Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill March 16, 2022
NO SILENT
Thirty-one days inside the first NC Starbucks to organize for a union
PARTNERS
BY SARAH EDWARDS, P. 11
Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 11
David Hinds of Steel Pulse, p. 14 PHOTO BY PATRICK NIDDRIE
CONTENTS NEWS 3
Daniel Turcios's autopsy revealed he was not intoxicated when RPD officers fatally shot him. Will that matter to Wake DA Lorrin Freeman? BY LEIGH TAUSS
4
Wake County's library system has a new policy for challenging books.
6
Durham DA Satana Deberry tells a congressional committee there's no link between rising gun violence and criminal justice reforms.
8
Shootings are a part of life for many young people in the Bull City, but elected officials and others are working to change that. BY DAIR MCNINCH
BY JASMINE GALLUP
BY THOMASI MCDONALD
FEATURE 10 The FOILIES: Recognizing the year's worst in government transparency. BY MUCKROCK AND THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION
ARTS & CULTURE 11
A group of Raleigh baristas is organizing to unionize the first Starbucks in North Carolina. BY SARAH EDWARDS
14
Reggae group Steel Pulse headlines Wilmington's Lumina festival. For Triangle reggae fans, it'll be a performance worth the trip. BY THOMASI MCDONALD
THE REGULARS
16 Culture Calendar
COVER Photo by Brett Villena / Design by Jon Fuller
WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER S Wake County
MaryAnn Kearns Durham/Orange/ Chatham Counties
John Hurld EDITOR I AL Editor in Chief Jane Porter Managing Editor Geoff West
2
March 16, 2022
Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards
Theater+Dance Critic Byron Woods
C RE ATI V E
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
Staff Writers Jasmine Gallup Thomasi McDonald Editorial Assistant Lena Geller Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska
INDYweek.com
Graphic Designer
Jon Fuller Staff Photographer
Brett Villena
Durham/Orange/ Chatham Counties John Hurld Sales Digital Director & Classifieds Mathias Marchington
C I RC U L ATI O N Berry Media Group
INDY Week | indyweek.com
A D V E R T I S I N G SA L E S
P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702 Durham: 320 East Chapel Hill Street, #200 Durham, N.C. 27701 | 919-286-1972
advertising@indyweek.com Durham 919-286-1972 Classifieds 919-286-6642
Raleigh: 16 W Martin St,Raleigh, N.C. 27601
E M A I L A D D R E SS E S first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com
Contents © 2021 ZM INDY, LLC All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission.
N E WS
Raleigh Supporters gathered at Moore Square in downtown Raleigh at a February press conference and call for justice in response to RPD officers fatally shooting Daniel Turcios earlier this year. PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
A Sobering Truth Daniel Turcios’s autopsy showed he was not intoxicated when Raleigh police shot and killed him following a highway crash. Will that matter to Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman? BY LEIGH TAUSS ltauss@indyweek.com
T
he 911 caller said Daniel Turcios appeared drunk when the car he was traveling in with his family crashed on the shoulder of a Raleigh highway. When police arrived on scene, body camera footage shows a witness pointing at Turcios, who was holding his 7-year-old son in his arms. The English speaking bystander told officers, “He’s probably intoxicated.” Turcios did not speak English. He could not dispute this assertion. This statement was repeated by countless media outlets reporting on the January 11 incident that ended with Turcios shot dead by police in front of his wife and two children. It was repeated again by Police Chief Estella Patterson in her five-day report. Two months later, an autopsy of Turcios’s body proved what his family has insisted all along: that Turcios was sober when police rushed the scene, tasered him, and shot him five times. No alcohol or drugs other than nicotine and caffeine were found in his system.
The news was broke on a Friday afternoon at the tailend of an exhaustive weekly news cycle. What should have been a major correction instead read as a footnote as the prevailing narrative parroted by law enforcement and the media was already fully saturated in the public mind. Countless folks who had read about or viewed the graphic footage of Turcios’s killing had already decided the shooting was lawful after reading that a knife-wielding Turcios seemed drunk. But he wasn’t drunk. His family says Turcios had been knocked unconscious by the rollover crash and woke up disoriented. And due to a serious language barrier, police were unable to communicate with Turcios, who did not understand their commands, compounding the confusion at the chaotic scene. “Because of the outsized power that law enforcement has to create narratives that make them look least culpable at best, and at worst, degrade and defame victims of state sanctioned violence, it is even more critical that we are as
a community are very skeptical of initial reports from law enforcement,” says Dawn Blagrove of Emancipate NC, an organization that pushes for criminal justice reform. “This family has been ridiculed, and has been told that the harm that was caused to them was justified based solely on false information that was spewed by RPD.” The autopsy showed Tucios died as a result of five gunshot wounds—in his chest, torso, and right thigh. District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who will decide whether to criminally charge the officers that killed Turcios, declined to comment on whether Turcios’s sobriety at the time of his death will factor into her decision. Freeman told the INDY she expects a final report from the State Bureau of Investigation to be completed by the end of the month. “There are a number of reports outstanding including interviews from witnesses on scene. As you are probably aware, there were a lot of witnesses on scene,” Freeman said in an email. “I believe all interviews have been concluded. The reports of these interviews are still in process.” Two years ago, Freeman declined to charge police officer W.B. Tapscott after he killed Keith Collins, a Black man with a history of mental health issues. Tapscott fired 11 shots at Collins, seven after Collins had already collapsed to the ground. Tapscott initiated the use of force against Turcios by firing his taser at Turcios’s back as he attempted to walk away from officers. The autopsy reported Turcios was actually struck twice by the taser as his body had two impact marks. As police surrounded and attempted to restrain Turcios, who held a small knife in his hand, officer A.A. Smith fired five shots from his gun at Turcios over five seconds. RPD told ABC11 last week that no officers were injured by Turcios’s pocketknife. Turcios’s characterization as a “knife-weilding man” was played up heavily in early reports of the incident by RPD and the media. Blagrove says Raleigh Police Department should issue a public apology to Turcios’s family, and criminal charges should be levied against the officers. “This family is owed the opportunity to take their case before a jury of their peers and have an independent determination of whether or not [these officers] committed a crime,” Blagrove says. “The family has suffered economically and psychologically. That trauma was compounded by the lies and this defamation that was spread mostly by RPD. “This family deserves to be compensated for the harm RPD caused and more importantly, RPD needs to feel the economic pain that is associated with making these kinds of egregious breaches of trust.”W INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
3
N E WS
Wake County
The Right to Read Following administrators’ decisions to remove and reshelve books, Wake’s library system is updating its book challenge policies. BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com
T
he Wake County Public Library system took a step toward protecting intellectual freedom this month when administrators unveiled a new policy for dealing with book challenges. The policy, comparable to those that similarly sized library systems across the nation use, makes it much more difficult to censor or ban books. The library’s “request for reconsideration” policy came under scrutiny earlier this year when deputy library director Ann Burlingame and senior collection manager Theresa Lynch removed the graphic novel Gender Queer from shelves. Although the book was restored to the library a month later—following backlash from librarians and the public—the controversy prompted county leaders to launch a months-long review of the library’s outdated policy. Two weeks ago, library administrators presented the new and improved policy to the Wake County Board of Commissioners.
Addressing First Amendment concerns Included in the new policy is a provision stating the library “reserves the right to restrict the availability of materials … not protected by the First Amendment.” That could include books that meet the legal standard for obscene or pornographic material, a primary complaint of parents lobbying to get LGBTQ-focused books like Gender Queer and Lawn Boy removed from libraries. When Gender Queer was initially banned, administrators said some of the book’s illustrations could be considered “pornographic.” In a December email, Burlingame wrote she supported Lynch’s eval4
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
uation that “Gender Queer was not appropriate for a library because it depict[ed] illustrations that were concerning.” “Defining something as pornographic is tricky,” Burlingame later wrote. “I follow the leadership of Justice Potter Steward, who said about pornography in [the U.S. Supreme Court case] Jacobellis v. Ohio [1964], ‘I know it when I see it.’” But meeting the legal standard for obscenity is much more difficult than simply deeming something “pornographic.” Under the library’s new policy, books would have to meet the state and federal definitions of “obscene” to be removed from shelves. Complaints from parents or conservative groups would not be enough to get a book removed, nor would the opinion of a single administrator. Whether a work is legally obscene depends on whether it meets a threepronged test established in Miller v. California, a 1973 Supreme Court case, says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. In order to be deemed “obscene,” a work must meet each of the following three criteria: • It must depict or describe, “in a patently offensive way,” sexual conduct, as defined by NC General Statute 14-190.1. (See box.) • A reasonable person, applying nationwide community standards, must find the work as a whole appeals to the prurient interest, meaning solely for the purposes of sexual titillation or stimulation. • The work must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. “So clearly, Gender Queer would not meet that standard,” says Caldwell-Stone. “It is a literary graphic novel memoir, a
Inside the Village Regional Library
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
coming-of-age [story], that happens to, at parts, deal with sexual topics.” The way the Wake County Public Library cites the First Amendment is not necessarily an issue, Caldwell-Stone says, “but there should be a thorough understanding of what that means. [Obscenity] should be measured by the state statute.” North Carolina’s obscene literature law (NCGS 14-190.1), last updated in 1998, mirrors the Supreme Court standard by outlining a multipronged test for obscenity.
The statute defines "sexual conduct" as 1) vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse, whether actual or simulated, normal or perverted; or 2) masturbation, excretory functions, or lewd exhibition of uncovered genitals; or 3) an act or condition that depicts torture, physical restraint by being fettered or bound, or flagellation of or by a nude person or a person clad in undergarments or in revealing or bizarre costume.
Who should judge whether something is “obscene”? During the Wake County Commissioners meeting last month, Commissioner Matt Calabria said he is concerned that a panel of librarians would not have the legal expertise necessary to make appropriate decisions about book challenges. There were two issues with the decision about Gender Queer, he said. “One was we didn’t really have a well-defined process. And two is, I’ll just say it, I don’t think we adhered to the legal criteria that are appropriate,” Calabria said. “I don’t want to respond in a way that allows laypeople, without any legal background, to make substantive constitutional decisions that are unimpeachable, and we don’t give them any guidance about what they can and cannot do under the law.” Wake County’s Community Services program manager Frank Cope replied that if a book was challenged on the grounds of “obscenity” or another First Amendment concern, the library would consult the county attorney’s office. Leaders plan to add a provision to the policy clarifying how and when a lawyer will be involved in book challenges.
The American Library Association advises that libraries have a lawyer on retainer to consult on legal issues, Caldwell-Stone says. But there are some potential snags in using the county attorney to fill that role. “There’s a conflict of interest, especially when there are elected officials arguing a book should be pulled and you have the county attorney make a decision,” Caldwell-Stone says. “It should be independent legal counsel that doesn’t also represent the police department and the county government.”
A better policy Overall, the library’s new policy for dealing with book challenges is a good one. Like other libraries, it cites the freedom to read and vows to protect the right of patrons to access “controversial, unorthodox, or even unpopular ideas.” Under the new policy, the library will accept requests for reconsideration only from Wake County residents and/or permanent cardholders. This is to ensure the process belongs to those who use the library and to prevent people living out of state from attempting to ban books, says Sarah Lyon, senior manager of Library Experience and Youth Services. The policy also outlines the library’s selection policy, which is part of the metric used to evaluate whether a book should be removed. If a book meets criteria for selection—for example, if it is in high demand or has received positive reviews from library professionals—it’s likely to stay in the collection. Once a request for reconsideration is submitted, a nine-person committee will review the challenge. The committee includes the selection manager, currently Theresa Lynch; a book selector; and seven librarians. Two adult and two youth librarians will serve staggered twoyear terms, while the other three, “with expertise in areas relevant to the challenged material,” are appointed on an ad hoc basis. Committee members read the challenged material “in its entirety,” the policy states. When making a decision, they will consider resources from the American Library Association, the library’s selection criteria, reviews of the book, awards or nominations the book has received, data on the book’s circulation, and material presented by the requester in support of removal. “It’s important to us that, even though we’re pulling our own source material,
we’re also paying attention to what the requester’s initial concerns were,” Lyon says. “If the requester has any supporting material, that will be taken into account, so we’re looking at this from a fair and balanced perspective.” The committee can decide to keep, remove, or relocate a book from one section to another. Their decision is final and the book in question cannot be rechallenged for five years following the decision in order to prevent people from repeatedly challenging the same book in an effort to keep it off shelves, Lyon says. During the review, challenged books will remain on the shelves, per the American Library Association’s guidance. Under the new policy, “politics should have very little role,” said library director Mike Wasilick. “I think it’s important we’re aware of things [like Critical Race Theory] and they don’t have undue influence on us.”
Changing how books are selected and evaluated Last year, in addition to removing Gender Queer, Lynch and Burlingame planned to remove the board book versions of Our Skin and Anitracist Baby. Although the books were still available in the library in picture book format, the decision raised concerns from librarians about parents and toddlers being able to access the books. In some cases, moving books out of the children’s section can violate the right of young people and their parents to access them, because the books aren’t available where patrons would expect to find them. “We don’t regard it as a best practice to reshelve books to prevent access or avoid offending particular users,” Caldwell-Stone says. “The book should remain accessible for their intended audience and age group. It shouldn’t be moved because someone believes the subject matter to be sensitive or offensive to them personally.” But, Caldwell-Stone adds, “I’d be more concerned if [Wake County Public Library staff] were removing them from the children’s collection altogether, which has happened in the past.” In Wichita Falls, Texas, for example, the city council created a law allowing any 300 people to petition the library to move books from the children’s section to a restricted shelf in the adult section. The process was used to relocate Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate, which a federal judge later ruled
was discriminatory. In Wake County, the decision to remove or relocate a book following a formal complaint is guided in part by the library’s collection development policies. Those policies also help book selectors decide which books to buy and where they’re shelved. Immediately following publication of the INDY’s February story, in which two librarians raised concerns about a new “collection purpose policy” Burlingame and Lynch developed, administrators handed off development of that policy to a committee. Leesville library manager Kate Taylor leads the new committee. Comprised of staff volunteers, it is tasked with outlining standards for board books, picture books, and children’s nonfiction books—the same collections Burlingame and Lynch were reviewing. When the committee finishes its work in the early summer, the county manager’s office will review the policy, said county spokeswoman Alice Avery. It will then go into effect countywide. Administrators plan to have a similar panel of volunteer staff review the larger collection development policy sometime in the future, Avery added. Overall, librarians seem optimistic about the changes the library is undergoing. Visits from library system director Mike Wasilick and community services director Frank Cope have bolstered spirits and spurred conversations between librarians and administrators. “Everyone I’ve heard from has been remarkably excited after meeting with [Cope]. People were talking like it gave them back hope and faith in the library,” says Rowan Dalzell, a part-time library assistant. But some librarians are still skeptical. Although Wasilick and Cope have followed through on promises of more outreach and communication, staff are waiting on more concrete changes, says one library manager on condition of anonymity. “It seems as though [the library director] is trying to make things better, but most people want to witness ‘real’ change,” the library manager says. “It seems to me that he is concerned about his position and not so much about library staff.” Dalzell acknowledges librarians do remain frustrated over some issues. “Right now my feeling is that librarians generally are optimistic … but understanding that it will take time to fix everything,” Dalzell says. “Instead of ‘Trust but verify,’ something like ‘Hope but maintain vigilance.’” W
Raleigh's Community Bookstore
Latest on Bookin’ Available
3.14
Carissa Veliz, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data Events IN-STORE
Poets from Wildacres Moderator: Mamie Potter Les Brown, A Place Where Trees Had Names: Poems Michael Gaspeny: The Tyranny of Questions SUN
Nancy Dew Taylor: Showing Face
2PM
Joyce Brown: Standing on the Outcrop
TUE
VIRTUAL
3.20
3.22
6:30PM
John Searles, Her Last Affair with Amy Ryan
Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com. www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 Offering FREE Media Mail shipping and contactless pickup!
INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
5
N E WS
Durham
Deberry Goes to Washington Durham County’s district attorney tells U.S. House members there is “no evidence” that a rise in gun violence nationally is linked to criminal justice reforms. BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com
D
uring a highly partisan hearing in the nation’s capital, Durham County district attorney Satana Deberry told U.S. lawmakers that the Bull City has endured “a perfect storm of challenges contributing to a devastating rise in violence.” Speaking to a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee last week, Deberry said gun violence in Durham, like elsewhere in the country, has been exacerbated by “a oncein-a-lifetime pandemic [that] has disrupted support systems and strained institutions and organizations that respond to and try to prevent violence” and that commonsense, evidence-based reforms were needed. Deberry said in addition to the pandemic’s disruptions, two prominent features in America have played a significant role in the nation’s violent crime wave: poverty and easy access to firearms. “The year 2020 saw the largest single-year increase in poverty ever recorded in the United States,” she told the committee. “Study after study has shown that increases in poverty are closely linked to increases in crime because extreme poverty creates stress and seeds desperation, making people more likely to see crime as their best or only option.” “At the same time, Americans purchased guns in record numbers,” she continued. “Nearly 23 million guns were purchased in 2020 and nearly 20 million were purchased in 2021, the highest and second-highest years on record.” Deberry noted that data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that in 2020, newly purchased firearms were used in more crimes than usual, suggesting that the increase in gun purchases is connected to increases in some gun crimes. Yet, many states have embraced policies that ease access to and regulation of guns. The topic of gun violence during the hearing in Washington has also been the 6
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
subject of considerable discussion and debate in the Bull City. Deberry was among a cadre of criminal justice experts who spoke at the hearing. Representatives from the National Urban League and the Council on Criminal Justice, as well as Dallas police chief Edgardo Garcia, also testified. DA spokesperson Sarah Willets told the INDY that Deberry agreed to join the panel after she heard about the hearing from Fair and Just Prosecution, a national nonprofit that works with prosecutors on criminal justice reform. Subcommittee chair Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, said that the purpose of the hearing—titled “Reimagining Public Safety in the COVID-19 Era”— was to investigate the rise in crime during the pandemic and the role of the federal government in enhancing safety. Jackson Lee added that even though the overall crime rate has declined, Americans witnessed a spike in homicides and shootings in “historically underfunded communities,” both urban and rural, “for reasons not clear.” She noted guns were pervasive across the anatomy of the American landscape before the pandemic and are the “weapons of choice” in two-thirds of the nation’s homicides over the past two years. “More people are carrying guns, legally and illegally, brought on by anxieties from the pandemic,” she said. Fights in neighborhoods escalate, and “families shoot each other. Friends shoot each other.” Jackson Lee’s opening statement was met with stiff, even harsh, resistance from her Republican colleagues. In marked contrast to Democratic lawmakers’ pursuit of addressing the root causes of crime with evidence-based solutions in partnership with law enforcement, some GOP committee members appeared to only support the decades-old “tough on crime”
Satana Deberry
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT
approach, “wars” on crime and drugs, and mass incarceration that have served to only aggravate the issue in impoverished Black and brown communities across the United States. The subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, said he was concerned “by the dangers posed by some on the left to defund the police and other progressive policies that correlate to the rise in crime” before offering a video of Black Lives Matter supporters protesting soon after George Floyd’s murder. “I fear that this hearing is nothing more than an election-year attempt by my colleagues to deflect attention from those in the [Democratic] party who have vocally championed the defunding of the police
movement, as well as other progressive policies, which will be discussed today,” Biggs said. Biggs also offered up a list of cities where he claimed violent crime had risen exponentially, not as a result of the anxieties caused by the pandemic but as a consequence of defunding the police. “Just what America needs—more imagination from the Democrats,” a scowling Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said before veering off into an ugly, disinformation-filled soliloquy that blamed the Democrats’ “reimagining” for chaos at the Southern border, $4-per-gallon gas, inflation, and crime in every major city. Deberry, however, urged lawmakers to see reform as a solution to crime, not the cause.
“Like many communities, Durham saw an increase in homicides last year, even as most other types of crime and overall violent crime were down,” she said. “There is no evidence that the rise in homicides and gun violence in communities across the nation is a result of criminal justice reforms. I do not say this to trivialize the recent increase in violence but rather to underscore how pervasive, tragic, and unacceptable it is, and how badly we need better solutions.” Deberry noted that cities with high poverty and unemployment rates in 2020 “experienced greater increases in crime, suggesting much of the increase was due to economic stress and inequality, rather than reform.” “Both cities that rejected and pursued reforms saw similar increases in homicides and violent crime. Some cities that have elected and reelected reform-minded prosecutors have seen no change or even a decrease in homicides [and] violent crime rates,” she explained. “Blaming reform-minded prosecutors for increases in violent crime is misguided and misinformed.” Federal gun reform, even after mass shootings, has repeatedly stalled in Congress, and without fail at the hands of GOP lawmakers. Deberry told the House subcommittee that the country needs to “address the proliferation of guns through effective policies that impose waiting periods, increase required training, and limit access to guns for young people and individuals at significant risk of harming themselves or engaging in violence.” “These measures,” she added, “coupled with a public health approach to preventing violence are key to confronting the proliferation of guns in our country.”
W
hen Durham citizens in 2019 elected Deberry to serve as the county’s district attorney, she was often cited as part of a group of reformist DAs across the country, including Rachael Rollins in Boston and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. Deberry cited Krasner as a model, someone who argued that a system born from reactionary zero-tolerance, tough-oncrime policies was intrinsically racist and counterproductive, producing a carceral state that had ripped apart communities of color. “We’re looking at different ways we can protect children in Durham County,” Deberry said two years ago after announcing her office would no longer accept court referrals for school-based incidents (with rare exceptions for seri-
ous crimes) and would stop threatening criminal charges against parents of students who miss school. “We want to focus on getting kids what they need instead of locking them up,” she explained at the time. Last month, Deberry made public her office’s 2021 annual report that highlighted what she described as progressive policies that help to “ensure case outcomes are fair and equitable.” The report highlighted law enforcement partnerships that strengthened homicide prosecutions, leading to more convictions in 2021 than 2020. Deberry’s work has been bolstered and supported by like-minded residents who live in the state’s bluest city. Even before George Floyd’s death, a multiracial group of millennial activists in Durham was among the first in the country to demand defunding the police department and an end to the prison pipeline. Th e year-old Durham Community Safety Department and a new community-based Durham Public Safety and Wellness Task Force are initiatives born out of the Black Lives Matter protests. A record count of homicides last year, among them disproportionate numbers of young victims who were gunned down in East Durham along the South Alston Avenue corridor, bolstered a sense of urgency among local officials. Police have not said what exactly is fueling the gunfire, but gang violence is considered a leading cause, according to a report from a task force examining gang activity. The report’s summary also makes clear that the effort to reduce youth gun violence has had little success so far in 12 troubled neighborhoods. “Violence exposure in eight of those neighborhoods is exacerbated by extreme poverty and exposure to other social vulnerabilities that have remained mostly unchanged since 2014,” according to the report, which has been in the works for seven years. The report, which has not yet been made public, mirrors Deberry’s and Democratic lawmakers’ concerns in Washington: on average, more than 64 percent of children are living in poverty in eight
Durham neighborhoods. Even more disturbing, more than 70 percent of children live in poverty in some East and South Durham neighborhoods, and nine of the neighborhoods “have high rates of underlying social conditions that contribute to children and youth becoming involved in the criminal justice system and gangs.” Support for reimagining public safety following the deaths of Floyd and Black people at the hands of police has waned following recent high-profile shootings, including ones on the campus of North Carolina Central University and inside Southpoint Mall along with a stunning mass shooting in December, which killed two teenagers and wounded four others who were 17 years old or younger. Politically, concerns about gun violence reached a triggering point during the lead-up to the city’s municipal elections last year, when the Friends of Durham political action committee distributed a mailer to Durham residents that read, “Murders up 54 percent, Rapes 14 percent. Don’t defund the police!!!!” Moreover, t he 2021 City of Durham Citizen Survey made public last month indicated residents wanted the city to emphasize police protection above all else over the next two years. Mayor Elaine O’Neal and fellow council members Mark-Anthony Middleton, DeDreana Freeman, and Leonardo Williams recently voted to approve piloting ShotSpotter, gunshot-detection technology that relies on audio sensors mounted on buildings and light posts to identify the locations of gunshots and alert police within seconds of a gun firing. But late last year, reports from two of the nation’s largest cities bedeviled by gun violence indicated ShotSpotter might be shooting blanks when it comes to getting firearms off the streets. An internal report by the Atlanta Police Department showed the system only led to five gun arrests during its one-year trial period. Similarly in Chicago, a police report indicated the gunshot detection system “rarely produced evidence of a gun-related crime.” Also in response to rising crime, the city council in January voted unanimously to
“Blaming reform-minded prosecutors for increases in violent crime is misguided and misinformed.”
approve pay raises for police officers and firefighters of every rank in an effort to counter staff shortages. Along with those measures, the Durham County Board of Commissioners this year unanimously approved the construction of a new $30 million secured youth home for court-sanctioned children. The building is part of a 2019 court settlement that required commissioners “to study, explore, and construct, if feasible, an expanded Durham County Youth Home, or develop some alternative plan for total sight and sound separation between juveniles and adults in Durham County” following the 2017 death of a teen who hanged herself while in custody at an adult detention center. Commissioners have said they expect more teens will be sanctioned in juvenile courts after the “Raise the Age” law made North Carolina the last state in the United States not to automatically prosecute 16- and 17-year-olds as adults. On both sides of the issue, policing is a nuanced understanding that goes beyond the performative politics displayed last week by the GOP members of the House Judiciary subcommittee. In Durham, elected officials and community residents alike recognize the need for law enforcement, but also support evidence-based initiatives that supersede polarizing partisan politics. “We have to stop pretending reform is the real threat to public safety and recognize how overreliance on prosecution and incarceration may make us less safe,” Deberry told subcommittee members. “We do not need to ‘choose’ between reform and public safety; those two objectives are inherently linked.” Deberry said the nation’s leaders must invest in communities and address the root causes of crime, including economic instability, housing insecurity, and mental illness. “We must reduce financial stress on our communities,” she said in a written statement she submitted to lawmakers. “Research shows people experiencing negative income shocks are less inclined to behave violently when they receive timely financial assistance. We must reinvest in and expand promising anti-violence strategies, like violence interrupters and programs that add structure, mentorship, and opportunities for youth. Evidence shows that investing in neighborhoods themselves—by greening vacant lots, providing adequate lighting, and removing exposure to pollutants like lead—prevent crime while otherwise benefiting residents.” W INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
7
N E WS
Durham
The Way of the Gun For many young people in the Bull City, the specter of gun violence is an inescapable fact of life. But city officials and others are trying to address what’s driving shootings. BY DAIR MCNINCH backtalk@indyweek.com
“I
n Durham, for a quarter, somebody’s going to kill somebody,” Maimouna Barrett says. Barrett came to Durham from France in 1997 and has been living for the past five months in the section of the city the police department refers to as Beat 223. When reporting instances of crime, Durham police divides the city into five divisions and these divisions into smaller sections called beats. While gun violence has been on the rise across the city over the past three years, Beat 223 has seen the highest combined number of shooting incidents in the form of armed robberies, aggravated assaults, and homicides. This area in northern Durham comprises less than four square miles but has experienced 129 of these crimes from October 2018 to the end of 2021. Shooting-related deaths in Durham jumped by more than 36 percent from 2020 to 2021, sparking conversation among city officials in the past few weeks about the factors driving the increase and what’s being done to respond to them. These factors include a growing number of vacancies in the police department, increasing levels of gang activity, and the pandemic’s exacerbation of financial stress in the community. Mayor Elaine O’Neal said during the February 21 city council meeting that she won’t discuss her efforts with reporters but that she and others are working behind the scenes with the community to tackle the issues causing gun violence. In Beat 223, however, residents are willing to share their thoughts. Like Barrett, Christine Dewberry, Sodiq Oladiran, and Greg Hill weren’t surprised they live in the area with the city’s high8
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
est combined number of armed robberies, aggravated assaults, and homicides. Dewberry has lived in her current apartment for the past three years. She says the amount of shootings she hears right around her apartment has gotten worse each year she’s been there. Now, she says it’s happening every weekend. While shooting-related deaths in the city remained at 33 for both 2019 and 2020, the number of people shot increased from 189 to 318. This number dropped to 280 in 2021, but the tally of those that were killed rose to 45. One of those 45, Dewberry said, was a man in his early 20s who was killed over a drug dispute in her neighborhood. “Over there in that next building across the street,” Dewberry said, gesturing to a row of units less than 75 yards away from where she sat outside her front door. In addition to the increase in gun violence, Dewberry said she’s also noticed that police presence in her neighborhood has declined over the last few years. In 2018, the year before Dewberry moved into her current apartment, Durham police had 96 percent of its allocated positions filled. This rate has declined each year since then. Now the department staffs just over 83 percent of its 537 positions. “If we have limited people to fill these beats and fill these hours of the day, then we’re going to have a harder time getting into all the different spaces,” said Lt. Thomas McMaster, an assistant district commander for the Durham Police Department. City council member Jillian Johnson said that Durham has the greatest number of unfilled positions in the public sector the city has ever seen. She believes that the citywide vacancies are reflective of national
Map of Durham’s police districts
GRAPHIC BY MAKAYLA WILLIAMS
labor issues but that the vacancies in the police department are particularly bad due to higher pay rates being offered to officers in neighboring areas. “Officers can pretty much go and have their pick of the litter right now and find a higher-paying police department to apply to,” said Cpl. Jesse Green, homicide investigator for Durham police. “I would say that’s the driving force.” Durham City Council decided in January to raise the pay for recruits by 10.6 percent and the salaries of higher-ranking officers by an equal proportion.
Green said he thought the raise “would stop the bleeding, so to speak.” The city has also pursued a series of different efforts aimed at lightening the workload of Durham’s officers. The Community Safety Department, for example, is developing four different pilot programs for units that dispatch trained and unarmed individuals, such as mental health professionals, to certain situations normally handled by the police. To attempt to head off crime before it occurs, the police department’s Community Engagement Unit assigns officers to public
housing communities to increase neighborhood visibility and administer safety education and intervention programs. “We need to continue to take a holistic approach and not put ourselves on an island at the police department but as a partner to the community and all these other groups,” McMaster said. “We certainly have an important role as being the enforcers when bad things happen, but we need to be part of the solution as well.” Meanwhile, Durham’s Gang Reduction Strategy manager Jim Stuit says that the level of gang activity in the city seems to be growing. Stuit said that while the larger gangs are staying around the same size, this rise in activity appears to be driven by an increase in “pop-up gangs.” These pop-up gangs, Stuit said, are created when five or six people living in a neighborhood get together to sell drugs, steal money or property, or engage in any other sort of gang activity. Eighteen-year-old Sodiq Oladiran said that he watched friends he knew in high school get caught up in gang violence. Some of these individuals, he said, saw family members killed as effects of their involvement. “When we were in high school it didn’t seem like they were going towards that route, but as soon as they started hanging around certain people that’s the direction they took,” Oladiran said. “And I guess because their parents lived around that life and their grandparents lived around that life it sort of feels normal for them.” Because of this, Oladiran believes that an increase in community outreach and conversation about the possible repercussions of this sort of lifestyle could go a long way to curb the issue. Changing the social norms that tolerate violence in the community is one of the primary strategies of Bull City United, Durham’s team of trained violence interrupters and outreach workers. They attempt to mediate conflicts and engage with high-risk people to discuss the costs of violence and help them get needed services or support. This desensitization to violence that the program is attempting to challenge can push people toward involvement with gangs, Stuit said. “The more fighting you hear, the more gunshots you hear, the more people you know that have been harmed, the more exposure you have to that, and the more trauma there is, the more likely you are to wander down that path as well,” Stuit said. Not only are gun violence and gang activity exacerbated by each other, they’re also
influenced by the same set of socioeconomic factors. “Everything is connected,” city council member Leonardo Williams said. Rising housing costs, inflation, and a lack of equal access to education or opportunity for employment puts certain groups of people at higher risk of being forced into a state of financial need. And the greater an individual’s financial need becomes, the more their likelihood of getting involved with or being impacted by gun violence will rise. “When people are desperate they do desperate things,” Williams said. “So if we want to solve the gun violence issue, we’re going to have to solve the housing crisis issue.” Each of these various socioeconomic issues has been felt nationwide due to the pandemic, but Durham’s growth as a city over the last few years has helped particularly accelerate the effects of the housing crisis. This has forced many people out of their previous living situations and into lower-income communities or the public housing system. Greg Hill, whose brother is serving 15 years for his involvement in an incident of gun violence, believes that the energy of the space someone lives in influences their potential to be impacted by gun violence. “When you concentrate marginalized communities in one spot and when they’re around the same socioeconomic space, a lot of times there’s going to be violence and things of that nature that occur,” Hill said. While Johnson is proud of the steps the city has taken to alleviate some of these different social issues, she said that substantial solutions to these types of problems are beyond the scope of local investment without federal intervention. “The entire budget of the city of Durham is $500 million a year,” Johnson said. “We could put every penny of that into affordable housing and not provide enough affordable housing for everybody that needs it. The capacity doesn’t exist.” She says in order to see solutions to these types of issues, there needs to be a concerted antipoverty initiative at the federal level that guarantees people things like an affordable place to live, a sufficient basic income, and access to a good education and health care. “There isn’t a one-city solution to this problem and there isn’t a one-shot investment solution,” Johnson said. “It’s massive investment in a comprehensive social welfare state that actually takes care of people.” W This story was originally published by UNC Media Hub. INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
9
worse than hoarding top-secret documents at a golf club? Is “acid washing” records, as Trump accused Clinton, any less farcical than flushing them down the john? Ultimately, we decided not to give Trump his seventh Foilie. Technically he isn’t eligible: his presidential records won’t be subject to FOIA until he’s been out of office for five years (releasing classified records could take years, or decades, if ever). Instead, we’re sticking with our original 16 winners, from federal agencies to smalltown police departments to a couple of corporations, who are all shameworthy in their own rights and, at least metaphorically, have no problem tossing government transparency in the crapper. Here’s a sampling; read the rest at indyweek.com.
FEATURE
The Operation Slug Speed Award: U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparency. BY THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION AND MUCKROCK
backtalk@indyweek.com
E
ach year during Sunshine Week (March 13-19), The Foilies serve up tongue-in-cheek “awards” for government agencies and assorted institutions that stand in the way of access to information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock combine forces to collect horror stories about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state-level public records requests from journalists and transparency advocates across the United States and beyond. Our goal is to identify the most surreal document redactions, the most aggravating copy fees, the most outrageous retaliation attempts, and all the other ridicule-worthy attacks on the public’s right to know. And every year since 2015, as we’re about to crown these dubious winners, something new comes to light that makes us consider stopping the presses. As we were writing up this year’s faux awards, news broke that officials from the 10
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
National Archives and Records Administration had to lug away boxes upon boxes of Trump administration records from Mar-aLago, President Trump’s private resort. At best, it was an inappropriate move; at worst, a potential violation of laws governing the retention of presidential records and the handling of classified materials. And while Politico had reported that when Trump was still in the White House, he liked to tear up documents, we also just learned from journalist Maggie Haberman’s new book that staff claimed to find toilets clogged up with paper scraps, which were potentially torn-up government records. Trump has dismissed the allegations, of course. This was all too deliciously ironic considering how much Trump had raged about his opponent (and 2016 Foilies winner) Hillary Clinton’s practice of storing State Department communications on a private server. Is storing potentially classified correspondence on a personal email system any
The federal government’s lightning-fast (by bureaucratic standards) timeline to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine lived up to its Operation Warp Speed name. But the Food and Drug Administration gave anything but the same treatment to a FOIA request seeking data about that authorization process. Fifty-five years—that’s how long the FDA, responding to a lawsuit by doctors and health scientists, said it would take to process and release the data it used to authorize the vaccine. And yet, the FDA needed only months to review the data the first time and confirm that the vaccine was safe for the public. The estimate was all the more galling because the requesters want to use the documents to help persuade skeptics that the vaccine is safe and effective, a time-sensitive goal as we head into the third year of the pandemic. Thankfully, the court hearing the FOIA suit nixed the FDA’s snail’s pace plan to review just 500 pages of documents a month. In February, the court ordered the FDA to review 10,000 pages for the next few months and ultimately between 50,000 and 80,000 through the rest of the year.
The Spying on Requesters Award: FBI If government surveillance of ordinary people is chilling, spying on the public watchdogs of that very same surveillance is downright hostile. Between 1989 and at least 2004, the FBI kept regular tabs on the National Security Archive, a domestic nonprofit organization that investigates and archives information on, you guessed it, national security operations. The Cato
Institute obtained records showing that the FBI used electronic and physical surveillance, possibly including wiretaps and “mail covers,” meaning the U.S. Postal Service recorded the information on the outside of envelopes sent to or from the archive. In a secret 1989 cable, then FBI director William Sessions specifically called out the archive’s “tenacity” in using FOIA. Sessions specifically fretted over former Department of Justice attorney Quinan J. Shea’s and former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong’s leading roles at the archive, as both were major transparency advocates. Of course, these records that Cato got through its own FOIA request were themselves heavily redacted. And this comes after the FBI withheld information about these records from the archive when it requested them back in 2006. Which makes you wonder: How do we watchdog the spy who is secretly spying on the watchdog?
The Transparency Penalty Flag Award: Big 10 Conference In the face of increasing public interest, administrators at the Big 10 sporting universities tried to take a page out of the ol’ college playbook last year and run some serious interference on the public records process. In an apparent attempt to “hide the ball” (that is, their records on when football would be coming back), university leaders suggested to one another that they communicate via a portal used across universities. Reporters and fans saw the move as an attempt to avoid the prying eyes of avid football fans and others who wanted to know more about what to expect on the field and in the classroom. “I would be delighted to share information, but perhaps we can do this through the Big 10 portal, which will assure confidentiality?” Wisconsin chancellor Rebecca Blank shared via email. “Just FYI—I am working with Big Ten staff to move the conversation to secure Boardvantage web site we use for league materials,” Mark Schlissel, then president of the University of Michigan, wrote his colleagues. “Will advise.” Of course, the emails discussing the attempted circumvention became public via a records request. Officials’ attempt to disguise their secrecy play was even worse than a quarterback forgetting to pretend to hand off the ball in a play-action pass. University administrators claimed that the use of the private portal was for ease of communication rather than concerns over public scrutiny. We’re still calling a penalty, however. W
FO O D & D R I N K From left: Elsa Engelbrecht, Alyssa White, & Paola Cira, employees at the Midtown East Starbucks who are petitioning to establish a union for workers in the Triangle. PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
No Silent Partners Thirty-one days inside the first North Carolina Starbucks to organize for a union BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
I
n high school, Elsa Engelbrecht worked at a Chickfil-A in Boone Trail, North Carolina, that holds a world record. It’s for the most drive-through cars served in an hour: 500 cars, or 8.3 cars per minute. “I’m used to working in really fast-paced drive-through environments,” Engelbrecht, 19, affirms cheerfully. For the past two years, she’s worked for Starbucks; since July, she’s worked night shifts at its 2901 Sherman Oak Place location in Raleigh. “But,” she continues, “the way that Starbucks as a company runs is not equipped for that speed. They expect you to make handcrafted drinks one at a time with like seven modifications while also expecting out-of-this-world customer service where you want to get to know every customer, while also having 32-second drive-through times.” When I first met Engelbrecht, one mild February afternoon, I arrived late to the interview because I’d accidentally gone to the wrong Starbucks—another store, eight minutes away—which speaks, at least in part, to the ubiquity of the
corporate coffee giant. Across the United States, there are 9,000 corporate-owned stores; in North Carolina alone, as of 2017, there are 338. There’s a line about how there’s a Starbucks on every street corner in America, which, if not literally true, has grains of truth to it—a 2012 study found that the farthest point in the country that you can be from a Starbucks is 140 miles, and 80 percent of the country is within at least 20 miles of a store. If you live in a city or suburbs, you’ll find yourself much closer. The particular store Engelbrecht works at in Raleigh is sleek and newish and, yes, has a drive-through. It’s a popular location and sits near Trader Joe’s and Ashley Christensen’s BB’s Crispy Chicken; most days, cars snake all the way around the lot. This is where, in the summer of 2021, Engelbrecht first met and began working with fellow baristas Alyssa White and Paola Cira. White and Cira are both Starbucks veterans and have worked for the company since they were teenagers—White for four years and Cira for nearly seven. Both are 23.
Conversations about unionizing began as a joke—or not a joke, exactly, but an idea teased out lightly over headsets during shifts. Both women had followed unionizing efforts across the country with interest, including a 2019 drive at a Philadelphia Starbucks that was curtailed when two organizing employees were fired (the labor board found this action unlawful; Starbucks appealed the ruling and, almost three years later, a decision is still pending). By this point, as for many food workers, frustration had built up: a couple months into the pandemic, the company had removed hazard pay, even as customers remained belligerent, work crews skeletal, and hours static. But Starbucks represents normal life and strove to create a sense of stability for customers, a reminder that even if times were hard, you could still have an iced grande skinny vanilla latte. The effort paid off, at least for corporate: from 2020 to 2021, total revenues grew 21 percent to $29.1 billion. The increase in company profits also parallels an increase in prices: the company has announced that it expects to hike coffee prices this year, blaming inflation. In August, three Buffalo stores filed to unionize with Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Other stores across the country soon followed suit and the word began to crop up with more frequency. While cleaning out her car, recently, Cira found one of the green-apron cards that the company gives to employees so they can pass along notes of encouragement to one another. This one, written last summer by White, reads: “#UnionizeStarbucks.” “I remember my parents telling me about [unions] because they’re from Mexico,” says Cira. “They would be like, ‘Unions in Mexico were really important and fundamental because that’s the only way that people were getting paid.’ I remember them saying, ‘Are there any unions here in the U.S.?’” There are, of course—steelworker and teacher unions are usually the first to come to mind—but in North Carolina, a right-to-work state, their presence is not always immediately obvious. And despite the growing popularity and visibility of unions (a recent Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest approval rating since 1965), actual membership has steadily declined: since 2000, the unionized percentage of the U.S. workforce has dropped from 13.5 percent to 10.3 percent. Despite, or perhaps because of, this lag, in February Engelbrecht, Cira, White, and several other baristas— Sage Shaw, Sharon Gilman, Frida Salas-Caldera, and Clio Maxwell, all of whom are in their early to midtwenties— plunged forward with organizing plans. White reached out to Workers United and, over Google Docs and a group chat, the baristas began to plan. On February 15, they filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board and submitted an open letter to StarINDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
11
bucks CEO Kevin Johnson, signing their names alongside a note acknowledging the coworkers who “preferred to stay anonymous.” The majority of staff supports a union, White says, but fears retaliation. “I was talking to one of our delivery drivers a few nights ago and I told him about how we filed to unionize and he asked, ‘Is that illegal here?’ Because he genuinely didn’t believe that unions were allowed here,” Engelbrecht says. “I feel like that kind of speaks volumes. If we win, this would be a huge shift for North Carolina as a whole—to show that we can unionize.”
S
tarbucks has a special name for its employees: partners. It’s cozy corporate-speak for employees, to be sure, but the camaraderie is rooted in a benefits program more robust than most others in the fast-casual hospitality world. Various levels of health-care coverage (including dental and vision) are available, as are a 401(k), company stock, and paid time off and parental leave for eligible employees. Other perks are tucked into the job, too: store and affiliate discounts and a free Spotify premium subscription. The career package sends a message to employees: we see you as people with a future, not just as disposable workers. It’s supposed to be a progressive company to work for, and for Engelbrecht, Cira, and White, its message was alluring from the start. “My mom was excited about the 401(k) plan,” Engelbrecht says. “She’s like, ‘Start investing, get that stock plan!’” But benefits are pulled from paychecks, and for baristas, those paychecks aren’t all that robust to begin with. As of February, the average Starbucks barista makes $11.64 an hour; in North Carolina, that amount is a little lower, rounding out at $11.00, which, at a full-time annual salary of $22,880, means that a full-time North Carolina Starbucks barista’s annual salary falls below the federal poverty line. The nationwide labor shortage has prompted Starbucks to rethink wages. There are currently more than 11 million job openings in the United States and plenty of reasons why, including school and childcare disruptions and older workers retiring early. These openings have created a more flexible post-vaccine market for workers, especially those in the service industry, and recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that November and December quit rates were the highest since 2000. “We have a birthday calendar in the back with everyone’s birthdays on it and three12
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
Facade of the Midtown East Starbucks in Raleigh fourths of the employees on there do not work here anymore,” Engelbrecht says. “I’ve only been at this store since July and it’s kind of sad. I got here right when that calendar was put up, and most of the people on there are gone. It’s like a graveyard of employees.” In October, Starbucks announced that by this summer all employees will earn at least $15 an hour. (The announcement anticipated an optics scramble: In early January 2022, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings were released, revealing that in 2021, CEO Kevin Johnson’s compensation grew 39.3 percent from $14.67 million to $20.43 million.) The Fight for 15 campaign was launched by SEIU in 2012. At the time, the proposed new minimum wage was regarded as a piein-the-sky aspiration but it swelled from city to city; last year, it was set to be a central plank in President Biden’s $1.9 million stimulus package but the Senate parliamentarian struck it from the bill. Still, a $15 wage floor has
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
gained traction, and in the decade since has become imprinted in the national consciousness. To people in power who have, say, fond youthful memories of working $7-an-hour gigs at the local ice cream shop, a rate of $15 (which now amounts to an annual salary of $31,200) might sound more than adequate. But things have changed, even just in the 10 years since the Fight for $15 campaign launched, and after taxes that pay grade only translates to a take-home salary of $25,510.30. According to one recent analysis published in The Triangle Business Journal, the median income in Raleigh is $61,500 but the income needed to “live comfortably” as a renter is $80,486. So for the baristas at 2901 Sherman Oak Place, the promise of a future raise was already too late. They wanted a seat at the table, too. “There’s a Bojangles right down the street and they had a ‘paying $15 an hour’ sign out like a year ago,” Engelbrecht adds. “Starbucks is just now getting to it.”
“We have a birthday calendar in the back ... and three-fourths of the employees on there do not work here anymore. It’s like a graveyard of employees.”
One of the shadows looming across the American workforce’s so-called great resignation is a pervasive idea that workers are quitting because they don’t want to work— that Gen Z, indeed, is so entitled that they would rather spend the day posting on Reddit’s infamous r/antiwork board than clocking into a shift. It’s language that takes several labor trends—pandemic-era white-collar burnout and poverty-wage employees striking or reshuffling—and essentializes them into a singular sociological phenomenon. As many have pointed out, though, a worker shortage is just one name for the current conditions; a better one might be a shortage of wages. “I’ve been organizing in the South for 30 years and worked on a lot of inspiring campaigns, but this is one of the ones at the top,” says SEIU Workers United Southern Region director Chris Baumann. “It’s been led by this younger generation of workers, Starbucks partners, and they’re doing it themselves. We’re trying to support them, but they stepped out and are up against this horrible antiunion activity from Starbucks.” Engelbrecht, Cira, and White are all part of that younger wave of workers. They’ve got some of Gen Z’s signifiers—Doc Martens, TikTok references, swoops of glittery eyeshadow—and have spent their young adult years working behind a counter during a pandemic, having come of age during the Trump presidency. It would be foolish to think they don’t know what they’re doing—or to assume the momentum will stop at Starbucks. “Inflation is worse than the Great Depression now,” Cira says. “Someone said, like, ‘The new homeownership is having an apartment and the new having kids is having a pet.’ It’s so expensive to do anything. I can’t imagine ever owning a home or having children because of how bad the economy is. Fifteen dollars is a bare minimum—the fact that we’re still fighting for it in 2022 is crazy to me.”
I
n late February, management at the Raleigh store acknowledged the petition by posting a note in the back room. It read warmly, promising to make “space as you need to ask questions and get all the facts on unions.” “To be clear,” it read, “we don’t believe we need a union here. We’re not perfect, but we’re trying.” “They claim to be a progressive company that leads, and yet when they had multiple stores in Asia experiencing the pandemic before us, they did nothing to prepare,” White said in a text message, when I asked
“I can’t imagine ever owning a home or having children because of how bad the economy is. $15 is a bare minimum.” what she thought of the notice. “I read this letter to my team this morning and they laughed.” “We will respect the process and will bargain in good faith guided by our principles. We hope that the union does the same,” Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, said in a statement. Still, organizing Starbucks workers across the country—so far, about 130 stores across two dozen states have filed—maintain that the corporation has used union-busting tactics. Most famously, in early February at a Memphis Starbucks, the company fired seven organizing employees who have since become known as the “Memphis Seven.” (A company spokesperson has said that the employees violated safety and security policies.) Other criticisms of Starbucks’s response include alleged texts encouraging workers to vote no, the heavy presence of corporate management at unionizing stores, and allegations of labor practices being tweaked to target and edge out unionizing workers. In Raleigh, according to the baristas there, management has been pulling staff aside in pairs for sit-down meetings. “The attitude of yesterday’s meeting is ‘Come on guys, even if you unionize, even if you organize, this is going to take forever,’ as if to say, ‘Just give up now, you won’t be in the long run for it,’” Cira says over Zoom, recounting one such meeting. “But it felt like it had the opposite effect of ‘Okay, I guess I’m going to stay with this company part-time until I see what I’ve been fighting for pay off.’” When I asked about possible retaliation, White pulls up a bingo card of union-busting lingo on her phone. “I think it would be funny to see Starbucks try to retaliate against me at this point,” she says. “I’ve never had a write-up. I’ve been partner of the quarter at every single store that I’ve worked at—I know I’m a valuable employee and I know that I’m good at my job.” So far, six stores have officially unionized; Baumann says that Workers United is working with as many as 40 stores in the South. Employees at a Starbucks in Knoxville were the first in the South to file for a union election; after that store, the Carolinas lead the way with a
Greenville Starbucks set for a mail-ballot deadline of May 2. The Sherman Oak Place Starbucks, meanwhile, will follow a day later with a Zoom election count on May 3. Starbucks has spent extensive resources challenging individual unionizing stores—its argument that elections should be held on a district-wide, not individual store, basis—but has not won any cases so far. It did not challenge the elections in Raleigh or Greenville. As they wait, Alyssa White has stayed busy visiting other Starbucks stores in the Triangle and asking if employees want to unionize. Elsa Engelbrecht is preparing to start a remote degree at Arizona State University as part of Starbucks’s tuition-funding program. And Paola Cira, finally, is finishing up her last semester at Meredith College. In July, she plans to take the LSAT and apply to law school. “My hope is that the community will wrap their arms around the partners in Raleigh and show support,” Baumann says. “And I hope that people who shop at Starbucks will take a real look at the corporation. They like to portray themselves as a progressive company, but based on this antiunion activity, it seems quite a contrast to what they portray to customers.” On a recent morning, I went to work from the Sherman Oak Place Starbucks. It was busy; most customers were either in suits or yoga pants and, aside from the masks that employees wore, it felt like time had stopped and this normal scene was a snapshot from pretty much anytime in the company’s 51-year history. One distinction this store does have, though, is an exterior mermaid insignia that is black and white instead of the corporation’s signature emerald green. I asked the baristas why: it has a “midcentury vibe,” they said, and theorized that it was meant to make the store feel more modern. And maybe that’s true. Maybe the mermaid is catching up with the times, after all, and can lead the South’s Starbucks forward. Maybe the May 3 vote will give a better idea of how that’s going. “I’m one person at one store at one Starbucks in one state and a singular country,” Cira says. “It might not be a big impact, but I don’t want to leave this behind and know that I didn’t at least try.” W
? Love the Support the businesses that support us!
Shop local! INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
13
M U SIC Photo of David Hinds, in the foreground, with members of the band Steel Pulse PHOTO BY PATRICK NIDDRIE
Rhythms of Resistance Reggae roots group Steel Pulse headlines Wilmington’s Lumina Festival. For Triangle reggae fans, the cost of a ticket and a drive to Wilmington would be worthwhile. BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com
F
or the roots reggae superband Steel Pulse, it’s all about putting the politics of the Black experience to music. David Hinds, the group’s guitarist and lead vocalist, remembers seeing the lifeless body of Malcolm X on the floor of Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on a television screen nearly 60 years ago. Late last month, Hinds appeared on a social media website, Night Nurse Reggae Redemption Radio, which is cosponsoring UNC-Wilmington’s Lumina Festival for the Arts. Steel Pulse is headlining Lumina and will perform Saturday night at Kenan Auditorium on the UNC-Wilmington campus. 14
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
Hinds, during an hour-long appearance on the social media site, acknowledged that the legendary band’s music is part of a continuum of the Black experience that pays tribute to the Pan-Africanist philosophies of freedom fighters like Alexander Crummell, Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle, Malcolm X, George Jackson, and Martin Luther King. Steel Pulse’s music, with its unrelenting global view, made plain to Black people struggling all over the world that our struggle is one and the same. “Malcolm X’s assasination date passed just a few days ago and I remember it,” Hinds said. “I was nine years old when I saw him lying there in a pool of blood on a black-
and-white TV in England. I can just remember my father saying to me, ‘I knew they would kill him! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!’ And that stayed in my mind.” “So with those kinds of sound bites, those kinds of images, and I fast-forward to George Jackson, watching him walk in chains,” he added. “And all those things that were happening in my teens, with George Jackson’s experience and Martin Luther King’s assasination. So, the story, the landscape of what Steel Pulse is about [happened] before the music came into play. I would say politics came first.” The Lumina Festival, first mounted in 2017, is returning after a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic shutdown. The festival organizers last month told the Port City Call newspaper that the time off gave them an opportunity to rethink the event in order to attract more students and make it more inclusive. In years past, the Lumina Festival largely featured operatic performances during the summer months while most of the students were on break. The first order of business was scheduling the event four months earlier to attract students already on campus. And in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests, Lumina organizers wanted to create an event that emphasized inclusiveness, community, and awareness. The result is a 13-day music, theater, and arts festival that begins today and ends March 29. The festival will spotlight 10 reggae bands and also include bluegrass, jazz, salsa, and classical music performances. Still, reggae roots music is the festival’s crown jewel. And bringing Steel Pulse is the event’s pièce de résistance. Even with gas prices higher than a weather balloon and Wilmington more than two hours and some change away, the chance for the Triangle’s roots reggae music lovers to luxuriate in Steel Pulse’s songs of resistance might be worth the price of the ticket. The group is one of the few remaining bands still around from the 1970s and early 1980s, unquestionably the Golden Age of Reggae. It was the music’s most creative period with the emergence of reggae icons Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, Black Uhuru, Third World, and Dennis Brown from Jamaica; Aswad, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Steel Pulse from the UK; and Alpha Blondy from South Africa (with a tip of consciousness to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s “Afrobeat” in Nigeria, and Thomas Mafumo’s Chimurenga music in Zimbabwe). The music and culture landed in fertile ground and minds in Durham’s West End during the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was part of a vibrant, multinational Rastafarian community whose activism included demanding justice for Mumia Abu Jamal, protesting after the Philadelphia police bombing of MOVE, visiting the Know Bookstore on Fayetteville Street to hear Pan-Africanist lectures, raising fists while listening to Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and exploring music from all over Africa and the diaspora.
th
us
ke up w a W i
And yes, we raised hell while participating in anti-apartheid rallies and demanding the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Reggae music—not ganja—was the connective substance whose righteous indignation transmitted messages from Jamaica, England, Africa, and even America throughout the diaspora and the Motherland. The British poet Linton Kwesi Johnson (and not the UK press) chronicled the discontent of Black urban youth and predicted the 1981 Brixton riots with his 1978 album Dread Beat an’ Blood. Everything changed when crack cocaine arrived, followed by music that denigrated life and celebrated violence. “Revolutionary words have become entertainment!” the great Jamaican poet Mutabaruka spat out in disgust. Steel Pulse came from Handsworth, a multicultural area of Birmingham, England. They were the first non-Jamaican reggae band to win a Grammy for Best Reggae Album for their 1985 album Babylon the Bandit. Hinds, last month, says the band got its start in 1975, when they were inspired by Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Catch a Fire album, noting that he loved poetry while a student and that “Bob stimulated me to put words to music.” “We said, ‘You know what? I think we can utilize the whole experience to become a force and an entity to be reckoned with.’ So that’s how Steel Pulse came to me.” And, oh, what a force the group has been. The band’s first five albums—Handsworth Revolution in 1978, Tribute to the Martyrs in 1979, and Reggae Fever in 1980, followed by True Democracy in 1982 and Earth Crisis in 1984— are all masterpieces. By the time members of the Recording Academy finally got around to selecting Babylon the Bandit in 1985 as the reggae album of the year, the only question for discerning listeners was “What took so damn long?” Reggae Redemption’s host Kimberly Smith-McLaughlin, in addition to working at UNC-Wilmington and producing and promoting reggae concerts, has hosted weekly radio shows for 30 years, including Coastal Carolinas Modern Rock 98.7 FM. She asked Hinds what it is about reggae music that enables it to transcend ethnic, race, and class barriers all over the world. “Ninety-nine percent of the [people of the] world are sufferers,” the easygoing and unfailingly pleasant music legend replied. “It’s an organic and natural gravitation to the music that stimulates them. We are sufferers. Another thing is the frequency of the music. The bass. The sound of the foot drum, the kick drum. The frequency of those instruments are a lot lower, that has more to do with the sound of the heart.” W
SIGN UP FOR THE
INDY DAILY Local news, events and more— in your inbox every weekday morning
Sign up:
For more about information about the Lumina Festival visit uncarts.universitytickets.com INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
15
C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R
Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.
Tony Low Sun, Mar. 20, 6 p.m. Vecino Brewing Co., Carrboro.
music
Arts Discovery Educational Series: “Sonia De Los Santos, La Golondrima” $8 (general admission), free (DPS students). Mon, Mar. 21, 9:45 and 11:20 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. Sunflower Bean performs at Motorco Music Hall on Monday, Mar. 21. PHOTO BY COURTESY OF MOTORCO MUSIC HALL
Celtic Woman $40+. Wed, Mar. 16, 7 p.m. DPAC, Durham. Local Fix @ 506 Wed, Mar. 16, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. The Protomen $22. Wed, Mar. 16, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Zombi / Sister, Brother $15. Wed, Mar. 16, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. The Dan Tyminski Band $22+. Thurs, Mar. 17, 7:30 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. Duke Chorale Spring Concert Thurs, Mar. 17, 7:30 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University, Durham. YOLO Karaoke Thurs, Mar. 17, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Andrew Kasab Fri, Mar. 18, 7:30 p.m. Vecino Brewing Co., Carrboro.
The Best of Broadway with the North Carolina Symphony $40+. Mar. 18-19, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. The Industrial Strength Tour with Ministry and Special Guests $40. Fri, Mar. 18, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. Juniper Avenue / Monsoon / Babe Haven / Ovary-2 $7. Fri, Mar. 18, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. Madhouse $8. Fri, Mar. 18, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Poguetry in Motion featuring Spider Stacy and Cait O’Riordan $27. Fri, Mar. 18, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Secret Monkey Weekend CD Release Party $10. Fri, Mar. 18, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Beethoven Lives Upstairs: Young People’s Concert with the North Carolina Symphony SOLD OUT. Sat, Mar. 19, 1 and 4 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. Carnaval of All Rhythms $15. Sat, Mar. 19, 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. Eric Slick / Black Haus / Jenny Besetzt $10. Sat, Mar. 19, 9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro. Frautschi/Manasse/ Nakamatsu Trio $10+. Sat, Mar. 19, 8 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University, Durham. International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella: South Semifinal $25+. Sat, Mar. 19, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
JoJo SOLD OUT. Sat, Mar. 19, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Queer Agenda Sat, Mar. 19, 11 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Rodes / Al Riggs $10. Sat, Mar. 19, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators $55+. Sat, Mar. 19, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham. Baroque & Beyond: From Old World to New $20. Sun, Mar. 20, 3 p.m. Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Chapel Hill. Marvelous Music Mainstage Series: Time for Three $27. Sun, Mar. 20, 6 p.m. Cary Arts Center, Cary. Obituary / Gruesome / 200 Stab Wounds $25. Sun, Mar. 20, 7:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Kishi Bashi $25. Mon, Mar. 21, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Sunflower Bean $16. Mon, Mar. 21, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. Beach House: Once Twice Melody Tour $72+. Tues, Mar. 22, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. Joe Bonamassa $82+. Tues, Mar. 22, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham. Mahler Chamber Orchestra $39+. Tues, Mar. 22, 7:30 p.m. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. North Carolina Master Chorale: Soldiers in Song $13+. Tues, Mar. 22, 7:30 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. Wolf Alice $25. Tues, Mar. 22, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
screen Advance Screening: Everything Everywhere All at Once $13. Thurs, Mar. 17, 6:45 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh. Movie Loft presents Straight to Hell Thurs, Mar. 17, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
page Kelly Barnhill presents The Ogress and the Orphans Wed, Mar. 16, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. Alex Harris presents Our Strange New Land: Narrative Movie Sets in the American South Thurs, Mar. 17, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
The Haunting & Burn Witch, Burn $10. Fri, Mar. 18, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. Art in Bloom Film Screening— Exhibition on Screen, Painting The Modern Garden: Monet To Matisse $10 (members), $12 (nonmembers). Sat, Mar. 19, 2 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon Brunch $10. Sat, Mar. 19, 11 a.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh. North by Northwest $10. Sun, Mar. 20, 3 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh. Evil Dead II $12. Mon, Mar. 21, 7:45 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince $10. Sat, Mar. 19, 3 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.
stage Honest Pint Theatre Company presents Small Mouth Sounds $15+. Mar. 18-Apr. 2, various times. Pure Life Theatre, Raleigh. Trolls LIVE! $15+. Mar. 19-20, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Family-Friendly Transactors Improv: Animal Crackers $6+. Sat, Mar. 19, 6 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. Wow in the World Pop Up Party: Laboratory of Bad Ideas $45+. Sun, Mar. 20, 1 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Benjamin Gilmer presents The Other Dr. Gilmer Tues, Mar. 22, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM 16
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R
2022
Down Home Concerts
Live music is back—
tickets on sale now!
Thursday, March 17 7pm
Dan Tyminski A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater | 2 E. South Street, Raleigh, NC 27601 Proof of full COVID-19 vaccination or negative test required. Art in Bloom at NCMA PHOTO COURTESY OF NCMA
art Cocktails Inspired by Art in Bloom Mar. 16-20, various times. The Willard Rooftop Lounge, Raleigh. Lunchtime Floral Demonstrations $27 (members), $30 (nonmembers). Mar. 16-18, various times. NCMA, Raleigh. Global Garden Party Opening Reception $72 (members), $80 (nonmembers). Wed, Mar. 16, 7 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. Guided Tour: Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa Thurs, Mar. 17, 1:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.
Live from the Galleries: Frank Lee Craig—The Distance Thurs, Mar. 17, 6 pm. Online; presented by the Gregg Museum of Art & Design. Mindful Museum: Virtual Slow Art Appreciation, Art In Bloom Edition Thurs, Mar. 17, 7 p.m. Online; presented by NCMA. Durham Public Schools Art Instructor Showcase Mar. 18-May 5, various times. Durham Arts Council, Durham. Art In Bloom Virtual Tour $5. Fri, Mar. 18, 1 p.m. Online; presented by NCMA. Guided Tour: Explore the Ackland’s Collection and Peace, Power & Prestige Fri, Mar. 18, 1:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.
Ackland Open House at ShopSpace Sun, Mar. 20, 3 p.m. ShopSpace, Raleigh. Art In Bloom Virtual Tour In American Sign Language $5. Sun, Mar. 20, 1 p.m. Online; presented by NCMA. Gallery Talk: Saba Taj Sun, Mar. 20, 2 p.m. The Nasher, Durham. Honors Thesis Exhibition: Ella Kiley, Signs of Displacement— Deconstructing Borders Mar. 21-25, various times. Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill.
pinecone.org | Call PineCone and save on fees: 919-664-8333
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
967-6159
(919) 967-6159
bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
17
P U Z Z L ES
ALL RE A LTHC T HEA ERS GE K R WO
FF O % L 10 ON ALKS
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
March 16, 2022
INDYweek.com
3.16.22 INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com
C L AS S I F I E D S EMPLOYMENT
E V EN T S
Work Situation Wanted: Seamstress/Tailor Assistant In possession of sewing skills and would like to work part-time for an experienced sewer. Durham-based, but can commute in Triangle. Can provide work samples. Wage negotiable. Call Kathy at (919) 924-6521. Assistant Director, Life Sciences (Durham, N.C.) Duke University seeks an Assistant Director, Life Sciences in Durham, NC to evaluate life sciences technologies for patentability and commercial potential. PhD and 3yrs or MS and 5yrs. For full req’s and to apply visit https://careers.duke.edu/ Job Reference Number: 179349 IT HR Systems, Integrations Lead (Durham, N.C.) Parexel International LLC seeks an IT HR Systems, Integrations Lead in Durham, NC that architects, designs, implements, and supports Workday integration solutions with Third Party Vendors and internal systems. MS + 4yrs. Remote work 1-2 days per week allowed. To apply send resumes to: openings@parexel.com and reference Job ID: 80708BR Sr. Infrastructure Engineer-Automation and Cloud (Durham, N.C.) Sr. Infrastructure Engineer-Automation and Cloud sought by NC Health Affiliates, LLC in Durham, NC. Responsible for the overall planning and development of complex computer systems engineering designs in support of the implementation of network, compute, telephony, platform, middleware and software database solutions. Telecommuting permitted. Apply @ www.jobpostingtoday.com #78827.
HEALTH & WELL BEING
LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE 919-416-0675
www.harmonygate.com
Looking for easier advertising? TRY INDY CLASSIFIEDS! Email classy@indyweek.com or sales@indyweek.com for more information
INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com
INDYweek.com
March 16, 2022
19