At a press conference Friday afternoon, a new community visioning initiative was unveiled with a distinctive, eye-catching yellow-and-black logo, called Chattanooga Stunt which seeks to help shape the future of the city by asking one million Chattanooga residents to complete a short survey about their concerns and ideas.
“You might be thinking, isn’t one million just some totally arbitrary large number?” said Chattanooga Stunt lead coordinator Robin Fredamont. “Doesn’t Chattanooga just have a population of 170,000, anyway? To those people, I say, ‘That’s inside-the-box thinking.'”
“I remember as a child watching Evel Knievel on TV make a record-breaking motorcycle jump over 18 cars,” said Fredamont. “Then how did he top that? The following year, he jumped over 19 cars.”
“More is always better,” explained Fredamont. “If 25,000 surveys is good, then 100,000 must be four times better. And 1,000,000 must be ten times better than that.”
“Chattanooga’s main concerns are education, crime, jobs and economic development, and we are proud of its natural beauty and downtown area,” said Fredamont. “This is stuff we already know. But we really really want to be sure, so that’s why we’re going to ask one million people.”
“Chattanooga is kind of like a wheel—sure, it works OK, but it’s been around for so long, just going around and around,” said Fredamont.
“Let’s reinvent Chattanooga. Let’s reinvent the wheel,” said Fredamont, who was met with thunderous applause.
“Chattanooga is currently experiencing a truly wondrous transformation from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, and it’s due to the hard work, ingenuity and effort of many, many people over many, many years,” said Fredamont. “But, we at Chattanooga Stunt are happy to take the credit.”
“This visioning initiative will yield many benefits for our community, and when I say, ‘our community’ I really mean ‘my colleagues and myself,'” said Fredamont. “At the end of this campaign, we’ll have one million names and email addresses that we can spam for future enterprises, and this project will look great on our résumés.”
“The beauty of an effort like this is that if you’re not for us, then you’re against us and by extension, against Chattanooga, so I implore you and all Chattanooga organizations to join us,” said Fredamont. “History is written by the victors.”
