Residents packed Fort Worth City Hall on Tuesday night to deplore political division in the city.
Some aired grievances against elected officials, particularly Mayor Mattie Parker. A few thanked Parker and council members for their leadership.
The crowd included Fort Worth residents, community activists, faith leaders and elected officials. State Rep. Nate Schatzline, a Fort Worth Republican and pastor at Mercy Culture Church, attended the meeting with his congregants.
Schatzline told the Fort Worth Report that he and his parishioners chose to fill City Hall with prayer during the council meeting after he met with Parker, Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare, City Council member Alan Blaylock and other faith leaders. At that meeting, he said, Parker suggested that local faith leaders come together to “cover our city in prayer.”
“We have so many church people here tonight that aren’t here to make noise,” Schatzline said. “We’re literally just here to show, ‘Hey, we’ve got the city’s back. We care about the city. We love the city. And we’re going to be here and engage in maybe ways we should have been here all along.”
Parker did not return phone calls seeking comment but said via text message that she would be available to comment Wednesday about the meeting Schatzline described in a social media post and his call for people to show up to the Oct. 14 public comment meeting and pray.
Her chief of staff, Kinsey Clemmer, said via text message that the mayor attended the meeting Schatzline described and asked for prayers for the city and its leadership, but Clemmer did not answer further questions. O’Hare did not return a request for comment, and Blaylock declined to comment.
The way Schatzline described it on social media, he and other Mercy Culture pastors were called to meet with O’Hare at his office where Parker and Blaylock were present. The room was filled with other pastors, Schatzline said in the video. It’s unclear when the meeting occurred.
Estrus Tucker, the co-founder of DEI Consultants LLC who served on the city’s race and culture task force, said he’s been a part of meetings with faith and community leaders in the aftermath of the 2019 fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson. People with various perspectives came together then for dialogue, he said.
Tucker, an independent, said he wasn’t a part of the recent meeting Schatzline described. However, he said he found the legislator’s recent social media post, which called for prayer amid threats of violence in the council chambers misleading, because “it is just one-sided.”
“The politicalization of our council interactions has just been steadily increasing, and with that, the kind of violent language, the conflict, the gross disrespect.” Tucker said. “We want our elected officials to encourage us or call us to a higher standard and to model that to the best of their ability.”
About 60 attendees addressed council members on a range of issues during their Oct. 14 public comment meeting, while dozens more packed the council chambers. A city marshal said the room was at its capacity of 250 seats. All council members attended in person except for Elizabeth Beck, who joined the meeting virtually and left before it ended.
The two most-discussed topics were the council’s 2026 meeting schedule, adopted last month with fewer opportunities for public comment than this year, and a comment Parker made to a community activist two weeks ago. Some speakers described her remarks as threatening, inappropriate and racially charged.
During a Sept. 30 meeting, community activist Patrice Jones opposed the reduction of public comments, telling the council that residents may seek out council members elsewhere and make them “uncomfortable in (their) comfortable spaces.”
Parker responded to Jones saying, “I still have your casket.” She later said that was a reference to a 2022 incident when an empty casket bearing the names of police violence victims was left in the mayor’s yard, suggesting Jones was involved. The Fort Worth Police Department investigated the issue at the time but did not publicly name any suspects.
Last month, Parker joined about 40 U.S. mayors in signing a declaration against political violence. That coalition added to a national movement of politicians decrying politically motivated violence after the fatal shootings of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman earlier this year.
Throughout the more than three hourslong meeting Tuesday, speakers urged the council to give residents more opportunities to speak to the members. The majority of speakers demanded that Parker take accountability and publicly apologize to Jones.
Only two speakers identified themselves as Mercy Culture congregants. Schatzline emphasized before the meeting that congregants were there to pray throughout the meeting rather than speak to the council.
During public comment meetings, residents may address the council on any issue. At such meetings, the mayor and council members hear public comments without commenting or taking action. Residents may also address council members during their regular meetings, but comments must relate to an item listed on the meeting’s agenda.
Some speakers criticized Parker for meeting with Schatzline and Mercy Culture pastors. They accused the mayor of aligning with Christian nationalism.
Jeremy Pope, an ordained minister and chaplain in Fort Worth, said the core of his ministry is standing with and fighting for marginalized communities. Comments like Parker’s to Jones, a Black woman, drive fear in communities of color. He urged Parker to “apologize and move on.”
Pope noted while the mayor has done some good, such as prioritizing school literacy, other areas Parker needs to improve such as trying to get people with different perspectives to engage in dialogue.
“It’s going to take the two sides coming together in somewhat of a private sphere and trying to at least get to where we cannot see each other as the enemy,” Pope told the Report. “What’s happening now, it’s just escalating everything and nothing’s getting done.”
Mercy Culture pastor Chris Cheema thanked the mayor and council for their leadership and said he and others attended the meeting to show that the gates of hell “won’t prevail against our city.”
“Today, we have an opportunity to choose righteousness and to partner (in) what God is doing in this city,” Cheema said. “I’m grateful that even in moments of darkness, the light of God continues to shine brighter.”
Tucker said a big piece of what’s missing in the conversation is residents who “want to express goodwill, want to do the right thing,” but don’t want to get involved in the “political mudslinging.”
“It’s frightening as to the kind of incivility that this will promote in our communities. It just puts us more entrenched in our positions. We’re not a community when we do that,” Tucker said. “I want to believe that Fort Worth is better than this, but what I’m looking at does not tell me we’re better than this.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org.
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
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This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.