- Councilman, Don Carey,thank you for joining us today

to talk about this newmeasure that you initiated.

- Thank you so much for having me,

I'm excited to talk about it.

- So In God We Trust decals are going

on city vehicles in Chesapeake.

Can you tell me what led to that?

- Sure, so the main reason

I brought that resolutionto council was because

I was seeing the socialfabric of our city,

our discord around politics, our discord

around racial issues, that discord

around the different things that divide us

continue to crumble and my thought was

to act similar to how wedid when I played football

in the NFL for 10 years.

One of the ways NFLteams would kinda bring

different individuals fromdifferent demographic backgrounds

was to coalesce us arounda model or a statement

or a DNA as we call it in Detroit.

So I tried to act thesame here and I thought,

what better way to coalesce individuals

around than the modelof the national model

of our great nation?

- So something I didnotice in the recorded

city council meeting that I watched.

At the end, when the measurewas voted on and passed,

there was a round ofapplause within the chambers,

which I thought was moving.

That being said, did youreceive pushback on this?

- Oh yes. (laughing)

The round of applause was, wasvery encouraging and helpful.

I would say there have beenequal amounts of pushback

and support for this resolution,which is not too uncommon,

for, I guess, controversial deals.

But of course there areindividuals who disagree

with the resolution, theydisagree with the model,

and then, by God, I'llsupport their right to protest

or stake their claims ormake their concerns known.

- And you did also mention in the meeting

about this measure notbeing an evangelical tool.

Can you explain what that means, as well?

- Sure, so one of the main pushbacks was

this is being used as away to coerce or, you know,

trick individual into Christianity.

And to which I want us tolet individuals know that

no, this is not an evangelical tool

to bring anybody into Christianity.

Matter of fact, we don'teven talk about Christianity

nowhere in the resolution.

We talk about, you know, building

or rebuilding healthy patriotism.

We talk about bringingindividuals together

being divided by socialdiscord, political discord.

And I mentioned that Tuesday night,

most of the rhetoric comesfrom our fellow politicians,

in this political space.

So if there's something we can do to begin

to rebuild what we areconstantly tearing down

I think it's worthwhile.

So the, the, the pushbackthat I was getting saying that

this was some type of evangelical tool,

number one, I am a Christian.

I make no bones about that.

I will proudly say that.

Secondly, it takes abit more to get people

into Christianity than justto prop in God somewhere.

You kinda have to make some,

some other claims there.

So there's nowhere near that,nor am I trying to do that.

I respect separation of church and state.

I do not think any publicbodies should be trying

to use anyone's faith tocoerce anybody into anything.

Policy should not be made like that

and I think that's, Ithink that's a bad move.

- As a resident of Chesapeake,I am looking forward

to seeing In God We Trustdecals on city vehicles

while I am driving around the city.

- So I, I will tell you, we, we are

behind our great sheriffwho has already been placing

In God We Trust on his vehiclesfor several months now.

So you look up our sheriff's cars

or vehicles you'll see them,

but within a year you will see them

on all city vehicles, notjust first responders.

They'll be on, you know,

utility vehicles to the trash pickup.

So we're very excited about that.

- Great news.

Well, thank you againfor sharing this with us

and good luck with thatinitiative and you take care.

- Sure, thank you so much.