TCB March 15, 2017 — Protesting 101

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

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Welcoming Winston? PAGE 6 Robot invasion PAGE 18 March Madness PAGES 5, 10 & 20

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March 15 – 21, 2017

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WINSTON-SALEM, NC • MARCH 2017

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By Maya Mike BELMOPAN, BELIZE - Belize has announced the launch of a new Consulate office in Winston Salem, NC as the Caribbean/Central American nation moves to build stronger relations with the United States.

A representative trade office will also be established to aid business between the two countries, and in February, the USA and Belize signed a protocol granting citizens mutual exemption from pre-entry visas. Talks are also ongoing over a double negative tax agreement.

Speaking to press at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Prime Minister expressed the importance of the move. The presence of a Consulate will facilitate bilateral cooperation on these issues.

The main task of consulates is to foster trade and maintain commercial links between two nations. It also facilitates export between the two countries.

WINSTON-SALEM, NC – Maya Mike announces a kickstarter .com project to fund an amazing new sauce discovered on a culinary expedition to the foothills of the Maya Mountains in Belize, Central America. This incredible condiment possesses the perfect balance of heat and flavor.

Hand harvested WILD red habanero peppers indigenous to the Yucatan are naturally fruitwood-smoked and blended with ripe whole fruits and crushed native herbal seasonings and roots to make an authentic sauce with rich culinary depth.

Kickstarter events are occuring locally throughout the triad.

He said “Just last month we also eliminated visas for citizens of the USA to be able to move more swiftly from one country to the other.”

Southwest Airlines announced non-stop service from Raleigh, North carolina to Belize City starting in June of 2016.

By Edward McIlhenny

Birding in BELIZE With more than 574 species of birds Belize has quickly become a favorite Caribbean / Central American birding spot among birders and nature lovers.

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DANGRIGA, BELIZE – Lying on the East coast of Central America, south of Mexico’s Yucatan and East of Guatemala, is English speaking Belize. Rich in history, the refuge of the sailing fleets, her harbor protected by reefs was once the home of pirates and loggers. Seldom visited except by wandering foreign craft, the former British Honduras was once one of the most inaccessible places in Central America.

There are traditionally five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.

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Fake news brought to you by: © 2017 ThoughtLeader.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

TUESDAY, MARCH 21ST, 4:00 - 7:00 pm

211 3rd St E, Winston-Salem, NC 27101

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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK It was a Thursday night, territory I once cheerfully lumped into the greater weekend, and just like the old days I was driving

by Brian Clarey around in search of one last drink.

But it wasn’t quite the same, because though it was technically evening, the time had just passed 7 p.m. and I wasn’t chasing down a couple quick whiskies before last call but a strong cup of coffee — preferably an Americano — so that I could stay awake for the next few hours and finish my work day.

We all jam several different lives into our years on this planet; most of the ones I’ve crafted so far involved absurdly late hours and very little sleep.

I started tending bar in college, and there were times that, after I’d restocked my bottles and wiped down my bar, I’d run through a quick shower and head for my 8 a.m. class while the rest of the staff went out for morning beers.

I attended grad school at Igor’s Lounge & Gameroom on St. Charles Avenue in

New Orleans between the years of 1995 and 2000, and between the hours of 2 and 10 a.m. I watched the sun rise most mornings, because even when I wasn’t working I’d usually usher in the dawn with friends at bars in my French Quarter neighborhood.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I would often say, taking a page from the Book of Warren Zevon, an ethos I carried with me even after I moved to the Triad, where the bars close at the ridiculous hour of 2 a.m. and sometimes, believe it or not, even earlier.

I never found my coffee on Thursday night, so by the end of the performance I attended my eyes were watering with exhaustion. It had reached nearly 11 p.m. by the time I got out of there, way past my bedtime in this life, and yet for some reason my wheels rolled into downtown Winston-Salem, where I slipped into Test Pattern and let the raucous electricity of the band, the smell of beer and booze and wisps of cigarette smoke wafting in from the sidewalk wash over me, like running into an old friend.

I think I lasted 20 minutes before checking out and doing what all reasonable middle-aged men do at this hour on a school night: I went home and went to bed, grateful I hadn’t had that last drink.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

dick@triad-city-beat.com

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

eric@triad-city-beat.com

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green jordan@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL INTERN Joel Sronce

Thursday, March 23 6 p.m.

Broyhill Auditorium Farrell Hall Donna Edwards is the first African American woman elected to Congress in Maryland. While in Congress, she championed human rights and advocated for criminal

healthcare for all. Earlier in her career, she co-founded and led the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and served as executive director of the Arca Foundation and Center for a New Democracy.

A 1980 graduate of Wake Forest is currently on an epic RV road trip

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Kat Bodrie Spencer KM Brown

Jelisa Castrodale Stallone Frazier Matt Jones

Cover illustration by Jorge Maturino. Jorge protests against Eric Ginsburg because he always puts his feet up on his desk in the office.

intern@triad-city-beat.com

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2017 Beat Media Inc.

U.S. Congresswoman (2008-2017)

University, Congressman Edwards

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 jorge@triad-city-beat.com

DONNA EDWARDS

to education and affordable, quality

— Will Cox, in News, page 6

ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino

presents The Honorable

justice reform and increased access

They look like something you would have seen in pre-Civil War times like the Fugitive Slave Act. If you try to help a fellow human being it’s like you’ve committed a crime. This is a time when if you sit on the fence you made a decision. People will be hurt if you don’t act.

BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey

triad-city-beat.com

Night moves

promoting awareness of state and national parks across America.

The Leadership Project is designed to engage members of our community with compelling personal leadership stories from a wide range of experiences and perspectives.

Free and open to the public lead.wfu.edu #wfuleads

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March 15 – 21, 2017

CITY LIFE Mar. 15 – 21

by Joel Sronce

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

Black trans women day of action @ 447 Arlington Ave (GSO), 6 p.m.

NC Queer TROUBLMakers — Queer and Trans Revolutionaries Organizing Under Black Lives Matter — hosts a rally honoring the national call to action to resist violence against trans black women. More info on the Facebook event page.

Anthony Braxton @ SECCA (W-S), 7 p.m.

SECCA opens its SoundSeen: Remix exhibit with a live performance by legendary jazz artist Anthony Braxton. SoundSeen: Remix presents the musical compositions of three artists — Braxton, John Cage and Christian Marclay — in which drawings, diagrams and images replace the musical notation to become a “graphic score.” More info at secca.org.

Mr. Gaga @ Aperture Cinema (W-S), 8 p.m.

Helen Simoneau Danse and Aperture Cinema co-present a screening of Tomer Heymann’s film Mr. Gaga. The documentary tells the story of the internationally acclaimed choreographer Ohad Naharin, who invented the form of dance and “movement language” known as Gaga. More info at aperturecinema.com.

FRIDAY Art Chantry @ High Point University, 11 a.m.

A graphic designer from Tacoma, Wash., Art Chantry uses analog techniques to observe the arcane and obscure. He has designed more than 200 record covers, as well as T-shirts, posters, products and walls at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The free event takes place in the ballroom at the Plato S. Wilson School of Commerce.

More info at highpoint. org.

SUNDAY “Where We Met” sculpture raising @ LeBauer Park (GSO), 7 p.m.

LeBauer Park hosts the first annual “spring blooming” of Janet Echelman’s aerial sculpture. After being taken down for the winter to avoid icy weather, the fiber net sculpture returns to its place above the park’s lawn.

The family-friendly event features live music, dance and art classes from 3 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. More info at greensborodowntownparks.org.

ALL WEEKEND

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Battle of Guilford Courthouse reenactment @ the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park (GSO) Beginning on Saturday morning, the Guilford Battleground Company sponsors an event honoring the 236th anniversary of the battle.

Activities include music by the Guilford Courthouse Fifes & Drums, a Carolina Colonial Dancers performance, a small arms demonstration and a guided battlefield walk. More info at guilfordbattlegroundcompany.org.

SATURDAY The 2017 Greensboro Odyssey @ 200 N. Davie St. (GSO), 11 a.m.

Known as “a car show of the future,” the Greensboro Odyssey gives visitors the chance to see the latest in alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles, as well as talk with local experts. The Triad Electric Vehicle Association showcases some of the newest electric and hybrid cars, including the Tesla Model S, in addition to electric motorcycles, hybrid buses, homebuilt experimental vehicles and more. Further info at tevanc.org.

triad-city-beat.com

Four questions for Matt Walsh

by Jordan Green

What was ahead for the Low Counts?

We had a lot of plans. We planned to put out another album…. Austin was dedicated to the Low Counts. He ate, breathed and drank the Low Counts. It’s what he thought about all day. He knew that we were going to get to where we wanted to go. He never threw in the towel no matter how tough things got. If we broke down on the side of the road, he held his nose high. We believed in each other and loved each other a lot. I will never ever meet a musician like him again, I know.

COURTESY

Opinion

thing. I don’t want to share it with anyone else. When we do a memorial I’ll probably play a couple of our songs just for him. I’ll do it myself. I’ll probably put his bass drum beside me and do it that way.

Cover Story

What was he like as a friend?

To me, he was like a brother. He was also like a son;

We had the best time. We had a blast no matter where we went. We laughed going up and down the road. We enjoyed each other’s company so much. We had so many good adventures. Things that happened on the way to the gig sometimes were as exciting as the gig itself.

News

What was Austin Hicks like as a musician?

He’s the best drummer I’ve ever known. He really was.

I don’t know anybody out here playing music anywhere who played how hard he played. He played so hard he would make himself sick. A couple times we’d finish a gig, and he’d get off the stage and puke — that’s how much he put into it. He was right there with me every time; he meant business. He was the only person I ever considered my musical partner, and I felt it was our music. What we had was special — it can’t be duplicated, you know? I’ll miss him forever. Obviously, we’re not going to keep doing the Low Counts. We decided a long time ago that neither one of us would continue if the other one didn’t.

I’m older than him. He was my equal; I never saw him as anything but being equal. I think that’s why we got along so well.

Up Front

Austin Hicks, 22, was one half of the Low Counts, a stripped-down, feral blues duo from High Point. He died unexpectedly on March 9. Guitarist player Matt Walsh, who declined to comment on the circumstances of his partner’s passing, talks about what Hicks meant to him and why he’s retiring the Low Counts.

The death of Austin Hicks (foreground) last week leaves bandmate Matt Walsh on his own.

Will you ever play the Low Counts’ songs again?

I don’t think so. Probably just move on and leave it where it was. I don’t want to tarnish that. That was our

For this week’s Barometer, we took a poll on which Triad college basketball team will get closest to its tournament’s Final Four. Whether it’s in the NCAA or NIT, the UNCG men, the High Point University women and the Wake Forest men’s and women’s teams all have a shot.

0% Wake Forest women 5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Triaditude Adjustment

Readers: Our readers chose the High Point University women to advance further than any of the other teams. The UNCG men and Wake Forest men tied for second, while the Wake Forest women finished last (with nobody casting their vote for these Deacs).

25% Wake Forest men

Shot in the Triad

Joel Sronce: It seems the NIT picked up on the quarrel between the city of Greensboro and Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who claimed that there’s no value in playing in ACC Tournament in Greensboro. Syracuse hosts UNCG in the first round of the NIT, a game that tips off a few hours after press time. Though it’s for nothing more than solidarity and spite, I’m going with the Spartans.

25% UNCG men

Crossword

Eric Ginsburg: I’d love to see UNCG make a deep run — my girlfriend went there, they’re just up the street from my home and they start off against Syracuse. But I’m a bandwagon fan of the High Point University women’s team, who are kicking ass for the second year in a row (and maybe longer, but that’s how long I’ve been hip to their skill).

Let’s go, Panthers!

50% High Point University women Sportsball

Brian Clarey: I’m just gonna be real here for a minute: Nobody cares about the NIT, and even though I will be watching the game between UNCG and Syracuse and hoping for the big upset, it is never gonna happen. I’m awfully proud of the High Point and Wake Forest women, but if I’m being honest I have to say that I will not be following them avidly this month. My hope lies with Wake Forest men, who have a real shot at winning their play-in game in the NCAA tourney and even going a couple rounds deep. I’ve always said that the Demon Deacons are the ACC team for the discerning Triad college-basketball fan, and they’ve got a shot this year at making me look a little less stupid for doing so.

Culture

Which Triad team will advance furthest in March Madness?

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

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NEWS

Battle brews over Winston-Salem’s proposed ‘welcoming city’ resolution

by Jordan Green

Councilman Dan Besse’s “welcoming city” resolution doesn’t go far enough for members of the Sanctuary City Coalition of Winston-Salem, but conservative state lawmakers, including Rep. Debra Conrad (R-Forsyth) want to punish any city that doesn’t comply with federal immigration law.

With some residents looking to cities to draw a line to protect vulnerable immigrants and with conservative state lawmakers aligned with President Trump’s reactionary agenda promoting harsh penalties for noncompliance, Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse is navigating a tricky middle path.

Besse’s proposed “welcoming city” resolution, which comes before city council’s general government committee on March 21, tiptoes around a 2015 state law that prohibits cities and counties from enacting so-called “sanctuary” ordinances.

“The welcoming city resolution is intended to let our residents know that we as a city welcome immigrants and refugees, that they are full parts of our community, and that we will do everything that we can within the law to keep our city a safe and welcoming environment for them,” Besse said. “It expressly states our opposition to discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin or ethnicity. It reconfirms our tradition of providing a safe community for refugees who are legally resettled in the United States.

“The resolution language recognizes that there is a national environment today of excessive fear and suspicion directed towards some immigrants and refugees,” Besse added. “My resolution would let our residents know that we do not support that political environment of hostility.”

North Carolina’s anti-sanctuary law deals with a subset of the newcomers addressed by Besse’s proposed resolution — unauthorized immigrants. The law prevents cities and counties from adopting ordinances to prohibit law enforcement agencies from collecting information about immigration status and sharing it with federal immigration authorities.

A new bill filed in early February — HB 63 — that is cosponsored by Rep. Debra Conrad, a Forsyth County Republican, would penalize cities and counties that fail to comply with the

Members of the Sanctuary City Coalition of Winston-Salem pose on the steps of City Hall.

anti-sanctuary law, with provisions to have the attorney general investigate complaints and withhold state funds.

Only one paragraph of Besse’s draft resolution addresses residents’ immigration status.

“The city of Winston-Salem recognizes that our whole community is safer when victims and witnesses of domestic violence or criminal activity feel safe in contacting our police for assistance without fear, regardless of their immigration status,” it reads.

The clause is simply a statement of fact, Besse said, noting that it doesn’t tell the police what to do.

Under Trump’s Jan. 25 executive order on immigration enforcement, the primary tool for engaging local law enforcement in immigration functions is a program known as 287(g) that was originally activated under the administration of President George W. Bush. The executive order directs the secretary of homeland security to recruit states, counties and municipalities to sign up for 287(g), but participation remains voluntary. The city of Winston-Salem is not currently participating in 287(g) and Besse said city officials have no intentions of signing on.

Forsyth County Sheriff Bill Schatzman, who is responsible for operating the county jail and managing patrols in rural and suburban areas that lack their own police services, has also passed up the opportunity to join 287(g).

Assistant County Attorney Lonnie Albright, who advises the sheriff’s office, said in late January that Schatzman

COURTESY PHOTO

is not considering participation in the program.

Hana Brown, who teaches sociology at Wake Forest University and is active in efforts to support the immigrant community in the Triad, said the Trump administration is looking to local law enforcement as a force multiplier to extend its relatively limited number Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents.

“If the Trump administration’s going to be able to manage a mass deportation, they’re going to be using these 287(g) agreements,” Brown said during a teach-in at UNCG in Greensboro on Sunday.

The Bush administration ramped up the use of 287(g) around 2007. Brown characterized that implementation as “disastrous,” adding that the program didn’t fulfill its original purpose.

“The original goal of these agreements was to get local jurisdictions to help apprehend and remove threatening, criminal undocumented immigrants,” Brown said. “The idea was we’re going to take people already convicted of a crime who were supposed to be deported already but haven’t been deported yet. But that’s not what happened on the ground. What happened on the ground was that this 287(g) program was mostly used to arrest and deport people who had really minor infractions. And when I say ‘minor,’ I mean driving with one broken taillight.”

Both the Winston-Salem Police Department and Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office participate in a program

managed by the Greensboro nonprofit FaithAction International House which provides law enforcement with the option of accepting alternative IDs instead of booking undocumented immigrants for minor traffic offenses and putting them at risk of deportation.

While acknowledging that state law prohibits the city from instructing the police to not ask residents about their status, Councilman Besse said it isn’t necessary because the police don’t need be told to not target undocumented immigrants Chief Barry Rountree said in a Jan. 30 memo to Mayor Allen Joines and members of city council: “Members of the WSPD do not ask immigration status, initiate immigration roundups or gather immigration status information during the course of providing law enforcement services,” As another tool for cajoling cooperation, Trump’s executive order instructs the secretary of homeland security to create a weekly “Declined Detainer Outcome Report” to shame local law enforcement agencies by publicizing “a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any other jurisdiction that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens.”

Albright said that as a rule, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office does not hold unauthorized immigrants on ICE detainers for more than 48 hours.

“I do recall that if we receive an ICE detainer on someone, that ICE is notified that they have 48 hours to pick up that person,” he said in a recent email.

“If they fail to do so, then the person is released on whatever terms the state court has ordered — that is to say bond, written appearance or the like. The sheriff doesn’t keep them beyond the 48-hour requirement. To do so, I believe would constitute a due-process problem and perhaps more.”

Since mid-December a group of residents who call themselves the Sanctuary City Coalition of Winston-Salem have been lobbying the city to adopt a resolution declaring itself a sanctuary city.

Will Cox, a member of the coalition, said the group isn’t endorsing Besse’s “welcoming city” resolution, but they see it as a step in the right direction.

But the resolution has also attracted criticism from other residents.

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword

Winston-Salem NC

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Triaditude Adjustment

rattle + hum

Shot in the Triad

Recycle this paper.

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Reginald Reid, who was recently elected secretary of the Forsyth County Republican Party, charged in a Facebook message to Triad City Beat that Besse’s resolution “would provide a protective blanket for human trafficking and exploitation.”

That premise has been contradicted by Greensboro police Capt. Mike Richey, who told reporters in 2015 that residents have told the police that they wouldn’t have come forward if they didn’t have the FaithAction ID — implying that the assurance that they wouldn’t be deported gave them the confidence to talk to police. Richey said that as a result the police were able to make arrests in a human-trafficking and child-exploitation case.

Both opponents of Besse’s “welcoming city” resolution and those who would like it to go further reached back to the Civil War era for comparisons that illustrate their sense of alarm.

“Quite frankly [the “welcoming city” resolution] is a return to slavery and Jim Crow,” Reid said. “We are bringing people here to do work supposedly Americans will not do and their mistreatment is sanctioned by the government. And didn’t certain states about 1860 or early 1861 seek to nullify federal laws preventing human exploitation?”

Cox of the Sanctuary City Coalition reached back further for a comparison to HB 63 and other legislation proposed

by Republican lawmakers that would penalize cities for trying to protect unauthorized immigrants.

“They look like something you would have seen in pre-Civil War times like the Fugitive Slave Act,” he said. “If you try to help a fellow human being it’s like you’ve committed a crime. This is a time when if you sit on the fence you’ve made a decision. People will be hurt if you don’t act.”

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

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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg brings road show to NC A&T University

by Jordan Green

The social media mogul talked about the double-edged sword of Facebook Live, the lack of diversity in the tech industry and whether he’s interested in running for president at a town hall at NC A&T University on Monday.

Facebook has struggled to strike the right balance on community standards and fake news, but cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg displayed no hesitation in discussing his feelings about the use of the social-media platform to share live videos of interactions between citizens and police.

“I feel great,” he said during a town hall at NC A&T University in Greensboro on Monday. “I mean, look, we believe a lot in transparency and giving people a voice. And if we’re not going to give them body cameras we’ll give everyone a live camera. Transparency is a lot about what Facebook is about — giving people a voice and putting power in people’s hands and giving everyone a voice to share what’s important. There’s certainly a lot of injustice, that you’ve talked about it and a lot of people deny it. You put it on camera and they can’t deny it anymore. There’s something really powerful about that.”

Zuckerberg spoke to about 200 students and invited guests. The media was not granted access to the event, but journalists were allowed to watch a simulcast from an auditorium used as an overflow section.

Kani Bynum, a student organizer from Charlotte who is majoring in public relations, gushed about Zuckerberg’s message after the town hall.

“It gave us insight on the way that the future is going to go,” he said. “Power to the people creates peace. I see more unity going forward. I think it’s beautiful the way he’s giving power back to the people.”

Bynum said the social media platform’s Facebook Live streaming video app is an especially powerful tool, noting that police accountability activists used it after the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott in September 2016 to show instances of alleged excessive force that helped shape media coverage of the protests.

Bynum was recording when another protester, Justin Carr, was fatally shot as police in riot gear massed to protect the Omni hotel in Charlotte’s center city on the second night of protests. From the beginning, the police contended that Carr was shot by another civilian.

Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks to students at NC A&T University on Monday.

“That was not true,” Bynum said.

“I got it on Facebook Live. The police shot the protester. It was not another protester.”

Multiple media accounts cite various sources, including pastors and lawyers who were on the scene, as saying they witnessed the police shoot Carr, but the police said they pieced together citizen video with surveillance video from nearby buildings to identity a man named Rayquan Borum as the shooter.

Borum has been indicted for murder and authorities say he confessed to the shooting.

Public video posted online captures the sound of gunshots and the aftermath of the shooting, but does not definitively show who is responsible.

Some segments of the community continue to insist that Borum’s confession was coerced and that he is being framed from Carr’s murder. Bynum, the A&T student who said he recorded the incident, has a Facebook account on a private setting and did not respond to requests to view the video.

Zuckerberg, who addressed the students in his trademark T-shirt and jeans ensemble, acknowledged there’s a darker side to the Live app.

“There are different examples of people showing something bad that’s happening in the world, there are also people who use Live as a tool for broadcasting bad things that they’re doing,” he said. “There are examples of people committing crimes and live-streaming that and getting to a large scale. That is something that I don’t feel good about,

COURTESY OF FACEBOOK

right, and that I think we have a responsibility to not allow.

“If someone broadcasts themselves committing a crime and gets a lot of people watching that, we don’t want that to be an example that other people watching see and say, ‘Hey I could get a lot of people watching, too, if I go steal a car and go make a live video of myself doing it,’” the 32-year-old billionaire entrepreneur continued.

“There are examples that are really sad.

There was a girl a couple weeks ago who live-streamed committing suicide.

It’s terrible. One of the questions that we were struggling with afterwards is we have all these tools on Facebook to make it so that if you see someone who needs help, you can reach out to them and give them help or you can call 911 or reach out to community hotlines to get them the support. One of the big reflections — and I spent a lot of time with our management asking this question of: ‘Why didn’t anyone who saw this, say something?’”

Zithobile Nxumalo, a doctoral candidate in leadership studies, asked Zuckerberg what he intends to do about the lack of diversity in the tech industry and what advice he would give to “us as minorities to strategically navigate the entrepreneurial world so that we can be included.”

Zuckerberg responded that the responsibility for cultivating a diverse workforce falls on tech firms as opposed to job applicants, adding that companies that value diversity need to make it a priority.

“If you want diversity, you better have specific teams that focus on diversity,” he said. He also emphasized the importance of addressing unconscious bias.

“We do this really rigorous training for every manager at Facebook,” he said. “You have to go through and understand what your unconscious biases are because I think a lot of people — the research shows this really clearly — a lot of people [who] think that they care about diversity actually have a lot of these biases.”

Zuckerberg’s advice for young people of color who want to work in tech, especially at schools like A&T with a strong engineering focus, was simple.

“There’s a really clear dynamic in the world right now where there’s way more demand for engineers than there are engineers,” he said, “so if you just really focus on doing the best work that you can then there’s a lot of opportunity out there.”

Zuckerberg has embarked on a 30-state tour as part of what he called an effort “to get out of my bubble in San Francisco.” As part of an effort to understand how Facebook fits into a new paradigm of global community, he’s visiting people like far-flung oyster farmers in Louisiana to learn how they’re using social media to more effectively market their product. The tour has led to speculation that Zuckerberg is exploring a run for president in 2020.

The final question at the A&T town hall went to a young woman, identified as a former Facebook intern, who asked, “Do you have any plans and intentions for running for president possibly with other innovators such as Kanye West, who has expressed interest in running as well?”

Zuckerberg got one thing out of the way first: “I don’t think that Kanye is going to be at the bottom of anyone’s ticket.”

As to Zuckerberg’s own plans and intentions, he said the answer is no.

“One of the things that I think is a little funny is to do these trips and go around and meet folks, people say, ‘Oh, he’s trying to meet people — he must immediately be trying to run for office,’” he said. “It’s like, ‘What? The rest of what I do isn’t important or relevant?

There’s no reason for me to actually understand people?’ We’re kind of building a community here — it’s not that small. It’s good.”

triad-city-beat.com

Up Front

News

Opinion

Cover Story

Culture

Sportsball

Crossword

Shot in the Triad

Triaditude Adjustment

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

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OPINION

EDITORIAL

Tournament-less town The tweet heard ’round the basketball world was deployed on the Greensboro city Twitter feed by Communications Manager Jake Keys, who zinged Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim after Boeheim told a reporter that there was “no value” to playing the storied ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament in its longtime home of Greensboro.

Keys’ retort — “I guess you can lose in the 1st round anywhere.

At least it’s a quick ride home.” — was the finest piece of college hoops trash-talk so far this postseason, and possibly the greatest ever takedown of a big-time college basketball coach by a mid-level city employee.

And while the tournament played out in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center, where it will live for yet another season, local basketball fans had a small reason to smile amid the hurt.

This is the time to be reminded that the Greensboro Coliseum was supposed to be holding a round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament this very weekend, but instead will be playing host to the NC Rabbit Breeders Convention.

That is not a joke.

The tournament will not This is the time to suffer. Duke and Carolina fans be reminded that the will just as soon travel south to Greenville, SC as they would Greensboro Coliseum west to Greensboro. And it’s was supposed to be close enough that both teams holding a round of the will still enjoy their traditional NCAA Men’s Basketball first-round home-team advanTournament this very tage.

But on the ground in weekend, but instead Greensboro it will be felt by will be playing host to empty parking lots, empty bars the NC Rabbit Breeders and restaurants and hotel beds Convention. bereft of heads.

When Greensboro lost the tournament in September 2016, we knew it would be something like this, we knew it would be bad. And back then it was easy to blame our disgrace on HB 2, that nasty piece of legislation that besmirched the name and reputation of our state and the people who live in it.

Now some months have passed and still nothing has changed on the HB 2 front, except for Rep. Mark Brody’s bill, expected to be filed this week, proposing an investigation into the ACC and the NCAA. Brody believes the organizations may have violated their tax-exempt status by engaging in political activities — by which he means refusing to play big games in his home state.

It doesn’t seem like this bill will do much for Greensboro, either.

While college basketball luminaries have been defending Tournament Town’s status and role in the ACC, the fact is we will never see any of it — not the ACC nor the NCAA tournaments, not to mention every other college sport that once held tournaments here — until we handle the business of HB 2 first.

We can no longer blame this on the bill itself. The fault must be laid at the feet of the people who refuse to do anything about it.

CITIZEN GREEN

Lesson of ’79: How to organize after the worst What conditions in society allow a group of armed extremists to gun down progressive activists in the streets in front of television cameras and without police interference, and then to

by Jordan Green be acquitted of all criminal charges?

That question hung over a presentation by Signe Waller Foxworth, a survivor of the Nov. 3, 1979 Klan-Nazi massacre in Greensboro’s Morningside Homes public housing community, to white anti-racist activists at the Elsewhere artist collaborative on March 11. The sense of fear about the surge of ugly passions unleashed with the election of Trump was palpable in the room.

The five committed young people who died on Nov. 3, 1979 and those who survived were seasoned activists at the time, mostly in their early thirties or late twenties. Some were doctors; all of them put promising careers on hold to work in area textile mills to try to improve working conditions by organizing across racial lines. They confronted the Ku Klux Klan, a group historically opposed to interracial cooperation. They openly advertised themselves as communists — a group as easily demonized and rendered expendable as today’s “terrorists.” Their provocative rhetoric unleashed the fury of the Klan and Nazis, with the response of official Greensboro ranging from indifference to hostility.

Fear left unchecked and allowed to manifest in isolation and division opens the door to atrocities, said Joyce Johnson, another survivor of the massacre who attended Waller Foxworth’s presentation.

“It is based on fear and a sense of trying to protect my family — me and my four and no more — that sets up the dynamic for violence and repression,” Johnson said. “The focus is Muslims and immigrants right now, and people who are part of the LGBT community. Black people have been enduring it in the past.”

They were a tight-knit group, and so the loss was most proximate for the widows who lost husbands.

But for any of the survivors, any of the five slain activists was a dear friend, including Waller Foxworth’s husband, Dr. Jim Waller, along with Sandi Smith, Cesar Cauce, Dr. Jim Nathan and Bill Sampson.

Smith, a student body president at Bennett College, had been leading the Revolution Organizing Committee to establish a union at Cone’s Revolution Mill.

“Sandi Smith was my best friend,” Johnson recalled. “I was the matron of honor at her wedding.

One of the most difficult things I’ve ever done is

calling her mother to let her know Sandi was dead.”

The survivors might have been expected to disappear after experiencing the worst trauma anyone could conceivably undergo, and many of Greensboro’s establishment leaders undoubtedly hoped they would. For years after the massacre, Joyce Johnson said her family experienced isolation. Her husband, Nelson, as leader of the Workers Viewpoint Organization — later renamed the Communist Workers Party — was vilified and perversely blamed by many for bringing the violence to Greensboro.

Joyce Johnson suggested courage is the best antidote to the atrocities that become more likely in a climate of rampant fear.

“The good point is that some of us did survive, and we’ve continued to struggle,” Johnson said. “So you have a decision to make. If you do, it will make a difference to you and it will make a difference to the world. It will make a difference to your family and your children.”

Now 70, Johnson expresses a preference for interpersonal dialogue over street protests, but she retains the same ardent desire to change the world that motivated her when she was a 20-year-old college student. Neither the bullets of the Klan and Nazis nor almost four decades of official indifference have dissuaded her. The economic and social forces at work in the world today don’t seem that different from 37 years ago when five of her comrades were cut down.

“The period of economic prosperity — the ontop-of-the-world period — was unraveling in the United States,” Johnson recalled. “Third world countries were starting to assert themselves and demand their share. The economic downturn was beginning.

We in the Workers Viewpoint Organization knew that. We knew it was going to be so important for diverse people of the world to come together to ensure everyone could enjoy some measure of well-being.

“The difference I see is that because the exploitative nature of capital has fewer and fewer places to run to, it’s turning on its own people,” she continued.

“The Democratic Party is trying to figure out how to reach white, working people, but they’re not willing to fundamentally transform the economic system.

White, working-class people are getting more and more hit. Women and people of color are getting hit even more. Because some more eyes are opening, I think there’s potential that our transformed future rests in embracing each other, not just in a hugging kind of way. Of course, the alternative is that something like what happened in Germany in the 1930s could happen again here.”

Skate or die (or not) With all this talk about “green space,” why would the city decide to concrete over a good portion of Latham Park? [“Public agrees on plan for Greensboro skatepark”; by Eric Ginsburg; March 30, 2016] A park that many in the neighboring homes and apartments use for walking, jogging, cycling, dog walking, and a quiet moment in a scenic setting. The basketball courts were well used until the city let them fall into disrepair. Should have picked a better location, not taken away what little green space we have around here. Wonder how many trees were cut down for this.

Suzanne Layton Mitchell, via triad-city-beat.com

Opinion Cover Story

Eric Ginsburg responds: I loved that basketball court — it’s where I used to shoot hoops. They did save a massive tree next to the court, and from what I remember of that area, no more than a couple of trees were lost for this skatepark (though I haven’t checked that with the city yet).

News

I was very interested in your article regarding the refugee cutback to 50,000 per year in the USA. And since Clinton, Bush and Obama had similar, if not more expansive bans in place at various times, I would say that America needs to take a breather right now. Trump, of course, is correct.

While many people advocate for the refugees, I never see advocates for the end of the USA’s never-ending wars that create refugees. If the USA would stop its share of destruction and mayhem (in the name of fighting terror) then a great deal of this problem would be alleviated.

I know that the mainstream “fake news” journalists cannot talk about ending the wars, but local journalists certainly could.

Did you know that most, if not all modern wars have been conducted for the benefit of the Federal Reserve Bank shareholders? It is all about the money. And, yes…

Russia is in the crosshairs since Putin cut the balls off the Russian Central Bank.

Mark J. Leblanc, Greensboro

Editor’s note: There are a lot of questionable assertions in this comment, but since one is directed at us in particular, we’ll respond to that — our paper has only been around for three years and focuses heavily on local (rather than national or international) coverage. That said, some of us have a long history of opposing war — read the intro to this week’s cover story for one example.

Up Front

ease doing, or haven’t the skills, contacts or interest. But while memories of the Great Recession still linger and with non-stop Trump tweeting keeping everyone awake, maybe it’s time for another mass gathering.

Andrew J. Young, Greensboro

triad-city-beat.com

Refugee reboot?

For many years I have been a critic of refugee resettlement agencies, but not because I am anti-refugee [“Triad refugee agencies adjust to drastic reduction in new arrivals”; by Jordan Green; March 8, 2017]. Locally, they have done some very strong work but their efforts and initiatives have been tied to the larger Greensboro culture of lots of organizations but limited collaboration, of a patchwork of services that have been based more on what’s available or fundable and less on what individuals, families and communities need. The important social work these organizations do is unquestioned, but it can’t hide the fragility of the resettlement process as its carried out in our area.

When Lutheran Family Services up and left several years back it triggered a mass gathering of partners and stakeholders to rethink the system. But important changes never took hold and many of the resettlement problems that sank the LFS boat continue.

Despite Trump and a bunch of anti-immigrant supporters, I believe there are things we can do in our area to not lose the talent and skills of those being let go from the resettlement agencies, improve the local resettlement process and strengthen newcomer individuals, families and communities. There’s a lot of grief, rage and frustration going on that mask some of the fundamental work that many have never felt at

Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

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Cover Story

March 15 – 21, 2017

We marched down Newbury Street, a main commercial hub, where someone had spray-painted a peace sign in the road.

When we came to an on-ramp for the Mass Pike — a multilane highway with fast-moving traffic — a few dozen marchers tried to race police down the ramp and block the highway. Surprised, my mom and I held back and watched briefly before heading home.

I had no idea what to expect at my first protest, but I felt an urgent need to be there. I left determined and a little excited. Before long I would be organizing anti-war rallies of my own, and marching for other causes, too.

Plenty of people never make it to their first protest, determining they aren’t the type. But for thousands of Americans, that’s changing.

Almost 15 years later when millions of people participated in the historic Jan. 21 Women’s March, I realized that many of them must’ve been first-timers. Just a few days would pass before another major mobilization, this time primarily at the nation’s airports, and no doubt again pulling in newly mobilized Americans.

Building on the strength of preceding movements including Occupy, Black Lives Matter and the protests at Standing Rock, the Trump resistance has already turned 2017 into the year of the protest.

And it’s doing so by bringing people into the streets who wouldn’t call themselves activists, who’ve never read socialist scholars, who’ve never called their congressmen before.

Sound like you? Read on.

Media depictions in the news or films don’t really get down to the nuts and bolts of how street demonstrations work. In the spirit of service journalism, here’s a guide for what you can actually expect at a street protest. If you still have questions after reading this, comment on the online version and I’ll do my best to answer based on what I’ve seen (and I invite protest vets to chime in). If you’re one of the countless thousands who will decide this year to protest for the first time, this practical guide should help you feel more comfortable showing up and making up your own mind.

So this is your first protest

by Eric Ginsburg • Illustrations by Jorge Maturino

I remember my first real protest, as a 15-year old when the war in Iraq began. I’d been sitting in the kitchen while my mom cooked dinner, and on the small countertop TV, a news helicopter showed us images of hundreds of protesters flooding the streets. Many of them were students at MIT and Harvard — no doubt a good portion of them at their first protest as well — and I remember the news anchor saying that they were crossing the bridge from Cambridge to Boston, headed for Copley Square.

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My mom and I both forget the specifics of what happened next. I just remember that when we arrived in Copley — about 30 minutes from my childhood home — it was nighttime, and the air filled with a defiant mood.

People protest for so many different reasons: to express anger or fear or love, to push for change, to disrupt a law or status quo they see as unjust, to find unity and warmth in the crowd, to share their thoughts, to protect and exercise their rights, to stand alongside others.

While the umbrella of what constitutes a street protest is expansive, there are still some basic things that will help you prepare physically and mentally.

This list is based on lived experience, first as a participant and organizer and then as a reporter. I’ve shown up at mock funeral processions in Georgia, die-ins in Boston, Occupy in New York City and probably close to 100 protests right here in the Triad, to name a few. The causes, participants and exact tactics have ranged from the aging hippie crowd to militant young anarchists, from big group hugs to skirmishes with police and neo-Nazis. Yet some practical tenets hold true.

This guide is based in particular on what you can expect in Greensboro — it’s not only the largest of the Triad’s cities, but it’s also the local protesting capital. Still, there are strong histories of street protests throughout the Triad.

No matter where it’s held, here are some tips to help you think about and prepare for your first protest. I’ve

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What to wear: Wear comfortable shoes. Whether you’re standing around for a while at a rally or walking with a 1 2 3march, there’s a good chance your feet will take a beating. If there’s a march and rally, you may want layers in case you warm up while walking or grow cold while standing still.

Some people wear masks to conceal their identities — maybe they don’t want their faces on TV because they fear retaliation at work, or they might intend to break a law.

You’re more likely to encounter this outside of the Triad; it’s technically illegal to cover your face at a public demonstration in this state, which local police sometimes enforce.

The larger the group doing it, the less likely enforcement is, however. Protesters who want to be prepared for tear gas sometimes bring bandanas soaked in apple cider vinegar to counteract the gas.

Some protests encourage participants to wear something in particular as a sign of unity. On International Women’s Day, many people wore red as a sign of support. Pink hats became a symbol of the Women’s March. Sometimes protesters wear all black for anonymity. Generally, you should wear whatever you feel comfortable in.

What to bring: You can bring a sign or banner if you want, but many participants just show up. Bring a bottle of water.

Bring a friend or family member and stick together. If you expect the event to be particularly long, bring a snack. If you have an asthma inhaler or important medication, bring it.

Consider sunscreen if needed.

Before you get there: You’ll likely be at the protest for at least an hour, if not two or three. Go to the bathroom first. You probably aren’t planning to be arrested, but if you’re committing civil disobedience, have the phone number of a lawyer and someone who plans to wait for you and bail you out. Some activists will write the phone number on their arm in Sharpie, so that they can easily access it from jail.

Eat before you arrive. Check the weather forecast.

1or2 If you are concerned about being profiled by police possible immigration agents (though it goes against current ICE policy to target protests), all the more reason to come as a group. Maybe this means you would feel more comfortable not bringing a sign or wearing anything that would identify you with the protest group.

Map out where you want to park so you only have to travel a short distance to the event. Research the group organizing the protest to see if you feel like this will be a safe space. It’s okay to reach out to organizers ahead of time to express your concerns. Different organizers may respond differently, but most local activists would likely be receptive.

When you get there: Show up a little bit late so you’re not awkwardly waiting around for a while. Spend a little bit of time checking out the scene. If you feel uncomfortable, hang out nearby — maybe across the street — and just watch for a little bit until you’re ready to dive in.

If there are speakers, listen to them. Plenty of1 people 2 3 show up at rallies and talk to each other through the speakers, which is especially understandable when the same old folks get up every time and say almost the exact same things. But in general, it’s worth listening to what the speakers are saying. Especially if you benefit from privilege, remember that you’re there to learn, support and be in solidarity rather than just to hang out.

During the protest: Be aware of your comfort level, as it may change throughout the event. Remember that you can leave at any time. Talk to whomever you came with, especially if they’ve been to a protest before, and ask them questions.

You’ll likely see people holding signs or hear them speaking about things that might seem unrelated to the issue you’ve come for. That’s very common at protests, especially on the left. Other participants will tell you that this is because issues are interconnected. Try to keep an open mind.

Participate in chants if you feel like it. Just listen, if you’d rather. If a large march spills1into2 the3 street and remains there, stay with the crowd. If police tell people to disperse, get out of the street or give any other orders, you should probably obey them; consider that your first protest may not be the best time to commit civil disobedience. Take things slowly — there will be many protests in the future.

If you’re concerned about being arrested or a confrontation between police and protesters, pay attention to the mood of the crowd and the movement of police. If people are chanting at police or the protest is related to policing, be particularly alert. Chances are there won’t be any arrests 1 2 3but it always pays to be aware. or confrontations, Sequence of events: The most common protests around here are rallies, 1 2 3 where people gather either primarily to hold up signs or to listen to speakers.

Interpreters are rare, though sometimes available. In Greensboro, rallies most often happen at Governmental Plaza. There’s a small, cov3 ered stage sort of like a pavilion, and people stand or sit on stairs (or directly in front of the stage) facing the speakers.

The area is wheelchair accessible. In Winston-Salem, Corpening Plaza and the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and New Walkertown Road are common protest sites.

Marches generally start here as well, usually beginning

with a rally, evolving into a march and finishing with another rally. Sometimes the concluding rally is in the same location, and other times it’s somewhere like Center City Park, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum or the county jail downtown. Most often these marches exit on the Greene Street and turn right (south), turn left onto McGee Street and then head up South Elm Street.

Rallies and marches take all sorts of different forms, but these are the most common. A standalone rally generally takes at least an hour, while a rally with a march could last two or three hours depending.

triad-city-beat.com

included some locally specific details about what to expect when you arrive, though it’s possible the terrain could change in the future. I’ve attempted to provide advice that would apply to people from all walks of life, though given my privileged background, I’ve no doubt forgotten or overlooked some aspects.

The bottom line is this: There are no prerequisites and no litmus test for joining your first protest. These insights are rather exhaustive and should help you prepare, but the only things you really need are the desire to show up and the means to get there.

After the protest: Do whatever you want! But it could help to have plans to grab food with a friend you came with and talk about how it went. Think about how you felt, and what you might want to do differently next time. Did you feel uncomfortable in a good way because you were pushing yourself or exposing yourself to a different perspective, or did you feel unwelcome or unsafe?

If you leave with a positive feeling, consider signing up for the email list, liking the organizing group on Facebook or reading more on the group’s website. Think about how you can stay involved. Maybe you’ll decide that protesting in the street is a good fit for you, but maybe you’ll determine that you prefer a different method of resistance. Both are perfectly fine conclusions to draw, but before you write off a method of dissent, consider going to a totally different type of protest first.

TYPES OF PROTESTS

Rally: The most common form of public protest is a rally, where people gather and generally listen to speakers.

Sometimes the list of speakers is preplanned by organizers, and other times a megaphone is passed around to anyone who wants to talk. Rallies often happen in Greensboro’s Government Plaza, but they also occur in public parks, on sidewalks outside of businesses, on college campuses and more.

March: Typically marches begin with a rally, however informal, to gather people before the march begins. Often marches also end with a second rally, however short. A march is what it sounds like, though they vary greatly in length, tone/ vibe and intention. Some marches happen on the sidewalk, but these protests frequently wind up in the streets.

Permitted: Sometimes, protest organizers secure a permit for their event. It’s a way to reserve a space (such as outside city hall), to get permission to march in the street or to coordinate with police.

Some people reject this approach, arguing that the First Amendment protects their freedom of assembly. Others say a permit is a way to protect a protest,

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March 15 – 21, 2017 Cover Story

2 3

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which might 1 2 3be beneficial particularly if vulnerable groups (undocumented immigrants or parents pushing strollers, for example) are participating in a street march. Your call.

Unpermitted: Protesters frequently take to the streets in Greensboro and other cities throughout the country without permits. Sometimes it would be impossible to get a permit (think of Standing Rock) and other times organizers either see no reason to do so or actively oppose the idea of a permit. Many (and possibly most) protests don’t have a permit and there’s nothing to worry about. Read on for more about police discretion and how it’s often exercised at unpermitted local demonstrations.

Civil disobedience: While rare in the Triad, civil disobedience is occasionally used here, sometimes to great effect.

People who commit civil disobedience are intentionally refusing to comply with a certain law or ordinance, sometimes to highlight an unjust rule as in the famous and tremendously effective case of the A&T Four and their sit-in at Woolworth’s.

Other times people who commit civil disobedience want to be arrested to draw attention to an issue. The latter is more common today, like when immigration activists occupied then-Sen. Kay Hagan’s office a few years ago or when activists with Greensboro Operation Transparency sought arrest in January to highlight the city of Greensboro’s handling of the Dejuan Yourse case.

Civil disobedience isn’t 1 always — sometimes 2 preplanned 3 protesters act in the moment if they believe their First Amendment rights are being violated. Good organizers make sure participants understand the stakes so that people who want to be arrested can stay while others who want to avoid the legal system can step back or leave.

That’s exactly what happened recently at an anti-Trump rally in Greensboro.

Black bloc: Though only a remote possibility locally, the black bloc is a tactic that’s been used in a variety of street protest settings in the United States including at the Trump inauguration.

Demonstrators utilized it in Caswell County, NC, to counter the Klan, though it’s more likely that you’d run into a black bloc in Washington, DC or 1 2 California.

3 northern Just in case, here’s a quick rundown.

A black bloc consists of people wearing all black, generally covering their faces, as a way to provide anonymity to the participants. That anonymity can be used to a variety of ends, ranging from the more mundane desire not to be publicly identified with the protest to the more radical aim of shielding participants from prosecution if the group broke a law.

Black bloc participants are generally anarchists, a generally misunderstood term that for space reasons you’ll need to read more about elsewhere. People in black blocs sometimes destroy property (allegedly including a limo

at the inauguration), throw projectiles, or battle police or white supremacists. Sometimes their motive is to shut down an event, like recent actions in Berkeley, Calif. to stop Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking. Other times no laws are broken at all.

There’s no particular group or organization affiliated with black blocs, 1 2 3and the mere presence of people wearing all black or anarchists at a protest doesn’t constitute a black bloc. And not all participants are necessarily anarchists. True to its name, the bloc typically sticks tightly together, occasionally linking arms or using reinforced banners to demarcate the perimeter of the bloc. In Caswell County, TCB saw participants forming a defensive rear guard at the back of the bloc and wielding baseball bats.

Police often act aggressively towards a black bloc, sometimes arresting all participants and even people nearby as occurred at the inauguration. In that sense, proximity to a bloc might mean you’re at greater risk for arrest. Other times, no conflict or arrests arise, as was the case in Caswell County despite the bats and possibilities for a clash between anarchists and the Klan.

Other: There are countless other forms of protest — too many to list, but it’s worth explicitly mentioning the recent strikes on International Women’s Day and Day Without an Immigrant, candlelight vigils, occupying space from the dean’s office to a roadway, pickets and more.

There are other acts of protest, of course, many of them more personal or private, but for the sake of brevity we’re focusing on street protests.

POLICE RESPONSES

Likely response: Greensboro police typically take a hands-off style approach to policing large protests, even the ones without permits. The larger the crowd, the more likely police are to allow the demonstration to spill into the street, which isn’t uncommon.

Small crowds, especially more militant or aggressive ones, are often treated differently — at a small, spontaneous May Day march several years ago, a lone officer tried to stop an unpermitted march in the street and ultimately arrested one protester. When protesters block streets — such as sitting down in the road at a recent anti-Trump march [√] — police move more quickly to clear the street. At an anti-war protest downtown about a decade ago, one protester was Tased and more arrested while blocking a major intersection. Such occurrences are rare, though.

The police reaction also depends on the location of the protest. A protest on private property, such as one a couple years ago inside a Whole Foods, doesn’t received the same sort of semi-relaxed treatment as a rally at Governmental Plaza.

Usually if police are going to start making arrests, they will warn protesters. They’ll look for a leader and attempt

to talk to them, and sometimes a negotiation occurs as has happened repeatedly with some Black Lives Matter protests.

Police often have a presence on bicycle as well as on foot. Documents obtained by Triad City Beat show that at least one undercover officer participated in Occupy Greensboro meetings. Police can sometimes be seen filming protests, and on at least one occasion the department’s spokesperson attended a rally and took photos.

Unlikely response: While the Greensboro Police Department typically wants to project an image of trust and transparency when the public, including protesters, TCB uncovered the secretive formation of something called the Civil Emergency Unit. Other cities like Charlotte have these as well, designed in part to respond to civil disorders, rebellions and aggressive or militant protests.

The unit, which trains regularly and consists of about 90 officers, is equipped for a mass disturbance. Though nothing that could be categorized as a riot has occurred in the Triad in recent history, an internal PowerPoint presentation on the need for the unit cites Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore. Another slide explains in more detail: “We want the citizens to feel safe but we do not want to elevate emotions of a crowd by appearing on scene in ‘militarized’ uniforms,” it reads. “We have numerous levels of gear and protective equipment that can be utilized to optimize our ability to secure an area and maintain a professional presence with any crowd. The uniform can change significantly depending upon the reason why we are called to the area. Our uniform changes depending on the needs of the public and the desired response conveyed from the command staff.”

The Greensboro unit deployed to Charlotte in September 2016 after police there shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, and trained with the National Guard earlier last year in a scenario involving mock protesters.

According to documents obtained by TCB, the department’s critical-incident van includes 23 canisters of CS gas, 45 riot batons, four hard hats, a ladder, 20 shields and various munitions. Greensboro police brought at least 60 riot shields to Charlotte but didn’t use them, according to the department, and also brought riot helmets and gas masks.

The Greensboro Police Department acquired a longrange acoustic device, or LRAD, in 2015. The device, which can be used by the Civil Emergency Unit but is not technically assigned to it, contains a crowd-control deterrent tone. TCB reported on the crowd-control aspect of the LRAD on Dec. 2, 2015 — according to an email dated one week later, Chief Wayne Scott then “requested the LRAD be solely used as a communication device and not for crowd control dispersal in the red volume zone.

“He has asked that the red volume zone capability be made inoperable on the device if possible,” Sergeant PC Uehlein continued in the email, obtained by TCB. Capt. John Wolfe responded: “I was not invited to or present at the meeting either, however I do know that

SECURITY

If you’re concerned about government surveillance, there are several things you can do to put roadblocks in the way of government overreach. One of the simplest approaches is downloading Signal, a free app with security encryption that you can use for texting or calls. You can even set messages to disappear after a set amount of time. Many people who are engaged in regular acts of protest and resistance (as well as others too, like journalists) use the app as a more secure communication platform.

Some would argue that it’s worth taking steps such as this regardless of

whether you intend to break any laws, a position that makes increasing sense as lawmakers in North Carolina and around the country introduce legislation that would crack down on protesters. You may thank yourself for practicing what some activists call “security culture” from the outset later on.

TL;DR

Maybe this is all a whole lot more than you were expecting.

Does protesting really have to be this complicated? you might be wondering. I thought this dude said there were no prerequisites for protesting, but this feels like a lot of homework.

If this is too long and you didn’t read it all, here’s the executive summary or key points to remember: wear comfortable shoes, bring a friend or two, stay alert and check in with your feelings and with those you came with regularly, and do whatever you’d normally do (like eating dinner, maybe) before going out for several hours. For your first protest, that’s really all you need.

Sustained protest activity comes with a whole host of other advice about avoiding burnout, what being an ally or showing solidarity really means and thinking about broader strategies and tactics for success. But for your first time out the gate, you’re already set to go.

SO YOU WANT TO ORGANIZE A PROTEST Get help: It is possible to organize a protest on your own, but most people work in small groups. Find some likeminded people (most people start with a friend or someone else affected by the issue) and start discussing plans.

triad-city-beat.com

the ‘red’ volume zone will not be used without the approval of the chief of police…. Ultimately I want the policy to reflect that this device is designed for the purpose of communicating with individuals and crowds when the environment or conditions make the natural voice ineffective.”

Protesters in Greensboro haven’t been met with the full force of the unit, and the LRAD’s crowd control function hasn’t been used here. But neither is out of the question, depending on the situation.

In all likelihood, you wouldn’t be surprised by the Civil Emergency Unit’s deployment — don’t expect to see it at run-of-the-mill rallies or family-friendly marches. If a protest escalated to the point where the department decided to deploy the unit, there would almost certainly be numerous warning signs and opportunities for you to leave first if you hoped to avoid it.

Pick your target: Make sure you know what you’re protesting. It will make it easier to communicate with people and convince them to attend. If you’re taking on a big, somewhat abstract cause (such as healthcare, for example), picking a target will help you focus and be more effective.

Pick your location: Once you know your target, the location of the protest becomes clearer. People protesting a city policy often demonstrate right outside of a city council meeting, right before the meeting starts. Other times the visibility of a busy street makes sense. Regardless, you’ll need to communicate to people where to meet.

Plan the protest: If it’s your first time organizing a protest, it’s probably best to keep it simple. Plan a rally, make some signs, and invite people to come. Adding a march or speakers can quickly complicate things, but if you want to include either, plan those as well. The more planning you’re able to put into your protest, the more likely it is to be successful.

Spread the word: People often spread the word about protests on Facebook, with fliers, by reaching out to related organizations or the media and by making announcements at other events. Your approach may depend on how much time you have and how much you want to be personally identified with the event. For example, if you are concerned about repercussions at work, a public Facebook event connected to your real name might be a bad idea.

Consider different scenarios: If the media shows up, who is going to talk to them? What if a guest speaker won’t stop rambling? What if there are counter protesters? If someone is arrested, will people be ready to wait for them outside of the jail? You can’t plan for every scenario and these possibilities shouldn’t stop you from planning your protest, but considering various scenarios can help you be ready.

Plan next steps: Your protest is over — what happens now? Activists typically want to sustain pressure on an issue or involvement of people they mobilized.

Maybe they want people to sign up to join an organization, or show up at the next city council meeting. The time to plan for what happens when the protest ends is before it starts, so that you have your petition, sign-up sheet and call to action in place at the protest itself.

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15

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

16

CULTURE My pierogi-tive for going to Cin Cin

by Eric Ginsburg

I

’m kinda over burgers, but I showed up at Cin Cin Burger Bar on Monday anyway because there’s another draw: pierogies.

If you’re looking for these eastern European dumplings somewhere in the Triad, skip Old Europe Restaurant (which doesn’t serve them) and head to the new chain-like burger bar across from the Quiet Pint in Winston-Salem.

Cin Cin is the latest creation from the Michael Family Restaurant Group, which also owns Waldo’s Wings and Mama Zoe Michael’s, where you can get anything from Greek spaghetti to a burrito, but not pierogies.

Cin Cin, with its speakeasy-themed décor, bright lights, semicircle banquettes and a covered patio out front already seems primed for franchising.

Despite being a Monday after 1 p.m., people packed Cin Cin, occupying most of the many tables and a chunk of the barstools, too. Televisions tuned to various news and sports channels ring the top of the restaurant on two sides, with dancy music playing in the background. Some of the walls sport unfinished wood, but Cin Cin feels more like Shane’s Rib Shack meets Bravo than a hipster bar.

It’s here that you can find pierogies, a European dumpling commonly associated with Poland that can be found throughout the eastern part of the continent. It’s possible that you can buy pierogies elsewhere in the Triad; the only ones I’ve found come in a pack at the grocery store, and failed to inspire much excitement when I cooked them at home.

Like dumplings, pierogies can be filled with all sorts of things, though potatoes are common. At Cin Cin, the Pittsburgh Pierogies come stuffed with a warm and soft potato and cheese

Pick of the Week Black Brunch @ Emma Key’s (GSO), March 19, 10 a.m.

Every third Sunday, Black Lives Matter Gate City hosts a gathering to break bread with members of the community and support a local black business. Emma Key’s newly added breakfast menu ends at 11 a.m. More info at the Facebook event page.

The Pittsburgh Pierogies at Cin Cin Burger Bar come with fried onions and a sour cream sauce on top. They’re slightly crunchy, like wontons, but are generally compared to dumplings.

ERIC GINSBURG

combo, topped with fried onions and a sour cream sauce with oughly enjoyed the No Money — No Honey burger with goat chives. They’re slightly crunchy, sort of like wontons, and are cheese, bacon, lettuce and sweet pepper jelly. It’s similar to deeply satisfying. The pierogies are technically a small plate, the burger I order at Hops in Greensboro, but there my fingers but there’s enough food that you could make it a meal or always end up a sticky mess. I made it out clean at Cin Cin, due share as a starter with a couple people. partly to a thick bun that soaked up some of the juiciness of But the focus at Cin Cin is on the burgers, fancy shakes the burger and contained its sticky toppings. (some of them alcoholic) and craft cocktails. Just two years Burgers take up too much of the local restaurant real estate, ago I was remarking that Winston-Salem is and they’re often uninspired and shoddily a hot-dog town while Greensboro is burger executed. Not so here at all, where my mecentral, but in that time more burger-cendium burger actually arrived as requestVisit Cin Cin Burger Bar at tric joints including Local 27101 and Burger ed — this should be a given, yes, but it’s 1425 W. First St. (W-S) or Batch have opened, the latter doing it up certainly not in my experience. I appreciatat cincinburgerbar.com. big with fancy shakes, too. ed the variety of side options too, ordering Cin Cin trades on the speakeasy/Prohibithe Asian noodles, a soba-style cold dish tion theme that’s also swept the country with mandarin oranges, peapods, shredin recent years, aligning with so-called “moonshine” producded carrots, a little pepper and some kick in the aftertaste. It tion in North Carolina. I get the appeal, but it’s a little overproved to be a nice counterpoint to my hot and sweet-topped wrought. Hell, Hardee’s sells a Midnight Moonshine burger. burger.

I was the kid who always preferred chicken nuggets to burgIn short: I’m not a burger guy, but I still recommend what ers on family fast-food runs, and I still do. I rarely crave burgCin Cin’s cooking. Accompanied with a shake, it’d be enough ers, which might make me a perfectly obnoxious food writer to make me keel over, so if you’re eying the fancy drink, split it who’s out of step with the general public. That said, I thorwith someone or order the pierogies for lunch instead.

SPREADING JOY ONE PINT AT A TIME

Up Front News 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

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joymongers.com | 336-763-5255 576 N. Eugene St. | Greensboro KAT BODRIE Liberty Brewery & Grill in High Point produces 800 barrels of beer per year. Brewer Todd Isbell is an advocate of removing the state-mandated limit on self-distribution that forces breweries into distributor dependency, some argue.

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

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“Our member companies and their owners have been actively engaged in the political process for several generations,” Kent said. “They will continue to do so now and in the future.

We make no apologies for that.”

Guilford County Sen. Trudy Wade, a Republican, received $19,750 from distributors. Wade is the co-chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which will likely vet HB 67 if it reaches the state Senate.

Wade, who is notoriously unresponsive to media inquiries, didn’t respond to requests for comment before press time.

A day after being introduced, the bill was referred to the Committee on Alcoholic Beverage Control, where it’s remained for more than a month. Rep. Jamie Boles, a Southern Pines Republican and a chairman of the committee, received almost $33,000 from distributors between 2013 and 2016, with $11,000 coming from the NC Beer & Wine Wholesalers PAC. Guilford County Republican Rep. Jon Hardister, who has expressed opposition to restrictive state beer laws before, is a vice chairman on the committee and couldn’t be reached for comment.

For small brewers like Isbell, the law is counterintuitive and needs to be changed.

“I don’t understand the rationale behind the government saying, ‘You’re doing too great. Now, you have to sell to this person you don’t know,’” said Isbell. “If you can’t expand organically, you’re forced to lose out.”

Culture

tate law mandates that breweries topping 25,000 barrels a year in production must use a distributor (also known as a wholesaler) to distribute their products to retailers. The law isn’t all that popular with smaller local breweries, and there’s a movement to change it.

by Kat Bodrie Craft breweries can benefit from using distributors if the breweries don’t have infrastructure like refrigerated trucks to ship their wares to retailers, or if they don’t have time to form relationships with retailers.

Winston-Salem’s Foothills Brewing is one such business with a positive relationship with its distributor, United Beverages of North Carolina, as the ubiquity of Foothills beer in restaurants, bars, bottleshops and grocery stores indicates.

“We just didn’t have the accounts or the relationships to get into grocery channels and convenience store channels... before we started working with distributors,” Foothills President Jamie Bartholomaus says in a recent marketing video for NC Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association.

Distributors also laud the current system, claiming lower prices for consumers and less competition for new breweries that are just starting out.

But problems can arise if distributors care more about the profits from easy-to-sell Big Beer brands than lesser-known craft beer products, and some breweries don’t like the requirement forcing them to contract a middleman.

“A distributor rep could have a portfolio exceeding 100 beers,” said Todd Isbell, the brewer at Liberty Brewery & Grill in High Point. “The sales interactions between a craft brewery and a customer could invariably be enhanced with an intimate, one-on-one relationship, as opposed to using a third party.”

Self-distribution without production regulation is the goal of many North Carolina craft breweries. The so-called “craft freedom” movement — spearheaded by Red Oak and supported by nearby breweries like Pig Pounder in Greensboro and Four Saints in Asheboro — aims to put power back into breweries’ hands by pushing for legislative reform.

On Feb. 8, a bipartisan group of legislators including Guilford County Democrat Rep. Pricey Harrison introduced House Bill 67, which would increase the current cap to 100,000 barrels a year.

Liberty, a brewpub that sells its beers on premises, produces just 800 barrels a year. But Isbell, who brews without assistance, is against the production cap on principle.

“I have no problems with distributors,” Isbell said, “but I’m against [the law] from an American entrepreneur standpoint.

Craft breweries should be able to choose whether or not to use a distributor.”

According to a March 6 press release from Democracy North Carolina, a left-leaning nonprofit based in Durham, individual beer distributors and the NC Beer & Wine Wholesalers PAC donated almost $1.5 million from 2013 to 2016 to key lawmakers, most of them Republicans.

Tim Kent, the executive director of the NC Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association, defended the expenditures to Triad City Beat.

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S

Movement against a rigged beer distro system grows

2921-D Battleground Ave. • Greensboro

thehubltd.com • 336-545-6535

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March 15 – 21, 2017 Up Front

C

lad in trademark chains across his arms and neck, JBOT walked through the crowd with a drum strapped around his shoulder, banging out rhythm along with the Russian national anthem that bellowed out of the speakers. He carried a red flag with the words “We’re all f***ed” hand-painted on it.

Curiosity and wonder filled the room as all eyes held on Jay Vance, more commonly known as JBOT, as he marched around the Garage on Sunday night,

Triaditude Adjustment

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CULTURE Robots invade, bringing Russian ramblings

by Spencer KM Brown

18

All Showtimes @ 9:00pm 3/15

Comedy + MailMyselfToThereau

3/16

For The Fire, Nevernauts, JT

3/17

Nite Moves Shamrockin’ Dance Party

3/18

Lift Tom Lift, Above The Mendoza

3/19

Crow’s Nest Presents NEON NIGHTS: Blam, Juice, Cesar Sanchez, Blaze N Trixz

3/21

Tim Poovey, Tight Fright

701 N Trade Street Winston-Salem, NC 27101

(336)955-1888 Pick of the Week UNCSA’s Symphony Orchestra @ Gerald Freedman Theatre (W-S), Saturday at 7:30 p.m., March 19 at 3 p.m.

The orchestra presents Antonin Dvorak’s engaging 8th Symphony, along with a performance by the winner of the 2017 Concerto Competition. Music Director Christopher James Lees conducts. More info at uncsa.edu.

and when he took the stage between his bandmates, the crowd pushed forward, awaiting what was to come.

Their enthusiasm was understandable — after all, JBOT’s bandmates are actual robots.

Controlled and pre-programmed through a mixing board towards the back of the stage, the two robots make up drums, guitar and bass, thrashing out a mathematically precise blend of grindcore and crust punk.

GTRBOT666 stands almost 8 feet tall, cradling a double-neck guitar/ bass combo in its mechanical grip.

DRMBOT 0110 sits at an eight-piece, stainless-steel drum kit wired with triggers and pedals. The robots moved and bobbed their head and had personalities all their own, SPENCER KM BROWN Jay Vance, or JBOT, and his mechanical bandmates give a bizarre and amazing performance at the Garage. closing the gap between human and machine. The style of metal and punk music the band plays has been heard set list and the robots thanked the crowd, Jay Vance many times before, but Vance makes up for the familiarity with perran to the back of the club to work his merch booth haps his enthusiastic performance and unique accompaniment. and meet with fans. These activities required a more Between songs, JBOT shouted his discontent with current nationhuman touch. al politics, even engaging in witty dialogue with GTRBOT666 and DRMBOT 0110 who cursed and hilariously let loose on their frontman.

Marching in to the Russian national anthem and hanging American and Russian flags on either side of the stage added a compelling political edge to Captured! by Robots’ performance, one that stirred fans into brays of cheering and that launched a wild mosh pit in the middle of the crowd.

Jay Vance built his robot band in 1996 and, as stated in his professional bio, says the idea came about because he was extremely unlikeable and wanted to play in a band after all of his past human bandmates hated him. Vance says he built the robots and programmed them to play music, but eventually they turned on him and enslaved him, forcing him to perform while they lash out with verbal abuse on their captive throughout the show.

Based out of San Francisco, Captured! by Robots has been touring the country since the mid-1990s. This 2017 tour, entitled the 20 Years of Suffering Tour, marks the 20th anniversary of the enterprise. While the band originally consisted of nine members, only one of them human, only two robots remain.

If something is lost in the music by the fact the musicians are robots, the ravenous crowd cheering for more didn’t seem to notice.

Vance ran throughout the downtown Winston-Salem club while screaming out vocals, joining the mosh pit, throwing beer and water on fans and stirring the crowd into action.

Opening the show for the night were Winston-Salem-based bands Support Free Press. Read us, Mortimer and Primovanhalen. Both bands laid down solid sets for the night, maintaining a large crowd of local fans for the duration of the follow us,advertise with us. show. Yet it seemed the openers got swept under the rug when the robots took the stage.

The moshing didn’t let up as the night wore on, and the crowd gathered close to the stage to witness the robots and Vance’s wild performance. As Captured! by Robots finished the last song on the

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CULTURE Gender-bending with the Sisters of Salem College

by Brian Clarey

Thursday, March 16 @ 8pm Friday, March 17 @ 8pm

Up Front

Open Mic Night

Jack Gorham & Bobbie Needham Saturday, March 18 @ 8pm Monday, March 19 @ 7pm

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Distant Future

Mystery Movie Monday

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602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

Mary Robert sees a disco ball, she exclaims, “Little Angels! Little Angels.”

And in the end, these members of the Pierrettes come together to sing the final number.

“But what are you left with/ when the lights go out? I’ll have my sisters with me still/ I’ll have my sisters, always will.”

It’s not just drama; it’s something real.

Triaditude Adjustment

Helen Simoneau Danse @ Hanesbrands Theatre (W-S), Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 7:30 p.m.

In its seventh season, the dance company presents three pieces that explore human connection and conversation across disciplines. The evenings feature live music by Must Be the Holy Ghost and the visual art of Weapons of Mass Projection.

More info at helensimoneau.com.

Shot in the Triad

Pick of the Week

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Donna Summer in Central Park and her body afire in tight and glittery red. She carried the action between scenes ably, with chops in both vocals and movement Megan Billups, as Mother Superior, along with other nuns Kate Banick as Sister Mary Robert and Kerri Hughes as Sister Mary Patrick, rose to the fore in the chorale. But scenes featuring the choir of nuns — after, that is, the disco diva takes over the choir — showcased deep harmonies and fine soloing, and even a little rapping.

While she’s teaching the nuns to put on a Vegas-style revue, Van Cartier is also being hunted by her former boyfriend Curtis and his gang of thugs — a crew played, in a sort of reverse-Shakespeare move, entirely by women.

Some of the play’s funniest moments came from the gang dressed in drag, a bumbling squad of doofuses with a few tight song-and-dance numbers and, as it develops, problems of their own. Monsignor O’Hara, played by Ginny Schnorenberg with perfect straight-man levity, runs a wonderful story arc, from grim preacher to funky emcee as the sisters’ act gets better and better.

“They’re here tonight,” he informed the crowd, “in the name of the Father, the Son and You Know Who!” The only men in the production were all in the fantastic five-piece chamber orchestra, helmed by pianist Jonathan Blake Borton, who graduated from Salem College — the school enrolls men above the age of 23 in the adult education track.

But the nuns owned this show with their singing, wisecracks, antics and wide-eyed innocence; the first time Sister

(336) 698-3888

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Y

ou can’t study drama at Salem College, the tiny women’s school that’s anchored Old Salem for almost 250 years.

There’s no drama department, so the Salem College Pierrettes theatrical troupe exists as an extracurricular, a club good for two shows a year, a drama in the fall and a musical in the early spring. The college was already more than 100 years old when students founded the Pierrettes in 1909, but these days it’s the oldest student-run group on campus, its shows a tradition that provide a backdrop against which so many college memories are painted.

The graduating seniors took up a full page of the playbill for this spring’s stage production of Sister Act with snippets of song lyrics, breathless exclamations and unabashed pledges of love for their fellow players.

It’s this sort of spirit among the cast — along with a script heavy with good female roles — that makes Sister Act the perfect vehicle for the Pierrettes.

“There’s a song at the end, we call it the Sisters Scene, that really captures it,” said musical director Cristy Lynn Brown, herself an accomplished mezzo soprano and voice instructor at Salem. “It’s what life at Salem College is all about.”

Brown relied on some of her vocal students for talent, recruited a few more from the dance department and filled the rest of the cast with theater nerds, shower singers and drama queens from the willing and able ranks of the Pierrettes.

Shania Guy’s star rose from her first moment on stage as the disco diva Deloris Van Cartier, with hair poofed out like

COURTESY PHOTO

Culture

Shania Guy, center, turns the gaggle of nuns from the Salem College Pierrettes’ production of Sister Act into a roadhouse R&B showcase.

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

20

SPORTSBALL

Gene Banks wields sport and spirituality

H

igh-school sophomore Gene Banks sat in a church pew in his mother’s basement, wringing his hands. He waited in the room — a small, subterranean sanctuary that

by Joel Sronce brought many in his West Philadelphia neighborhood together — for a decision that would change the course of his life.

Banks played on a basketball team that would take part in the televised state championship game in a few hours. College coaches, reporters and fans from around the country had come to see the team and its young star, but one thing stood in the way: He wasn’t allowed to play on Sundays.

More than 40 years later, Banks — who would become an All-American at Duke University in 1980 and 1981, a 7-year NBA veteran, a 12-year professional player and the creator of the Gene Banks League of Greensboro — still remembers fretting in the basement pew, while in a separate room in his mother’s house, two Pentecostal pastors and a deacon from another church debated his fate.

“I thought they weren’t going to let me go,” Banks said, referring to the pastors. “They were really hardcore. They were my aunts, too, so they were like, ‘This ain’t gonna happen.’”

But finally, the deacon, a mentor to Banks in those formative years, entered the sanctuary with a hint of a smile.

“Get out of here,” he said.

The teenager ran. He caught two trains and arrived at the gym in time.

As Banks now defines it, he then proceeded to have the game of his life.

For Banks — who at age 57 maintains a sturdy physique to his 6-foot-7 frame — spirituality has always been present in basketball. Throughout his career, he experienced moments too unbelievable to deny that a greater force guided the events to their extraordinary conclusions — a spontaneous reaction, a leading hand.

On Senior Day in 1981, his last-second shot sent a heated game against rival UNC into overtime, which resulted in one of the most memorable victories in Duke basketball history.

Years later, playing on a team in France, Banks hit a buzzer-beater that saved his team from relegation and earned him a considerable financial bonus.

Immediately after the shot went in, Banks ran to the team’s general manager, asking for a phone.

He called his wife, who was staying with her parents in Greensboro and was searching for a home for herself, her husband and their two daughters.

Now with the financial means that came directly from his unbelievable shot, Banks told her, crying, “Go find that house.”

Like basketball itself, spirituality has also been a bridge to community, a catalyst for together-

ness that reflects his convivial upbringing in West Philadelphia.

In San Antonio, during his first few years in the NBA from 1981 to 1985, he began the Gene Banks Fiesta League, a program that worked to bring disenfranchised Hispanic and African-American youth together through mentorship and community cultural awareness.

Off the court, Banks would attend Hispanic churches and other religious sanctuaries to express solidarity through worship.

“I’ve gone to a synagogue and to a mosque, and my thing was, it’s not so much that I’m praying to your religion,” he said. “I’m there enjoying the fellowship; I’m there enjoying the spirituality of it.”

Banks said he values learning those different traditions, as they introduce him to something new.

To some, sport and spirituality as tools for social unification may seem flimsy when compared to political policy or more direct community action.

But in Greensboro, Banks has needed all the help he can find.

In 1994, now settled in the new house in Greensboro, Banks developed the Gene Banks League, a program that uses sports and academics to provide unity and structure to young people in order to support their growth and understanding of community.

But his endeavor proved harder than he expected.

“In Greensboro, I cannot get the support when it comes to youth programming,” he said.

More often than not, academic institutions, community and religious leaders, and those in political positions haven’t shown up.

“This is a clique town,” Banks continued. “People have certain cliques, people have their own agendas.”

Whether reestablishing a summer league or advocating for an athletic and cultural community center in east Greensboro, Banks hasn’t received the support he seeks. While he continues to use sport and spirituality as vehicles to bring communities together and engender progress, he doesn’t perceive a similar desire in other community leaders.

“If [social issues] aren’t gonna be addressed, it’ll keep going with the status quo,” Banks said. “They want to maintain the same thing.”

He would like to see seminars for people from different social divisions to come together and create dialogue to address issues.

“First and foremost,” Banks said, “we must be open to accept and hear the history of what has happened here. Secondly, where have we come from that history? Lastly, where are we gonna go?”

Coming from an upbringing of community, and having received the support and witnessed the changes realized in other cities, Banks emphasized the priority of communication.

“You have to talk,” he said decisively. “You definitely have to talk.”

In 1981, Gene Banks’ last-second shot sent a headed game against UNC into overtime, resulting in one of Duke’s greatest wins.

COURTESY PHOTO

Banks, left, poses more recently with Duke’s famous (or infamous) Coach K.

COURTESY PHOTO

Pick of the Week Port Huron Prowlers vs. Danville Dashers @ WinstonSalem Fairgrounds, Friday at 7:30 p.m.

Before the inaugural season of the Carolina Thunderbirds in Winston-Salem this fall, the Fairgrounds Annex hosts a neutral-site game between the Prowlers and the Dashers of the Federal Hockey League. More info at carolinathunderbirds.com.

by Matt Jones

Culture

Friday, March 24th @ 6pm

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Anniversary Party

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Kleur Shop 724 Trade St NW, Winston-Salem • 724-422-5553 Sportsball triad-city-beat.com Crossword

Upper limit for a jungle gym, maybe Lingerie item similar to a romper Antiseptic gel source Character in “The Wind in the Willows” Victory celebration Exactly correct Ice Cube’s real first name Small iPods “Closing Bell” network ACL’s location Free ad, briefly Fasten fabric Verb suffix?

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39 40 41 47 48 49 52 54 57 58 61 62 63

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Down 1 Early Tarzan actor Buster 2 “To be or not to be” soliloquist 3 Way shorter than 2-Down, say 4 The King of Pop, in tabloids 5 Aesthetic pursuit 6 “Doin’ the Pigeon” singer 7 Toyotathon, e.g.

8 Olympic speed skater ___ Anton Ohno 9 “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)” singer Cantrell 10 Office PC hookup 11 Outer skin layer 12 Homes for some lizards 13 Like an epic voyage 19 “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” singer Belinda

Triad City Beat’s

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Across 1 Actor John of the “Harold and Kumar” movies 4 Boxer’s blows 8 Equipped for 14 Kurosawa’s adaptation of “King Lear” 15 Math class calculation 16 Situated 17 Protestant denom. founded in Philadelphia 18 Genre for bands like Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, in the wrong key?

20 Chess side 22 Bluish duck 23 Places for MDs and RNs 24 “Get Shorty” sequel 26 Hall of Famer Carew 28 “___ Boot” (1981 war film) 29 “You too?” a la Caesar ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 30 Villainous 33 “Why am ___? What does it all mean?”

35 Screw-shaped pasta 37 MTV cartoon with the show-within-a-show “Sick, Sad World” 38 Metallica hit, in the wrong key?

42 Looks at lewdly 43 Relate a story about 44 Go no further 45 Cookie with a Peeps-flavored 2017 variety 46 Brats 50 “The Star-Spangled Banner” lyricist 51 “Neither snow, ___ rain ...”

53 Catch cunningly 55 “___ for Alibi” (Sue Grafton mystery) 56 Unwell Answers from previous publication.

59 “The Jetsons” pet 60 “Runaway” singer, in the wrong key?

21 College catalog listings 64 Meal starter?

25 “Dallas Buyers Club” actor Jared 65 “That makes sense” 27 “I ___ such thing!”

66 “Eso ___” (Paul Anka hit) 31 Melbourne is its capital 67 Fuss 32 Comic book line artist 68 City where Canada’s parliament meets 34 Got cranky 69 2.0 grades 36 Jimmy who works with Lois Lane 70 Man cave, really 38 Mixed-breed dog that sounds like a bird

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CROSSWORD ‘Change of Key’ you’ll have to pick another one.

Eric, Brian and Jordan: the Three Amigos

21

March 15 – 21, 2017

Walker Avenue, Greensboro

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Last-minute adjustments before the next round at the first North Carolina Robotics Competition at UNCG.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship... connect your business to success.

336-379-5001

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It keeps you runnin’

Playing March 16 – 18

Up Front

Friday Night Standup Presents

St. Patrick’s Day Drunken Stand Up 8:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. Friday, March 17. $5 Tickets!

News Opinion

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

Saturday Night Improv 8:30 p.m. & 10 pm. Sat., Mar. 18

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

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Playing March 17 – 22 St. Patty’s Beer & Board Games Night

7 p.m. Friday, March 17.

More than $100 board games -- FREE TO PLAY! $1 off all craft bottles!

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--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS--

Saturday Morning Cartoons

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

Geeksboro Anime Club Free Admission. 1 p.m. Saturday, March 18 TV CLUB: Samurai Jack New Episode! 11 p.m. Saturday, March 18.

Free Admission with Drink Purchase

Totally Rad Trivia 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 21 Drink N’ Draw 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 22 All Artists of All Ages & Skill Levels are Welcome!

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro geeksboro.com •

336-355-7180

Triaditude Adjustment

TV CLUB: The Walking Dead 9 p.m. Sunday, March 19. Free Admission With Drink Purchase

Shot in the Triad

have a complicated relationship as the people in it, whether it was seeing Chrissie Hynde in with Facebook’s “On this Day” feaconcert, hearing Laurie Anderson talk about creativity or just ture. Sometimes I enjoy the remindforcing myself to make eye contact with handsome baristas ers of places I’ve visited, of spending with deliberately crappy tattoos. time with friends who I rarely see and It worked, so I worked. I got a job fact-checking a book of brief flirtations with the Paleo diet, about investment strategies, sspending most days sitting in revenge poetry and a man with an battered, leather coffeeshop furniture, circling slightly inacunfortunate tooth-to-gum ratio, in curate Warren Buffett quotes. I had a brief-but-enjoyable gig

by Jelisa Castrodale reverse chronological order. Mostly with a celebrity magazine you probably read while you wait it shows how often I’ve worn the same bleach-faded Doobie to check out at Target, an assignment that lasted just long Brothers T-shirt over the past decade. enough for me to make out with one of my (equally tempoThis month, Facebook’s daily updates have been commemrary) coworkers. orating the time I ran away to Brooklyn for six or seven weeks, There is something about that collection of boroughs that and there’s really no better way to describe it than running makes you work harder, if only because every day you’re standaway. I was a couple of years out of a relationship that even ing shoulder to shoulder with people who are doing the same Facebook rarely reminds me of, and my career felt like it had thing. My friends — the real ones and the temporary ones — turned into a collection of tight-lipped responses thanking me were all networking, hustling, freelancing, striving and forcing for my interest. I wasn’t writing anything other than cover letthemselves to be confident enough to do all of it. At the end ters for résumés that were ignored, selected and dragged into of the day, when I dragged myself past the Dick Chicken on the the trash, along with Bed Bath & Beyond coupons, LinkedIn second floor, I felt like I needed to roll a heavy mesh security updates and other things that no one really wants. screen over my own brain, just in case someone tried to steal A friend of a friend was getting ready to sublet her place and my motivation while I slept. needed a reasonably responsible renter, so I went. I wanted a After six weeks, I came back to Winston-Salem feeling change of scenery, even if that meant laying awake at night, sharper, and like I’d learned how to use my own newly forged staring at a different pattern of shadows on a different ceiling. blades to trim anything unnecessary from my life, slicing free Her apartment was in an imposing, impressively crumbling of anything that slowed me down. I was also exhausted. (But building in Williamsburg, one that looked like it would slide I went back for another five weeks later that summer.) Seeing into the East River if you scrolled through Google Street View those Facebook posts reminds me that I need to get back too quickly. It had exposed pipes, chunks of missing plaster there. Not necessarily to that hulking Brooklyn building, but I and faded spray paint in the stairwells from an artist who definitely need that kind of lean urgency again. called himself Dick Chicken. (This may or may not have been The apartment owner and I exchanged emails shortly after the Dick Chicken. I never found out.) Anyway, it was perfect.

I originally settled in and the bookcase was again in one funcI carried two months worth of stuff into her apartment and tional piece. She asked how I’d gotten there, and I told her it immediately knocked over one of her bookcases, spending was mostly because I was running away from my problems. the first 20 minutes trying to re-pot a plant and brushing (In retrospect, I think she’d just meant, “Which train did you black soil out of thousands of pages before sliding them back take?”) onto the shelves. These were her books — she was (and is) a She said she understood, but that she’d reached a point talented, critically acclaimed novelist — and those previously where she knew what she wanted and ran toward it instead. well-organized paperbacks were bound, ISBNed proof that I think I can do that now, too. I’m trying, anyway. she’d done something, finished something and sent her words Jelisa Castrodale is a freelance writer who lives in Winston-Saout into the world. lem. She enjoys pizza, obscure power-pop records and will probaMy career had been entirely confined to the internet, so I bly die alone. Follow her on Twitter @gordonshumway. didn’t have anything tangible to show for it, not without an active wi-fi connection. I can’t pull a paperback out of my bag and casually drop it onto the table at parties. (Not that novelists typically do this, although I believe that Mitch Albom might.) The best I could do is to corner someone by the guacamole, shoving my Twitter feed in their face and shout about the time I was retweeted by the former governor of Vermont. I’m super Take charge of your mind, body and spirit fun, obviously.

Test pH balance, allergies, hormones Anyway, at the time, it felt wrong to Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions even refer to what I had as a career. It Create a personalized health and nutrition plan felt dishonest, like trying to convince someone that your poorly stitched Canal (336) 456-4743 • jillclarey3@gmail.com Street knockoff handbag was the real 3723 West Market St., Unit–B, Greensboro, NC 27403 thing. I spent six weeks trying to shake www.thenaturalpathwithjillclarey.com that feeling, and the city helped as much

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TRIADITUDE ADJUSTMENT

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STEVE WOZNIAK

Co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc., High Point University Innovator-In-Residence

Monday, March 6