TCB Feb. 15, 2017 — Trump's first four weeks

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point February 15 – 21, 2017 triad-city-beat.com

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The first four weeks Trump and the path to autocracy PAGE 12

Hip-hop hopefuls PAGE 18 Defund or defend? PAGE 6 Analog photog PAGE 19

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February 15 – 21, 2017

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

We’ve got a couple new writers rolling here at Triad City Beat, so I’ve been finding myself doing the thing that maybe I love most about

by Brian Clarey this business: helping writers with their writing.

The degree to which I’m effective at it is arguable, though I myself have been mashing sentences together from the very beginning: on typewriters, surplus office computers from the early 1980s, a laptop the size of a briefcase and a succession of Apple computers and their clones that date back to the fifth grade.

I know well the frustration of young writers whose work is never quite as good as they want it to be — it’s never as good as we want it to be, I tell them now — and the sort of grateful humility that comes when someone points out to you specifically why your writing sucks.

The first person to do that for me — besides my mother, who provides a constant source of feedback on everything I do — came to me when I was still very young.

Everyone had heard of Paul David Rivadue before they got to Garden City Junior High: The tiny Canadian hippie with shoulder-length hair and graying muttonchops. He was known among the students for giving out free copies of

the New York Times, leading responsible excursions to Grateful Dead shows and teaching the hardest courses in school: US history and, for 9th graders only, journalism.

I failed Rivadue as a student: I passed his history class only because he permitted me to make maps of the states for extra credit. By the time I was done I had worked through half the Canadian provinces. I dropped out of his journalism class, but not before I went on an infamous field trip to a journalism seminar at Columbia University in New York City when somehow we all got arrested for truancy in Times Square a few miles to the south.

Yet Rivadue was the first person ever to adequately explain to me the tide of history, the inevitability of change and how that pertains to our political factions.

And he gave me my first writing tip: the power of the verb. He used to mark up a writer’s words with a red Flair pen, making constellations of passive verbs and casting shame on the author. It’s still my favorite trick as an editor.

Riv passed last week at a suitably advanced age, mane of hair and muttonchops still intact. I know he remembered me — he told me a few years ago that a teacher tends to remember those students who were detained by police on their watch.

And I remember him every time I use an active verb.

triad-city-beat.com

Remembering Rivadue # DT WS

DOWNTOWN

restaurant week F E B R U A R Y

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

It’s not just that Putin and Trump lie, it’s that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.

— Journalist Masha Gessen, in the Cover, page 12

# DT WS

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey

ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach

SALES DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING Dick Gray

brian@triad-city-beat.com allen@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

jorge@triad-city-beat.com

dick@triad-city-beat.com

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

eric@triad-city-beat.com

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Kat Bodrie Spencer KM Brown

Jelisa Castrodale Stallone Frazier Matt Jones

Cover photography of Donald Trump campaigning in Greensboro

by Jordan Green

jordan@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL INTERN Joel Sronce intern@triad-city-beat.com

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February 15 – 21, 2017

EVENTS

Wednesday, February 15 @ 7pm

Healing Psychic Readings by Lucía Thursday, February 16 @ 8pm

Open Mic Night

Friday, February 17 @ 8pm

Bruce Piephoff w/ Scott Sawyer Saturday, February 18 @ 8pm

Matty Sheets

Monday, February 20 @ 7pm

Mystery Movie Monday

CITY LIFE Feb. 15 – 21

by Joel Sronce

THURSDAY #NoDAPL @ UNCG, 12:30 p.m.

UNCG Women’s & Gender Studies presents a series of scholars and activists who have been involved in indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The discussion, held in the Maple Room at the Elliott University Center, includes environmental and anti-colonial aspects of the struggle. More info on the Facebook event page.

Women’s March co-chairs @ Wait Chapel (W-S), 7 p.m.

The keynote event for Wake Forest University’s Black History Month activities features Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez — co-chairs of the recent Women’s March in Washington, DC. The discussion, “Reckoning & Resistance,” connects their involvement in the march to the task of moving forward.

Melissa Harris-Perry moderates the event. More info and ticket registration at news.wfu.edu.

FRIDAY 602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

(336) 698-3888 SPREADING JOY ONE PINT AT A TIME

Family game night @ High Point Museum, 5 p.m.

The High Point Museum presents an evening of card games, board games, scavenger hunts, Pokémon Go and the “Challenge High Point” game. Pizza, snacks and prizes are available. More info at highpointnc.gov.

Leo Kottke & Keller Williams @ the Carolina Theatre (GSO), 8 p.m.

These two famed musicians team up for an event called “Shut the Folk Up and Listen.” The evening features solo sets from each guitarist as well as some collaboration. More info at carolinatheatre.com.

SATURDAY Move & Dance! In Solidarity with Women @ the Sherri Denese Jackson Foundation (GSO), 1 p.m.

All are invited to the Women Empowering Women event to unite against exploitation of girls and women. The event includes poetry, dance, refreshments and information about agencies that assist those in need in Guilford County.

More info on the Facebook event page.

Monday Geeks Who Drink Pub Quiz 7:30 Tuesday Live music with Piedmont Old Time Society Old Time music and Bluegrass 7:30 Wednesday Live music with J Timber and Joel Henry with special guests 7:30

Thursday Live music with Josh King, Mark Kano, and Jordan Powers with special guests 8:30 Friday, Saturday, Sunday BEER

Saturday, February 18

Carri Smithey Band 8:00

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joymongers.com | 336-763-5255 576 N. Eugene St. | Greensboro

Neptune’s Car @ Muddy Creek Music Hall (W-S), 8 p.m.

An award-winning Americana duo brings a down-to-earth style that accompanies its compelling musical arrangements with Holly Hanson’s light soprano and Steve Hayes’ rich tenor. More info at muddycreekcafeandmusichall.com.

have been more intellectually honest and complicating to use it to tell the story of Roosevelt, who ordered the internment, and who is otherwise lionized in the series.

Yet all in all, Stone’s injunction seems prophetic for the modern era: “Unless we remind ourselves of the good that we have lost, it’s not easy to imagine a better future.”

News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball

the Soviet Union, not the US-led invasion of Normandy, that turned the tide of the war in Europe. That, and the staggering number of Soviet casualties, should tell us something about the national pride that propels Vladimir Putin’s dreams of a resurgent Russia.

“Untold History” certainly takes an angle.

And while viewers should come armed with a degree of skepticism, it’s also worth considering the series’ proposition that the United States could have easily taken a different path with a radically different outcome.

“We are going to propose, among other things, a forgotten set of heroes, people who suffered for their beliefs and have been lost to history because they did not conform,” Stone says in the introduction. “And we are going to debunk some of those heroes that you believe in, not with malice, but by restating the facts.”

Stone’s hero is Henry Wallace, who served as vice president before he was sidelined by the Democratic Party’s conservative wing in the 1944 election in favor of the more pragmatic, centrist Truman. Fatefully, Roosevelt was dying, putting Truman in position to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to launch the Cold War. Stone suggests that the progressive Wallace would have forged a vision more attuned to the needs of working people and geared towards greater international cooperation.

There’s plenty of room to quibble with Stone’s editorial decisions: While material about the Japanese internment camps might thematically fit with the run-up to atomic bomb, it comes across as a cheap shot against Truman, who Stone clearly holds in low regard. It would

Up Front

by Jordan Green Around the time of the 2010 midterm elections, all those conservative yellers in tri-corner hats thumping their chests about the Constitution (aka the tea party) accomplished at least one good thing: They prodded people across the ideological spectrum to start studying the history of the early republic, if for no other reason than to avoid losing an argument.

A similar phenomenon seems to be occurring with the advent of the new administration.

Anyone who smells a whiff of fascism surrounding Donald Trump’s election or wants to understand why he’s playing footsie with Russia has to be scrambling right now to bone up on their World War II history.

A great place to start is “Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States,” a 10-part television documentary released in 2012 that has recently become available on Netflix. Stone has called the project — which took four years to complete — “the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done.”

I’ve only watched the first three episodes, dealing respectively with the initiation of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt and the rivalry between Harry Truman and Henry Wallace, and the advent of the atomic bomb, but the brisk pacing and provocative framing of the series augurs that I’ll probably finish it soon.

For a number of reasons it’s instructive viewing. Depictions of the German blitzkrieg, imperial Japan’s ruthless occupation of China and the US-British firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo inflicting massive civilian casualties should make us reluctant to stumble into war.

Also, the series argues persuasively that it was

triad-city-beat.com

‘Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States’

Crossword

Solving the world’s water crisis

by Joel Sronce

Reports show that people in the US use 2.5 million plastic bottles of water every hour. (Most are thrown into the garbage, at best.) Yet despite these staggering numbers, many people in this country lack clean water, with Flint, Mich. being the most glaring example.

So now that the gods are finally showing us a little warmth, let’s get our thirsty masses down to Antarctica.

Line up and harvest your own supply as the Larsen C shelf melts into the ocean!

Certainly, there are enough bottles lying around.

Impractical? Yes. But much easier solutions somehow elude us.

Triaditude Adjustment

miles, scientists expect a break to happen soon, establishing one of the largest icebergs ever.

The collapse of an ice shelf frees up the glacier behind it, allowing it to melt and expedite global sea-level rise.

The entire Antarctic ice sheet holds well over half of Earth’s fresh water. With nearly a billion people worldwide lacking access to clean water, the break in Larsen C couldn’t be happening at a more opportune time.

Apparently there’s a lack of international political will to redistribute funds to provide clean water for all of humanity, even though the cost to do so would amount to a fraction of the annual sales of bottled water.

Shot in the Triad

On Feb. 7, the New York Times reported that a crack in Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf grew 17 miles in the last two months.

Seventeen miles is 29,920 yards. Since two months measures no more than 62 days, that’s approximately 483 yards a day and more than 20 yards an hour. In a single day, the crack averaged more first downs than the Patriots or Falcons gained in this year’s Super Bowl.

About 20 miles separate one end of the crack in the Larsen C ice shelf — a rift now over 100 miles long — from where the shelf front meets the South Atlantic Ocean. Due to the stress the crack puts on the remaining

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February 15 – 21, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

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NEWS

Activists on both sides of abortion debate look to larger fight

by Jordan Green

About 60 people gathered outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Winston-Salem to call on Congress to defund the agency, while a smaller group showed up to defend women’s right to choose.

Ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood will be a victory, but the ultimate goal remains outlawing abortion altogether, anti-abortion activists vowed during a protest outside the reproductive healthcare provider in Winston-Salem on Feb. 11 as part of a coordinated nationwide action.

“Abortion shouldn’t be legal; it shouldn’t be about choice,” said Samantha Hogan, who organized the protest.

“We the people should acknowledge the truth of the matter: Abortion ends lives and hurts society. If we can get the government to stop funding abortions, stop funding companies that perform abortions, we would be that much closer to seeing abortion eliminated altogether.

But one step at a time, right?”

About 60 people, including state Sen. Joyce Krawiec, joined the protest.

Holding placards reading “Defund Planned Parenthood,” “Moms for Life” and “Dads for Life,” they listened to speakers and prayed in unison.

A smaller group of about a dozen counter-protesters gathered across the street holding hand-made signs with messages like “You are not pro-life — You’re anti-woman,” “Against abortion?

Don’t get one,” and “Politicians make crappy doctors — Keep your hands off my wife’s bits.” They interrupted the anti-abortion activists’ rendition of “Amazing Grace” with a chant of “Pro life, that’s a lie. You don’t care if women die.”

Krawiec equated abortion with slavery, invoking a Colonial Era law that differentiated between children born free and those born into bondage.

“Condemning that child to slavery is illegal,” she said, “but condemning that child to death is federally funded — government sanctioned basically.”

Federal law, as codified in the 1976 Hyde Amendment, already prohibits the federal government from funding abortions except in rare exceptions, but

State Sen. Joyce Krawiec (R-Forsyth) speaks to anti-abortion protesters outside Planned Parenthood in Winston-Salem, including NC Right to Life President Barbara Holt (left).

abortion foes and lawmakers, including US House Speaker Paul Ryan, have argued that federal funding is fungible and there’s nothing to prevent Planned Parenthood from reallocating funding for its other services to pay for abortions. Ryan said during a CNN townhall in January that the Republican majority in the House wants to shift federal funds from Planned Parenthood to federal community health centers that don’t provide abortions.

Planned Parenthood says that about 60 percent of its patients rely on public health programs like Medicaid and Title X for preventive and primary care, including birth control, sexually transmitted infections tests, Pap smears and mammograms. Cutting off funding would deny care to 2.5 million patients, and the nonprofit argues that federal community healthcare centers don’t have the capacity to absorb them or provide services during hours that are convenient for low-income patients who work irregular shifts or multiple jobs.

“There is a new president, and now they will not be getting money from the federal government,” Barbara Holt, the

state president of NC Right to Life, told protesters. She and other speakers applauded the fact that Trump has already signed an executive order cutting off federal funding to international NGOs that advocate for abortion rights, selected a vice president who is an ardent abortion foe, and nominated a Supreme Court justice whom they consider to be “pro-life.”

The speakers also celebrated the fact that the General Assembly passed a law in 2015 that denies state grants to Planned Parenthoods and other groups that perform abortions. Krawiec told the protesters that she expects a bill to come out of the General Assembly this year involving the concept of personhood for fetuses. Voters in Mississippi rejected a referendum to amend the state constitution to provide fetuses with personhood in 2011, and a similar proposal in the Louisiana state legislature was shelved in 2015, according to news reports.

In an interview after the protest, organizer Samantha Hogan, a recent transplant from Virginia Beach, Va., acknowledged that the law already pro-

JORDAN GREEN

hibits federal funding that goes directly to pay for abortions and that existing federal funding covers the cost of Planned Parenthood’s family planning services. But she questioned the safety of contraceptive options offered by the nonprofit and said she would rather see women receive counseling to consider adoption as an alternative.

“They’re taking advantage of a population that comes in mostly on Medicaid, a population that’s poor,” Hogan said. “We want that tax funding to go to other community health centers that provide prenatal care and that show women their ultrasounds. Studies have shown that when that happens, they choose life.”

Tina Trutanich, who lives in Winston-Salem, said she felt compelled to show up to support Planned Parenthood, adding that she’s taken advantage of the services provided by the clinic targeted by the protesters.

“Right now we’re in a crisis of women’s rights,” Trutanich said. “We support women and we support a woman’s right to choose. We’re in a time right now when the Supreme Court

triad-city-beat.com Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

could take away a woman’s right to choose. We have to organize and educate to make sure that abortion remains a right.”

Holt acknowledged that cutting off government funding to Planned Parenthood would not end abortions.

“Stopping government funding of Planned Parenthood should mean fewer abortions and will strike a blow at Planned Parenthood’s abortion advocacy, but — it’s important to realize this — they will continue to be funded for their abortion services by private donors….”

Josh Grimes, a student at Forsyth Tech, said he looks forward to a day when abortion is illegal, but JORDAN GREEN warned his fellow anti-abortion ac- Anti-abortion activists joined abortion rights supporters across the street from the protest. tivists that they will need to step up with financial support and care for cessful as you can be. If you choose to go through an “millions of children that will be in need of a home.” abortion, I want to tell you that we will be here for you Grimes also counseled encouragement to women, after you have it. We’re gonna provide care and support whether or not they choose to undergo an abortion. because people make mistakes. When the scars of the “Ladies, if you need help, we are here for you,” he abortion and the heavy burden that it carries become said. “We will be here to help you give that baby life. too much to handle, we will help you carry it. Ladies, We will work tirelessly to make sure that you are as sucyou are beautiful, but so are those babies.”

Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

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February 15 – 21, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

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ICE arrest causes alarm across North Carolina

by Jordan Green

Amid unverified media reports of raids and checkpoints, an arrest witnessed by school children in Charlotte causes panic at an elementary school and alarm across the state. ICE says the man arrested had been convicted of felony forgery and multiple DWIs. President Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration enforcement have caused mounting anxiety among undocumented people, educators and advocates across North Carolina, but a spokesperson for ICE says it’s business as usual.

Incidents that have caused alarm include a confirmed arrest witnessed by elementary students and school personnel on the west side of Charlotte on Feb. 9. The incident prompted an email from the principal to her staff.

“As many of you have heard or seen this morning, Immigration is arresting illegal immigrants in this area this morning,” Principal Cara Heath wrote to staff at Berryhill School in an email provided to Triad City Beat by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. “I know this is upsetting for the kids as well as all of you. Both staff and students watched as some immigrants were taken in on their routes to school this morning.

“Some of you may require counseling help today,” Heath continued, adding that a psychologist would be on site to assist.

Bryan D. Cox, the Southern region communications director for Immigrations Customs Enforcement, said he is aware of only one arrest in the vicinity of Berryhill School. He said the arrest took place 2.3 miles away from the school. Cox said the arrest was carried out by ICE’s fugitive operation team, and the individual taken into custody was a convicted felon with a felony forgery conviction, along with five driving while intoxicated convictions.

News of the arrest set off alarm among parents of students at Berryhill School, and Heath assured parents in an email that, contrary to rumors, no immigration officers had set foot on the school campus.

“We realize that reports of immigration activity is a very sensitive matter for our students and school families,” Heath told parents in the Feb. 9 email. “Please

Mayra Diosdado, whose children attend Guilford Elementary, addressed the Guilford County School Board on Feb. 9.

know that we have counselors on site to provide any social emotional support needed at this time.”

Cox said ICE has not conducted enforcement actions at any schools in North Carolina, citing a 2011 memo from then Director John Morton directing agents to avoid making arrests at so-called “sensitive locations,” including schools, churches, hospitals, funerals and weddings, and public demonstrations. Cox emphasized that the order is still in force.

As a gauge of enforcement activity in the past week, Cox said ICE has made about 200 arrests in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, mostly involving individuals convicted of crimes, including murder, robbery, battery and domestic violence-related offenses.

“There’s been a lot of rumors this week alleging something new or expanded,” Cox said. “The fugitive operation team was focused on identifying and arresting individuals who pose the greatest threat to public safety. ICE

only conducts targeted immigration enforcement. When they leave for the day they have a list of individuals that we’re looking for. We’re looking for specific individuals. It’s lead-driven enforcement and targeted enforcement. We do not conduct any random enforcement. The claims that have been floating around that have suggested this is something new — this is ongoing enforcement activity.”

Notwithstanding his insistence that ICE is prioritizing undocumented individuals who hold criminal convictions, Cox acknowledged that President Trump’s Jan. 25 executive order flattens distinctions by treating those with criminal convictions the same as individuals who have used false documents to work in the United States or are merely suspected of having committed a crime. He said he couldn’t “speculate” on how the executive order might be implemented in the field, and otherwise referred questions about it to the media office at the Department of Homeland

JORDAN GREEN

Security in Washington.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that ICE launched a series of raids across the country on Feb. 9 and 10, marking what the newspaper called “the first largescale episode of immigration enforcement inside the United States” since the Jan. 25 executive order.

The report said “immigration activists” had documented ICE raids in a dozen locations across the country, including Charlotte and Burlington in North Carolina, along with an ICE checkpoint somewhere in North Carolina. Triad City Beat could not confirm the reports.

Viridiana Martinez, an organizer in Raleigh with Alerta Migratoria NC who advocates for undocumented people, said she had only heard about an immigration checkpoint in Apex, a town in Wake County, but emphasized that her group was never able to actually confirm the occurrence.

Cox said he didn’t know anything about the alleged incidents in North Carolina.

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THE LEGACY SHOW Her solo album, “Legacy: Violin Music of African-American Composers.” is heralded as one of the top 10 albums

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Triaditude Adjustment

that it remains to be seen whether ICE enforcement activities in North Carolina are playing out in a different way than they did in the past. Citing a recent New York Times report about an undocumented woman who was arrested on Feb. 8 after checking into an ICE office in Phoenix, Garcés said in an email: “It’s not clear yet if some of the other targeted actions [in North Carolina] in the past week or so (they were looking for specific people with convictions) were also somehow indiscriminate, more like the raids of 10 years ago, or not.

But clearly in at least a few instances, supervising ICE agents are using a much broader definition of who is a ‘priority’ for deportation. Which is exactly what the orders directed ICE to do.”

Garcés credited local officials like Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan for publicly affirming a welcoming stance towards immigrants, but said many undocumented people are understandably worried that local governments will have little ability to intervene if the federal government undertakes a massive crackdown.

“I think as a community that we have to decide what risks we are willing to take in order to protect communities who are targeted, whether those communities are African-American or immigrant,” Garcés said. “What are we willing to do to create safety? How do we respond to laws that are designed only to harass, intimidate and even separate our neighbors from their families?”

Martinez said the horrified reaction of teachers across the state to deportations carried out against high school students under the Obama administration has created a foundation for resistance in the Trump era.

“Kids were being picked up on the way to school,” she said. “This is how the teachers got involved. Their kids are telling them they’re terrified.”

Martinez applauded a group of parents who addressed the Guilford County School Board with the support of their children’s teachers on Feb. 9.

“These moms are talking to local leaders, saying, ‘Please make the school safe for my kids,’” Martinez said. “That is what needs to be happening. I think there’s the win. With all the chaos, there’s all these people saying, ‘I can no longer sit idly by.’”

triad-city-beat.com

“If we were in fact there I can tell you categorically it was not a checkpoint or a raid,” he said. “We do not conduct any type of vehicle checkpoint, raid or indiscriminate sweep.”

The irony of the heightened concern about immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, Martinez said, is that undocumented people who had committed no offense other than being in the country illegally were already being deported in contravention to an Obama-era policy stating that only convicted criminals would be targeted. As an example, Martinez said her organization advocated on behalf of an Appalachian State University student who was arrested by ICE in 2016 without having committed any criminal offense other than being in the country illegally.

A series of arrests across the state in the early months of 2016 caused particular anxiety.

“The reality is that all of this stuff was happening already,” Martinez said. “I can’t tell you how afraid people were when the raids were leaked to the Washington Post in December 2015…. It was a bunch of teens picked up on their way to school that the Obama administration categorized as national security threats just so they could send this message to Latin America that we’re not going to welcome them.”

Trump’s election and the indiscriminate enforcement codified in the executive order at least brings the agency’s activity’s out into the open, she said.

“In a way I’m like, ‘Yay, I’m so glad we have this asshole who’s not trying to hide who he is, so people understand we have to fight these injustices,’” Martinez said. “He’s ugly and he doesn’t make any effort to hide it.”

If anything, Martinez said, the level of fear among immigrant families she’s encountered as an activist and legal assistant, was higher one year ago than it is today.

“We hadn’t seen that kind of thing before — I’ve heard of all kinds of stories of what they did last year to pick up these kids whose only crime was fleeing these countries [in Central America] that are overwhelmed by criminal cartels and gangs,” she said.

Andrew Willis Garcés, an organizer who works with undocumented young people in Guilford County, indicated

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February 15 – 21, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

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OPINION

EDITORIAL

Trading party punches Trying to stay astride the news cycle these days is a little bit like washing bottles with a firehose: It will get the job done, but in the end there’s gonna be water everywhere.

Ignoring, for the time being, the barrage of outrages coming from Washington, DC — you can get your dose of national politics in this week’s cover story, “Four weeks in: Trump and the path to autocracy,” beginning on page 12 — we turn to Raleigh, where a different type of sleight-ofhand is being performed.

A slew of outrageous laws has arisen to feed the slush pile, but one being pushed by 10 different Republicans does away with the concealed-carry permitting process, essentially allowing all North Carolina residents above the age of 18 to keep a gun in their pocket. What could go wrong?

And at least one high-ranking member of the state GOP, Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse, has shown the capacity to use Twitter to incite well-earned outrage: He tweeted a link to an article from redstate.com that characterized trans-Americans as “mentally ill and sexual perverts who claim to be mentally ill.”

But as usual, the real show is in the courts, now engaged in an odd sort of tug-of-war between the new governor and the president pro tem of the Senate.

Back in December, during one of two extra sessions of the General Assembly, the Republican members of the Senate unveiled a thick stack of legislation that among other things abolished the State Board of Elections and folded its operations into a State Ethics Commission that in some ways was a superior way to address the integrity of state elections. It also curtailed the traditional powers of the governor.

Gov. Roy Cooper, as one of his first acts this year, took the architects of the bill, including Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger Sr., to court. The action came before a Superior Court panel that granted a stay in the formation of the new entity. Then last week, a Court of Appeals panel quashed the lower court’s stay. There’s controversy, of course: Berger Sr.’s son, Phil Berger Jr., won a seat on that very Court of Appeals just last year, but the names of the judges on the panel remain confidential.

This week the law landed in the state Supreme Court, with a new judge Mike Morgan tilting the balance of power to the left. The NC Supreme Court supported the first court’s findings, essentially putting a stay on a stay on a stay and quashing the power-play by Republicans in the General Assembly… for now. The initial suit still needs to be tried and adjudicated.

Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out if we will have new districts and elections for state House and Senate seats. That one is in the hands of the US Supreme Court, which is still at this point one judge short and leaning slightly left.

CITIZEN GREEN

Making things in High Point again

Among the 90 or so manand athletic CEO, showed off the company’s fleet of ufacturers, designers, profesroadster bikes — purchased in anticipation of a future sional crafters and artists who greenway — to his industry peers, and mentioned the poured onto the second floor raised beds surrounding the building that provide food of the cavernous BuzziSpace for employees, noting that the factory is located in a furniture factory on a recent food desert.

Wednesday evening, there The company scouted locations in Michigan, Indiana

by Jordan Green wasn’t a single red “Make and Tennessee, but ultimately chose High Point — a city America Great Again” hat to be he called “a diamond in the rough.” seen and hardly a peep of overt political talk.

“We could have gone to Grand Rapids, Michigan,” Manufacturer Gregg Arrington and entrepreneur Van Dessel said. “But I said to myself: ‘I’m going to get Dave Springett, two men with 30 years of experience lost. No one’s going to give us any attention.’ In High each in the industry, founded the NC Furniture Institute Point, we can stand out. This is a place where people are a year and a half ago with the intention of resurrecting looking for a reversal.” a spirit of collaboration among their peers, networking, For Van Dessel, the privilege of accessing the Amersocializing, sharing knowledge and rebuilding the furniican market is best paid back by employing American ture industry in High Point and across the state. workers.

“We feel like a lot of jobs and skills have been given “I don’t need protection to make things here,” he said away,” Springett said while greeting guests for the asafter the tour. “I’m more driven by the moral imperasociation’s monthly meeting, a tour of BuzziSpace with tive: If this is the area and the country that’s generating complimentary wine, meatballs and banana pudding. revenue for my company, how do I best make the Springett acknowledged feeling “positive” about Donald investment to continue that? The best way I can think Trump’s manufacturing agenda, but his talking points to do that is to employ people locally and provide them veered far away from federal trade policy and betrayed with a livelihood.” no hint of resentment.

A trade war or steep tariffs on foreign goods probably “We have to help,” he said. “One of the things we wouldn’t provide positive reinforcement for his decision have to do here is a furniture academy. to invest in High Point.

We want young people to understand “In my industry, I’m always going to ‘You can make there’s a future in this. We need to comhave to import something,” Van Dessel $40,000 to bine forces to show people there’s a future said. “I seriously doubt if you can find a $50,000 a year in making things in this country. You can zipper made in the United States. For this make $40,000 to $50,000 a year making business [protectionism is] not necessarily making things things with your hands. That’s a whole lot going to help.” with your hands.’ more future in that than working in retail Less than three years in, BuzziSpace is – Dave Springett and fast food. The people in this room already demonstrating the collaborative can’t find enough workers. They can’t spirit that the NC Furniture Institute afford to train their own workers. That’s holds up as an organizing principle for the where we can get GTCC involved.” furniture industry. Faced with excess square footage, BuzziSpace, a 9-year-old Belgian company that speBuzziSpace invited one of its suppliers, Splash Works, to cializes in comfortable seating and sound-dampening set up shop in the basement of the old mill. Proximity components for co-working spaces, seems like a natural facilitates communication. place for Springett to make the argument, because the Along with producing printed fabric for BuzziSpace’s company provides a tangible advance on the promise cut-and-sew operation, Splash Works is also replicating held out by the institute for revitalizing the industry. paintings by local artist Brian Davis and producing uniBuzziSpace opened its US production facility in the old forms for college and high school baseball teams.

Pickett Cotton Mill in High Point’s historic industrial As the home to the largest furnishings industry trade core in May 2014, with roughly 40 percent of its product show, High Point can feel like a colony that belongs to a for the US market produced by 38 employees in High floating population of international buyers and manuPoint. facturers, giving the city the air of a deserted camp all The vibe of business, which provides workspace furnibut two weeks out of the year. ture for tech companies like Facebook and LinkedIn, is “Product defines place,” Janet Kagan, an arts consulmore enlightened collaboration than red-blooded pride tant, told the crowd gathered at BuzziSpace. Buying and and American exceptionalism; the company is Belgian, selling is fine, but maybe High Point could once again after all. Tom Van Dessel, the company’s cheerful be known for making things.

Opinion Cover Story

Audience Extension

Culture

Is [Jordan Green] really just one person? How does he write so much with so much detail. Amazing.

Kent Tager, Greensboro

News

We take this as high praise With all due respect, I think Jelisa Castrodale maybe the worst free-

Up Front

Stateless persons First of all, if you are in this country illegally, you have no rights [“Bracing for deportations, Guilford parents seek school district’s support”; by Jordan Green, Feb. 9, 2017]. Your time would be better served figuring out how you can become legal. As it is, you’re breaking the law.

Cathy Cichowski, via triad-city-beat. com

triad-city-beat.com

The sky is falling Let me get this straight. [“ICE arrest witnessed by students in Charlotte causes alarm across NC”; by Jordan Green; Feb. 10, 2017] Principal says teachers and students need counseling help because they witnessed a convicted felon being apprehended?

Cupcakes and rainbows…. What has happened to us?

Jack Witt Jr., via triad-city-beat.com

lance writer I every [sic] read. Her last column [“Triaditude Adjustment: The view from Helsinki”; Feb. 8, 2017] may be the worst I read since I started reading your paper. All of columns [sic] are poorly written; they lack any substance and are hardly worth reading. Her last column was one of worst [sic], and could written buy [sic] a high school or middle school student. I really do not think she actually been [sic] outside this nation for more then [sic] day or two at the most based on way she writes. I actually have a lot of friends and near family who are from and/or been [sic] to place [sic] she claims to have gone. Most of if not all of facts in columns [sic] are load [sic] of bull and show she little knowledge [sic] on the topics she writes on. As for this for current president [sic] he is no better then [sic] last one, the only difference is their political party. Neither one is respected outside this nation. Please find better writers for your paper, or the number of pages will continue to go down.

Bradley, via email

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Triaditude Adjustment

At the Vineyard you can come as you are and be yourself.

Whatever your thoughts about church, whatever your beliefs about God … you are welcome here.

gatecityvineyard.com 336.323.1288 204 S. Westgate Dr., Greensboro

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11

February 15 – 21, 2017

The first four weeks

Trump and the path to autocracy

F

Cover Story

by Jordan Green

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or many observers, Donald Trump’s mid-October appearance at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex Amphitheater on a warm Friday afternoon might have seemed like the desperate ploy of a candidate running out of gas and heading for a defeat of historic proportions.

The crowd was not especially large and the venue was not at full capacity, in contrast to a visit earlier in the week by President Obama to whip up support for Hillary Clinton. Similarly, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders drew more people than Trump in another Greensboro Coliseum Complex venue during campaign stops in previous months.

North Carolina was considered a must-win state for the Republican nominee, and multiple visits by Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, demonstrated that they understood the stakes.

Trump’s talking points seemed to heighten the emotional charge of every issue important to his disaffected conservative base — gun rights, crime, abortion, immigration and trade, to name a few — while making little attempt to appeal to the moderate and

independent voters thought to be the crucial swing votes in the election. Far from any measure of conciliation in response to allegations of sexual assault against multiple women, Trump denied any wrongdoing, mocked the women for their looks and then furiously attacked the press for publishing the stories, characterizing the media as “sick,” “corrupt” and “destroying our country” with “lies” in his Greensboro stop.

“On Nov. 8 the arrogance of Washington DC will come face to face with the righteous verdict of the American voters,” Trump predicted. “I’m asking all Americans — Republicans, independents and Democrats — to join us in our campaign to defeat the corrupt establishment and give our government back to the people.”

Five days later, in his final debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump telegraphed his disdain for democratic institutions by refusing to say whether he would accept the results of the election if he were not declared the winner. “I will tell you at the time,” Trump said. “I’ll keep you in suspense.”

Conventional media analysts and virtually everyone else had assumed that revelations before the election that Trump had bragged about grabbing women’s genitals would decimate support among key constituencies in his electoral coalition, including white women, suburban independents and some Christian fundamentalists. Journalists and political professionals were stunned to see Trump carry not only North Carolina, but the traditional Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin on election night.

While attacking and then taking over the Republican Party and broadsiding a Democratic Party whose leadership was confident in their technocratic prowess, Trump built a political base of people who feel ignored by major civic institutions.

His supporters feel contempt for both political parties, the mainstream media and academia. On issue after issue, Trump has characterized American society and foreign policy as collapsing, while presenting himself as the only one who is strong enough to turn it around. As Jedediah Purdy, a law professor at Duke University, has observed, Trump is unique among American politicians in that he rarely invokes the Constitution.

“Whether you’re left or right, whether you’re Barack Obama or you’re Ted Cruz, an image of

the country’s national community being based on Constitutional text and principles has been a very standard refrain for American politicians,” Purdy told host Frank Stasio on North Carolina Public Radio’s “The State of Things” on Feb. 1.

The only part of the Constitution Trump really talks about is the Second Amendment, Purdy said, and even then he mainly uses it as an opportunity to talk about fear of criminals.

“He talks about the country instead in terms that are ethno-national and religious in a variety of ways,” Purdy said. “It’s us versus the Mexicans, it’s us versus the Muslims, it’s us versus the criminals, it’s us versus the terrorists. He said more than once in the campaign that Christians need to band together the way that Muslims do, implying that this is a Christian nation.”

Trump’s appeals to a kind of nationalism that privileges whiteness and Christianity, his lack of respect for democratic institutions, and his posture as a tough negotiator with the singular ability to deal with a cataclysmic crisis have prompted many scholars, journalists and citizens to question whether the United States is drifting towards authoritarianism, if not fascism, totalitarianism or some other form of autocracy. Whether or not death camps are the logical conclusion of Trumpism, we might consider the fragility of democracy and how easily civilized societies of the past have slipped into barbarity.

“I think for 30 years, part of the reason Democrats as well as Republicans thought so little about inequality, thought so little about insecurity, thought so little about the things in their own lives that gave people the sense… that stuff was falling apart and things were bad, was that they believed they were living at the end of history and there were going to be no more ideological challenges to the order of things, no more crises like this one,” Purdy said on “The State of Things.” “And so what did they not do? They didn’t correct the role of money in politics. They didn’t correct the ideologically distorting effects of gerrymandering. They allowed inequality and insecurity to become the everyday experience of an enormous number of people with no sense that there was anything wrong with this, or that there was any alternative.”

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt described conditions that seem chillingly relevant today in her classic text The Origins of Totalitarianism, first pub-

Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd

lished in 1950: “Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite for political organization.”

Arendt wrote that both the Nazis in Germany and communist movements in Europe after 1930 “recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene.

This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been ‘spoiled’ by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which

‘Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite for political organization.’

— Hannah Arendt

JORDAN GREEN

spelled terror rather than conviction.”

Behind the political theater, narcissism and obvious pandering of Trump’s public presence, his reclusive chief strategist has a cogent worldview that’s worth studying. After serving as CEO of Trump’s campaign, Steve Bannon resigned as chairman of Breitbart News Network and took the position of senior counselor to the president.

In late January, Bannon received an appointment as a regular member of the National Security Council, giving him a voice in United States foreign policy, along with domestic affairs.

Bannon described Breitbart to journalist Sarah Posner as a platform for the so-called “alt-right” during an interview at the Republican National Convention in July 2016.

“He denied that the alt-right is a white nationalist movement but he basically admitted that it’s an ethno-nationalist movement, and he pointed to these far-right, authoritarian populist movements in Europe that were the model for the alt-right,” Posner told host Amy Goodman on the Jan. 27 broadcast of “Democracy Now!” “And he said that these national movements were alive and well in the United States before President Trump became a candidate for president, that he did not create this movement. And Bannon actually credited someone else with spurring this movement, and that’s Jeff Sessions.”

Sessions’ name should be familiar. The Republican senator from Alabama was an early supporter of Trump. Sessions failed to receive Senate confirmation for a federal judgeship in 1986 after it came to light that he had joked as a federal prosecutor in Alabama that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “okay” until he learned its members “smoked marijuana.” On Feb. 8, he took the oath of office as the new attorney general for the United States.

Bannon’s nationalist ideology includes a belief that Christianity, capitalism and the West is undergoing a crisis and is at the beginning

triad-city-beat.com

before leaving the stage in Greensboro three weeks before the election.

of a global war with radical Islam. He outlined his beliefs in remarks to a conference hosted by the Human Dignity Institute at the Vatican in the summer of 2014 via Skype from Los Angeles. During the call, Bannon urged what he called “the church militant” to not only stand behind its beliefs, “but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will literally eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,025 years.”

He went on to say, “But I strongly believe that whatever the causes of the current drive to the caliphate was — and we can debate them, and people can try to deconstruct them — we have to face a very unpleasant fact. And that unpleasant fact is that there is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global. It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today.

Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act.”

During the question-and-answer portion of Bannon’s call, he articulated a complicated view of Russian President Vladimir Putin, while expressing a measured admiration for traditionalism, an obscure European movement of the early 20th Century with ties to fascism.

“I’m not justifying Vladimir Putin and the kleptocracy that he represents, because he eventually is the state capitalist of kleptocracy,” Bannon said. “However, we the Judeo-Christian West really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism — and I happen to think that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing and strong thing. I think strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States. I think it’s what can see us forward.”

Bannon explicitly acknowledged the connection between traditionalism and fascism in an earlier comment: “When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he’s got an advisor who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th Century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that.”

Bannon added in his remark to the conference at the Vatican the West should be “very much on guard” against Putin, who he described as an intelligent leader who appeals to social conservatives in the United States. “Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand,” Bannon said. “However, I really believe that in this current environment, where you’re facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive, that is really a situation — I’m not saying we can put it on a backburner — but I think we have to deal with first things first.”

Preoccupation with global jihad has characterized much of Bannon’s political and creative work over the past decade. A 2007 film proposal written by Bannon depicts the US Capitol sometime in the near future with an American flag in which the stars and stripes have been replaced by the Islamic crescent and star while the Muslim call to prayer emanates from the seat of government.

That narrative dovetails with a set of charges advanced by Frank Gaffney, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, to the effect that Muslim radicals have been actively working to infiltrate and subvert US government agencies and civil society, including the conservative movement, for the purpose of instituting shariah law. Glenn Beck, the conservative media personality, explored the same material in a 2012 film called The Project, helping to spread the idea to a mass audience of conservatives. Gaffney and Beck have both raised flimsy charges that conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist acted as an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaffney also promoted the false claim that President Obama was born in Kenya. (Sound familiar?)

Donald Trump was exposed to Gaffney’s work before Bannon joined the campaign, having cited a study by Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy when he announced his plans for a Muslim ban in late 2015. Referring to himself in the third person, the then-candidate rolled out the plan during a Pearl Harbor Day campaign

13

February 15 – 21, 2017 Cover Story

14

rally in South Carolina.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” he said. “We have no choice. We have no choice…. There is a great hatred toward Americans among large segments of the Muslim population.”

The demonization of Muslims — by taking the actions of a few radicalized violent persons and painting members of the entire faith as either active terrorists, apologists of secret enablers — has continued after the election. As an example, Breitbart, characterized by many analysts as an amplifier for Trump’s agenda, published a Feb. 2 article that describes the mainstream Council on American Islamic Relations as “jihad-linked” and its executive director as “a leading advocate for Islamic radicals.”

The paranoia surrounding Islam echoes the antisemitism that provided a scapegoat for the Nazis in the 1930s and ’40s.

“The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of a Jewish world conspiracy,” Arendt wrote in the Origins of Totalitarianism. “Concentration on anti-Semitic propaganda had been a common device of demagogues ever since the end of the 19th Century, and was widespread in the Germany and Austria of the ’20s.

The more consistently a discussion of the Jewish question was avoided by all parties and organs of public opinion, the more convinced the mob became that Jews were true representatives of the powers that be, and that the Jewish issue was the symbol for the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the whole system.”

The content of anti-Semitic propaganda was neither new nor original to the Nazis, Arendt emphasized, but the Nazis effectively used it to mobilize society.

While issuing hysterical warnings about the threat of Islamic radicalism, Trump has made explicit appeals to Christian identity while stoking a sense of victimization.

“Christianity, it’s under siege,” then-candidate Trump said at Liberty University in January 2016.

And seven days into his presidency, Trump granted an interview to the Christian Broadcasting Network hours before issuing executive orders temporarily suspending refugee admissions and indefinitely suspending resettlement of refugees from Syria. The president indicated he would carve out an exception for Christian refugees.

“They’ve been horribly treated,” he said. “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you come in, but if you were a Christian, it was impossible and the reason that was so unfair — everybody was getting persecuted in all fairness — but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”

Politifact labeled Trump’s claim that it was “impossible” for Christian refugees to enter the United States as “false.”

The site wrote: “Christians make up a very small fraction of Syrians admitted under the refugee program, but they have been able to enter the United States. There is no evidence that this is an outcome of discriminatory policy.

‘The more consistently a discussion of the Jewish question was avoided by all parties and organs of public opinion, the more convinced the mob became that Jews were true representatives of the powers that be, and that the Jewish issue was the symbol for the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the whole system.’

— Hannah Arendt

Refugee admissions skew in favor of Christians in other countries.”

“Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,” Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Incredibly, Trump surrogate Scottie Nells Hughes more or less admitted a similar strategy to a panel of dumbstruck journalists on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” three weeks after the election.

“One thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say, ‘Facts are facts,’ they’re not really facts,” Hughes said. “Everybody has a way — it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water — everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.”

Fittingly, the first example offered by one of the journalists on the panel to counter Hughes’ radical statement was Trump’s unsupported claim that he only lost the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton.

“First I’ve got to pick my jaw up off the floor here,” said Glenn Thrush, then with Politico. “There are no objective facts? I mean, that is — that is an absolutely outrageous assertion. Of course there are facts. There is no widespread proof that three million people voted illegally. It’s been checked over and over again. We had a Pew study that took place over 15 years that showed people had more likelihood of being struck by lightning than voting illegally in an election.”

President Trump has continued to stick to the baseless claim.

When a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to present evidence of voter fraud, he attempted to brush it aside, saying, “As I said, I think the president has believed that for a while based on studies and information he has.”

Only a couple days earlier, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s counselor, had refined Hughes’ idea while defending Spicer’s false statements about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration.

In a Jan. 22 interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Conway said, “Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood and they’re giving — Sean Spicer, our press secretary — gave alternative facts to that.”

Masha Gessen, who came to the United States as a refugee from Russia in the early 1990s and returned to her native country to work as a reporter, has observed a similarity between Trump’s falsehoods and Vladimir Putin’s perverse relationship with the truth. Three years ago Gessen and her wife returned to the US because of the increasingly anti-gay climate in Russia. Gessen predicts in a Dec. 23 article in the New York Review of Books that the alliance between the two world leaders will ultimately prove short lived, but she argues that for both men, lying as a mode of discourse is more important than the specific content of their lies.

“It’s not just that Putin and Trump lie, it’s that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself,” Gessen wrote. “Take, for example, Putin’s statements on Ukraine. In March 2014 he claimed that there were no Russian troops in newly annexed Crimea; a month later he affirmed that Russian troops had been on the ground. Throughout 2014 and 2015, he repeatedly denied that Russian troops were fighting in eastern Ukraine; in 2016 he easily acknowledged that they were there. In each case, Putin insisted on lying in the face of clear and convincing

you just played is based on hard facts about numbers that Donald Trump doesn’t like.”

Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the judiciary have also raised widespread alarms among legal analysts and politicians alike.

As a candidate, Trump telegraphed both his xenophobia and his disdain for the judiciary when he suggested in June 2016 that a federal judge of Mexican heritage who was born and raised in the United States would be biased in a case involving a lawsuit against Trump University.

Any doubts that Trump would change his behavior when he took office evaporated when he responded on Twitter to US District Judge James L. Robart’s order to suspend key aspects of the president’s exclusion order. In a Feb. 4 tweet, Trump called Robart a “so-called judge” and his ruling “ridiculous.” The next day, he piled on by tweeting, “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!” And following a federal appellate court decision upholding the stay, Trump called the ruling “political,” implying that it doesn’t have a sound legal basis.

As a measure of how far outside democratic norms Trump’s behavior falls, the speaker of Britain’s House of Commons has suggested that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to address parliament on his next official state visit to the United Kingdom.

“However, as far as this place is concerned, I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and sexism and our support to equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations,” Speaker John Bercow said on Feb. 6.

It seems unlikely that the Republican-controlled Congress will investigate the multiple ethics concerns that have arisen from Trump’s tangle of business interests or initiate impeachment proceedings in relation to possible violations of the emoluments clause or untoward dealings with Russia. GOP lawmakers have a historic opportunity to realize longstanding goals such as dismantling the Affordable Care Act and defunding Planned Parenthood, and likely want to avoid the distraction and drama that would be caused by the impeachment of a president, especially a fellow Republican.

The most effective check on the power of the president is likely to be the Fifth Estate, a concept developed in the French Revolution to describe the people — supposedly the source of Trump’s power. The United States, unique among the world’s democracies, also has the advantage of having a federated system, with a separation of powers between the states and

federal government, and cities that hold significant power.

There are abundant examples of defiance and civil resistance in response to Trump’s election. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s #AlwaysNewYork speech vowed noncooperation with any attempt to create a Muslim registry, a pledge to protect immigrant families threatened with deportation and a promise to block any effort to restore stop-and-frisk policing is one. An effort in Los Angeles to establish a $10 million legal fund to help immigrants fight deportation is another.

The massive Women’s Marches in cities large and small across the country, along with solidarity marches around the world, demonstrated that a major segment of society is adamantly opposed to Trump’s policies. The instantaneous response to the exclusion orders, with cab drivers striking in solidarity in New York City and lawyers flooding into airports — some armed with judicial orders — to assist travelers demonstrated imaginative engagement at the spear-point of Trump’s oppressive policies. More recent actions, like protesters blocking a police van carrying an undocumented woman in Phoenix who had checked in regularly with ICE on Feb. 8, and preventing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from visiting a Washington DC middle school on Feb. 10, are examples of people — to paraphrase 1960s student activist Mario Savio — putting their bodies on the gears of the machine.

Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism that “statesmen and diplomats,” along with “benevolent observers and sympathizers,” often expect revolutionary movements to normalize when they take power. “What happened instead was that terror increased both in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in inverse ratio to the existence of internal political opposition, so that it looked as though political opposition had not been the pretext of terror (as liberal accusers of the regime were wont to assert) but rather the last impediment to its full fury.”

The unavoidable conclusion is that the time to oppose totalitarianism is before it takes hold rather than after it has fully developed.

“I’m utterly pessimistic,” Masha Gessen told journalist Fernanda Eberstadt for a Jan. 8 article in Salon. “I’m not aware of any aborted autocracies in modern history. Democracy is an aspiration, and it is defenseless against people who use it in bad faith. America’s advantage is that it has an incredible rich cultural environment, a vibrant public spirit. Can we learn from other countries’ mistakes? The only thing to do is the exact opposite of what Germans, Poles and Hungarians did, which is wait and see. We must panic and protest, presumptively assume the worst.”

Trump thanking supporters in Hershey, Pa. after the election.

MICHAEL VADON (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

triad-city-beat.com

evidence to the contrary; and in each case his subsequent shift to truthful statement were not admissions given under duress; they were proud, even boastful affirmatives made at his convenience. Together, they communicated a single message: Putin’s power lies in being able to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is the president of his country and the king of reality.”

Trump’s assault on the press as an institutional bulwark of democracy has been well documented.

On his second day in office, Trump disparaged the press as “the dishonest media” at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. “The reason you are my first stop is that I have a running war with the media,” Trump said. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know the reason you’re my No. 1 stop is exactly the opposite. Exactly the opposite. And they understand that, too.”

Of course, only 10 days earlier, Trump had tweeted: “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

Then on Jan. 26, Trump attacked the press again in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity for accurately reporting that more people attended President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. “The media — much of the media, not all of it — is very, very dishonest,” Trump said.

“Honestly, it’s fake news. It’s fake. They make things up.”

On the same day, in a rare interview with the New York Times, Steve Bannon said, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.

“I want you to quote this,” he added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

It’s unlikely that the media was the intended audience for Bannon’s statement; most journalists are wired to respond to intimidation by rededicating themselves to bold and fearless coverage.

“This is an effort to delegitimize the media in the eyes of the Breitbart audience, the Trump base more broadly,” journalist Sarah Posner told “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman, “by suggesting that the media has dishonestly covered Donald Trump, when in fact the chief complaint that has been lodged against the media by the Trump administration and amplified on last night in that [Fox News] clip that

15

February 15 – 21, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

16

CULTURE Caviar film explores an elite food product

by Eric Ginsburg

B

rian Gersten’s never really understood the allure of caviar and why people are willing to pay so much for the delicacy. After spending two years producing a short film about the revered fish eggs — talking to experts, visiting a growing and harvesting operation in western North Carolina and trying caviar for the first time — he isn’t any closer to an answer.

Gersten and Wake Forest University classmates Liv Dubendorf and Wei Ying are putting the final touches on their short film, “Caviar Dreams,” raising money on Kickstarter for final sound mixing, color correction and particularly archival licensing fees. But the short’s already been accepted to the Sonoma International Film Festival, and it’s likely that California screening won’t be their only festival appearance.

The trio found themselves working together on the piece as part of an assignment for Wake’s three-year graduate film program, Gersten said.

It wasn’t the first idea he’d come up with, and it evolved considerably from the outset. But knowing his history, it isn’t that surprising that the Chicago transplant ended up working on a film about caviar, despite a lack of personal reverence.

Gersten had been working as a writer before being accepted into grad school, writing copy for marketing and advertising as well as nonfiction for magazines. Upon acceptance, he quit his “soul-crushing” marketing gig and sought temporary work until relocating to Winston-Salem. He wound up as a fish cutter at Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop, a venue that appears in “Caviar Dreams” as the location of a tasting for the fine food.

But during his short tenure at Dirk’s, Gersten didn’t try any caviar. It sparked

Pick of the Week The High Point Healthy for Good Expo @ Oak Hollow Mall (HP), Saturday, 8 a.m.

This free community event provides a “passport” to visit various health stops, including healthy cooking demonstrations. Stop by anytime between 8 a.m. and noon, but plan to stay for at least an hour. More info at healthyforgood.heart.org.

An employee cuts into a sturgeon, exposing the caviar beneath at Atlantic Caviar & Sturgeon near Lenoir, NC.

COURTESY PHOTO

some interest though, and after finding Atlantic Caviar & SturGersten didn’t grow up that way, and neither did Dubendorf geon farm about 90 minutes west of Wake Forest University, and Ying. He first tried caviar at the North Carolina fish farm, outside of Lenoir, Gersten and his classmates set to work. somewhat ironically based in the mountains. It’s not that he The film, which runs about 14 minutes long, explores why doesn’t like it, but if he had the money, it’s clear he’d spend it the black fish eggs harvested from sturgeons — a type of fish elsewhere. There’s no sense of contempt or resentment that that Atlantic Caviar farmer Jeff Hinshaw describes as “swimcomes through in the film or his voice, however, just genuine ming dinosaurs” in the film — rose to prominence and gained intrigue. such popularity. (Similar to champagne, caviar is a term reDubendorf — who previously worked in reality television served for sturgeon eggs, while other fish eggs must be called — handled most of the audio for the project, Wei tackled simply that, or roe.) the bulk of the editing and Gersten focused on the camera, “Caviar Dreams” relies on experts, connoisseurs, farmers he said, adding that their existing skills complemented each and archival footage to illustrate the product one person other nicely. calls more valuable by weight than cocaine. It’s engaging, It’s the second film Dubendorf and Gersten collaborated with shots ranging from a sturgeon on, the first about a competitive being cut open to reveal thousands of yodeling/yelling competition held little black beads to footage of kids each year in the state. That project Visit triad-city-beat.com to watch sampling and responding to the fishy made it into a bunch of film festivals the trailer for “Caviar Dreams,” food’s taste. and pulled in several awards, Gersten But the short also explores the said. They’re no doubt hoping for and find the film on Kickstarter ethical implications of such a comsimilar success this time around. to help the locally-made flick modified and overfished product. As Dubendorf and Gersten arrived at through its final hurdles.

Philadelphia-based caviar historian Wake Forest University with some Inga Saffron puts it: “We think we can credits, allowing them to graduate eat anything at any time of the year, this past December though they’re and that it will have no consequences.” part of Ying’s class that finishes up in May. Their study of this The film ends with several entertaining archival clips as the luxury food is the biggest accomplishment of their time in the credits roll, including a strange segment showing two women film program, and Gersten said it’s very likely “Caviar Dreams” in an inflatable pool full of the black gold and another from will appear on a local screen before too long.

ABC News reporting on the young Barron Trump using his Given his past success and the quality of the short, that mother’s “enhanced caviar skincare line,” which the new first sounds likely and would certainly be welcome. lady reportedly said she applied to him “from head to toe.”

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Try these 6 Girl Scout cookie-inspired drinks

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The Lemonade Girl Scout cookies pair well with a lemon-spritzed cocktail made with Smashing Violet, the blueberry whiskey from Broad Branch Distillery in Winston-Salem.

3. Peanut Butter Sandwich/Do-si-dos: The perfect cookie to complement your favorite hearty stout, like one from Foothills. Flavored beer might be too jarring, but if coffee or cocoa beer is your thing, go with it. A white wine would pair well, too, like a buttery chardonnay.

6. Shortbread/Trefoils: Wouldn’t these be great with literally anything? I’ll let you make the call on this one, but if you can find a beer with bergamot, like Sierra Nevada Earl’s IPA, you could mimic British afternoon tea with biscuits. Cheers!

Kat loves red wine, Milan Kundera and the Shins. She wears scarves at katbodrie.com.

Crossword

5. Peanut Butter Patties/Tagalongs: A booze pairing wasn’t immediately evident, although these are my

favorite Girl Scout cookies. Eventually, I settled on dark beer — nothing as dark as stout, but a porter, even a flavored one, will do. Coco Loco from Charlotte’s NoDa Brewing has a bitterness from cocoa nibs that matches the patties’ cloying sweetness and chocolate coating.

You can pick up a can from Potent Potables in Jamestown.

Sportsball

4. Caramel deLites/Samoas: This might sound weird, and maybe a bit out there, but I’d go for ruby port or sherry, depending on which way you want to take the flavor. (Sweeter for port; nuttier for sherry.) Fortified wines aren’t a local trend, apart from communion wine at Episcopal churches, but they’re a yin to the yang of the caramel, chocolate and coconut.

KAT BODRIE

Culture

2. Thin Mints: You may want to match a mint- and chocolate-flavored cocktail, but I don’t recommend it.

Try a dry white wine with very little flavor, like sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio. (Bottom shelf brands could work.) You’ll want something bright to balance the mint and chocolate without overpowering or clashing with them.

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1. Lemonades: These call for a drink that’s not too sweet and has a subtle lemon flavor. I chose Smashing Violet, which is white whiskey steeped with real blueberries — a spirit concocted by Broad Branch Distillery in downtown Winston-Salem. Add a bit of simple syrup and a squirt of lemon juice. All cocktails, I believe, should be made to taste, though I recommend trying the cookies first to determine how sweet or sour to make the drink. For a real treat, rim the glass in crushed cookies by moistening the rim with a lemon wedge and dipping it in cookie crumbs on a plate.

Up Front

irl Scout cookie and booze pairing events popped up around the Triad as the desserts came back in season. Corks, Caps and Taps in Winston-Salem did wine pairings and beer pairings on separate weeks, and bartenders

by Kat Bodrie at Preyer Brewing in Greensboro re-imagined the time-honored delights in the context of their own beers.

What’s with the appeal of taking our childhood favorites and pairing them with adult beverages? First of all, a show of hands: Did you buy a box from your child or a co-worker in the last two years? No shame; my hand is raised. If you also consume alcohol, chances are there was at least one night when you couldn’t resist pulling the cookies out of the pantry and devouring half a sleeve.

It just makes sense to take the next step and try them with a few deliberately selected, expertly concocted wines, beers and spirits. Here are my selections for the most delectable Girl Scout cookie and booze pairings. Try them, and let me know what you think.

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he held her heels together, the left one tapping the beat just moments before the song began.

SunQueen Kelcey pulled the strap of her blood-orange Les Paul over her neatly groomed afro, adjusted the glasses on her nose, let her fingers pluck the strings and nodded to the house band behind her tonight. As she began, her voice suddenly lifted arms into the air and opened lips, the crowd singing along to the chorus lines of “Thick girls do it better.”

Greensboro musician Kelcey Ledbetter, who performs under the full title of SunQueen Kelcey, challenges the idea of genre; giving off a badass rocker’s vibe with her guitar in hand while her voice revives the mellow sounds of Motown and classic R&B. SunQueen Kelcey moves about the stage with a full, beautiful smile, promoting peace and racial equality in her set in an almost punk-rock attitude.

Ledbetter is one of 23 performers who took the stage on Feb. 11 at the Blind Tiger in Greensboro, stunning crowds

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CULTURE Black 2 Hip Hop festival showcases Triad artists

by Spencer KM Brown

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Burlesque & Comedy Extravaganza: Love Hurts So Good

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Karaoke with Michael Ray Hansen

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Scrub Pine, Kyle Caudle, The Promise Is Hope

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Crow’s Nest Presents: Nightmare Sonata, Mindjakked, The Generic Terrors

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Nige Hood gives stunning performance at Black 2 Hip Hop festival.

SPENCER KM BROWN

for the fourth annual Black 2 Hip-Hop festival. Performances heard.” This year the festival broadcasted live and went out included spoken-word poetry, stage artists, painters and a nationally over radio and podcast. fashion show. The front of the stage was lined with artwork by The festival will remain an annual event during Black Hislocal black artists, as well as tables on the sides of the venue tory Month, and Evans says that in coming years, he plans to with handmade jewelry and clothing. And while artists and expand the festival’s local reach and will work with historically musicians from the Triad were well represented, others came black colleges throughout the country to bring Black 2 Hip from surrounding cities and states to take part in the festival.

Hop to the national stage, celebrating not only artists of color Nige Hood & the Folk Rap Band brought an element to but all people who have been pushed to the fringes of society. the room that blended hip-hop with ’60s funk and jam-band With the list of performers being so large, most acts were sounds, but with a frontman whose stage presence calls to only allotted two or three songs each, leaving the crowd mind Lenny Kravitz mixed with James Brown. craving more and chanting encores for local favorites such as Nige Hood, a self-dubbed “folk rap genius,” hails from CharSunQueen Kelcey, Allie Capo, and Debbie the Artist, which lotte. Having performed for a few years as a solo act, Hood underscored the strength of this empowering and relevant has recently brought a four-piece band into his live shows, festival. culminating in a style that blends more mainstream hip-hop Artists mingled among fans as their performances ended; traditions with funk and folk sounds from the Peace & Love posing for pictures and signing a CD or T-shirt. Smells from the Generation. The charismatic frontman belted out smooth food trucks poured in through the open doors and attendees melodies with a flare of funk and eloquent, tightly-spouted lined up along the bar for another round, even five hours into verses with a Nas-like flow. the festival, holding off from reaching for car keys or having Festival-goers posed for pictures and showcased traditional a cigarette as the lights dimmed, awaiting the last acts of the bodypainting; flowers stuck out from braided hair; couples night. danced and cheered as those on stage gave meaningful and uplifting words of cultural and racial empowerment. This is the central idea Pick of the Week behind the festival, said Black 2 Hip Hop Want your album reviewed? founder, Torey “Viva” Evans.

Rhapsodies for clarinet and piano Send a copy to: “This festival is focused on bringing @ UNCSA (W-S), Saturday, 7:30 Spencer KM Brown people of the Triad together. Artists, p.m. c/o Triad City Beat musicians, poets, dancers — we want to UNCSA faculty members Oskar 1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24 come together and share the voices and Espina-Ruiz on clarinet and Allison Greensboro NC 27406 talents of black artists in the Triad and Gagnon on piano present Spanish, or email links to spencer@triad-city-beat.com surrounding cities, because all lives matFrench, German and American ter, all artists matter,” Evans said. “Black rhapsodic styles. A UNCSA compo2 Hip Hop is about coming together to sition student’s premiere of a work celebrate our culture, to celebrate artists for clarinet solo completes the of color and to bring empowerment to event. More info at uncsa.edu. artists who might otherwise never be

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Secret Sunshine @ Aperture Cinema (W-S), Saturday, 9:30 a.m.

Aperture holds a morning viewing and discussion of the Korean film Secret Sunshine, a story of human faith during tragedy. It is the second of three events on faith, doubt and transcendence in film. More info at aperturecinema.com.

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furniture catalogs. The strong tradition of photography continued into the 1980s, perpetuated by the furniture market and the foundation of NASCAR in the region. Toda’s longtime friend and photography partner Worth Canoy remembers their time working at racecar shows and shooting thousands of shots of furniture just decades ago. Now Canoy, who works as a security officer at High Point University, says he has a hard time finding work in photography.

“The digital revolution destroyed photography,” Canoy says. “Now people buy their own cameras and do it themselves. There’s no professional photography industry anymore.”

For both Toda and Canoy, Huemax seems to be more than just a photography shop; it’s a preservation capsule of a precious art.

Graham Kennedy, a UNC School of the Arts student, is evidence of a younger generation taking an interest in the dying form. He has been coming to Toda’s shop regularly for the past year since he discovered Huemax through school friends. This morning, he buys 10 rolls of film for a whopping $90, which the student says is a good deal.

“More and more people are finding it important and it’s making a bit of a comeback,” Canoy says of film photography. “I think it’s cool. I’m glad to hear that people even realize there was a world before digital cameras.”

Going forward, Toda hopes to keep inspiring younger enthusiasts like Kennedy to continue the tradition of film photograph. He envisions one day letting someone with the same passion take over his store.

But for now, Toda works behind the counter in his warehouse, day after day, repairing relics from decades past and spreading the gospel of his beloved craft to any who will stop and listen.

triad-city-beat.com

CULTURE Snapshots of the past preserved in photo sanctuary

by Sayaka Matsuoka en Toda has a certain familiarity about him.

At 65 years old, the Japanese expat is only five years older than my dad and has similarly wrinkled lines on his face, evidence of decades of life experience. He even has a familiar smile, a sort of crooked, half-smirk that says, “Sit down, let me tell you a story.” But instead of collecting stamps and model airplane kits like my father does, Toda collects cameras — hundreds of them.

The shabby warehouse off an unassuming side street in High Point sits in the middle of a gravel parking lot lined with old Celicas that evoke a time dominated by Michael Jackson records and turtleneck sweaters. From the outside, the building looks like a modest metal shack and the stickered sign on the door that reads “Huemax” — the name of the store — is barely legible from a distance. In other words, you’d have to be looking for this place to find it.

As you walk in the door, the obscurity of the outside of the building gives way to a cluttered museum-like interior crowded with cameras and various photography gadgets. Cameras taller than me greet customers near the entrance of the shop, while walls lined with hundreds of photography artifacts draw visitors in.

This is Toda’s homage to a lost art.

Born and raised in the Kansai region of Japan, Toda began tinkering with cameras in elementary school. He recalls being interested in landscapes and remembers taking a picture of a burned-down Ken Toda began tinkering with cameras in elementary SAYAKA MATSUOKA school near his home. By the time he was in high school. school, he had his own darkroom and was studying photographs in publications like Time magazine. cance because it marks the time when digital cameras made Fifty years later, he’s still adding to his collection and spends their debut. Thirty years later, with the onslaught of cell his days selling pieces and repairing cameras for customers, phones featuring high-tech cameras built in and the invention shooting images from time to time. of gadgets like the GoPro, the era of film cameras is rapidly Toda’s photography obsession closely follows his journey to fading. For Toda, limiting his collection to film cameras is his the states, which began when he was in high school. He met way of preserving a recent, yet quickly disappearing past. a group of North Carolinians at the 1970 Osaka World Expo, “Digital photography killed us,” Toda says. “The camera is and he befriended an interior designer from Winston-Salem not a camera anymore, it’s a computer. I don’t hate it, it’s just named Reginald Styles. He visited Styles in New York the a different beast. You can’t improvise as much. That’s why you following year and from there, Toda found have to go back to retro.” his way to Kernersville where he lived for His oldest piece, a looming portrait camera, five years while going to school at Randolph epitomizes this sentiment. It dates back to Huemax is located at Community College and later Elon University.

1860, a time when portraiture was the main 2313 Geddie Place (HP) He was hired as the university photographer subject of photography and the art was just and is open via apand used his skills as a cameraman as a way of starting to take off. His rarest artifact comes in pointment only. communicating with the outside world. Just the form of a $1,200 Leica camera from 1931, as food was my Japanese father’s entry into a displayed in a glass case towards the back of new country, for Toda, photography was his the building. way of assimilating into American culture.

Listening to Toda describe the various pieces in his shop, it’s As he fondly recalls his time working at Elon, Toda shows more than evident that his passion for cameras goes beyond me various pictures he took for the 1975 yearbook including just the mechanics of the art form. He describes how the meaction shots of basketball players and students sunbathing on dium has changed over the years and what it meant to him as the lawn. He looks back on this time with pride as he points a teenager in a new world. Both the warehouse and Toda’s vast out a younger version of himself, complete with a bowl cut, knowledge provide a glimpse into the history of photography posed with a camera. It was during this time that Toda began as well as a preservation of High Point’s own history with the his camera collection. medium.

Displayed in chronological order from the mid-1800s to According to Toda, the once-booming furniture market 1975, more than 1,100 cameras grace the walls and cabinets made High Point a prime spot for photography dating all the of Toda’s shop. For the collector, the latter year holds signifiway back to the early 1900s, when the medium was used for

19

February 15 – 21, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball

Sports and politics intersect in a time of racial tension

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n Mexico City in the summer port of Trump while their gear is worn by members of of 1968, US Olympic runners marginalized communities and the complicit silence John Carlos and Tommie of Tom Brady in the wake of Richard Spencer’s tweets Smith raised their blackduring the Super Bowl are both harmful,” Crippen said, gloved fists during the National referring to racist, pro-Patriots tweets from the white Anthem. The gesture was one of supremacist Spencer. solidarity, resistance and black Yet for Thomas Santiago, a 22-year-old student power, of unimaginable meanat UNCG who coaches Crippen’s nephew in a youth

by Joel Sronce ing to millions at home. Both basketball program in Greensboro, the influence of men were suspended from the famous athletes is overemphasized. team, ostracized, subject to threats and abuse.

“We need to stop looking to athletes of high status Not until the past few years have sports figures and and instead look to restructuring ourselves,” Santiago the greater world around them witnessed the same said in a phone interview. “We look at what athletes political and racial tension that moved these two men have financially, we see what they have that we don’t, to undaunted political demonstration nearly 50 years and we assume they can help.” ago.

To Santiago, athletes like the somewhat outspoken There is no question as to whether or not the conLeBron James don’t understand most people’s lives. temporary world of sports intersects “He was kept away from that reality and mirrors our country’s intense politfrom age 13,” he said, referencing James’ ‘Eleven- to 13-year early path to NBA stardom. ical climate. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, for example, Though there is some discord beolds may not know continues to receive criticism for refustween the statements from Crippen and all the politics, but Santiago, they are not necessarily on ing to stand for the National Anthem that he felt does not represent him. His they can certainly separate sides of a debate. The harmful decision inspired hundreds of athletes actions that Crippen referenced were tell you how they from many backgrounds to follow suit, committed by those who promote the often resulting in further criticism and damaging systemic segregation that feel.’ even threats. In contrast, Under Armour causes Santiago to look toward his own – Thomas Santiago recently expressed support for President community for guidance. Systemic racial Trump while continuing to profit from division often leads the contentious sales to children of color whose lives Kaepernick’s discussion of politics in professional sports. dissension directly addresses.

As more athletes of color refuse to be silent, the role The contention surrounding political stances in proand presence of white athletes is called into question. fessional sports raises an important discussion about When black athletes and other athletes of color stand the position of influence held by athletes. in solidarity with oppressed communities, they put Cherizar Crippen, co-chair of communications for their careers, futures, even their safety in jeopardy.

Black Lives Matter Greensboro and a political science This is a sacrifice that many believe should in no way student at GTCC, stresses the power generated by be black athletes’ burden to bear, much less shoulder athletes taking a stand. Much like the physical stances alone. of Smith and Carlos at the 1968 Olympic Games, an Yet lately, the only white athletes to create waves athlete’s voice and actions can be symbols of solidarity of serious political impact are Tom Brady and Curt against oppressive forces, she contends.

Schilling — clammed up in Brady’s case and clamorous But to Crippen, an athlete’s or athletic company’s in Schilling’s. Both men abandon the actions and statechoices can sponsor the side of the oppressor to an ments of solidarity with athletes of color that some equally powerful degree. feel should be preeminent in today’s political climate.

“Companies like Under Armour coming out in supFor Crippen, there’s no question about white

athletes’ role in the work to undo the injustices that contemporary politics has illuminated.

“Being a traitor to white supremacy is the highest calling a white athlete or any white person could have in these times of racial tension,” she said. “Athletes would need to make the principled but difficult decision to be willing to risk income for our collective good. I do doubt that the backlash for white players would be as harsh and long-lasting as it has been historically for black players; maybe if they were confident of that it would motivate them to action.”

Santiago, however, expressed a deeply-rooted skepticism that correlates with the very separate lives of black and white communities.

“What we’ve been through as African Americans makes us more confused to the idea of help,” he said, rhetorically adding, “What’s your true motive behind helping?”

Again Santiago cited the need to focus on local community instead of seeking guidance from those of impossible wealth and fame.

“People my age need to look at what’s around us and look for chances to teach and be taught,” he said.

“What’s around us are kids. Eleven- to 13-year olds may not know all the politics, but they can certainly tell you how they feel.”

The political influence of athletes has no set measure. They make up an indeterminate part of the collective action that will determine what these kids will have to sacrifice, what burdens they will bear, and what they may have to shoulder alone.

Pick of the Week UNCG men’s basketball @ the Greensboro Coliseum, Wednesday, 7 p.m.

Join the Healthy Relationships Initiative — an organization that promotes community information, resources and services for healthy and safe relationships — at the UNCG men’s basketball game for family fun or a date night. More info at guilfordhri. org.

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CROSSWORD ‘Hide Your Kids’ they’re in there somewhere.

by Matt Jones

56 57 61 62 63 64 65 66

Contends What each of the entries with circles reveals To be in France Lago contents Country divided since 1948 Hair band of the 1980s He played Clubber Lang in “Rocky III” Gift on the seventh day of Christmas

Playing February 16 – 20 Friday Night Standup Presents

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8:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. Friday, February 17 (Netflix, Conan, The Late Show with Seth Meyers) Tickets $15 at the Door and $12 Online

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OTHER SHOWS Open Mic 8:30 p.m. Thurs. Feb. 16. $5 tickets Family Improv 4 p.m. Sat., Feb. 18. $6 Tickets!

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Bridges of film “Stacks of wax” Cabinet contents Departed “Entourage” agent Gold Werewolf’s tooth Long haulers Onetime Trooper and Rodeo maker John who was Gomez Addams Acquired relative Dove noise Abbr. stamped on a bad check Place for supplies, sometimes “Back in the ___” (Beatles song) The gold in Goldschlager, e.g.

What “-phile” means Curly-tailed canine Like xenon, as gases go On the ocean “Taken” star Neeson Caltech grad, perhaps Letter-shaped bolt link Site with the tagline “Discover the expert in you” Glass on the radio “Steal My Sunshine” band “___ Boot” (1981 war film)

News 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro idiotboxers.com • 336-274-2699

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Down 1 Chatter away 2 Poet’s palindrome 3 Brunched, say 4 Absorbs, with “up” 5 Unbelievable cover?

6 “CHiPs” costar Estrada 7 Bread at an Indian restaurant 8 Eight, to Ernst 9 Audrey Tautou’s quirky title role of 2001 10 Chamillionaire hit that doesn’t actually have “Dirty” in the title 11 Lose one’s mind 12 Cher’s partner 14 “The Bridge on the River ___” 17 Hit with a barrage 20 Concede 21 Exchanges 22 Cheesy chip flavor

23 27 28 29 30 32 33 34 35 37 38 39 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 52 53 54 55 58 59 60

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Across 1 Baker’s buy 6 Group of periods 9 Pet sounds?

13 Threepio’s mate 14 McDonald’s Corporation mogul Ray 15 “Dog Barking at the Moon” painter Joan 16 Maintain the same speed as 18 Tree of Knowledge garden 19 Converse with the locals in Rome, e.g.

21 NBC show since ‘75 24 Lilly of pharmaceuticals 25 Undersized 26 Size in a portrait package 28 It keeps going during the Olympics 31 “You’re not ___, are you?”

32 Guy with a lot of food issues?

33 “Chandelier” singer 36 What regular exercise helps maintain 40 Layer of lawn 41 Mid-sized jazz combo 42 Blue material 43 Clunky footwear 44 Home of Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” 46 Muhammad Ali’s boxing daughter 49 Soundless communication syst.

50 U.K. tabloid, with “The” 51 “Hmmm ... I’m thinking ...”

Playing February 15 – 21 Sportsball

FREE TOURNAMENT: Mario Kart 8 (WiiU) $50 cash prize! 5 p.m. Saturday, February 18.

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Saturday Morning Cartoons

Great Cartoons! Free Admission! 10 a.m. & 12 p.m. Every Saturday!

Geeksboro Anime Club Free Admission. 1 p.m. Sat., Feb. 18 TV CLUB: The Walking Dead Totally Rad Trivia 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 21 Drink N’ Draw 6 p.m. Wednesday, February 15 All Artists of All Ages & Skill Levels are Welcome!

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February 15 – 21, 2017

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Snow Moon during the penumbral lunar eclipse.

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Clean ductwork, Elizabeth Warren and Betamax • Have you had any respiratory issues? How far could you run before your Discman started to skip?

• Were you out of breath after you blew into your Nintendo cartridge?

• Were you too sore to stir your Tang?

• Are you feeling okay today? Raise your hand, raise your haaaand if you’re sure.

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I didn’t know what to tell her, so I just nodded. Yes, it was smaller than a 50-cent piece. On the way out, I swear I heard the faint screech of a dial-up modem coming from somewhere deep inside the office. I put my darkest sunglasses on and decided that yes, that’s exactly what it was.

Opinion

Jelisa Castrodale is a freelance writer who lives in Winston-Salem. She enjoys pizza, obscure power-pop records and will probably die alone. Follow her on Twitter @gordonshumway.

Cover Story Culture

eye doc, he slid his hands into the pockets of his crisp white coat, looked at the floor and quietly said, “I’m sorry, but I’m out of ideas.”

I still have a lot of frustrating bad days, but I try not to think about it, at least not until I’m fumbling for my eye drops or waiting for an allergy shot. I let Allergist No. 2 convince me that I needed twice-weekly injections, which don’t seem to be doing anything except helping me understand why he drives such a nice car.

Twice a week, I stand in front of one of the clinic’s identically surly nurses, who all seem to be using my upper arms as practice rounds for the World Darts Championship. At my last appointment, the nurse tapped the syringe with her fingernail and, just before she tried to see if she could touch my arm bones with the tip of the needle, she asked, “How was your last reaction? Was it bigger than a 50-cent piece?”

I had to think about it, not because I’d forgotten clawing at the angry red welt on my right arm, but because I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a 50-cent piece, let alone considered the size of it.

That seems like one of the strangest, most outdated units of measurements she could’ve used, especially since the average age of allergy shot patients seems to be Still Licks the Chairs in the Waiting Room.

I have an appointment tomorrow and, for the first time since this low-key nightmare started, I’m finally looking forward to it, if only because I’m excited about what other references the nurses might dust off. I’m hoping for something like:

Up Front

• Was your last reaction bigger than a Pet Rock?

• Was it bigger than the label on a Betamax tape?

Sportsball

• How many of Gorbachev’s birthmarks could you fit inside it?

• How many Book It! stars would you need to cover it?

Crossword

everal months ago, both of my eyes decided that they hated me. I woke up on one summer Sunday and looked like I’d just gone 10 rounds with an entire MMA undercard, sporting two red, swollen slits in the places where my eyeballs used

by Jelisa Castrodale to be. It was the morning after Salute, downtown Winston-Salem’s annual wine celebration, so I assumed it was just payback for drinking my entry fee’s worth of berry wines. (I’m not saying that I was overserved, but by mid-afternoon I was facedown on the ground, wearing a regulation West Virginia University football helmet and shouting, “Only God can judge me.” It was quite a day.)

But even after I gave my endocrine system a peace offering of McDonald’s, Pedialyte and a generous handful of Ibuprofen, the problem hadn’t gone away.

My next thought was that it had been caused by my new upstairs neighbors, who decided that the best way to make friends was to replace their hardwood floors at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. (The fact that I didn’t stomp up the stairs to strangle them with my own frayed nerve endings is what I’ll be writing on my Nobel Peace Prize application).

I wondered if maybe the construction had dislodged a colony of dust mites who decided to pack their disgusting belongings and move into my own HVAC system, so over the course of the next week, I had my ductwork cleaned (not a euphemism), had my apartment tested for mold and bought a vacuum cleaner that could suck the electrons out of an atom. Nothing helped, then or now.

Eight months later and it persists, the Elizabeth Warren of ophthalmic issues. I’ve been to two allergists, two ophthalmologists, a dermatologist, a general practitioner and a gynecologist — mostly because I thought you got a free Subway sandwich after you’d seen six Novant Health specialists. I’ve been tested for every possible autoimmune disorder and I’ve been on enough steroids to win this year’s Tour de France, but no one has any idea what caused it or how to make it stop. At my most recent appointment with the second

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• Was your arm redder than a can of Tab?

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