I don’t know about you, but Halloween puts me on edge. I have never seen a scary movie because simply the commercials for those movies are enough to keep me sleeping with a nightlight well into adulthood. As I’ve gotten older, I have become a little more relaxed about horror movies. I know the things I used to be afraid of aren’t real and can’t hurt me. Besides, there are much scarier things in the life of an adult: bills, taxes, freedoms disappearing. You know, things that should actually keep an adult up at night.
While visions of Jason or Chuckie will certainly give people a scare for a night, there are people who are rightfully scared of real things each and every day in Tennessee. They are scared that their livelihood will be taken away by the government. They are scared for their child’s future because financial strain means they are forced into a failing school district. They are scared that their property rights no longer exist or that their small business will go under because the high taxes they’re paying are being used by the government to fund their competitors. This is the real scary stuff.
Natural hair braiders, security alarm installers, makeup artists, and auctioneers across the state need state permission to do their job. That often means hundreds of hours of schooling and thousands of dollars they cannot afford. Many families in Tennessee are forced to send their children to a school that doesn’t meet the child’s specific needs, simply because they live in a certain zip code. Homeowners all over Nashville are facing costs up to tens of thousands of dollars to build sidewalks in front of their homes just because the city said so. Small business owners are putting up money to keep their doors open while the government is paying for their competitors to move into Tennessee.
At the Beacon Center, we are working to make Tennessee less scary for workers, business owners, and all taxpayers. But we cannot do it alone. Join us in our mission to empower Tennesseans and remove barriers to success.