TCB Oct. 19, 2017 — The 2017 General Election Guide

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point Oct. 19 - 25, 2017 triad-city-beat.com

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2017 GENERAL ELECTION GUIDE

PAGES 6-10

Oct. 19 - 25, 2017

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

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Pinball on the boardwalk Bob’s pinball different now, he says, new construction technique is a and better restaurants on the boardwalk, joke — ironic, bethe sorts of activities he enjoyed as a boy cause he is of the now relegated to a museum. same vintage as But he recognizes the old casino, many of the classtanding on this point of the Jersey Shore sic tables at the since 1932, before his parents — my Silverball Museum grandparents — ever met. He remembers

by Brian Clarey on the boardwalk the carousel house, too, now a beaux arts here at Asbury Park, NJ. skeleton but once the centerpiece of the Even at the old pinball machines from oceanside carnival and midway, where he the 1950s, with their natural-wood cabisaved all his prize tickets until the end of nets and rudimentary bumper systems, he the weekend and then cashed them in for slaps at the flipper buttons like he’s trying giant toys. to put out a grease fire.

He recognizes the And when I get him Stone Pony, too, the Bob spent a few memorable legendary beachfront on the more modern summers down here as a machine, the Twilight rock room where Zone from 1993, with Bruce Springsteen and child, while the decades ramps and levels countless others cut aplenty, I have to fight turned from the 1940s to their teeth. On a sumthe 1950s. one of those urges all mer trip when he was sons eventually feel still in law school in the with their fathers. I early 1960s, he caught want to show him how to trap the ball a set there from Bill Haley & the Comets. with the flipper, aim his shots, tutor him Here at the Silverball, Bob fares much the same way he did for me when I was a better at the Skee Ball lane, two ancient kid — at the pool table, the dartboard, the cabinets at the back corner of the mubowling alley, the backyard with a bat and seum, where he consistently drops bank ball. shots into the 50-point hole, outscoring And he manages a pretty good score, me in every game. haphazardly slapping silver balls up the “Where the hell are the tickets?” he asks correct ramps and into the correct spinafter the first round, when nothing comes ners enough times to outscore me the first out of the slot. two games.

“They don’t do that anymore,” I say.

Bob spent a few memorable summers down here as a child, while the decades turned from the 1940s to the 1950s. It’s all

triad-city-beat.com

Playing Oct. 20-24 Playing October 19 - 21

Geeksboro Presents “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” With FREE CANDY, Comics, and a MAJOR SPECIAL GUEST 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 22nd Free Admission with Drink Purchase!

The Idiot Box Presents

Ultimate Comic Challenge X Celebrating 10 Years of Competitive Comedy!

Winner gets $1,000 Prize!

10:00 p.m. Friday, October 20th.

Tickets $10.

--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS-Board Game Night FEATURING ALL NEW GAMES! 7 p.m. Friday, October 20th. More than 100 BOARD GAMES -- FREE TO PLAY!

GRAWL-O-WEEN Women’s Arm Wrestling Tournament 8 p.m. Saturday, October 21st $6 tickets!

TV CLUB presents “Star Trek: Discovery”

OTHER SHOWS

BRAND NEW EPISODE 8:30 p.m. Sunday, October 22nd Free Admission with Drink Purchase!

Thursday Night Special: Adam Cayton Holland 8:30 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 19th $10 tickets!

SEASON PREMIERE: The Walking Dead 100th Episode!

9 p.m. Sunday, October 22nd FREE ADMISSION WITH DRINK PURCHASE!

Totally Rad Trivia! $3 buy in! Winners get CASH!

Family Improv 4 p.m. Sat., Oct. 21st $6 Tickets!

8:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 24th

Discount tickets available @ Ibcomedy.yapsody.com

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Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

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University Concert and Lecture Series presents:

Juilliard String Quartet Fri, Oct. 27 School of Music Recital Hall 8:00pm

for more information and tickets, visit:

ucls.uncg.edu 3

Oct. 19 - 25, 2017 Up Front News

by Lauren Barber

THURSDAY 19 The Roots of the IQ: Innovation on Depot Street @ Goler Memorial AME Zion Church (W-S), 5:30 p.m.

In partnership with the Winston-Salem African-American Archive, the New Winston Museum presents the second panel discussion in a threepart series focusing on historic African-American landscapes in the Camel City. This panel of local experts focuses on the once-booming black businesses district forged in the neighborhoods currently home to the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter. Enjoy light refreshments while learning how African-American residents cultivated flourishing communities in the era of Jim Crow.

Find the event on Facebook.

Crossword

Shot in the Triad

Culture

Opinion

CITY LIFE Oct. 19-22

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ing catastrophe. Find tickets and learn more at aperturecinema.com.

The Legend of Buster Neal @ Arts Council Theatre (W-S), 7:30 p.m.

The NC Black Repertory Company presents playwright Jackie Alexander’s story about four generations of African-American men, featuring actor Nathan Purdee who is best known for his role as a private investigator on CBS’s “The Young and the Restless.” The production investigates friendship and masculinity, and runs through Oct. 29. Find tickets and learn more at ncblackrep.org.

Two by Tenn @ Triad Stage (GSO), 8 p.m.

In Collaboration with UNCG, South African company Abrahamese and Meyer Productions performs two short Tennessee Williams plays presented under the collective title Two by Tenn in UpStage Cabaret at Triad Stage.

The first play on the bill is a comedy, A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot, set in a juke-joint in 1930s St. Louis. In an interesting twist, awardwinning puppeteers Dean Balie and Marcel Meyer play life-size puppets of characters Bessie and Flora.

Williams’ bizarre and provocative late-career play, The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme. LeMonde, follows intermission. This production features strong language, violence and simulated sex, including allusions to sexual abuse. Two

by Tenn runs through Oct. 21. Find tickets and learn more at triadstage. org.

FRIDAY 20 The Last Wave @ Aperture Cinema (W-S), 9:30 a.m.

Film critic Mark Burger hosts a special screening of acclaimed, PG-rated psychological thriller and mystery as the latest installment of Aperture’s Looking @ Art Cinema education series. In this 1977 art-house horror classic, Richard Chamberlain portrays a lawyer whose worldview is challenged when he agrees to defend aboriginal people accused of murder; strange events foreshadow a loom-

Rave in Wonderland @ Krave Tea House & Kava Bar (GSO), 11 p.m.

This late-night, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-inspired rave features local, long-time EDM DJ FM with special guest DJ Julian Newman, who specializes in uplifting trance flows. All proceeds benefit Habitat for Humanity’s hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico. Krave is accepting donations through Oct. 31. This event is for ravers 18 years-of-age and older, and no alcohol is to be served. Learn more at kravekava.com.

SATURDAY Chalice in Wonderland Craft Beer Festival @ Crossnore School & Children’s Home (W-S), noon Grab a meal from any of the half dozen food trucks as you sample from 35 craft beers from 15 breweries. Hay rides and onsite playgrounds are accessible to children, and attendees are welcome to visit the horses, llamas, goats, pigs and donkeys that live on the farm. Part of the day’s proceeds will benefit Crossnore. Find tickets and learn more at chaliceinwonderland.org.

Interfaith celebration of refugees @ Knollwood Baptist Church (WS), 1 p.m.

Eat traditional foods from refugees’ homelands during a reception with information booths and familyfriendly activities like soccer and arts and crafts before an interfaith panel discussion about the refugee

experience. Stephan Bauman, the former president of World Relief, delivers the keynote speech and signs his books, Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis and Break Open the Sky. Learn more at interfaithwinstonsalem. org.

Ghoulash! Halloween Festival @ Center City and LeBauer parks (GSO), 2 p.m.

The Greensboro Youth Council presents an annual Halloweenthemed festival featuring bounce houses, game booths, face painting, a pumpkin patch, a costume parade and contest, and arts and crafts.

Peruse a craft market, wind through a haunted house and take pit-stops at local breweries’ beverage stations to the sound of live entertainment.

Learn more at greensboro-nc.gov.

Community dinner @ Oakview Recreation Center (HP), 6 p.m.

The High Point Human Relations Commission and the Bahá’ís of High Point welcome all community members to celebrate the 200th birthday of the Baha’i faith’s founder, Baha’u’llah. Hear stories and songs about Baha’u’llah and partake in the community’s traditions while enjoying a fellowship dinner. Learn more and reserve your seat at 200thanniversary.eventbrite.com.

SUNDAY Romeo and Juliet Promenade @ GTCC (HP), 3 p.m.

GTCC’s modern-day interpretation of Shakespeare’s iconic, tragic love story is presented in promenade style, meaning audience members move with actors from scene to scene to five different stages around campus. Bring a folding chair, if possible. Find tickets and learn more at highpointtheatre.com.

The Premier Brewery Tour in the Triad taphoppertours.com • 336.850.1477

New routes coming this month!

Buy the Bus!

News

than anything in the past.

The roots of the #MeToo movement go back to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which the future president of the United States gave some jarring examples of his gross behavior. Similarly piggish behavior came out of Silicon Valley and the halls of Fox News. After the election, when it became evident that Trump would suffer no consequences for his transgressions, millions of women took to the streets in pink hats.

Months later, Hollywood legend Harvey Weinstein was exposed as a serial sexual abuser and female actors began confirming the worst of the accusations.

From this, #MeToo tumbled forth.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that casting Weinstein out of Hollywood will suddenly end centuries of misogyny. But as men, perhaps we’re starting to recognize that we’re not doing enough to hold each other and ourselves accountable. With each #MeToo post, that becomes more clear.

Up Front

On Monday morning the #MeToo hashtag had taken over social media as, one by one, thousands and thousands of American women identified themselves as victims of sexual harassment and abuse, laying bare yet another facet of our national shame.

None of the men I spoke to in the days following the waterfall of admissions were surprised that almost all the women we know have suffered some form of sexual aggression — gropes, rapes, assaults both verbal and physical, unwanted sexual attention or some other leveraging of the sexual power dynamic that men have been exploiting for… well, forever.

Men I spoke to of an age similar to mine were forced to acknowledge the normalization of what we now recognize as “rape culture” — the caricature of the boss chasing his secretary around the desk, tales of the casting couch, examples of the Elektra Complex writ large across our culture for generations.

Some of us remember “The Benny Hill Show,” a BBC export that was basically an episodic montage of sexual harassment set to saxophone music.

We can’t say it was a different time or that we didn’t really know better, because we did.

And this Facebook and Twitter revolt feels different

triad-city-beat.com

The #MeToo movement

by Brian Clarey

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By Using code beer15

In Honor of #WOCAffirmation: 8 women of color to follow on Twitter

By Lauren Barber 1.

5. Mona Eltahawy (@MonaEltahawy) Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist, an international speaker on Arab and Muslim issues and the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution. Follow her for perspectives on global feminism and to learn about connections between imperialism, racism and sexual violence.

6. Nikole Hannah Jones (@NHannahJones) Jones is a New York Times Magazine investigative

7. Ijeoma Olou (@IjeomaOlou) Olou is a writer, self-described “internet yeller” and editor-at-large of the Establishment, a media organization funded and run by women. Follow her for incisive commentary on misogynoir and incredible threads on an array of social justice issues.

8. Adrienne Keene (@NativeApprops) Keene is a Cherokee activist, writer and an assistant professor of American studies and ethnic studies at Brown University, where her research is focused on educational outcomes for Native American students.

Keene also founded Native Appropriations, a blog dedicated to analyzing contemporary indigenous issues, particularly indigenous representations in popular culture.

Crossword

3. Janet Mock (@JanetMock) Mock is a contributing editor and columnist at Allure and the bestselling author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty. She is a prominent transgender

4. Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) Gandy is a retired lawyer and well-respected political blogger, journalist and women’s rights activist currently working as a senior legal analyst at Rewire News. She claps back at men’s rights activists, overtly racist fools and zealous Bernie Sanders supporters.

Follow her to keep up with anti-choice legislation, musings on movement-building and the future of the Democratic Party.

reporter primarily covering race and civil rights. She is a 2017 MacArthur Genius Award fellow and the cofounder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, an organization that seeks to empowers reporters and editors of color through skills trainings and networking. Follow her for nuanced, historically informed and data-driven stories about racial segregation in education and housing.

Shot in the Triad

2. Michelle Taylor (@FeministaJones) Taylor is a social worker, writer and prominent Black Twitter contributor. She launched #YouOKSis, an internationally-known anti-street harassment campaign, and a National Moment of Silence (#NMOS14) — a protest of police brutality. Her writing appears in time.com, Essence, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other outlets.

rights activist committed to storytelling as a way to destigmatize LGBTQ issues and the creator of #GirlsLikeUs, a tool of empowerment for transgender girls and women.

Culture

April Reign (@ReignOfApril) Reign challenged lack of representation of marginalized communities in Hollywood as the creator of the viral hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and promotes change as a public speaker and consultant for organizations and studios grappling with diversity and inclusion efforts. After the #WomenBoycottTwitter protest against the platform’s brief suspension of Rose McGowan’s account, Reign introduced #WOCAffirmation, which sought to uplift the voices of women of color whose harassment and abuse doesn’t receive the same support.

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017

Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad

2017 general election voter guide

by Jordan Green

It seems as though the primaries are hardly over, and now it’s time to go back to the polls.

The Oct. 10 primary winnowed unruly fields in Greensboro and High Point down to two candidates per seat, and early voting begins Thursday for a 13-day run in advance of the Nov. 7 general election.

For the first seven days, early voting takes place in the Blue Room of the Old Courthouse in downtown Greensboro and Washington Terrace Park in High Point. You can vote at either location as long as you’re eligible to vote in the Greensboro or High Point elections. On the last week of early voting, two additional sites open — the Ag Center on the east side of Greensboro, and Leonard Recreation Center on the west side.

And on Nov. 4, the Saturday preceding Election Day, a total of eight earlyvoting sites open, including Deep River Recreation Center in High Point. Visit the Guilford County Board of Elections website at myguilford.com/elections/ for additional information about early voting and to find out which candidates will appear on your ballot.

All elections are important, but this one is a pretty big deal. For the first time, terms for mayor and city council members in Greensboro will be extended to four years from the current two. High Point will be electing a new mayor and filling two vacant seats, while tightly contested races in Greensboro’s at-large bracket and District 5 could potentially determine the direction of the city. Go vote.

GREENSBORO

Crossword

Mayoral (vote for 1)

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Nancy Vaughan (i): Over her two terms as mayor, Nancy Vaughan has led a center-left coalition that has promoted downtown reinvestment and multiculturalism.

As executive director of the Guilford Green Foundation, which advances the interest of LGBTQ people, she represents a cultural counterweight to a

Republican-controlled General Assembly that has taken multiple opportunities to undermine gay and trans rights.

She’s walked a fine line on police reform issues, as revelations of racial disparities in traffic stops and excessive force have trained unwelcome attention on the department. She met for months with reform advocates and sat on a panel with author Michelle Alexander, but publicly backed the Greensboro Police Department against accusations of excessive force involving a 15-year-old in the controversial Jose Charles case.

And yet the Oct. 10 primary proved that Greensboro is not Charlotte — unlike Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts, who lost her primary, Vaughan came through with a commanding 61.4 percent of the vote, while two challengers from the left and right shared the leftovers.

Diane Moffett: A longtime pastor at St. James Presbyterian Church in southeast Greensboro and new resident who recently relocated from Jamestown to the city, the Rev. Diane Moffett snagged a spot on the general election ballot with her second-place finish in the primary.

But considering that she received 21.7 percent of the vote, Moffett has a lot of ground to make up. And it’s unlikely she’ll be able to woo supporters of John T. Brown, the conservative Republican eliminated in the general election. Some on the left are discontent with Vaughan’s track record on police accountability and the city’s growing wealth gap, but Moffett has her work cut out to distinguish herself on those issues. Attracting jobs that pay a living wage, improving policecommunity relations and addressing poverty are a few of Moffett’s interests.

At-large (vote for up to 3) Yvonne Johnson (i): One of Greensboro’s most significant political leaders over the past quarter century, Yvonne Johnson was the first and only African American elected mayor, and she’s served on city council

for 24 years, with a two-year break from 2009 to 2011 when she lost her mayoral re-election bid. Johnson has achieved a rare alchemy in the at-large race, earning respect as a veteran incumbent while also capturing the support of a new progressive coalition seeking police reform and more aggressive policies to promote affordable housing and increase wages.

Johnson said she prayed and analyzed the situation before courting Democracy Greensboro voters. It must have paid off: Johnson led the balloting in the Oct. 10 primary, polling 7.8 points ahead of the nearest contender.

Marikay Abuzuaiter (i): A one-time protégé of Yvonne Johnson, former restaurateur Marikay Abuzuaiter has come into her own in her three terms on council, building on a political base from the city’s international community and lasting goodwill from her ardent opposition to efforts to reopen the White Street Landfill. Abuzuaiter recently parted ways with Johnson on police accountability by publicly backing the police after reviewing police body-camera video of a July 4, 2016 encounter with 15-year-old Jose Charles, while Johnson said, “There are rules where it’s legal to do something, but it may be that a better decision could have been made.” While alienating Democracy Greensboro voters, Abuzuaiter has received endorsements from the Greensboro Police Officers Association and the Professional Fire Fighters, and took second place with a 3.4-point lead over fellow incumbent Mike Barber.

Mike Barber (i): A conservative Democrat, Mike Barber has publicly tangled with police-reform advocates, and in one instance criticized the parenting skills of the mother of Jose Charles. He identifies public safety as the city’s most pressing issue in a voter guide produced by the League of Women Voters, adding, “We are beginning to feel the effects of a number of factors leading to higher gun availability on the streets. Opioid and other drug use, the continued erosion

of school system effectiveness, [and] the challenges of supervision in economically challenged households are among a few.” From an economic standpoint, Barber is a typically a reliable vote for rezoning requests on the basis that expanding the tax base will allow the city to keep the property tax rate down.

Among the incumbents, Barber is the most conservative and the most vulnerable, leading his nearest competitor by only six votes in the primary.

Michelle Kennedy: Among a slew of progressive change candidates, including four who serve on the city’s human relations commission, Kennedy came into the race with the strongest name recognition as executive director of the Interactive Resource Center, an outspoken advocate for poor people, and the ’s 2016 Woman of the Year. That reputation likely boosted her fundraising ability, giving her the highest amount of cash on hand of any at-large candidate, as of the most recent campaign reporting cycle.

Kennedy has pushed back against talk of moving services for poor people away from downtown — sure to be a significant issue in the next four years. As one supporter who expressed overall satisfaction with the direction of the city put it, Kennedy would be the “conscience” of the council.

Dave Wils: A Democratic Party activist and officer with the Guilford County Association of Educators, Dave Wils spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016. Along with Kennedy — a fellow Greensboro human relations commissioner — Wils’ fifth-place showing in the primary cements his reputation as a power player. And after Kennedy, Wils goes into the general election with the second-largest campaign war chest among the at-large candidates.

His day job as a teacher at Grimsley High School provides the perfect metaphor for the politics of a progressive rising star. “I believe everybody does better when everybody does better,” Wils says

Shot in the Triad Crossword

Craig Martin: Public defender Craig Martin, who describes himself as a “progressive voice” who would bring “positive change” to the city, earned a rating of 4.9 out of 5 rating from voters at a conference held by the progressive political action committee Democracy Greensboro. Despite his efforts, Martin received only 21.8 percent of the vote in the Oct. 10 primary. Attempting to make up ground, Martin has been focused on a vote Outling took to prevent the city from awarding a healthcare management contract to Cigna Health Insurance that benefited competitor United Healthcare (which does business with Outling’s firm), despite the fact that an independent consultant found that going with Cigna would save the city $650,000.

Martin is also telling voters they shouldn’t be impressed by the police body-camera video policy authored

by Outling. “It’s been stated that the city’s policy that they passed before the Faircloth bill was enacted is progressive,” Martin said. “In reality, it mirrors the Faircloth bill, and is restrictive and does not allow access to the video. The presumption of the policy is that the video is private; the presumption should be that it’s public.”

Culture

Goldie Wells (i): The daughter of legendary civil rights leader Golden Frinks, Goldie Wells holds an unassailable socialjustice pedigree of her own. She led the fight to keep the White Street Landfill closed to household waste and the effort to open the Renaissance Community Co-op, and that was she served two terms on city council from 2005 to 2009. In July, Wells was appointed by city council to fill the unexpired term of Jamal Fox — leading to criticism from some that she’s too closely aligned with her colleagues on council. Her 53.9 percent showing might look like a mandate, but supporters of CJ Brinson, who was eliminated in the primary, are challenging her positions on public safety. Wells expressed concern during a candidate forum in August that the homicides in District 2 are “black on black,” a phrase that Black Lives Matter activists find

Justin Outling (i): The first African-American representative of District 3, Justin Outling is a corporate lawyer who describes himself as progressive on social issues and conservative on fiscal issues. He authored a policy governing the release of police-worn body-camera video before it was canceled out by a restrictive state law filed by Rep. John Faircloth (R-Guilford). On police accountability issues, Outling tends to side with law enforcement, and has received the endorsement of the Greensboro Police Officers Association. Celebrating a 69.1 percent showing in the primary, Outling said that if elected to a second term he wants to work with Mayor Nancy Vaughan on a “cite and release” policy that allows lowlevel offenders to avoid being booked in jail.

Opinion

Sharon Hightower (i): With two terms on city council under her belt, Sharon Hightower came through the primary with the highest poll numbers of any incumbent — 78.3 percent, against three challengers. District 1 voters in southeast Greensboro appear to be loyal to their representative, and this boring race contrasts with the drama in District 2, where there’s an open seat. Hightower has distinguished herself as the strongest voice for police accountability and transparency on the council, making her a model candidate for the progressive Democracy Greensboro, a PAC that has encouraged challengers in other districts. Hightower

District 2 (vote for 1)

Jim Kee: Developer Jim Kee has also previously represented District 2 on council, and received Wells’ backing in 2009. But over the years, as Wells is happy to point out, Kee’s leadership has engendered distrust from some northeast Greensboro residents. As the District 2 councilman in May 2011, Kee told a community meeting led by Wells that it appeared the city council was going to reopen the landfill and that he was focused on ensuring that adverse impacts to residents were minimized. Residents at the meeting made it abundantly clear they planned to fight the landfill and would not support any political compromises. Today, Kee is quick to remind people that his was one of five votes to keep the landfill closed once Nancy Vaughan was freed from a conflict of interest. In 2012, after attending meetings with a group of people who conceived of the plan to open a cooperative grocery in a derelict shopping center on Phillips Avenue, Kee threw his support behind a plan by realtor-politico Skip Alston to privately develop the shopping center. Today, Kee says he has a plan to stabilize the co-op. And in 2015, Kee, a newly-minted Republican, supported a plan by state Sen. Trudy Wade to restructure Greensboro elections.

The federal court struck down the plan earlier this year, finding that it packed Democratic voters into districts to maximize Republican candidates’ success.

Kee says his experience as a business person gives him an edge at promoting economic development and argues the city needs to reduce property taxes and fees to compete with Alamance County, while tacking to Wells’ left on the issue of police accountability.

District 3 (vote for 1)

News

District 1 (vote for 1)

Paula Ritter-Lipscomb: An intervention specialist with Guilford County Schools, Paula RitterLipscomb said she always tells her students that they should “reach for the sky” and that they can have a voice. The realization that she needed to practice what she preaches led to her decision, after praying over it and consulting with her family, to run for city council. Ritter doesn’t necessarily take issue with her opponent’s position on police reform, but she’s said that transparency is “two-way street,” adding that community members should be willing to sit down and talk with officers while keeping an open mind. Relationship building is the key to everything, in Ritter-Lipscomb’s view, both among council members and between the district representative and her constituents.

Once those relationships are in place, Ritter-Lipscomb said she’d be able to work effectively to address challenges like affordable housing, transportation and crime.

offensive because it ignores the fact that most crime is committed within racial groups, justifies increased policing and distracts from racially biased policing.

After the election, Wells rebuffed Brinson’s proposal for a community forum, and said she would be open to considering increased levels of policing and reinstating the gang unit.

Up Front

Dianne Bellamy-Small: A former member of Greensboro City Council from 2003 to 2013, Dianne Bellamy-Small often found herself playing the role of lonely warrior as representative of District 1. If she wins one of the three at-large seats, she would be only the second African American after Johnson to win a citywide election since the early 1980s. A victory for Bellamy-Small could make for an awkward working relationship with Sharon Hightower, a former ally who unseated her in 2013, or she might turn out to be an effective amplifier for the needs of the historically disenfranchised east side. Bellamy-Small currently serves on the Guilford County School Board, and it’s not altogether clear why she would want to give up that seat, but she clearly feels a sense of responsibility for the city. “In the current political environment, it’s almost as if we don’t want honorable people to serve,” she told . “I believe I have the expertise to make a difference for this city. I have a track record of making sure the council addresses the needs of all the people, not just the downtown or the west side.”

voted against giving police officers a 7.5 percent raise this year, arguing that it was insensitive to other city workers who toil at less celebrated labors, particularly the Greensboro City Workers Union.

triad-city-beat.com

in a professionally produced campaign ad featuring some of his students. “You know, we should care as much about the person who’s struggling to get by as we do about the person who’s making it just fine. That’s how I approach my classroom; that’s how I want to approach the city of Greensboro.”

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017

Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Crossword

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District 4 (vote for 1)

District 5 (vote for 1)

Nancy Hoffmann (i): Nancy Hoffmann’s poll workers greeted voters during the Oct. 10 primary holding signs with a red line across the words “tax increase.” The popular message underscores Hoffmann’s conviction that the city needs to encourage building to increase the tax base so the city won’t have to raise taxes to cover the cost of services. She also cites a need for more affordable housing. The tradeoff is that sometimes council has to approve unpopular rezoning requests. Hoffmann remains unrepentant about her support for a controversial rezoning that would have extended commercial development west from the Friendly Center, lamenting that the coveted Trader Joe’s shied away after neighbors mounted resistance.

Despite some residents’ misgivings, Hoffmann came through the primary with two thirds of the vote, making the three-term councilwoman a formidable incumbent.

Tony Wilkins (i): The most stunning outcome of the Oct. 10 primary was incumbent Tony Wilkins’ second-place showing behind challenger Tammi Thurm. As the only registered Republican on the nonpartisan council, Wilkins has attempted to put a brake on spending. Wilkins voted against the 2017-18 budget, expressing concern about the tax rate while declaring that District 5 was a “conservative district.” (Ironically, the vote placed him in the same camp with two of the council’s most left-leaning members, Sharon Hightower and Jamal Fox, who opposed it because it raised pay for police and firefighters while leaving other city workers behind.) He cast the lone vote against apologizing for the Greensboro Massacre in August, and opposes participatory budgeting. When staff was able to procure game tables approved by District 5 voters at 50 percent of projected costs, Wilkins persuaded fellow council members to reallocate the $10,000 surplus from participatory budgeting funds to Out of the Garden Project, which sends food home with K-12 students over the weekend and operates mobile markets in under-served areas across the city.

Gary Kenton: Gary Kenton was an early participant in the group that would become Democracy Greensboro, which coalesced as an effort to push local government to the left as the cataclysmic implications of the 2016 election were becoming clear. A retired communications professor, Kenton has argued that Hoffmann and other incumbents haven’t been transparent enough about policing, and he walked the walk by getting arrested in January during a civil disobedience action to demand that the city release the investigative file surrounding discipline of an officer in the Dejuan Yourse case. It’s not altogether clear that voters in District 4 — an area on the west side that is more affluent and white than the city as a whole — are all that appreciative. “I say it’s incumbent on all of us to look at our city and say it’s incumbent on people to look at our city and say that poverty, race and jobs — those are the main concerns, I think, on city council,” Kenton told voters at a forum last month. “It is incumbent on all of us to keep on raising those issues in every setting we’re in.”

Tammi Thurm: An administrator at Hagan, Barrett & Langley law firm, Tammi Thurm has already disproved the conventional wisdom that District 5 is a conservative stronghold, outpolling incumbent Tony Wilkins in the primary, 46.0 percent to 42.6 percent. That doesn’t mean she’ll be a walk-on in the general election. Votes won by two other contenders who were eliminated in the primary likely skew conservative and favor Wilkins. But during the primary, Thurm dominated precincts west of Guilford College Road, and mostly split the vote elsewhere in the district. An adherent of the Jewish tradition of “healing the world,” Thurm favors tying business incentives to an average minimum salary for workers, using tax-increment financing for economic development and providing as much public access to police body-camera footage as legally permissible.

HIGH POINT

Mayoral (vote for 1) Jay Wagner: A moderate Republican first elected to city council in 2012, Jay Wagner has gradually watched political sentiment shift in favor of his stance in support of targeted investment in downtown High Point to rebuild the city’s tax base. An unabashed proponent of a planned downtown stadium conceived as a “catalyst project,” Wagner argues that now that the public, the business community and High Point University are on the same page, he’s the candidate that has the confidence of all three groups to get the project done. Wagner has the backing of a new political action committee organized as the political arm of the chamber of commerce that has raised $44,500. The committee is so formidable that it’s widely known in High Point as “the PAC.” Since the Guilford County Commission has so far shown reluctance to assist with financing for the project, Wagner argues the city needs should be prepared to go it alone. Voters signaled support for the stadium during the primary by giving Wagner and Bruce Davis, another pro-stadium candidate, a cumulative 72.5 percent of the vote, while eliminating stadium skeptic Jim Davis from the contest.

Bruce Davis: A daycare operator and former Democratic county commissioner, Bruce Davis concedes no ground as a stadium booster, pointing out that the idea for the project emerged from a convention & visitors bureau retreat he attended as chairman of the board. But he faults Wagner for alienating the county commission, arguing that he doesn’t understand its political culture. As mayor, Davis says he would repair the relationship between the city and the county, adding that he would be more independent of the business interests promoting the stadium than Wagner.

“I’m a mustanger, more of a free spirit,” he said during a recent interview. “I’ve come up through the ranks.” Davis demonstrated during the primary that he enjoys strong support across the city

by carrying a column of precincts from Deep River Recreation Center at the north end down to Allen Jay Recreation Center at the south end and claiming second place. Davis has also gotten involved in addressing the city’s spiraling violent crime challenge, showing up at community meetings where black residents questioned why the city manager and police chief weren’t there. And although he got off to a late fundraising start, he goes into the general election with a healthy balance and support from an array of players, including stadium proponent Sims Hinds and the wife of High Point University President Nido Qubein.

At-large (vote for up to 2) Cindy Davis (i): A populist conservative, Cindy Davis typically opposes public investment on the grounds that unnecessary public spending places a burden on poor and elderly property owners.

She was the only member of council to cast vote against spending $15 million for land acquisition and site design for the stadium in April. She voted against renaming a street in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., but has earned a measure of respect from African-American constituents by showing up at community meetings. During the 2014 election, she dominated the at-large race, outpacing her nearest competitor by 3.4 percent. This time around, Davis’ stubborn opposition to the stadium — at least as a recipient of public funds without input from voters through a referendum — seems to have hit a headwind of public enthusiasm for the project. Primary voters gave Davis — the only incumbent in the race — third place, after the two candidates backed by the pro-stadium High Point Political Alliance. That means she has ground to make up in the general election if she wants to win one of the two at-large seats.

Britt Moore: A property manager whose primary focus is jobs, Moore served on city council from 2010 to 2014, as the city was recovering from the Great Recession. During his tenure, Moore largely resisted calls for public invest-

Chris Williams (i): An employee of International Market Centers, the behemoth furniture showroom operator, Chris Williams’ adopted blight reduction as his top priority when he was elected to represent Ward 2 in 2014. Covering east-central High Point, Ward 2 includes some of the highest concentrations of poverty in the state. Williams voted in support of the stadium, although he hasn’t made it a focal point of his campaign. Williams told voters at a recent candidate forum that the city is on the right track, citing an increase in code enforcement officers from two to six and the advent of the Operation Inasmuch program, which has translated into home repairs for about 40 households through donated materials and volunteer labor. He said he’s worked closely with High Point Community Against Violence to address rising levels of violent crime. “I think as we work together as a city,” he said, “it will affect the blight, the crime and the hunger.”

Megan Longstreet: Megan Longstreet decided to enter politics when her 21-year-old daughter suffered a series of strokes and wound up in the hospital after being denied access to coverage through the Affordable Care Act and to Medicaid, and went without health insurance for 10 months. Longstreet’s daughter had already known she had lupus, but the strokes revealed that she also suffers from a rare condition called moyamoya that restricts blood flow to the brain. Her family’s struggles with healthcare motivated Longstreet — a home-schooling mom with a background in electrical engineering and pharmaceutical research — to get involved with the progressive group Indivisible High Point. As a council member, she would apply her concern about healthcare to tackling the opioid crisis. Canvassing Ward 3, which includes the poverty-challenged southwest quadrant, Longstreet said most voters want to talk about the opioid crisis, violence and food deserts instead of the stadium. Although initially skeptical, she said she now supports the project, mostly because it will create a gathering place for an otherwise disconnected city.

Monica Peters: Alyce Hill unseated Judy Mendenhall as representative for Ward 3 as part of a pro-revitalization slate that swept into office in 2014.

After only one term, Hill decided to retire and has endorsed Monica Peters as her replacement. Peters helped launch We “Heart” High Point, a citizen

Crossword

David M. Bagley: Motivated by the desire to live close to his father, David Bagley moved from Durham to High Point in 2015.

A former property developer, the 27-year-old candidate divested his holdings in April, when he decided to run for council, and has been knocking on doors since July. He highlights the closure of Food Lion on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive as a setback for food security in Ward 2, and proposes a massive investment in environmental remediation along the corridor so that the area

Shot in the Triad

Ward 3 (vote for 1)

Culture

Willie H. Davis: This election marks the third match-up between Jeff Golden, the current representative of Ward 1, and Willie H. Davis, a driver-trainer with Murrow’s Transfer who chairs the Citizens Advisory Council. This year, Davis says he believes voters “are ready

Ward 2 (vote for 1)

Opinion

Jeff Golden (i): As chair of the community housing, neighborhood development & public safety committee, Jeff Golden is the point person for shepherding demolition orders for condemned properties through council. Answering a question from the High Point Regional Association of Realtors at a recent candidate forum, Golden responded that state law more than adequately protects property rights, and, if anything, he’d like the city to have more tools to address blight and properties that draw repeated police attention. “The property right seems to be protecting the one that leaves his property unattended more so than the one that was doing the right thing,” he said. “So we can’t just come in and demolish that property. We don’t have no authority to sell that property.

We don’t have any authority to rehab it ourselves.” He added, “And if we have to do that through some kind of punitive source, I think I would be okay with that.

In fact, we talked about that a little bit today, where we’ve got properties where police have come out there multiple times, and nothing changes. The owners are being contacted. Nothing changes.

So we’re looking at maybe fining people to do the right thing.” Golden voted with the majority of council to authorize city funds to buy property for the planned stadium.

can support industrial jobs again. Bagley is interested in a business incubator and job-training programs to promote workforce development, although he’s vague on where the funding would come from and what the city’s role should be. And he’s definitely a skeptic on the stadium project. “Yes, it’s gonna be a lot of jobs, but it’s low-wage jobs,” Bagley said during a recent interview. “If you’re gonna ask a gangbanger who’s selling rock on the corner to take a $9-per-hour job, he’s not going to go for it.”

News

Mary Lou Andrews Blakeney: If she’d done nothing else, Mary Lou Andrews Blakeney would be more renowned than half the candidates on the ballot simply because as a 15-yearold at William Penn High School she led the effort to desegregate the Woolworth’s lunch counter in High Point in

Ward 1 (vote for 1)

to see something new,” but it’s hard to figure out where he differs with Golden on jobs and affordable housing — the two major issues in this economically challenged ward. Count him as a skeptic on the stadium project. “I’m not at this point ready to say yes or no because I don’t know enough about the stadium. I don’t think the council is being transparent about the stadium. I don’t know who’s going to own the stadium. My problem with that… is if we are paying for that stadium, how are we going to get the tax revenue to cover the cost?”

Up Front

Don Scarborough: There’s only one candidate who mayoral contender Jay Wagner concedes might be a more passionate supporter of the stadium project, and that’s Don Scarborough, a retired senior vice president at High Point University who moved to the city as a widower and single father several years ago. “We need to be able to get to know each other in this city,” Scarborough said at a recent candidate forum. “We’ve got this group here, this group here, and never do we have an opportunity for all of us to get together and drink a Coke, eat popcorn, yell and scream, get jumping up and down and having fun. I haven’t seen much of that here in our town. This is a great opportunity for us. I’m behind it 100,000 — 456,000 percent. It is going to change this place… and we will reap the benefits from this stadium.” The High Point Political Alliance apparently appreciated Scarborough’s enthusiasm, and gave him their endorsement.

1960. After retiring, she returned to her hometown and became an advocate for senior services, eventually winning an at-large seat in 2008, only to lose it to Britt Moore two years later. She supports the stadium, but addressing the needs of seniors is still her first priority. Several of the initiatives she supports to allow seniors to maintain their independence, from providing assistance for home repairs to improving public transportation, would benefit other struggling residents as well.

triad-city-beat.com

ment to revitalize downtown High Point.

He wasn’t impressed by new urbanist Andres Duany’s proposal to diet North Main Street and use modified shipping containers to populate downtown with pop-up retail stores. But he’s come out as a supporter of the proposed downtown stadium, arguing that High Point can’t afford to pass up an opportunity that could potentially transform its fortunes.

His experience and support for the project earned him the endorsement of the High Point Political Alliance. A pragmatist who’s not too wedded to his positions or convinced of his infallibility, Moore has said, “I’ve had up votes and down votes on different issues. The ultimate thing for me is be correct as much as I can. Even when votes don’t go my way, I still want things to go as best as they can.”

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017

Up Front News Opinion

initiative to promote revitalization when the previous council was denigrating or watering down core-city initiatives. She organized EbFest Music Festival and Makers Fair, an annual event since 2015.

As a board member of the Southwest Renewal Foundation, Peters has been promoting a plan to build a greenway through the area. As a backer of the stadium, Peters is part of the slate endorsed by the High Point Political Alliance, but she’s also keen on repurposing the historic industrial building stock in the ward. “I am also very passionate about restoration of old factories and mills that we have scattered across Ward 3, where industries left back in the ’90s and early 2000s,” Peters said during a recent candidate forum. “And I have firsthand seen that a company that was displaced by the stadium has moved down English and has purchased the old Melrose Mill and is converting it into an awesome, really cool [live-work, cohabitation, cowork] space that will really encourage the entrepreneurial spirit that I think we need to attract millennials, increase economic growth and to make our city great again.”

Crossword

Shot in the Triad

Culture

Ward 4 (vote for 1)

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Wesley Hudson: Construction company owner Wesley Hudson doesn’t hesitate to tell anyone he’s a big supporter of Jay Wagner, who currently represents Ward 4 on city council. With Wagner running for mayor, Hudson jumped at the chance to run for the open seat. He locked down 49.5 percent of the vote during the primary, making him the frontrunner in this contest. As an enthusiastic stadium supporter, Hudson enjoys the backing of the High Point Political Alliance. Hudson views the stadium, which would be built in Ward 4 near High Point Regional Hospital, as a solution to many of the city’s challenges. “I would say that the root of a lot of the issues we’re talking about tonight — hunger, violence, drugs, crime — the root is poverty,” he said at a recent candidate forum. “If you want to tackle the issue of poverty, you have to have money.

You have to have revenue. A city cannot tackle a problem without resources. If you want to create a way out of poverty, the best way to empower people is to

give them jobs, to give them hope.”

Jim Bronnert: A retired custom-car painter who describes himself as “older than dirt,” Jim Bronnert ran for the Ward 4 seat in 2014, but lost to Jay Wagner. At the time, he opposed a proposal to diet North Main Street — a relatively modest proposal to revitalize the core area. The stadium project has made a convert out of him. “I’m 100 percent supportive of it,” said Bronnert, who founded his neighborhood association in Oak View and sits on the Guilford County Parks & Recreation Commission. He cited the once-blighted Over-the-Rhine section of his native Cincinnati as an example of how strategic public investment can pay dividends.

“You create a public meeting space, and the next thing you know you’ve got businesses, you’ve got everything happening,” he said. “I think it’s one of the neatest things. I go back to visit Cincinnati quite often. And when I got there and I see things happening and then I come back here and I don’t see anything, it’s discouraging.” A gritty realist, Bronnert cites “the blight, the crime and the heroin” as the three top priorities for the ward. Although he only received 25.6 percent of the vote, if he’s able to win over the supporters of Jody W. Kearns — who was eliminated in the primary — he might have a shot.

Ward 5 (vote for 1) Chris Whitley: Having served on city council from 1992 to 2001 and then again from 2003 to 2012, Chris Whitley exemplifies the revolving-door quality of High Point politics. He gave up his seat in 2012 to make an unsuccessful bid for mayor, backing Jim Davis as his replacement. Davis’ unsuccessful bid for mayor this year — he was eliminated in the primary — cleared a path for Whitley to run again. It’s hard be opposed to the stadium in this election, but Whitley, a fiscal conservative who took 47.7 percent of the vote in the primary, comes pretty close. He praises High Point University President Nido Qubein for raising $50 million to support the project, but argues that the council had

five years to put the project on the ballot as a bond referendum to give voters a say. Now that the city has purchased the land for the stadium, Whitley says the project needs to go forward, with or without the county’s support. He said he would scrutinize the project closely and make sure all the environmental assessments are done before the city takes on additional liability. “I was the finance chairman for basically seven years,” he says. “I know what needs to be done.”

Vic Jones: It’s a testament to how dramatically public opinion in High Point has shifted on the issue of revitalization that the stadium project is popular even in suburban Ward 5. Vic Jones, a Marine veteran and who owns a limousine service, trucking company and insurance company, earned the endorsement of the High Point Political Alliance through his energetic outreach to business leaders. Jones has also taken the pulse of the ward through an aggressive canvassing effort. “I was fully prepared to have some opposition to the catalyst project,” he said. “I thought there was gonna be a lot of naysayers. But I’m going to tell you out of a thousand people, there’s been one person. There was one gentleman who had some questions, but he wasn’t particularly negative…. I’m here to represent the interests of the people that live in my ward. So if one of a thousand — if I’m doing my math right, it’s 99.9 percent — believe this is good for their kids, they believe it’s good for jobs, they believe it’s good to take the burden off the tax base from those declining properties — it’s gonna be good for our economy.”

Ward 6 (vote for 1) Jason Ewing (i): A realtor with Keller Williams, Jason Ewing was first elected to represent Ward 6 in the affluent northeast corner of the city in 2012.

Now seeking his third term, Ewing is in the enviable position of being the only candidate on the ballot who is running unopposed. Once a skeptic of public investment in the core city, he’s coalesced with his colleagues on the current prorevitalization council. At a recent candi-

date forum, Ewing championed the city council’s three strategic goals: increasing the population of millennials, aggressive code enforcement and creating a catalyst project. “My focus is to continue with those three because they’re not complete yet,” Ewing said. “They’re still in process, but I think it’s taking us in the right direction.”

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EDITORIAL

A sleight of hand, a level field

Democracy in the balance with SCOTUS ruling

Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Crossword

held race-based gerrymanders unconstitutional, but has not found a manageable, reliable measure of fairness for determining whether a partisan gerrymander violates the Constitution.”

The three federal judges presiding over a case in Greensboro this week that involves a similar challenge to North Carolina’s congressional district map are no doubt awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision as guidance before they rule on whether the map violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.

Should the courts adopt the test proposed by plaintiffs in Gill v. Whitford, the case recently heard by the US Supreme Court, and League of Women Voters v. Rucho, the case under litigation in Greensboro, it would shake the republic to its foundations.

“Partisan gerrymandering is as old as America,” Jennifer Bremer of the League of Women Voters conceded during a press conference in Greensboro on Monday. “Patrick Henry drew the granddaddy of all gerrymanders to keep James Madison out of our very first Congress. Fortunately, he didn’t succeed. But if he’d had access to the mountains of data and powerful computer programs that drive today’s gerrymandering, it could well have been another story.”

An expert witness for the league randomly generated 3,000 Congressional maps using traditional redistricting criteria while excluding partisan considerations, and not one yielded a 10-3 Republican advantage. The typical map yielded seven Democratic seats and six Republican seats. The Republican mapmakers can choose their voters with such precision that the plaintiffs allege it would take a 9-point swing in a Democratic wave election to overcome the Republicans’ lock on power.

The cases raise a thorny constitutional question of whether judges should rein in the legislative branch. Lawyers for the North Carolina General Assembly conveyed an unmistakable message in their opening statement in Greensboro: Back off.

“If plaintiffs have their way, the federal courts will wander out of the political thicket and into a political lion’s den,” they said. “Plaintiffs’ theories do not — and cannot — answer the elusive question asked by the Supreme Court — how much politics is too much politics in redistricting?

Instead, plaintiffs thrust federal courts into the middle of a vibrant and ongoing political conversation among competing views and ask judges to pick political winners and losers in what will become judicial gerrymandering.”

The defendants warn that the proposed fairness test “amounts to proportional representation,” adding that “no greater threat to the reputation of the federal judiciary exists than the lure of plaintiffs’ ‘social science’ sirens.”

Maybe, but “a vibrant and ongoing political conversation among competing views” hardly describes the current political climate in North Carolina. More like a monologue shouted through a bullhorn.

News

Voters in High Point’s nonpartisan municipal election will choose between a black Democrat and a white moderate Republican for their next mayor. In Greensboro, a nail-biter election in the atby Jordan Green large bracket will likely determine whether a pro-development candidate or an advocate for the poor takes the third seat, and voters in the closely matched District 5 race will decide between a conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat.

There will be no such suspense in next year’s congressional elections. Assuming the current maps remain in place, the outcome is preordained. Ten out of North Carolina’s 13 seats will go to Republican candidates, and three will be allotted to Democrats even though the state is almost evenly divided — enough so to narrowly elect a Democratic governor last year. Reps. Ted Budd and Mark Walker, both Republican incumbents, are all but guaranteed to win reelection in their respective districts, which bisect Greensboro with a line straight through the middle of the campus of the state’s largest historically black university, in a county where registered Democrats hold a 75-percent advantage over Republicans.

There’s a reason why we get excited about city council elections, but we can write the script for the congressional race 12 months in advance. While the process of drawing electoral maps for Greensboro and High Point was by no means free of politics, the two governing bodies that approved the plans are nonpartisan and more closely reflect the voting base. In contrast, the congressional districts were drawn by the majority party in the state General Assembly, and overwhelmingly favor their own.

Rigging elections to disenfranchise roughly half of the population is wrong. Everyone knows it’s wrong. The only justification is the Republicans’ prerogative of maintaining their hold on power. The hyperpartisan gerrymandering scheme that effectively denies a voice in state government and the North Carolina congressional delegation to the Democratic majorities in urban counties like Guilford is dangerous for democracy. Extreme gerrymandering converts us from citizens to subjects, and when government loses legitimacy, democracy is in trouble. Of course, no amount of editorial scolding is going to persuade the Republican rulers to do the right thing. They well know that a press weakened by the digital revolution, erosion of advertising revenue and fragmented readership is ill equipped to hold them accountable.

The US Supreme Court is on the verge of making a seismic decision in Gill v. Whitford, described by Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as “perhaps the most important” case of the 2017 term. As Ginsburg explained in a speech to law students in July: “So far, the court has

Up Front

On the surface, it seems an awful lot like someone is out to get Guilford County newspapers, but it didn’t start that way.

The first draft of Sen. Trudy Wade’s bill would have eliminated a requirement that every county and municipal government in the state post its public notices —bankruptcies, public auctions and that sort of thing — in paid-circulation newspapers in lieu of posting on the county website.

After cries of outrage from newspaper owners and their lobbyists, the law was retooled to exempt 99 of the state’s 100 counties from the law. It sounds ridiculous, which is probably why Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed it.

But thanks to a neat piece of political gamesmanship, the subsidy for Guilford County newspapers is no more.

To achieve this, legislators zeroed in on SB 181, a local bill that initially created a pathway for independent candidates to run in Forsyth County partisan elections. By the time SB 181 became law, all references to Forsyth County had been removed, replaced with the language of the Senate bill Cooper had previously vetoed.

Because local bills are exempt from the governor’s veto pen, the bill became law on Oct. 5, effective Dec. 1.

It’s inevitable, of course, that newspapers lose this crucial revenue stream after years — decades, really — of similar losses in classified ads, personal ads, real estate listings and so forth. It’s all part of the Great Unbundling of American newspapers, stripped down to bleached bones.

And this subsidy which amounted more than $1 million — the publisher of the Kernersville News admitted that legal notices contributed about $250,000 to his bottom line each year — may have been a boon to journalism in general, but not for everybody. Free papers like Triad City Beat never qualified for this handout, giving our competition an unfair advantage in the market.

So while it’s a shame to see local journalism take such a hard hit, it must be acknowledged that some of the papers on this gravy train do not actually practice journalism, loading their pages with press releases and large, grainy photos instead of the sort of work for which the First Amendment is written.

And we remind them that nobody is guaranteed a profitable business model for life.

CITIZEN GREEN

triad-city-beat.com

OPINION

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Crossword

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CULTURE Adrian Miller and the presidential plate

by Eric Ginsburg

W

hen soul-food scholar Adrian Miller comes to Winston-Salem this weekend, he’ll be looking for recommendations on where

Foodies no doubt already know all about Adrian Miller; his Oct. 22 to eat. appearance at the Besides a scheduled appearance as black-owned Sweet part of a seven-course dinner held at Potatoes makes for a Sweet Potatoes’ new downtown locagreat opportunity for tion, Miller doesn’t have much else them to meet him planned for the day, and he’s willing to and hear him talk in drive hours in search of quality barbecue a much more approor soul food. He’s been told to check out priate setting than the Skylight Inn BBQ south of Greenville a lecture hall. But — three hours from Sweet Potatoes — you don’t have to be but Miller is open to suggestions. obsessed with food Miller won a James Beard Award for to be drawn to the his book Soul Food: The Surprising Story canals full of history of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a that he’s dredging.

Time, and he also authored the more Miller came by the recent release The President’s Kitchen subject for his latest Cabinet: The Story of the African Ameribook by accident, cans Who Have Fed Our First Families, finding repeated From the Washingtons to the Obamas. references to African He lives in Colorado, but he’ll be in Americans cookNorth Carolina for the Terra Vita Food ing for this nation’s & Drink Festival and will be stopping at presidents while Sweet Potatoes while in state. researching the But despite his considerable credenhistory of soul food. tials, Miller admits he’s still eating his He found at least way through North Carolina, and the 150 black people tabs on his website listing his favorite who cooked for US soul food and barbecue leave out the presidents, but said LOTTIE HEDLEY Adrian Miller is headlining a seven-course dinner at Sweet Potatoes in WinstonOld North State entirely. That’s an he believes he’s Salem this weekend. oversight, he said; Mert’s Heart & Soul in just scratching the Charlotte should be on there, and Allen surface. history. It’s why he’d like to write about the historical relation& Son’s, too. He loves Crook’s Corner in That history makes sense, and is almost obvious in hindship between Jewish food and drinks and black cooks someChapel Hill, though it doesn’t qualify as sight, Miller added — for centuries, black people were considday, he said. That’s right — picture black cooks going to Jewish soul or barbecue, and he has good things ered to be born for roles of servitude, so it isn’t surprising that delis to buy kosher meat, or working in Jewish homes as cooks, to say about Sweet Potatoes as well, but they did the cooking in the White House. Some were slaves or or even being spokespeople for products like Manischewitz for adds that he thinks of the restaurant “as longtime family servants who arrived alongside the presidentads in black newspapers. more Southelect, and most were accidenWhether you’re interested in hearing Miller talk about the ern/Amerital, he said, adding that it isn’t future of soul food — from restaurants such as the Seasoned can.” that these cooks dreamed of Vegan in New York City to the Grey inside a former Greyhound Already love Adrian Miller and The Presi“When I cooking at the White House bus station in Savannah — Hillary Clinton’s hot sauce affinity, dent’s Kitchen Cabinet? You might also think of a soul but instead that they found Donald Trump’s eating habits or why none of the Africanfood joint, themselves thrust into the like Michael Twitty’s book The Cooking American presidential cooks he’s discovered are from North I think of a role.

Carolina, just 10 minutes in conversation can be transporting Gene: A Journey Through African Ameriplace that’s Not that the cooks were and enthralling. can Culinary History in the Old South or going to do a without agency — it’s fascinatBut even if you can’t afford the cost on the seven-course Nicole Taylor’s work, including her book lot of variety ing to hear Miller talk about meal this weekend (that will feature chilled mint pea soup, meat dishes,” how various White House The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie baked mac & cheese, grilled salmon, country captain chicken, Miller said cooks acted as confidants, Pedernales River chili, a tropical fruit smoothie and sweet in a Brooklyn Kitchen. in a phone as windows into black life potato cheesecake), you can still read one of Miller’s seminal interview. “I in America and even as civil books published by UNC Press. think of them rights advocates. The relaOr shoot him a note telling him where to eat on his visit. as more classic Southern.” tionships have been complicated; think of the proprietor of Pausing briefly, he added: “I know in Freddy’s Ribs in “House of Cards” and President Underwood, if Find more info about Adrian Miller and Sweet Potatoes’ seventhe South the lines between Southern you’ve seen the show. course dinner at events.journalnow.com, or visit adrianemiller. and soul are so blurred.”

Miller enjoys excavating that complex, multi-dimensional com for more on him and his books.

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion

CULTURE After annual hiatus, the Garage opens its doors

by Spencer KM Brown

I

t was a Wednesday night, just like any other, except that downtown Winston-Salem’s premier music venue would be returning to the

scene.

John Hampton, longtime doorman at the Garage, sat at the bar finishing the last bites of a sandwich he’d brought from home. Lights behind the bar carried a low flame of light to dark walls covered with bygone show posters, and Hampton sat eating with a perfect view of the entire club.

Like many other employees of the Garage, Hampton found other work for the few months the club closes its doors during the slow summer months. Being a member of the Hampton family that owns a local art framing company, John Hampton spent several weeks hanging every piece of artwork in the newly renovated Forsyth County Central Library.

“I recently had the opportunity to hang a 200-year-old painting of George Washington in the new library,” Hampton said. “And you know, as I was lifting it and placing it on the wall, I kept thinking, He was right there. Washington

Shot in the Triad

Culture

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Thursday Joymongers Band aka Levon Zevon aka Average Height Band 8:30 Friday, Saturday & Sunday BEER!

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was just on the other side of this canvas as the artist worked. That’s something that can blow your mind.

“I’ve worked the door for dozens of places,” Hampton continued. “Ziggy’s, the old Aquarius, and I love being on this side of things. I’m blessed to be a stay-at-home dad most of the time, but to come and work here at night and see all the bands and amazing shows, it’s something I love doing.”

The doors would open in an hour. The dancefloor and bar were empty and yet the club hummed with life; the bartender carrying ice and stocking the coolers, the sound engineer making notes and getting the last few levels for Must Be the Holy Ghost, the night’s opening band. Amps, drums, guitar cases and shining cymbals festooned the side of the stage.

“It’s something I think we’re very lucky to be able to do,” said Tucker Tharpe, owner of the PHOTO BY SPENCER Jared Draughon of Must Be the Holy Ghost sound checks before show Garage. “It’s like a lot of those KM BROWN beach shops. They make enough to live off during the busy season, Sitting in a road-worn van parked along Seventh Street in and close up after Labor Day. This town is notoriously slow for front of the club, Josh Weaver, guitarist for headlining band restaurants and shops in the summer. Even more so for live Royal Thunder, ate his cheeseburger under the pale glow of music. And so instead of losing money every year, risking havthe street lamps. ing to close the doors permanently, I found taking a break for “We’re just doing this short tour,” Weaver said. “We’ve a few months is what’s best for business.” played [the Garage] a few times now, and of course we had An employee brought Tharpe his dinner, and he stood to add it to this tour. We try to play here whenever we come behind the bar as he bit into his burrito, watching as Jared through. Honestly, it’s hard to find such great people as Draughon, aka Must Be the Holy Ghost, ran through one of Tucker.” the songs on his setlist.

As the staff finished their quick din“I try my best to take care of ners of burritos or sandwiches inside, everyone here,” Tharpe said. “I know everything slowly fell into place. it can be tough on employees being Visit the Garage at 110 W. Seventh The show was nearly sold out with closed like that, but I do what I can an hour to spare before the doors St. (W-S) or check out the list of for them.” opened. A small crowd began formupcoming shows at the venue by Most of the Garage’s staff also ing outside the club, and Hampton work at other bars and clubs in visiting the-garage.ws. smiled as he stood at the entrance.

Winston-Salem, but many of them “Well, here we go,” he said, and consider the Garage to be a second took a few tickets. home.

The Garage has been open for “I’ve worked the doors here for sevalmost 18 years, becoming a mainstay en years,” Hampton said as he set up his post on the sidewalk of the local music scene and a constant in the lives of emin front of the club. “You never know what will happen on ployees like Hampton, but Tharpe doesn’t take its success for any given night. Could be a bluegrass show that sells out and granted. there’s a line out the door. Could be no one at all and you’re “It’s one of the hardest businesses to keep alive,” Tharpe the only one who gets to see an amazing show. I’m lucky to be said. “I’ve watched so many great clubs open and close, and a part of this.” each time it’s crushing. It’s a fear I have, of course — I have to.

As Hampton slapped a fresh pack of Marlboros against his That’s the only way to beat it. But for however long we can hand, drew one out and lit it, a man came up to buy 12 tickets keep it up, we’ll keep putting on the best shows. We’ll always for the show. be here for this town.”

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Crossword

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CULTURE Artist Renzo Ortega rebuffs immigrant stereotypes

by Lauren Barber

V

isitors might encounter the an academic, so strumming of a guitar upon his range of vision entering artist Renzo Ortega’s is huge. To have home in Carrboro, but they won’t our histories that see many art supplies; Ortega prefers are contemporary solitude and silence, painting in a shared and part of this studio on a set schedule: Tuesday and country’s history Thursday nights and all day Saturday, in that space is relike clockwork. ally great; to have In contrast to Ortega’s regimented these voices preswork routine, his art is far from quiet ent is important. or predictable. Of late, his audacious We are sharing the palette consists almost solely of black space, walking toand brilliant red acrylic on canvas, or on gether in the same recycled cardboard boxes arranged into path.” pillars for an assemblage installation Both artists piece at the Greenhill Center in Greensembed ties from boro entitled Moving In, Moving Out. His past and present brushstrokes lay thick and fast. in their work. Last Ortega grew up in Peru, attending la year, when Ortega Escuela Nacional Superior Autónoma de realized bamboo is Bellas Artes in Lima before emigrating common in many to the United States 17 years ago, at age nearby public 26, to study mixed media and composispaces, he decided tion through the Art Students League to incorporate the of New York. He eventually earned his Peruvian tradition masters of fine arts from Hunter College of bamboo-buildin 2014. Last year, after 16 years in New ing. It’s a practical York, he relocated with his infant son to solution and one Carrboro in his girlfriend’s home state of that he said allows North Carolina. him to keep a folk “I am a Peruvian immigrant but all tradition alive in my professional career has been in the his work. A quick United States so it’s not that I’m doing peek under his PHOTO BY LAUREN Renzo Ortega’s exhibit Moving In, Moving Out is on display at the GreenHill BARBER Peruvian art; my art belongs to the soaring installation Center (GSO) until Nov. 5. country, to the issues and the history of at Greenhill reveals His current work examines the material and immaterial this country, too,” Ortega said during a delicate yet sturdy obstacles that he and other Latinx people currently face in phone interview. “No matter what, it is craftwork. the United States, drawing connections between the displacePeruvian though because I’m the person Around two dozen diverse travelers — small children, punks, ment of Native Americans and Latinx immigrants’ ancient, it is coming from. But my art is about religious figures and all — peer outward from painted windows ancestral connections to the land. It is a painful paradox that our contemporary history as people who on the more than five-foot long, suspended airplane with a these histories are often erased but simultaneously fetishized live in the United States.” bright red belly. A soaring bird appears in the middle of the and appropriated.

Ortega’s multimedia work is currently plane’s left wing beyond four goldfish and before an array of “I live one year here and many people think that because I displayed alongfeathers extending toward the wing’s am Peruvian, I should be Inca and so, in my art, they put that side Greenstip. The right wing also features the wall in front of me,” Ortega said. “I also see the mainstream… boro-based artleaf-like feathers but the innermost View Ortega’s work at GreenHill wants to show only our traditions. They think, ‘Oh, Hispanic ist and Guilford two-thirds of the wing hosts a more Center in the Greensboro Cultural music, Latino music that’s just Mexican folk,’ and, ‘Oh, Hispanic College profeseclectic mix of geometric shapes, a Center at 200 N. Davie St. (GSO) art is Diego Rivera,’ so I want to break that barrier and show sor Antoine shooting star and dizzying squiggles through Nov. 5 and learn more about that we are part of this contemporary life, too.”

Williams’ acrylic and polka dots. Seashells, an envehis upcoming artist talk on Oct. 25 at Ortega said he feels most fulfilled as an artist when he and wheat-paste lope, soccer cleats and reed pipes 6 p.m. at greenhillnc.org. spends time discussing his work with exhibit-goers because he paintings; the embellish the aircraft’s hood and makes art “for the people” and wherever he sees a barrier, he’s two are sharpeaceful mammalian eyes with thick, one to build a bridge. ing the gallery’s feminine lashes grace the cockpit “That’s the most beautiful thing in artmaking,” Ortega said. principal space area.

“I believe in the power of painting and color and want people for a concurrent exhibit, Two Artists, One “As a human being I do have political responsibility but I to have their own interpretations because, depending on what Space. don’t think it’s an obligation to do political art,” Ortega said. they think about my work, we can start a conversation. If I “[Williams] is from North Carolina “But at the same time, I am an immigrant and I have been told them, ‘It is what it is, period,’ we [are] never going to be and he has experienced what it is to working with immigrant communities and see that this is a able to start a conversation.” be an African American in this current country where immigrants make a lot of contributions — not environment,” Ortega said. “He’s also only with work but to the culture.”

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Oct. 19 - 25, 2017

College Avenue, Greensboro

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The Charles Duncan McIver statue on the campus of UNCG which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. McIver was an advocate for higher education for women and the founding president of the State Normal and Industrial School which later became UNCG.�

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

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Recycle this paper.

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CROSSWORD ”Candy-Coated”-it’s what’s on the inside.

59 Candy collectibles, or what the three long answers end up being 64 Crowning point 66 “___ Scissorhands” 67 Cleveland basketball player, for short 68 Apple voice assistant 69 River that divides Nebraska 70 Egyptian headdress serpent 71 Peppers may pack it 72 Restraining rope 73 “That’s it!”

Answers from previous publication.

Opinion

41 Place for relaxation 45 Part of QEII, for short 46 Get clean 50 Fabric store amts.

53 Skillful 54 Go laterally 56 Crumble away 57 Rub clean 58 Answers a party invitation 60 Solve an escape room successfully 61 Dispatch a fly 62 Bike course 63 Art Deco master born Romain de Tirtoff 64 Cigarette leftover 65 Pizza order

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Down 1 Fringe factions 2 Take by force 3 “Reading Rainbow” host Burton 4 Conventiongoer’s badge 5 “Parks and Recreation” costar Ansari ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 6 Poetic place between hills 27 Amazon founder Jeff 7 “East of Eden” director Kazan 29 “Good grief!”

8 Soak up knowledge 30 Having only one channel, like old LPs 9 ___ Domingo 31 Former “MadTV” cast member Lange 10 Cry of dismay 33 Note between fa and la 11 Adheres in a pinch, maybe 34 MetLife competitor 12 “And the nominees ___ ...”

35 Heron relative 13 Big Pharma product 36 It’s a long, long story 21 Cooking spray brand 38 Night sch. awards 22 Person with a following 39 Historic periods 26 Representative

Up Front

Across 1 ___-de-sac 4 Seedless oranges 10 Maroon 5 frontman Levine 14 Expend 15 Funnel-shaped wildflower 16 Fishing line attachment 17 Valentine’s Day candy word 18 Pop singer Christina 19 Breezed through 20 Performer who does a lot of swinging and catching 23 Jack who could eat no fat 24 “Yup,” silently 25 File folder feature 28 Molten rock 32 “August: ___ County” (Meryl Streep movie) 34 DDE beat him twice 37 Comedian with a self-titled ABC series and a TBS talk show 40 Inflated self-images 42 “Come in!”

43 Fallon’s predecessor 44 Shaped like a quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides 47 Crossers of aves.

48 Nation south of Mount Everest 49 Writing assignment 51 Get from ___ B 52 ___ in “Isaac” 55 Milk container?

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by Matt Jones

Culture Shot in the Triad Crossword

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