INDY Week 2.02.2022

Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill February 2, 2022

MAJ3STY’S

SECRET SERVICE The extraordinary story of tragedy and resilience behind a rising Raleigh musician's

apocalyptic reggae-pop

BY BRIAN HOWE, P. 10

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 5

A new season at Tranplanting Traditions Community Farm, p. 12 PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

CONTENTS NEWS 5

Attorneys for a former Granville County sheriff's deputy charged with dozens of felonies say the Wake DA, who is prosecuting his case, acted improperly and have moved to have the case dismissed. BY JANE PORTER

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Two years of pandemic measures are taking a toll on prisoners during the Omicron surge. BY ELIZABETH THOMPSON

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Affirmative action has been a staple of universities' admissions policies for decades. Now, an ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court will rule in a case brought against UNC-Chapel Hill. BY JASMINE GALLUP

FEATURE 10 The extraordinary story of tragedy and resilience behind a rising Raleigh musician's apocalyptic reggae-pop. BY BRIAN HOWE

ARTS & CULTURE 12

Hsar Ree Ree Wei grew up at Transplanting Traditions Community Farm.

Now, she's its new executive director. BY GABI MENDICK

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To release his new album, A deep clean you can count on!, Owen FitzGerald first had to take a long look back. BY MADELINE CRONE

16 Review: Jphono1's Rectify Mercy spins psych-rock vignettes into joyful meditations. BY HARRIS WHELESS

THE REGULARS 3 15 Minutes

4 Op-ed

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Culture Calendar

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WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER S Wake County

MaryAnn Kearns Durham/Orange/ Chatham Counties

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February 2, 2022

Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards

Theater+Dance Critic Byron Woods

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A D V E RTI S I N G

Creative Director

Senior Writer Leigh Tauss

Contributors Madeline Crone, Grant Golden, Spencer Griffith, Lucas Hubbard, Brian Howe, Lewis Kendall, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Gabi Mendick, Anna Mudd, Dan Ruccia, Rachel Simon, Harris Wheless

Annie Maynard

Wake County MaryAnn Kearns

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BACK TA L K

Last week, we republished a story from writer Zella Hanson from The 9th Street Journal, our partner newsroom at Duke, on a public hearing that took place regarding a proposed development near West Point on the Eno. In a letter, reader CHRIS DREPS has some thoughts to add to the reporting:

First, the people who spoke in support from the nearby church might also be described as benefitting financially from the project.

The article makes them sound like just regular folks in support of housing, but the key entrance road without which the project could not be built would run across their property. Did the church give that for free to the developer? I’ll bet not, and I’ll even bet they’re going to make a nice profit, so Faith Community Church is part of the development team.

Secondly, why is this development allowed 370 units and not 120 units of housing, the density every other neighborhood around it is, AND the density to which it was supposed to be down-zoned after the defeat of the ill-fated Eno Drive? After that terrible idea of a bypass road beside the Eno was killed, why was this parcel left at a higher density (which, by the way doesn’t even match its land use map designation), while all the parcels around it (including Faith Community Church) were zoned at a lower density? Was it an oversight by the City? Something else?

Perhaps the most important issue that escaped your reporting is the question of whether this and other high-density proposed and new developments pose a threat to Durham’s current proposal for a 1.5 billion–gallon future water supply less than 1 mile away just down the Eno River. One speaker raised the question of whether this development, plus the new high school, plus the rezoning at Guess and Latta Roads, along with other new nearby building might somehow endanger Durham’s proposal for that water supply, which is being considered by the state right now. The City is proposing a Water Supply Watershed Classification IV, which has specific limits for impervious cover both inside the 1/2 mile critical area and outside of that critical area but within city limits. This Westpoint thing is within the so-called “protected area” of the proposed water intake. If these new developments, all being allowed by Durham at the moment when we are requesting this critical water supply, would not be allowed under Water Supply Watershed Classification IV regulations, can the state allow the developments to occur at these densities? Would the construction of all this very dense impervious area within the city limits in the proposed water supply intake’s so-called “protected area” somehow preclude our City’s request for this needed water supply? I hope someone in the City and at NC Division of Water Resources has figured this out, because this water supply is more important than the ability of some developer to make a few (million) extra bucks building 370 units instead of 120.

Look for more reporting on this proposed project in the INDY’s pages soon.

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Janet Lee (top right with her family) and her virtual trivia team CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Durham

15 MINUTES Janet Lee, 36 Virtual trivia champ at Bull McCabe’s

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

How did you get involved in trivia?

I think I saw on social media that Fullsteam [Brewery] was doing virtual trivia. This was back in the earliest, dark days of COVID. We really weren’t seeing a lot of people. It seemed like a fun thing my husband and I could do from home. We did it once or twice on our own and then had so much fun that we started inviting other people.

What is it like doing virtual trivia?

[Our team’s] not all local, so we’re usually all watching the video feed or, often, somebody will take screenshots of the question and post them to a group text. Then the rest of us communicate via group text. [The team is] a big mix. Some of the people are people I work with, some of them are friends from high school, some are friends from college.

What’s your team name?

We come up with something different every week [but] we almost always are named something that has to do with “Chalupa Batman.” During the course of this whole pandemic, I got pregnant [and] my husband bet naming rights to our child on an answer to a question. He was right, but that didn’t stop the rest of the members of our group from running with this. So my then yet- unborn kid became known as “Chalupa Batman.” Since then, there’s been other kids in the

group who have been born, so now there’s some more variability in the team name.

What is the key to winning bar trivia?

There’s not really a strategy, it’s just about the mix of people you have. Some of us are in science and medicine.

There’s a social studies teacher who is a huge history buff and entertainment connoisseur. There’s people who like a lot of different things, and we have a range of ages too. One of our older players has a 14-year-old daughter and she is instrumental to our ability to win sometimes. I’m the food person. Questions about food, international ingredients, weird fruits and vegetables, that is totally my jam.

What’s your favorite thing about doing this every week?

My favorite thing about [trivia] has been reestablishing friendships and communication with people I didn’t talk to a whole lot. It’s fun to see people pop in and out that I had not spoken to in years. It’s been a really good social support system as I was going through pregnancy and postpartum [depression]. Over the course of trivia, there’s been at least three kids born in this group. It’s become something where we don’t just talk on trivia nights, there’s all sorts of other things that happen in the group. W INDYweek.com

February 2, 2022

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Bad Math When it comes to redistricting, Republican numbers don’t add up.

BY NATALIE MURDOCK backtalk@indyweek.com

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very 10 years, the U.S. Census takes a head count of every community and every state across the nation.

For any statisticians or history buffs, the census results tell a fascinating story of how our nation has grown and evolved.

For politicians, the results can be a reality check on the changing mood and values of their constituents.

The 2020 census results tell us a lot about North Carolina: where we’ve been, where we are, and trends that show us where we’re going.

North Carolina gained nearly 1 million new residents over the past decade.

With these population gains, North Carolina will also be one of six states to gain new congressional seats, increasing our state’s influence at the national level.

If you were to gauge North Carolina’s changing demographics over the past decade based on Republican congressional and legislative maps, you’d think that our state has grown significantly whiter, older, and more rural since 2010.

If this were truly the case, it would be understandable that North Carolinians would move from having eight Republicans and five Democrats in Congress to 11 Republicans and three Democrats under new maps.

That kind of drastic swing doesn’t add up when you look at North Carolina’s demographics.

Based on party registration alone, Republicans are third behind Democrats and Independents, with just 30 percent of the state’s 7.2 million voters identifying with the GOP. But, to be fair, North Carolina voters don’t vote straight-party tickets as much as in other states.

The 2020 census tells us that North Carolina is becoming increasingly diverse—particularly among people who identify as two or more races, which 4

February 2, 2022

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“The 2020 census results tell us a lot about North Carolina: where we’ve been, where we are, and trends that show us where we’re going.” has increased a staggering 245 percent since 2010.

The census also tells us that North Carolina is becoming more urban. Nearly 80 percent of North Carolina’s population growth occurred in its two largest metro areas, while over half of the state’s 100 counties lost population.

That is the story of where North Carolina’s population has been, and where we’re going: more urban and more diverse. But the reality is that our legislature and our congressional delegation don’t reflect the makeup of our state. It’s a problem that has long plagued state politics.

According to the 2020 census, North Carolina’s population is 60 percent white;

20 percent Black; and 11 percent Latino; 51 percent are women.

This is in stark contrast to North Carolina’s representation in the General Assembly.

Out of 170 members elected, Democrats have a combined 73 seats—40 are people of color (55 percent), and 31 are women (42 percent).

Republicans hold the majority in both the state house and senate, with 97 members—zero minorities and just 14 women (14 percent).

Now, consider the new proposed legislative and congressional maps drawn by the Republican majority. It’s true that North Carolina’s constitution permits partisan advantage in drawing district maps. But it’s also true that we should expect the map drawers to at least strive to draw district maps that reflect the nature of who North Carolina is today.

While North Carolina’s diversity is increasing, Republicans are looking to decrease minority representation in the General Assembly. An analysis of Republican-drawn maps show that in the state senate alone, four of the 12 Black incumbents will likely lose their seats to Republicans. In the state house, five of the 24 Black incumbents will be gone in 2022.

As North Carolina becomes more progressive, more urban, and more diverse, Republicans are sticking their heads in the sand. Their maps whitewash North Carolina’s future.

The Republican-drawn maps reflect the North Carolina that the GOP wants to see, not North Carolina as it truly is.

Republicans want to gerrymander away our state’s growth and our identity. We can’t let them do that. W Natalie Murdock is a state senator from Durham.

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Wake County

Ethics Questions Did Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman act inappropriately in a case against a former Granville County sheriff’s deputy that she’s prosecuting? BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com

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n her nearly decade in office, Wake for misconduct following an investigation County district attorney Lorrin Free- in which Coffey implicated Joshua Freeman man hasn’t earned a reputation for tak- in a DWI and cocaine possession.

When Coffey was originally charged ing a hard line against cops who abuse with obstructing justice, falsifying docutheir power.

Freeman could have her chance to show ments, and participating in a cocaine-dealshe’s tough on bad-apple officers in the ing conspiracy in Granville County, Waters case of a former Granville County sheriff’s personally asked Lorrin Freeman (no reladeputy, Chad Coffey, the onetime head of tion to Joshua) to prosecute the case and that county’s drug unit whom Freeman Freeman agreed. The motion from Coffey’s lawyers suggests that the is prosecuting on numeradmitted conflict of interous felony charges related est on Waters’s part should to embezzlement, a drug have prohibited him from conspiracy, and obstructfurther involving himself in ing justice—that is, if Freethe case. But after Freeman man hasn’t jeopardized the agreed to prosecute Coffey, case by behaving unethicalshe and Waters exchanged ly herself. text messages that Coffey’s In a motion filed last lawyers, who obtained the week, Coffey’s attorneys are messages through a court asking a state court to disorder, say unduly influenced miss the case against their Freeman’s handling of the client following what they case and that she now has characterize as Freeman’s a conflict of interest, too. being subject to “influences “Specifically, Mr. Waters that undermine confidence Lorrin Freeman repeatedly suggested avethat a prosecution can be conducted in disinterested fashion,” per nues for investigation through one-on-one text messages with Ms. Freeman,” states the motion.

Coffey faces 11 felony charges in Gran- the motion from attorneys Hart Miles, Colville County for obstructing justice, con- lin P. Cook, and Elliot Abrams from Raleigh spiring to deliver cocaine, and embezzle- firm Cheshire Parker Schneider, PLLC. Furthermore, Waters remained copied ment, plus another 24 charges in Wake County related to falsifying training docu- on investigative reports in Coffey’s case, ments and qualification requirements for a and, the motion states, Waters “instigated former Granville County sheriff and a for- ill-will toward Mr. Coffey through private mer chief deputy between 2013 and 2018. text messages with Freeman.”

The texts aren’t flattering. In one Freeman took up the case against Coffey after Granville County district attorney exchange, Waters sends Freeman a screenMike Waters recused himself, citing a con- shot of a Facebook post from Coffey’s wife flict of interest. Waters had, in his capac- criticizing Freeman’s prosecution of the ity as a private criminal defense attorney case. Freeman responds by asking Waters before he was elected DA, represented to “keep sending me stuff like this.”

Five days later, Freeman charged Coffey a sheriff’s deputy, Joshua Freeman, who was fired from the sheriff’s department with an additional 10 felonies, per the motion.

A text message exchange between DAs Lorrin Freeman and Mike Waters “These charges were based almost entirely on uncorroborated statements of informants—statements that would likely fail to establish probable cause if utilized in support of a search warrant,” the motion states. “Moreover, the allegations by these informants are seriously undermined by contemporaneous witness statements, police reports, and evidence submission reports … documents the prosecution team largely did not obtain until after bringing the charges.”

In another series of texts, Waters makes suggestions as to how Freeman should proceed with the case, calling her “a bad ass” and writing that she could obtain training and standards records to help her make the case against Coffey.

Freeman and her prosecution team did obtain those records, the motion states, and “would then indict Mr. Coffey for 28 felonies—14 of which were based on a theory never-before utilized that, by putting allegedly false or misleading records into his bosses’ personnel folders at their insistence, Mr. Coffey committed the ‘infamous’ felony offense of common law obstruction of justice,” according to the motion.

Freeman has drawn criticism in the past for not charging law enforcement officers who have assaulted or shot civilians, sometimes fatally, and for declining to bring charges against Raleigh detective Omar Abdullah who framed more than a dozen men in a fake heroin scheme. Freeman did not respond to requests for comment for this story before the INDY went to print on Tuesday.

Carissa Byrne Hessick, a professor at UNC Law School, says that Freeman’s actions don’t rise to the level of violating ethics rules that bind prosecutors by state statute that could subject Freeman to any sort of professional discipline. Hessick says she also doesn’t see how the texts are grounds for dismissal of the case.

“I understand that [Coffey’s lawyers] don’t like the fact that [Freeman] was texting with [Waters], that they don’t want her to do that,” Hessick says. “But I’m having a hard time understanding how her having any sort of contact with this [DA] has any bearing on her ability to prosecute the case.”

But Jim Coleman, a law professor at Duke University and director of the university’s Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility as well as its Wrongful Convictions Clinic, says he isn’t surprised when he hears allegations of prosecutors behaving in ways that give an appearance of impropriety.

“Prosecutors are supposed to be … pursuing justice, not just a win,” Coleman says.

“But when they are doing things that are inappropriate to advance their case, the conclusion from that is they must be motivated more by winning than the pursuit of justice. The [NC Bar] that is supposed to monitor this kind of conduct [is] basically sitting on the sidelines when prosecutors openly engage in this kind of behavior. So the lesson [prosecutors] take from that is that there are no consequences.”

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday in Wake County, after the INDY’s publishing deadline. W INDYweek.com

February 2, 2022

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North Carolina

Breaking Point Two years of pandemic measures take a toll on prisoners during the Omicron surge.

BY ELIZABETH THOMPSON backtalk@indyweek.com

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usan Rouse feels lucky that she hasn’t gotten COVID-19 yet. But that’s not the only thing she’s worried about anymore.

The 74-year-old from Wake County is incarcerated at Raleigh’s North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women (NCCIW), which, like many of North Carolina’s prisons, experienced a surge in cases as the Omicron variant swept across the state in early January. North Carolina Health News previously reported on the toll the new variant could have on the state’s prison system.

Rouse was moved from NCCIW’s minimum-security Canary Unit to the prison’s main campus shortly after the Omicron surge began and the Canary Unit was closed due to staffing levels.

More than 700 out of the prison system’s roughly 13,000 staff members are currently not able to go to work after testing positive for COVID or being exposed to someone with the virus, according to North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesperson Brad Deen.

Even though she is still considered an “honor grade” prisoner, many of the privileges that came with being housed in a minimum-security facility—some as simple as being able to get a good night’s sleep, have access to a microwave, or work outside the prison—are gone.

As the latest Omicron surge has upended people’s hopes that the pandemic was winding down and caused widespread frustration, the two-year anniversary of the pandemic’s appearance in the United States means something different to incarcerated people.

It has meant lockdowns limiting their already sparse communication with the outside world. It’s also meant fragmented—or eliminated—visits with family and friends.

Every time a new surge has started, rules have changed: now you can’t touch your loved one, now your visits are limited to 30 minutes, now your visit is canceled.

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The pandemic has made life more unpredictable for everyone, but for prisoners, the lack of predictability has gone up yet another notch. And no matter how much some incarcerated people work toward gaining more privileges with good behavior, COVID outbreaks come and go, completely upending their status quo.

NC Health News spoke to incarcerated people and their loved ones from across the state as the Omicron variant permeated North Carolina’s prison system.

After two years of outbreak after outbreak, something is different this time.

Some incarcerated people say they’re reaching a breaking point.

The numbers tell the tale.

On January 20, the state prisons reported a high of 1,086 active cases, the most cases the DPS has reported at least in the last six months.

Three incarcerated people have died by suicide in North Carolina’s prisons since the beginning of 2022, according to press releases from DPS, just one month into the new year.

According to DPS official press releases, there were a total of eight suicides in the North Carolina prison system in 2021.

“Hard time” during COVID As the Omicron variant began to surge in North Carolina prisons, the DPS took temporary actions to stop the spread on January 12—this included suspending work release programs and suspending visitation at some prisons.

Much of NCCIW is now locked down, which means that incarcerated people spend almost all of their time in their dorms, Rouse said.

“The tension gets higher,” Rouse said.

“There’s nothing good about being enclosed all but one hour a day.”

North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women PHOTO BY TAYLOR KNOPF, COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA HEALTH NEWS

Another woman incarcerated at NCCIW who asked NC Health News to omit her name because she was afraid of retaliation from prison staff said her anxiety was reaching a “fever pitch.”

“None of the women are getting the mental health therapy they need,” she said.

“They’re getting worse because they’ve not been able to visit or do anything.”

“You’re really doing hard time right now during COVID.” Some prisons in the state have isolated people who have tested positive for COVID by placing them in cells typically used for solitary confinement, a practice which is considered psychological torture by the United Nations. Incarcerated people in North Carolina who were placed in solitary confinement were found to be 24 percent more likely to die in the first year after release, according to a study by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill.

DPS spokesperson John Bull said in an email that incarcerated people who have tested positive for COVID and placed in those cells “keep all their privileges as possible.”

“They are not put there for punitive reasons, but for logistical reasons,” Bull said.

Deen said incarcerated people put in cells used for solitary confinement for “health risk mitigation measures” should have access to phone calls, recreation time, and mail “unless pandemic safety reasons dictate otherwise based on a prison’s layout.”

Laura Garrett’s boyfriend, who is incarcerated at Greene Correctional Institution, spent Christmas in solitary. He spent a total of 17 days in a cell alone, and all the while he wasn’t able to use the phone, she said.

“He didn’t receive my mail while he was

down there,” Garrett said. “And he thought that I’d left him …. I got letters where he talked about suicide.”

“Will you still love me if I break?”

Many people outside of prison have experienced times of deprivation during each wave of COVID, but there is generally something to look forward to, said Eric Reinhart, resident physician at the Northwestern University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

“People in jails and prisons are enduring much more severe deprivations that corrode the basic conditions for life, for sanity,” Reinhart said. “And they don’t have much to look forward to. Maybe in six months they’ll be allowed to go into a slightly bigger cell. But that’s not really so sustaining.”

Jane, whose boyfriend is incarcerated at Johnston Correctional Institution, asked to use a pseudonym for fear her boyfriend would face retaliation. Since the Omicron wave hit his prison, his dorm has been in quarantine.

He was sick for more than three weeks but said he was never tested for COVID. Even though he is supposed to be released in a couple of months, Jane’s boyfriend told her he wasn’t sure he was going to make it.

“He’s like, ‘Will you still love me if I break?’ and I said of course,” Jane said.

Incarcerated people are already more likely to have experienced trauma and suffer from mental illness than the general population. One study found that almost half of the incarcerated people in Iowa’s Corrections Offender Network were diagnosed with a mental illness.

Not to mention the fact that incarceration itself is traumatic, and it often retraumatizes already traumatized people, exacerbating that past trauma.

That was before COVID. Now, inmates agree that the prison system is worse from the threat of getting sick with COVID, staffing shortages, and restrictions.

Deen said mental health is a priority for prisons, “including what may be manifestations of these conditions—such as fighting and suicide.” He said medical and custody staff are both trained to “recognize and react to these concerns.”

Not just long COVID As waves of COVID spread throughout the prison, fewer incarcerated people are leaving unscathed.

Deen said DPS “will continue to follow the science and do what is possible to prevent COVID-19 from getting into the facilities, to help prevent it from spreading to other facilities, and to confine it within a facility if it does get in.”

NC Health News previously reported on the confusion around testing at NCCIW during the Delta variant wave.

It’s likely many more people contracted COVID during that wave and the current Omicron surge than were reported, given stories such as the one told by Jane’s boyfriend, and it’s likely many people reentering society from prison will have long COVID, Reinhart said.

“The way that COVID is going to affect them is not just through what the general population we’re referring to as long COVID,” Reinhart said. “It’s going to affect them by synergistically interacting with chronic diseases from which incarcerated people suffer disproportionately in part due to lack of access to good health care.”

Long COVID is not the only thing formerly incarcerated people might bring home with them, Reinhart said. The trauma of being incarcerated during the pandemic will be coming home too.

“The psychic weight of the pandemic is a lot heavier on people who live in conditions like we find in U.S. jails and prisons,” Reinhart said, “and there is also an aggregate effect over time.” W This story was originally published by North Carolina Health News. NC Health News is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina.

Visit NC Health News at northcarolinahealthnews.org.

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Chapel Hill UNC–Chapel Hill PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

By Hook or By Crook Affirmative action has been a staple of universities’ admissions policies for decades. But with a lawsuit before an ultraconseravtive U.S. Supreme Court challenging the practice, the country could be on its way back to 1950 in terms of equity in higher education. BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

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he University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has faced mounting criticism over its treatment of Black faculty and students, will soon go to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend its diversity-centric admission policies.

Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group opposed to affirmative action, first sued UNC-Chapel Hill in 2014. The group argued that UNC’s admission policies, which consider the race of students, disadvantaged white and Asian American applicants.

In October, a federal judge ruled in favor of the public university, writing it “has a genuine and compelling interest in achieving the educational benefits of diversity” and had demonstrated the benefits of its admission policies.

The loss prompted Students for Fair Admissions to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed last week to take up the case, combining it with a similar lawsuit against Harvard University.

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“We look forward to defending the University’s holistic admissions process before the U.S. Supreme Court,” UNCCH spokeswoman Beth Keith said in a statement.

“As the trial court held, our process is consistent with long-standing Supreme Court precedent and allows for an evaluation of each student in a deliberate and thoughtful way.”

What is affirmative action?

Affirmative action, a loaded phrase at the best of times, dates back to the Reconstruction era, says William Spriggs, a professor of economics at Howard University in Washington, DC. “Most schools in the North openly sought Black students. They were the most outspoken against slavery,” Spriggs says. “Starting around the end of the 1870s and through the early 1920s, you will see this swelling of Black graduates from all of the elite schools.”

Within 50 years, however, the country’s attitude changed.

As elite private universities opened their doors to public school students (instead of just prep school students), they also created admission policies specifically designed to keep certain people out. The rise of eugenics and scientific racism in the 1920s led universities to discriminate against Black students, Jewish students, and other minorities, says Spriggs.

“You had these eugenicists who were convinced they could document racial inferiority,” says Spriggs. “Standardized testing was implemented initially to document inferiority. The tests were scaled and designed so [colleges] could [recruit] the ‘right’ people out of the public schools.

“The elite schools did not want to offend Southerners, and Black students disappeared.”

Affirmative action as we know it today emerged during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as businesses and schools faced pressure from the federal government to integrate. An executive order from President John F. Kennedy established the concept of taking “affirmative action” to recruit people of color to schools and jobs.

“The horrors of the Holocaust and of the Nazi movement made the eugenics movement try their best to disappear,” Spriggs says. “By the end of the 1950s, because of Dr. King and the Montgomery bus boycott, and the victory Howard Law School had ending public segregation, many of the elite schools felt like, ‘Well, we can’t keep all Blacks out.’”

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination. Later, in 1969, the Nixon administration successfully implemented the “Philadelphia Plan,” which required government contractors in the state to hire minority workers and set “goals and timetables” for diversifying their workforce.

Some states, businesses, and universities followed suit, but not without facing plenty of backlash. Almost as soon as colleges began considering race in admissions, white men and women who were denied entrance began suing on the basis of “reverse discrimination.”

In 1978, the Supreme Court decided a case that set the precedent for affirmative action for decades. Alan Bakke, who is white, sued the University of California medical school after he was twice denied admission.

The court’s decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was mixed. Although it outlawed racial quotas (the system used by the University of California), it ruled that other, more narrow considerations of race were lawful. That position was upheld in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), when the court ruled that race could be considered as one of several factors in an admissions decision.

Black students at UNC-Chapel Hill Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings, Black students remain massively underrepresented in colleges and universities across the country. Today, many arguments against affirmative action revert to a 1920s ideology, says Spriggs.

“Most of the arguments now still rest on a belief that the presence of Black students means you have admitted inferior students,” Spriggs says. “They clearly presume that it is not possible that Black students are equal. Their argument is ‘You must have put your thumb on the scale in order to get this result.’”

At UNC-CH, Black students currently make up 8.7 percent of the total student population. Most students come from Wake County, where the population of Black high school graduates is more than triple that number at about 31.7 percent. Many other students come from Mecklenburg County, where about 41.4 percent of graduates are Black, and Guilford County, where about 37.8 percent are Black.

The history of segregation at UNC-CH has left a lasting mark on the student body. The first Black students were accepted to the university in 1951, when a court order forced the law school to admit them. The school’s population of Black students grew until the 1980s, when it plateaued at around 7 or 8 percent. Growth of the Black student body resumed in 1994, peaking a decade later at 10 percent. Since the 2003-04 academic year, however, Black enrollment has dropped.

The challenge to UNC-CH’s affirmative action policies is “troublesome,” says Jarrah Faye, president of the university’s NAACP. “It just lets me know that even the mere thought of Black and brown students having the chance to be a part of the higher education system bothers people,” she told the INDY. “At what point do we take a stand and say, ‘This is a direct challenge to Black students’? [Students] who are probably first generation, who don’t come from traditional backgrounds, but are trying to get an education, to get a chance to be something.”

Faye says she appreciates UNC’s defense of its admission policies, but it feels “performative.”

“Here you are trying to support and increase diversity in your student population, but once you get that diversity, you’re not doing anything to ensure that population is protected. You’re not doing anything to make them feel safe,” Faye says.

“The same way they’re fighting for this policy in the Supreme Court, [UNC-CH] should fight for policies that support diversity within the school system.”

What can we expect next?

The Supreme Court will likely hear the case during its next term, which starts in October. The court currently has a solid conservative majority, which is unlikely to change even if President Joe Biden appoints another liberal justice following Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement.

Spriggs is not optimistic about the outcome of the case, he says.

“The fact that the courts want to treat this as an ahistorical phenomenon, that isn’t what went on,” he says. “It’s like we are going to, by hook or by crook, find our way back to 1950.

Whatever it takes. And that would be really unfortunate.” W

2021 Supreme Court Justices

PHOTO COURTESY OF SUPREMECOURT.GOV

Where the U.S. Supreme Court Justices Likely Stand on Affirmative Action Prediction: 6-3 decision against affirmative action Clarence Thomas - Against. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Thomas called affirmative action “racial discrimination” and argued it was disallowed by the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. In Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), he wrote race-based admission could be harmful. “Blacks and Hispanics admitted to the University as a result of racial discrimination are, on average, far less prepared than their white and Asian classmates.”

Samuel Alito - Likely against. In the most recent affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas II (2016), Alito wrote that the university’s holistic admissions policy, which includes a consideration of race, was too broad to meet the standards for affirmative action set by the Supreme Court. “The University has still not identified with any degree of specificity the interests that its use of race and ethnicity is supposed to serve.”

John Roberts - Likely against. Roberts joined Alito’s dissent in Fisher v. University of Texas II .

Neil Gorsuch - Likely against. Gorsuch didn’t rule on affirmative action as an appellate judge, but he has embraced a literal interpretation of the Constitution, worrying some civil rights activists. Unlike justices who ruled that affirmative action coincides with the spirit or purpose of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Gorsuch emphasizes the original meaning of the law. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), he wrote the text means judges’ “focus should be on individuals, not groups.”

Brett Kavanaugh - Likely against. As a lawyer, Kavanaugh has argued that using race as a voter qualification is unconstitutional (Rice v. Cayetano). He has also written in favor of the state using “race-neutral” criteria when it comes to employment and education, which would disallow affirmative action.

Amy Coney Barrett - Likely against. Barret has not ruled on affirmative action as an appellate judge and said little on the issue of race during her confirmation hearing. She is, however, a reliable conservative.

Sonia Sotomayor - For. In Fisher v. University of Texas II, Sotomayor joined the majority opinion stating the university’s holistic admission policy, including a consideration of race, was acceptable.

Elena Kagan - For. Kagan recused herself from the Fisher cases in 2013 and 2016 due to her previous involvement as U.S. solicitor general. Before becoming a Supreme Court justice, Kagan approved a brief to a federal appeals court arguing in favor of the University of Texas’s affirmative action policy. The brief defended the constitutionality of narrowly tailored affirmative action.

New Justice - Stephen Breyer’s retirement means the last justice on the Supreme Court is TBD, and their opinion remains a mystery. But Biden’s appointee is likely to be a reliable liberal in favor of affirmative action.

INDYweek.com

February 2, 2022

9

Maj3sty

FEATURE

M

Maj3sty’s Secret Service The extraordinary story of tragedy and resilience behind a rising Raleigh musician's apocalyptic reggae-pop.

BY BRIAN HOWE music@indyweek.com

Heaven is inside of you Please don’t let them lie to you Religion will blind you, too —Maj3sty, “Babylon Burn”

L

ast summer, the musician and entrepreneur Maj3sty dropped a new single, “Last Trumpet,” which blends reggae and R&B into a gentle warning of the end of the world.

Released via his music company, Dan Fashion Entertainment, the song is nearing 36,000 plays on Spotify, where it is his second-most-popular song after the equally lilting and premonitory “Babylon Burn.” Both singles, along with several others he has made since 2019, will be on his first album, slated for September 30.

Then, last fall, he put the debut line from his new clothing company on sale. Tri Fit USA focuses especially but not exclusively on large sizes. The sweatshirts and pants sport clean black-and-white designs and proclaim messages like “Faith Over Fear” or “Kupatikana Tayari,” which means “be found ready” in Swahili. The one-man company has global aims, with warehouse space in Europe as well as closer to home in Raleigh. Mid-2022 should bring its first shoe line.

Intended to be luxurious yet affordable, the sneakers are 10

February 2, 2022

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partly inspired their designer’s memories of being teased for his size 18 Shaqs as a kid.

At age 28, he stands 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 235 pounds, and looks every bit the former athlete and personal trainer that he is. On a first impression, you might peg him as someone who has breezed through life on a tailwind of luck, popularity, and existential confidence. But with Maj3sty, whose soft-spoken, hypnotically steady eloquence reveals a highly introspective nature, things are always more than they appear.

Take Tri Fit USA. Its slogan, “a brand with a message,” and its logo, a cross, make it seem like a Christian company. But after seeking his way through several organized religions, Maj3sty jettisoned them all, entering into a more direct, personal rapport with God that imbued his music and fashion with a new sense of purpose.

His message is the bittersweet yield of a promising life story turned off course again and again—by physical injuries, mental health crises, medical misdiagnoses, drug abuse, and baroque misfortune—before it reached this unsuspected destination at the crossroads of worldly work and otherworldly faith. It’s a story that revivifies stock clichés about what it means for an artist to have a voice, to have dreams. It all happened something like this.

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

aj3sty was born Nathaniel Jaree Dãn Salama Peterkin-Adon. A Christian minister visiting Pinehurst had told his mother, also a minister, that she would have a special son who would do great things, and he would be called New Son of Peace: “Dãn.”

In a mix of Arabic and Nigerian languages, his full name means God’s Gift, God Wins, New Son of Peace, Rock of Stone, Lord.

“Later, I was like, I can’t be out here saying all these names as an artist,” he says, in a long conversation conducted by video chat, phone, and email over several weeks.

“But I could break them down to Maj3sty. I put the ‘3’ in just because of stuff I grew up with about the father, the son, and the holy spirit, even though my beliefs differ.”

During his school years in Charlotte, Rockingham, and Southern Pines, he was “a big nerd with big glasses, getting picked on a lot” who hid in Harry Potter books and feared speaking out. He was tall long before he was big and strong. His parents urged him into confidence-building school activities like basketball, which led him to join his high school team, and congressional speech and debate, which carried him off to rhetorical competitions at distant universities like Harvard and George Mason.

“It was like one of those classic high school movies where the jock falls in love with stuff that is not jock-like,” he says.

“I started excelling more at speech and debate than I ever did in basketball.”

Anyway, his secret wish had always been to play football.

He even furtively made his middle school team, he says, but hadn’t asked his parents for permission and didn’t get it.

But one day in his senior year, the football coach chased him down in the schoolyard. “Hey, big guy, lemme talk to you! Man, you got some good size, how old are you?”

Learning of the parental ban on football, the coach said he’d call them. Maj3sty had doubts, but when he got home, they said yes. Unfortunately, his patellar tendon said no.

He tore it in a basketball scrimmage and missed the whole year of football. Still, he’d practiced enough to be invited to observe practices at North Carolina Central University.

He enrolled there in 2011 and excelled academically, as a freshman, but never got around to football. By the next school year, he was gone.

At NCCU, where he rapped under names like Lyric and Chief Ali, he also started partying a lot, as newly loosed young folks will do, and got “mixed up with the wrong crowd,” he says. “A big wave of angel dust had come through the area, and the stuff in my circles was laced. I thought I was smoking straight ganja.”

This was the start of a downward spiral that lasted for four years. After flunking out in 2013, he dealt weed until he lost his apartment in 2014. He lived in his car for more than eight months, still using drugs, until one fateful day in 2015.

Maj3sty isn’t sure exactly why the police approached him.

“I think,” he says, “it probably has to do with a large African American male wandering around in the summertime with a big coat on and an aggressive-looking

dog, and I think the area of Chapel Hill I was in was predominantly Caucasian.”

But the interaction wasn’t aggressive on either side. The officers asked if he was OK; he said he was not, and they took him to the UNC hospital. There, he says, he signed forms he didn’t understand and was moved to the psychiatric ward. He couldn’t remember his parents’ phone number for several days, and later, he wasn’t allowed to check himself out.

He was hospitalized for almost a month before his mother came and took him home to Pinehurst, with a new diagnosis of schizophrenia and a raft of prescriptions. He found he couldn’t hold down a job. Counting parts in a machine shop, he would fall asleep on his feet. He gained enough weight to have hypertension and arthritis. But he still carried the belief that he had to play football for his family’s sake, and he started forcing himself to train through his depression.

“I didn’t want to be who they said I was,” he says, meaning everyone who thought he was weak, or sick, or a failure; everyone who’d wronged him, or whom he’d wronged. “Over time, something clicked, and the music became a part of it.”

He worked out early in the morning, before his family awoke, listening to Bob Marley “to mellow out the sadness of the whole experience.” (He couldn’t have guessed that, in just a few years, he would be opening for Julian Marley in South Carolina.) He returned to Durham in 2017, newly muscled and running a 4.2 on the 40-yard dash. “I was solid,” he says. “I was good.”

He re-enrolled at NCCU in 2018 and graduated with an English degree in 2020, which he has used to teach in public schools. But once again, football was not to be. He says he got clearance to play from the NCAA, but a paperwork mishap slammed his chance shut. Determined, he decided to go out for a developmental league.

First, he needed a checkup. He’d been having seizures and blackouts after a change in his medication. But he discovered that his doctor, who’d made the change, had left without notice.

“There’s this new guy sitting there,” Maj3sty remembers. “He looked at me, typed in his computer, looked at me again, and said, ‘I can tell you right now, you don’t have schizophrenia.’ He said I needed to go off the medications immediately.”

This was both validating and frightening. He had long felt that something in his treatment was not right. “I had doubted the diagnosis, but then I started to believe it, I guess just because of my childhood,” he says. “I was abused a lot. I was molested by two women as a teen. But I started getting suspicious when I was having the seizures because I never had them before. I was holding back tears, like, maybe he’s tripping. But what if he’s telling the truth?”

Soon, his schizophrenia diagnosis was replaced by a new one: posttraumatic stress disorder dating back to his childhood. Off his meds, he started feeling better. For a while, stressful situations or flashing lights could still trigger his seizures, but they receded with time and self-care.

He hasn’t had one in a year now.

“I had to eat that loss of four years of my life, and I have to forgive those people and let it go,” he says, in the tone of voice of someone conclusively shutting a book. “If I allow that to make me angry every day, I don’t get my life back, and they win.”

“I

’m gonna have to eat this,” Maj3sty thought, one day in 2018, as he floored his failing brakes (they were later recalled) and his Ford sedan plowed into the back of the stopped Chevy work van. His hood crumpled, and his head cracked a star in his windshield.

Dazed, he got out of the car, crawled into the back seat, and drank from a gallon of water. He stumbled across Durham’s Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway to check on the other driver, who was also banged up but intact. But when the ambulances and police cars arrived in a blur of flashing lights, Maj3sty’s knees buckled.

It was a week after he’d gone off his meds and one week before he'd step onto a Raleigh field in 100-degree weather for the semipro football tryouts.

Maj3sty

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

“About halfway in, I understood I was probably not going to be able to play football,” he says. “My feet feel like quicksand, my head is spinning, everything is going up and down like it’s on a seesaw.” Still, he finished the day.

When football was gone, music remained. “At first, my parents were kind of half-in, half-out of the music thing,” he says. “They said I still needed a Plan B. I was like, ‘I keep having Plan Bs, and life doesn’t work out for me. This time, I wanna go with a Plan A.’” Plan A revealed its promise when “Babylon Burn” caught on in Nigeria through radio play in 2019. “Oh, Jah showed I the time’s near / Oh, God showed me the time’s near / Oh Lord, the fire’s here,” Maj3sty sings. “Last Trumpet” has the same tenderly apocalyptic flavor: “There will be a time on this Earth that you’ve never seen before / I do this for the ones that I love and all that I adore.”

“I was hesitant about putting out ‘Babylon Burn,’ because I didn’t understand the words I was writing and how biblically sound it was until my family started to relay it to

me,” he says. “It was a little eerie.” He recorded the song in a darkened studio, watching the beat ripple in the air like a wave.

Seeing music as shapes and colors is called synesthesia.

Maj3sty often hears in red and green; a purple aura would presage his seizures.

These experiences seem like surface manifestations of the numinous perception that stands in such distinct contrast to Maj3sty’s calm, lucid presence. He’s one of those rare liminal people who are uniquely attuned to the thin places between this world and others. He’s been told that when he was very young, riding through the country in a car, he would tap on the window and say, “I see slaves in the field!” His songs come from the powerful dreams he’s always had. Steeped in his ancestral heritage—Jamaican, Bantu, Native American—these dreams whisper obscure yet insistent prophecies in a voice he feels is not his own.

He tried to drown it out in his hedonistic days, but when the medication quieted it, he missed it. A part of him felt missing.

“I don’t want to say the dreams got ‘worse’ around the time of my breakdown, because the dreams aren’t bad.

They made me me,” he says. “But they got more intense.

That’s what led them to believe I was schizophrenic. When I got out, my mom asked what the voice was telling me.

It was always saying something positive, but I knew it was outside of me, so I questioned it, and it scared me and made me think I was crazy. She said, ‘No, son, that’s the voice of God.’” Who or what was God, though? He hadn’t found the answer in Christianity, or Islam, or Rastafarianism, which he dove into in 2016 and then gave up, along with marijuana, in 2018, the year he took the Nazarite vow of godly devotion, purity, and abstention. He started singing more than rapping and purged sex, violence, and materialism from his music.

In 2020, he renounced religious labels altogether, as if the external codes of conduct became vestigial once he hewed them into an internal code all his own.

“It doesn’t mean I’m frowning on religion,” he explains.

“I was reaffirming that I’ve done enough self-exploration trying to belong to something, and I came to the conclusion that I don’t belong to anything except God. I know my music is meant to be on a bigger platform than I may be comfortable with or feel worthy of. I’m not doing it because of a belief I have. I’m doing it because of something I believe the Most High is telling me, and this scares me to my core.”

Maj3sty’s music and fashion are a direct conduit from his dreams to the wider world, amplifying the secret signals of his divine charge.

“Walk in righteousness and purpose, wear righteousness, but give yourself grace when you fail,” he sums. “At the end of your life on earth, that should put you in good standing so that you are found ready, even if you call it the universe and not God. I’ve been given more than one chance to understand that life can be short, and you have to be righteous urgently.”

For a message that made him question his sanity, it sounds patently sane. Whether or not we believe in the afterlife, our deeds will outlast us. Whether or not we believe in a final arbiter, our peers and the future will judge us. And whether or not we believe in the rapture, these days, we all might recognize the growing intuition that time is running out. Kupatikana tayari. W INDYweek.com

February 2, 2022

11

FO O D & D R I N K

TRANSPLANTING TRADITIONS COMMUNITY FARM 2912 B Jones Ferry Rd, Chapel Hill | transplantingtraditions.org | 984-212-4621

Hsar Ree Ree Wei at Transplanting Traditions Community Farm PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Zar Ree and Lion Wei started farming at a new farm called Transplanting Traditions, and in 2013 Ree Ree was one of the first teens to pilot the youth program at the organization. Over the years, she has remained involved in various capacities—interning, translating, and consulting on projects—and has witnessed the expansion of the organization and the growth of the individuals involved.

T

A New Season After her family resettled from Thailand, Hsar Ree Ree Wei grew up at Transplanting Traditions Community Farm.

Now she’s its new executive director. BY GABI MENDICK food@indyweek.com

A

s a teenager, Hsar Ree Ree Wei hated when her parents, Zar Ree and Lion Wei, dragged her to their farm to help weed, hoe, and harvest produce. A decade later, fresh out of college, Wei—who goes by Ree Ree—still dislikes the heat and the physical labor of fieldwork.

“Some days when I’m not working, [my mom] will force me to go, but I still go with an attitude,” Ree Ree laughs.

But for as much as she dreads picking green beans, Ree Ree is excited to be the incoming executive director of Transplanting Traditions Community Farm, the same place where her parents started growing on a small plot of land over 10 years ago, and where they still farm today for a CSA with over 50 members.

Ree Ree was eight when her family moved to the United States from Tham Hin, the refugee camp in Thailand where she was born. The civil war in Burma (the English name of Burma was officially changed to Myanmar by its ruling government in 1989) had been going on for decades, where periods of internal conflict and violence continue to 12

February 2, 2022

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this day. Between 2008 and 2014 over 100,000 refugees from Burma were resettled across the United States. Many, like Ree Ree, came from refugee camps on the border of Burma and Thailand.

Tham Hin is one of the most closed-off camps, being off the electricity grid and accepting few visitors. For those reasons, Ree Ree explains that when tourists occasionally visited—or, in one instance, when a helicopter arrived carrying individuals from outside of Burma—she thought they were from another planet.

“I always thought that we were the only people that existed in the world,” she says.

In 2006, Ree Ree’s family initially resettled in South Carolina, where they struggled with a lack of community and little support. A distant relative living in the Triangle encouraged them to come to Carrboro, where they moved six months later. The family found a community of Karen refugees whom they had known in Tham Hin, and Ree Ree’s father got a job with UNC Housekeeping. Soon thereafter,

ransplanting Traditions Community Farm founder Kelly Owensby first met Burmese refugee families while working at a community garden project managed by the Orange County Partnership for Young Children.

“I learned that so many folks from Burma held an incredibly rich agricultural heritage and multigenerational knowledge of farming and living with the land. Upon resettlement, one of the first impulses for a people once deeply rooted in farming was that part of the process of recreating home was to get their hands in the soil and seeds,” Owensby explains.

When the opportunity arose to expand the garden, Owensby applied for a grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement and received three years of funding to start Transplanting Traditions. In 2010, its first year, 44 individuals from Burma worked collectively “to turn a pasture into a farm,” Owensby says.

The organization’s mission, according to its website, is to “uplift food sovereignty in the refugee community through access to land, education, and opportunities for refugee farmers to address community food insecurity and the barriers they face in reaching their dreams of farming.” It has become a hub for individuals of the Karen and Chin ethnic groups in the Triangle, and currently 22 individuals farm over 100 varieties of produce at Transplanting Traditions.

While some members farm on just a few beds for themselves and their friends and family, others sell at the Carrboro Farmers Market and Chapel Hill Farmers Market or provide produce to local businesses and restaurants such as Snap Pea Catering and Rose’s Noodles, Dumplings & Sweets.

Owensby, the acting executive director of Transplanting Traditions, has roots in western North Carolina and will be transitioning out of her role this spring, as she trains Ree Ree. Ree Ree, who is 23, initially doubted herself when offered the job.

“I was fresh out of college, so I had a lot of negative selftalk,” says Ree Ree, who graduated from Guilford College in 2021, where she majored in community and justice studies and forced migration and resettlement studies. “It took me a lot of convincing and a little bit of self-love.”

She’s also confident in the skills that have been passed down to her.

“Any skills you’ve learned and gained—these things are replicable,” Ree Ree says. “Share this knowledge with other people. If someone has no education background,

F

or many of the farmers at Transplanting Traditions, the biggest benefit of a Karen executive director is basic communication.

“Being able to have someone in leadership who can speak my language is really beneficial and helpful,” says Sirr Sirr Thart, a farmer at Transplanting Traditions. “If I have anything I want to ask or share I can go directly to this person instead of having to wait for an interpreter who will have to communicate with that person and then come back to me, and it takes much longer.”

Sirr Sirr Thart fled her village in Burma at the age of 15. For several years she moved from village to village, continually being forced out when the military would arrive.

She ended up at Tham Hin refugee camp in her thirties. Before resettling, she was a farmer in Burma; now in North Carolina, she misses growing rice and other tropical

produce that is difficult to farm in a North Carolina climate. Still, she’s grateful for the access to land and her 10 years of farming at Transplanting Traditions.

“I’m able to have a supplemental income, to grow and eat my own food that is chemical free, and I’m able to save and store them throughout the year, especially winter time,” Sirr Sirr Thart says. Initially, she just grew food for her family, but she’s since joined the Share a Share program.

Here, individuals’ donations are used to purchase Southeast Asian produce grown

by Transplanting Traditions farmers such as Sirr Sirr Thart; that produce is then donated to PORCH, a Chapel Hill– and Carrboro-based organization that aims to alleviate hunger and promote better nutrition in the community. PORCH distributes the produce to local refugee families who have limited access to healthy foods.

Transplanting Traditions’ eight acres of farmland also create an opportunity to grow varieties of produce that were common in Burma but are not widely available in the United States. Some of these ingredients are sold at Asian grocery stores, but the produce is usually imported and is not pesticide free. Sirr Sirr Thart lists some of her favorite crops to both grow and eat: “Roselle, Thai chili, Asian cucumber, and Thai pumpkin—you can eat the shoots and the fruit.”

Ree Ree seconds her love of roselle, also known as hibiscus, because of its unique sweet-and-sour flavor. A favorite Burmese recipe using the ingredient is roselle paste with chili. The roselle leaves, rather than the more familiar pink flowers of the plant, are cooked down in water until the mixture becomes a paste. Once the roselle breaks down, the cook adds a little bit of onion, shrimp paste, salt, and chili to their own taste. The sweet, spicy, and sour paste is delicious served with rice and can be stored in the fridge for several weeks. There are no Karen restaurants in the area, so having the fresh ingredients available allows Sirr Sirr Thart, Ree Ree, and so many others to cook and enjoy Burmese dishes at home here in North Carolina.

The challenges and hardships that refugees face do not, of course, come to a halt after being resettled in a new country. Transplanting Traditions Community Farm provides opportunities and support for many refugee families but also a space to find community and to sustain, nurture, and celebrate their culture here in North Carolina.

“Deciding to come home and reconnect with my elders wasn’t in my mind to do this early in my life,” Ree Ree concludes, “but it’s really been a blessing.” W

BILL BURTON ATTORNEY AT LAW Un c o n t e s t e d Di vo rc e Bu s i n e s s L a w UNCONTESTED In c o r p o r a t i o n / L LC / DIVORCE Pa r t n e r s h i p MUSIC BUSINESS LAW Wi l l s INCORPORATION/LLC WILLS C o l l e c t i o n s SEPARATION AGREEMENTS Mu s i c

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no high school degree, teach them. There are hard skills and soft skills that can both be learned and taught, so share with other people.”

This sentiment applies to Transplanting Traditions programming, which provides workshops and professional development training to farmers of all skill levels. And in addition to Owensby’s support, Ree Ree is supported by the familial environment of the farming community at Transplanting Traditions.

“I call them aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa,” Ree Ree says. “I feel very supported going into this role and that I’m going into this as a community and with my family together.”

A 2015 survey found that only 8 percent of nonprofit executive directors were people of color. Though this gap exists in other sectors, it is especially jarring when it comes to nonprofits, the majority of which have social welfare and justice-centered missions.

I asked Ree Ree why she believes this dissonance still exists.

“It definitely has a lot to do with ‘Are we willing to give up our power?’” Ree Ree says.

“A lot of organizations I’ve been involved with are all about the talk, but then they don’t implement it and do the action, and I see why those things have been hurtful to the community.”

In part, this is why Owensby is taking a back seat at Transplanting Traditions.

“I am a white woman leading a community-based organization in which I do not share the culture, language, needs, and experiences of that community,” Owensby says. “No matter how hard I tried, I experienced over and over the ways in which I was limited. My hands were tied in my ability to lead authentically.”

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February 2, 2022

13

M U SIC

OWEN FITZGERALD: A DEEP CLEAN YOU CAN COUNT ON!

[Sleepy Cat Records; Friday, Feb. 4]

Past Tense To release A deep clean you can count on!, Owen FitzGerald had to first take a long look back.

BY MADELINE CRONE music@indyweek.com

L

ike the pile of clothes that accumulates on a bedroom chair—clean laundry never folded, or items overdue for dry cleaning—the nine songs on Owen FitzGerald’s new record, A deep clean you can count on!, were set aside at a moment when dealing with them felt too arduous. The intention was not to leave them there forever, but sorting through the towering works would require a level of mental organization he didn’t achieve until 2017.

Due February 4, A deep clean you can count on! marks FitzGerald’s first full-length as part of Sleepy Cat Records following his label-debut EP, Body, Child, Light, Crime, in 2020. Some songs at the bottom of that stack date back over a decade, and the retrospective practice of relistening introduced FitzGerald to a nearly unfamiliar past self.

The Siler City native and current Durham resident—who previously recorded and performed under the moniker Jokes&Jokes&Jokes—was serious about stepping back into his legal name. It required him to bridge the great distance between the person who penned those poignant lyrics and the now-sober husband and father he is today.

“There have been some major transitions in my life since all of these songs have been written—some even happened after the album was recorded,” FitzGerald says. “All of those transitions shift my perspective toward the songs. But what I appreciate and also what is difficult about those songs is that they are all coming from a really dense emotional place.”

“If emotion was a temperature,” he continues, “these are all very hot songs. The circumstances around them are all different, but they are all equally ‘hot’—like, ‘I would rather die than feel how I am feeling right this second.’ And feelings are difficult for me to endure sometimes.”

FitzGerald got sober in 2014. The years leading up to that breakthrough were strenuous and chaotic. He was in a relationship and points to the opening line of “Fear on Pine Street” as the pinnacle of his sorrowful struggle with alcoholism: “Katie, I’m sorry / I keep falling down.”

“It was that last year of drinking, and I just could not understand why I couldn’t tell the truth,” he explains. “I had no idea that it was because I was an alcoholic. I could say one thing and really fucking mean it, and then not be able to do it after I had anything to drink. It was terrifying and sad. And I knew it was fucked up.”

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Owen FitzGerald

PHOTO BY SHANNON KELLY PHOTO, SET DESIGN BY COPPERLINE PLANTS

“Don’t Give Me a Pet” comes at that struggle from a different angle with a humorous attempt to explain addiction-induced irresponsibility. The lyrics unfold like a warning about the liability of his disorganization, which he blames, in part, on a lifelong struggle with inattention. In hindsight, a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder illuminates the track.

“That song is me being like, ‘I don’t know why I can’t do it another way, but I cannot do it another way,’” he says. “And then I find out so far after the fact, like, ‘Oh, there’s a good reason.’ Just like an alcoholic can’t make good decisions when you’re not sober, people with intense ADD can’t do those things.”

The humor of the opening line, “Don’t give me a pet / I’ll kill it / I’ll kill it by accident,” and the follow-up zinger, “Don’t make a date with me / I’ll miss it,” swiftly shifts into a deeply cerebral space as FitzGerald outlines the aftermath of these accidents. “I soak right through the mattress / Recalling what happened,” he sings through a rollicking chorus line, evoking the drowning paranoia that has kept him up at night.

With wondrous ease, FitzGerald delivers hard truths in plain terms. He began songwriting in early high school, accompanied by a prewar Gibson L-00 his father purchased at a Goodwill. Progressive classic rockers like Jethro Tull and skate-punk pioneers like Millencolin and Anti-Flag soundtracked his teens, but he points to Pete Townshend as the first artist to truly shape his songwriting style.

“Before I could play an instrument or had ever written a song, I was just so into the idea of longer-form storytelling in music,” says FitzGerald. “I remember at 11 or

12 years old, trying to understand Quadrophenia from start to finish.”

Critics at Backseat Mafia and Various Small Flames have compared this candidness to the works of Bill Callahan or John Prine. FitzGerald takes it as a compliment. Admittedly, he’s never heard a Callahan song but says the Prine reference hit home.

“I didn’t hear John Prine until I was out of college.

When I did, it was like, ‘Oh, man, there’s a person who’s already done that,’” he says. “The world felt a lot less lonely immediately.”

Beyond the emotional legwork, there were practical reasons why FitzGerald’s songs took so long to see the light of day. Though they were fully formed lyrical works, FitzGerald only had a mental melody.

“Probably because it was emotionally hot enough for me, I never taught myself how to play any of these songs,” he explains. “I couldn’t play them if I wanted to, but I also didn’t want to.”

Two critical realizations allowed the ball to get rolling.

First was seeing the songs as a batch. Listening through the stack, he saw himself through a more stable lens. Each song stands alone as a snapshot in time—some as innocent as a yearbook photo, others more like a mug shot. But as a collection, these now-distant memories make FitzGerald feel proud of the person he has become.

“All of these songs were written from a perspective that I kind of only remember and do not occupy now,” FitzGerald says. “I wouldn’t want to change any of them because they are accurate representations of how I was feeling. And even if some of the songs aren’t dealing with being an alcoholic, or

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being just a disappointment, or hurting people, they’re all tangentially related to that.”

Second was the understanding that he didn’t need to be ready to reveal darkness on a broad scale to begin recording.

“I just had to trust that for whatever reason, it feels right to start recording now, and to treat these as actual pieces of work,” he explains. “And hopefully by the end of that process, however long it takes, I will feel prepared to offer them up.”

The pandemic offered FitzGerald two more years to prepare. When it finally came time to dive in, FitzGerald immediately turned to a friend and local go-to, Sleepy Cat’s Saman Khoujinian, to coproduce the project.

“I knew that the easiest and healthiest way for me to experience songs that have, like, a lot of toxic versions of myself was to experience them in a really healthy environment with Saman,” FitzGerald says. Khoujinian echoes the spirit of the collaboration, describing it as “educational.”

“My whole relationship to recording was very technical,” Khoujinian adds. “And working with Owen it was like, ‘Oh, you maybe need to spend some more time listening instead of looking at the graph or whatever.’”

For the first time, FitzGerald also allowed other musicians into his creative sphere.

The album opener, “Touching the Oven at Work,” welcomes Patrick O’Neil (guitar, keys), Dylan Turner (bass), and Marc Allen (drums) into a slow-burning folk track with enough texture to push it into the rock sphere. John Howie Jr. builds percussive momentum across the chaotic country-rock contained in “Don’t Give Me a Pet,” surmounting it into the rollicking fury. Daniel Fields’s slide guitar blurs the lines between his blues and pysch-rock influences on “Bismuth, the Last Gentleman.”

In relinquishing control and expanding his production credits, FitzGerald also bolstered his sonic storytelling. Intentional sparseness balances disorienting bouts of productive mayhem to set the mood of dismal angst that binds these nine vignettes.

As if taking a page from a Flannery O’Connor novel, FitzGerald employs morally flawed characters and grotesque humor to explore universal themes and achieve the dark country and psychedelic folk components of his soundscape.

A deep clean you can count on! is an artistic arrival for FitzGerald that hinged on his ability to extinguish the fear of presenting his former self to the world.

“If there is no bad outcome, then you can be so relaxed that you are surprised by the good outcomes that blossom, so there is no way it could have gone wrong,” he concludes. W

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February 2, 2022

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M U SIC

JPHONO1: RECTIFY MERCY | HHH1/2

[Potluck Foundation; Jan. 7]

RECTIFY MERCY ALBUM RELEASE SHOW

Cat’s Cradle Back Room | Saturday, Feb. 5, 8 p.m., $10

Jphono1’s Joyful Meditations Rectify Mercy is a paean to hope in the midst of turmoil. BY HARRIS WHELESS music@indyweek.com

W

hat is an ordinary response to extraordinary events?

When there is no horizon, no time or distance—only static continuity—what is the proper recourse?

For working musicians who make their living on the road, the pandemic has been a significant blow to their livelihood. In response, many have turned to songwriting, doing studio work, or sharing demos and overdubs back and forth, turning a fallow period into one of fruitful output.

Rectify Mercy, a collection of compact psych-rock gems released on January 7, is the latest album to feature the musicians and frequent artistic collaborators associated with Potluck Foundation, the Triangle-based independent label and artists’ collective behind BANGZZ, Bleeder, Matt Southern, and Analog Mountains.

John Harrison, one of the label’s founders, is the main creative force behind Jphono1.

Even though the act is just one of his many musical projects, Rectify Mercy is his fourth release in two years.

Harrison’s latest is a return to the jams found on 2021’s Parliament. Some of its atmospheric, dream-pop guitar runs and Byrds-esque harmonies might sound at home on the soundtrack to a modern-day remake of Easy Rider. Desert winds whipping up against the Stars and Stripes–painted fuel tank of a California chopper, reverb and voices soaring in a montage of rapidly lost horizons.

On Rectify Mercy, Harrison is joined by frequent collaborators Jimmy Thompson (Brice Randall Brickford, North Elementary) and John Crouch (Caltrop, Solar Halos, Kerbloki) on bass and percussion.

Following its propulsive opener, the album’s first side becomes progressively slower and more trancelike, a trend that culminates in the album’s centerpiece, “You Are a Kingdom,” a paean to hope in the midst of turmoil. The album closes in a run that is at turns twangy or droning, with guitars, unique effect manipulations, and the ambient padding of guest harmonies: the final highway sign. W

C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R

art

Guided Tour: Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa Thurs, Feb. 3, 1:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

Guided Tour: Explore the Ackland’s Collection and Peace, Power & Prestige Fri, Feb. 4, 1:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

What’s in the Box? $8 (member), $10 (nonmember). Wed, Feb. 2, 10 a.m.

NCMA, Raleigh.

Virtual Artist Talk: Rex Miller Thurs, Feb. 3, 6 p.m. Online; presented by the Gregg Museum of Art & Design.

Birding with a Ranger Fri, Feb. 5, 8:30 a.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Teens Sketch the Galleries Fri, Feb. 5, 12 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

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

Brittney Spencer performs at The Pinhook on Wednesday, Feb, 7.

PHOTO BY NICKI FLETCHER

page Mary Tribble presents Pious Ambitions: Sally Merriam Wait’s Mission South Tues, Feb. 8, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

music Romeo and Juliet runs at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts from Feb. 3-Feb. 20 PHOTO COURTESY OF DUKE ENERGY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

stage The Comedy Experience: Steve Gillespie $15. Wed, Feb. 2, 8 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. $10.

Thurs, Feb. 3, 8 p.m.

Clouds Brewing, Raleigh.

Carolina Ballet: Romeo and Juliet $27+. Feb. 3-20, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Wild Mind Improv $12. Sat, Feb. 5, 6 p.m.

The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Brittney Spencer $16. Wed, Feb. 2, 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Alan Parsons Live Project Tour $55+.

Thurs, Feb. 3, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Love and Valor / Jon Ward Beyle $10. Thurs, Feb. 3, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

The Queers / Teenage Bottlerocket / The Second After $20. Thurs, Feb. 3, 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Kevin Gold Jazz Ensemble Fri, Feb. 4, 6 p.m. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

La Cafeteras $30.

Sat, Feb. 5, 8 p.m.

Stewart Theatre, Raleigh.

North Carolina Symphony: All Strings $37+. Fri, Feb. 4, 12 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Ripe $18 (advance), $20 (day of).

Sat, Feb. 5, 8:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

The Oshima Brothers $18. Fri, Feb. 4, 5 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Yarn/Wire Fri, Feb. 4, 8 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

Cory Luetjen and the Traveling Blues Band Sat, Feb. 5, 7:30 p.m.

The Blue Note Grill, Durham.

49 Winchester $13 (advance), $15 (day of). Fri, Feb. 4, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Family Saturday Series: Shana Tucker $5. Sat, Feb. 5, 11 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

The Holland Brothers Fri, Feb. 4, 7 p.m. Vecino Brewing, Carrboro.

Jphono1: Rectify Mercy Album Release Show $10.

Sat, Feb. 5, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Totally Slow / Night! Night! / Geeked $10. Sat, Feb. 5, 9:30 p.m.

Nightlight, Chapel Hill.

Solomon Georgio $15+. Sun, Feb. 6, 7 p.m. Raleigh Improv, Cary.

The Brook & the Bluff $16 (advance), $18 (day of). Tues, Feb. 8, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

The FABBA Show: A Tribute to ABBA $30+. Tues, Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com

February 2, 2022

17

P U Z Z L ES

ALL RE A LTHC T HEA ERS GE K R WO

FF O % 10 ON ALKLS

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage.

BOO

In-Store Shopping Curbside Pick Up www.regulatorbookshop.com 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 In-store and pick up hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10a-6p

su | do | ku

this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box.

The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered.

Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.”

Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com solution to last week’s puzzle

18

February 2, 2022

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2.02.22 INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

C L AS S I F I E D S E V EN T S

EMPLOYMENT MANAGER, DATA ANALYTICS (Raleigh, N.C.) Manager, Data Analytics sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to perform complex data management & analysis tasks within specific functional area or data type.

Min of Masters degree or equiv in Analytics, Business Analytics or rltd + 4 yrs exp in job offered or in Analytics rqd. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Apply by mail to Toyia Hayward, 1100 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005.

HEALTH & WELL BEING

CORPORATE COUNSEL (Raleigh, N.C.) insightsoftware (Raleigh, NC) to be resp. for serving as Lead Corporate Counsel for all M&A activity, incl. rvwng non-disclosure agrmnts/confidentiality agrmnts, compiling materials for disclosure schedules, rvwng SPA drafts, & rvwng diligence materials. Leading Co. legal intgrtn upon close of acqstns. Serving as Lead Corporate Counsel w/legal entity rationalization, incl. estblshng processes, & drafting, rvwng, & compiling legal dcmnts.

Mngng the Co’s intlctl property portfolio, incl. all patents & trademarks, & mngng external counsel’s activity for intlctl property renewals. Mngng the Co’s insurance program, incl. COI requests, policy questions, & renewals of policies. J.D. degree & be admitted to practice law in any state. Must know (through academic training or work experience) rvwng contracts to identify provisions of interest, changes in contracts, incorrect terms, & missing dcmnts, & applying contract mngmnt tools to manage & edit Co. contracts, non-disclosure agrmnts, & data processing agrmnts, incl. ensuring cmplnc w/domestic & intrntnl regs such as the EU GDPR. Send resume via U.S. mail to Office of General Counsel, insightsoftware.com, 8529 Six Forks Road #400, Raleigh, NC 27615.

CRIT TERS

919-416-0675

www.harmonygate.com

LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE

Looking for a loving cat companion?

Goathouse Refuge, a no-kill cat rescue in Pittsboro, NC, has many cats and kittens in need of loving homes. We also care for “unadoptable” cats, giving them attention and comfort they deserve. Please support our mission by adopting, sponsoring, volunteering or donating today: goathouserefuge.org.

Looking for easier advertising?

TRY INDY CLASSIFIEDS! Email classy@indyweek.com or sales@indyweek.com for more information

INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

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February 2, 2022

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