INDY Week January 11, 2023

The planned commuter rail system is the Triangle’s best chance to escape a future of tra c gridlock, but several logistical and financial challenges lie ahead.

BY JASMINE GALLUP, P. 8

BY JASMINE GALLUP

ARTS & CULTURE

BY GABI MENDICK

B A C K T A L K

From Instagram:

“Hindsight is 20/20, but I would estimate that these vendor and employee complaints are not unusual across most service and hospitality settings,” wrote @UPBEATSITDOWN . “I’m not giving poor management a pass here (or anywhere), but from the baiting title on a COVER story I was expecting something more egregious, substantial, or definitive. Additionally, applying hindsight to decisions made during COVID is not the best look. Most every business struggled with when and how they could open and practice during that unprecedented time.”

“The DFH is a start-up. Adair Muller [sic] is a founder. Durham is meant to welcome this kind of innovation, vision, and energy,” wrote commenter @RYCAREYOUSLEY. “Let me rewrite the headline for you: ‘Local female business owner defies odds to open food hall amidst numerous COVID setbacks.’”

“This was a great article. As someone who worked in this industry for years, it’s no surprise to see yet another person with NO hospitality background try to open a venue like this,” wrote commenter @BL0NDAMBITION. “Also loved the part about her surveilling the staff—this happens ONLY with deranged owners who have no idea what they’re doing.”

From Twitter:

“I’ve been disappointed with the Food Hall,” wrote @DURMBULL. “We used to enjoy going but a lot of good places closed. The two food halls in Raleigh are much better.”

“Fascinating look inside DFH. I’ve been disappointed with its layout compared to Raleigh’s FH since covid restrictions lifted & it was obvious how little space is available for diners,” wrote @CHRISSYDID. “Not surprised to read that layout behind the scenes is equally difficult for vendors.”

“Great article! The connection to O2 CEO Olander reminded me of the suspicious closing of the Elliot Rd location a couple months ago,” wrote commenter @FORESTWITH2RS. “No warning, just rolled up to a boarded up gym and employees at other locations refuse to speak on it. Maybe poor business practices spilling over?”

“Glad you mentioned the complete lack of an elevator to the upstairs private event spaces. Honestly not sure how that’s even legal, ADA-wise,” wrote @ERINMADDIE24.

“My gosh this story needed an editor. It is all over the place,” wrote @RICKDMARTINEZ

D R A W N O U T

indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @INDYWeekNC @indyweek

Last week, Lena Geller took a deep dive into the inner workings of the Durham Food Hall. Readers on Instagram and Twitter had a lot of thoughts. WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD?

Editor’s note @RickDMartinez: Rude!

Ready for Rail?

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

Aregional commuter rail may be the answer to the Triangle's traffic troubles, but there are several major challenges to overcome, accord ing to a new report from GoTriangle. The proposed rail runs 37 miles from Garner to Durham and requires cooperation from Johnston, Wake, and Durham county commissioners. Here's how much the rail could cost and when we could expect it to be up and running. To learn more about the commuter rail project, see story on page 8.

WESTERN SECTION

RTP Station to West Durham Station

10 miles of passenger rail service About $1.6 billion 12 years to build 3,000 weekday boardings expected by 2040

CENTRAL SECTION

Raleigh Union Station to Ellis Road or the RTP Station

15-20 miles of passenger rail service $800 million – $1 billion 10 years to build 4,000 weekday boardings expected by 2040

EASTERN SECTION

Auburn Station in Garner to Raleigh Union Station

10 miles of passenger rail service $600 million – $700 million 8 years to build 4,000 weekday boardings expected by 2040

Source: readyforrailnc.com

The Year Ahead in NC Politics

This year, LGBTQ rights, the UNC System, and Christian nationalism will be three stories to watch.

BY JOE KILLIAN backtalk@indyweek.com

“I

t is difficult to make predictions,”

Dutch politician Karl Kristian Steincke once wrote. “Especially about the future.”

But if you’re a reporter who carefully follows a few issues, you don’t need a crystal ball to have a fairly good idea of what to look for in the new year. Here are some stories we’re certain we’ll be following and reporting on in 2023.

Renewed legislative assaults on LGBTQ people

For LGBTQ people in North Carolina, 2022 was a year of tensions, tragedies, wins, and losses.

Transgender North Carolinians saw two major legal victories—winning the right to change the gender marker on their birth certificates without undergoing medical transition and a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s exclusion of gender-affirming health care for transgender state employee under the state health plan.

State treasurer Dale Folwell, a potential Republican candidate for governor in 2024, is challenging the health care ruling.

But North Carolina was also caught up in an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation, with bills introduced that would exclude transgender people from school sports, require teachers to out LGBTQ students to their families, and ban any instruction or material mentioning LGBTQ people in kindergarten through third grade. Facing a certain veto from Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and potential blowback from

major pro-LGBTQ corporations looking to invest in the state, Republican leaders in the General Assembly didn’t bring those bills to a vote in 2022.

But Cooper’s veto—and Democrats’ ability to sustain it in the General Assembly— was the only sure defense against those bills being taken up and passing. After Democratic losses in the 2022 elections, Republicans now need just one Democratic vote in the House (or the absence of a single member) to overcome a Cooper veto.

That new mathematical reality and a large conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has LGBTQ advocates worried 2023 could see a renewed push to pass new laws aimed at LGBTQ people and claw back progress they’ve made.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade—and the legal reasoning underpinning that decision—has led some legal experts to predict the court will also revisit the landmark Obergefell decision that gave same-sex marriage constitutional protection. LGBTQ advocates are warning the recently passed Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t go far enough to protect LGBTQ couples and families. While it ensures marriages legal in one state will be recognized across the country, it doesn’t prevent states from turning back the clock to a period in which same-sex couples can be married in some states but not others.

North Carolina was the last state in the United States to pass a same-sex marriage ban by statewide referendum prior to the Obergefell ruling. Amendment One was approved by a margin of 61 percent to 39

percent in a 2012 primary election with a turnout of just 35 percent.

“Today’s passage of the Respect for Marriage Act crucially codifies marriage equality for our communities,” said Kendra Johnson, executive director of Equality NC, in a statement after it passed. “However, LGBTQ+ people deserve so much more. We need our legislators to pass comprehensive legislation which protects our communities, like the Equality and Fairness for All Act. Moreover, we need federal protections from the onslaught of hateful legislation and policy being enacted on the state level. The passage of the Respect for Marriage Act is a good step, but there’s a massive gulf between where we are now and where we need to be.”

While marriage equality is an issue that increasingly divides Republicans, the party and its elected officials continue to fully back anti-transgender legislation at the local, state, and national levels.

“The state legislative seasons in the last few years have seen so many bills targeting LGBTQ people, particularly trans people and trans youth,” said Alexis Rangel, policy counsel with the National Center for Transgender Equality, in a recent interview with Policy Watch. “We’ve had to split our attention between local governments, state governments and school boards. It’s an attack on all fronts and it’s very well coordinated.”

In November, just across the border in Virginia, Republican state lawmakers filed Senate Bill 791, which would outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender youth and allow health insurance companies to

decline coverage for gender-affirming care for transgender people of any age. The bill is a version of the same anti-transgender legislation recently passed in Arkansas that is now the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Conservative activists and lawmakers have discussed similar bills in North Carolina and are actively pushing for them in the coming legislative session. Policy Watch will continue to follow this legislative battle in the coming months.

Continued politicization of the UNC System

The past year saw a ramping up of the politicization of the UNC System that Policy Watch has been documenting for years.

In April, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a scathing 38-page report documenting what it called rampant political interference and institutional racism at UNC. In June, the national faculty group voted unanimously to officially condemn the system and its board of governors for a pattern of interference it said chills speech and threatens academic freedom.

The system’s swift response was to deny the report’s findings, defend its record, and criticize the AAUP itself.

That defense, sent to the AAUP before the report was officially released, was authored by Kimberly van Noort, then the system’s senior vice president for academic affairs. Before that defense, van Noort also authored a defense of the system and

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

of UNC-Chapel Hill’s board of trustees in the controversy over that board’s refusal to vote on tenure for Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The controversy generated national headlines and threatened boycotts, caused alumni to discontinue giving to the university, and ultimately led UNC-Chapel Hill to enter into an out-of-court settlement with Hannah-Jones.

“It is hard to read this as anything other than a situation in which a sought-after scholar weighed multiple tenure offers and selected the one she most wanted to pursue,” van Noort wrote, minimizing the months-long affair and the multiple shocking revelations of behind-thescenes pressure and lobbying by wealthy donors and politically connected alumni.

Where is van Noort now? She was made interim provost at UNC Asheville, where Chancellor Nancy Cable stepped down at year’s end. UNC System president Peter Hans announced van Noort as interim chancellor in October, at the time of Cable’s announcement.

Over the last two years, critics of the system and its leadership have pointed to a pattern of elevating loyalists, political allies, and personal friends to top positions throughout the UNC Sys -

tem and its 17 campuses. Its governing board has given Hans expanded powers to personally choose finalists in chancellor searches, potentially bypassing the search system and preferences of local boards of trustees.

In 2022, Hans also disregarded decades-long norms and precedents in appointing long-time WRAL anchor and friend David Crabtree the new CEO of PBS NC, bypassing a national search that had already been announced and dismissing the need for any competitive process for choosing the organization’s new leader.

Political interference in university governance reached the point in 2022 that even some of the most conservative political appointees on the UNC Board of Governors felt compelled to call it out. In July, several members publicly condemned the General Assembly’s mandate that the system move from its traditional home in Chapel Hill to the seat of political power in Raleigh as unnecessary, against the advice of its governing board, and an example of lawmakers undermining system leadership and their own appointees.

As that move to Raleigh proceeds this year and new leadership positions

open across the system and its campuses, Policy Watch will continue to follow the story.

The advance of Christian nationalism in NC politics

For the past few years, Policy Watch has documented the growth of the American Renewal Project, a Christian nationalist group that rejects a separation between church and state and works to encourage conservative Christian fundamentalist pastors to run for office. Its North Carolina arm, the NC Renewal Project, preaches that Christian doctrine should be mandated in public schools and hosts speakers who attack LGBTQ people, non-Christians holding elected office, and even Christian churches they find insufficiently conservative.

Once a fringe movement within the state GOP, the group has strengthened its bonds with elected Republicans in the last few years, counting among its supporters former U.S. Representatives Mark Walker and Madison Cawthorn and former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. While all those politicians were either rejected by voters or failed in attempts at higher office, the group still has two powerful allies—current Lt. Gov.

Mark Robinson and Michael Whatley, chairman of the NC Republican Party. Last October, Policy Watch reported on both men’s speeches before Renewal Project audiences across the state.

“I don’t need to be liked,” Robinson told one such audience in October, saying he is encouraged and fueled by those who don’t like him, as they are mostly undesirable and even dangerous people he’s proud to count as enemies.

But Robinson does need a majority of voters across the state to like him if he is serious about becoming North Carolina’s governor—an ambition he teased throughout 2022 and on which he now says he is laser focused.

Can his fiery anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, bizarre alternate history lessons, and calls to fellow Christians to threaten violence against those they oppose pave the way to the GOP nomination? Will a more moderate but still strongly conservative figure such as state treasurer Dale Folwell have more appeal? Policy Watch will follow the progress of Christian nationalist groups and their adherents and standard bearers in the new year. W

This story was originally published online at NC Policy Watch

Stuck in Traffic

The proposed commuter rail system is the Triangle’s best chance to escape a future of traffic gridlock. But will funding uncertainties and coordination between stakeholders tie up local plans?

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

For more than 15 years, Michelle Durst commuted from Cary to North Raleigh for her full-time job in sales. At first, the drive wasn’t too bad.

“I would get on the exit at Tryon, then get off at Wake Forest,” she says. “Traffic would pretty much keep moving. Then … as time went on, the Cary traffic going into Raleigh became so bad I would start taking back roads.”

Today, the 30-mile commute can take up to an hour, or even more if there’s a car accident or construction, which seems constantly ongoing. Like many people, Durst began working from home following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. She sells windows and doors, so although in-person engagements were limited, business was still booming.

“Thank goodness I don’t have to do [the drive] now with all the road construction on I-440, because it’s even worse,” she says. “I’ll go in occasionally for appointments in the showroom, but I can schedule them around rush hour.”

During the pandemic, many daily commuters found relief in working from home, getting back two or more hours they had previously spent in traffic. But the drive from Raleigh to Durham, which thousands of people take every day, is still one of the most congested in the Triangle, with I-40 narrowing to just two lanes west of exit 270, the interchange with U.S. 15-501. According to government officials, public transportation may be the solution.

The future of Triangle traffic

The Triangle’s rush-hour commute is nothing compared to hours-long gridlocks

drivers face in cities like Atlanta, Houston, or Washington, DC. But with so many people pouring into the area, commuters could be dealing with similar traffic conditions within the next 30 years, experts predict.

The population of the Triangle is expected to climb from 1.6 million today to 2.5 million by 2050, a 56 percent increase, according to the NC Office of State Budget and Management. Consequently, drive times from Raleigh to Durham and around the beltline are expected to shoot up, far surpassing the 45- to 60-minute commute many drivers currently deal with.

As of 2016, traffic on I-40 and I-440 ranged from moderately congested during rush hour to consistently congested “throughout and beyond the peak hours of travel,” according to a report released last year from the NC Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (NC CAMPO).

In the words of social media commenters, the traffic is “god awful,” “a nightmare,” and “horrible and get[ting] worse.” When one aspiring commuter asked for tips for the commute between Raleigh and Durham, online commenters suggested a teleporter, helicopter, or fast-acting anti-anxiety medication.

I-40 and I-440 are expected to be even more bogged down by traffic by 2050, even during non-peak hours. Moreover, back roads around these major highways will also face high traffic congestion where traffic is now relatively free-flowing.

What is the commuter rail project?

This problem isn’t a new one. County officials started taking a closer look at the area’s transportation system more than a decade

ago, back when growth was still relatively slow. In 2011, voters in Durham County approved a half-cent tax increase to fund expanded bus services, a light rail line, and a regional commuter rail line—37 miles of track that would connect Garner to Raleigh to Durham, sharing existing railway lines.

“Durham needs good local and regional public transit,” says County Commissioner Brenda Howerton. “Our Durham County Transit Plan outreach … revealed that the [commuter rail] project had support as one element of a robust comprehensive public transit system.”

Likewise, voters in Wake County also approved a half-cent tax increase to fund expanded bus service and support the commuter rail project, which at the time was still a rough proposal yet to be studied in depth.

“As people continue to move to Raleigh, we have to find a way to get ahead of road congestion,” says Mayor Pro Tem Corey Branch, also a board member for GoTriangle, which operates the Triangle’s public transportation and plans future improvement projects.

“We’re starting to become a society where owning a car is a challenge. So if you don’t have a vehicle, how do you get around? How do we connect people to jobs, how do we connect people to social activities?”

Since voters approved the tax increase, Raleigh has taken significant steps to improve bus service but remains stalled

on commuter rail. The Durham light rail project—meant to connect Durham to Chapel Hill with 18 miles of track—is now infamous for crashing and burning in early 2019. The project cost taxpayers in Durham and Orange Counties $157 million before ultimately failing, thanks in part to Duke University pulling its support.

“If you ask 10 people why the Durham light rail failed, you’ll get 10 different answers,” says Charles Lattuca, president of GoTriangle. “Some people will say it was Duke … some people will say it was [railroad company] Norfolk Southern, and some people will say the state kept moving the goalpost on the money.”

GoTriangle has learned its lesson from the Durham light rail project, Lattuca says. Part of the reason it failed was because solid agreements weren’t in place before design and engineering work began, Lattuca says. This time, GoTriangle plans to get solid agreements before they start spending money.

“I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on who’s responsible. What I do try to spend time on is identifying the risk and making sure that we are appropriately addressing it,” Lattuca says. “This time around … we’re doing a better job making sure that our key stakeholders, meaning North Carolina Railroad, Norfolk Southern, Duke, and the other institutional stakeholders, are on board before we start spending a lot of money.”

A passenger train departs Union Station in downtown Raleigh PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Money, money, money

Following the failure of the Durham light rail, GoTriangle officials restarted work on the regional commuter rail, releasing a new “feasibility study” just last week. The study paints an inspiring picture of the future of public transportation in the Triangle, but the project faces major challenges.

The proposed commuter rail could cost up to $3.2 billion, far more than local counties can afford even if the federal government supplied half of the funding, according to the study. Getting that federal funding is also a challenge. The Triangle’s population is too low right now to qualify for a major federal grant called the New Starts Program, which covers 50 percent of the cost of major transit projects.

“I don’t think the program does a good job of taking into account rapidly urbanizing areas like Raleigh,” Lattuca says. “It does a great job of taking into account heavily urbanized areas like New York and Baltimore and DC. But for us, we don’t have that population density yet.”

There are federal loans the project might qualify for, where the Triangle would borrow 100 percent of the money needed for commuter rail and then pay back all of it within the next few decades. Overall, that option could be less expensive than the New Starts Program, which requires payment up front, according to Lattuca.

structure law that Congress passed … back in the summer was a huge amount of money. About a billion dollars of that got eaten up by inflation in one year. If I can build one of these sections now instead of later, that would save us hundreds of millions of dollars.”

A phased approach

The commuter rail project is currently divided into three phases—an eastern section going from Auburn Station in Garner to Raleigh’s Union Station, a central section going from Raleigh to a new station RTP (which could potentially involve a relocation of Cary’s Amtrak station), and a western section going from RTP through Durham.

For years, officials have aspired to connect Raleigh to Durham through public transportation. But the western section of commuter rail, which does just that, is by far the most expensive and complicated section to build. The 10 miles of track connecting the proposed RTP Station to West Durham Station is expected to cost $1.6 billion and take 12 years to build, according to the study.

“The [study] has shown that there are significant infrastructure and cost challenges for the project—particularly in Durham,” Howerton says. “Commuter rail in Durham will require a longer-term approach, reduced costs, and/or additional revenue sources in order to make it happen.”

Lattuca puts it more bluntly.

only do North Carolina Railroad, Norfolk Southern, and a host of other agencies have to get on board, but Wake, Durham, and Johnston county commissioners then have to agree to fund the project as outlined.

One of the major points of conflict is over which part of the rail will be built first. Starting with the eastern and central sections of the commuter rail would be much easier, but connecting these areas is also much less of a priority for Durham commissioners.

“It’s problematic because we have an early goal of connecting Durham and Raleigh. [But that western section] would have to come at some other point in time,” Lattuca says. “If we were to build the middle phase, we would work towards building out the entire system as proposed, it would just take longer. It’s causing some frustration with folks.”

Howerton says the commuter rail needs to include a “strong regional transit connection to downtown Durham, the GoDurham bus system, and Durham’s population and employment centers.”

“The central and eastern segments fall short of that and would require alternative transit service connections through central Durham,” she added. “We want to hear from the public on if the phased approach would be a good option and/or if we should consider other regional solutions. Durham has to be a part of the regional transit system no matter what approach is taken.”

eration. I want to see a region where everyone has the ability to access opportunities, to better the lives of their families …. We have to make sure we’re forward-thinking because if we think about self, we’ll never get anything done.”

In many major cities, the process of building large, complex, and expensive transit projects began after the population had already boomed, Lattuca says.

“The good thing about these [loan] programs is ... the payback doesn’t start until after the project starts operating,” he says. “So if it takes you 10 years to build, you don’t have to pay anything back until after you start running trains. And then they let you pay it back over 35 years. If you look at the impact on local transit dollars, it actually might even be less than the 50-50 program.”

Overall, the commuter rail project is just too expensive to build all at once, as originally planned. Instead, GoTriangle is proposing to build the project in phases. But that plan also comes with its own problems. As expensive as commuter rail is now, it will be even more expensive as time passes because of inflation.

“Inflation is eating up the dollars like crazy,” Lattuca says. “The bipartisan infra-

“Durham to RTP is the least affordable phase,” he says. “We think the middle phase is very affordable, and then the short 10-mile phase [in the east] is really affordable. If you think of the project as 40 miles, that middle segment is only $1 billion. You’re delivering almost half the project for one-third of the cost.”

One of the biggest issues with the western section is that only a single track goes through the area, and trains often stop on it for hours at a time to load and unload goods in East Durham’s rail yard. The delay presents a major problem for a commuter train, which would run about 40 trips a day, Lattuca says.

A commuter railway would require building all-new tracks in the area, an expensive prospect. Not only that, but building track through downtown Durham also presents challenges since the city has numerous low bridges that trains can’t pass beneath. Construction would involve closing some streets and doing major renovations on others.

In order to start construction on the commuter rail, all parties involved have to agree to a plan on how and when to build it. Not

GoTriangle is asking for input on its commuter rail plan. The public comment period is open through February 19. One of the goals of gathering this input is to determine which phase should be built first, or whether the planned sections should be modified, says Branch.

“It’s all about identifying what that phase looks like that better serves the people,” he says.

Will we ever have a local rail system?

Lattuca says it’s not unusual for projects of this size to take decades to complete. Moving from design to engineering and land acquisition can take anywhere from 10 to 20 years before construction even starts. Building the railway can then take years more.

The lengthy lead time for commuter rail isn’t the project’s biggest problem, however. The whole point of the Triangle commuter rail project is to build for the future, for the people who will move to the Triangle in 2040 or later, according to Branch.

“What we’re building is for the next gen-

“[In Maryland and DC], we were trying to solve a problem that already existed. Here we have the opportunity to solve a problem before it becomes bad,” he says. “It’s going to be much easier to acquire real estate when not everybody is up against the rail corridor. It’s going to be a lot easier to build something now when the demand on the highway is not impossible.”

According to Lattuca, commuter rail is only one piece of the overall solution.

“It’s really a three-legged stool,” he says. “We need to have a lot of investment and growth in our local buses, and also these bus rapid transit projects that are being considered and built by Raleigh and Chapel Hill. What we have in Atlanta, Baltimore, and New York are transit systems. Here we don’t have a unified transit system.”

Wake residents like Durst who are burned out on commuting say, for now, that it’s still probably easier to drive within the county than to use public transportation.

“I wonder about the convenience of [a commuter rail], depending on where you’re picking it up, where it drops off,” Durst says.

For longer trips, though—from Cary to Durham, for instance—Durst says she’d make an exception.

“If I had to go into RTP, definitely [I’d take public transportation], because that traffic is crazy crazy,” she says. “But just around the beltline—I would probably still drive.” W

“Inflation is eating up the dollars like crazy.”

GoTriangle CEO Chuck Lattuca PHOTO BY STEFAN WALZ/GOTRIANGLE

Up in Arms

A fear of violence is reshaping the face of gun ownership.

BY CHARLOTTE KRAMON backtalk@indyweek.com

Andréa “Muffin” Hudson is an activist for incarcerated individuals, directs two criminal justice nonprofits, and believes prisons do catastrophic harm. She is also a gun owner.

When Hudson, 47, drives around Durham, her G2C 9 mm pistol sits beside her on the passenger seat. She carries it with her everywhere, wearing it like a “fanny pack.” She leaves her gun behind only when she goes to the Durham County Courthouse to pay cash bonds.

Hudson lives with her son, 18, and daughter, 28. Her round cheeks frame her easygoing smile as words flow out, her deep voice suited to the seriousness of her work.

Each room in Hudson’s house has a gun in it. Even the bathroom.

“So if you’re in the bathroom, and somebody breaks in while you’re in the bathroom, you can protect yourself,” she said, laughing. “You know, I watch a lot of movies.”

Gun violence in the United States spiked in 2020—the onset of the pandemic. In Durham, from 2019 to 2020, the number of shootings skyrocketed by almost 70 percent. But the city saw 721 shootings from early December 2021 to early December 2022, 188 fewer than in the same period two years earlier.

Fatal shootings increased slightly. From early December 2020 to early December 2022, they went from 30 to 39.

Gun control debates conjure images of white, conservative men who collect arms for sport. Today, a new population makes up a disproportionate percentage of firsttime gun owners: people of color, especially women. Like Hudson, they don’t use their guns for recreation. They own them for protection.

In a study conducted between January 2019 and May 2021, researchers found that 22 percent of Black gun owners and 16 percent of Hispanic buyers had purchased arms for the first time in the 28 months prior to the survey. The same was true for just 8 per-

cent of whites surveyed. Additionally, nearly half of first-time gun owners in 2020 and 2019 were women.

During the same period, 7.5 million Americans bought guns for the first time. More recently, mass shootings in Raleigh, the University of Virginia, Colorado Springs, and Chesapeake, Virginia, have drawn more attention to the issue of gun ownership.

Some expected the Biden administration to impose stricter gun control measures, which accounts for a portion of the surge in gun ownership, said Becky Ceartas, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence. However, that is only part of the story.

White nationalism and law enforcement

Donald Trump’s presidency inflamed deep-seated racial animosity, lent new muscle and momentum to white nationalists, and stoked the fears of people like Hudson. She bought her first gun in 2017.

“I got it because Trump won, became president, and people were acting erratic,” said Hudson, who is Black. “I was thinking that folks were going to start doing stuff to harm other people. I was thinking about The Walking Dead and Armageddon coming, and I wanted to give us a fighting chance to survive.”

Hudson’s greatest fear is not people from her own community but “white men in America.” She recalls when a white man shot and killed nine Black people at a Charleston church in 2015. She also points to Kyle Rittenhouse, who was not old enough to own a firearm and killed two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, yet served no prison time.

The pandemic has only amplified gun violence. Almost all recent increases in homicides resulted from gun violence, notes Phil Cook, a public policy and economics professor at Duke who studies the economics of crime.

“The objective threat level has gone way up in a short period of time,” he said.

He believes a combination of tumultuous events has contributed to this increase. The pandemic stripped people of vital community services. Lockdowns caused “young men to have more time on their hands” and resort to gang violence, he said. At the same time, he said that police forces are weaker since the racial justice protests of 2020.

“Having an effective police force is part of what creates public safety,” Cook said, “and we lost some of that in 2020.”

To Hudson, police officers and the “State” are violent threats in and of themselves. In addition to police shootings, she believes that the incarceration and targeting of people of color, along with a lack of mental health services and other resources, are a form of violence.

“We need protection from the government and the State,” she said.

Fear of a “tyrannical” state has traditionally been associated with right-wing fringe groups, but it has “now migrated into the center of gun culture,” said Jeffrey W. Swanson, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and faculty affiliate for the Center for Firearms Law at Duke Law School.

The fraught relationship between people of color and law enforcement leaves Hudson feeling as though her only source of protection is her weapon.

Arms race

Gun ownership is the norm in many communities.

“In some places, it’s literally an arms race,” said Kristin Goss, a political scientist at Duke University who studies gun violence.

“So if nobody was armed, people probably wouldn’t feel like they needed to be armed. Once other people start arming themselves, then you have this kind of counter effect of, you know, ‘The place seems more dangerous, so I need to protect myself.’”

MarSean Hall, 30, of Durham, grew up in Chicago. Based on what he has seen, he believes that criminals will purchase illegal guns or resort to other modes of violence.

“A lot of people that are advocating for fewer guns or no guns are the people that have been more so sheltered their whole lives,” said Hall, who is Black.

Both of Hall’s parents were in the military, owned guns, and taught him about firearm safety. Most of his friends’ parents had guns, he said, and he knew others who obtained them illegally.

Hall owns a security firm called Category 5 Protection and bought his first gun when he was 21. He has three children and owns several guns that he keeps locked in a safe.

“I teach [my children] it’s a tool that can give you an upper hand in situations but not to play with them,” Hall said.

In Hall’s eyes, anyone who can legally own a gun should take advantage of that right, because not every instance of potential violence can be “de-escalated.” Still, gun owners must be responsible, Hall believes. He suspects that people who conduct background checks are not as thorough as they should be.

For Hudson, the arms race is not just among her community. It’s among her community, white people, and law enforcement.

“In a perfect world, no one would need a weapon,” Hudson said. “But I think about all the people who have guns legally, who do the killing, like, when you think about police officers. You think about random, young white men who go into gun stores, go to

PHOTO BY TOM DEF ON UNSPLASH

gun shows, get all of these guns and all of these weapons.”

Yet, Hudson said, just because people like her own guns doesn’t mean they want to use them.

“I would rather have it and not need it,” she said, “than need it and not have it.”

A series of tragedies

Mass shootings have dominated headlines since October. Five people dead in Raleigh. Five killed in Colorado Springs. Six dead in Chesapeake, Virginia. Three football players slain at the University of Virginia.

“I think if [the assailant] didn’t have a gun, they may still be dead,” Hudson said of the players. “What if it was a knife? What if it was a car?”

Hudson speculated that the athletes must have done some “harm” to the suspect, adding, “No matter what they did to this young man, they should still be here.” Officials have disclosed no evidence of any conflict between the players and their assailant.

Hall, though, thinks the gun sealed the athletes’ fate. If their assailant had used a knife, a scenario with three men against one would not have resulted in death, Hall said. Still, he does not think that mass shootings should stop people from purchasing guns as a “tool.”

North Carolina’s gun laws

In North Carolina, residents apply for a handgun permit through each county’s sheriff’s office. Applicants must meet certain criteria.

North Carolina does not have red flag laws, which allow state courts to confiscate firearms from people who exhibit dangerous behavior, such as domestic violence. There are also no restrictions on the types of weapons people can buy (for example, an assault rifle vs. a semi-automatic rifle) or on the number of rounds of ammunition a magazine can hold.

“North Carolina is middle-of-the road or more permissive than other states,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of Duke Center for Firearms Law.

This could change with a U.S. Supreme Court decision last July. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court struck down as unconstitutional a New York law that required individuals to show “proper cause” before receiving a license to carry a concealed pistol or revolver outside the home. Goss said the case may encourage other lawsuits against state gun regulations.

Violence is systemic

Idrissa A. Smith, a public defender for Durham County, says that violent crime is driven by systemic factors related to employment, education, culture, and financial strain.

Smith has noticed higher rates of gun ownership recently, particularly among juveniles. The attorney attributes the rise in gun ownership in Durham to several factors, including economic distress, the migration of gangs toward the South, and fears of white supremacists.

Smith, who is Black, added that law enforcement and government agencies regulate and prosecute crime, but “none of these institutions have anything to do with violent crimes. It’s systemic. It goes to what’s going on in people’s homes, how people were raised (these people being us, our population), the environments we were put in, and our sensibilities.”

Several of Smith’s fellow lawyers have become first-time gun owners in the last few years. But the lawyer vows never to buy one.

District Attorney Satana Deberry agrees that violence is systemic. Critics charge that she has been soft on violent crime, but both Smith and Cook disagree. Still, Deberry notes that violence has gone up across the country, not just in Durham. She says this proves that the problem extends beyond local prosecution.

Deberry admires Durham’s community efforts to reduce violence. For example, Hayti Reborn Justice Movement is a new coalition aiming to grow and maintain Black wealth in Durham by investing in Black businesses, bringing together community organizations, providing mentorship, and helping people find work.

DA spokeswoman Sarah Willets also highlighted the Duke Hospital Violence Intervention Program, the City of Durham’s Prescriptions for Repair pilot program, and the Community Safety Department.

“What I think is unique to Durham is our ability to really recognize when there was a challenge in 2020 and 2021 and respond to that,” Deberry said. “There are hundreds of people in this community who are working on decreasing the amount of violence.”

When it comes to guns, Deberry chooses not to own one. She grew up in the rural South with parents who lived through Jim Crow, and her father owned guns to protect his family.

“I’m unwilling to deal with the consequences of using it,” Deberry said. “My father always said, if you have a gun, you gotta be willing to use it.” W

This story was published through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is produced by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.

An Open Letter to the DPS School Board

Riverside High School students have ideas about how DPS should spend $18 million in grant money from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

BY THE PIRATES’ HOOK STAFF backtalk@indyweek.com

Dear members of the Durham Board of Education,

On November 15 Durham Public Schools (DPS) received a grant for $18 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. DPS is one of many public school districts receiving donations, and while Scott is known for selecting the organizations she funds out of the public eye and with no specific explanation for each selection, it’s clear why she chose DPS.

Scott looks for organizations with missions that indicate “high potential for sustained positive impact” and “experienced leadership representative of the community served.”

Scott’s philosophy of choosing organizations that are already committed to equity and uplifting underserved communities should also be the lens through which DPS decides how to use the money.

“When our giving team focuses on any system in which people are struggling, we don’t assume that we, or any other single group, can know how to fix it,” Scott wrote in an essay published last March. “This means a focus on the needs of those whose voices have been underrepresented.”

This donation has the potential, and the intention, to significantly impact students, so we encourage you to listen to student voices. We know how our schools work and what our education looks like better than anyone. We know what needs to be changed.

With her philosophy in mind and our own perspectives as high school students, we recommend using the funds to address three critical needs.

Buses

On November 23, DPS announced that 24 buses would either be delayed or not in service at all due to driver shortages.

Some students were hours late to class. Others simply couldn’t go to school because they couldn’t get another ride.

The shortcomings of our bus system is the most urgent and glaring issue impacting our students right now. Buses are often late picking students up at their stops and drop them off tardy to their morning classes. A driver shortage forces many buses to transport two separate loads, which leaves students, teachers, and administrators waiting at school for an hour or more after class is dismissed. It’s a tremendous waste of students’ time, an inhibitor to education, and a serious equity issue. Students who can drive themselves or have parents who pick them up leave as soon as the school day ends, while students who have to ride the bus wait every day.

The district has already increased pay multiple times to try to recruit more drivers. If staffing issues continue to prevent us from improving student transportation, we need to create programs and enrichment opportunities to better utilize the time students spend waiting for their bus after school. What if there was tutoring and homework help for students who spend their afternoons waiting for the bus? What if we were able to implement teachers’ ideas that could boost academic progress during the time kids currently spend standing in a parking lot?

Using this money to fix the issues with our bus system would have a direct and immediate impact on students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the whole school community.

Additional resources for impoverished students and families

There is a slew of research that suggests that poverty is the number one factor that impacts academic achievement. About 55

percent of DPS families qualify for free or reduced lunch. As inflation and reduced access to free school meals due to federal funding cuts create new financial challenges, the district should prioritize the needs of its low-income students.

This can take the form of broader access to free lunch for students or guaranteed meals for students and families during breaks. This could be after-school transportation for students who want to take part in clubs or sports after school but don’t have access to a ride. We could provide smallgroup, professional tutoring opportunities to reduce the achievement gap, or resource closets at school that discreetly offer toiletries, clothing items, and food to take home.

DPS showed its commitment to supporting low-income students during the pandemic by fast-tracking individual Chromebooks and making all meals free and available. With the $18 million, the district can and should expand the services it provides and offer additional resources that were previously unattainable.

Enriched academic opportunities/modernized classrooms

Coming back from online learning has been tough for many students. Data from NAEP Nation’s Report Card shows that decades of academic progress has been erased by pandemic learning loss, especially for younger students. Let’s not pretend we can fix this issue by “making up” that year and a half that we “lost.” Instead, let’s move forward with educational opportunities that will offer students a more robust learning experience that compensates for years of compromised stimulation and instruction.

Our journalism class knows how money and resources can enhance learning. Last year, The Pirates’ Hook partnered with The

Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting to pilot a high school program designed to recruit journalists of color. We took field trips to the News and Observer headquarters and UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. World-class reporters, editors, and college professors facilitated workshops via Zoom to supplement our curriculum. And local journalists visited our classes to coach us through the research and writing process as we completed our own investigative reporting projects. The additional adults drove down the student-to-teacher ratio, which enriched our learning. These experiences produced some of the best writing ever featured in the Hook.

However, like many other classrooms at Riverside, we face outdated technology and broken equipment. Our class set of Macs is almost 13 years old. They no longer run up-to-date versions of the Adobe software we use to edit photos and design our print editions. Using the grant money to modernize classrooms like ours could upgrade us to Adobe Creative Cloud software, which would allow us to save files to a cloud and work collaboratively, similar to Google Drive. It could fund additional cameras and microphones for broadcast and podcast projects.

We are evidence that enriched academic opportunities and modernized classrooms are both positive and scalable. Our class, like our school and district, is diverse. We publish the only bilingual high school newspaper in North Carolina and compete with schools from more affluent cities and districts for state and national awards. Last year, our newspaper was recognized as one of the best in the state. Think about the kind of content we could produce if we had updated technology on par with professional and college-level newsrooms. And think about how

PHOTO BY MARCUS PREWITT

many other DPS classrooms could benefit, and grow, in the same way we did.

Our district has a total operating budget of $678 million, so we know that an $18 million grant won’t be able to fix everything. But by targeting the right issues, the school board has the opportunity to enact significant change and address issues that we’ve never had the capital for.

Like Scott, we don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we as students are the underrepresented voices she seeks to amplify. We do have a real understanding of the issues that affect our community.

Board members, please consider the suggestions outlined in this letter and by our classmates. We value DPS and all of the work it does, and we hope that this donation is able to have the highest impact on its student beneficiaries.

Sincerely, The Pirates’ Hook staff

With no sign or word that a bus was on its way or even coming at all, someone made a quick call to Lakewood Montessori Middle School, and 30 minutes later an activity bus was outside. Our gym teacher, Justin Lasher, drove us to our campsite.

Bus issues became glaringly apparent when I reached middle school. Though I lived just two miles from my school, Lakewood Middle School in the downtown area of Durham, I had to get up before dawn to get to my bus stop because my bus didn’t pick up just kids from Lakewood but also students who were going to Shepard Middle School, which is near NC Central University.

The morning bus rides were not bad except for waking up so early, but the afternoon rides were crazy. Four buses would come to Lakewood, pick up all of the bus riders and take us to Shepard, where we then all got off and got on a different bus with Shepard kids and, finally, went home.

Though this may have seemed like an equitable solution in theory, in reality, it was not. The buses were so packed that sometimes students would have to sit three to a seat. Most of the kids being shuttled from Lakewood to Shepard were traveling to the other side of Durham and, in the process, passing the neighborhoods they lived in. This “solution” meant we got home an hour to an hour and a half after school ended.

on December 19 and 20. Although school administrators were apologetic, they did not offer a solution and instead sought volunteers with a bus driver’s license to step up and help.

After addressing driver shortages and wages, the remaining grant money should go to buying more buses so fewer students experience overcrowded buses. One bus costs $100,000, according to a WRAL News article, which means that, with the grant, DPS would have enough money to buy the 10 more buses needed so that drivers don’t have to pick up as many kids, making pickup times later, and have extra buses in case buses break down or aren’t working.

As of December 16, DPS announced that it would issue incentives to bus drivers to encourage better attendance and more employment. Bus drivers will get an extra $150 for a month of perfect attendance; all new drivers hired from now on will get a $1,000 bonus, and any driver hired that already has a bus driver’s license will receive a $3,000 bonus.

up with a million ways to use the money to enhance our education.

As kids in every classroom discussed the possibilities, one idea came up more than the others: infrastructure.

Let’s face it, the DPS schools are outdated and falling apart.

One of my first conversations about Riverside ended with the remark “Oh, the school that looks like a prison?” Known for its bland and broken exterior, dilapidated bathrooms, and messed up heating and a/c systems, Riverside could use some work.

ARTWORK BY AMORY PEREZ JUAREZ

Fix Our Bus Transportation

BY ISABELLE ABADIE

Since I was 11 years old I have taken the bus to and from school. In elementary school, buses showed up on time to take us to and from field trips. But for middle school, I woke up at 5:45 a.m. to get to the bus stop by 6:30 and be at school by 7:10. It was annoying to do every day, but it did get me to school on time and home before dark.

The first time I experienced the bus shortage myself was in fifth grade. It was the end of the year and all of the fifth graders were going camping to celebrate graduating from elementary school. Still, instead of taking hikes and eating s’mores, we were sitting in the front lobby of George Watts Elementary School. Our bus was over two hours late. Teachers were starting to get worried, and we were all starting to get bored.

I became so frustrated with this situation that, halfway through my eighth-grade year, I opted to ride my bike to school, regardless of the weather. That got me to and from school in less than 20 minutes.

I strongly believe we should use the $18 million grant from MacKenzie Scott to fix our bus situation. As of December 1, DPS has 13 open positions in its transportation department. DPS drivers currently make $17 an hour and work 180 days a year, which roughly adds up to $24,000 a year; they also receive benefits for health, dental, and eye care as well as vacation time and sick days. But even though the district increased bus drivers’ pay last year, the issues remain. Many drivers still have to find a second source of income, which wouldn’t happen if they were paid a livable wage and were paid during school breaks. Bus drivers should get paid on school breaks, just like teachers, because then they might not have to find another job for the times that students are out of school.

Right now, we are seeing the effects of bus drivers not getting enough holiday time off. During the weekend of December 17, DPS administrators sent out emails to parents of bus riders explaining that many drivers had already gone on holiday break and that there would be a big bus shortage

Even though the district has already taken steps to solve this problem, I still believe we should spend the $18 million and do whatever it takes to fix our bus system because it will help every DPS school. The students affected by this most are kids who don’t have any alternative transportation. Students need bus transportation to get to school, and right now, they are missing hours, sometimes days, that should be spent learning. W

Isabelle Abadie is a freshman at Riverside High School. Amory Perez Juarez is a junior at Riverside High School.

For example, rebuilding bathroom stalls, updating ventilation, fixing heating and cooling systems, and renovating for appearance could all help increase achievement by improving the learning environment. Right now, it feels like people just don’t care about the education system and our schools. Problems are constantly ignored, and opportunities available to students seem too few. The long-term solution would be for the state government to step up and care about its youth. There are plans to fund the schools of North Carolina, but it’s not clear if lawmakers will act on them. Fixing infrastructure would only be a start to bettering our schools as a whole.

Northern High and Durham School of the Arts are getting completely new schools on new campuses. The bond that Durham residents voted for in November will fund that construction. For most other schools, too, new construction would be much needed and exciting. There are 55 DPS schools, with varying numbers of students each, and around 32,000 students across the entire district. Whether divided equally or based on the student population, $18 million would disappear fast. Investing in buildings themselves, in the bones of schools, would benefit everyone inside them.

If the building is the bones of a school, how can students be expected to perform adequately and how can programs thrive without a good building? Investing in school infrastructure would set the standard for learning expectations.

Improve Infrastructure

BY LANA MCILVAINE

When Riverside students heard that MacKenzie Scott donated $18 million to Durham Public Schools, they came

For students and staff, much of our lives take place within a school. It is where we work, learn, eat, and socialize. Walking into a comfortable school every morning would both inspire students to do their best and help them focus on schoolwork. For example, some classrooms’ temperatures are so hot or cold as to be distracting or uncomfortable to students trying to learn. Good infrastructure improves quality of life and community connection and demonstrates progress.

Many things make up a great school. When I think about concepts and ideals

PHOTO BY LANA MCILVAINE

like safety and security, academic excellence, dominant athletics, and opportunities for creativity and enrichment, I imagine a utopian school with happy people. In my mind, I see a nice building, not bathrooms with shattered mirrors and broken toilets, classrooms that are too hot or too cold, and dirty white floors.

Investing in an aesthetically pleasing and functioning building will give room for better things to come to the school. Maybe people would actually care about the education of our youth if the district looked the part. W

Lana McIlvaine is a sophomore at Riverside High School.

judgment, others pity, but all begging to know what happened.

For too many students, this hypothetical scenario is their reality.

This is a real barrier to academic success. Instead of going to class able to focus, students oftentimes show up distracted and disengaged. And while this doesn’t qualify as a “crisis,” it still needs immediate attention.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in three high school students throughout the United States experience symptoms of depression, while one in six youth have made a suicide plan. These statistics have both increased by at least 40 percent since 2009 and are expected to keep rising.

Additionally, according to the American School Counselor Association, the ideal caseload for a counselor is around 250 students. At Riverside, a counselor’s average caseload is around 350. The state average in North Carolina is 386.

could greatly improve mental health support and accessibility with its new grant money, which would not only better the lives of 32,000 students but would also immensely enhance the district’s overall academic success. W

Piper Winton is a junior at Riverside High School. Dunya Omar is a junior at Riverside High School.

Young people need an opening, even if it’s small, because many don’t know where to start. Schools should be able to provide these types of openings for other classes as well. And with the $18 million grant from MacKenzie Scott, DPS could give these kinds of opportunities to all students.

When kids enter high school, many only think about passing their classes, moving on to the next grade, and surviving that final exam. Others don’t care about their classes or their GPA. They don’t think high school is important.

But let’s say schools gave them classes where they can actually engage, and it’s less about a structured grading rubric and more about helping them build life experiences, skills, and connections.

ARTWORK BY DUNYA OMAR

Increase Access to Mental Health Resources

BY PIPER WINTON

Imagine walking down the hallway toward the front office, holding in tears, just needing someone to talk to so you can make it through your last two classes.

When you walk through the door, you are greeted at the front desk.

“Good afternoon,” a front office secretary says to you. “What’s wrong?”

You can feel the tears building up. “I need to speak to a counselor, please.” A few tears slip out.

“You’re going to need to log into the student service page and request a time,” says the secretary. “It looks like the next available slot is in about three weeks.”

The tears start falling, fast.

“OK,” you whisper.

You leave with your head down and vision blurred.

The embarrassment of heading back to class with your eyes watering and face flushed is almost unbearable. When you walk toward your seat you can feel 22 sets of eyes staring at you, some filled with

Currently, DPS as a whole has access to three different mental health programs: co-located services, Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS), and Inner Explorer. But the availability of these programs varies greatly depending on the school.

Most schools have at least one of these services available, but access can be very limited. In order for students to actually use these services, schools need to have trained staff members on campus, and most schools don’t, due to the cost and time it takes to complete these training sessions.

The $18 million grant DPS recently received from MacKenzie Scott could train a lot of faculty and staff members and could pay for a lot of additional programs, too.

Instead of walking back to class trying to hide your tears, imagine returning refreshed and relieved. When you enter the front office, someone greets you and asks what’s wrong. You feel the tears building up, and a few slip out, but instead of being told to schedule an appointment, you walk to your counselor’s office right away.

You sink into the chair, feeling no embarrassment about the tears sliding down your face or what you’re about to say. Your counselor was available. You have a great conversation and use the tools and strategies they learned from their professional training.

You can finally start to breathe again, and your heart is no longer beating out of your chest because you know you’ll be able to make it through your last two classes without feeling the stares piercing through your skin at each and every movement.

This could easily become a reality. DPS

BY CAITLIN LEGGETT/WUNC

Provide More College and Career Exploration

BY DONNA DIAZ

My freshman year, the only thing I knew

I was good at was talking. I would ride in the car, asking my aunt millions of questions all at once, and she always seemed to know the answer, so it was easy for me to ask anything. But did I know I could do this as a future job? Of course not, until I got into journalism.

Most of the time students don’t have an idea of what they should do after high school. Some don’t even have a plan for what to do during high school.

In my case, journalism has been the most influential class I ever took. It opened many doors for me. I’m meeting new people in the community, and learning and working with classmates and adults in ways I would have never thought possible. I’m making friendships with people who can relate to having a similar passion as me. And I would have never known I had these interests until I got into the class.

I’ve participated in workshops. I wrote a few pieces, published an investigative story about why so many bilingual students take Spanish 1, and interviewed my school’s French teacher, who also happens to speak Arabic and Berber. Last spring, I learned how to create a résumé, applied for an internship, and spent the summer working with WUNC to create my own radio segment.

It’s important for young people to explore and experience what they could do as a career in the future. And high school is the time to do it. At the very least, it will give kids activities to put on their college applications. And at most, more students like me, who feel lost and unsure about their futures, will realize the value of school and discover what they could do in their lives, like making a difference in their communities, making their families proud, and bettering themselves as a whole. This could be done with one push, one opening, to change and better a student’s life. DPS should use the grant money to give high school students the chance to explore interests that could become occupations rather than forcing them to concentrate only on academics. W

Diaz is a junior at Riverside High School.

Increase Arts Funding

BY SADIE IRBY

Last year, if students in my art class finished their project early, our art teacher told them to grab used canvases covered with unwanted art and paint them over white.

PHOTO

Donna

ARTWORK BY SADIE IRBY

Acrylic paints are commonly created to be unremovable and last a long time, so just resurfacing one canvas would take many layers to complete. The surface of a canvas affects the art drastically, and we did not have access to sanders or paint-removing alcohols, so the canvas was never “good as new.” But it stretched our supplies, and allowed a lot of students to keep painting on canvas the following year. Canvases were left used when the school year ended because students did not want to bring their artwork home.

Though this may seem a smart way to save money, it really showcases how desperate the visual arts in Durham schools are for better funding.

Most of the arts funding is paid through a combination of district and school funds. The art and Career Technical Education (CTE) program are the only programs with set budgets, and for visual arts, each teacher receives $2,500 combined in funds from both DPS and Riverside. Teachers use their budgets to pay for supplies, but materials can take weeks to ship and our teachers often pay for materials with their own money in order to get them sooner.

Using Durham Public Schools’ $18 million grant from MacKenzie Scott to increase funding for the arts would give high schoolers more opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills. The arts can help students with their social and emotional needs not only as a creative outlet but also as a resource to help students mentally. Art engagement has proven to lower the chances of developing mental illnesses and build students’ confidence and self-worth, even if they don’t plan to pursue art beyond high school.

Additional funding would also address issues of equity. Art supplies are very expensive, so underprivileged students are unable to buy their own and, as a result, can’t thrive in advanced art classes that expect kids to buy their own tools. Most of the time teachers will allow students to borrow materials, but they are shared by all of the art classes and often worn. Many of the materials are damaged and borderline unusable.

Art is a pricey hobby to pursue, and classism is present within the DPS and broader community. No matter how talented you are as an artist, if you can’t afford the resources, your art will never look as good or reach its full potential and you are not receiving an equal opportunity.

Increased funding would also foster more inclusion and creativity. Once students complete beginning and interme-

diate art classes at Riverside, they need an art teacher’s recommendation to move up. Even if they pass with As and Bs, if their art doesn’t reach certain standards and expectations, opportunities to continue are limited.

This might seem cruel and strict on the surface, but teachers aren’t given much of a choice. There are only two visual arts teachers at Riverside and they teach five different levels of art classes. The program is small, and schools don’t have the resources or staff to continue to teach more than a select few. With funding, advanced classes and the process of getting into advanced classes would be less divisive for both students and teachers.

Supplies affect art tremendously and funding would benefit art education as a whole. Quality art supplies can be pricey, and underprivileged students need this funding in order to reach their full artistic potential. W

Last year, Riverside’s homecoming weekend began on a rainy Friday afternoon. The football team was supposed to play Northern that night, but conditions outside were nearly unplayable. No one knew if the game was actually going to happen.

Riverside athletic director Robert Duncan calls a turf field “a hope and a dream.” It’s Duncan’s job to take care of the school’s fields, and he decides when to cancel practices and games due to the weather.

Duncan and assistant athletic directorBrian Strickland work tirelessly to make our grass fields playable. Riverside’s athletic staff spends three to four hours per week cutting grass, much of it on their own time. The school recently invested $10,000 in a digital machine that will paint the field on its own.

A single match on a poorly maintained field can ruin athletes’ play, increase the risk of injury, and decimate the field for the rest of the season. Artificial turf fields, on the other hand, are far more durable than natural grass fields and can be used all year, regardless of weather conditions. There’s no need to paint, because the lines are permanent, too.

Turf would also improve playability, cost less to maintain, and reduce injuries. And it would benefit many different athletic programs, as Riverside’s main field is home to the majority of the school’s athletic teams, including football, men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse, field hockey, and track and field.

Install Turf Athletic Fields

BY JADEN BUTLER

Durham Public Schools, as we all know by now, received a generous, $18 million grant from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. The gift is primarily intended to promote equal opportunities and achievement for American communities.

A portion of the grant should be allocated to athletic programs, and all DPS high schools should get turf fields.

The weather during the fall of 2020 rendered Riverside’s main athletic field unplayable. It was so bad that all of our home games were moved to Durham County Stadium. We practiced on a field full of mud, holes, ants, and puddles of water.

While DPS schools sometimes play at Durham County Stadium, which has turf, none of the district’s schools have turf on campus. But many local schools do, including Durham Academy, Voyager, Green Hope, and Cedar Ridge.

Turf fields would encourage more families to enroll at DPS schools as well, as student-athletes prefer to play on nice fields, not mud. It could also generate revenue for the school, which could rent the facility to local recreational leagues and host youth sports and community events.

I believe there has never been a better time to upgrade the district’s athletic facilities. Riverside has demonstrated that with a decent grass field, we can compete with anyone. Consider what we could do with turf! W

Jaden Butler is a junior at Riverside High School. Marcus Prewitt is a sophomore at Riverside High School.

Sadie Irby is a sophomore at Riverside High School.

PHOTO BY MARCUS PREWITT

Preservation Station

BY GABI MENDICK arts@indyweek.com

Walking neighborhood streets in the Triangle, you’re likely to come across a plethora of free goods: numerous household items with “free” sticky notes on curbs, Little Free Libraries chock-full of donated books, and various wooden structures containing dry goods and pantry items with signs reading “Free Food” or “Comida Gratis.”

Now, in the same spirit of giving back to the community—and not the landfill— Durham has its first community fridge. After eighteen months of planning, on October 29, the refrigerator was plugged in and officially “opened for business.”

Behind the Durham Community Fridge is a local mutual aid group that aims to mitigate food waste by providing open access to food. It’s not a charity organization: per the group’s definition, mutual aid involves communities coming together to help meet the needs of everyone in the community.

The refrigerator/freezer, painted lavender and stocked with donated food, is located at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Durham at 1901 West Main Street. Alongside the fridge is a cabinet filled with dry food goods and personal care products including essentials like toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, and condoms.

All kinds of provisions—produce, dairy products, prepared meals, beverages, and more—are regularly stocked, and beyond

the contributions of individuals, the fridge also receives consistent weekly donations from local businesses and nonprofits, including Red’s Quality Acre, the Durham Co-op Market, Iglesia Presbiteriana Emanuel, Redstart Foods, Geer Street Learning Garden, and Happy Dirt.

On a recent Friday morning, for instance, the fridge was stocked with a drawer full of root vegetables, three quart containers of homemade curry-carrot soup, a tray of cornbread stuffing, two cartons of nondairy milk, and much more, while the freezer held several bags of sliced bread. On its Instagram page, Durham Community Fridges posts regular photo and video updates sharing the current contents of the fridge.

The phenomenon of community fridges first cropped up in Europe in the 2010s and, in recent years, has made its way to the United States.

The onset of the pandemic heightened food insecurity, isolation, and inflation, and as a result, grassroots efforts like community fridges have begun to emerge in more places. The online database Freedge lists more than 150 community fridges across the country.

Because the fridge is a mutual aid effort and is fully run by and serves the community, both regulations and barriers to access are minimal. Much of the donated food is cooked in individuals’ homes and in kitchens that are not certified or regulated. But

unlike other food access programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which have eligibility requirements and application processes, accessing the community fridge does not require filling out forms or providing documentation. All are welcome to participate, no matter their need level or income.

“Social conditioning tells us that you can only engage with something like this in the taking side of things when you are in dire need,” Haleigh Paquette, a member of the mutual aid group, shares. “This is an exercise in the leveling of a playing field, getting capitalism out of the picture, and giving and taking when and if you are able without questions asked.”

The Durham Community Fridge mutual aid initiative was founded by nine individuals with a range of different backgrounds and skills who came together around a shared mission to feed their community. Before moving to Durham, one member of the group was involved in Miami’s community fridge network of 10 community fridges; another has spent time working in Durham restaurants and born witness to food waste; while a third member had purchased a new refrigerator for their home and wanted to donate their old fridge.

The group coalesced around that refrigerator with the objective of finding it a home base. One of the major initial challenges the group faced was finding a local space to host the fridge.

“Many businesses were interested, but it was difficult to give them concrete exam-

ples of how the fridge would function without having an example here in Durham,” the mutual aid group shared over email with the INDY. Other businesses that expressed support were limited because they rent their property and did not have the ability to build a structure for the fridge or to provide an electricity source.

The group finally connected with St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, and the two entities formed a harmonious partnership. The church designed and helped build a structure for the fridge, installed electricity on the exterior of the church building, and built the pantry that sits alongside the fridge.

“St. Joseph’s has a long-standing relationship with the unhoused population of West Durham, and the flagship of that is our three-times-a-week community breakfast that brings a whole bunch of people together to eat,” shared Lachlan Hassman, ministry associate for liturgy and administration at St. Joseph’s. “We have a beautiful location that we can’t utilize enough.” (St. Joseph’s community breakfasts are held on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at eight a.m.)

When the fridge was first installed— and word spread that there was an outdoor electricity source—there was an initial issue with people unplugging the fridge in order to charge their phones and electronics. But the wrinkle was optimistically dealt with head-on: organizers simply built in additional power sources to accommodate people’s needs.

The mutual aid group behind a new community fridge has a simple credo: “Everybody deserves food.”

The Durham Community Fridge at 1901 West Main Street

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

“This is an excercise in the leveling of a playing field, getting capitalism out of the picture.”

Just as anyone is welcome to take food from the fridge, all are welcome to donate food to it. Donations from individuals in the community are critical to keeping the fridge full throughout the week. If you cook an extra serving of soup or grow more tomatoes than you know what to do with, they can easily be dropped off at the fridge, so long as the donation is labeled with its ingredients and either the date it was made or an expiration date.

Since its inception, community fridge volunteers have noticed a demand for ready-to-eat prepared foods, and donations from home cooks go a long way toward meeting that demand.

The Durham Community Fridge does not currently accept monetary donations. The group raised funds to start the fridge on Kickstarter and has a small reserve for maintenance and other expenses that come up, but otherwise their focus is on a different kind of giving.

“If you find yourself wanting to give and where your mind goes with that is to give money, it’s about this changing of mentality to instead make an extra loaf of banana bread and put it in the fridge,” Paquette says.

Volunteers play a key role in ensuring that the fridge is well-maintained. Members of the community fridge group visit every day to clean the unit and check the shelf life of the items stocked. “We’re monitoring—every day we have someone come and check on the fridge, and that might entail opening a container of something and giving it a sniff,” says Paquette. “There’s no precise formula, but just regular monitoring and using one’s better judgment.”

The fridge is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a schedule that acknowledges another aspect of people’s different food needs. Other food assistance programs, like food pantries, usually have specific pickup windows, which can make them difficult to access for people with busy work schedules.

It’s also still very new to the community, and the Durham Community Fridge is still developing and fine-tuning its system with the hope of providing a template for future community fridges in the Triangle.

“It’s an open-sourced food pantry on the street corner propelled by the care we provide for each other,” the group wrote over email.

“We want to remove the stigma that there is a specific need and specific people who deserve it,” Durham Community Fridge member Sharmin Aziz says. “Everybody deserves food.” W

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

music

The Chisel $15. Wed, Jan. 11, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Queer Country Night Wed, Jan. 11, 5 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

By George $13. Thurs, Jan. 12, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Local Produce: Velle / Isaac Thursday / Echan / Ver b2b Isabel Essence Thurs, Jan. 12, 8 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Severed Fingers / Jessye DeSilva / Kym Register $10. Thurs, Jan. 12, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Adam Knight’s Buried Alive: A Tribute to Phish $14. Fri, Jan. 13, 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Anthony Hamilton $328+. Fri, Jan. 13, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Jim Ketch Swingtet $20+. Fri, Jan. 13, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

North Carolina Symphony: Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances $50+. Jan. 13 and 14, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

The Steel Wheels $34+. Fri, Jan. 13, 7:30 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Cuchulain / Honey Magpie / Cameron Stenger $10. Sat, Jan. 14, 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Lamefest XIV with WMF, Bronco, Andy Lame, Damien Lugo and The Halo of Vultures $12. Sat, Jan. 14, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Magic City Hippies $23. Sat, Jan. 14, 9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Victoria Victoria $15. Sat, Jan. 14, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

The Wes Collins Band $15. Sat, Jan. 14, 8 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.

WINTER METALFEST with Cultus Black, Drill 187, Infinity Dream, Outliar, Attracting the Fall, and Among the Machines $15. Sat, Jan. 14, 6:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Mozart and His Contemporaries $9+. Sun, Jan. 15, 3 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Rodolfo Zuniga and Uri Gurvich Quartet $20+. Sun, Jan. 15, 7 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Shot Thru the Heart: A Tribute to Bon Jovi / Bullet the Blue Sky: A Tribute to U2 $15. Sun, Jan. 15, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Gooseberry / Tiger Beach / Cab Ellis / The Violent Exploit $10. Tues, Jan. 17, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Jazz Trio $8. Tues, Jan. 17, 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

stage

screen

The Other Half: A New Play by Mark Cornell $10. Jan. 12-22, various times. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Comedy Night with Azeem $15. Fri, Jan. 13, 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

AS IS … The Strings of Hope $15. Sat, Jan. 14, 2 and 6 p.m. East Chapel Hill High, Chapel Hill.

George Lopez: OMG! Hi! Comedy Tour $48+. Sun, Jan. 15, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Half-Cocked Thurs, Jan. 12, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

Rebecca and Gilda $10. Fri, Jan. 13, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Alice Street: Screening and Discussion with Director Spencer Wilkinson Sun, Jan. 15, 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Let the Little Light Shine: Screening and Discussion with Director Kevin Shaw Sun, Jan. 15, 4:30 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Tea Hacic-Vlahovic: A Cigarette Lit Backwards Thurs, Jan. 12, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Francesca Royster: Black Country Music Fri, Jan. 13, 7 p.m. North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh.

Second Sunday Poetry Series: Janis Harrington and J.S. Absher Sun, Jan. 15, 2:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

MLK Day Book Drive and Celebration Mon, Jan. 16, 1 p.m. Golden Belt Campus, Durham.

Cuchulain performs at the Pinhook on Saturday, January 14. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PINHOOK

like to plan ahead? FOR

like to ahead?

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

SERVICES

for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige. Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0071820)

Software Engineer III, F/T at Truist (Raleigh, NC)

Deliver highly complex solutions w/ significant system linkages, dependencies, & associated risk. Oversee & participate in testing, implmtn, maintenance, & escalated support of Truist’s most complex solutions. Dvlpmt includes but is not limited to customized coding, software integration, analysis, configuring solutions, or the use of tools pertinent to the area, project, or system to configure or generate a solution. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, IT, or related tech’l field. Must have 6 yrs of progressive exp in s/ware engg or IT consulting positions implmtg TRIRIGA solutions/ applications. Work exp must have incl performing/ utilizing the following: TRIRIGA tech’l integration expertise w/ TRIRIGA Implmtn, support & Data migration; TRIRIGA Functional configuration & function knowl of Capital Project, Facilities, Space mgmt, Lease, Asset, Operations, Project & Portfolio modules; Understood the TRIRIGA application capabilities & defined the application configuration / customizations required to meet the reqmts; Dsgn, Dvlpmt, Implmtn, Data migration from legacy systems & testing of the TRIRIGA application as per business reqmts; Migrating leases from Legacy systems to TRIRIGA by implmtg FASB ASC 842 accounting standard; Implmtg or upgrading TRIRIGA solutions; & utilizing exp w/ the following: IOT skills , Machine learning & Artificial intelligence; Java for dvlpmt; Agile methodologies; & CAD integration & reporting. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0071817).

Storage Engineer II, F/T at Truist (Raleigh, NC)

Deliver & support Enterprise Storage solutions using NetApp storage, Brocade SAN, & Cisco UCS as well as Cloud based solutions such as AWS. Support the delivery & sustainment of enterprise storage services & solutions while supporting the existing storage & SAN fabric infrastructure. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, or related tech’l field. Must have 4 yrs of exp in s/ware engg or IT consulting positions performing the following: troubleshooting, implmtg & supporting enterprise storage, SAN, storage mgmt & security related technologies & platforms; supporting the delivery & sustainment of enterprise storage services & solutions while supporting the existing storage & SAN fabric infrastructure; & utilizing exp w/: SAN; NAS; NetApp storage; Brocade SAN; Cisco UCS; & NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager Suite of tools, incl Insight (Assure, Platform, Plan, & Balance), Performance Manager, System Manager, & Workflow Automation, My Autosupport, Snap Creator Framework, & SnapCenter. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige. Whitesell@Truist.com (Reference Job No. R0072053).

Enterprise FileNet P8 System, Alfresco Document Mgmt; Business Process Modeling tools: IBM Rational Systems Architect (RSA), Microsoft Office Visio & Camunda Modeler; Project & Test Management tools: HP ALM & JIRA; & Data Analysis using SQL, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Position may work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly