INDY Week 3.22.17 by Indy Week

raleigh

3|22|2017

AMERICAN D RE AME RS A SPECIAL IMMIGRATION ISSUE

2 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

Raleigh Durham | Chapel Hill

PUBLISHER Susan Harper EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jeffrey C. Billman MANAGING EDITOR FOR ARTS+CULTURE Brian Howe DESIGN DIRECTOR Shan Stumpf NEWS EDITOR Ken Fine STAFF WRITERS Thomas Goldsmith,

Erica Hellerstein, Sarah Willets

MUSIC EDITOR Allison Hussey ASSOCIATE ARTS+COPY EDITOR David Klein FOOD EDITOR Victoria Bouloubasis LISTINGS COORDINATOR Kate Thompson THEATER AND DANCE CRITIC Byron Woods RESTAURANT CRITIC Emma Laperruque STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Alex Boerner, Ben McKeown CHIEF CONTRIBUTORS

Spencer Griffith, Corbie Hill, Laura Jaramillo, Erica Johnson, Jill Warren Lucas, Sayaka Matsuoka, Glenn McDonald, Neil Morris, Angela Perez, Hannah Pitstick, Bryan C. Reed, V. Cullum Rogers, Dan Ruccia, Dan Schram, Zack Smith, Eric Tullis, Chris Vitiello, Ryan Vu, Patrick Wall, Iza Wojciechowska, Baynard Woods INTERNS Megan Howard, Nijah McKinney, Noah Rawlings

PRODUCTION+DESIGN

PRODUCTION MANAGER Christopher Williams GRAPHIC DESIGNER Steve Oliva

OPERATIONS

BUSINESS MANAGER Alex Rogers DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER Tira Murray

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Brenna Berry-Stewart DISTRIBUTION Laura Bass, David Cameron,

Michael Griswold, JC Lacroix, Raymond Lanier, Richard David Lee, Joseph Lizana, James Maness, Gloria McNair, Jeff Prince, Timm Shaw, Freddie Simons, Marshall Wade, Gerald Weeks

ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Shannon Legge SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Ele Roberts ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Gillian Morris, Joshua Rowsey ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE & CLASSIFIEDS SALES MANAGER

PERIPHERAL VISIONS | V.C. ROGERS

Sarah Schmader

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INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 3

YOU ARE WELCOME HERE

IT TOOK PRESIDENT TRUMP JUST A WEEK TO MAKE HIS INTENTIONS CLEAR.

Though patently unconstitutional and incompetently implemented, that first travel ban was an unmistakable signal that the bigotry on which he campaigned would also be a bedrock of his administration. Since then, we’ve seen more of the same: the proposed border wall, a second travel ban targeting Muslim countries, plans to crack down on sanctuary cities and ratchet up deportations. These are dark hours for America’s immigrant and refugee populations. But in this darkness we’ve also seen glimmers of light: thousands upon thousands of people all over the country marching in the streets, protesting at airports, demanding that our institutions protect the vulnerable, proclaiming to the world that Donald Trump does not speak for us. In this week’s INDY, we lend our voices to this cause. In the pages that follow, you’ll find stories of those suffering under America’s byzantine and often cruel immigration system—which, to be fair, long predates Trump—as well as those fighting back against rising tides of nationalism and intolerance. Our message is simple: no matter your circumstance, you are welcome here. At its best, America has been a beacon of hope to those yearning to breathe free; at its worst, we’ve allowed or perpetuated unthinkable horrors. Now, at this crossroads in our history, we must decide what kind of country we want to be—and whether we have the resolve and the vigilance to stand up for what’s right.

—Jeffrey C. Billman

AQUÍ SON BIENVENIDOS

El presidente Trump tardó solo una semana para dejar claras sus intenciones El primer veto migratorio, a pesar de ser a todas luces inconstitucional y estar pobremente implementado, fue la señal inequívoca de que la intolerancia que Trump promovió durante su campaña sería la piedra angular de su administración. Desde entonces hemos visto más de lo mismo: la propuesta del muro fronterizo, un segundo veto migratorio dirigido a los países musulmanes, planes para acabar con las ciudades santuario y un aumento considerable en el número de deportaciones. Sin duda, estos son tiempos oscuros para las poblaciones de inmigrantes y refugiados de Estados Unidos. Pero en la oscuridad también hemos vislumbrado destellos de luz: miles y miles de personas hemos marchado en las calles de todo el país, protestado en los aeropuertos, exigido que nuestras instituciones protejan a los grupos vulnerables y proclamado ante el mundo que Donald Trump no está hablando por nosotros. En la edición de INDY de esta semana prestamos nuestras voces a esta causa. En las siguientes páginas podrán encontrar historias sobre aquellos que sufren bajo el bizantino y muchas veces cruel sistema migratorio de este país -el cual, siendo justos, es muy anterior a Trump-, así como anécdotas sobre aquellos que combaten las oleadas crecientes de intolerancia y nacionalismo. Nuestro mensaje es claro: no importa cuáles sean sus circunstancias, aquí son bienvenidos. En sus mejores momentos, Estados Unidos ha sido un faro de esperanza para aquellos que añoraban respirar libremente; mientras que en sus peores épocas el país ha permitido o perpetuado horrores inconcebibles. Actualmente, en esta encrujada histórica, no solo tenemos que decidir qué tipo de país queremos ser, sino reconocer si tenemos la determinación y la capacidad para defender lo que es justo.

VOUS ÊTES LES BIENVENUS ICI

Le président Trump n’a pris qu’une semaine pour éclaircir ses intentions. Bien qu’elle soit manifestement inconstitutionnelle et incompétente, cette première interdiction de voyage était un signe incontournable que la bigoterie sur laquelle il a fondé sa campagne serait aussi le socle de son administration. Depuis lors, nous avons témoigné plusieurs choses similaires : le mur de frontière proposé, une deuxième interdiction de voyage visant les pays musulmans, des projets visant à réprimer les villes de sanctuaire et l’accroissement des déportations. Ce sont des heures sombres pour les populations des immigrants et des réfugiés en Amérique. Mais dans cette obscurité, nous avons également aperçu des lueurs de lumière : des milliers et des milliers de personnes dans tout le pays marchant dans les rues, protestant dans les aéroports, demandant que nos institutions protègent les vulnérables, proclamant au monde que Donald Trump ne nous représente pas. Dans l'INDY de cette semaine, nous prêtons notre voix à cette cause. Dans les pages qui suivent, vous trouverez des histoires de ceux qui souffrent sous le système d'immigration byzantine de l'Amérique souvent cruel - qui, pour être juste, prédomine avant Trump - ainsi que ceux qui luttent contre la montée des marées du nationalisme et de l'intolérance. Notre message est simple : peu importe votre circonstance, vous êtes les bienvenus ici. Au meilleur des cas, l'Amérique a été un phare d'espoir pour ceux qui aspirent à respirer librement ; et au pire, nous avons permis ou perpétué des horreurs impensables. Maintenant, à ce carrefour de notre histoire, nous devons décider quel genre de pays nous voulons être - et si nous avons la résolution et la vigilance pour défendre ce qui est juste.

TRANSLATIONS: Spanish, María Ítaka; Mandarin, Xinglu Jiang; Arabic, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Vanan Services

4 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

‫‪CONTENTS‬‬ ‫‪THE LAMP BESIDE‬‬ ‫‪THE GOLDEN DOOR‬‬ ‫‪By Jeffrey C. Billman p. 6‬‬ ‫‪THE TAR HEEL‬‬ ‫‪MELTING POT‬‬ ‫‪By Thomas Goldsmith p.10‬‬ ‫‪THE WAITING‬‬ ‫‪By Sarah Willets p.12‬‬ ‫‪IN THE SHADOWS‬‬ ‫‪By Thomas Goldsmith p.16‬‬ ‫‪HOME OF THE BRAVE‬‬ ‫‪By Victoria Bouloubasis p.19‬‬ ‫‪BY ANY MEANS‬‬ ‫‪NECESSARY‬‬ ‫‪By Ken Fine p.22‬‬ ‫‪BLESSED ARE‬‬ ‫‪THE MERCIFUL‬‬ ‫‪By Amanda Abrams p.24‬‬ ‫‪THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLE‬‬ ‫‪By Erica Hellerstein p.28‬‬ ‫‪THE RADICAL‬‬ ‫‪By Erica Hellerstein p.30‬‬ ‫‪STRANGERS IN A‬‬ ‫‪STRANGE LAND‬‬ ‫‪By Ken Fine p.32‬‬ ‫‪THE IMMIGRANT‬‬ ‫‪IN THE KITCHEN‬‬ ‫‪By Victoria Bouloubasis p.34‬‬ ‫‪HOW TO HELP‬‬ ‫‪By Nijah McKinney p.36‬‬

‫‪INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 5‬‬

‫‪आप सब का स्वागत है।‬‬

‫|ंे‪सिर्फ एक सप्ताह लगा प्रेसिडेंट ट्रम्प को अपने इरादे स्पष्ट करने म‬‬

‫‪स्पष्टता असंअवैधानिक और अयोग्यताकपूर्वक परिपालित होते हुए भी, पहले यात्रा‬‬

‫‪प्रतिबंद एक असन्दिग्ध संकेत था कि जिस कटरता के साथ उन्होंने अभियान चलाया था‬‬

‫‪वो ही उनके प्रशाशन का मूल सिद्धांत होगा। तब से हमने वैसा ही या उससे अधिक देखा है।‬‬

‫‪प्रस्तावित सीमा पर दीवार, मुस्लिम देशो पर निशाना साधते हुए दूसरा यात्रा प्रतिबंद, सहारा‬‬ ‫‪देने वाले शहरो पर कड़ी कार्यवाही की योजना बनाना और निर्वासन में तेजी लाना। यह‬‬ ‫‪अमेरिका कि अप्रवासियों और शरणार्थी आबादी के लिए एक बुरा वक़्त है।‬‬

‫े‪लेकिन इस अँधेरे में भी हमने रौशनी की कुछ किरण देखि है। हज़ारों और हज़ारों की संख्या म‬‬ ‫‪पूरे देश में लोग सड़को पर निकल के आ रहे हैं, हवाई अड्डो पे विरोध कर रहे हैं और ये मांग‬‬

‫‪कर रहे हैं की संस्थाए कमज़ोर की रक्षा करे, दुनिया को खुले आम ये बता रहे हैं की डोनाल्ड‬‬ ‫‪ट्रम्प हमारे विचारो का प्रतिनिध्त्व नहीं कर रहे हैं।‬‬

‫‪इस सप्ताह के INDY में हम अपनी आवाज़ें इस अभियान को देना चाहते हैं। आने वाले पन्नो‬‬

‫‪में आप को ऐसे लोगों की कहानियाँ मिलेगी जो कष्ट सहन कर रहे हैं अमेरिका कि पेचिदा और‬‬ ‫े‪अकसर क्रूर आवर्जन प्रणाली की वजह से - जो कि न्यायसंगत कहें तो, ट्रम्प के आने क‬‬

‫‪पहले से मौजूद है - और वो जो लड़ रहे हैं राष्ट्रीयता और असहिषुणता की उफनती लहरों की‬‬

‫‪विरुद्ध। हमारा सन्देश सरल है। चाहे आप किसी भी परिस्थिति में हो, आप का यहाँ स्वागत है।‬‬ ‫‪अपने चरमोत्कर्ष पर, अमेरिका खुली हवा में साँस लेने की उम्मीद रखने वालों के लिये एक‬‬ ‫‪दीप स्तंभ की तरह रहा है और सबसे बुरे वक़्त में हमने अनुमति दी है या जारी रखा है एक‬‬

‫‪अकाल्पनीय घराने को। अब अपने इतिहास के इस चौराहे पर हमें ये फैसला करना है की हम‬‬

‫‪कैसा देश बनाना चाहते हैं और क्या हममे वो निश्चय और सतर्कता है जो सही है उसके पक्ष‬‬ ‫‪में खड़े होने की।‬‬

‫ןאכ התא ךורב‬ ‫‪.‬ותונווכ תא ריהבהל עובש קר פמארט אישנל חקל‬ ‫רוסיא ‪,‬הרורב הרוצב תונמוימב עצבתמ אלו יקוח אל אוהש תורמל‬ ‫‪,‬הילע ולש ןייפמקה תא ךרעש תואנקהש קהבומה תואה היה ןושארה העיסנה‬ ‫רדג ‪:‬המודהמ רתוי וניאר ‪,‬זאמ ‪.‬ולש הלהנהה לש דוסיה ןבא תא םג היהת‬ ‫טוקנל תוינכת ‪,‬תוימאלסא תונידמ דגנ ןווכמה ינשה רבעמה רוסיא ‪,‬עצומה לובגה‬ ‫םירגהמל תוהכ תועש ןה הלא ‪.‬תוילגהה תא ףירחהלו טלקמ ירע תופירחב‬ ‫‪.‬םיטילפה תויסולכואלו הקירמאל‬ ‫יבחר לכב םישנאמ םיפלא יפלא ‪:‬רוא לש תוצוצינ םג וניאר הזה ךשוחב לבא‬ ‫תודסומהש העיבתב ‪,‬הפועתה ילמנב םיחומ ‪,‬תובוחרב םידעוצ תירבה תוצרא‬ ‫‪.‬ונמשב רבדמ אל פמארט דנלודש םלועה ינפב םיזירכמ ‪,‬עיגפה לע ונגי ונלש‬ ‫‪,‬םיאבה םיפדב ‪.‬וז הרטמל ונלוק תא םינתונ ונא ‪,‬סילופנאידניאב הזה עובשב‬ ‫הריגהה תכרעממו הקירמא לש יטזיבהמ םילבוסש הלאל םירופיס אצמת התא‬ ‫הלאל ףסונב ‪-‬פמארטל םדק תכורא ‪,‬ןגוה תויהל ‪,‬איהש ‪-‬ללכ ךרדב תירזכאה‬ ‫רסמה ‪.‬תוליבס‪-‬יאמו תוינמואלמ תולועה לפשהו תואגה דגנ המחלמ םיבישמש‬ ‫‪.‬ןאכ התא ךורב ‪,‬ויהי ךלש תוביסנה המ הנשמ אל‪:‬טושפ אוה ונלש‬ ‫םושנל םיעגעגתמש הלא לכל הווקת לש האושמ התייה הקירמא ‪,‬הבטימב‬ ‫לע תולעהל ןיאש תועוז ונחצנה וא ונרתה ונחנא ‪,‬רתויב עורגה הבצמבו‪.‬תוישפוחב‬ ‫ןימ וזיא טילחהל ונילע ‪,‬ונלש הירוטסיהב תאזה םיכרדה תשרפב ‪,‬וישכע ‪.‬תעדה‬ ‫ףוקז דומעל תונרעה תאו תושיחנה תא ונל שי םאו – תויהל םיצור ונחנא הנידמ‬

‫انه مكب ًابحرم‬

‫‪.‬هاياون نع بمارت سيئرلا فشكيل ًايفاك ناك طقف دحاو عوبسأ‬ ‫ةراشإ لوأ دسج دقف ‪،‬سسؤم ريغو يروتسد ريغ رفسلل رظح لوأ نوك نم مغرلابو‬ ‫‪.‬هترادإل ًاساسأ ًاضيأ نوكس ‪،‬بمارت ةلمح هيلع تدنتسا يذلا بصعتلا نأب ةيلج‬ ‫رظح ‪،‬حرتقملا يدودحلا رادجلا ‪:‬ةلثامملا ءايشألا نم ديدعلا اندهش ‪،‬نيحلا كلذ ذنمو‬ ‫يوأت يتلا ندملا ةبقاعمل ططخ ‪،‬ةيمالسإلا لودلا فدهتسي يذلا يناثلا رفسلا‬ ‫يف نوئجاللاو نورجاهملا اهشيعي ةملظم مايأ اهنإ ‪.‬ليحرتلا تايلمع ةدايزو ‪،‬نيئجال‬ ‫‪.‬اكيرمأ‬ ‫سانلا نم فالآلاو فالآلا ‪:‬رون نم ًاصيصب ًاضيأ انحمل ‪،‬مالظلا اذه طسو نكل‬ ‫نوبلاطيو تاراطملا يف نوجتحي ‪،‬عراوشلا يف نوريسي دالبلا ءاحنأ عيمج يف‬ ‫ال بمارت دلانود نأ ملاعلل نينلعم ‪،‬ةشه ةيعضو يف صاخشألا ةيامحب انتاسسؤم‬ ‫‪.‬انلثمي‬ ‫‪،‬ةيلاتلا تاحفصلا يف ‪.‬ةيضقلا هذه ةمدخل انتوص عضن ‪،‬عوبسألا اذه ‪ INDY‬يف‬ ‫اكيرمأ يف يطنزيبلا ةرجهلا ماظن لظ يف نوناعي نيذلا كئلوأ نع ًاصصق نودجت‬ ‫نوكن ىتح بمارت مودق لبق دئاسلاو نايحألا نم ريثك يف ةوسقلاب فصتملا‬ ‫‪.‬ةدعاصتملا بصعتلاو ةيموقلا ةجوم دض نولضاني نيذلا كئلوأو ‪،‬نيفنصم‬ ‫‪.‬انه بيحرت عضوم كنإف ‪،‬كفورظ نع رظنلا ضغب ‪:‬ةطيسب انتلاسر‬ ‫نوقوتي نيذلا كئلوأل ةبسنلاب لمألل ةرانم اكيرمأ تناك ‪،‬لاوحألا لضفأ يف‬ ‫‪،‬نآلا ‪.‬اهروصت نكمي ال عئاظف رارمتساب انحمس ‪،‬اهئوسأ يفو ‪.‬ةيرحلا قاشنتسال‬ ‫ام اذإو – نوكن نأ ديرن نادلبلا نم عون يأ ررقن نأ بجي ‪،‬يخيراتلا فطعنملا اذه يف‬ ‫‪.‬بئاص وه امع عافدلل ةظقيلاو مزعلا انيدل ناك‬ ‫‪总统特朗普只花了一周时间就昭示了他的企图‬‬ ‫‪尽管公然违宪并且并无实施效力，第一份移民禁令确凿无疑地表明，特‬‬ ‫‪朗普在推行这项运动中所显露的顽固偏执将成他行政的基本原理。自那之后，‬‬ ‫‪我们见证了更多的类似情况：拟建边境墙，第二份针对穆斯林国家的移民禁‬‬ ‫‪令，取缔避难所的计划以及加速驱逐出境等。这对身处美国的移民和难民来‬‬ ‫。‪说是黑暗的时刻‬‬ ‫‪然而，置身如此暗夜，我们仍能看到微微闪耀的曙光：成千上万来自不‬‬ ‫‪同国家的人们蜂拥到街上游行，在机场抗议，声称道他们的机构保护弱者，并‬‬ ‫。‪向全世界澄清，唐纳德特朗普并不能代表他们的立场说话‬‬ ‫‪在本周的INDY中，我们将就这一事件发声。你将会在下文中读那些受难‬‬ ‫‪者的故事，他们挣扎在残酷的移民体系下——事实上，这早就是特朗普的眉睫‬‬ ‫‪之迫；以及那些在风起云涌的民族主义和褊狭的浪潮中奋起反抗的人们的故‬‬ ‫。‪事。我们想要传达的讯息很简单：无论你身处何种境遇，我们这儿都欢迎你‬‬ ‫‪在最好的时刻，美国层是那些渴望自由的人们的灯塔之地；在最坏的时‬‬ ‫‪刻，我们也曾容忍并永远铭记那些令人难以想象的恐怖。如今，置身于历史的‬‬ ‫‪十字路口，我们必须做出决断：我们究竟想要一个怎样的国家？我们是否有决‬‬ ‫‪心和觉悟去拥护我们所坚信的正义‬‬

THE NE W COLOSSUS NOT LIKE THE BRAZEN GIANT OF GREEK FAME, WITH CONQUERING LIMBS ASTRIDE FROM LAND TO LAND; HERE AT OUR SEA-WASHED, SUNSET GATES SHALL STAND A MIGHTY WOMAN WITH A TORCH, WHOSE FLAME IS THE IMPRISONED LIGHTNING, AND HER NAME MOTHER OF EXILES. FROM HER BEACON-HAND GLOWS WORLD-WIDE WELCOME; HER MILD EYES COMMAND THE AIR-BRIDGED HARBOR THAT TWIN CITIES FRAME. “KEEP, ANCIENT LANDS, YOUR STORIED POMP!” CRIES SHE WITH SILENT LIPS. “GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE, THE WRETCHED REFUSE OF YOUR TEEMING SHORE. SEND THESE, THE HOMELESS, TEMPEST-TOST TO ME, I LIFT MY LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR!” — E M M A L A Z A RU S , 18 8 3

THE LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR Will we ever be the country Emma Lazarus imagined? BY J EFFREY C . BILLM A N

or the last 114 years, Emma Lazarus’s famous sonnet has been engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, an expression of how America imagines itself, as a beacon of hope to the “wretched refuse” of the world—which, though perhaps patriarchal to modern eyes, is at least imbued with empathy for the downcast. Written by a Jewish socialist who died of cancer a year after the statue’s 1886 dedication, its words, particularly those last five lines, have become something of an American credo. But the United States’ relationship with immigrants has never been that simple—or that benevolent. Setting

6 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

aside the indescribable evil of the African slave trade or even the widespread (and often forced) practice of indentured servitude that predated the formation of the union, the U.S. at its formation encouraged immigration, at least of certain people. “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger,” President Washington said, “but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.” In 1790, he signed the country’s first immigrationrelated statute, which restricted citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person,” who had been in the United

States for two years. While the Naturalization Act of 1790 said nothing about nonwhite birthright citizenship, later legislation took care of that. The nineteenth century saw several waves of immigration: more than four million Irish immigrants, many fleeing famine and abject poverty in the mid-century, who settled into East Coast cities near their points of arrival; Germans, many of whom clustered in the Midwest, in places such as Milwaukee and St. Louis, who came seeking religious liberty and land on which to farm; Asians, especially the twenty-five thousand Chinese immigrants, many escaping political and economic

turmoil in China, who were lured to California by the gold rush of the early 1850s. As has been a common refrain throughout our history, a backlash arose among the powerful WASPs who resented the newcomers who were competing for jobs. The Irish, being Catholic, and the Chinese, being Asian, were especially vilified and targeted for discrimination. The Naturalization Act of 1870, for instance, extended citizenship rights to African Americans but excluded the Chinese, under the theory that the Chinese could not properly assimilate into American society. Twelve years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from coming to America. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most American immigrants were coming from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe: more than four million Italians between 1890 and 1920; more than two million Jews from Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1920. They, too, were met with hostility, particularly the Jews. In 1917, the government established a literacy test for adult immigrants. In 1924, Congress prohibited immigration from Asia and established quotas that favored immigration from Western Europe. Those quotas would stand for the next

forty years. America began to broaden its immigration policies after World War II, allowing refugees from Europe and the Soviet Union and later Cuba. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which replaced the quotas with a system that allows Americans to sponsor relatives from their countries of origin. That resulted in shifting immigration patterns—fewer immigrants from Europe, more from Asia and Latin America. By the eighties, undocumented immigration from Mexico emerged as a source of political debate—as it obviously still is today. In 1986, President Reagan signed a relatively progressive immigration reform law that granted amnesty to three million undocumented immigrants while tightening enforcement. Four years later, President Bush signed a law expanding the number of legal immigrants admitted to the country and boosting immigration from “underrepresented” countries. A recession gave rise to anti-immigrant sentiment, and in 1996, Congress passed—and President Clinton signed—a law bolstering border enforcement and restricting immigrants’ access to social programs. The events of 9/11—and, later, the catastrophic refugee crisis spawned by the Iraq

FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION, 2015 NORTH CAROLINA

(Figures rounded)

UNITED STATES

794,700

294,500 undocumented

living below poverty line

43.3m

22.2m

17.3%

foreign-born

undocumented

PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION

13.5% 7.9%

21.2%

living below poverty line

INCREASE OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION FROM 2000–15

84.8% 39.2%

INDY WEEK’S BAR + BEVERAGE MAGAZINE ON STANDS NOW

SOURCE: MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE

INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 7

war, the Syrian civil war, and the rise of ISIS—turned immigration into a national security issue. Even so, President George W. Bush pushed for comprehensive reform that offered undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. It was scuttled by xenophobic hard-liners in his own party. President Obama tried to forge a similar deal, ramping up deportations, especially of undocumented immigrants with criminal records, as a sort of olive branch to conservatives while trying, unsuccessfully, to secure sweeping reform. Ultimately, while he protected undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors from deportation, he also deported some 2.5 million immigrants, the most of any president. As simplified a history as this is, two things can be learned from it: one, whatever Pollyannaish thing Emma Lazarus imagined Lady Liberty to stand for, we’ve not always lived up to it; two, Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant message draws on a deep current of resentment and fear of the other that pervades the story of America. Trump doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Even though net migration from Mexico has been negative since 2008—owing to improvements in the Mexican economy and a desire for familial reunification—a sizeable portion of our population, about 35 percent, is still willing to spend tens of billions of dollars on a massive border wall to keep out Mexican “rapists” and “criminals,” when in fact most undocumented immigrants come here legally and simply overstay their visas. Similarly, there are millions of Americans who support Trump’s executive orders in January and again in March—both blocked by federal courts—halting refugee access and temporarily banning visits from some majority-Muslim countries, as well as his promises to ramp up the border patrol and deportations. After all, that’s what he campaigned on, and he won. Trump tapped into something primal, an animus rooted in anxiety over economic stagnation, yes, but also the fact that, a generation hence, America will no longer be majority white. Our culture is changing. And just as at every other point in our history when our culture has undergone rapid, dynamic transformation, not everyone is comfortable with that. The question for us is whether Trumpism, and the revanchism it embodies, will be more than a historical speed bump, more than a throwaway sentence in your greatgrandchild’s textbook, whether we can evolve to become the country the Lazarus envisioned 134 years ago: the Mother of Exiles, the lamp beside the golden door. jbillman@indyweek.com 8 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

BY THE NUMBERS

IMMIGRANTS IN NORTH CAROLINA BY PLACE OF BIRTH

210,136 ASIA

1,965

OCEANIA

61,591 India

30,965

426,055

China (including Taiwan)

LATIN AMERICA

22,023

(South America, Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean)

Vietnam

240,122 Mexico

87,866 EUROPE

341,013

Central America

18,431

United Kingdom

48,335

17,462

South America

Germany

36,707

Caribbean

47,503

SOURCE: MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE

AFRICA

NORTH AMERICA (Canada, Bermuda,

Greenland, St. Pierre, Miquelon)

TOP FIVE INDUSTRIES BY IMMIGRANT SHARE IN THE U.S.

20,990

UNLAWFUL

LAWFUL

Private households

22%

UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANT POPULATION IN THE U.S. Estimated in millions

Textile, leather, apparel manufacturing

12.2

14%

11.1 8

11.3

11.1

After a steady increase, the undocumented immigrant population peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, then leveled off.

3.5 1990

1995

SOURCE: PEW RESEARCH CENTER

2000

2005

2010

22% 36%

Agriculture

18%

8.6 5.7

24%

15% 33%

Accommodation

11%

21% 32%

Food manufacturing 2014

13%

17% 29%

SOURCE: PEW RESEARCH CENTER

45%

INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 9

THE TAR HEEL MELTING POT

spreading out the B motivatio economic “Profound tion follo 1745 raise and result Just as governme ferences f Tar Heel Before legislation tem that immigrat Northern est sector of North Carolina immigrants,stand out many of whom now work in the technologyJames Jo sector, Johnson points out. typically s As in the past, anti-immigrant rhetorichad alrea has brought difficult times for many Northficult to d Carolina newcomers, says Allie Yee, associ-once they ate director for the nonprofit Institute for Immigr Southern Studies. And under the Trumpfrom Sco administration, it’s only ratcheted up. cal and re “I’ve been hearing that there’s a lot of fearhard time and a lot confusion about what’s going toknown as happen,” Yee says. “There is a sense of peo-Rhine Va ple being emboldened around anti-immi-some Ger grant hate.” of the stat One ex panish explorer Hernando de Soto’sitage.org: march through these regions in thein Haywo early 1540s is described as one of thenamed fo first incursions of Europeans into what isgrants wh now North Carolina. As every attendee ofJohannes “The Lost Colony” knows, the Sir WalterNorth Ca Raleigh-backed expeditions to the OuterAtlantic w Banks in the 1580s ended only in enduring The Pl mystery, not the hoped-for outpost of Eliza-op the br bethan England. canine in Following the 1608 Jamestown settle- Anothe ment in Virginia and the Pilgrims’ 1620turies of landing at Plymouth Rock, the first perma-Waldensi nent white settler in North Carolina wasancestry Nathaniel Batts, who built a house at Albe-mation. T marle Sound at 1657, according to historianNorthern William S. Powell. tury whe The eighteenth century brought bordersmove to N that separated the Old North State fromed Valdes South Carolina and Virginia. Even before “The g the Revolutionary War roiled the aborninggrated to nation, waves of Highland Scots, displacedtic on th by their defeat in the Battle of CullodenBurke Co and “harsh action by the British ParliamentCary resi against the Scottish clans,” made the trek toblog (itsi a new life in areas notably including Northgrants fo Carolina, Powell wrote. with a cha “Although the Scottish emigrants, inCarolina coming to America, were assured freedomsand acre to exercise their Presbyterian religion atin eastern a time when the Stuart monarchy favored Salem,

The story of North Carolina is a story of immigrants BY THOM AS GOLDS M ITH

o set forth the history of North Carolina immigrants is simply to tell the state’s story. For centuries, North Carolina has leaned on the labor and initiative of seas of immigrants, from Scots-Irish to Germans, Jews to Italians, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Greeks, Cambodians, Latinos, and many more. Without them, we would have had no town of Valdese, no Old Salem, no Plott Hound, no Family Dollar Stores, a distinct shortage of skilled tech workers, and a far less interesting food scene. Despite all that, the most recent wave of newcomers has almost always found opposition. That's the word from James H. Johnson, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, whose work includes the history of immigration. In their fight for acceptance, immigrants have made use of a unifying characteristic, Johnson says. “Immigration is a highly selective process—immigrants are risk takers by definition,” he says. “If you think about coming to a new country, there’s something unique and special about it.” Indeed, North Carolina has largely benefited from a centuries-long parade of people from other nations arriving here, settling, raising children, attending school, and starting businesses. In the genealogy of most North Carolina residents, there's a Scot or a Vietnamese refugee somewhere in the background, or a German or a Mexican immigrant, all of whom decided to make a new start, often under difficult conditions. “All of the newcomers have been discriminated against,” Johnson says. “In many instances, they had no choice but to start their own businesses.” Initially, the entrepreneurial direction pursued by many immigrants was impossible for the forebears of roughly 22 percent of North Carolinians who are African 10 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

A Lebanese couple in Wilimington, 1914 American. Those ancestors likely arrived here as slaves. For Native Americans, about 1.6 percent of the state’s population, the journey to what is now North Carolina is thought to have begun some sixteen thou-

COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

sand to eighteen thousand years ago, probably from Siberia. Despite the attention given recently to immigrants from Mexico and a much smaller group from the Middle East, Asians have recently become the larg-

spreading the Anglican Church throughout the British Isles, the most important motivation for Scottish emigration was economic,” wrote historian Robert J. Cain. “Profound changes in agricultural organization following the Jacobite insurrection of 1745 raised rents to unprecedented heights and resulted in large numbers of evictions.” Just as in the current day, deprivation, governmental oppression, and religious differences fueled several generations of early Tar Heel immigrants. Before President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation in 1965 that altered a quota system that had previously chiefly allowed immigration from three countries in Northern Europe, most immigrants didn’t stand out in crowds in North Carolina. As James Johnson says, many were “phenotypically similar,” or looked like people who had already arrived. “It was sometimes difficult to distinguish where they were from” once they had mastered English, he says. Immigrants from Germany, like those from Scotland, left in the wake of political and religious oppression and economic hard times, in their case from the region known as the Palatinate, in the southern Rhine Valley. In the eighteenth century, some Germans migrated to the western part of the state to take advantage of cheap land. One example, according to digitalheritage.org: “The Plott Balsam Mountains in Haywood and Jackson Counties were named for the Plott family, German immigrants who settled on Plott Creek in 1801. Johannes Plott, who first immigrated to North Carolina in the 1750s, crossed the Atlantic with his family’s hunting dogs.” The Plott family continued to develop the breed, which was designated state canine in 1989. Another group that arrived after centuries of religious persecution was the Waldensians, Italian Christians whose ancestry preceded the Protestant Reformation. They were living in the Alps of Northern Italy in the late nineteenth century when a group decided to make the move to North Carolina, where they founded Valdese, a town in Burke County. “The group of Waldensians that immigrated to North Carolina crossed the Atlantic on the SS Zaandam … and arrived in Burke County via train on May 29, 1893,” Cary resident Torre DeVito writes in his blog (itsitalian.blogspot.com). “The immigrants founded the Valdese Corporation with a charter granted by the State of North Carolina and purchased about ten thousand acres of land near the Catawba River in eastern Burke County.” Salem, the community for which Win-

ston-Salem is partly named, had its origins in the Moravians, another pre-Reformation Christian sect, based in what is now the Czech Republic. Fleeing persecution—does this start to sound familiar, and relevant?— the sect bought and richly developed a tract of one hundred thousand acres. Meticulously restored, the Moravian settlement of Old Salem remains a popular attraction for locals and tourists, a visible reminder of what immigration has meant to the state.

ews appeared in historical records in North Carolina as early as 1585, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, and have remained a significant and high-profile immigrant group ever since, though small in numbers. In an incident with poignant contemporary relevance, a North Carolinian made use of a former Dutch farming compound, the Van Eeden colony, to offer refuge to Jews who escaped during World War II. “Dr. Alvin Johnson, an American scholar and humanitarian activist, assembled a group of refugee activists to create the Van Eeden settlement in Pender County,” wrote UNC researcher Susan Connell. “The activists sought to make the settlement a refugee haven for German Jews who were subjected to the horrors of Nazi Germany.” The Van Eeden settlement dissolved after a few years, as the middle-class intellectuals and merchants who had emigrated proved unsuited for farm life. In addition, they failed to receive a warm welcome from suspicious local residents. However, the effort was notable, particularly in light of the United States’ rejection in 1939 of Jewish refugees packed into the ocean liner St. Louis, which was forced to return to Europe with most of its passengers still on board. More recently, Jewish families have been among North Carolina’s most notable charitable givers. The family of Leon Levine, who found the multibillion-dollar Family Dollar chain in 1959, has given tens of millions to cultural, health care, and academic causes. Immigrants from Lebanon have a century-plus history in North Carolina, one that’s copiously documented by historians, notably Akram Khater, an N.C. State history professor who also heads the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies. The center’s work was key to the 2015 exhibit Cedars in the Pines: The Lebanese in North Carolina, 130 Years of History, which opened at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte. During the first wave of Lebanese immigration, in which many Lebanese were fleeing repression or economic hard times, most settled in big cities like New York and Philadelphia; a smaller number, however,

opted for smaller cities such as Charlotte and Goldsboro. Because North Carolina didn’t see a lot of immigration in the early twentieth century, they stood out, becoming shopkeepers and salesmen, while some prominent families, such as the Mansours and Salems, took an interest in civic life, according to the Levine Museum. A later, second wave of immigrants sought higher education opportunities and technology and medical jobs. The influence of the Lebanese community can be seen, among other places, in family-run restaurants like Sitti and Neomonde. The most significant waves of immigration in the twentieth century have been made up of Mexicans and other Hispanics, who often started in agricultural or construction jobs, and Asians, who are more often employed in technical fields. A key moment in the history of Hispanics in the state came in September 2004, when the Mt. Olive Pickles company entered an agreement with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Following a five-year consumer boycott of the company’s products promoted by the union, the pact went some distance toward protecting the rights of Hispanic farmworkers here on H2A guest worker visas. Even so, immigrant workers

still experience exploitation on several levels, Yee says, citing wage theft, poor working conditions, and substandard housing. Immigrants from Asia have come to North Carolina for decades, going back to before the Vietnamese, who began emigration after the American war ended there in the mid-1970s. During the past few years, annual net immigration from Asian countries has sometimes outpaced Hispanic numbers. In the Wake County suburb of Morrisville, nearly three in ten residents are of Asian descent. Although the immigration crackdowns of recent years have produced a net loss in Hispanic immigration into North Carolina, immigrants from a panoply of nations remain a vital part of the state culture and economy. However, despite centuries of contributions—space does not allow a much more comprehensive listing—prejudice and bigotry remain. “With the broadening of the priorities for deportation under the Department of Homeland Security, there is the sense of, ‘Who’s a good immigrant and who’s a bad immigrant?’” Yee said. “If you are not a U.S. citizen, you are vulnerable. There’s a brooding sense that no one’s safe.” tgoldsmith@indyweek.com

INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 11

Lilian Cardona (center) and her family pray during a March 11 vigil at William Chapel A.M.E. Zion in Angier.

THE WAITING

PHOTO BY SARAH WILLETS

Lilian Cardona, a pregnant woman who has called North Carolina home for twenty years, could be among the first victims of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies

n March 11, a Saturday afternoon, in William Chapel A.M.E. Zion, a bare-bones church in Angier, Lilian Cardona is watching her children play. They weave among the rows of seats that had been filled moments before and run circles around the keyboard and the legs of standing adults. Cardona, nearly thirty-five, turns her head behind her husband’s shoulder and quietly cries. A minute later, she wipes her eyes, adorned with a stripe of bright blue eye shadow, and resumes talking about how, within a few weeks, maybe even a few days, she may be ripped from her husband, her four young children, and her home of twenty years. 12 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

BY SARAH W ILLETS For the last month, since she got the word from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that she could soon be deported, Cardona’s life has been filled with uncertainty— and its excruciating partner, waiting. The family will wait five more days until they can leave for Charlotte, where Cardona must answer to a six-year-old order for her removal from the country. On March 16, they’ll drive three hours to the ICE field office, not knowing if she’ll make the trip back to Angier. They’ll huddle in the cold for more than an hour outside of the ICE building before Cardona’s appointment, unsure if she’ll be detained once she opens its heavy glass doors. And they’ll wait another hour to learn that she’s been granted something of a reprieve from

deportation, at least during the couple of weeks it takes ICE to accept or deny her application to stay in the country. With no criminal record, a valid work permit, and a baby due in May, Cardona is one of many immigrants who have been caught in a wide net cast by the Trump administration in the name of making America a safer country. If Cardona is eventually deported, it will show that the government is willing to break apart a family to further that goal, sending a mother—and a baby who would be an American citizen given a slight shift in timing—to a country that has not been hers for decades. “How would [Trump] feel being separated from his children?” Cardona asks.

oft-spoken but confident, Cardona is open about the unease facing her family, the unbending faith in God that has helped her through it, and her life in Harnett County. But the violence she endured as a young girl in Guatemala—and at the hands of a smuggler during her month-and-a-halflong journey to North Carolina—is a subject she prefers to leave in the past. When Cardona left Malacatán, Guatemala—a city of about seventy thousand people thirty miles from the Pacific Ocean—in 1997, the country had just reached a peace deal with guerilla fighters, bringing to a close more than three decades of bloody civil war. She was fifteen. Her memories of her family are among the few bright spots of her time in Guatemala. In a part of the country central to the flow of migrants and drugs between Central and North America, killings were indiscriminate. Food was sometimes scarce. “It was a very sad life,” Cardona says. Seeking higher wages and a better life for her family, Cardona’s mother left for North Carolina when Cardona was thirteen. The family knew the journey would be dangerous, but so was staying in Guatemala. Violence, particularly against women, has permeated Guatemala’s history, perhaps as a symptom of the war and the drug trade. The country still has the world’s third-highest rate of femicides—the gender-motivated murder of women and girls. According to UN Women, 98 percent of those who commit femicide aren’t punished. “The scholars who study Guatemala talk about the way in which violence becomes embedded in the structure [of the country],” says Deborah Weissman, a UNC law professor specializing in immigrants, refugees, and women’s issues. “Murder and rape were weapons of war so often focused on women.” About two years after her mother left, Cardona and her sister followed, with a smuggler paid in borrowed money. They walked for a week in the desert, Cardona says, before boarding a train. They were deprived of food for fifteen days. “The smugglers treat them like animals. They don’t feed them, they lock them up and they abuse the women,” says Triangle-based attorney Yesenia Polanco-Galdamez, who has represented Cardona since 2013. A year after that, Cardona’s father and brother followed. The family would be part of a postwar boom of emigration from Guatemala to the United States, aided in part by the loosening of a Reagan-era policy that denied the entry of nearly all asylum-seekers from war-torn Guatemala and El Salvador. Today, an estimated 723,0000 undocumented Guatemalans are living in the United States—

about 7 percent of the U.S.’s unauthorized immigrant population and second in number only to immigrants from Mexico. “Typically we see people from the northern Triangle literally running for their lives,” Weissman says, referring to the region containing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. “We know that when they’re returned, their persecutors know they were unsuccessful. They’re even more vulnerable, so we hear about people who were targeted by the very same groups that drove them to leave in the first place.”

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he Cardona family’s first American home was in Fuquay-Varina. They came here to work, Cardona says. “It was a very focused life,” she says. Instead of enrolling in school, Cardona began working with her mother in a tobacco field. As a result, her ability to read and write is limited. Both her parents today live in Harnett County. Her father and husband work in construction; her mother, who doesn’t read, installs underground cables. Cardona’s oldest daughter, age sixteen, has lived in Mexico since the girl’s father, who had been abusive to Cardona, absconded there with her, Cardona says. Cardona’s youngest is five. She and her husband, Juan De Dios Alvarez, have been married since 2006. Cardona moved to Angier three years ago. She is now a busy mom who works Monday through Friday cleaning houses and working at a Mexican restaurant in Holly Springs. Saturday is reserved for spending time with her children before the family heads to church, where services last until eleven p.m. Sunday morning, it’s back to church until late afternoon. “She is my family,” says Cardona’s pastor, William Arreaga. “She is a human being. The kids need her, the church needs her, and this nation needs her.” Her daughter Kayli, twelve, says her home is usually filled with laughter. And while that hasn’t entirely changed in the last month, since they found out that deportation was looming, there has been a lot more anxiety. “I feel what she feels,” Kayli says. “Sometimes she’s sad, and I feel sad.” The thought of Cardona returning to Guatemala, where she has no home, family, or doctors to monitor her pregnancy, makes her parents nervous. But even if she was deported, Teresa Cardona told her daughter last week, it would be worth it for the time she’s spent in America. According to her attorney, Polanco-Galdamez, Cardona had no issues with ICE until 2010, when her landlord claimed she had stolen, rather than purchased, the FuquayINDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 13

Varina trailer in which she lived. The case was dismissed by the Wake County District Attorney’s Office, but not before it landed Cardona on ICE’s radar. The Wake County Sheriff’s Office is one of five North Carolina law enforcement agencies that participates in the 287(g) program, which allows local police forces to enforce immigration law and lends local jail space for detentions. “Because of 287(g), she is immediately screened by ICE and placed in removal proceedings,” Polanco-Galdamez says. Polanco-Galdamez says a notice telling Cardona to appear in immigration court in early 2011 was sent to an old address, so she missed the hearing. In her absence, the court issued an order for her removal. Still, because Cardona was never convicted of anything but traffic violations, her deportation wasn’t considered a priority under the Obama administration. In 2011, she was granted an order of supervision, which allowed her to stay in North Carolina. As part of the supervision order, she was issued a work permit that she can renew each year. However, a January 25 executive order by President Trump made more undocumented immigrants a priority for deportation, including anyone an immigration officer determines is a risk to public safety, anyone facing criminal charges that have not been resolved, and, like Cardona, anyone with an outstanding removal order. She was now a target. And so, during a routine ICE check-in last month required by her supervision order, she was told her baby would not be born in America. Cardona was given an order to appear before ICE one month later, travel arrangements in hand, or else be removed from the country no later than March 31.

ardona’s attorneys are seeking to have her removal delayed for one year while they work on different remedies to keep her in the country. Because she came to America as a minor, Cardona could qualify for protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, if she can enroll in school after her baby is born, according to Polanco-Galdamez. But her attorneys are focusing now on securing a U visa, reserved for victims of a crime that occurred in the United States, which they see as the most likely form of potential relief. To qualify, the applicant needs a form from the law enforcement agency investigating the crime certifying that he or she is helping in the investigation. Cardona’s U visa application is tied to an attack in December 2015, when four unidentified men tried to force their way into her 14 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

Cardona hugs her daughter Kayli before her ICE check-in March 16.

car while she was in it. The stress landed her in the hospital. “At the time, she was pregnant,” says Polanco-Galdamez. “We can’t confirm whether or not she lost her baby as a result of this attack, but she did end up losing her baby.” The Harnett County Sheriff’s Office has certified Cardona’s form, Polanco-Galdamez says, but that’s just one step in getting her application approved. (Getting this form was not a given. Fourteen agencies in North Carolina have a blanket policy to never certify the form, according to a recent study by Weissman and her colleagues.) It can take more than two years for ICE to reach a decision on a U visa application, says Raul Pinto, an attorney with the N.C. Justice Center. Once an application is approved, there’s an additional waiting period before the applicant gets a visa number. While she waits, the applicant may be given a work permit but not necessarily protection from deportation, Pinto says. Just ten thousand U visas are awarded each year. At the end of fiscal year 2016, nearly eighty-seven thousand U visa applications were pending. For Polanco-Galdamez, Cardona’s deportation would be among the most egregious miscarriages of justice to come from the Trump administration’s policies. “They’re spending their resources on deporting a woman who has been consistently, responsibly, and continuously reporting to them,” Polanco-Galdamez says. The state and Harnett County chapters of the NAACP have been among Cardona’s biggest advocates. They organized a March 11 vigil opposing her deportation at William Chapel A.M.E. Zion in Angier, called for supporters to come to her ICE check-in in Char-

PHOTO BY SARAH WILLETS

lotte last week, and have started an online petition calling for a halt to her deportation. “There’s a time when a picture speaks a thousand words,” said the Reverend William J. Barber II, the state NAACP president, standing alongside the family at the vigil. “You don’t see felons. These are not criminals. This is a family, a working family—a husband and a wife and children. A pregnant woman in the third trimester. This is who you are being told to fear.” Because of the NAACP’s involvement in the case, as well as her attorney’s efforts to bring awareness to what she sees as an unjust deportation, Cardona has been thrown into the media spotlight. In addition to North Carolina media, the Associated Press, CNN Español, and Univision have all reported on the case. Along with messages of support, Cardona has noticed online comments from those who say she broke the law in coming to America and must face the consequences. Jesse Jones, who has known Cardona for about five years, says that’s the initial impression of many people in Harnett County, where he has a law office. About 65 percent of the largely rural county’s residents are white. Trump won about 60 percent of votes there in November. “Most people think she did something really wrong or that she shouldn’t be here and doesn’t pay taxes,” he says. “But when you get them alone and tell them the facts of her case, they say, ‘That’s not right.’”

oing into her March 16 appointment with ICE officials in Charlotte, Cardona had no intention of complying with orders that she pack up her life into no more than forty pounds of luggage and arrive

“completely ready for deportation.” Relying on her faith that God would see her through, she also had no plan for what to do if she were deported. “They don’t have a plan because all of a sudden it just happened,” said Lourdes Pereda, the family’s pediatrician, translating for Cardona. “They are trying to stay here because the kids don’t know anything but the United States.” On that frigid morning, Cardona’s family arrived wrapped up in blankets, waiting in their silver minivan for nine o’clock to come. No one would be allowed in the building with Cardona except her attorney, and although they were careful not to say it too loudly, no one was sure if she would come back out. Tightly encircled by news cameras, the family, friends, and a handful of supporters prayed in English and Spanish. When Cardona emerged from the ICE office about an hour later, the same group strained, detecting a smile from across the parking lot. Inside the ICE office, there had been more waiting. During the appointment, attorneys filed an application for a stay of removal on Cardona’s behalf. They also presented a brief explaining the hardship her children would face if she were deported and the effect her deportation could have on her unborn child and her ability to recover from her delivery, says attorney Pooyan Ordoubadi. Ordoubadi says he spent about ten minutes summarizing Cardona’s application for an ICE officer and that she was not present for that conversation. As part of a request for a stay of removal, an applicant can include medical evidence for why he or she should not be deported. In Cardona’s case, that was a note from her doctor saying she is being “followed closely” for pregnancy complications and cannot safely travel. Asked about the agency’s policies on detaining pregnant women, ICE spokesman Bryan Cox says that “custody determinations are made on a case-by-case basis based on the totality of the circumstances,” including a pregnancy. News of Cardona’s fate will arrive in two or three weeks, Ordoubadi says, via fax or email. By the time ICE decides whether to grant a stay of Cardona’s removal or deport her to Guatemala, she will be about four weeks from her due date. Ordoubadi says Cardona is not necessarily protected from deportation while her application is considered. “We did buy some extra time,” Ordoubadi says. “We don’t have the final response yet, so right now all we can do is wait.” swillets@indyweek.com

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IN THE SHADOWS

Amid the threat of a crackdown, undocumented immigrants fear that any interaction with police could lead to deportation BY T HOM A S G OL DSM ITH 16 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

ere’s what fear of deportation can look like in North Carolina: undocumented parents are arranging to have Mexican citizenship papers drawn up for their U.S.-born children. Why? If the parents are suddenly deported, the children can go along, even if it's “back” to a country where they’ve never lived. Deportations increased under President Obama—leading critics to label him “deporter in chief,” despite steps he took to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors—but the executive orders and antagonistic statements from President Trump are contributing to an atmosphere of heightening anxiety among immigrants, advocates say. “[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has definitely created fear in the community with their actions, particularly in Charlotte, but also in the Triangle,” says Will Saenz, communications coordinator for El Pueblo, a nonprofit advocacy organization for North Carolina Latinos. “It’s put the community at unease, and people are going through a lot of tension. I would say that, generally speaking, we are more on the defensive than ever before.” At the same time, attendance is up at “Know Your Rights” workshops and legislative protests, Saenz says. “In North Carolina in the past couple of years, more than ever, we have seen a really strong immigrants’ presence, especially at the General Assembly,” he says. “People are more willing to speak up on these issues.” Widely publicized immigration sweeps, anti-immigrant rhetoric on the state and national levels, and a stream of proposed new laws targeting the undocumented have created churning dread for people who are in North Carolina without required papers. This fear has been stoked by Trump’s portrayal of undocumented immigrants as “bad hombres,” who are “rapists,” “bringing drugs,” and “bringing crime,” even though a Department of Justice report from December showed that fewer than 5 percent of inmates in state and federal prison were noncitizens. Trump’s executive orders, ICE raids— including actions taken in February that rounded up 683 purported undocumented immigrants, which Trump hailed as a “military operation”—and bills working their way through the General Assembly are arriving on top of an existing program known as 287(g), named for a 1996 portion of federal immigration law. The law creates a path for ICE to be notified if an undocu-

mented person is arrested and can lead to the person being detained and deported. Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison says thirteen ICE-trained deputies in the 287(g) unit deal with an average of two thousand people a year at the county’s Hammond Road jail, south of downtown Raleigh. (Harrison says he doesn’t know how many 287(g) cases have led to deportation; ICE didn’t respond to a request for information.) Harrison has been questioned by Latino residents at recent community meetings about whether they were likely to be picked up at checkpoints. He said at a meeting in Garner that the sheriff’s department would continue to conduct checkpoints but not with the goal of

Even though the definition of the term sanctuary city is vague, the concept has brought pushback both from Trump and the state legislators sponsoring bills including House Bill 63, which would impose sanctions against cities that do not fully comply with state immigration laws, create new felony charges for some offenses involving fake IDs, disallow bond for undocumented people who are arrested, and probe for parties’ immigration status in court proceedings. The bill moved forward in a House committee last week. In addition, Trump has threatened to withhold funding from cities that do not take part in reporting undocumented people who are accused of crimes.

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“I would say that we are more on the defensive than ever before.” detaining undocumented immigrants. The county’s undocumented residents also face the question of whether to report crimes, because doing so might lead to their status being uncovered. Harrison is adamant that people can still report a crime without having their immigration status probed. “If you’ve got a problem in your neighborhood, call me. We don’t question if you’re undocumented.” Advocates say that might be the case, but there are many other situations—checkpoints, roundups—that leave people with a real fear of being deported. Immigrants are dealt with differently across North Carolina’s law enforcement jurisdictions. In addition to the one in Wake, 287(g) programs are up and running in Gaston, Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, and Henderson counties. On the other end of the spectrum, cities including Durham and Chapel Hill operate without an understanding with ICE, though they have not formally designated themselves as “sanctuary cities”—something that, in 2015, the state legislature and former governor Pat McCrory deemed illegal.

Because of the potential retaliation, the Triangle’s more progressive cities shy away from the word sanctuary, even while pledging solidarity with immigrant communities. In 2003, for example, Durham passed a resolution prohibiting police from targeting people based solely on their immigration status; after Trump made his threat earlier this year, city attorney Patrick Baker sought to assuage concerns about potential impacts to Durham: “I am not aware that Durham has been classified or perceived by the Federal government as a ‘sanctuary city’ but I am also not aware that the federal government has ever defined the term ‘sanctuary city’ or has maintained such a list of cities,” he wrote in an email last month. Proponents of 287(g) say it can help law enforcement track down criminals from other countries, whom they otherwise lack means of identifying. One person was arrested fifty times in Wake County before ICE told Harrison that the man faced serious outstanding charges in Honduras, Harrison says. “If he goes out and kills somebody, who’s going to get blamed INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 17

for it?” Harrison asks. The city of Raleigh takes a different approach to dealing with undocumented immigrants, says spokeswoman Laura Hourigan. “The Raleigh Police Department does not have a memorandum of agreement with ICE concerning the 287(g) program,” Hourigan writes in an email. “RPD officers are not typically involved in matters involving immigration status and do not have access to the federal databases that contain status information. The focus of their interactions with people is the same regardless of racial or ethnic background— providing assistance to victims at their time of need and locating and charging suspects responsible for crimes committed in Raleigh.” Since the RPD doesn’t enforce immigration laws, it doesn’t have a written policy on 287(g). There is a policy on nonbiased policing, however, which says in part: “Except in ‘suspect-specific incidents,’ employees are prohibited from considering the race, national or ethnic origin, or other identifiable group descriptors of members of the public in deciding to detain a person or stop a motor vehicle and in deciding upon the scope or substance of any law enforcement action.” Durham’s approach is similar, according to police chief C.J. Davis. “DPD officers do not make routine inquiries into the immigration status of individuals that they encounter in the performance of their duties,” Davis wrote in an email in response to a query from a city council member. “In fact, officers have been instructed that the primary responsibility for enforcement of federal immigration law rests with the Department of Homeland Security and that officers of the DPD are expected to focus on detecting and apprehending individuals involved in violations of criminal law regardless of what the documentation status of the suspect may be.” Even though Triangle cities don’t currently refer undocumented immigrants who get arrested to ICE, many such people spend each day afraid of what an interaction with authorities may bring. The mere threat of a crackdown has brought about a situation they didn’t foresee even a year ago, Saenz says. They’d like to be free to drop their kids at school, to have driver’s licenses, to live as their neighbors do. Given that those changes would require a complete reversal in direction by the General Assembly, not to mention a new, friendlier administration in the White House, the community will likely deal with its new, uncomfortable reality for years to come. tgoldsmith@indyweek.com 18 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

HOW UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS CAN AVOID ICE

In advising her clients, immigration attorney Yesenia Polanco-Galdamez likens the chaos currently swirling around immigration enforcement to a natural disaster: Hurricane Trump. As with a hurricane, she says, immigrants need to have an emergency plan in place in case they or a loved one are detained. Polanco-Galdamez, thirty-four, is the principal attorney at Polanco Law, which has offices in Raleigh, Durham, and now Lumpkin, Georgia, near the Stewart Detention Center, where many Carolina detainees are sent. Polanco immigrated to the United States from El Salvador at age four. Here, Polanco-Galdamez talks with the INDY about how undocumented immigrants can avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement, what they should do (and not do) if they’re detained, and how citizens can help their friends and neighbors sin papeles.

What legal rights do undocumented immigrants have if approached by local law enforcement or immigration agents?

If you are in your home, do not open the door—to anyone. You don’t have to answer any questions. When police come, they need to have a warrant from the sheriff’s department or from a judge. They need to have a legal document to enter your house. Immigration also has to have a warrant; the problem is [ICE], it’s so unlikely that they will. They usually just carry a deportation order. That is just a civil document. Under the Constitution, that is not enough for them to just enter your house. If they do have a warrant, they’re going to throw your door down. Let them do that. Don’t volunteer to let them in your house. Be cooperative, be polite and patient, but do not volunteer. In your house, you have the most rights. In the street, your rights are more limited. Driving a car, you have the right not to be subject to unreasonable search and seizure, but you’re also driving a car, so you have to identify yourself.

What exactly should they say if an officer stops them and asks about their immigration status?

“Am I under arrest?” “Do I need to call my lawyer?” You don’t answer yes or no in between. You answer what you need to answer related to your traffic stop, or if you’re walking down the street.

What should they do if they are taken into custody?

You don’t have the right to a free, court-appointed lawyer, but you do have the right to retain counsel. You can remain silent, and that’s important because the Department of Homeland Security has the burden of proving what country they need to deport you to. So you want to make sure you’re silent and let them have the burden. We tell people, don’t sign any documents you can’t read even with an interpreter. ICE agents are generally the interpreters. They’re not unbiased. Once you have clearly been detained or are under ICE’s custody or the state’s custody, let them know if you have small children at home or on their way home from school. Before being detained, you say nothing. After you’ve been detained, you ask to speak to your consulate, you ask to speak to a lawyer, and you try to figure out the best way you can what’s going to happen with your children.

What can citizens do to help?

There may be families whose children are left behind, and I’ve been asked the question, “Can I keep a child?” Anyone can have a power of attorney to keep a child. We can help children, we can pick them up from school. We can also give people rides so they aren’t driving around. And you can donate to organizations that support these causes. —Sarah Willets

HOME OF THE BRAVE Wildin Acosta’s detention shook a community into action. But he and countless others still aren’t free. BY V I CTOR I A B OUL OUB AS I S

Wildin Acosta

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

n a bright Sunday morning in September, the elusive east Durham cowboys are parading two ponies down a concrete pathway that separates the pupusa trucks at the Green Flea Market. A puppy scurries by before a woman in an oversize pink T-shirt scoops it up and clasps it to her chest. Wildin Acosta laughs as he knocks back a swig of Coca-Cola. “I don’t understand,” he says matter-of-factly. “And I don’t mean to be rude. But I’ve noticed that gringos sometimes like their animals more than people.” He goes on about how much we care for our pets—how we let them sleep in our beds, how we feed them organic food, how we braid ribbons into their manes and tails. There’s a subtle irony in his bemused commentary. Because for seven months—until a few weeks ago, in fact—this smiling nineteen-year-old had been in a private immigration jail, treated worse than a pet, treated like a criminal. Acosta possesses an innate charisma and a razor-sharp memory. He remembers faces and how he’s met them. He’s kind and gracious, stubborn and unwavering in his opinions. He became a household name in Durham during his incarceration, when “Free Wildin” became a rallying cry. His case sparked urgency in this progressive community he’d called home for three years, marked by confusion about how a teenager who fit so neatly into the American obsession with meritocracy would be treated like a delinquent. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s intervention— INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 19

nabbing him on his way to school, a few months before graduation—felt treacherous and new, coming at the start of an election year that felt like a hate-filled Twilight Zone. But members of the immigrant community— Latino and undocumented especially—knew things were finally coming to a head. “They took one of us,” says Ivan Almonte, a friend of Acosta and a member of Alerta Migratoria NC, a grassroots organization of immigrants and allies fighting to stop the deportations of local residents. “And I’m almost glad it happened to Wildin so publicly, because otherwise people wouldn’t have noticed. This is not something new for us. But something big was happening.”

art Detention Center in the small town of Lumpkin, Georgia, two and a half weeks later. Nearly all of the detainees who end up there—87.1 percent—are deported, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Only 5.2 percent are released on bond. Stewart, run by the private CoreCivic, is what the Marshall Project calls “the black hole of the immigration system” and features America’s toughest immigration court. In 2015, less than 2 percent of detainees who went

ed to study and get a useful job that he could turn into a stable career, but in Honduras, he says, “it’s complicated.” Leaving a rural town to study at a university in a bigger city would make him more of a target for gangs. There’s a phrase about his hometown in a song by a Honduran band, Los Plebes de Olancho: “Olancho/ Entra el que quiere/ Sale el que puede.” It means, “Enter if you want to. Leave if you can.” “There are many enigmas like that about

en in plain clothes approached Acosta outside his home on the way to school one cold January morning. It was about seven thirty a.m. Both the sun and Acosta were making their way into the day when three men surrounded the teen. As Acosta recalls, they “looked like vagabonds” in ripped jeans and clothes that “looked like they were people who lived on the street.” He didn’t know what to think. Acosta was frazzled. He was supposed to meet his girlfriend at school at six to finish homework, but he’d overslept. The men caught him off guard. They asked him for his name, and he replied with the middle name his family calls him: David. One of them pulled out a sheet of paper with his photo on it, pointed to it, declared Acosta’s full name, and said, “This is you, isn’t it?” They opened up their jackets to reveal ICE badges and then tightened zip-ties around his wrists and behind his back. Acosta tried to keep calm. A congenital heart condition has taught him to tame his nerves in tense moments. The agents, he says, asked him to allow them entry to his home. Acosta refused, knowing his undocumented family would be at risk. His father watched from the apartment window, sobbing. It was over in just three minutes. The agents guided him into the backseat of an unmarked sedan, a car so unassuming that it could have belonged to anyone in the neighborhood. The officer driving the vehicle looked him in the eye from the rearview mirror. “It’s nothing personal,” he said. “That's when I lost it,” Acosta says. “I starting crying and I couldn’t stop. How can you say that to someone?” Soon he was in Cary, where officers took his backpack and photographed him, then shuffled him around to various jails and detention centers where, in each, he spent anywhere from one night to one week: Raleigh, Winston-Salem, and Irwin County, Georgia, before landing at the Stew20 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

Acosta (right) with Ivan Almonte before the court won their cases. And so what transpired over the next several months to get Acosta released was nearly unprecedented.

costa left his hometown of Olancho, Honduras, at seventeen. His parents were already in North Carolina, earning money that they hoped would provide opportunities for Acosta and his two younger sisters. His father arrived nearly ten years ago, his mother, five. He misses breakfasts with his grandmother the most: her fresh-baked bread, Honduran coffee served black with a hint of ground cloves, mandarin oranges from the backyard tree. Now his grandparents receive photos from North Carolina, where Acosta is a full-fledged adult. His baby face is filling out, wispy patches of hair sometimes latent on his chin. Dusty dirt paths in Olancho led to humble yet lush backyards like the Acostas’, with orange and banana trees. Many families farm coffee, the bushes of bright red coffee cherries dotting the landscape. But opportunities for someone like Acosta are scarce. He want-

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

Olancho,” he says. Acosta knows a few. “Another thing you hear: where many people are born, but few grow up.” One afternoon changed his life. A devout evangelical Christian, Acosta began preaching in parks to drug addicts. A gang leader strolled up and told him to leave the men alone. “He told me to leave and that he had it out for me,” Acosta says, “that he was going to find where I lived and search for me until I was killed.” Threats like these are serious in Honduras. With a homicide rate of 74.6 for every 100,000 people, it’s one of the most murderous countries in the world. Within two hours of the threat, Acosta had decided to join his father in North Carolina. “I knew nothing about immigration, about bills, about rent,” he says. “I just wanted a better life.”

costa arrived in the United States in June 2014 at age seventeen. He doesn’t talk about the journey from Olancho to the U.S.-Mexico border, other than to say it took nearly four months. This trip is often harrowing for Central American

migrants, who can face violence at the hands of those trying to exploit their vulnerability. Acosta was apprehended at the U.S. border along with many other unaccompanied minors that summer, the majority fleeing violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. By July, the border patrol had apprehended 41,042 minors from Honduras, according to statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement last year. Per procedure, Acosta was given an order to appear in court in March 2015. Due to what he describes as bad legal advice, he skipped his court date, which resulted in a deportation order. His lawyer, Almonte says, scared him into thinking he would be arrested if he went to court. Ten months later, ICE picked him up. Acosta’s detainment led to an outpouring of community support, largely led by his teachers at Riverside High School. They followed the lead of Alerta Migratoria NC. It took persistent urging by Alerta members and Riverside students for U.S. Representative G.K. Butterfield to take a stand. But when he did, Butterfield loudly advocated for his “friend Wildin” until Acosta was finally released. Butterfield and U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, petitioned the ICE director to put a hold on Acosta’s deportation order. When Acosta was put in solitary confinement for helping another inmate translate a document, Butterfield wrote another letter and succeeded in getting his stay in solitary reduced from thirty days to nine. Last August, Acosta was released on a $10,000 bond and applied for asylum. He has a court date set for this August. He’s still not protected from deportation. Acosta’s detention occurred at a time when activists who merely pointed out—and challenged—President Obama were met with pushback from mainstream liberals. Riverside ESL teacher Ellen Holmes, who spearheaded the educators’ efforts, said last summer: “It was said that they were going to target criminals. Please tell me how a student, a child, is a threat to security and how he breaks the law? It just makes me see red. All the children going back to Honduras are being killed. Giving any child a death sentence is inhumane.” “The question of ‘Why can’t Wildin graduate?’ became a rallying cry here and in the community,” says Riverside journalism teacher Bryan Christopher. “Wildin was detained the final semester of his senior year. At a certain point, immigration and education policies intersected. Students were missing school out of fear of arrest or deportation.” “I noticed how scared many of my friends

SAFE SPACES T

he day after the presidential election, Mark Bailey, director of Durham’s Maureen Joy Charter School, greeted worried students as they got off the bus. “I had kids that morning who were like, ‘All the moms and dads have to go back now. Is it true that we’re going to be deported?’” he says. Under ICE policy, schools are supposed to be “sensitive locations” where immigration action should be avoided if possible. But the Trump administration’s expansion of who is considered a priority for deportation has cast doubt on whether schools are really safe spaces for undocumented students. It’s a concern that hits close to home in the Triangle. Just last month, a Durham County Sheriff’s Office checkpoint set up near a school sparked suspicion about the real motive of the stop (officials said it was to catch speeders). The public opposition may have contributed to the Durham Police Department’s decision to halt DPDinitiated checkpoints altogether. Durham, Wake, Orange, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools do not ask for a student’s immigration status upon enrollment. (After all, they can’t share information with immigration officials that they don’t have.) According to the Pew Research Center, 8.7 percent of North Carolina students have a parent who is undocumented. Law enforcement should seek permission before entering Durham Public Schools and are expected to interview students about nonschool matters away from school. Wake County schools also instruct law enforcement to conduct interviews off-campus, while Orange County says interviews should happen in the principal’s office. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools law enforcement policy does not give specific instructions. Durham Public Schools, where about 28 percent of students are Latino, recently doubled down on a resolution it passed after Wildin Acosta’s detention, calling for law enforcement to honor the sensitive-

got,” says Morgan Whithaus, a senior during Acosta’s incarceration. “Just seeing how scared they were completely broke my heart. No person should have to feel that way and have to fear losing their families.” Whithaus penned an open letter to Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson in the Huffington Post: “Let me remind you, Secretary Johnson, some laws, even though they had good intentions when they were passed, are not morally right. Slavery was

locations policy. A group of activists also recently asked Wake County schools to adopt a safe-zone policy. Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County schools have sent out letters addressing concerns about immigration enforcement. About 16 percent of CHCCS students are Latino, but the proportion is higher at some schools, including Frank Porter Graham, a bilingual elementary school where staff are being trained on immigration history and policy. “We have students at our school who are worried about their friends being deported, for example,” says FPG principal Emily Bivins. “I would say there has been an increase in the number of kids who are worried about this and the amount of time counselors and teachers are spending talking about these concerns.” Maureen Joy, where 55 percent of students are Latino, was already reaching out to the immigrant community before the election. Last summer, people slept in the school parking lot to get Faith IDs, an alternative to a government-issued ID. Last month, the school partnered with El Centro for an information session that packed the school’s auditorium. “After the election, we told our kids not to worry, that they were safe. And now we need to be very careful in saying that,” says Bela Kussin, the school’s equity and community facilitator. The school has focused on being a resource for immigrant parents, helping teachers address students’ anxiety, and countering rhetoric that students hear outside school. Students seem more concerned about the safety of their parents than themselves, Bailey says, while the risk of getting pulled over has deterred some parents from attending school events. “We feel powerless sometimes because you’re unable to just fix it or make it go away,” Bailey says. “I think that’s the part that feels so foreign to us. We don’t have the ability as we normally would to personally impact and change that situation.” —Sarah Willets

once allowed by law, followed by Jim Crow, and right now, taking students away from their high school education in the name of immigration is law. But not all laws are right.” Whithaus also traveled with Holmes and fellow students to speak to Congress last May. They met privately with Education Secretary John King. “It was a frustrating meeting,” Whithaus says. “He said his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do. That really bothered

me. It’s something directly impacting schools, and he should do something about it.” Pam Gonzalez, a Dreamer who was a senior at Riverside last year, also took the trip to Washington. She used to tutor Acosta in math. She and Whithaus organized the activist movement at Riverside. They hosted information sessions during lunch hour, passing out white wristbands to show support for Acosta. On graduation day, Whithaus says, the entire student body raised their wrists in solidarity for Acosta. “A lot of students started questioning and realizing that it wasn’t fair,” Gonzalez says. “My teachers and friends knew I was undocumented, but I didn’t necessarily come out and tell people. Afterwards and now, I’m more comfortable talking about it than I was before.” Acosta’s mother, Dilsia, controlled the reins of her son’s campaign. She kept her composure even when she cried in public, her resolve rooted in a faith that she passed on to her son. She spoke up and built her courage in front of English-speaking audiences. She learned that the freedom of speech permissible here can still be met with the stifling silence of authority. “The most powerful moment—when I saw Dilsia with fear, but also with a lot of faith— was when she was praying at the immigration office,” says Almonte. A group had traveled to the ICE office in Charlotte to submit an application for a stay of removal. Dilsia prayed and sang in the lobby, flanked by community and ICE agents. “Here she was, in front of the authorities, a strong woman fighting for her son. She was never afraid to say, ‘I’m undocumented,’ or for la migra to come after her. She stood by the idea that ‘This is my son, I brought him here for a better life, I’m fighting for him.’” Acosta’s case is among at least six in North Carolina involving high-school-age immigrants who could qualify as refugees but instead were detained by ICE last spring at Stewart. All have been released and are in the process of seeking asylum, except for one— Santos Padilla Gúzman of Raleigh. According to the local Qué Pasa newspaper, gangs in El Salvador threatened to kill him for not joining. He’s still locked up in Stewart. And just weeks prior to Acosta’s detainment, a student from El Salvador who had been at Riverside for a few months was detained and quickly deported. She had fled death threats in her home country; after she disappeared, no one, not even her high school boyfriend, heard from her again.

costa says that while he was in detention he was looking for answers. He’d preach to his fellow detainees, young

men like himself from all over the South. “Even when I read the Bible, I’d cry,” he says. “We would go outside sometimes and see the street on the other side of the fence. And we’d ask ourselves, ‘What does it feel like to be free?’ Freedom was so close, but felt so far away.” In the seven months he’s been back in Durham, Acosta has been adjusting slowly. He says he feels OK, though the weight of helping support his family and achieve his own goals is burdensome. Almonte has encouraged him to see a therapist, though they haven’t been able to find one available on weekends. “Missing a day of work means a lot of money lost, so for him, it’s not a priority,” says Almonte. “He doesn’t recognize that after being detained for seven months, he has to expect anxiety. I think he has a lot of depression as well. He was different before he was detained. He was happy all the time. I think that his self-esteem was stronger before.” Acosta quietly finished his high school coursework in January, which he says is a dream fulfilled. He’ll walk in the June graduation ceremony. “He did a pretty good job of trying to fall back into life as a student,” says Catherine Sebring, a Riverside counselor. “I don’t think that was easy for him, given the media coverage and publicity that his story has driven, not to mention the experiences he had at Stewart. He has become a strong voice in the community.” As bold and as affirmative as his declarations are, a gentle fatigue sometimes creeps into Acosta’s voice. He’s been in the spotlight since his detention, but sometimes, he says, “I just want to act like a normal young guy.” Being detained led to a steep drop in his GPA, which is now below 2.0. He’s working on raising both his score and the funds to begin college courses for electrical engineering. Acosta currently works twelve-hour days in construction. Since the election, undocumented communities have been on high alert. But following Acosta’s case, student activists have been pushing for louder advocacy with no fear. “The way I see it, [President] Trump’s whole campaign is basically trying to scare us,” says Gonzalez, now a first-year student at Meredith College. “That’s what they want, and I don’t want to give them that. I’m not scared.” Acosta, as usual, tries to see the silver lining in the dark cloud. “If it weren’t for Trump, there wouldn’t be a unified immigrant voice,” he says. “They left a lot in the hands of Obama. If they were united like they are now, maybe we’d already have immigration reform.” vbouloubasis@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 21

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY U.S. Representative G.K. Butterfield on resisting Trump’s attacks on immigrants and refugees BY KE N FINE

U.S.

Representative G.K. Butterfield walked the walk during the civil rights era, leading marches in Wilson, the segregated eastern North Carolina town in which he came of age. During his decadeplus in Congress, including a stint as head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Butterfield has been an advocate for marginalized groups, most recently helping to secure reprieves from deportation for Durham teenager Wildin Acosta and asylum-seeker Felipe Molina Mendoza. During a Q and A with the INDY the day after President Trump unveiled his budget proposal last week, Butterfield urged his constituents to stay vigilant, to be activists, and to protect those who move the economy—and American culture—forward. And, he said, it’s time to call the president’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants and build a border wall what it is: “preposterous.”

are opposed to any type of immigration reform confronted, massively confronted, the Republican members of Congress and made them back away from any type of reform. So that’s the closest we’ve come to getting that problem solved. The divide, it seems, appears to be getting worse. And it’s being fueled by right-wing propaganda, with Breitbart and other rightwing organizations. They are fueling the paranoia the American people have about undocumented immigrants. Now it’s at a fever level. And it cries out for a solution. We have somewhere between ten and fifteen million people in the country who are undocumented, and the interesting thing about all of this is we have enough votes, I believe, in the House of Representatives, to get a bill passed. The problem is, Speaker [Paul] Ryan and the Republican leadership, under the influence of the tea party, refuse to let any legislation on the floor that deals with this issue.

INDY: Trump’s attacks on immigrants and refugees feel like the civil rights crisis of our time. G.K. Butterfield: It’s a big deal, for sure.

You don’t believe there’s an increased threat from immigrants?

We’ve had an immigration debate ever since I have been in Congress, and that spans more than twelve years now. And, you know, at one point, when President George W. Bush was president, I thought we were on the verge of a bipartisan compromise to pass comprehensive immigration reform. It fell apart because those who

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The immigrant community is not a threat to democracy or American safety. As we have said so often, there are certain elements within the immigrant community that are not good actors, who need to be perhaps removed from the community, but by and large, ninety-five percent or more of immigrants, undocumented immigrants, in our country are good, law-abiding, hardworking individuals. The immigrant community

“The North Carolina economy depends on immigrant labor. That is a fact.” economy depends on immigrant labor. To remove that source of labor from the economy would be catastrophic. You go down on the coastline and talk to the fisheries, those who are fishing and bringing the seafood in, they depend on immigrant labor. That’s a fact. The zealots are the ones talking about removing undocumented immigrants. But not only do we have the labor pool, we also have some very highly intelligent immigrants, you know, undocumented immigrants in our community. Highly intelligent. They went to kindergarten and elementary school and middle school and college in our country. These Dreamers, as we call them, are good intellectuals who contribute to our vibrant economy.

What touched you about Wilden Acosta’s case?

G.K. Butterfield is not a threat, yet President Trump wants to spend an additional forty-four billion in homeland security, which will increase the hiring of ICE agents and border patrol agents unnecessarily. This is going to be very expensive. And that’s not to mention the wall proposition.

Let’s talk about the wall.

Most reasonable people would not disagree that we need some type of protection at the border. We need to secure our borders, and I think most people would agree on that. But what is disagreeable, what is in dispute, is the methodology used for it. Building a

thirty- or forty-billion-dollar wall along the border holds us up as ridiculous. That’s not the way you secure a border. We have technology we use that can protect the border. The wall proposition is preposterous to say the least.

Can you give us a sense of how North Carolina would function were we to deport every single undocumented immigrant?

The North Carolina economy depends on immigrant labor. That is a fact. You ask any businessperson, you ask any farmer, you ask any contractor—the North Carolina

We bonded with Wildin and are very proud of getting him back to Durham and to Riverside High School. I gave it all that I had to have this outcome. The thing that made a difference in Wildin’s case was the tremendous community support that he enjoyed. There was a unified effort to support this young man because he was a victim of circumstance. You know, the case is not over. It continues to be a pending case. But that was a good outcome.

There’s no guarantee that he won’t eventually be deported.

Families are being torn apart. [White House press secretary] Sean Spicer, in one of his press conferences a few weeks ago, was asked by a reporter, ‘How many of the undocumented immigrants in this country are at risk of being deported?’ His response was, ‘All of them.’ It’s clear that under the president’s new executive order, basically any undocumented immigrant could be deported. The American people shouldn’t

tolerate that. We have allowed the immigration problem to intensify over the years and the solution is not mass deportation.

This latest travel ban and the refugee restrictions have folks pretty concerned.

We are a compassionate country by tradition. We welcome those who are being oppressed in other countries. We have been that way for a long time. We have a lot of refugees. That’s one of the reasons America is prospering and doing quite well. Had we not had refugees come to our country for asylum, they’d be dead. Two federal courts have blocked President Trump’s Muslim ban. We saw the most recent one from Hawaii, and certainly that’s going to be appealed, so we’ll watch that very closely, but the court cited the words of Donald Trump and members of his administration in determining the ban is clearly intended to target Muslims. We cannot have that type of racial profiling and racial discrimination in our refugee policy. The ban is just—I’m going to call it un-American.

Are there Republicans you feel will eventually stand up to Trump?

They’re slowly coming around, and I believe as time goes on, more and more Republicans will distance themselves from President Trump for various reasons. Some are concerned about their own viability in the 2018 elections. They feel that this man’s unfavorables are very high right now, and we know the drain that has on the downballot races. There’s another group that will finally wake up and realize that Donald Trump does not represent the values that we as Americans represent.

You’re a son of the civil rights movement. You were there for the marches and the protests and the boycotts. Do we need to take it that far at this point?

By any means necessary. That’s a phrase from the nineteen-sixties. We need to reverse these trends by any means necessary. It starts off with persuasion, and then you can escalate it to confrontation and then you can do some other things. I wouldn’t rule out anything that is lawabiding to prevent this problem. Massive demonstrations are just one tool. The 1963 March on Washington was a massive demonstration. The Million Man March was a massive display of activism. So yes, that needs to be a tool among the many tools in our toolbox. kfine@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 23

BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL

Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly support Trump. But not all of them support his refugee restrictions. BY A M A NDA A B R A M S Rachel Betts and Reverend Bill Biggers 24 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

t was fall 2015 when God called Rachel Betts to pay attention to current events. The Syrian refugee crisis was exploding, and Betts wanted to help somehow. For years, her church, Durham’s Church of the Good Shepherd, had been hosting “good neighbor” teams that sponsor refugees, so Betts and other concerned congregants formed a new one. In early 2016, they welcomed a small Syrian family: a mother, her twelve-year-old daughter, and the mother’s sister. Over the next year, the group walked through life with that family: helping them open bank accounts and fill out job applications; shuttling the girl, who had a blood disorder, to doctors’ visits; being present during a bone marrow transplant that ultimately failed; attending the mosque prayer service after the girl died; and later, celebrating the mother’s marriage to another Syrian refugee. Not everyone at the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is theologically conservative and affiliated with the evangelical Presbyterian Church in America, was enthusiastic about the institution’s refugee activities. “I’ve had some interesting conversations with people in the church about it,” says Betts. Some members are simply more conservative on immigration policy, and others are fearful about potential terrorist threats. That’s not surprising. Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, whose push to keep undocumented immigrants and Muslims out of the country was a hallmark of his campaign and has been a centerpiece of his administration so far. According to the Pew Research Center, 76 percent of white evangelicals approved of Trump’s first executive order, which barred immigration from seven Muslim countries and halted the flow of refugees for 120 days. The numbers are presumably similar for the second executive order, which, like the first one, was halted by a federal judge last week, before it could take effect. What those overwhelming proportions belie, of course, are not-so-tiny minorities who disagree with Trump’s policies. A proxy war has been brewing among Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was vociferously anti-Trump (and, for that matter, anti-Hillary Clinton) during the campaign and came perilously close to losing his job. Meanwhile, more than six thousand prominent pastors from around the coun-

try have signed a letter to Trump supporting the country’s refugee resettlement program, saying that loving one’s neighbor and welcoming the stranger are key tenets of Christianity. Almost twenty of them came from North Carolina, including Daniel Akin, president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, part of the Southern Baptist Convention. Akin says he’s fully behind Moore and believes the country has room for a “gracious and compassionate” immigration policy. “This to me is one of the big humanitarian crises of our world, and this is where the church is called,” says the Reverend Bill

“This to me is one of the big humanitarian crises of our world, and this is where the church is called.” Biggers, pastor of Durham’s Hope Valley Baptist Church and a signatory to the letter to Trump. Hope Valley Baptist recently converted a building on its property to serve as short-term housing for refugees, called Hope House; it’s currently occupied by an African family. The project wasn’t without resistance and required careful finessing, months of prayer, and church-wide dialogue. “There are certainly people in our congregation who are conflicted [about the house],” says Cara Bolton, a Hope Valley Baptist member who has largely led the

house’s renovation. “I’ve heard people say, ‘We have people here who need help. Why aren’t we helping them first?’ Corey Jackson, pastor of Cary’s Trinity Park church—which he describes as “extremely conservative theologically”— has heard similar comments from church members. But he has no doubts about the church’s activities with refugees, which have been a core component of the institution’s ministry over the past four years. “It’s a total no-brainer from a Christian perspective to love refugees. When Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, that includes everyone,” he says. “We know what God’s called us to do regarding refugees. We have this opportunity to show the gospel and show Christ’s love,” adds Lawrence Yoo, pastor of the Southern Baptist-affiliated Waypoint Church in Durham. Just about every church member is part of a team sponsoring refugee families, and several have elected to live “in community” in apartment complexes crowded with refugees. According to Adam Clark, director of the Durham branch of World Relief—one of the four resettlement agencies working in North Carolina—about 230 churches from across the theological spectrum partner with his office. That’s impressive for a medium-size program; in fact, he says, his office garners the most volunteers of any of World Relief’s offices across the country. “It’s a real bragging point,” he says. Volunteers who work with World Relief and similar agencies learn about the detailed, two-years-plus vetting process that all refugees to the U.S. go through and the subsequently tiny chance a terrorist will slip through the cracks. That’s one reason they tend to support the programs and oppose Trump’s refugee restrictions, no matter how closely their views might otherwise align with political conservatism. But refugees are also a more politically palatable population than, say, undocumented immigrants. After all, they’re lawfully here. “In my experience, Christians are more ready and willing to help refugees because they come here legally, versus other immigrants who many perceive as not having ‘gotten in line,’” says Jennie Belle, program associate for farmworker and immigrant rights at the N.C. Council of Churches. Indeed, many refugees don’t want to come to the United States; they simply have to, as a result of suffering and hardship in their home countries. World Relief and affiliated groups are worried, though. The number of refugees

coming into this country has slowed to a trickle. Even though Trump’s executive orders were struck down, he had the authority to reduce the annual cap on refugees from 110,000 under President Obama last year to 50,000 this year—and the majority of those have already arrived. That diminished number throws both the agencies and the volunteers into uncertainty. Marc and Kim Wyatt, Raleigh-based volunteers with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, ran Welcome House, a residence providing short-term housing for refugees that was the inspiration for Hope House as well as several other similar facilities across the state. After hosting almost 150 people over the course of fifteen months, they had to close at the end of February because of a lack of arrivals. What’s ironic, they say, is that public support for their work has never been greater—because of outrage over Trump’s actions. “There’s a tremendous interest and enthusiasm to help from the community— not just the faith community,” says Marc Wyatt. “People here are concerned. For us, this is one of the most opportune times for the church to be engaged with the community.” But he’s worried because there aren’t many new refugees coming right now. “In four months, say, if things get going, will interest and the desire to help return? We’re prayerful that the enthusiasm now won’t be squashed by the delay of new arrivals.” In the meantime, the couple is recommending that potential volunteers get to know the area’s refugee community and the agencies that serve it. There’s plenty of need among existing refugees for mentors, ESL tutors, and after-school teachers. That recommendation goes for anyone, not just those outraged about the current political climate. As just about all of the pastors and church members involved with refugees would agree, the best way to overcome anxiety toward outsiders is simply to get to know them. That’s been Rachel Betts’s experience during her time sponsoring the Syrian family. “I think when you get down to it, even people who might be more conservativeminded as far as immigration policy goes, or more fearful about potential terrorists—when you say we need a bicycle for a twelve-year-old who came from Syria, they say, ‘We have one. Have mine,” she says. “I think it goes back to that fear of the unknown, but when people have the opportunity to see a person and see a need, they’re going to step up.” backtalk@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 25

Welcome to Raleigh, Y’all

is a campaign by the new Raleigh nonprofit Come Out & Show Them. Using yard signs, stickers, and largescale murals that welcome visitors and residents alike to Raleigh using seventeen languages and our favorite all-inclusive contraction, Come Out & Show Them hopes to spark conversations about the impact of immigration and ideas of sanctuary in our communities while allowing folks to express their regional warmth and hospitality. Come Out & Show Them has distributed approximately two thousand such signs and stickers in the Triangle in the last month, with many more to come. To get your own, go to welcometoraleighyall.com. Proceeds go to Uniting NC and the local chapter of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, as well as to support the sustainability of Come Out & Show Them.

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THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLE How chance, weather, and war brought

twenty thousand persecuted Vietnamese Christians to North Carolina BY E RI C A HE L L E RST E IN

s Glun Siu walks around Raleigh’s St. Paul’s Christian Church, he appears perfectly at ease. Petite, with a head of silver-streaked black hair, he strides confidently, jangling his keys. But he wasn’t always so comfortable here. When the forty-eight-year-old arrived in North Carolina in 2002, he didn’t speak any English and knew nothing about the state save for its landscape. Someone back in Vietnam had told him the trees were abundant here, lush and fantastic. Siu struggled in his new home. He missed his family and friends, all back in the tiny village of Plei Grak, tucked away in the central highlands of Vietnam. He yearned for the familiar faces of the mountainous, agricultural region he knew so well. At night, insomnia crept into his bed. Over time, things got better. He put down roots, found work, made friends, even brought the rest of his immediate family over. But Siu still thinks often about those who weren’t so fortunate—his relatives and friends who are still back in Plei Grak, still suffering. “When I call my village, they’re always upset and crying,” he says. “They always say, ‘The Vietnamese don’t care about our village.’ They cry and cry. They always ask me, ‘Help us.’ They say, ‘You must come back.’ I say, ‘I’m scared to come back.’” Siu is part of a little-known refugee community in North Carolina, one of an estimated twenty thousand who fled religious and political persecution in Vietnam and found a new home in the Old North State. An indigenous community comprising about thirty tribal groups, they’re often referred

to as the Montagnards, a term imposed by French colonizers meaning “mountain people.” Siu identifies as Jarai, which is his native tongue and one of the numerous tribal groups under the Montagnard umbrella. Today, North Carolina is home to the largest Montagnard community outside of Vietnam. How they wound up here is a slice of history worth excavating, an exodus rooted in chance, weather, and, true to the good old American tradition, war. It’s also a story whose telling seems to have new urgency in this political moment. As nativist fears grip the nation’s highest office, making their way into policy and resurfacing in bombastic xenophobic statements, tens of thousands of Montagnards have been settling into life on a new continent, with a new language, with new friends. Among those who have embraced the Montagnards are the congregants of St. Paul’s, who have quietly been working with them since the early 2000s, when they were asked to help resettle four Montagnard men, all newly arrived from a Cambodian refugee camp. But that was not the first group of refugees they greeted: in the 1970s, the church also worked with Vietnamese and Polish refugee families. Their work is guided by a moral framework articulated by the Reverend Diane Faires: “If we claim to be a country that stands up for humanitarian values and compassion, we have to think about that and practice our values by providing hospitality for people that have been through such difficult circumstances.” The Montagnards, including many of those who ended up in North Carolina,

Glun Siu PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN have long faced oppression in Vietnam. The reasons are multifaceted but rooted in the group’s political, ethnic, and religious history. Although the Montagnards traditionally practiced an animistic religion, some began converting to Christianity in the fifties and sixties; in the nineties, many more joined unofficial churches. Their religious activity has become a point of tension with the Vietnamese government, which, according to a 2011 Human Rights Watch report, alleged that the Montagnards’ churches were being used as a front for political-independence activism. That persecution is ongoing, monitors say. Since 2001, thousands have fled to nearby Cambodia to escape harsh government repression. Ironically, it was the promise of autonomy that, in part, drew the Montagnards into an alliance with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, in which roughly forty thousand Montagnards fought alongside the U.S. Army Special Forces in the mountains of Vietnam. According to the North Carolinabased Montagnard Human Rights Organization, Montagnard leaders were told that the U.S. would “help the Montagnard people regain their autonomous state.” After the war, however, the Montagnards suffered greatly and were targeted by the communist regime for their alliance with the U.S. military. Thousands were executed or thrown in jail, according to the MHRO, and an estimated eight thousand who escaped the

carnage perished in the jungles of Vietnam. The first group of Montagnard refugees arrived in North Carolina in 1986, and later waves in the early 1990s and 2000s followed. The Montagnards wound up in North Carolina for a host of reasons, including the state’s mild climate, the work of local resettlement agencies, and the presence of the U.S. Special Forces, which has a base in Fort Bragg and veterans throughout the state. Siu was part of the third wave. He came to North Carolina in 2002 after spending eight months in a Cambodian refugee camp. Like many others, Siu was fleeing religious persecution. In the late nineties, he began attending a church in his town. His parents weren’t Christian, but he was drawn to the church’s focus on living a pure life—no smoking, no drinking—activities in which Siu says many of his fellow townsmen heartily partook. Attracted to the healthier lifestyle espoused by the church, Siu looked at the congregation and thought, “‘I want to go!’ I was not a very good man. It was good for me.” Vietnamese law, however, requires all religious groups to register with the authorities; government officials, in turn, are allowed to approve or deny requests. Those considered a “threat” to the ruling party’s authority are “sharply repressed on grounds that they pose a threat to national security and public order,” according to HRW. In Siu’s case, authorities began harassing

him after he began his church visits. They picked him up and interrogated him, he says, and placed a gun on the table during the interrogations. In 2001, he got word from a friend that his name was among those on a list of people slated to go to jail the following month. “I didn’t want to go to jail because I didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “If I did something wrong, it’s OK I go to jail. Maybe I’ll learn something. But I didn’t do nothing wrong! I just went to church. I was very angry.” What Siu experienced is not uncommon in Vietnam, says MHRO executive director Ron Nay, who escaped to the jungle and spent seventeen years fighting the Vietnamese with the Montagnard Resistance Force. “We have been under darkness for one hundred years,” Nay says. “And the situation is bad. Nothing much has changed. The Montagnards no longer own the land, they have no rights to own anything. Police can come to their house without permission and arrest them without any reason.” Siu escaped to the lush jungle with ninety-nine other Montagnards who were also fleeing arrest. For twelve days they lived without food, subsisting only on the leaves scattered on the jungle floor. Siu, who left behind his wife and five small children, eventually made it to a Cambodian refugee camp, where he stayed for eight months. There, Siu says, he was vetted by United Nations workers, who even traveled back to his village of Plei Grak to question his

wife and family about his reasons for fleeing the country. When they concluded Siu’s account was truthful and his application was approved, he was given the option of staying put, returning to Cambodia, or relocating to the United States. Siu chose the latter, which is how he wound up in North Carolina in 2002. His involvement with St. Paul’s made the transition easier, and he began taking ESL classes at the church, a doubly difficult task considering he never learned to read or write in his native language. Nevertheless, Siu made headway in his studies, scored a job as a custodian at a local high school, began making friends, and even laid eyes on the ocean for the first time. He was stunned by the vastness of the water, the wind whipping around his face. He got another piece of good news three years later, when he learned his wife and five children would be joining him in North Carolina. In the days leading up to their flight, in 2005, Siu was so excited he couldn’t sleep. Siu’s family joined a growing group of Montagnards embraced by St. Paul’s. When Siu joined the church, he was the first of four Montagnard men the church helped resettle; today around forty Montagnards are in the congregation, Faires estimates. St. Paul’s works with the families on practical issues: English classes, housing applications, citizenship test preparations, navigating doctor’s visits (one church member helped deliver a Montagnard baby in the middle of the night, before the ambulance arrived). Some of the Montagnard families helped Faires when she moved to a new house, and she returned the favor. “It’s kind of sharing life together at this point,” she says. Twenty thousand Montagnards, who fled a country we once warred against, are now settling into life in North Carolina. For the politicians most fearful of the latest crop of refugees, those once again fleeing trauma and violence, sometimes under the regimes of our professed enemies, perhaps this would be a surprising or even an unimaginable outcome. For Siu, however, it is simply the story of his family’s move to North Carolina. He’s a U.S. citizen now. So is the rest of his family. He feels safe here. His eldest daughter, married to an American-born North Carolinian, has a two-year-old son. Sometimes, Siu says, people who don’t know him are curt, or rude, or dismissive of his accent, but it’s OK. He smiles. “If they know me, maybe they’ll be nice, too.” ehellerstein@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 29

INDY Week’s Guide to Dining in the Triangle

Deadline to reserve ads:

APRIL 5TH, 2017 On streets:

MAY 10, 2017

THE RADICAL A half-century ago, Gail Phares went to Nicaragua. Her life has never been the same. BY E RIC A HE L L E RST E IN

“W

e all need to be radicalized.” These are not necessarily the first words you’d expect to hear from Gail Phares, a seventy-seven-year-old with a shaggy bob and a wooden cross draped around her neck. But in her Raleigh office, she’s seated beneath a wall of posters reflecting that mantra: stenciled-in maps and photos of activist trips to Latin America, farmworker advocacy signs, tributes to religious figures slain in El Salvador. Her faint North Dakota accent flares up in exasperated bursts of “you know, really.’’ Phares, the Triangle-based cofounder of the Raleigh-based organization Witness for Peace Southeast, which advocates for peace, justice, and sustainable economies in Latin America, believes people need to have their “blinders” taken off, “to really see each other, think critically.” For her, that was the genesis of a path to radicalization. In 1963, she boarded a plane to Nicaragua and left behind an affluent conservative family to work with the Maryknoll Sisters, a Catholic missionary group. She returned to the United States six years later, hardly the same starry-eyed girl. After Nicaragua, Phares spent time in Guatemala, where a bloody civil war was underway. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. became involved in a counterinsurgency campaign with the Guatemalan army to quash a small band of leftist rebels. Over the course of more than three decades, an estimated two hundred thousand people were killed or disappeared; the majority perished at the hands of U.S.backed forces following a CIA-sponsored coup against the country’s progressive, democratically elected president in 1954.

30 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

Although Phares wasn’t there for all of the fighting, what she saw strengthened her resolve against U.S. military operations in the region. By the time she left Guatemala, she was so disturbed that she’d stopped speaking English altogether. “For me, it was seeing the economic power and the military power of the U.S. government. I was appalled. And I came home, so angry that I didn’t read body language back then. My dad thought I was a communist,” she says. The eighties were a roller coaster for peace activists like Phares. Back then, the cold warriors of the Reagan administration were involved in wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, supporting repressive military dictatorships as safeguards against socialist uprisings. Those forces were responsible for devastating human rights violations. In Nicaragua, the U.S. government opposed the country’s socialist Sandinista government, which had toppled a brutal right-wing dictator in 1979. Instead, the U.S. supported the Contra rebels, forces Human Rights Watch concluded “were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners.” Reagan’s description of them as “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers” was anathema to Phares. “For God’s sake, they were attacking clinics and schools and killing regular people,” she scoffs. The wars killed hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans over the course of several decades, and the violence touched Phares personally. In 1980,

Phares says the government granted them clearance to travel to war zones without military accompaniment. By then, they were sending three delegations a month to monitor the fighting. “It was just amazing!” she says. “We started to put the names of Nicaraguans and ages and what they were being killed for. And we would go right to Congress with our pictures and say, ‘This is what the Contras are doing.’” That effort went well beyond the halls of Congress. In 1986, as Republican congressman William Cobey was battling Democrat David Price for reelection, Phares and a group of activists walked to his office offering crosses etched with the names and ages of Nicaraguans killed in the war. The press accompanied them, too. “We went up the stairs with our crosses and said, ‘What are you doing?’ We got [Cobey] out of office. We did a bunch of stuff like that.”

Gail Phares, pictured in the Fairmont United Methodist Church in Raleigh PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN members of the Salvadoran military raped and killed an American missionary named Maura Clarke, one of her closest friends and a former housemate, along with three other churchwomen. (Phares keeps a tribute to them on the wall of her office.) The bloodshed fueled a mass exodus of Central American refugees to the U.S. border. But less than 3 percent were granted asylum, thanks to the Reagan administration’s insistence that those fleeing terror were “economic migrants,” not political refugees. In response, in what’s now referred to as the “sanctuary movement,” communities of faith began harboring and supporting undocumented refugees. Federal officials, wary of bad optics, held off on arresting religious participants and barging into holy spaces, though they later took a more aggressive stance, even going so far as sending informants to infiltrate the movement. In the Triangle, Phares says, a network of people—not churches—took part in that movement, providing temporary sanctuary for Latin American refugees before placing them on planes to Canada, where more support for Central American refugees was available. As all this was playing out on the national stage, Phares cofounded Witness for Peace Southeast in west Raleigh in 1982. The fol-

lowing year, Phares and her fellow activists led a delegation to Nicaragua, with thirty others in tow. The plan was to give delegates a close-up look at the war so they could effectively lobby for policy changes at home. They made it two hundred yards from the border with Honduras, Phares recalls. The goal was to visit people most intimately

affected by the violence. As they approached the site, the shooting subsided. An anthropologist on the delegation told Phares, “If all it takes to stop the killing is to have Americans in the war zone, let’s call for a vigil.” Three months later they were back in Nicaragua, aiming for a near-constant presence in the country. Shortly thereafter,

Phares points to an image of colleagues killed in El Salvador. PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN

Among their actions with an ongoing legacy is an annual immigration pilgrimage across North Carolina, inspired by Nicaraguan activists who traversed the country to raise awareness about the war. In 1985, Phares and the Witness for Peace network embarked on their first pilgrimage. In early April, they will once again walk across the state, culminating in a visit to the state legislature. Phares suspects that a lot of people will want to participate this year, given the political climate. She believes a sanctuary movement reminiscent of the one that took shape in the eighties will emerge once again, distinct in its own way, but fueled by the sense of moral outrage that has long compelled people to stand up to the government at extraordinary personal risk. Phares intimately understands the urgency that drives people to make these decisions. After all, she hauled everyday North Carolinians to deadly war zones, people who jotted down their wills before boarding planes to Nicaragua. The lesson that can be applied to this political moment, she believes, is to convince broad swaths of people to participate in small actions. “People take steps. Give them something they can do, little steps,” she says. “Not everyone is going to do civil disobedience right off the bat or be a sanctuary church. But you can do something. You could have a study group on immigration at your synagogue or your mosque or your church. If you see something happening at a grocery store, you can stand beside whoever it is getting harassed. You can do little things. You can grow.” ehellerstein@indyweek.com

INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 31

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND When they arrive here, refugees get three months’ assistance. What happens after that?

BY KEN FIN E

Syrian family is meeting with an attorney when their confusion surfaces. They’ve seen headlines about deportations and a travel and refugee ban. They’re here legally, but they’re nonetheless convinced that government officials will soon knock on their door. “The father says, ‘If they are going to take us, I wish they would just kill us. We can’t go back. If they send us back, we’re dead,’” says Madison Hayes, director of Refugee Community Partner-

ship, a grassroots advocacy organization founded in Carrboro in 2011 that, among other things, helps facilitate legal assistance for refugees. “And the lawyer is telling them, ‘No. This doesn’t apply to you. You’re safe here. You’re OK. That isn’t going to happen.’ And they respond with, ‘It is happening.’” Hayes says that, at the dawn of the Trump era, this sort of anxiety is commonplace among the three hundred-plus refugees RCP serves. “I think generally speaking, folks are

acutely aware of the growing sociopolitical hostility toward refugees,” she says. “The way that it manifests in everyday life—and we’ve heard this from local service providers and other folks who are working alongside refugee families—is that people are afraid to apply for jobs, they’re afraid to apply for food stamps, they’re afraid to submit an application for public housing for fear that it’s going to reveal their status and all of a sudden they’ll be targeted violently.” These are people whose lives have been

defined by hardship. Being a refugee living in the U.S. requires it. “What grants them refugee status is that their lives are so in danger that, by staying in their country, it would mean guaranteed death,” Hayes says. “I think what’s really critical for us to understand as Americans is that refugees are displaced by their own countries. They’re not choosing to abandon everything they know and they’re familiar with in search of some better opportunity. Their lives are literally that threatened.”

Khai Tow is a refugee who fled an oppressive military state in Myanmar. PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER 32 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

hai Tow lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for more than fifteen years after her family fled an oppressive military state in Myanmar. She remembers not having enough food to eat. The rice, fish paste, and beans that were rationed among those seeking asylum wasn’t nearly enough to go around. “We don’t have meat or anything,” she recalls. Buying additional food meant money— something those confined to the camps had no way of earning, as they were prohibited from seeking employment. “We don’t have enough food. And you can’t go out,” Tow says. “If you go out, they put you in the jail.” “There’s woefully insufficient water, food, and medical resources to go around. The conditions there are pretty destitute,” Hayes adds. “There aren’t formal schools or employment opportunities.” The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says there are currently more than sixty-five million “forcibly displaced people” living in camps across the world, a number characterized by UNHCR officials as “unprecedented.” More than half of them are minors. Many leave their homes on foot and travel for days before reaching a safe zone. Khai’s parents fled Myanmar with their daughter and at first left her with her grandmother before leaving her at a camp in Thailand. It would be years—refugees must wait a minimum of two—before she would have a chance to board a plane to her new home, during which she and those she was living alongside were put through a series of interviews, health and mental health evaluations, and subjected to extensive background checks. And then, one day—for Tow it was after a decade and a half—a plane landed and names were called. “There is no advance notice. A plane touches down one day, someone steps out of the plane, they call names off a roster, and essentially whoever is within earshot and hears their name called gets to go,” Hayes says. Those, like Tow, bound for America meet with little support, save a few months’ rent and a job. The job, housing, and financial aid are provided by one of nine resettlement agencies contracted by the federal government to ensure refugees make it to their new hometown somewhere in the U.S. Beyond those basic needs, those agencies are also supposed to provide support. But Hayes suggests that the agencies entrusted with doing the government’s bidding are ill equipped to provide the kind of assistance that’s really needed.

“They’re responsible for, essentially, covering a person’s plane ticket over here, and they give them a cultural competence training, but it’s like two hours long,” Hayes says. “Because, you know, if you have no frame of reference for what a culture is like, two hours is sufficient. [They] are supposed to provide support for the refugees’ first three months here, but they are understaffed and overworked, so a lot of times, they can’t.” Of the nine agencies across the nation, several—namely, Catholic Charities in Tennessee and the Refugee Empowerment Center and Lutheran Family Services in Nebraska—have cut staff and are bracing for losses in the millions of dollars due to President Trump’s restrictions on refugee entries, as they rely on federal dollars paid per refugee. And even if the other agencies have the staff and funds to do their part, after three months of cash assistance, the government’s involvement in refugees’ lives ends. “The only employment opportunities that refugees can really access are low-wage jobs,” Hayes says. “Around here, that’s typically housekeeping work at UNC. So you’re talking eight dollars an hour. It’s not enough to meet even basic rent costs. Because the work is so low-paying, these folks will often work two to three jobs—eighty hours a week—and they don’t have time to participate in an ESL class or spend time with their kids. So quickly, they get locked into this persistent cycle of poverty.” That’s where RCP comes in. It gets no money from the federal government and receives the majority of its funding from private donors and foundations that support nonprofits, as well as small stipends from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Orange County. Andrea Eisen, RCP’s cofounder, says the only way to provide these refugees all that they need is a grassroots movement to accomplish things like an increased minimum wage and investment in affordable housing. In other words, policy changes that would benefit refugees who can currently only find low-income jobs and high-rent housing. Hayes agrees. Over time, she says, being on the receiving end of charity “really starts to corrode your sense of self-worth.”

ful when you go to the hospital or take your children to school. You can’t understand anything. I don’t know what the teacher say or what the doctor say. It was so hard for me, so stressful. It was tough. I needed help.” They need to feel empowered and be given space to heal psychological wounds, like another Syrian family served by RCP whose members live in fear—not because of Trump’s executive orders, but because they lack the social relationships that provide a break from reminders of what they left behind. “Both the husband and the wife are really depressed, and I think the long-term psychological effects of isolation, that loneliness and fear, it has profound consequences,” Hayes says. “They can’t make rent. They’re two-hundred dollars short every month. They are dying to go back to the refugee camp in Jordan because they say at least there, we can make ends meet. Here, just being out in public is scary. It’s like you see people taking photos of each other on the street. They worry a photo might get snapped of one of them and it’ll end up on the Internet and it’ll get back to ISIS and they’re going to fly soldiers over here to kill them.” So RCP takes on the real challenges associated with refugee resettlement locally. The organization’s seventy volunteers are

there to help, sure, but they also provide a shoulder to cry on, as well as a support system most American citizens get from coworkers, family members, and neighbors. And they implore others to get involved. “People celebrate their culture and the births of their babies. People get to live their lives and be resilient. That exists now,” Eisen says. “And there is a community among themselves, one we have helped create, that helps maintain that.” Given recent developments inside the White House, continuing that work—and protecting those communities—is more important now than it’s ever been, Hayes says. “I think we have to critically reflect on how we’re actually helping and defending folks from the sociopolitical onslaught they’re facing now. Some see refugee support efforts as apolitical, as neighbors loving neighbors, [and] while this is a nice sentiment, it isn’t what actualizes freedom from oppression,” Hayes says. “By seeing this as apolitical, we are opting out of responsibility. When you understand how structures of power operate in this country, it becomes clear that if we are to actually help, it means using the access we have to break into sources and resources of power.” kfine@indyweek.com

any refugees require constant support—a far cry from the home, job, and three months of financial assistance they come into the United States with, Hayes says. They need time to learn English and money for childcare so they can work enough to provide for their children. “Before when I came [to RCP], I had a really hard time,” Tow says. “It’s so stressINDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 33

THE IMMIGRANT IN THE KITCHEN

The restaurant industry depends on immigrants. What happens if we lose them all?

eventeen years ago, I enrolled at the oldest public university in the nation to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a journalist. Just down the road from my classes at UNC-Chapel Hill, Luis Ortega was cutting his teeth as a line cook at Crook’s Corner, the Southern landmark that gave North Carolina a coveted spot on the national culinary stage. I didn’t know Ortega then, but our lives intersected in ways that are typical in a college town. We are exactly the same age; back then, we were teenagers nearing adulthood. We caught live music at Local 506 and the defunct Go! Studios, and picked Breadmen’s breakfast the next day as our preferred hangover cure. We both worked in high-volume downtown food establishments. I studied Spanish and practiced it with a Greek accent at my job, rolling burritos for gringos. Luis picked up English with an eastern North Carolina drawl from chef Bill Smith and spent hours perfecting that classic, awardwinning shrimp-and-grits recipe in a very crowded high-end kitchen. Ortega and I realize all this when I first meet him in his hometown of Celaya, Guanajuato, during the summer of 2015. After several years at Crook’s, Ortega returned to Mexico in 2007. He grew tired of waiting for policy reform, of feeling trapped without the mobility to ever see his family again, or even to drive just fifteen minutes into another town, for fear of getting stopped without a license and getting deported. A sense of nostalgia creeps into his cadence when he talks about “Celaya Hill,” or the Chapel Hill he and his compatriots made their own. During the day, sunlight shines on the butcher block at his carniceria in the Las Delicias neighborhood. In the middle of the shop, a clothesline supports dozens of hanging chorizos. A massive illustration of the Virgen de Guadalupe peeks through the links, her hands pressed in prayer, blessing the butcher. It’s there, in 34 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

BY VIC TORIA BOULOUBAS IS

At his butcher shop in Celaya, Mexico, Luis Ortega remembers his time cooking at Crook's Corner. the midst of plucking sausages from the line, that Ortega confesses how much he misses grits. Some Southern recipes, he says, can be amended with Mexican ingredients. He can find the white wine to make the brine for Crook’s Corner’s green Tabasco chicken. And the beets, too, for Smith’s beet salad, another favorite. But not the grits. He misses the grits. At Crook’s, Ortega steered dinner service with other Mexican cooks, side-by-side with Smith. The way he speaks about food is the way my hipster generation talks recipes: with a nerdy zeal, sharp criticism, and an insatiable desire to talk the subject to death.

Cooks like Ortega navigate the world of fine dining and become an integral part of it; they represent a growing sect of a creative class obsessed with food. But, as Smith once told me, his cooks “feel invisible.” In fact, the men and women behind the kitchen door are quietly leading the pack. They are part of a famed coterie of food artisans and entrepreneurs, chefs and farmers. Ortega earned the enviable tutelage of a beloved chef in one of the South’s most revered restaurants. And in a place completely unfamiliar to me, I could relate to Ortega through food about our shared experience of a place once completely unfamiliar to him.

PHOTO BY VICTORIA BOULOUBASIS

Smith can do the same, with a much deeper intimacy. When Ortega drove home to Mexico after many years in Chapel Hill, Smith took the thirty-six-hour drive with him. Smith visits when he can slip away from the restaurant, often on his birthday, most recently this winter. His connection to his fellow cooks is based on a sense of equity he feels in his heart. He understands them as we all should, with nuance, humanity, and zero expectations. Many cooks come here for a “better life,” a uniform identity to which we are socialized. But with that comes complexity and layers. For Ortega, there was also a youthful sense of adventure, the kind that propels any Ameri-

can teenager with a passport to see the world. He wanted to measure himself against something greater than what he already knew.

ood is not just nourishment or art. It is a commodity, and it relies on a structure of labor. The restaurant industry is the second-largest and fastestgrowing market in the U.S. economy. The latest Pew Research Center statistics indicate that 1.2 million workers in the restaurant industry are undocumented—somewhere between 12 and 16 percent. With a more draconian immigration sweep under President Trump, the South could lose many of these workers. Most rumors about ICE raids in restaurants have turned out to be false, but the worry among chefs and cooks is palpable. Without immigrants, the restaurant industry cannot survive. The growing demographic of Latinos and immigrants in the South in public places like schools, health clinics, and city parks is obvious. The visual cues of change that we see in our public spaces—like tiendas and restaurant kitchens—are the result of this massive, decades-long migration. Between 1990 and 2000, the Latina/o population in North Carolina increased by approximately 394 percent. Food has been our immediate gateway to other cultures, and the immigrant in food service is often seen as one who works for other people or owns a food-related business that adds vital diversity to the community. But the conversation around ethnic chefs and cooks is often skewed toward the contribution of the immigrant. And even when that contribution may be a reflection of their voices and their entrepreneurial capital, it is still made for the consumption of a white majority that’s unfamiliar with the culture and often unwilling to familiarize itself beyond what it can consume. A Mexican immigrant cook through a white person’s lens is usually portrayed as working with previously learned skills, rather than inventing or initiating the art in question. It would be remiss not to draw a parallel to the work of Toni Tipton-Martin, a journalist who researched hundreds of AfricanAmerican cookbooks lost in, and shielded by, history for centuries. She not only points out the racist “magical” trope regarding African-American cooks, but also argues for the humanity, intelligence, agency, and creative talents of African-American men and women who contributed to the American/ Southern culinary canon. A discomfort and negotiation is expressed in our history, with patterns of exploitation that we must confront. Labor and food are symbiotic. But the disconnect between

the realities of restaurant kitchens and the accommodations of their patrons is troubling. We are surrounded by food culture, yet completely disconnected from the actual experience. In exploring the expansive theme of food as a journalist for almost a decade, I’ve made it my mission to seek out stories that shed the layers with which we’ve insulated ourselves and others. When immigrant workers are given agency, we can talk about their work in Southern food with the respect and consideration it deserves, understanding its value as an expressive language, as art, as cultural capital, as intellectual property. I wish this weren’t an essay, that I could have instead shared the myriad stories of cooks like Ortega who are still here, making fantastic food with artistry and pride. But our democracy is dangerously swaying toward what resembles a regime. And cooks in the South are keeping their heads down, today more than ever. Food may be a tool for economic survival in America, but culinary skills have limited power. We are actively participating in a consumer culture that keeps its blinders on, focusing on American generosity and its semblance of opportunity. We celebrate the wonderful food of immigrants, lick our fingers clean, and ignore reality. The cooks who feed us, who run our vibrant food culture, don’t have the same rights as eaters. If we don’t acknowledge that, we are feeding into a politics of fear and disempowerment.

JazzSynergy 25 March 8-10pm

Please join us for another great evening of straight ahead jazz by some of the best local musicians. This is their third month at The Strowd and it just keeps getting better!

THE STROWD • 159 E FRANKLIN ST CHAPEL HILL NC • THESTROWD.COM

ack in Mexico, Ortega and I tear through warm tortillas and fold each piece between our fingers, scooping chicken mole into our mouths at his mother’s kitchen table. He hands me a can of Tecate Light just as Mama Conchita presents her copy of Bill Smith’s cookbook, Seasoned in the South, which she has stored in her dining room armoire. She shows me Smith’s handwritten dedication to her on the title page. Before I can put my beer down, Ortega grabs the book from his mother and skims quickly through the pages to a recipe for blueberry soup. “Read this,” he says, pointing to Smith’s introduction, which reads: “‘I have tasted your blueberry soup. It is terrible.’ So pronounced one of my cooks, Luis Ortega, when I put this soup on the menu.” Ortega can’t stop laughing. “Have you had it? It sucks,” he says, drawing out the uh like a Southern teenager. Ortega and I are talking food again, the way any food writer and chef would. I wish he could be here to tell you all about it. vbouloubasis@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 35

HOW TO HELP

Local nonprofits serving immigrant and refugee communities BY N I JAH MCK I N N EY

hroughout the Triangle, organizations are working to help local immigrants and refugees, either through advocacy or legal representation or by connecting them with vital services they need to acclimate to their new communities. If you’re looking for a way to help, these are all worthwhile nonprofits that could use your support.

CHURCH WORLD SERVICE-DURHAM

112 South Duke Street, Durham, 27701 (919) 680-4310, cwsrdu.org CWS-Durham, which opened in 2009 and helps resettle about three hundred refugees every year, connects incoming refugees with community resources and social services.

CIR (COUNCIL ON IMMIGRANT RELATIONS)

3033 Stonybrook Drive, #3, Raleigh, 27604 (919) 322-0360, ciraleigh.org Founded in 2006 as Centro Internacional de Raleigh, CIR seeks to organize and engage churches and community organizations to assist under-resourced international communities.

COME OUT & SHOW THEM

comeoutandshowthem.com Raleigh activist couple Tina and Grayson Haver Currin’s Come Out & Show Them has broadened its focus from HB 2 to immigrants and refugees through its Welcome to Raleigh, Y’all (and companion Welcome to Durham, Y’all) campaign.

D.E.A.R. FOUNDATION

4917 Waters Edge Drive, Raleigh, 27502 (919) 803-0559, dearfoundation.org Since 2013, the D.E.A.R. Foundation has sought to protect immigrant rights through legal-empowerment programs and has represented more than one thousand immigrants in court and before boards of appeals and administrative agencies.

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EL CENTRO HISPANO 2000 Chapel Hill Road, #26A, Durham, 27707 (919) 687-4635, elcentronc.org Over the last twenty-five years, El Centro Hispano has grown from a small program in a Durham church basement into the largest grassroots Latino organization in North Carolina, providing education, support, and health care services to more than ten thousand community members.

EL PUEBLO

2321 Crabtree Boulevard, Raleigh, 27604 (919) 835-1525, elpueblo.org For more than fifteen years, El Pueblo has been lobbying the General Assembly on behalf of immigrant communities, advocating for improved farmworker conditions, in-state tuition for certain undocumented immigrants, and access to driver’s licenses for DACA recipients, among other things.

THE HISPANIC FAMILY CENTER

2013 Raleigh Boulevard, Raleigh, 27604 (919) 873-0094, cpfhraleigh.org Founded in 1997, the Hispanic Family Center works to develop education, health, and jobtraining programs to help Hispanic families better integrate into the community.

MONTAGNARD HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION

1720 Hillsborough Street, Raleigh, 27605 (919) 828-8185, mhro.org The MHRO works to promote human rights and self-determination for the indigenous people of the central highlands of Vietnam, and advocates on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers who have fled persecution in Vietnam.

REFUGEE COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP

110 West Main Street, #2G, Carrboro, 27510 (919) 590-5910 refugeecommunitypartnership.org The RCP seeks to build a supportive infrastructure for newly relocated refugee families, providing advocacy, education, and food-assistance programs.

SOUTHERN COALITION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

1415 West N.C. Highway 54, #101, Durham, 27707 (919) 323-3380 southerncoalition.org Since 2007, the SCSJ has worked with economically disadvantaged communities and communities of color to advance social and economic justice through research and legal advocacy.

U.S. COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS, NORTH CAROLINA

3824 Barrett Drive, #200, Raleigh, 27609 (919) 334-0072 refugees.org/field-office/north-carolina Over the last decade, the USCRI’s North Carolina office has resettled some three thousand refugees, connecting them with service providers and programs to help them get on their feet.

WORLD RELIEF DURHAM

801 Gilbert Street, Durham, 27701 (919) 286-3496 worldreliefdurham.org A faith-based organization, World Relief Durham works with churches to “think biblically about refugees arriving to the Triangle,” according to its website, as well as support services encompassing everything from greeting incoming refugees at the airport to helping them find apartments to assisting them with getting social security cards.

Your week. Every Wednesday. News • Music • Arts • Food

indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 35

3.22–3.29

Martha Graham Dance Company

STAGE

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLINA PERFORMING ARTS

THURSDAY, MARCH 23 & FRIDAY, MARCH 24

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY

The phrase “a ninety-one-year-old modern dance company” has a dizzying, delicious dissonance to it. But the numbers don’t lie: it was 1926 when choreographer Martha Graham created a troupe to perform her groundbreaking works and perpetuate them after her death. In recent years, the company has diversified its offerings through new commissions by artists influenced by Graham’s signature methods and style. Carolina Performing Arts commissioned Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Mosaic for its current Sacred/ Secular: A Sufi Journey series. Critics at the work’s New York premiere last month praised its “sensuous Middle Eastern movement quality” (BroadwayWorld.com) and “transcendent, mysterious effects” (The Village Voice). At UNC, the evening also includes I used to love you, maverick Annie-B Parson’s dance theater response to Graham’s 1941 work on marital infidelities, Punch and the Judy. —Byron Woods UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL, CHAPEL HILL 7:30 p.m. Thurs./8 p.m. Fri., $10–$39, www.carolinaperformingarts.org

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WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

Jóhann Jóhannsson and ACME MUSIC

PHOTO BY WOJCIECH WANDZEL

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

JOHANN JOHANNSSON: DRONE MASS

Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson is best known for his award-winning The Theory of Everything soundtrack (he’s scoring the forthcoming Blade Runner reboot, too), but he can’t be pigeonholed as simply a film composer. He arrives in Durham with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble for a performance of his 2015 piece Drone Mass, which is neither a drone, a mass, nor a mass of drones. It contains bits of each but is not beholden to any of them. Over the course of ten movements, the hourlong work uses a strange, vowel-only text from the Coptic Gospel and other Gnostic texts to update various traditions of medieval and Renaissance counterpoint. Eight singers, a string quartet, and electronics cultivate a fair share of drones, but Jóhannsson variously evokes the sprightly interlocks of David Lang, the ecstatic depths of Arvo Pärt, and the buoyant explorations of Meredith Monk, all while keeping to an appropriately ritualistic theme. —Dan Ruccia DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM, DURHAM 8 p.m., $10–$32, www.dukeperformances. com

STAGE THURSDAY, MARCH 23– SATURDAY, APRIL 1

THE MIRACULOUS AND THE MUNDANE

Illness sometimes threatens much more than the person who’s sick. In this new workshop production at Manbites, Percy Nelson is a Durhamite who has seen his family through good times and bad. But now that he’s beginning to show early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, his condition places new stress on his relationships with his children and their ties with one another. In his first new play since Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green garnered our highest rating in 2015, acclaimed local playwright Howard L. Craft asks what holds an African-American family together when its patriarch fades. Joseph Megel directs this Manbites Dog Theater/StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance coproduction, starring Lakeisha Coffey, Trevor Johnson, Ron Lee McGill, and Irving W. Truitt, Jr. —Byron Woods

MUSIC

THURSDAY, MARCH 23

SIERRA HULL

Twenty-five-year old mandolin whiz Sierra Hull was slated to perform at Fletcher Opera Theater in early January, but the show was iced out last-minute due to a storm—such is the way winter transpires in these parts. At the time, Hull was up for a Best Folk Album Grammy for her excellent LP Weighted Mind, and though she lost out to Sarah Jarosz’s Undercurrent in February, it’s unlikely that that nomination will be Hull’s last. She has an impressive ear for graceful, gorgeous melodies, and her understated playing is consistently stunning. Songs like “Black River” are almost chilling, with Hull’s detailed, restrained ruminations demanding every second of your attention as they unfold. —Allison Hussey FLETCHER OPERA THEATER, RALEIGH 8 p.m., $22–$29, www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com

MANBITES DOG THEATER, DURHAM 8:15 Weds.–Sat./2 p.m. Sun., $5–$15, www.manbitesdogtheater.org

ART

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

THE MOTHERSHIP LAUNCH PARTY In an upcoming issue, we’ll report on the merger of coworking space Mercury Studio and local-maker retail space The Makery into one entity called The Mothership. The two businesses have long shared a building on Geer Street, but now they’re making it official, with joint ownership and new branding that features powerful alien/ woman hybrids and a voluptuous spotted sphinx. The merger will mean expanded offerings for Mercury members and the public, and it comes with a new mission statement that declares, “We want to live in a world where anyone with an idea meant to improve the world can find a place where they are welcomed, heard, supported and cheered.” To celebrate this union, The Makery will host a launch party on Saturday with performers to be announced. Stop by to learn more before The Mothership lands. —Hannah Pitstick THE MAKERY, DURHAM 5–9 p.m., free, www.themakeryatmercury.com

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

BLACKALICIOUS AT MOTORCO (P. 41), DIVAS! AT RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE (P. 46), GABRIELLE GOLIATH AT DUKE UNIVERSITY (P. 44), JOHN SCALZI AT VARIOUS BOOKSTORES (P. 47), TALKING BLACK IN AMERICA AT NCSU’S HUNT LIBRARY (P. 47), WXYC TURNS 40 AT NIGHTLIGHT (P. 42) INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 39

3/22 THE JAPANESE HOUSE W/BLAISE MOORE ($15/$18; SHOW MOVED FROM CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM) 3/23 SOHN** W/ WILLIAM DOYLE ($17/$20) 3/24 JOHNNYSWIM LD W/ BRUCE SUDANO SO OUT 3/25 HIPPO CAMPUS W/MAGIC CITY HIPPIES ($13/$15) 3/28 THE MENZINGERS W/ JEFF ROSENSTOCK, ROZWELL KID ($17/$20)

TH 3/23 @CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

SABA 3/25 LAURA REED AND REBEKAH TODD & THE ODDYSSEY ($10/$12)

3/29 COREY SMITH W/ JACOB POWELL ($20)

3/29 CHERRY GLAZERR W/LALA LALA , IAN SWEET ($13/$15) 3/30 THE SUITCASE JUNKET W/ DUPONT BROTHERS ($10/$12)

3/31 BENEFIT FOR BILL LADD FEATURING:

3/31 TRANSPORTATION,

THE CONNELLS

W/THEROMANSPRING,ARROWBEACH($10) 4/1 DINOSAUR JR

W/ EASY ACTION

4/2LAMBCHOPW/XYLOURISWHITE($15)

TH 3/23

SOHN

WED, MAR 22

BAT FANGS, SUNNYSLOPES 4/1 STRIKE A CHORD WITH

4/7 CARBON LEAF W/ ME AND MY BROTHER ($16/$20)

MUSICAL EMPOWERMENT, CAROLINA UKULELE ENSEMBLE, THE RED CLAY RAMBLERS, BELOW THE LINE, AUTUMN BRAND, NICK WHITE (AND FRIENDS)($10)

4/2 CARRIE ELKIN 4/8 DIRTY BOURBON RIVER W/ DANNY SCHMIDT ($12/$15) SHOW AND ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES ($10/$12) 4/5 LORELEI W/ ANTENORA, ANAMORPH ($7) 4/10 GOGOL BORDELLO ($27/$30) 4/7 NORTH ELEMENTARY 4/11 WHY? W/ ESKIMEAUX ($16/$18) RECORD RELEASE PARTY W/ THE WYRMS, SE WARD (FULL BAND) 4/14 WXYC 00'S DANCE! 4/8 DRIFTWOOD 4/15 MIKE POSNER AND THE LEGENDARY MIKE POSNER 4/9 BIRDS OF CHICAGO ($12/$15) BAND ($20/$24) 4/17 CASHMERE CAT ($17/$20) 4/13 MATT PRYOR & DAN ANDRIANO ($13/$15) 4/18 CHRONIXX W/ KELISSA, MAX GLAZER ($22.50/$25) 4/20 FOXYGEN W/ GABRIELLA COHEN ( $18/$20) 4/21 JUMP, LIT TLE CHILDRENSOLD T OU

4/17 SALLIE FORD W/ MOLLY BURCH ($10/$12)

4/24 AN EVENING WITH NOAH & ABBY GUNDERSEN ($16/$18) 4/25 PARACHUTE W/ KRIS ALLEN ($18/$20)

4/22 SORORITY NOISE W/ SINAI VESSEL, THE OBSESSIVES ($13/$15)

4/26 DOPAPOD W/ GROOVE FETISH ($13/$15)

4/27 THE WILD REEDS W/ BLANK RANGE ($12/$14)

5/2 THE BLACK LIPS ($14/$16)

5/10 SLOWDIVE W/ CASKET GIRLS ($36/$39) 5/11 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS PUP W/PRAWN ($15/$17) 5/14 SARA WATKINS SEATED SHOW ($18/$22) 5/16 WHITNEY W/ NATALIE PRASS ($16)

4/28 SARAH SHOOK & THE

DISARMERS AND TWO DOLLAR PISTOLS ($10/$12) 4/29 THE DEAD TONGUES / LOAMLANDS W/MOLLY SARLE ($10)

4/30 SEAN ROWE W/ FAYE WEBSTER 5/2 SWEET CRUDE W/ MOTEL RADIO ($10) 5/3 CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH W/ LAURA GIBSON ($16) 4/22 SORORITY NOISE W/ SINAI VESSEL, THE OBSESSIVES ($13/$15) 5/5 MELODIME ($10/$12)

5/17 NEW FOUND GLORY W/ TRASH BOAT ($22/$26)

5/6 SHANNON MCNALLY ($17/$20)

5/19 PERFUME GENIUS W/ SERPENTWITHFEET ($17/$19)

5/7 LETTERS FROM THE FIRE W/ KALEIDO ($12/$14)

5/20 SAY ANYTHING / BAYSIDE W/ HOT ROD CIRCUIT ($21/$23) 6/3 DELTA RAE ($25/$28)

5/8 THE BESNARD LAKES W/ THE LIFE AND TIMES ($12) 5/10 TWIN PEAKS W/ CHROME PONY, POST ANIMAL ($15)

6/5 CAR SEAT HEADREST W/ NAP EYES ($17/$20) 6/6 THE ORWELLS ($18/$20) 7/19 JOHN MORELAND SEATED SHOW ($13/$15) 11/7 THE STRUMBELLAS ($22/$25)

5/19 HAAS KOWERT TICE ($12/$15) 5/21 WAY DOWN WANDERERS ($11/$13) 5/23 DEAD MAN WINTER (FEAT. DAVE SIMONETT OF TRAMPLED BY TURTLES) 5/24 TOBIN SPROUT W/ ELF POWER ($13/$15)

CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM 3/23 SABA W/ SYLVAN LACUE, JOSEPH CHILLIAMS, MFNMELO, KOURVIOISIER ($15/$18) 3/24 THE FAUX HAWKS THE CINNAMON GIRLS, "SEQUEL TO ZIGGY STARDUST" LISTENING PARTY

6/17 BARNS COURTNEY ($14/$16) ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO) 5/6 BOMBADIL W/CLAIRE HITCHINS ($18/$20) 5/14 ROBYN HITCHCOCK**($20/$23) PINHOOK (DURHAM) 4/22 SERATONES ($12)

4/19 ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE W/ BABYLON ($10/$12) 4/20 SCOTT MILLER ($12/$14)

5/5 ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO W/ SAUL ZONANA ($26/$30)

6/15 MARSHALL CRENSHAW Y LOS STRAITJACKETS ($20)

4/24 MATTHEW LOGAN VASQUEZ (OF DELTA SPIRIT) $13/$15 KINGS (RAL) 5/3 ANDY SHAUF W/ JULIA JACKLIN ($13/$15)

4/22 JUNIOR BROWN ($22/$25)

4/30 AB-SOUL ($22.50/$25)

6/9 JONATHAN BYRD 6/14 JOAN SHELLEY W/ JAKE XERXES FUSSELL ($13/$15)

4/15 DIET CIG W/ DADDY ISSUES, FISH DAD ($10)

4/23 THE STEELDRIVERS ($28/$35)

4/28 SOMO ($25/$30)

SA 3/25

HIPPO CAMPUS

4/14 KAWEHI ($12/$15)

4/18 SWEET SPIRIT W/TOMA, RAVARY ($10/$12)

5/25 VALLEY QUEEN AND CHRISTOPHER PAUL STELLING

5/10 RUN RIVER NORTH W/ ARKELLS, COBI ($15/$17) RED HAT AMPH. (RAL) 5/14 THE

CAROLINA THEATRE (DUR) 4/14 WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE W/ERIN MCKEOWN THE RITZ (RAL) (TICKETS VIA TICKETMASTER)

5/1 THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS W/ WAXAHATCHEE ($30) NC MUSEUM OF ART (RAL) 5/6 MIPSO W/ RIVER WHYLESS 6/5 FOUR VOICES:

JOAN BAEZ, MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER AND INDIGO GIRLS AMY RAY SOLD & EMILY SALIERS OUT 6/13 KALEO 6/18 JASON ISBELL

AND THE 400 UNIT 6/24 SHERYL CROW 7/22 MANDOLIN ORANGE W/ JOE PUG 7/31 BELLE AND SEBASTIAN AND ANDREW BIRD 8/1 AMERICAN ACOUSTIC TOUR W/

PUNCH BROTHERS & I’M WITH HER HAW RIVER BALLROOM 4/1 PATRICK WATSON W/ TREVOR SENSOR ($20/$22) 6/11 JAMES VINCENT MCMORROW ($20/$22) DPAC (DURHAM) 4/20, 21 STEVE MARTIN AND MARTIN SHORT WITH

STEEP CANYON RANGERS

5/26 ZACH WILLIAMS (OF THE LONE BELLOW) ($17/$20)

SHAKORI HILLS COMM. CTR. 6/22 LAKE STREET DIVE ($25; ON SALE 3/29)

6/7 GRIFFIN HOUSE ($20/$23)

9/30 SYLVAN ESSO W/ TUNE-YARDS, WYE OAK, HELADO NEGRO & MORE

($10/$12)

CATSCRADLE.COM ★ 919.967.9053 ★ 300 E. MAIN STREET ★ CARRBORO

**Asterisks denote advance tickets @ schoolkids records in raleigh & chapel hill order tix online at ticketfly.com ★ we serve carolina brewery beer on tap! ★ we are a non-smoking club 40 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

music

3.22– 3.29

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

WWW.INDYWEEK.COM

CONTRIBUTORS: Amanda Black (AB), Elizabeth Bracy (EB), Timothy Bracy (TB), Grant Britt (GB), Zoe Camp (ZC), Spencer Griffith (SG), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Dan Ruccia (DR), David Ford Smith (DS), Eric Tullis (ET),Patrick Wall (PW)

MUSICAL EMPOWERMENT!

SOLD OUT

W/ YOUNG MISTER, KATIE ROSE

TU 3/28

THE MENZINGERS

CAROLINA THEATRE: Stephin Merritt & The Magnetic Fields; 8 p.m., $10–$55. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): The Japanese House, Blaise Moore; 9 p.m., $18. • THE CAVE: Floor Model: Ginger Wagg, Mike Geary; 9 p.m., $5. • DUKE’S NELSON MUSIC ROOM: Anders Paulsson; 5 p.m., free. • KINGS: Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Currence; 8 p.m., $15–$18. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Rising Appalachia; 8 p.m., $20. • LOCAL 506: Cosmonauts, The Molochs, S. E. Ward; 9 p.m., $10. • NIGHTLIGHT: Pamela_and Her Sons, Steph Russ, de_Plata, Oceanette, Chucha, Gudiya; 8:30 p.m., $8. • THE PINHOOK: Dude York, Paws; 9 p.m., $10. • POUR HOUSE: The Blue Eyed Bettys, Kate Rhudy; 9 p.m., $8–$10. • RUBY DELUXE: Matt Stevenson, CALAPSE, Lady Fingers; 9 p.m., $5.

THU, MAR 23 Chicano Batman NO CAPES He doesn’t wear a mask or sport a cape, nor does he get to gigs by sliding down a bat pole. Even so, Chicano Batman embodies the sleek elegance and raw power of the Dark Knight in his music. Whether he’s wailing in a Curtis Mayfield falsetto on “Friendship Is a Small Boat in a Storm,” or offering slinky jazz with wah-wah-fueled psychedelic blaxploitation on “Angel Child,” Chicano Batman’s musical justice abides. With 79.5 and Sad Girl. —GB [LOCAL 506, $13–$15/7 P.M.]

performing Bach and a pair of English Renaissance composers alongside recent works by Henry Cowell and Viktor Kalabis, as well as a stunning translation of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase. —DR [DUKE’S NELSON MUSIC ROOM, $10–$28/8 P.M.]

various waves of emo. LAIRS rounds out this week’s Local Band Local Beer bill with atmospheric alt-rock that’s fond of psychedelic detours. —SG [POUR HOUSE, $3–$5/9:30 P.M.]

Horse Lords

CHI Neither rapper CROWN would advocate such divisiveness, but we must choose between Chance the Rapper and fellow Chicago rapper Saba as the city’s heir apparent to Kanye West. For this occasion, all mics point toward Saba, on the strength of his elegant Bucket List Project debut from late last year. Enough with all of the upliftment rap—Saba’s heavy lifting is much more inspirational. Also with Sylvan Lacue, Joseph Chilliams, and Mfnmelo. —ET [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $15–$18/9 P.M.]

FRIENDLY Baltimore’s Horse NAZGUL Lords revel in complexity, in the joy of tightly interlocking parts that want to fly in every direction at once but somehow combine to form something glorious. They’re awash in the power of a lockstep beat that subtly shifts and evolves over time, in the emotional force of a lopsided groove, in the love of the rock-infused minimalism of Rhys Chatham and Terry Riley and the avant-rock instrumentals of Can and Captain Beefheart. It’s pure bliss. With Drippy Inputs and Enemy Waves. —DR [NEPTUNES PARLOUR, $8–$10/9:30 P.M.]

Inter Arma RVA HEFT Richmond’s Inter Arma owes a lot to the seminal boundary-free metal band Neurosis, but moreso in philosophy than aesthetic. Inter Arma ingests and digests the broad spectrum of metal’s many forms—doom, prog, death, etc.—for heavy rippers and lumberers that burn with frenetic energy and shine with avantgarde flourishes. —PW [THE PINHOOK, $10/9 P.M.]

Mehan Esfahani

Local Band Local Beer: Zephyranthes

MODERN The harpsichord PLUCK seems permanently attached to a vision of the Baroque and the seventeenth century, which ignores the somewhat less grand but nonetheless significant tradition of music for the instrument from the past century. Mahan Esfahani, a young Iranian-American harpsichordist, maps out parts of that history in this concert,

PUNK Zephyranthes’ FWD frenetic, adventurous art punk relies on improvfriendly opportunities, wherein spaced-out vocals collide with mathy, jazzy instrumental intricacies that spin out into noise, suggesting a middle ground between At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta. Soccer Tees adds raw, aggressive tunes that split the difference between pop-punk and

Saba

Sohn MEHLondon-born LECTRO singer-songwriter Christopher Michael Taylor’s major attributes are a clarion falsetto and a clever facility for transforming his slow-burning, lovelorn R&B into plausibly danceable EDM over the course of a single track. His major weakness is a risk-averse sameness that threatens to render his considerable talents tedious. William Doyle opens. —TB [CAT’S CRADLE, $17–$20/9 P.M.]

Sofi Tukker JUNGLE Of all the microPOP genre tags of the last few years, “tropical house” is consistently one of the most overused and least useful. From the get-go, upbeat duo Sofi Tukker hs been lumped in with this vague trend-piece genre. That’s unfortunate, as their jittery, memorable Portuguese art pop has little to do with faux-Balearic EDM. Imagine Sylvan Esso if they got really into seventies Brazilian funk records. With DJ LP Giobbi. —DS [KINGS, $12/9 P.M.]

ALSO ON THURSDAY CAROLINA THEATRE: Black Violin; 8 p.m., $29. • DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: Celtic Woman; 7 p.m. • FLETCHER OPERA THEATER: Sierra Hull; 8 p.m., $22–$29. See page 39. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Hippie Sabotage, Kur, Mt. Crushmore; 7:30 p.m., $20–$100. • MOTORCO: Leyla McCalla, Beauty World; 8 p.m., $12–$15 • SLIM’S: Drunk on the Regs, Sexy Neighbor, T-Tops, Apes of Fire; 8 p.m., $5.

NITY CALENDAR

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PHOTO BY NICOLE MAGO

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

BLACKALICIOUS Way before actor Shia LaBeouf’s recent display of surprisingly impressive bars on SiriusXM, actor Daniel Radcliffe had already graduated from Harry Potter nerdom to rap wizard, three years earlier, on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show. There, in front of millions of viewers, he effortlessly rapped the entirety of “Alphabet Aerobics,” by California hip-hop duo Blackalicious. “I’ve always had kind of an obsession with memorizing complicated, lyrically intricate and fast songs,” said Radcliffe after the deed. “It’s a disease,” he added. In hip-hop’s favor, Blackalicious frontman Gift of Gab must also suffer from a similar disease. He boasts a heroic penchant for springing verbose, intelligent rhyme schemes and themes onto compositions—especially those of his longtime resident producer and beat master, Chief Xcel. The duo’s major-label debut, 2002’s Blazing Arrow, gave them ample room to create high-functioning phases of tranquility (“Make You Feel That Way”), mad science (“Chemical Calisthenics”), and exhibitionism (“Green Light: Now Begin”). And then there’s the Afrofuturistic bluesology of “First in Flight,” which featured Gil Scott-Heron on one of the only recorded hip-hop collaborations of his lifetime. While not as cozy as Blazing Arrows,

Blackalicious’s 2005 follow-up, The Craft, was an aggressive push to let some of Xcel’s musicality catch up to the alt-rap approach of his frontman, Gift of Gab, who had just released his solo album 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up. Produced entirely by two of hip-hop’s heaviest beat tacticians, Jake One and Vitamin D, 4th Dimensional delivered Gift of Gab back into the arms of his lyric fetishizers who appreciated rapid-fire runs like, “Riffin’ in the octave of the infinite provocative/come get within a rocket ship/dimensions of a positive/ inventions that is monstrous.” With the recent release of the “It’s Just Practice” single alongside an announcement of a forthcoming solo EP titled Rejoice! Rappers Are Rapping Again!, it seems as though Gift of Gab is back in the rapper’s seat, even if Chief Xcel isn’t riding shotgun this time around. Xcel is still his deejay, though, so the two will always perform together, even if the beats are from friends of the family. Now your job is to polish up your memorization of “Alphabet Aerobics” so you’re not out-rapped by a boy who’s known more for playing Quidditch than he is for emceeing. —Eric Tullis MOTORCO MUSIC HALL, DURHAM 9 p.m., $17–$20, www.motorcomusic.com

Hilary Hahn & Robert Levin NOT Hilary Hahn is a SOLO modern violin star. Long recognized as one of the finest practitioners of her instrument, she’s a rare talent who combines technical mastery with grace and artistry. And unlike the maestros of the past, she’ll appear on grand stages as well as do a Tiny Desk Concert. She’s joined by renowned pianist and composer Robert Levin. —DK [DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM, $10–$48/8 P.M.]

Amigo

The Klassiks

TWANGY Amigo’s power pop TRIO seems born out of a desert rather than the cacti-less Charlotte, though dollops of doo-wop vocals and garage rock gusto make the three-piece tough to pin down. Charleston quartet The High Divers brings soaring, soulful Southern anthems while locals The Antique Hearts deliver harmony-rich roots rock. Amigo and The High Divers also play Slim’s on Saturday with Pinto. —SG [THE CAVE, $5/9 P.M.]

MAD Though the Art of SKILLS Cool Festival likes to be on the leading edge of things, this year’s iteration of the boundary-breaking jazz-roots festival kicks off with a dance party that emphasizes the klassiks— spelled with two Ks for added bass—which means nothing but dance-floor dynamite all night long, courtesy of DJ Skillz. —DK [POUR HOUSE, $10–$15/9 P.M]

Dante High

SNOOZE For more than a ROCK decade, the L.A.-based Local Natives have trafficked in a particular sort of wide-screen, po-faced, populist rock similar in scale and attitude to contemporaries like Arcade Fire and The National. Singer Taylor Rice renders the band’s rhythmically complex, melodically straightforward, and oddly humorless tunes with a wounded yelp, the better to confer the unremitting seriousness of the occasion. The unfailingly vague lyrics, however, fail to explain much about the unwaveringly dour mood. Little Scream opens. —EB [HAW RIVER BALLROOM, $26–$28/8 P.M.]

NEW/ With Lost in the FOUND Trees, Ari Picker offered ornate and emotional songs that, from a pop-rock foundation, blossomed with string sections. But with his latest project, Dante High, Picker’s veering in a wholly different direction, favoring slick, synthy rock; single “Parking Lot Soul” is a bouncy downer in a similar vein as Future Islands. He celebrates the release of his debut EP as Dante High in Chapel Hill. —AH [NIGHTLIGHT, $10/9 P.M.]

The Faux Hawks MOCK The Faux Hawks—a ROCK new ensemble featuring members of The Old Ceremony, The Connells, and The Mayflies USA—covers Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home after The Cinnamon Girls (whose roster is made up of Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. alumni) tackle Neil Young’s Zuma. A multimedia listening party celebrates The Fall and Rise of John Elderkin and ¡Moonbeams No Mas!, a conceptual follow-up to Ziggy Stardust spearheaded by The Popes’ Elderkin. —SG [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $10/8 P.M.]

Local Natives

March Madness GO Though neither TEAMS! bands nor teams were locked-in at press time, this Sweet 16 party promises Jock Jam covers from locals, including Durty Dub and Less Western, a slam dunk contest, deejays spinning in-arena favorites, and, of course, a big-screen viewing experience for the evening’s slate of NCAA basketball games. Wear team attire for free entry. —SG [KINGS, FREE–$5/8 P.M.]

Frank McComb SOUL As a kid in Cleveland, JAZZ Ohio, Frank McComb showed prodigious piano skills. By age twenty, he was leading the R&B outfit Rude Boys and working with the legendary Gamble and Huff; collaborations with greats like Prince and Chaka Khan followed, as did a solo career marred by bad deals. McComb does it all. In the words of Jill Scott, “He can play his behind off, and he can sing his behind off, and then he has the gall to write his behind off.” —DK [BEYÙ CAFFÈ, $28–$30/7 & 10 P.M.]

Amanda Miguel & Diego Verdaguer COUPLE Need a sequined, CROONS vibrato-heavy reminder that love still exists in this cruel world? Celebrating their decades-long professional and romantic relationship, ArgentineMexican pop superstars Amanda Miguel and Diego Verdaguer stop at The Ritz to share their tried and true brand of balladic love with the Triangle. —AB [THE RITZ, $45/8 P.M.].

N.C. Symphony: Unremembered GOTHIC Of all the music the TERROR North Carolina Symphony is performing for the SHIFT Festival in Washington, D.C., next weekend, the full performance of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Unremembered is the most exciting. The work is a masterful thirteen-song cycle that features singers Shara Nova (of My Brightest Diamond), Padma Newsome, and D.M. Stith. The lyrics, by poet Nathaniel Bellows, are studies of childhood shot through with the gothic terror of the Brothers Grimm, tales of butchered swans, witches, ghosts, and slaughterhouses. Snider’s writing invokes Björk’s Vespertine, Joanna Newsom’s Ys, John Adams operas, Meredith Monk’s tightly intertwining vocal writing, and tastefully appropriate bursts of dissonance. —DR [CAM RALEIGH, $30/7:30 P.M.]

NE-HI RIGHT ON Ne-Hi is a no-BS, DIY rock band with surprisingly cinematic roots. The quartet initially formed with the express purpose of scoring a college classmate’s film, and INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 41

though the film never came to fruition, the band sure as hell did, quickly amassing a reputation for whirling dervish jangle-rock. The band’s 2013 self-titled debut plays as the soundtrack to some nondescript basement rager, NE-HI’s newer Offers doles out a more pointed, polished listen, primed for an above-ground party. Like-minded D.C. punks Flasher open, plus Tigerdog. —ZC [DUKE COFFEEHOUSE, $5, FREE WITH DUKE ID/7 P.M., $5]

Runaway Spring Release Party BRAND Runaway’s latest CREW pivot was the quiet release of its new athletic line of dry wicking apparel—sorry, no yoga pants yet. But this weekend, in rowdy rap fashion, the busy brand celebrates the release of its fifteenth seasonal collection with the help of all-star party agents Vacay, WELL$, Ace Henderson, Queen Plz, P.A.T. Junior, and Young Gunna. —ET [MOTORCO, $7–$10/9 P.M.]

Three Dog Night NO BULL- Seventies rock FROGS warhorses who made a killing with soft-soap interpretations of songs by everyone from Paul Williams to Randy Newman, Three Dog Night’s commercial prime was marked by an uncanny ability to render everything it touched equally cloying and skeezy, in the manner of the band’s signature hit, “Joy to the World.” Walker County opens. —TB [CAROLINA THEATRE, $46–$201/8 P.M.] ALSO ON FRIDAY BLUE NOTE GRILL: Dwayne Dopsie & The Zydeco Hellcats; 9 p.m., $20. Duke Street Dogs; 6-8 p.m., free. • CAT’S CRADLE: JOHNNYSWIM; 8 p.m., $22–$82. • DEEP SOUTH: Popunkapalooza 2017; 8 p.m., $7–$10. • THE KRAKEN: Mel Melton and the Wicked Mojos. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Rev Horton Heat, Unknown Hinson, The Goddamn Gallows, Birdcloud; 8 p.m., $20. • LOCAL 506: Dexter Romweber; 9 p.m., $8–$10. • THE PINHOOK: Erie Choir, Today’s Forecast; 8 p.m., $7. • POUR HOUSE: Matt Hires, Kyle Cox; 6 p.m., $10. • SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS (RALEIGH): John Foley, Milk N Honey, Love Like Ruby; 7 p.m. • THE STATION: Twilighter, Kitty Box, The Johnnys; 8 p.m., $6. • UNC’S HILL HALL: Karen Walwyn; 7:30 p.m. 42 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

SAT, MAR 25

Selector Dub Narcotic

Grandchildren

The most recent project from longtime indie scene maven and K Records founder Calvin Johnson, Selector Dub Narcotic continues the artist’s long-running fascination with dub and dance music as refracted through the naive, low-budget man-child posture that has defined Johnson’s aesthetics as far back as Beat Happening some three decades ago. While Johnson’s genuine affinity for dub music is evident in his customarily effusive approach, it’s less clear that he possesses the finesse to really pull it off. —TB [THE CAVE, $12.50/9 P.M.]

SCATTER Grandchildren SHOT started with singer-songwriter Aleks Martray splicing sampled beats onto his four-track folk songs, but the project has mutated into a larger psych-folk-electronic ensemble featuring a bevy of acoustic, electric, and electronic musicians. At its best, the Philly troupe recalls Dirty Projectors’ fractured pop, but the group’s far-reaching palette doesn’t always gel so cleanly. —PW [KINGS, $12/9 P.M.]

La Arrolladora Banda Limón NOT One of the few SOUR genres of music that continues to make its living through touring, banda seems to grow in popularity every year. René Camacho’s perennial banda outfit, La Arrolladora Banda Limón, offers equal parts plaintive vocals and rollicking brass. —AB [THE RITZ, $45/8 P.M.]

The Maywood’s FourYear Anniversary Party HEAVY Every town needs a HOME place to bang one’s head, and for almost half a decade, the small bar and rock room in an industrial park on Maywood Avenue, about a mile outside of downtown Raleigh, has provided a home for riff-oriented rock and metal. Helping The Maywood celebrate four years of head-banging and horn-throwing are power-metal traditionalists Widow, thrash titans Blatant Disarray, raunchy blues punks The Hell No, and border-crossing riff titans Bedowyn. —PW [THE MAYWOOD, $4/8:30 P.M.]

Merlin the Girl BEAT Twisted bangers MAGIC come quick and beguiling from San Francisco’s Merlin the Girl. Her handful of mixes on SoundCloud suggests that her ear for finely crafted house and techno selections is on point. Plenty of deejays have great taste, but with no cover charge, this set has the potential for a high return on a very small investment. —DS [THE STATION, FREE/10 P.M.]

OK DUB

ALSO ON SATURDAY ARCANA: DJ Chela, DJ PlayPlay: Spectrum; 10 p.m., $5–$10 donation. • BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Frank McComb; 7 & 9 p.m. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Red Dirt Revelators; 8 p.m., $8. • CAT’S CRADLE: Hippo Campus, Magic City Hippies; 8 p.m., $13–$15. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Laura Reed, Rebekah Todd & The Odyssey; 9 p.m., $8–$10. • DEEP SOUTH: Motorjunkie, Last Call Messiahs, The Gray; 9 p.m. • DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM: Johann Johannsson’s Drone Mass; 8 p.m., $10–$32. See page 39. • THE KRAKEN: Dexter Romweber, Rodney Henry, Western Star. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Whiskey Myers, The Steel Woods; 8 p.m., $10. • THE PINHOOK: Nana Grizol, The Grand Shell Game; 9 p.m., $10. • POUR HOUSE: Jenni Lyn, The Honeycutters; 9 p.m., $12–$15. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Al Strong Quintet; 8 p.m., $10–$20. • SLIM’S: Amigo, High Divers, Pinto; 9 p.m., $5. • ST FRANCIS UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: The Red Priest of Venice; 7:30 p.m., $20–$22.

SUN, MAR 26 The Jam Factory NU JAMZ Longtime Raleigh dance heads probably already know Chocolate Rice, aka Ray Coleman. He co-helmed the popular Fooly Cooly series that steamed up many late Friday nights at Neptunes a few years back. The Jam Factory, his latest monthly Sunday-night offering, looks to offer more low-key thrills. This opening salvo features the Triangle’s own Hanz. With Pidari, Copula, Epping Way, and DJ Marikat. —DS [NEPTUNES PARLOUR, $8/9:30 P.M.]

PHOTO COURTESY OF WXYC

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

WXYC’S 4OTH ANNIVERSARY If you talk with those who were students at UNC-Chapel Hill in March 1977, it’s a safe bet that more will recall the Tar Heels’ devastating loss to Marquette University in the NCAA championships than hearing Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On I’m a Radio” when it wafted through the airwaves as the inaugural song on the campus radio station, which had been newly rechristened WXYC. Forty years later, the blow felt by that devastating loss has been ameliorated by time. Meanwhile, WXYC 89.3 FM continues to send out its 1,100-watt signal from the campus student union to an area that encompasses most of the Triangle as well as Pittsboro and Apex. The station has much to celebrate when it throws itself a fortieth birthday party this Saturday. Throughout its history, WXYC has remained studentrun and noncommercial, and its broad programming has continued to present the best of the state’s rich culture and history to an ever-growing international audience. It does so in the form of regular features like Hell or High Water, which pulls from the trove of riches that is the Southern Folklife Collection, a live in-studio concert series, or simply through student deejays playing interesting, challenging, frivolous or fun music, free of nearly all constraints. WXYC revels in being able to range all over the stylistic map, from the state’s indigenous music to experimental

weirdness of the highest order and the myriad styles in between. In doing so, it reflects the essential aim of media: to inform, to entertain, to foster community. But it isn’t stuffy. You won’t hear any of that NPR-style lonely-saxophone break music on WXYC, which is proud to call itself “the sickest station on earth.” Since going 24/7 year-round in 1980, the station has been proactive in defining itself as inclusive, eclectic, and forwardlooking. In 1994, it broke crucial ground as the first terrestrial radio station to broadcast its signal online, and the station has remained ahead of the curve since then as an early adopter—not just of technology but also of musical trends and artists not yet deemed fit for mass consumption. The station has also given the world scores of talented alumni, including Rick Dees of “Disco Duck” fame, Stuart Scott of ESPN, and Tom Maxwell, late of Squirrel Nut Zippers. Several current deejays, as well as station veterans, will be on hand to spin sets for a celebratory dance party at Nightlight. In keeping with the station’s embrace of eclecticism, the music will alternate between DJ sets and live performances in the dance vein by Matt Stevenson, Tegucigalpan, and Spongebath. Heck, maybe they’ll even give Joni a spin. —David Klein NIGHTLIGHT, CHAPEL HILL $15, 8 p.m., www.nightlightclub.com

Loudon Wainwright III FOLKSY At seventy Loudon FELLA Wainwright III has spent a full five decades as one of America’s great chroniclers of professional and familial anxiety, wedding a bracing honesty to a black-pitched perspective and a seemingly endless store of withering one-liners. As he has aged, his material has become somewhat less cruel, if no less candid. —EB [MOTORCO, $28–$32/8 P.M.] ALSO ON SUNDAY BLUE NOTE GRILL: Pat Donohue; 7 p.m., $15. • CAROLINA THEATRE: The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle: A Viennese Trio; 3 p.m., free–$30. • THE CAVE: Carinae; 9 p.m., $5. • LINCOLN THEATRE: LOX, Uncle Murda; 8 p.m., $35. • MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: Triangle Brass Band: Freedom of Choice; 4 p.m. • MOTORCO: School of Rock: David Bowie Tribute; noon, $5–$7. • THE PINHOOK: Selector Dub Narcotic; 7 p.m., $12.50. • POUR HOUSE: Sol Seed; 9 p.m., $7–$15. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Evil Jay, DJ Midnite Cowboy; 10 p.m. • SLIM’S: Western Star, Rodney Henry; 8 p.m., $5. • UNC’S HILL HALL: Juan Álamo; 6 p.m., $10–$15. • UNC’S PERSON HALL: 1842 Pleyel Piano Concert; 2 p.m.

MON, MAR 27 THE CAVE: Psychiatric Metaphors, The Off White, Flash Car; 9 p.m., $5. • NCSU’S KENNEDY-MCILWEE STUDIO THEATRE: Faculty Jazz Recital; 7 p.m., $4–$10. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m. • THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Sessions at the Shed with Ernest Turner; 8 p.m., $5.

TUE, MAR 28 Michael Fabiano SOARING Michael Fabiano may ARIAS be one of the most in-demand young tenors on the opera scene right now. His voice is a commanding, impressive force, though he seems to get just as much press for “taking risks,” such as stepping in on six hours’ notice for a production he’d never seen. —DR [FLETCHER OPERA THEATER, $37–$52/7:30 P.M.]

Flogging Molly STILL AT IT

Flogging Molly will soon release its first

album in six years, and last year’s lead single, “The Hand of John L. Sullivan,” suggests the veterans are sticking to working-class anthems with an occasional political bent. Expect more previews tonight as the band bounces between punk charges and poignant ballads using both modern and traditional Irish folk instrumentation. Skinny Lister opens. —SG [THE RITZ, $29.50/8 P.M.]

ALSO ON TUESDAY

The Menzingers

John 5 and the Creatures

PARTY A four-piece from TIME Scranton, Pennsylvania, proffering melodic punk with an evolving side of adult introspection, The Menzingers formed in 2006, but tunes from their recently released fifth album, After the Party, wouldn’t have sounded out of place alongside similarly smart, whimsical So-Cal eighties acts like The Descendents and Bad Religion. Jeff Rosenstock and Rozwell Kid open. —EB [CAT’S CRADLE, $17–$20/8 P.M.]

Steve Miller Band FLY LIKE As the implacable AN EAGLE force behind countless classic rock staples from the seventies and eighties, Stevie “Guitar” Miller remains a polarizing figure some fifty years into his performing career. Whether you find tunes like “Fly Like an Eagle” and “Take the Money and Run” timeless chestnuts or insanely bland dreck, there is no arguing the manner in which they’ve wormed their way into the popular consciousness through several billion spins on a Clear Channel station near you. Lemon Sparks opens. —TB [DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, $45–$171/7:30 P.M.]

Laura Stevenson GARAGE A musically FORCE pedigreed Long Islander and former member of the punk collective Bomb The Music Industry!, Laura Stevenson has emerged as a prolific force of nature in her own right, releasing four records of hook-laden, revvedup garage pop since 2010. Equal parts swaggering and self-aware, Stevenson populates her cheerfully wordy anthems with wry insight and memorable character studies, suggesting something like Jonathan Richman if he had recorded for TeenBeat Records. With dollar signs. —EB [DUKE COFFEEHOUSE, FREE/7 P.M.]

KINGS: High Waisted; 8:30 p.m., $8. Drique London, Clavvs, Janxx; 9 p.m., $8–$10. • POUR HOUSE: John Kadlecik, Eric Chesson; 9 p.m., $12–$15. • RUBY DELUXE: Experimental Tuesday: Dendera Bloodbath; 11 p.m. • UNC CAMPUS: HILL HALL: Brooks de Wetter-Smith, Matthew McClure, Lee Weisert; 7:30 p.m., free.

WED, MAR 29 CREATIf Fender thinks URE FEAR enough of you to issue a custom-shop signature guitar branded with your name on it, you’ve got to be able to play a little bit, right? Guitar John 5, he of Fender’s Custom Shop John 5 Telecaster, cut his teeth with schlocky alt-rawkers Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, but his solo instrumental shred-rock boasts a yen for experimentation and genre-jumping. Get past the clown makeup, and there’s some serious technical flair going on here. Extinction Level Event opens. —PW [KINGS, $15/8 P.M.]

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FR 3/17

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ALSO ON THURSDAY CAT’S CRADLE: Corey Smith, Jacob Powell; 8 p.m., $20–$25. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Cherry Glazerr, LALA LALA, Ian Sweet; 8 p.m., $13–$15. • THE CAVE: Floor Model: Sponge Bath; 9 p.m., $5. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Blue October, Matthew Mayfield; 8 p.m., $27. • LOCAL 506: Miles Nielsen & The Rusted Hearts; 9 p.m., $8. • MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: Choral Concert: Raleigh Fine Arts; 7 p.m. • NEPTUNES PARLOUR: The Old Paints, Come Clean; 10 p.m., $5–$8. • POUR HOUSE: John Corabi; 9 p.m., $15–$20. • RUBY DELUXE: Bary Center, Kendall Cahan, Mall Prowler, Housefire, Chucha; 9 p.m.

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INDYweek.com | 3.22.17 | 43

art

3.22 – 3.29

OPENING

Art Student Graduate Organization: Art, Media, and Social Unrest: Keynote speakers Hasan Elahi and Hannah Feldman. Fri, Mar 24, 4 p.m. UNC’s Phillips Hall, Chapel Hill. ARTS Day 2017: Tue, Mar 28 & Wed, Mar 29. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www.artsnc. org. Becky Brown: Artist talk. Tue, Mar 28, 6 p.m. UNC’s Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. www. art.unc.edu. Particle Falls: Designed by Andrea Polli, an artist and scientist, this light installation on the Empire Properties Building changes according to data captured by an air-quality sensor, visually representing the particles of pollution entering your lungs with each breath. Do your conscience a favor and walk or bike to see it. Mar 24-Apr 23, 7-9:30 p.m. The Raleigh Times Bar, Raleigh. www.particlefallsral.org. —Erica Johnson Weightlessness of Forgiveness: Mixed media by Maya Freelon Asante. Sun, Mar 26. Cary Arts Center, Cary. www.townofcary. org.

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 & THURSDAY, MARCH 23

GABRIELLE GOLIATH: ELEGY

In “Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge,” Robert Burns memorably wrote of “man’s inhumanity to man.” South African visual artist Gabrielle Goliath has an interest in mourning, but her focus is squarely on man’s inhumanity to women. Here, as in previous works, she addresses victimhood and reclaims agency for victims of sex- and gender-based violence— over the centuries and in the recent past—by making the enormity more visceral. Elegy calls for a female vocal septet not simply to sing together but to call forth a spirit of collective mourning through a sustained cry. It’s an extended funeral song that necessarily shifts through each demanding performance, each of which is different as performers endeavor to fulfill the piece’s generalized directive to conjure the souls of those who have been violated and silenced. The performance takes place on Duke’s campus on Wednesday, followed by an artist talk and discussion at the John Hope Franklin Center on Thursday. —David Klein DUKE UNIVERSITY’S WEST UNION ROOM 303, DURHAM 7 p.m. Weds., free, www.igs.duke.edu JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN CENTER, DURHAM 7 p.m. Thurs., free, www.igs.duke.edu

ONGOING

Animal Spirits: Visionary Folk Art: Group show. Thru Apr 6. Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough. www. historichillsborough.org. Ansel Adams: Masterworks: An artist is not always the best person to assess his or her own work, but in the case of Ansel Adams, the great photographer of the American West, the king of the coffee-table book, we’ll make an exception. Adams called this “the Museum Set,” the ultimate expression of his legacy. These forty-eight masterworks, taken in locations like Glacier National Park, Yosemite, and Monument Valley, speak to Adams’s monumental purity of vision. Thru May 7. NC

Gabrielle Goliath: Elegy

Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org. —David Klein LAST Art of the Children of CHANCE Abraham: Mixed media. Thru Mar 27. West Raleigh Presbyterian Church, Raleigh. www.wrpc.org. LAST Artspace Corridor CHANCE Exhibition: Carrie Alter, Paula Baumann, Andie Freeman, Celia Gray, Judy Keene, & Don Mertz. Thru Mar 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www. artspacenc.org. Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation: By examining the history of Indian immigrants as they assimilated and contributed to American life—musical, political, culinary, scholarly, sporting, and cultural—this

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

traveling Smithsonian exhibit reframes what it means to be an Indian American. Thru Apr 2. City of Raleigh Museum, Raleigh. —David Klein

Collections: Leah Sobsey. Thru Sep 30. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham.

Cascading Color: Elizabeth Kellerman. Thru Apr 16. Durham Convention Center, Durham. www.durhamconventioncenter. com.

Color Across Asia: Thru May 13, 2018. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org.

Cecil Sharp’s Appalachian Photographs: Rare photography by the renowned folklorist. Thru Apr 18. The Murphey School at the Shared Visions Retreat Center, Durham. www. sharedvisions.org. Collecting Carolina: 100 Years of Jugtown Pottery: Pottery. Thru May 29. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

The Color of Light: Landscapes by Lyudmila Tomova and Vinita Jain. Thru Mar 29. Village Art Circle, Cary. www.villageartcircle. com. LAST Come Closer: CHANCE Ceramics by Holly Fischer. Thru Mar 25. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. Connections: Paintings by Ellie Edwards-Smith. Thru Mar 30. Eno Gallery, Hillsborough. www. enogallery.net.

LAST Corridor Exhibitions: CHANCE Carrie Alter, Paula Baumann, Andie Freeman, Celia Gray, Judy Keene, and Don Mertz. Thru Mar 25. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. Cuba Now: Photography by Elizabeth Matheson. Ongoing. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. www.cravenallengallery.com. LAST Ryan Cummings: CHANCE Thru Mar 25. Raleigh. www.jmrkitchens.com. LAST Darning Memory: CHANCE Fabric works by Leatha Koefler, Mary Starke, and Ely Urbanski. Thru Mar 24. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh. www.raleighnc.gov/arts. Deadpan: Kerry Law, Alex O’Neal, and Kirsten Stoltmann. Thru Apr 1. Reception: Friday,

Mar 3, 6-9 p.m. Lump, Raleigh. www.teamlump.org. Discover Your Governors: Thru Aug 6. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www. ncmuseumofhistory.org. Exposed: Nudes in Art: Juried show featuring work by twentyfive artists. Thru Mar 30. Litmus Gallery, Raleigh. www. litmusgallery.com. Eyes Wide Open: Photography by Elizabeth Galecke. Thru Apr 30. Tiny Gallery at the Ackland Museum Store, Chapel Hill. Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett: Selftaught artists also teach one another. Starting in the 1980s, Alabama produced a remarkable crop of AfricanAmerican ones who entered the canon as it slowly grew less homogenous. Scavenger sculptor Lonnie Holley has had a retrospective at the Birmingham Museum of Art; assemblage master Thornton Dial has been collected by MOMA, the Whitney, and the Met. Little known but primed for reconsideration is Dial’s cousin, Ronald Lockett, who explored the panoramic

violence and racial strife of the twentieth century in richly textured, starkly totemic paintings on discarded materials, wrought with wire and nails, twigs and leaves. He made some four hundred works before his death from complications of HIV/AIDS at age thirty-two in 1998. See fifty of them in the first solo exhibition of his work. Thru Apr 9. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org. —Brian Howe Flora and Fauna: Mixed media. Thru May 14. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www. ackland.org. From Duke Gardens to Giverny: Paintings by David Gellatly. Thru May 3. Duke University Hospital- Art & Health Galleries, Durham. Glory of Venice: Renaissance Paintings 1470–1520: Thru Jun 18. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org. LAST Josh Hockensmith CHANCE and Mark Iwinski: Mixed media. Thru Mar 27. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. www.chapelhillpreservation. com.

Holding On: Ceramics, collage, and photography by essica Dupuis, Karen Hillier, and Sarah Malakoff. Thru Apr 15. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. LAST Howard Murry CHANCE Rediscovered: Charlotte native Howard Murry painted in the resort town of Valle Crucis, near Boone. Murry was interested in rural North Carolina, from farming methods to religious practices, and his watercolor landscapes depict a slightly idealized past, free of utility lines and automobiles, taking subtle modernist liberties. The first exhibit of his work in twenty-five years consists of forty watercolors that his grandson has owned since Murry’s death in 1968. Thru Mar 25. Lee Hansley Gallery, Raleigh. www.leehansleygallery. com. —David Klein LAST Illuminations: CHANCE Intimate Portraits of Mother Nature: Photography by Richard Mathis. Thru Mar 26. Nature Art Gallery, Raleigh. www.naturalsciences.org. In Conditions of Fresh Water: The term “environmental racism” has existed since the

eighties, and the problem has existed for much longer. But it took the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to wake the nation to the idea that marginalized communities are routinely subjected to inferior, often dangerous environmental conditions. Even in 2017, basic services such as clean water and wastewater treatment are still lacking in places like Alamance County, imperiling both the health of residents and the security of the land itself. This exhibit is a collaborative project by Torkwase Dyson, a Duke visiting artist, and Danielle Purifoy, an attorney/ environmental scientist, that explores this phenomenon in depth through interviews with residents of two rural, historically black Southern counties, including Alamance, that have been victimized by this insidious form of institutional neglect for decades. It adds up to a powerful exhibit comprising photographs, paintings, and prose that speak to human resilience in the face of injustice. Thru Jun 3. Duke Campus: Center for

Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org. —David Klein LAST It’s All About the CHANCE Story, Volume 5: John Claude Bemis: Various artist interpretations. Thru Mar 26. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough. www. hillsboroughgallery.com. Judy Keene: Color Search: This is the first significant showcase of Durham-based painter Judy Keene’s work, but it’s undergirded by her long background in museums and galleries and her basis in art history. Primarily working in oil on linen canvases, Keene brushes and knifes opaque and transparent forms of varying thicknesses into earthily textured, evanescent crags. Keene mingles the influence of abstract impressionist colorfield painters—some of whom, like Keene, studied with Shirley Blum, including Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly—with a cool patina of Old Masterly precision. Keene’s abstractions abut the border of the real; her Canyon Series (pictured) harks back to her travels through the American West as a child in the 1950s,

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Material of Invention: Ceramic and mixed media by Mark Gordon. Thru Apr 15. Claymakers, Durham. www. claymakers.com. SPECIAL My Precious: An EVENT Exploration of Materiality on Contemporary Jewelry: Various artists curated by Betty McKim and Kathryn Osgood Thru Apr 1. Artist Reception: Mar 24, 5-7 P.M. Pullen Arts Center, Raleigh. Nuestras Historias, Nuestros Sueños/Our Stories, Our Dreams: Documenting the experiences of Latino farmworkers in the Carolinas. Thru May 7. Historic Oak View County Park, Raleigh. www. wakegov.com/parks/oakview. Laura Park and Connie Winters: Paintings. Thru Apr 7. ArtSource

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Fine Art, Raleigh. www. artsource-raleigh.com. Peace of Mind: Art Quilts: Fiber art. Thru May 12. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org. Project Reject Is Underway: Sitespecific installation by Jeff Bell and Megan Sullivan. Thru May 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www. artspacenc.org. Raleigh Fine Arts Society: Thru Apr 27. Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com. LAST Rock, Paper, Water: CHANCE Paintings and paper filigree. Eng Pua, Barbara Procter Smith, and Diane Starbling. Thru Mar 28. Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. www. carygalleryofartists.org.

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

DIVAS!

Calling an actor a diva isn’t usually an endearment. But Raleigh Little Theatre’s annual fundraiser reminds us that it’s different if you say it with a smile—plus a contribution somewhere in the twoto-five-figure range. The theater’s favorite printable pejorative gets a makeover in this yearly competition, in which performers of all genders compete in an evening of drop-dead glamour, comedy, and Broadway cabaret performances with a live band. The audience votes with its wallets, and whoever raises the most money gets to rule as RLT’s 2017 Diva. (Provided, that is, that person can wrest the crown from 2016’s Diva, stage veteran Rebecca Johnston.) Tickets get you into the show plus a reception with wine, beer, and food. —Byron Woods RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE, RALEIGH 8 p.m., $40–$60, www.raleighlittletheatre.org

Seasonal Prints: Screen prints by Vidabeth Bensen Thru Apr 1. North Carolina Crafts Gallery, Carrboro. A Sense Of...: Photography. Ongoing. Roundabout Art Collective, Raleigh. www. roundaboutartcollective.com. Stories from the Heartland: Paintings by Rachel Campbell Thru May 25. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org. Submerged: We often hear about “emerging” artists—but whence do they emerge? From somewhere below the vast, shifting surface of the gallery world, a fact that Mahler Fine Art manager Jillian Ohl keys in on in the title of the group exhibit she curated at the Raleigh gallery. Submerged features a dozen artists who are either new to the Raleigh/Durham area or just beginning to show their work, although some of the names, such as Davis Choun, might already be familiar to those who frequent Raleigh art havens such as Artspace and Visual Art Exchange. Others include Austin Caskie, Conner Calhoun, Dare Coulter, and Britt Flood; all are post-undergraduate but younger than thirty, working in mediums from experimental sculpture to abstract figure painting. Thru Mar 31. The Mahler Fine Art, Raleigh. www.themahlerfineart.com. —Brian Howe Textiles in Tiers: Trudy Thomson, Sandy Milroy, and Rose Warner. Thru May 25. National Humanities 46 | 3.22.17 | INDYweek.com

Divas! PHOTO BY DAVID WATTS Center, Durham. www. nationalhumanitiescenter.org. LAST Allison Tierney: CHANCE Thru Mar 25. HQ Raleigh, Raleigh. LAST Total Life Center CHANCE Exhibition: Artwork created in collaboration with artist Deb Withey and Total Life Center. Thru Mar 25. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. Transits and Migrations: A Summer in Berlin: Student photography. Thru Apr 15. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org. LAST Unwoven CHANCE Testaments: Textile art by Laurie Wohl that explores the relationships between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Thru Mar 26. Meredith College, Raleigh. www.meredith. edu.

food

Food Truck Rodeo on Rosemary: Rosemary Street between Henderson and North Columbia. 13 food trucks. Sun, Mar 26, 12-5 p.m. Wallace Plaza, Chapel Hill.

stage OPENING Approaching Happiness: Stand-up with Krish Mohan. $7–$10. Thu, Mar 23, 8:30 p.m. DSI Comedy Theater, Chapel Hill. www. dsicomedytheater.com. Comedy Roulette: Audience Participation Comedy $12. Wed, Mar 22, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy. com. Chris D’Elia: Stand-up comedy. Mar 23-26. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com. Hot Comedy with Brian Burns: Stand-up from Zo Myers, Chad Cosby, Jes Bolcuc, Jeremy Alder, Maddie Wiener Free. Thu, Mar 23, 8:30 p.m. The Cave Tavern, Chapel Hill. www.caverntavern. com. Festival of Laughs: Stand-up comedy by Mike Epps, Bruce Bruce, Rickey Smiley, Tony Rock.

Fri, Mar 24, 8 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh. www. thepncarena.com. Lawn and Disorder: Comedy. $20. Sat, Mar 25, 8 p.m. Clayton Center, Clayton. www. theclaytoncenter.com. The Miraculous and the Mundane: $6–$15. Mar 23-Apr 1. Manbites Dog Theater, Durham. www. manbitesdogtheater.org. PORK: Stand-up comedy. Free. Sat, Mar 25, 10 p.m. DSI Comedy Theater, Chapel Hill. www.dsicomedytheater. com. The Snow Queen: Musical. $8–$12. Fri, Mar 24, 7 p.m. & Sat, Mar 25, 2 & 7 p.m. Holly Springs Community Center, Holly Springs. The Wolf: Play Mar 23-Apr 2. Kennedy Theater, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh. com/venue/kennedytheatre.

ONGOING LAST  13 The CHANCE Musical: Evan Goldman, the central character in Jason Robert Brown’s engaging musical, is facing his

thirteenth birthday and bar mitzvah when his parents break up and he’s forced to move with his mom from the Upper West Side of New York to Appleton, Indiana. Directors Joel and Paige Rainey cultivate strong performances in the teenage actors. An unsinkable Brian Bunch sparkles as Evan. Humor comes from Sterling Jones’s Brett, a half-lit ultra-jock, and his notthat-suave posse. Among performers this young, occasional pitch problems are to be expected and they were apparent in several moments, but the choral and ensemble harmonies were noticeably strong under Michael Santangelo’s musical direction. The philosophical song of self-acceptance “If That’s What It Is” and the touching thoughts in “A Little More Homework” held truths beyond such tender years. As everyone who’s been there knows, thirteen’s not a perfect time, and 13’s not a perfect show. But as a chronicle of the absurdities and sudden

insights of a changing time, it’s more than worth a listen. Thru Mar 26. $12–$20. North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre, Raleigh. www. nract.org. —Byron Woods Anything Goes Late Show: Saturday, 10:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy. com. The Harry Show: Ages 18+. Improv host leads late-night revelers through potentially risque games, with audience volunteers brought onstage to join in. $10. Fridays, 10 p.m. & Saturdays, 10 p.m. ComedyWorx Theatre, Raleigh. comedyworx. com. When She Had Wings: Playwright Suzan Zeder has already proven that children’s theater doesn’t have to be childish. Her memorable Mother Hicks, which Raleigh Little Theatre produced in 2002, explored the lives of three social outcasts in a Mississippi River valley during the Great Depression. This presentday tale premiered during last year’s

Women’s Voices Theater Festival in Washington, D.C. In it, Beatrice is troubled by upcoming changes as she’s about to turn ten. Obsessed with aviation, she spends her free time in a treehouse turned cockpit in her backyard. She has reasons; the freedom and weightlessness of flight counters her father’s overprotection and her mom’s growing concerns about her weight. Then, one day, Beatrice finds someone waiting for her in her plane: an ally who may or may not be Amelia Earhart. Artistic director Patrick Torres directs. Thru April 2. $10– $14. Various times. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. www.raleighlittletheatre. org. —Byron Woods

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READINGS & SIGNINGS

THURSDAY, MARCH 23

TALKING BLACK IN AMERICA

“Black English is not bad English, it’s not a stereotype but a fact,” John McWhorter wrote in Time last year. But debates over the meaning, value, and very definition of AfricanAmerican vernacular English have raged for decades, long before “Ebonics” became a household word in the nineties. In recent years, Obama’s preacherly cadences, his dropping of final g’s, and other elements of black English—and the perceived authenticity thereof—were flashpoints of public contention. The new documentary Talking Black in America takes a historical perspective as it traces the development of what we call black speech: its origins in Africa, the Caribbean, the Deep South and industrialized North, as well as its role in the lives of those who speak it and in society at large. In doing so, the film aims to reverse institutionalized dialect prejudice and affirm the importance of black English as a cultural legacy, rather than shun it, as many have suggested. —David Klein NCSU’S HUNT LIBRARY, RALEIGH 7 p.m., free, www.lib.nscu.edu

SPECIAL SHOWINGS Elizabeth King/Body of Work: Free. Fri, Mar 24, 7 p.m. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org. The Other One (La otra): Fri, Mar 24, 8 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org. The Modern School of Film: Film Studies for All: Thu, Mar 23, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham. www. shadowboxstudio.org.

OPENING

CHIPS—Michael Peña and Dax Shephard star as two motorcycle police officers in the California Highway Patrol in this update of the retro police drama. Rated R. The Last Word—A domineering businessperson (Shirley MacLaine) forms an unexpected friendship with a journalist (Amanda Seyfried). Rated PG-13. Life—Six astronauts make the groundbreaking discovery of life on Mars—but is it worth the risk to bring it home to Earth? Rated R. Power Rangers—The nineties mega-franchise about teens with super powers gets a

reboot. Rated PG-13. Wilson—A grumpy middleaged man (Woody Harrelson) reunites with his estranged wife (Laura Dern) and meets his teenage daughter for the first time. Rated R.

A L S O P L AY I N G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at www.indyweek.com.  A Dog’s Purpose—Josh Gad voices a reincarnating dog in this maudlin family movie. Rated PG.  Beauty and the Beast— This live-action remake is an effective piece of fan service but certainly won’t replace the animated classic. Rated PG. ½ Get Out—Jordan Peele of Key & Peele’s directorial debut is Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner crossed with a racially charged The Stepford Wives update. It’s also one of the best things to happen to the horror genre in twenty years. Rated R. ½ Hidden Figures— This true story of three black women triumphing over racism and sexism in the 1960s space race has a TV-movie softness but powerfully portrays bigotry and courage. Rated PG.

½ I Am Not Your Negro— Raoul Peck’s filmmaking doesn’t always serve the material, but his James Baldwin doc must be seen for the undimmed power of its subject’s words and presence. Rated PG-13. ½ John Wick: Chapter 2—This smartly made return for the reluctant hit man character that resuscitated Keanu Reeves’s career runs on muscle cars and muscle memories. Rated R. ½ Kong: Skull Island— Set before 2014’s Godzilla, Legendary Entertainment’s reboot makes Kong’s origin story feel like Apocalypse Now meets Starship Troopers. Rated PG-13.  La La Land—Damien Chazelle reunites Gosling and Stone for a breezy jazz musical with Technicolor charm. Rated PG-13.  The Lego Batman Movie—Cranking up the Jokes Per Minute with an astonishingly high success rate, this animated film blends over-the-top laughs aimed at youngsters with countless gags for adults. Rated PG.

H½ Table 19—This comedy about the unpopular table at a wedding is a feast of cringes and winces. Rated PG-13.

Tony Bartelme: A Surgeon in the Village. Wed, Mar 29, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks.com. Ann Millett-Gallant: Re-Membering. free. Thu, Mar 23, 6:30 p.m. Page 158 Books, Wake Forest. Michelle Moore: The Cigar Factory: A Novel of Charleston. Thu, Mar 23, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com. Larry Nielsen: Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World. Tue, Mar 28, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks. com.

www.mcintyresbooks.com. John Scalzi: The Collapsing Empire. Wed, Mar 22, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks.com. — Thu, Mar 23, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. www. flyleafbooks.com. Will Schwalbe: Books for Living. Thu, Mar 23, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com. — Fri, Mar 24, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com. Lisa Yarger: Lovie: The Story of a Southern Midwife and an Unlikely Friendship Wed, Mar 22, 6 p.m. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org.

LITERARY R E L AT E D Book Club Bash: Mon, Mar 27, 7 p.m. & Tue, Mar 28, 10 a.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks.com. Radical Readers: Durham People’s Alliance book group meets at night to discuss books. RSVP for location, time & car pool. Last Tuesdays. Sybil Sylvester: Floral arrangements from Fresh. Wed, Mar 29, 11 am. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com. Your Story: Informal writers’ group facilitated by Gaines Steer. Fourth Saturdays, 10 am-noon. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. www.flyleafbooks.com.

Frances O’Roark Dowell: Birds in the Air. Sat, Mar 25, 2 p.m. South Regional Library, Durham. www. durhamcountylibrary.org. Gary Phillips, Richard Ostrander, Jo Taylor: North Carolina Poetry Society readings. Sun, Mar 26, 2 p.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 & THURSDAY, MARCH 23

JOHN SCALZI: THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi has earned a massive following among fans of science fiction for his imaginative yet character-driven books, including the Old Man’s War series and the reality-warping novel Redshirts, a riff on those poor background characters on Star Trek who always seemed to get killed by the aliens of the week. He’s also renowned for his blog, Whatever, an insightful and frequently hilarious look at the world. (His piece “Being Poor” from 2005 remains a bitterly funny and dead-on look at the class divide in America.) Now he’s returning to the area on a tour for The Collapsing Empire, the first book in a new series. It’s set in a future where “the Flow,” a means of transporting humanity to distant worlds, has resulted in the formation of a massive empire known as “the Interdependency.” But now the Flow is starting to shift, meaning countless worlds may be cut off from one another and the empire might—well, see the title. Get in on the next big thing in sci-fi and enjoy Scalzi’s sense of humor at these Quail Ridge and Flyleaf readings, both of which are free but require the purchase of the book from the respective stores for signing-line admittance. —Zack Smith QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS, RALEIGH I 7 p.m. Weds., free, www.quailridgebooks.com

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