TCB Dec. 14, 2023 — 'We're Losing A Whole Generation' by Triad City Beat

THE PEOPLE’S PAPER DEC. 14 - 27, 2023

‘ We’re losing a whole

generation’ Families affected by the fentanyl crisis seek justice, support BY GALE MELCHER | PG. 5

ELSEWHERE, RENEWED

DOSE ART COLLECTIVE

HI-SPEED RAIL

PG. 13

PG. 15

PG. 12

UP FRONT | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

CITY LIFE THURSDAY

DEC. 14 - 17 Museum of American Art (W-S) 9:30 a.m. Good Impressions: Portraits Across Three Centuries from Reynolda and Wake Forest was mounted to “mark the recent conservation treatment of John Singleton Copley’s 1762 Portrait of Mrs. Daniel Rogers (Elizabeth Gorham Rogers) in the collection of Wake Forest University, and Reynolda House’s recent acquisition of Kwame Brathwaite’s 1973 photograph Changing Times.” Plan your visit at reynolda.org.

Gingerbread Dog House Contest @ Bull City Ciderworks (GSO) 6 p.m.

Kersey Valley Christmas @ 1615 Kersey Valley Road (Archdale) 5:30 p.m.

All Pets Considered is hosting its first gingerbread dog house contest at Bull City Ciderworks. The price includes a gingerbread house, treats to decorate with, a pet goodie bag and a beverage for humans. Visit the event page on Facebook for more information.

Kersey Valley Christmas is a family-friendly event featuring a winter wonderland with more than 2 million Christmas lights, photo ops, visits with Santa, attractions and rides. Find more information and purchase tickets at kerseyvalleychristmas.com.

Nativity According to the Gospels @ HanesBrands Theatre (W-S) 7:30 p.m.

Rhonda Thomas Jazzy Soul Christmas Concert @ the Historic Magnolia House (GSO) 7 p.m.

Nativity According to the Gospels, presented by NC Black Rep, is a holiday musical that tells the story of Christmas through a fusion of gospel music, Afro-centric dance and spoken word. Purchase tickets at ncblackrep.org.

FRIDAY

Bring in the holidays at Magnolia House with soulful, live holiday jazz music by vocalist Rhonda Thomas and saxophonist Kyle Turner. Visit the event page on Facebook to purchase tickets.

SATURDAY

The Final Lap Cruise-In & Celebration @ Winston Cup Museum (W-S) 10 a.m.

THE TRIAD’S LOCAL EVENT TICKETING PLATFORM 2

The Winston Cup Museum is permanently closing its doors after nearly two decades in business. Join them for a final cruise-in and celebration honoring the museum’s preservation of the “Golden Era” of stock car racing. Visit the event page on Facebook for more information.

Winter WonderPark @ High Point City Lake Park (Jamestown) 4 p.m. Enjoy festive holiday lights and decorations, hot cocoa, train and carousel rides and more at High Point City Lake Park. The event is free to attend, but unlimited ride passes can be purchased in advance at https://bit.ly/46DoCnC.

Grinch-mas Whoville Party @ Boxcar (GSO) 8 p.m. Boxcar invites you to dress in your Grinchiest attire or as your favorite Who and join them for some Grinchinspired holiday fun. Grab a free pic with Santa, dance to Christmas music and enjoy themed spirits like the Cindy Lou Shooter, Grinch Punch or Max’s Sleighride. More information on the Facebook event page.

SUNDAY

Turpentine Shine @ Stock + Grain Assembly (HP) 8 p.m. Head to Stock + Grain for bluegrass jams by Turpentine Shine.

Good Impressions: Portraits Across Three Centuries from Reynolda and Wake Forest @ Reynolda House

Scan the QR code to find more events at triad-citybeat.com/local-events

Seasons Best Carolers @ Stock + Grain (HP) 11 a.m.

Seasons Best Carolers has spread Christmas joy throughout the Triad for nearly 15 years. Stop by Stock + Grain to hear the group’s “perfectly blended harmonies.” More information on the Facebook event page.

TCBTix is the local ticketing platform created exclusively for Triad-area community events. It’s free, easy to use, and fully customizable with all-access ticketing features to meet your event’s unique needs. For more information, scan the QR code or email chris@triad-city-beat.com.

DEC. 19 - 24

Annie Warbucks @ Winston-Salem White Christmas @ Carolina Theatre Theatre Alliance (W-S) 2 p.m. (GSO) 7 p.m.

Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance celebrates the 30th anniversary of Annie Warbucks, the sequel to the Tony Award-winning Annie. Purchase tickets at theatrealliance. ws/box_office.

Stop by Carolina Theatre for a screening of White Christmas where a group of four singers plan a musical extravaganza to save a friend’s failing business. Tickets available at carolinatheatre.com.

TUESDAY

FRIDAY

the holiday spirit” and enjoy a brunch prepared by the bakery’s elves before getting creative at holiday craft stations. Visit savorthemomentbakery.com for more information and tickets.

Tailgators Annual Christmas Party @ Tailgators (GSO) 8 p.m. Tailgators is hosting an ugly Christmas sweater party with live music by Jukebox Revolver. Party for a good cause! Drink tickets will be provided to those who donate a new or gently used coat to support A Cleaner World’s Give a Kid a Coat campaign. More information on the Facebook event page.

UP FRONT | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

CITY LIFE

Scan the QR code to find more events at triad-citybeat.com/local-events

SUNDAY

Down-Home Christmas @ Clemmons Ugly Sweater Party with Wristband @ First Baptist Church (Clemmons) 7:30 Garage Tavern (GSO) 8 p.m. Head to Garage Tavern for a rocking Ugly Sweater Party p.m. Salem Band invites you to its annual holiday concert, Down-Home Christmas. Hear your favorite traditional songs including Silent Night, The Holly & the Ivy and more. Free and open to the public. Contact musicdirector@ salemband.org for more information.

with live music by Wristband. Visit the event page on Facebook for more information.

The Ramkat’s final silent disco party of the year features music by DJs Poochie La Fever, 1dg and Mauve Angeles. A prize is in it for the guest with the ugliest sweater. Purchase tickets at theramkat.com.

THURSDAY

Second annual Ugly Sweater Party @ Blooming Board (HP) 6 p.m. The Blooming Board invites you to jingle and mingle during the second annual Ugly Sweater Party with festive fun, exclusive drink specials and cash prizes for the ugliest sweaters. Visit the event page on Facebook for more information.

Holiday Silent Disco Dance Party @ the Ramkat (W-S) 9 p.m.

SATURDAY

Brunch with the Elves @ Savor the Moment (HP) 12 p.m.

Santa’s Christmas Eve Wine & Cookie Flight @ the Loaded Grape (GSO) 12 p.m. Cookies can be enjoyed with more than just milk. The Loaded Grape invites you to enjoy three Christmas cookies paired with a specially selected wine anytime while supplies last until 6 p.m. Guarantee your flight by pre-purchasing at loadedgrape.com.

Savor the Moment invites you to “immerse yourself in

Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, 8PM

SAT, JAN 20, 2024

Steep Canyon Rangers, Grammy winners and Billboard chart-toppers, join the GSO for an evening of Bluegrass!

SAT, FEB 10, 2024

One of the most successful rock groups of the 70s and 80s, Jefferson Starship performs their top hits with the GSO.

GET YOUR TICKETS TODAY!

336-335-5456 x 224 Greensborosymphony.org Ticketmaster.com

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY

“

You’re just playing roulette every single time you take a pill, and you don’t know where that pill came from, and that person probably bought it from somebody else who bought it from somebody else.

“

UP FRONT | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

OPINION

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

— Amy Lamb, pg. 5

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

A week for movies

love going to the movies. I love buying the tickets, lining up at concessions, getting my popcorn — and the by Sayaka Matsuoka popcorn salt — and reclining in my seat for two hours, watching a story play out on a giant screen in front of me. And I love it even more when it’s in Japanese. This past week, Sam and I went to the movies two days in a row, both times to see films that were made in Japan. And that’s kind of a big deal. Of course, growing up in the United States, I watched American content. Everything was in English. That meant that the only time I got to interface with the language I grew up with was when I talked to my parents or I watched Japanese dramas on my laptop via random torrent websites. But now, in 2023, I can go to the movies just like everyone else and watch films in my native language. And after coming back from Japan, where I was immersed in it for weeks, it feels like a reprieve. Sure, we watch Japanese stuff at

home — lots of anime, and the occasional thriller or TV drama. But it’s a different thing entirely to be able to go out in public and experience it, especially in a place like Greensboro. So on Saturday, we bought tickets and watched the new Godzilla movie, Godzilla Minus One, and less than 24 hours later, we were in the same theater watching the new Miyazaki film, The Boy and the Heron, otherwise known as Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka in Japanese, roughly translated to, “How do you live?” When we went the second day, I noticed that there was an Asian family — a mother, two kids and a father — seated in our row. But as the film progressed, I picked up on a few words that the kids would utter as they watched the movie. “Ah, kaeru da.” Oh, a frog! “Tori!” Bird! And I realized they were Japanese. And it filled my heart with joy. Because when I was a kid, I never got to watch a Miyazaki film in Japanese. Instead, my sister and I spent hours watching the VHS tapes in the custodian-closet-turned-office at my parent’s restaurant on Sunday afternoons. Now, more than 15 years later, the 12-year-old me from back then couldn’t be happier.

This past week, I got to watch not one, but two, movies in Japanese in the theater.

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336.681.0704 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR

Sayaka Matsuoka

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CITYBEAT REPORTER Gale Melcher

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WEBMASTER Sam LeBlanc

chris@triad-city-beat.com

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Nathaniel Thomas

nathaniel@triad-city-beat.com

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry, John Cole, Owens Daniels, James Douglas, Michelle Everette, Luis H. Garay, Destiniee Jaram, Kaitlynn Havens, Jordan Howse, Matt Jones, Autumn Karen, Michaela Ratliff, Jen Sorensen, Todd Turner

TCB IN A FLASH @ triad-city-beat.com

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COVER: L-R, back-front: Amy Lamb, Kim Pishdadi, Lori Gray and Deborah Peeden have all lost loved ones in the last few years to fentanyl poisoning. Photo by Carolyn de Berry Design by Aiden Siobhan

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER Receive weekly updates on breaking News stories with Monday Mix, stay in the loop with our curated events calendar The Weekender, and view our headlining stories with TCB This Week.

L-R, back-front: Amy Lamb, Kim Pishdadi, Lori Gray and Deborah Peeden have all lost loved ones in the last few years to fentanyl poisoning.

City Beat stories are free to republish, courtesy of Triad City Beat and the NC Local News Lab Fund. See our website for details.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

NEWS | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

NEWS

A CityBeat story

‘We’re Losing a Whole Generation’

Families affected by the fentanyl crisis seek justice, support

by Gale Melcher | gale@triad-city-beat.com

n Oct. 21, Thomas Lamb’s dog Ruggie greeted guests in a royal purple East Carolina University collar. Lamb’s mother, Amy, acted as host in a rainbow tie-dyed shirt and multicolored wig. Colorful balloons and streamers adorned the rooms of the house, while in the background, the ECU Pirates played the Charlotte 49ers on the living room TV. His friends had all gathered as well, each wearing a different color of the rainbow. They had come together to celebrate Thomas’ 20th birthday. But to his family and friends, he’s still 18. Last September, Thomas purchased a pill to help him sleep; he thought it was Xanax. He had been struggling with depression that was keeping him up at night. On Sept. 14, he took the pill and went to bed. He never woke up. Test results later found that the pill Thomas purchased had been laced with a lethal dose of fentanyl, an incredibly potent and addictive synthetic opioid. While pharmaceutical fentanyl can be prescribed by doctors to treat severe pain, illegally-manufactured fentanyl has been infiltrating street drugs for the last several years, causing a drastic increase in overdose deaths. Hundreds of victims in Guilford County like Thomas have died after purchasing different drugs that were laced with fentanyl. Over the last couple months, Triad City Beat spoke to families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl poisoning. Many of them said that law enforcement officers who responded to the scene and handled their cases were rude or uncommunicative, while others felt like they did a good job. But none of them feel like they got justice for the people they lost.

These families hoped that a 2019 death-by-distribution law, which was updated this December, would be used by law enforcement to put those responsible for selling tainted drugs behind bars. Instead, the dealers weren’t tracked down, and any evidence that was collected was deemed insufficient for charges. Still, others who work in the harm-reduction space say that the death-by-distribution and other trafficking laws disproportionately harm communities of color, continuing the decades of racist policing started with the so-called “war on drugs,” coined by the Nixon administration in the ’70s. All the while, the families left behind continue to seek solutions in an effort to prevent the same heartbreaking losses they have had to endure. “He was my world, everything; I miss him so bad,” said Lamb. Thomas was her only child.

‘The new Russian roulette’

ccording to the North Carolina Division of Public Health, Guilford County recorded 188 fentanyl poisonings in 2021; the previous year, the county clocked 113. In 2021, Mecklenburg County also saw 188 fentanyl poisonings while Wake County counted 177. For context, Guilford County has a population of 541,299 per the 2020 census, less than half of each of the populations of Mecklenburg County — 1.12 million — and Wake County — 1.13 million. The numbers are climbing statewide, too. In 2020, 2,398 people died from fentanyl poisoning in NC. The next year, that number jumped to 3,117. In 2022, the state saw 3,354 fentanyl-positive deaths. Between 5

NEWS | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

January and August of this year, there have been 2,250 fentanyl-positive deaths in North Carolina. “All of his friends will tell you, I was concerned about fentanyl,” Lamb said. “I would talk with him about it, and it didn’t do any good.” The increase in fentanyl is largely due to the fact that the drug is much cheaper to manufacture than other drugs. It is cut into pills or powder drugs such as cocaine and heroin, then passed off as the real deal. These pills are often stamped to look just like name-brand drugs — pills that “look just like a Xanax that you might steal from your grandma’s medicine cabinet,” said Sandy Harrington, Thomas’ aunt. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, laboratory testing indicates that seven out of every 10 pills they seize contain a lethal dose of fentanyl. The lethal dose of fentanyl is much lower than other drugs — while the lethal dose of heroin is 100 mg, fentanyl’s is around 2 mg. The DEA’s website notes that it has seized a record 74.5 million fentanyl pills to date this year, exceeding last year’s total of 58 million pills. Kids are playing “the new Russian roulette,” Harrington said. “Back when I was growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we knew who grew the marijuana,” she said. “And now, you don’t know.” Even if you know the person you’re getting it from, she said, they might not know that their pills have fentanyl in them. “You don’t know which one is which,” Lamb added. “You’re just playing roulette every single time you take a pill, and you don’t know where that pill came from, and that person probably bought it from somebody else who bought it from somebody else. They don’t know what they’re peddling, really.” The loss of her nephew was “devastating,” Harrington said. But the subsequent lack of justice pains Harrington just as much. “The lieutenant that was assigned our case, she did almost zero about it,” she said. “She just basically said, ‘It happens, he shouldn’t have taken the pill.’ “There’s other kids in this neighborhood that the same thing has happened to,” she continued. “And the police officer said it’s too big for them to investigate it any further. Nobody tried to figure out where he got it from, trace it down, nothing like that.”

What is law enforcement doing, or not doing, about overdose deaths?

hen there’s an overdose death in Guilford County, patrol deputies with the sheriff’s department respond to the scene. They create the initial report and then the case is assigned to a major crimes investigations unit detective according to Guilford County Sheriff’s Office’s Communications Specialist Bria Evans. Then, the assigned detective works the investigation in coordination with the Medical Examiner’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office. Evans said that all fentanyl cases are worked with the “same seriousness and diligence as any other major crimes case.” The Greensboro Police Department’s Public Information Coordinator Patrick DeSota echoed a similar sentiment. He said that the department “investigate[s] deaths and follow up on evidence that is discovered.” But families affected by the fentanyl crisis told TCB that the dealers involved in the deaths of their loved ones haven’t been arrested or charged with any crimes. And that has to do with which statutes law enforcement officers use to arrest perpetrators and whether district attorneys have enough evidence to prosecute those involved. After years of increasing fentanyl deaths, in 2019, state lawmakers passed a deathby-distribution law. The law stated that a person is guilty of death by distribution if all of the following requirements are met: the person unlawfully sold at least one controlled substance such as an opioid, cocaine or methamphetamine, that the substance they sold caused the death of the user and that the person who sold the drug did not act with malice. The crime was a Class C felony, which usually results in a 5-12 year prison sentence with a maximum sentence of 19 years. On Dec. 1, the law was updated to remove the requirement that the defendant did not act with malice; the sale of the drug isn’t required for charges either. Under the new law, perpetrators can be charged with a Class C felony if they simply distribute a drug such as methamphetamine, fentanyl or cocaine that leads to a victim’s death. Additionally, if the defendant did act with malice, the offense would be a Class B2 felony. But even with the updated death-by-distribution law, law enforcement officials say that using laws related to trafficking are easier to use. These laws tend to be broader,

and in NC, cover individuals who manufacture, sell, deliver or possess controlled substances. State law notes that those caught with at least four grams of heroin, opioid, opiate or opium qualify for felony charges with a minimum sentence of 70 months in prison. Higher amounts can lead to a maximum sentence of more than 20 years. According to Captain M. Holder with the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, heroin usage, along with fentanyl, has become much more prevalent in Guilford County. He said that it’s really common for cocaine to be cut with fentanyl, too. When drug usage changes, law enforcement and drug dealers alike have to adjust their strategies. “The dealers adjust, so they go where the best profit margins are,” Holder explained. “So sometimes your cocaine will be replaced by fentanyl or some of your cocaine dealers will become fentanyl dealers. We just go where the best information is. We don’t specifically say we’re only making fentanyl cases or only making cocaine cases. We try to make the cases that have the best impact on our county.” One of the reasons why Guilford County is “a hub” for drug activity is because of its major highways, Holder said, and that they “have to work that aggressively.” Sometimes they’re catching several pounds of fentanyl and heroin at a time, he said. “We’re trying to cut that off at the top before it makes it down,” said Holder. And that strategy may be working. On Nov. 20, 25 people were charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl — along with methamphetamine and cocaine hydrochloride, or powdered cocaine — in Guilford and other counties. The indictment followed a two-year investigation. According to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of North Carolina, individual defendants face penalties ranging from 5 years to life sentences for narcotics conspiracy, distribution and possession with intent to distribute, depending on the drug amounts involved in the offenses. “Often we reach amounts that carry minimum mandatory sentences in prison,” Holder explained during a Nov. 9 community town hall. During the community meeting, Holder delved into the death-by-distribution law and explained why law enforcement hasn’t used it in the past. In order to substantiate a death-by-distribution charge, law enforcement has to prove that the drug that killed a person came from a specific individual. And that part is difficult to prove. But proving drug trafficking? Not so much. “We don’t know if we can substantiate a death by distribution [charge], but we’re pretty confident we can make a narcotics case on this suspect,” Holder said. “I don’t know that it’s fair for me to say that it is replacing death by distribution [charges], but it might be — with the resources that we have — the best way that we can approach that case.” By using this strategy, sometimes they can catch a drug trafficker “literally as soon as they leave their car,” he said. The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office backs Holder’s assertion that the death-bydistribution law is being used sparingly. According to the office, only one person has ever been charged with death by distribution. The victim’s official cause of death was acute fentanyl toxicity. When asked about the law, Evans with the sheriff’s office said that cases would “continue to be investigated in the same manner” even with the updated law. DeSota, with the Greensboro police department, echoed the sheriff’s office’s stance. He said that “as of now there are no planned changes” to how GPD operates in terms of drug overdose cases. When asked whether GPD had ever charged anyone with death by distribution, DeSota replied, “Not that I am aware.” Deborah Peeden lost her granddaughter Ashley in October 2021. She was 23 years old, and she thought she was doing cocaine with friends. The Greensboro Police Department handled Ashley’s case. “Ashley’s case was never really investigated,” Peeden told TCB. Many details of the case concern her. “She was left in an apartment for over 13 hours. The person whose apartment she was in left her unresponsive on the floor, took her car, was gone for a few hours, and then when they came back they waited another two hours before calling EMS.” They “could not give the police department a reasonable explanation as to why they waited,” she said. Peeden’s mission is to make sure this doesn’t happen to other families. She’s now part of Forgotten Victims of the Piedmont Triad, an organization that raises awareness about fentanyl. Peeden said that police refused to take Ashley’s phone as evidence and that they

What roles does the district attorney play in this?

he district attorney decides who to prosecute — who to charge with a crime and which charges to dismiss, what crime to charge them with, and whether to divert the case to a program, such as drug treatment or education, so the person can avoid a criminal conviction. Avery Crump has been Guilford County district attorney since January 2019. In an email to TCB, Crump shifted the responsibility back to law enforcement, writing that her office will prosecute these cases “if law enforcement makes an arrest and provides enough evidence to prosecute.” But Toni Wiker said that district attorneys need to be more aggressive. On Dec. 30, 2019, Wiker lost her son, Andy, after he bought what he thought was heroin; it ended up being laced with fentanyl. Andy was a musician and an artist from Jamestown who “had lots of people that loved and supported him,” including his long-time girlfriend, Wiker said. The death by distribution law had just gone into effect that December when Andy died. Wiker said that the sheriff’s deputies took Andy’s case seriously in 2019. “The house was packed full of deputies, state

police, High Point police, ambulance — there had to be 40 people in here,” Wiker said. “They did a very thorough job.” According to Wiker, she said that law enforcement found text messages between her son and the dealer on his phone and that they had a picture of the dealer’s car at the car wash where Andy met him. “That seems pretty slam-dunk,” she said. “Just saying.” But Andy’s dealer was never charged with death by distribution. “They say that it’s hard to prove, but they found the heroin with fentanyl on my son,” Wiker said. Wiker asserts that the person who sold her son the fentanyl is a known heroin dealer and that if they would have just arrested the dealer for selling heroin, that would’ve been good enough for her. “I mean, who else has he killed since 2019?” she said. Wiker feels that the problem is rooted in the district attorney’s office. “I would hope that these cases will come to be prosecuted moving forward because there is a law and it’s not being enforced,” Wiker said. “I don’t think it’s the deputies’ fault. At least I don’t believe it was in my case. You can investigate and investigate and get evidence and if the DA chooses to not move forward, it’s over.” Still, there are a lot of moving parts within the system, and when one of them slows down, so do the rest. One cog in the wheel is the Medical Examiner’s Office, which is in charge of determining the cause of death. Law enforcement can’t file charges until they have evidence that the illegal drugs killed someone. According to reporting in August by the Charlotte Observer, it’s normal for it to take five or more months before that proof arrives. While police and prosecutors wait to file charges, dealers can stay on the street and continue to sell potentially dangerous drugs until their time comes — if it ever does. Some families in Greensboro have had to wait even longer than five months. Lori Gray’s daughter, Stoney, loved to sing. She was living near UNCG when she died on Oct. 12, 2022. She was 29 and suffering from addiction. Gray and Stoney’s sister, Nancy Hunnemann, said that it took around nine months to get confirmation that it was fentanyl that killed Stoney. Gray said that she would call the medical examiner’s office in

Thomas Lamb was 18 years old when he took a pill that he thought was Xanax for depression. It was laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl. COURTESY PHOTO

NEWS | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

told her she could hire a private investigator to try to get into it. “I just found them to be very cold and very callous,” she said. Peeden said she went for a month thinking that detectives were investigating Ashley’s case. Later, she found out that the case was listed as inactive only four days after her death. As soon as the police department got her toxicology report and amended death certificate, they closed the case, she said. Peeden said she was told by the police department that this was because Ashley “willingly ingested an illicit substance.” Peeden is disturbed and frustrated by how some people — particularly those in law enforcement — view fentanyl deaths. “If you and I went out and we had a drink, and I slipped a little bit of arsenic in your wine, you willingly ingested that wine. Did you overdose or were you poisoned?” she asked. Still, Peeden understands that a death-bydistribution charge takes a lot of time to get right. “It’s a long process to investigate,” Peeden acknowledged. “It’s a long process to charge. It’s a long process before they get to court.” Even so, Peeden hopes law enforcement takes these poisoning deaths seriously. “Yes, they are difficult to prosecute, but you can’t prosecute when you don’t even investigate to begin with,” she said. Even with the updated law, there has to be a willingness from the district attorney’s office to prosecute the charges, said Holder, with the sheriff’s office.

RESOURCES Opioid overdose reversal (Naloxone/ Narcan) resources:

NEXT Distro mails free Naloxone, a medicine that quickly reverses an opioid overdose, free of charge.

The Guilford County Department of Public Health offers free naloxone kits and instructions/training on its use at these locations: Greensboro Locations: • •

Guilford County Division of Public Health Pharmacy, 1100 East Wendover Ave Triad Adult & Pediatric Medicine, 1002 S. Eugene St

High Point Locations: • • •

Guilford County Division of Public Health Pharmacy, 501 East Green Drive Kaitlyn’s House, 410 Gatewood Ave Triad Adult & Pediatric Medicine, 606 N. Elm

NEWS | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

Raleigh weekly to try to get information. “They don’t have enough help,” Hunnemann said. It’s not just Guilford County and Greensboro law enforcement that is struggling to manage the crisis. Kim Pishdadi doesn’t feel like officers with the Archdale Police Department in Randolph County fulfilled their duty after her 35-year-old son Joshua Peele died on March 27, 2021, leaving behind two children — Caleb, 16, and Alexandrea, 15. Pishdadi is now raising both of her grandchildren. Joshua loved being outdoors — hunting, fishing. NASCAR racing, and football, too. “Deer hunting, that was an every Saturday morning ritual during deer season,” Pishdadi said. “That was him and his dad’s thing.” Pishdadi said that the detectives were unable to get into Joshua’s cell phones. But one day, his son Caleb cracked the code. Pishdadi said she “started looking through his phone and was seeing all sorts of messages between [Joshua] and the dealer.” She said that messages on Joshua’s phone to his drug dealer clearly show her son asking for meth, and there’s a CashApp transaction between him and the dealer for $250. “The guy delivers it to the hotel room where my son was staying, and a couple of hours later my son’s dead,” she said. Pishdadi called the detective back to tell them what she’d discovered on the cell phone. “There was probable cause to charge this guy,” she said. Joshua had only 2.2 mg of methamphetamine in his system, Pishdadi said, along with enough fentanyl to kill more than 30 people. The person who was taking the drugs with Joshua ran off with them after they called 911. Because the drugs were never found in the room, this prevented any charges from sticking and the case didn’t move forward. Parents like Pishdadi and Wiker have found messages on their children’s phones to drug dealers, only to be told that evidence such as transactions or confirmation of purchase isn’t enough. According to reporting by Carolina Public Press, Durham County Assistant District Attorney Daniel Spiegel told a mother that there was a slim chance of prosecuting the dealer for death by distribution, saying that a text message was not enough evidence. “It can be difficult to prove a direct link between the alleged seller, the drugs and the victim’s death,” Sarah Willets, the communications specialist for Spiegel’s office, explained in a statement to CPP. Particularly in jurisdictions such as Durham that experience significant gun violence and larger-scale drug activity, prosecutors need to devote their limited resources to cases that will have the broadest impact on the community, Willets said. The dealers who sold fentanyl-laced pills to Andy and Joshua are still out there, the parents say. “I beg any child out here, any teenager, I beg them not to start,” Pishdadi said. “Don’t experiment. It is a vicious demon; not only to themself, but to their family. If there’s anything I could say to anyone out there: just don’t experiment with anything, you cannot trust anyone, it is not worth the risk.” Wiker said that since her son died, five of his friends have died from fentanyl poisoning as well. “All the little boys that ran through my house and played video games and patted the dog and had sleepovers; they’re all gone,” she said. One of Andy’s friends lost his father to fentanyl poisoning, and was so stressed out that he couldn’t eat or sleep. Andy’s friend bought a Xanax so that he could sleep, according to Wiker. It turned out to be pure fentanyl. “It’s changed my life; it’s devastated me,” Wiker said. “I’m not the same person. I can barely remember who that person was. But it’s like a cloud that just fills my life and sometimes, even now almost four years later, the reality just strikes out of nowhere and takes my breath away. It hurts my heart. I mean, I still can’t really believe that my baby’s gone forever.” While people “shouldn’t be doing street drugs,” Wiker said, “they’re still somebody’s child; every addict is somebody’s child.” 8 Jodi Lorenzo, a family friend whose son was friends with Thomas, wishes that

first responders would interact more tenderly toward families who have just lost a loved one. “Each time, you have to remember that someone’s going through it for the first time,” she said. Jimmy Barber, Thomas’s cousin, said he feels “extremely” angry about what happened to Thomas. “That’s a murder, and the fact that they don’t investigate it harder than what they do and try harder than what they do, it’s a shame,” he said. “The amount my life has changed because of what happened, I can’t express,” he added. “I’m not the same person I was. I don’t have the same love for life that I did. I felt like he got cheated. It’s one of those things that I’ll never really get over, but you just kind of learn to cope with it. You just kind of gotta understand sometimes that it’s alright to be sad.” Deborah Peeden lost her granddaughter Ashley in October 2021. She was 23 years old, and she thought she was doing cocaine with friends. PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

homas Lamb’s dog Ruggie was with him the morning that he died, his mother said. She thought it was strange that when she called for the dog, he didn’t respond. “It was because he didn’t want to leave him,” Lamb said. “He hasn’t left my side, pretty much since then.” Lamb’s voice caught as she hugged Ruggie, who she says still looks for Thomas. “It hurts the animals too,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. Thomas was two days away from having a psychological evaluation for depression. He had been treated for depression during the pandemic and had been prescribed some medication for it. “I guess it just wasn’t enough and he reached out for something else to numb the pain,” Lamb said. According to the medical journal World Psychiatry, more than 50 percent of adults with severe mental illness have a co-occurring substance-use disorder. The National Institute on Drug Use states that mental illness may contribute to substance use and addiction and vice versa. Genetics are at play, and environmental influences such as early exposure to stress or trauma, can factor in as well. Many of Thomas’s friends attended his birthday party in October. Lorenzo, the family friend, said that it was nice to “have the boys all together again.” She feels like the area is severely lacking in services, the kind that could’ve helped Thomas. That mental health appointment he was two days away from? He’d waited six months for it. “What could’ve been prevented to help create change for him?” Lorenzo wondered. “The fact is that there’s not a lot of services immediately available.” Peeden said that her granddaughter Ashley “was more than an addict.” She was beautiful, she was kind, she loved fishing, she loved animals and she had the biggest heart, her grandmother said. “Yes, she struggled with substance use, but she also had struggled with mentalhealth issues most of her life,” Peeden said. “Most of the time when people have a substance-use disorder, it’s usually due to some sort of trauma, and Ashley had suffered some trauma.” Peeden feels that fentanyl cases are overlooked because of the stigma of addiction. “I’ll never be ashamed of how my granddaughter died,” Peeden said. “[Pishdadi] will never be ashamed of how Josh died. But who we are ashamed of is those who choose whose life had value. That’s where the shame lies. “Where is the outrage?” she asked. Now, grandparents are raising grandchildren. “We’re losing a whole generation,” said Peeden. Sometimes, even when individuals are able to access help, it’s not enough, like in the case of Gray’s daughter, Stoney. “She had some struggles with heroin,” Gray said. While her family tried to get her help, treatment was expensive and Stoney didn’t have insurance. While she was able to get into a methadone clinic, a drug used to prevent the onset of opioid withdrawal, Gray doesn’t feel like it was helpful. There wasn’t accountability or “an end game” at the clinic Stoney went to, Stoney’s sister Nancy Hunnemann said. “They didn’t have like a schedule or anything to try to wean her off,” said Hunnemann. “She felt helpless,” Gray said. “It was one closed door after another.”

‘Keeping people alive’

elissa Floyd-Pickard directs GCSTOP, short for Guilford County Solution to the Opioid Problem. The organization focuses on harm reduction and has been serving the community since 2018. GCSTOP offers multiple programs including their post-overdose response team in which Guilford County EMS workers partner with GCSTOP to follow up with people who have recently overdosed and offer resources such as Narcan or naloxone, drugs that can quickly reverse an overdose by blocking the effects of opioids. “Basically what we try to do is just start some kind of relationship,” Floyd-Pickard said. People do best when they have a relationship that’s “positive and unconditional,” she said.

NEWS | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

‘She felt helpless’

Between July 2019 and June 2020, they made 258 referrals with 106 linkages to care. GCSTOP also has a syringe-services program which distributes sterile needles and properly disposes of used ones. During those same years, they distributed 222,290 sterile needles and received 95,605 needles back. They also distributed 2,999 naloxone medications — GCSTOP’s naloxone was responsible for 1,024 overdose reversals. Floyd-Pickard said that in terms of fentanyl exposure, they’re most concerned about people who are using cocaine, which is considered “pretty safe,” she said. “We’re seeing cross-contamination with cocaine to the point where people are dying because they don’t carry Narcan because they don’t think they need it,” she explained. People leaving jail are much more likely to have an overdose because they don’t have tolerance anymore, Floyd-Pickard said. “If they go back to what they were using before, they could easily die from that,” she said. Their Justice Involved Program allows them to meet with people who are incarcerated and involved in the justice system to provide support, advocacy and linkage to substance-use treatment. “We have to do better as far as making harm-reduction more available.” They want to meet people where they are, but not leave them there, she said. As far as the death-by-distribution law, Floyd-Pickard isn’t so sure that it will do more good than harm. “We don’t support that,” she said. “Death-by-distribution acts tend to be really punitive.” She said they also “unfairly target underrepresented groups.” “For example, when we go out and we do syringe access, it’s 80 percent white and 20 percent other ethnic minorities, right? And then if you go into a jail, it’s the other way around,” she said. “That tells us that there’s a disproportionate amount of charging that happens.” According to the Drug Policy Alliance, Black and Latino people are far more likely to be criminalized than white people despite rates of drug use and sales being similar across racial and ethnic lines. Census data analyzed by the Drug Policy Alliance noted that despite comprising 13 percent of the US population, “Black people comprise 30 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated in state or federal prison for drug law violations.” Similarly, Latinos make up 17 percent of the population, but comprise 20 percent of people in state prisons for drug offenses, and 37 percent of people incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses. In 2013, Latinos comprised almost half — 47 percent — of all cases in federal courts for drug offenses. And this further exacerbates an already flawed justice system. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2022, Black people were more than four times as likely to be sent to jail than white people. In Guilford County, around two-thirds of inmates are Black despite making up only 36 percent of the county’s population. “I would be very concerned about a death-by-distribution law because it would most likely target those folks who are already at greater risk of a negative outcome. Either dying from an overdose or being jailed,” Floyd-Pickard said. Rather than pursue punitive punishment, the Drug Policy Alliance recommends decriminalizing drug possession, helping more people receive drug treatment and redirecting law enforcement resources to prevent serious and violent crime. The alliance also recommends eliminating policies that result in disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates and ending policies that exclude people with records from rights such as voting, employment, public housing and public assistance. Floyd-Pickard said that the focus should be on harm reduction but that currently, there aren’t enough resources in the community. If people had the resources, Floyd-Pickard said, they would take buprenorphine or methadone, drugs that help treat heroin and other opioid dependence, but clinics don’t have enough spots. GCSTOP opened up a medication clinic a year ago and it was “completely maxed out.” Making sure drug recovery programs are low-barrier is also crucial. Some programs are “just super rigid,” Floyd-Pickard said, and that’s a problem. “Substance abuse is kind of the only disease that we kick people out of treatment for having. They need to be there,” she said. Floyd-Pickard said that many people want to get off drugs, but another barrier is 9

NEWS | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

painful withdrawals. “You can’t function at all when you’re that sick,” she said. The pandemic threw the organization for a loop. GCSTOP had been making a lot of progress, but they lost a lot of people struggling with addiction during the pandemic. It cut off access to their support networks. “Addiction really thrives in lonely environments,” Floyd-Pickard said. There also needs to be less of a stigma associated with people who end up using drugs, Floyd-Pickard said. Instead, education is key. Floyd-Pickard said that if you are going to do drugs, take steps to avoid an overdose. Use fentanyl test strips or “do tester shots where you’re doing a small amount before you actually push the whole plunger of the syringe.” “Harm reduction is about keeping people alive,” she said. Captn. Holder said that one way families can proactively prevent a drug overdose is by looking in their medicine cabinets. “A lot of the first contacts with opioids are prescription pills in the house,” Holder said. The city has secure collection boxes for residents to safely dispose of their unwanted or expired medications. “There’s no need to have 50 bottles of whatever laying around the house that are expired,” Holder said. “Turn that stuff in, get it out of your house. Don’t leave it out there for the kids to get their hands on.”

‘I will make his life matter’

amb said she hasn’t spoken with the police since the day Thomas died. “It’s very overwhelming because you basically just get an email that says what happened to your kid, and that’s it,” she said. “You get an email that just [shows] that it was fentanyl and that’s all.” Still, Lamb said she isn’t the vengeful type. She’s not laser-focused on finding out who “gave him the pill,” she said. “I would prefer to just focus on preventing somebody else from using [drugs] altogether,” Lamb said. “Because I can’t bring my son back, and no amount of

punishment is gonna bring him back.” Harrington agreed. “There’s no getting [Thomas] back,” Harrington said. “We just have to keep the message going. Don’t think that it can’t happen to your child, because it can.” “Sometimes it feels like we’re losing. And the police, it’s just bigger than what they can do,” Harrington said. “I think the police can do a better job policing, and we can do a better job educating as a community.” Lamb has faith that she’ll see her son again, and that sustains her. “He floated peacefully off, and I know that I’ll see him again,” she said. “I just have to know that there’s a reason and a purpose and I’ll find out. I will make his life matter and count, and hopefully stop someone else from doing it.” The stories of Thomas, Andy, Joshua, Stoney and Ashley are just five of the more than 10,000 people lost to fentanyl poisoning in North Carolina between 2019 and 2022. If you are struggling with addiction, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at 1-800-662HELP (4357). Learn how to perform life-saving measures, and call 911 if someone is overdosing.

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OPINION | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

OPINION

EDITORIAL

Hi-speed rail coming to NC… eventually

e’ve been

saying it for years: The reason for relatively low train ridership is not by Brian Clarey because people don’t want to do it. Our state is loaded with expatriates from the Northeast Corridor who are extremely comfortable traveling by rail. No, the problem is that we don’t have the lines or the frequency necessary to make train travel a reliable option in North Carolina. But last week, the Biden Administration let loose $8.2 billion for rail projects across the northern and southern borders, and throughout the East Coast. NC will get more than $1 billion, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced in Raleigh on Monday, funding high-speed rail lines running from Charlotte to Atlanta and Raleigh to Richmond, with an internal rail network connecting those lines from Asheville to Wilmington. The Triad’s piece is a line connecting 12 Winston-Salem to Raleigh with stops

in Greensboro, Burlington, Durham and Cary. And it should be a game-changer. The new rail line will shrink the distance between the cities of the Triad, creating a commuter class of people who want to forego their cars in favor of riding the train to work, or perhaps not even own a car at all. On weekends, folks will be able to hop a train from Winston-Salem to the beach, from Greensboro to the mountains, or just travel quickly to a neighboring city for dinner or a show and have a couple drinks without having to worry about driving home. The ramifications affect housing, zoning, events, downtown parking, bus service, economic development and a dozen more aspects we can’t yet foresee. It also plugs NC directly to the vast train network that connects the cities of the Northeast Corridor like a neural network. From Washington, DC new high-speed lines will run directly west to Chicago, or north to New York, with transport to all points in between and beyond. Considering parking, TSA and layover times, it might even be faster than flying. The bad news: We’re looking at five years or more before this particular dream is realized. Until then, it’s more traffic on the Salem Parkway.

NC will get more than $1 billion, funding high-speed rail lines running from Charlotte to Atlanta and Raleigh to Richmond.

Jen Sorensen jensorensen.com

John Cole

Courtesy of NC Policy Watch

CULTURE | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

CULTURE ‘We’re Still Here’ After closing for restructuring, Greensboro’s Elsewhere returns with a new director, renewed vision

by Sayaka Matsuoka | sayaka@triad-city-beat.com

es, it’s the place with all the stuff, but Elsewhere is so much more than that. That’s what the living museum’s new executive director, Kerri Mubaarak, wants people to know. “Anybody who comes through Elsewhere’s doors, it’s a place where you can actually think freely,” she says. “We just don’t have that anymore.” After closing its doors in January for six months, the quirky museum reopened this summer with a renewed energy around its vision. But it wasn’t always easy. Mubaarak, who became executive director in June, Learn more originally joined Elsewhere in 2017 as operations manager. about Elsewhere at She joined the board in 2020 and left the board to become elsewheremuseum. acting director in October 2022. org. Follow them Elsewhere was founded in 2003 by George Scheer, on Instagram at @ Josh Fox, Matt Merfert, Stephanie Sherman and Allen elsewheremuseum. Davis after the group converted the thrift store owned by Scheer’s aunt Sylvia Gray, into an immersive arts space. Scheer stepped down in 2019 and since then, the organization has undergone a good bit of change in leadership. In 2021, activist April Parker was named managing director while Matthew Giddings acted as executive director. But the organization was in flux. The pandemic had thrown a curveball at the museum and staff wondered what the future would look like for the longstanding arts organization. “When we stepped out, we were thinking about if Elsewhere needed to be something else,” Mubaarak says. “What ended up happening when we were down, was we threw everything on the table.” Scheer and Sherman returned to the museum, along with former staff, artist alumni, supporters from the community and board members. They started asking questions. What if it turns into a bar? What if it could be an Airbnb? “After all of this soul searching, we circled back to the beginning,” Mubaarak says. “We’re an artist residency. That’s what people know it to be…. That’s what it has been and that’s what it needs to remain as.” While many people in Greensboro may not be knowledgeable about Elsewhere’s mission — Is it a museum? Is it a thrift store? Is it business? — the organization has built up a worldwide reputation. And that’s mostly due to its artist residency program. “The wealth of Elsewhere is in its artists,” Mubaarak says. “They’ve had as many

Kerri Mubaarak is Elsewhere’s new executive director. PHOTO BY SAYAKA MATSUOKA

as five to six residencies a year for 20 years. There are hundreds of alumni that have been through Elsewhere that have been from all points around the globe. They have come to Greensboro so that they can be free to create, to have unencumbered thoughts to create.” Some of the most notable artists include Lonnie Holley, Shan Wallace and Chloe Bass. “There’s these really important artists who come here,” Mubaarak says. “If the general public knew who was living in downtown Greensboro, it would really surprise them.” The last artist residency took place in October with local artists Cassandra Liuzzo and Michaela Baldwin. Liuzzo lived in the museum while Baldwin commuted from Winston-Salem. Their residency was the first one that Elsewhere had hosted since October 2022. Next year, they’ll have their first urban exchange residency in which they’ll invite artists from Detroit to come and live and work in the space. In June, they’ll host their first alumni residency. “It’s for artists to come in and reimagine and think or not think and feel or journal and create in some kind of way,” Mubaarak says. But the space isn’t just for artists. In addition to the artist residencies, which they’ll have less frequently compared to before, Elsewhere will also make room for creative retreats for businesses, university groups or any other communities that want to utilize the space. In September, the museum hosted a consulting firm from Nashville that had come 13

CULTURE | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

to Greensboro for a medical conference. As part of the retreat, the consultants were asked to create art with the knick knacks and materials found throughout Elsewhere. And after an hour, these medical-minded people created installations that addressed things like race disparities within medicine and solutions. “That’s the kind of thing we want other people to experience,” Mubaarak says. “It’s not just a space for artists but also a space for non artists to get creative too.” The museum will also open up every first weekend of the month to the public. In the past, the museum was open every weekend. If the community wants to experience the space outside of that, they can rent out the museum for parties or open mic nights. The hope is that the Greensboro community gets to know Elsewhere more. “I would like for the community to understand Elsewhere as it actually is,” she says. “Yes it is the place with all the stuff, but why is that stuff there? When you start telling people that story, they’re fascinated.” The changes are also to ensure that Elsewhere as an organization can remain sustainable, according to Mubaraak. “When I came in from October to March, it was about making a full assessment in terms of where we were financially and our public image,” she says. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘We’re 20 years in, do we need to stop this?’” The group landed on this diversified set of offerings that allows the museum to make more money and not rely so heavily on grants. “If you’re talking about sustainable practices,” Mubaarak says. “Grants shouldn’t be the first thing that comes out of your mouth. Grant money is really for your programs. As far as the nuts and bolts of running the organization, that’s why we built out the plan for the creative retreats and the rentals.” And now, looking back on the quarter that Elsewhere is closed, Mubaarak is excited and confident about the museum’s future going into 2024. “George had called me and asked, ‘Is it over?’” Mubaarak remembers. “And I said, ‘Only if you want it to be.’ And nobody wanted it to, so we’re still here, and we’re doing fine.”

Kerri Mubaarak poses with artist Billy Dee’s “Little Elsewhere.” PHOTO BY SAYAKA MATSUOKA

‘It’s Just Needed’

The DOSE Collective in Winston-Salem aims to be a supportive ecosystem for up-and-coming creatives

The DOSE Collective, led by Taja Seafus, aims to be a supportive space for young, up-and-coming creatives in WinstonSalem. COURTESY PHOTO

CULTURE | DECEMBER 14 - 27, 2023

CULTURE

by Sayaka Matsuoka | sayaka@triad-city-beat.com

aja Seafus knows all about the post-college blues. As a trained scenic designer with a degree from Learn more about UNCSA, Seafus knew what it felt like to have an arts DOSE Collective at community when she was on campus. But after doseartistcollective. graduating in 2019 and setting out on her own, she com. Follow them on found that working siloed, alone, was a jarring experience after the Instagram at @dose. collaborative environment of school. inbtwn.ws. The next “I didn’t like the disconnect of being a designer,” she says. “You didn’t Lab takes place on have to be in the same room as anyone; there was no collaboration. It Feb. 5. As the city that touts itself as a hub of arts and innovation, Seafus was nerve-wracking for me.” feels like the former is being left behind to promote the latter. As she tried to navigate what it meant to build a career in the arts, she saw “The arts part has been the university and really nothing else,” she says. her classmates go on to New York and California to chase their own aspirations. “The city needs to choose one of them and I feel like innovation is where they are “But I would talk to these people and they’re not happy there because they think, This going and I fear that art is going to be left behind.” is the only place I can do my job; I’m stuck here,” Seafus says. When asked about long-standing institutions like SECCA and Reynolda House and And then the pandemic happened. That’s when Seafus, who grew up in Holly Springs, decided to try and create that how those play into the arts community, Seafus acknowledges that those spaces exist, but that they don’t always feel accessible to everyone, especially younger people of same sort of community within Winston-Salem. “I want to curate spaces for people to be safe and to be the creative person they want color. “That’s my disconnect, too,” Seafus admits. “I’ve only really been on the UNCSA side to be, however that transpires,” Seafus says. Her first project was INBTWN, an immersive art project that was kickstarted by [of the city]. I rarely go to Reynolda and SECCA. Money does have a factor in playing Seafus’ desire to bring to life a script she wrote about what it’s like being a nonbinary into how people interact with things. Reynolda is a very money-heavy area. If I’m going based on my fears, I feel like if you’re rich, you probably don’t like what I look like.” person of color wrestling with mental health. In the past few years, both institutions have worked to directly reckon with this “It was a reflection of myself,” Seafus says. “It was something that I felt like needed dynamic. In the aftermath of the 2020 racial uprisings, SECCA hired its first full-time to be shown.” But the project was short-lived. There wasn’t enough funding, and as a for-profit Black curator, Maya Brooks. Reynolda installed its first exhibition that delved into its entity, INBTWN just wasn’t sustainable. Pivoting, Seafus turned the business into a past treatment of Black workers. But it’s still important for places like DOSE to exist, Seafus says, because at its core, nonprofit and renamed it the DOSE Collective. Now the organization has 11 board members and a new downtown gallery space — named the INBTWN — on Trade Street. the mission is focused on burgeoning artists rather than those who may already have They’ve even secured funding from the Forsyth Arts Council to pay for the space and built a name for themselves, kind of like what Zach McCraw at Culture is doing. “It’s just needed,” Seafus says. “I feel like it can happen here because Winston-Salem DOSE’s two additional employees. is one the most malleable places that can accept the process of something like this The mission has changed, too. Now, rather than immersive experiences, the goal of DOSE is to bring together other happening within its city. There are places like New York that don’t need this because creatives, usually younger people of color who feel like they have no place in the city, to they already have it. Because of how much the majority of Winston-Salem is for an create on a regular basis. One of the organization’s most popular events is its monthly inclusive environment, this seems like the best place to do it.” In addition to the Lab and the gallery space, which spotlights different artists every arts showcase called the Lab that is hosted in the parking garage under the Sawtooth School of the Arts. It’s pay-what-you-will and all of the contributing artists are paid month, DOSE offers free programs like a songwriter’s workshop, writer’s circle, open jam session and a houseplant-care class. In January, they plan to start the Lawn, an through the arts council’s funding. Everything from dancers to musicians — singer-songwriters, hip hop, you name it intimate show in which bands who perform get recorded so they can use the assets to — to artists selling their goods, set up in the car park for an audience of about 80-120 promote themselves. Looking further into the future, Seafus has more ambitious goals. She wants to people every month. The turnout shows how needed this kind of community was in Winston-Salem, venture into experimental theater and rent out a bigger space. She’s also passionate about affordable housing and would love to create an art hub that supports local Seafus says. “DOSE is for up-and-coming artists,” she says. “As soon as you graduate, you get artists. Anything and everything to create a support system for creatives. “Sometimes I hear from people that have a fear of, ‘Why didn’t I know about this disconnected from the school community. I don’t think that’s talked about; you’re just sooner? Have I been missing out on this?,’” Seafus says. “But this literally just started, ripped out of it. You’re left wondering, How do I meet people? How do I make structure 15 you’re at the beginning.” for myself? DOSE is to meet other people who are like minded.”