Members of the Bordeaux community in Nashville met despite their community meeting being canceled following the resignation of City Councilman Loniel Greene on Friday.
“We need to meet now more than ever,” Judy Cummings, Pastor at New Covenant Christian Church Disciples of Christ, said to another community member outside of Hobson Methodist Church where the meeting was planned Saturday.
Some of the community members that showed up never heard that the meeting was canceled, while others heard but decided they wanted to show up and work to better their community regardless.
“Despite the resignation, we thought that it was important still to congregate,” Cummings said.
The meeting was originally planned by former councilman Greene, but following controversial phone calls and accusations, Greene canceled the meeting and resigned from his seat on City Council.
“We still don’t have all the facts as to what’s going on, but we remain as a community together,” William D. Mason, Jr., a previous city council candidate, said. “We’re going to overcome whatever obstacles we fight together.”
Due to the meeting being officially canceled, the doors of the church remained locked, so members of the Bordeaux community held their meeting outside.
“Bordeaux is getting ready to be developed, and we want to make sure that development is smart and that development is strategic and in the best interests of our community,” Cummings explained.
Much of the meeting was focused on the rezoning of areas of Bordeaux, but there were also conversations of moving forward, past the controversy with Loniel Greene.
"There’s no point in staying in the past,” Cummings said. “It’s been a blight on our community, an embarrassment for our community.”
Mason agreed, adding, “I think that people are hurting because we thought that we were moving forward, and this is like taking steps back, but we are going to come back from it.”
After about an hour of exchanging ideas outside of the church, the group exchanged email addresses and set up a plan to move forward.
As for Greene’s position on City Council, it will be filled by another council member until the August elections
