Reports of Race-Based Push Polling Funded by Bells Landing Partners, LLC Go Ignored by Local Media

A Scottsboro resident e-mailed me thusly with details of May Town Center push-polling of Nashvillians which also prompted calls to State Senator Doug Henry, who is sponsoring a bill to conserve the green and low density character of Bells Bend:

I am part of the core group fighting like hell to stave off May Town Center and preserve our little piece of heaven. Fighting a city dump was only slightly more heinous a task.

Anyhow, I thought you might want to know about some of the lame and desperate tactics the PR machine Tony [Giarratana] has hired, are using these days. We've tried to get this into the mainstream media but can't seem to get that accomplished. The Mays and [Giarratana] have hired folks (one group is at the U of Chicago but all others have refused to name who they work for or where they are located) who have been making a series of push-poll phone calls that target either Bells Bend and Scottsboro, North Nashville and Bordeau or most recently, the entire city. If the call is to our neighbors, they try to engage the resident in a discussion about property rights and how a "radical fringe group" within the community is involved in a "land grab' and is trying to "steal" their property rights. If they live in a surrounding area, they ask if the person values their property rights and opposes "those people" (me!) who are trying to destroy their quality of life. If the answer they get is yes, they patch them through to Senator Henry's office (he received 300 calls one day a couple of weeks ago from people who live nowhere near here and would in no way be affected by his legislation). And for those North Nashville and Bordeaux citizens, the caller asks if they think economic development and increasing the tax base of the city is important and then proceed to tell them how wonderful May Town Center will be for their community and how many jobs it will provide. When they call someone who says they do not support MTC they immediately hang up on them. I know of one instance where the caller laughed mockingly before hanging up as soon as my neighbor started voicing her opinion and opposition to MTC. There have been calls where people were asked to complete a survey, asked about their race and if the answer was Caucasian, they were told they didn't qualify for the survey and the conversation was over. I have copied and pasted a recent email below, from someone who received one of these calls.

UPDATE: PiTW pays attention.