Mayor Megan Barry’s ‘Office of Resilience’ Sells Globalists The Opportunity to Shape Nashville

 

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry has officially tethered the city to the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities” (100RC) initiative. The globalist foundation provides direct funding for Barry’s new “Office of Resilience” chief resilience officer, Erik Cole.

The Foundation’s team works with networked cities to plan for every eventuality ranging from natural disasters like floods and tornadoes to “slow-moving disasters like unemployment, affordable housing, and poverty and inequality – that are increasingly part of 21st century life.”

According to a U.S. Conference of Mayors report, from 2015 to 2016, chronic homelessness in Nashville has increased by 9.8 percent, well above the national average and ranking Mayor Barry’s city as having the sixth largest jump among cities included in the report. Nashville also ranked a 43.2% increase in unsheltered homelessness during the same time period.

Mayor Barry’s commitment to “meeting the goals of the Paris [climate] Agreement” aligns with the “City Resilience Framework” (CRF) and is supported by the president of 100 Resilient Cities and other 100RC city members. The CRF was developed by Arup, whose “independent firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists” have assembled to “shape a better world.” The CRF is intended to identify a city’s “characteristics and capacity” to respond to the:

growing range of adversities and challenges in the 21st century. From the effects of climate change to growing migrant populations to inadequate infrastructure to pandemics to cyber-attacks. Resilience is what helps cities adapt and transform in the face of these challenges, helping them to prepare for both the expected and the unexpected.

Resilience ideology considers an “overtaxed or inefficient public transportation system” a “chronic stress” which absent a fix, will obstruct “urban resilience.” Even though transportation has been part of Barry’s agenda since her campaign, her $2 billion budget was light in this area given her big plans. Even before the 2017 state General Assembly convened, the mayor was already talking up the governor’s gas tax plan to help fund transit. Now with the passage of Haslam’s IMPROVE Act, the mayor can raise transit funds by raising taxes if passed by referendum. However, the mayor’s “nMotion” almost $6 billion transit plan could be derailed if the Nashville Debt Limit Charter Amendment passes in a 2018 referendum.

In March, leading up to the launch of the city’s Office of Resilience, the Mayor’s office and 100RC brought together 120 community stakeholders in an “agenda setting workshop” (ASW).  The ASE ranked “poor transportation network quality” among the top chronic stresses.

Long-range planning for Nashville and Davidson County’s development was launched during Karl Dean’s administration. In 2013, Vanderbilt sociology professor Dan Cornfield whose wife, Hedy Weinberg serves as the director of TN ACLU, was lead author on the “Partnering for an Equitable and Inclusive Nashville” background paper, the contents of which were poured into the “Nashville Next” twenty-five year planning process. Organizations representing the disabled, immigrant and refugee rights, LGBT and Muslim communities were provided an expanded opportunity to influence the developing long-range plan for Nashville.

Nashville Next is the operative long-range plan to guide Nashville and Davidson County’s development from 2015 through 2040. Described as a community-driven process, emphasis was placed on including groups considered to be under-represented in civic processes.

Mayor Barry’s Office of Resilience is a logical extension of city and county planning but may hold the mayor’s office accountable to outside globalist investors as opposed to the voters.