Blessing boxes under fire?
‘Activist’ wants them removed in Rocky Top
Geri Anderson of Rocky Top works to refill the “blessing box” in front of City Hall with more groceries on Thursday, Aug. 27. Anderson is one of several volunteers who help put food in the boxes in town to help feed the poor and homeless. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The woman, who identifies herself as “Katie Styles” and “Katie Hurst” on Facebook, has been posting calls for people to help her clean up trash in the downtown Rocky Top area, and has posted that she has qualified to “run for city counsel,” which apparently she meant as “city council.”
Her effort to ban the blessing boxes – two of which stand in front of City Hall and Lake City Elementary School – began in the middle of last week, when she posted on the Facebook group site Rocky Top Chit Chat that she believed the boxes were encouraging the homeless, which she called “wicked people,” to gather and stay in the city. She also has created a new private Facebook group called “Rocky Top Risers,” which she says is about her efforts as an activist marshaling people to help her clean up the city.
Here is one of her comments from Rocky Top Chit Chat, in which she claims the support of Main Street Baptist Church in her effort to have the boxes removed (the comment is copied here without editing):
“I had a very inspirational meeting today with Main Street Baptist Church. Main Street has offered many services for Rocky Top Risers. Main Street does not support the ‘Blessing Boxs’. Rocky Top Risers are looking into removing these boxes ASAP. Next change [chance?] to raffle [ruffle?] the feathers of the wicked people walking the town, is to remove access to charging ports through the city! God has put so many helpful people in my life, with his guidance we will not fail! and the greatest change of all is happening September 5th at 9:00am! Wayne E Phillips offered to say a special prayer for our city and we want you there!! I will make an event page!! God is so so good! Change is coming for this town and we are only going up!!!! God bless Rocky Top and it’s people.”
Comments on the Rocky Top Chit Chat page have been overwhelmingly negative against Styles’ campaign to remove the boxes.
One commenter, identifying as Michael Holstine, said, in part:
“If the blessing boxes are so bad then why does God put it on my heart, and other people’s as well, to put stuff in them. The boxes did not bring the homeless. The homeless people [were] here before the boxes, I know this because I have lived in this town almost my entire life. God put it on someone’s heart to put in the boxes.”
Another commenter, Judd Mayes, was even more emphatic in opposition to Styles’ campaign, saying:
“You can delete or kick me out but a cold heart or black heart or no heart will not enter into heaven ... what would Jesus do??? … that’s it in a nutshell.”
Styles and a few others allied with her on Facebook contend that city officials refuse to listen to their complaints about the blessing boxes, homeless people and drug addicts hanging out on city streets, and the condition of some of the abandoned downtown buildings.
Rocky Top City Manager Michael Foster said those people do not attend the City Council meetings, which are open to the public, and that “I have never talked to Katie Styles; she has never called me.”
Foster also said that “No one has called or emailed me” about wanting the blessing boxes removed.
“The one here at city hall was originally at the rec center,” he said. “It didn’t really work there. The council agreed to allow it here at City Hall. It’s been here not quite a year. … The council allowed that to be there to see how it works out. I think it has helped people, but it doesn’t go without problems. … It does get abused, but that goes with everything. It has good and bad about it.”
Geri Anderson is one of the Rocky Top residents who help stock the blessing boxes, something she believes is a way she can give back to the community she has called home for only the past year. “I’m from New Orleans, but I moved to Tennessee after Hurricane Katrina, and to Rocky Top about a year ago,” she said.
She goes to a church food pantry event in Norris on some days to get food to stock the Rocky Top blessing boxes, and finds food other places at other times.
“The people these boxes are helping aren’t stray animals, these are people,” she said. “They are in dire straits. Some are drug addicts, but they need to eat.”
She had brain surgery late last year for an aneurism that she said doctors told her needed to be fixed or she would die within a year. Once she recovered from that operation, the 63-year-old Anderson said she felt as though her life was spared so she could continue helping the needy.
“Jesus said, ‘Feed my people,’” she said. “I’ve been down and out, too. I got to say, the people using the blessing box don’t trash it. They take care of it.”
At Main Street Baptist Church, Pastor Wayne Phillips said he did meet last week with Katie Styles for about an hour, but that the conversation was mostly about getting help from the church congregation to clean up trash along city streets.
“During that entire conversation, we talked about the blessing boxes for about 30 seconds, and I did not say I oppose them,” Phillips said. “I said that the church doesn’t ‘support’ them, by which I meant that we don’t go and put food in them. We have our own food pantry [for the needy].
“We don’t oppose [the blessing boxes] or want them taken out, we just feel we have a better way of helping to feed people,” he said. “Folks can come to our food pantry. … For folks who don’t go to church, but who contribute to the blessing boxes, we’re fine with that.”
As for Styles’ claim that she had filed to run for Rocky Top City Council, that’s not true, according to Anderson County Elections Administrator Mark Stephens. Two City Council seats are up for filling in the Nov. 3 election, the positions now held by Councilmen Juston Job and Nathan Dyson.
Stephens said the deadline to file for inclusion on the ballot was noon Aug. 20, and that only two candidates made that deadline – Job, who is seeking re-election, and newcomer Zack Green. Write-in candidates can still file an affidavit to seek to have write-in votes in their name counted in the election, and the deadline for that is noon on Sept. 14, Stephens said. The Rocky Top City Council has four members, who are elected on staggered four-year terms, and a mayor, who is elected every four years.