|
OTHER
‘Silent Sam’: A racist Jim Crow-era speech inspired UNC students to topple a Confederate monument on campus
WAPO // Antonia Noori Farzan // August 21, 2018
Summary: In 1913, Julian Carr, a prominent industrialist and supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, was invited to speak at the unveiling of a statue of a Confederate soldier on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It had been placed there by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Carr’s lengthy address made clear the symbolism of the statue. First, he credited Confederate soldiers with saving “the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” adding, “to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States — Praise God.” Then, he went on to tell a personal story. “I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal,” Carr said. “One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.”
Protesters topple Silent Sam Confederate statue at UNC
N&O // Jane Stancill // August 20, 2018
Summary: Protesters toppled the Silent Sam Confederate statue on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on Monday night. The monument was ripped down after 9:15 p.m. Earlier in the evening, protesters covered the statue with tall, gray banners, erecting “an alternative monument” that said, in part, “For a world without white supremacy.” Protesters were apparently working behind the covering with ropes to bring the statue down, which happened more than two hours into a rally. It fell with a loud clanging sound, and the crowd erupted in cheers.
Protesters topple UNC’s “Silent Sam” in evening demonstration
Progressive Pulse // Joe Killian // August 20, 2018
Summary: At a demonstration that began just after 7:30 p.m., several hundred protesters marched to the statue, which has been the focus of intense controversy over the last year. The toppling of the monument, the only Confederate statue on any of UNC’s campuses, comes after the UNC Board of Governors last month declined to even discuss petitioning the North Carolina Historical Commission to remove it. The commission meets Wednesday morning to discuss whether to remove three other Confederate monuments from downtown Raleigh.
Silent Sam is down. Here’s what people are saying about the Confederate statue.
N&O // Sarah Nagem // August 20, 2018
Summary: After years of controversy and protests, the Silent Sam Confederate monument is down. Protesters toppled the statue Monday night on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. Reactions posted on Twitter ranged from joy to disappointment. Gov. Roy Cooper’s Twitter account posted a message Monday night saying “violent destruction of public property has no place in our communities.”
Midterms
Editorial: Impeach state judges, how low can you go?
WRAL // CBC Opinion // August 21, 2018
Summary: How far is too far in North Carolina politics? It takes a lot, but regrettably we now know. It came last week when Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state Republican Party, suggested legislators could impeach judges or justices who decide to remove any proposed constitutional amendments from the ballot this fall. There is common agreement that ballot language of several amendments is misleading and even purposely deceitful – particularly those dealing with diminishing the authority of the executive and judicial branches of government and increasing the powers of the legislature to enforce the law and control the courts. North Carolina law requires that ballots truthfully reflect what voters are being asked to approve or reject. The governor’s office and state Board of Elections have asked the courts to determine whether the ballot language for the
amendments meets that standard and are legal.
When N.C. justices were impeached
Greensboro N&R // Doug Clark // August 21, 2013
Summary: Howard E. Covington Jr. dangles an intriguing historical footnote in his excellent new biography of Greensboro’s Henry Frye. (I’ll write about the book for a future Sunday Ideas section.) The author, who also lives in Greensboro, describes Republican Gov. Jim Martin’s 1985 appointment of Rhoda Billings to the N.C. Supreme Court (where Frye was already seated). Billings would be “the first Republican associate justice to serve since Democrats had tried to rid the court of Republicans in 1901 when Chief Justice David M. Furches and Associate Justice Robert M. Douglas, both Republicans, were impeached. Democrats in the state house were angry at the court’s attempt to overturn the white supremacy laws passed by the Democratic majority in the 1899 General Assembly. ... The senate failed to convict.” How did I miss that history lesson?
Constitutional Amendments
Fine printputsch: The North Carolina GOP provokes a constitutional crisis
NC Policy Watch // Rob Schofield // August 21, 2018
Summary: Surely there must be a line somewhere. Surely, there must be a point at which the language that is slated to appear on the state ballot with respect to a proposed constitutional amendment bears so little relationship to what the amendment would actually do, that the courts simply must step in. Think about it: What would happen if lawmakers voted to place language on the ballot that purported, say, to “clarify” duties and responsibilities of various officials with respect to “managing state investments,” while the actual amendment language (which was not included on the ballot) abolished the office of state treasurer? Could that possibly be lawful or constitutional? What if the hidden language abolished the office of Attorney General or even the Governor?
Amendments battle threatens elections
Courier-Tribune // Colin Campbell // August 20, 2018
Summary: The last-minute legal tussle between Gov. Roy Cooper and the legislature over proposed constitutional amendments has begun to affect the voting process for this year’s election. Last week, a three-judge panel delayed the printing of ballots until Sept. 1 — a move that likely means absentee ballots won’t be ready on Sept. 7 as currently scheduled. Voters seeking to cast their ballots by mail will have less time to get it done. The ballots could be delayed for about two weeks before the state would violate federal absentee voting rules. This situation could have been easily avoided, and both sides share in the blame. Cooper shouldn’t have waited five weeks to file his lawsuit against the two proposed amendments that shift the governor’s appointment powers to the legislature. He’s arguing that the ballot language misleads voters, but that language was approved on June 28. The lawsuit wasn’t filed until Aug. 6.
HD-8
Lawsuit alleges NC House candidate abused her power in police firings
WRAL // Tyler Dukes // August 20, 2018
Summary: Three Greenville police detectives disciplined after a May 2018 traffic stop filed suit against a city councilwoman this week, arguing that her formal complaint against them amounts to an abuse of authority. Detectives Joshua Smith, Travis Brinkley and Brock Flannery say Greenville City Councilwoman Kandie Smith obstructed justice and interfered with their employment by pressuring the police department to take disciplinary action against the officers. Smith is the Democratic candidate for the open N.C. House seat in District 8, which covers Pitt County, and has been a vocal advocate of criminal justice reform, including a push for the creation of a civilian review board to increase oversight of the Greenville Police Department. The lawsuit, filed in Pitt County Superior Court Monday and backed by the N.C. Police Benevolent Association, cites her candidacy as motivation for several complaints she has filed against the department.
Fired GPD officers sue city councilwoman Kandie Smith
WNCT // Connor Kick // August 20, 2018
Summary: Two fired Greenville police officers and one officer who was suspended have filed a lawsuit against City Council member Kandie Smith. In a news conference Monday, North Carolina Police Benevolent Association executive director John Midgette said three members of the Greenville Police Department's gang unit, Brock Flannery, Joshua Smith and Travis Brinkley, were targeted by Smith. The officers allege Kandie Smith took efforts to get them fired after they pulled over assistant Nash County superintendent Leonodus Farrow Jr.
NC-2
A GOP congressman wants his supporters to know (or think) he’s losing
N&O // Brian Murphy // August 20, 2018
Summary: Rep. George Holding, a Wake County Republican who has won each of his three terms with more than 56 percent of the vote, told supporters Monday that he is trailing Democratic candidate Linda Coleman in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District. In a fundraising email, Holding announced internal poll numbers that he says show him down three points. His campaign manager, Carter Wrenn, confirmed the results in an interview with The News & Observer on Monday and explained why the campaign made them public. “We want people to understand where we are. We don’t want people to take this election for granted,” Wrenn said. “George has always won by a pretty comfortable margin. This is a completely different election.” The polls were conducted by the Holding campaign and have not been made public.
NC-6
In Donald Trump era, a GOP leader looks to recast his party's image with black voters
USA Today // Eliza Collins // August 20, 2018
Summary: At an elite gathering of Republicans this month in the resort town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Rep. Mark Walker gave a speech urging the party to do more to reach out to African-Americans, Hispanics and other people of color. At the forum attended by influential conservatives such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and former presidential adviser Karl Rove, Walker elaborated on a message he has delivered in other private conversations with Republicans. Walker's message resonated enough with the audience that after the event, Rove reached out to talk further. But the next morning, Walker's party was dealing with fallout from a different message on race, when President Donald Trump called his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, a black woman, a “dog.” "That would not be my terminology,” Walker said during a telephone interview late last week with USA TODAY.
NC attorney general files lawsuit against contractors over scam
WBTV // Amaya Turner // August 20, 2018
Summary: People posing as contractors in the Charlotte area are being accused of scamming customers out of their money after failing to perform the services agreed upon. A lawsuit being pursued by the office of NC Attorney General Josh Stein stated Randy Briel, Glenn Dunnam, Signature Sun Decks and Decks Patios and Porches allegedly posted false advertisement of a legitimate contractor business with more than 20 business names, according to a statement from the attorney general's office. The statement also says the defendants were not licensed contractors. The defendants enter into a written contract, requiring a deposit before performing any services. The statement also says the defendants request payments throughout various stages of the construction, according to the statement. Officials say quickly after receiving the payments, the defendants abandon the project with the customer's money. “Unfortunately, some contractors are crooked: they take people’s money but don’t do the work,” said Attorney General Stein. “My office will not allow it.”
NC Environment
GenX
State board backs low threshold on GenX
WRAL // Travis Fain // August 20, 2018
Summary: A state board of scientists threw its weight behind North Carolina's longstanding health goal on GenX Monday, signing off on a conservative amount of the chemical believed to be safe in drinking water. That threshold: 140 parts per trillion. The miniscule amount represents the best estimate state scientists can make on the amount bottle-fed infants and other potentially sensitive populations can drink without expecting health problems from a chemical whose health effects have not been heavily studied. State regulators first set this level in July of last year, soon after the public learned GenX was found in the Cape Fear River and municipal water supplies downstream from the Chemours plant. In backing that threshold Monday the Secretary's Science Advisory Board on Toxic Air Pollutants rejected Chemours' suggestion that the state adopt a significantly higher threshold.
Our View: EPA visit gives reason for cautious GenX optimism
Fayetteville Observer // Opinion // August 19, 2018
Summary: We were heartened and encouraged by what we saw and heard at an EPA listening session in Fayettteville last week. After all we’d heard about the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, it was a different song in a crowded meeting room at the Crown Coliseum. Here were the leaders of the EPA’s key programs, telling us what steps they were taking to protect residents of the Cape Fear River Basin from the emerging contaminants known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. It appears they will be steps of substance and significance, not window dressing. We saw that there is already a productive partnership between the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Quality, whose efforts in dealing with GenX and related PFAS chemicals have been frustrated by state lawmakers who have refused many of the agency’s funding requests. But the EPA has stepped in and assisted in many areas of the GenX response. EPA officials said that cooperation would continue.
Climate Change
NC beach homes and coast are ‘doomed’ and residents need to get out, scientist says
N&O // Abbie Bennett // August 20, 2018
Summary: There’s a “disaster” approaching North Carolina’s coast, and it’s not a hurricane. It’s an increasingly encroaching sea, Orrin Pilkey says. An award-winning Duke University professor emeritus of geology, who is also the founder and director emeritus of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, Pilkey doesn’t mince words when it comes to sea level rise. “These beaches are doomed,” Pilkey has said, multiple times — most recently in The Washington Post and in an interview with The News & Observer. “The buildings are doomed, too.”
|
