INDY Week 4.29.20

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Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill April 29, 2020

We watch movies with Skylar Gudasz, hit the road with Sylvan Esso, weave words with Ayanna Albertson, jam to Japanese hip-hop, and go to hell with Bart Ehrman.

Amid a pandemic, life (and afterlife) goes on.

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April 29, 2020

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Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 37 NO. 16

CONTENTS NEWS 7

The government’s not coming to rescue Durham’s undocumented.

8

Advocates say ICE is indifferent to detainees’ fears about a coronavirus outbreak in the for-profit Stewart Detention Center. BY LEIGH TAUSS

BY THOMASI MCDONALD

FEATURE 10 Skylar Gudasz's Cinema is a timely ode to art and work. BY SARAH EDWARDS FOOD + DRINK 25 The pandemic has been a disaster for restaurants, but insurance companies aren’t paying. BY ADAM SOBSEY MUSIC 26 How Sylvan Esso's big-band adventure is shaping its future.

BY BRIAN HOWE

28 An abridged story of hip-hop's path from the Bronx to Japan.

BY BRIAN HOWE

CULTURE 30 Ayanna Albertson's slam-poetry success story.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD

32 UNC prof Bart Ehrman says Jesus wouldn’t recognize the modern church’s version of the afterlife. BY JEFFREY C. BILLMAN

DEPARTMENTS 4 Voices

6 A Week in the Life

5 Quickbait

12 INDY Press Club

COVER Photo by Chris Frisina/Design by Jon Fuller

WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER Susan Harper

Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald

EDITOR I AL

Digital Content Manager Sara Pequeño

Editor in Chief Jeffrey C. Billman Arts + Culture Editor Brian Howe Raleigh News Editor Leigh Tauss Deputy A+C Editor Sarah Edwards

Editorial Assistant Cole Villena Contributing Food Editor Nick Williams Theater+Dance Critic Byron Woods Voices Columnists T. Greg Doucette, Chika Gujarathi, Alexis Pauline

Gumbs, Courtney Napier, Barry Saunders, Jonathan Weiler Contributors Jim Allen, Jameela F. Dallis, Michaela Dwyer, Lena Geller, Spencer Griffith, Howard Hardee, Laura Jaramillo, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Josephine McRobbie, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, Neil Morris, James Michael Nichols, Marta Nuñez Pouzols, Bryan C. Reed, Dan Ruccia, David Ford Smith, Eric Tullis, Michael VenutoloMantovani, Chris Vitiello, Ryan Vu, Patrick Wall

Interns Sindhoor Ambati, Will Atkinson, Kate Davis, Elena Durvas, Hanah Miao

C RE ATI V E Creative Director

Annie Maynard Graphic Designer

Jon Fuller

Ayanna Albertson

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April 29, 2020

3

BACKTALK

So much has happened in the last two weeks, it’s hard to figure out what to focus on. Oh, right, on second thought, it’s not actually

voices

that hard.

The Era of Big Government Is … Back?

The pandemic could make Americans rethink their ambivalence toward the welfare state. Or not.

BY JONATHAN WEILER @jonweiler

It turns out that writing about the coronavirus tinfoil-hat brigade that descended on the ReOpenNC protest—and calling them “dumbasses,” because, well, yeah—brings out all sorts: “I believe this hyped-up ‘scare’ over the Corona Virus [sic], while this has been the most successful scare so far, as far as causing the most amount of money and chaos, from an operational level that was a success if that was the goal, like the Onion news for instance,” writes RUPORT. “However, in the end, this will go down the drain like Global Warming did when it comes time to show actual numbers, and just like the oceans didn’t rise, and the numbers reflected such, the virus total will be far less than the 2.2 million ‘apocalyptic’ prediction said. So Americans will just be that much more wary of FAKE news and HYPE in the future.”

Editor’s note: The oceans are rising, and the prediction of 2.2 million Americans who might die from COVID-19 assumed no mitigation efforts whatsoever.

“Don’t know who the state-worshiping douches canoe is that wrote this article, but ‘INDY’ should be replaced with ‘MSM Lapdog,’” writes THE MILKMAN. “Fearless independent local journalism, my left nut.”

“I thought organized protest was the highest calling one can aspire to a brainwashed leftist like yourself. What happened?” asks OUTRAGED. “Oh yeah, it’s different if you’re antifa.”

“Time to let natural selection do its job,” counters JB. “You can’t continue to protect people from themselves. The gene pool needs some chlorine, and this might be just the way to do it. But the punchline is that they seem to have forgotten that business was in the tank because of this virus before any of the preventive measures carried the weight of law and before North Carolina had even topped 100 cases or a single death. But if they think that 5,000 cases and 125 fatalities later, people are going to be more inclined to come through those doors they want opened so badly, I say let ’em.

Please proceed, slack jaws.”

W

ith the U.S. reeling from COVID-19’s mounting death toll and extraordinary economic shock, Congress approved another half-trillion dollars to shore up small businesses, hospitals, and our still-lagging coronavirus testing regime last week. All told, Congress has now allocated about $3 trillion in just over a month, a figure that, under different circumstances, might make Bernie Sanders blush. Even so, these measures are stopgaps, quickly-thrown-together bailouts in the face of an unprecedented health emergency.

At the same time, there’s a growing chorus of progressives arguing that the current crisis requires a rigorous tightening of a social safety net that, as The New York Times editorialized earlier this month, has become “threadbare” over the past generation. So it’s worth assessing the chances that this epidemic and this massive wave of spending will usher in a new era of activist government.

Conservatives will bristle even at the suggestion that we need to enlarge the welfare state. After all, we already spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a range of social programs. But what’s inarguable is that more of our citizens fall through our social safety net than do citizens in any other wealthy country.

We alone fail to insure virtually everyone. Child poverty, food insecurity, and other problems also afflict an unacceptable proportion of Americans and make us an outlier among rich countries.

Why? The question of who is deserving of government largesse has always anchored debates about the programs—and it’s always been inextricably tied to race. Extensive research has shown how opponents racialized President Johnson’s Great Society program to upend its goals.

That and other forces determined to push through a massive upward redistribution of wealth over the past 40 years have contributed mightily to our current state of affairs. The pandemic has exposed just how precarious economic circumstances are for millions of Americans who lack basic protections like paid sick leave that almost everyone else in the wealthy world takes for granted. Many Americans are at immediate risk of losing their health insurance and face a cascading series of shocks to their households as job losses mount into the tens of millions. The long lines of cars and people at food pantries

are one depressing emblem of the current crisis.

Skeptics point to previous economic crises, including the 2007–09 financial meltdown, when massive government interventions gave way to a backlash against profligate spending. Much of that backlash was, of course, utterly cynical. Elected Republicans cared little about deficits when their party controlled the White House— as both the Bush and Trump administrations have ably demonstrated—but they screamed bloody murder starting right about the time Obama lifted his hand off the Bible at his first inauguration.

But there’s also a basic ambivalence among many ordinary Americans who both want to help the poor and also feel antsy about the government doing too much, particularly for those they believe are “able-bodied” and should be able to fend for themselves.

So how might the present crisis change that? Returning to paid sick leave, maybe the question of who deserves what looks different in light of a pandemic. Under normal circumstances, you might believe people should just work harder and find a better job if they want decent benefits.

But if people who are sick go to work, they risk spreading a deadly virus. Whatever my qualms about government-mandated benefits, universal paid sick leave isn’t really about giving someone else a handout. It’s a benefit to me and my loved ones. We might argue similarly about health insurance more broadly.

Additionally, the inevitably random nature of who is struck down by a deadly virus might also upend settled notions about what it means to deserve one’s fate. And there is certainly more attention being paid to “essential workers”—the nurses, food preparers, grocery store employees, and others whose labor is essential for our well-being and who, by and large, work for low wages and few protections. As Nikole Hannah-Jones has said, these workers are “sacrificial” as much as they are essential. Perhaps this prompts some folks to think differently about who deserves to have a strong net to catch people who need it.

None of this is dispositive. It’s just another reminder that there is no precedent for what we’re living through.

Which means, perhaps, that we can’t really know whether, politically speaking, past is prologue. 2 Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.

WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD?

indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @IndependentWeekly @indyweek 4

April 29, 2020

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JONATHAN WEILER is a teaching professor in global studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide and Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.

QUICKBAIT

Where the Money Went

S

o you know how the $349 billion allotted for the Paycheck Protection Program disappeared in a little over a week, leaving thousands of desperate small businesses in the lurch in the worst economy since the Depression? And you remember how, soon after, we started hearing about how Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Potbelly Sandwich Shop and Shake Shack and other big-ass greedy companies had figured out ways to cash in on a program ostensibly designed to help out the little guys? (After being lambasted in the media, they gave the money back.)

The good news is another $310 billion became available Monday, this time with stricter rules and a stronger emphasis on community lenders. The bad news is it probably won’t be enough; it might be gone by the time you read this.

But that’s a discussion for another day.

Corporations, being publicly traded, have to disclose these loans to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which makes them public records. The Washington, D.C.-based data analytics firm FactSquared combed through them and compiled a list of more than 200 corporations that had received PPP money, usually in the millions of dollars.

We combed through that list and found five corporations from North Carolina that accepted a total of $20,170,505 in PPP money. One of them, fearing it had run afoul of the Treasury Department’s rules, has already returned the funds.

The others have not.

Air T, Inc.

Culp, Inc.

Novan, Inc.

Ticker: AIRT (Nasdaq)

Ticker: CULP (NYSE)

Ticker: NOVN (Nasdaq)

Market cap: $35.03 million

Market cap: $87.15 million

Market cap: $25.92 million

F/T employees: 769

F/T employees: 1,440

F/T employees: 41

What it does: Overnight air cargo, ground equipment sales/support, commercial aircraft, more.

What it does: Markets fabrics for mattresses and upholstery.

What it does: Clinical-stage biotech company that focuses on the development of nitric oxide-based therapies to treat dermatological and oncovirus-mediated diseases.

Date of report: April 10 Loan amount: $8.22 million What it says: Air T did not respond to a request for comment.

Date of report: April 15

Date of report: April 17

Loan amount: $7.6 million What it says: Culp did not respond to a request for comment.

High Point Morrisville

Loan amount: $955,800 What it says: Novan declined to comment. In its SEC filing, the company pointed out that on February 24, Nasdaq notified Novan that its stock had traded under $1 for the last 30 days, putting it at risk of delisting. On Monday afternoon, it was trading at 38 cents a share.

Raleigh

Denver

Ballantyne Strong, Inc.

Charlotte

Ticker: BTN (NYSE) Market cap: $23 million F/T employees: 290 What it does: Holding company that owns subsidiaries and investments in several sectors, including cinema products and services, digital signage, advertising, and insurance.

Date of report: April 13 Loan amount: $3.17 million (returned) What it says: Ballantyne returned the loan on April 23, saying that while it “has less than 300 employees and continues to be severely impacted by the disruption to the cinema, theme park, and advertising industries as a result of COVID-19,” it was returning the funds “out of an abundance of caution and in light of the new guidance” from the Treasury Department.

Innovate Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. Ticker: INNT (Nasdaq) Market cap: $27.24 million F/T employees: 8 What it does: A clinical-stage biotech company that develops medicines for autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.

Date of report: April 21 Loan amount: $220,205 What it says: Innovate did not respond to a request for comment.

KeepItINDY.com

April 29, 2020

5

The Good, The Bad & The Awful

A WE E K IN THE L IFE (Here’s what’s happened since the INDY went to press last week)

4/22

4/21

d goo Nursing homes with COVID-19 outbreaks also tended to have STAFFING SHORTAGES, North Carolina Health News reported.

Hundreds of TOTALLY NORMAL LIBERTY LOVERS descended on downtown Raleigh for the second weekly ReOpenNC protest, showing their disdain for masks and social distancing and tyranny and vaccines and 5G and science in general, and their appreciation for Dan Forest and Donald Trump and Gadsden flags and QAnon.

The first STATE PRISON INMATE died of COVID-19 at Pender Correctional Institution.

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4/23

Governor Cooper extended the STAY-AT-HOME ORDER until May 8 and announced a three-part plan for reopening the state.

“Only” 104,500 North Carolina residents filed for UNEMPLOYMENT in the week ending April 17, a relative improvement.

Wake County’s manager told its departments to prepare for 7 PERCENT across-the-board cuts in the next fiscal year.

Donald Trump nominated former Wake County schools superintendent/shitty novelist TONY TATA to be the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy, probably after seeing him on Fox News.

4/24

Durham extended its STAY-AT-HOME order until May 15.

Cooper announced that schools would REMAIN CLOSED until fall.

4/26

Data compiled by the University of Maryland showed that North Carolina residents left their homes and traveled more during the week of April 17–23 than in the previous week, a potential sign that the state is tiring of SOCIAL DISTANCING RULES.

4/27

An administrator of the ReOpenNC Facebook group said in a post that she had TESTED POSITIVE for the coronavirus.

Reversing course, state health officials disclosed the names of NURSING HOMES where coronavirus outbreaks had taken place.

Duke Health announced that it had detected the novel coronavirus in a PUG NAMED WINSTON, which doctors believed to be the first time the virus had been detected in a dog. (A Pomeranian in Hong Kong tested reportedly positive for the virus in early March, so maybe not.)

4/28

bad

With the General Assembly returning for its short session, the state House unveiled a plan to temporarily expand MEDICAID to cover coronavirus treatments.

April 29, 2020

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ul

f aw

Local Journalism!

For three weeks, the state Department of Health and Human Services refused to disclose the names of nursing homes, adult care facilities, and assisted living facilities that have seen coronavirus outbreaks.

Some counties made this information available, but not the state, which argued that doing so would mean violating patient privacy. That reasoning was bogus and counterproductive. As the AARP argued in a letter to Governor Cooper, “residents and family members deserve to have this information for their own health decisions.” On Thursday, a coalition of the state’s media outlets—whose repeated public records requests for this information had been blocked—sent the DHHS a letter threatening to sue if the state didn’t reverse course. By Monday, the state, seeing that it would lose, changed its mind.

Thom Tillis

It must suck to be Thom Tillis. Here you’ve spent the last year blindly tying yourself at the hip to President Trump, and now where are you?

POTUS just suggested injecting disinfectant to cure the coronavirus.

Unemployment’s through the roof. You’re either tied with or losing to a Democrat most people couldn’t pick out of a lineup. Worse, said Democrat doubled your fundraising haul in the first quarter, and Mitch McConnell’s super PAC had to bail you out with a $22 million fall ad buy. So now you’re Mitch’s guy. And McConnell, having given corporations a $500 billion bailout, decided last week that state and local governments taking the economic calamity on the chin aren’t getting more help. Most cities and wealthy states are run by Democrats, after all; let ’em go bankrupt.

At a tele-town hall on Friday, a constituent asked Tillis about bailing out “poorly run states that were near-bankrupt” before the pandemic: “I’m not so sure taxpayer dollars from North Carolina should go to a state, a county, or a city that, like you said, was in poor economic shape before we even had the virus,” Tillis replied. “I’m more or less aligned with Leader McConnell on the issue.”

Much like his spine, Tillis’s brain has apparently gone to mush. Every state is taking a beating. Even the notoriously spendthrift North Carolina is staring down a multibillion-dollar shortfall—and that’s after the feds sent it $2.2 billion via the CARES Act. By the way, those “poorly run” states tend to be far less dependent on the federal government than Trump strongholds—including McConnell’s own Kentucky.

No surprise, then, that McConnell—himself facing a tough reelection—has started to walk balk his objections. Expect Tillis to follow any second now.

ReOpenNC Let’s put these people in context: Despite the outsize media attention ReOpen NC’s Tuesday freak show tends to get, just 16 percent of North Carolina voters think the state should relax its social distancing guidelines. That more or less mirrors national polling. In both cases, however, there are indications that our collective patience is waning, and these astroturf exercises in public idiocy aren’t helping.

These ReOpen efforts are propped up by the same political networks that fueled the Tea Party, and to the same end: to further the interests of wealthy elites by fomenting faux-populist outrage. They’re pawns in a game they don’t know is being played, manipulated by the pseudo-scientific bullshit rife on right-wing social channels. And if we listen to them, a lot of people are going to die.

N E WS

Durham

Nowhere to Turn Durham’s undocumented community is reeling from the pandemic, too. But the government isn’t coming to their rescue.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

F

or the last five years, Mercedes—not her real name—has been working as a housekeeper at the Durham Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, according to her son, who spoke to the INDY on her behalf because she does not speak English. She and her husband came to the U.S. in 2001, fleeing gang violence and poverty in El Salvador. Mercedes is undocumented, as is her son. (Her husband and daughter have temporary protected status.)

The rehab center has become a coronavirus hot spot; as of Monday, at least 95 of its patients had confirmed cases. On April 13, Mercedes started to feel sick. She told her supervisor. He told her to get tested.

“She did and got tested there at her job,” her son says.

Mercedes spoke first to an on-site doctor that day, and again on April 15, when she was tested. The results came back positive on April 17. Mercedes, who doesn’t have insurance, went to a doctor to get documents to excuse her from work.

Her supervisor “wanted her to show up [for work] anyway,” her son says. “She didn’t go. She told him she wasn’t feeling very good and that she couldn’t work in her condition.”

In a statement, the Durham Nursing and Rehabilitation Center said that “staff members that tested positive have been closely followed by the Health Department as required,” and all team members wore personal protective equipment.

Not long after the pandemic took root in the Triangle, other unsettling stories of domestic violence, economic hardship, and health struggles began to emerge in the Latinx community.

“It turned everything upside down. It all got very real, very quickly,” says Edgar

Vergara, pastor of Iglesia La Semilla, a new faith community supported by the Asbury United Methodist Church near Duke’s East Campus.

Vergara moved to Durham from Henderson in 2018 to help start a community that would address the challenges faced by Latinx families in the Triangle. He and other members of the La Semilla team were putting together a strategic plan to address the community’s ongoing crises of economics, chronic illness, family separation, deportation, and detention. The effort kicked into overdrive with the pandemic.

They received a $10,000 grant from the North Carolina Conference of United Methodist Church and support from local businesses to feed a growing number of undocumented families in the region. Last week, they met at the Asbury church and prepared food baskets for 100 families. One of them was a woman who called the police because her husband was abusing her; the cops had taken him away, but his absence was making the family’s financial strain worse.

When they brought her food, Vergara says, “She just broke into tears. She asked, ‘How did you know I needed food?’ She was overwhelmed to know she wasn’t alone.”

Vergara spent his first year in the Bull City assessing the community’s needs.

Last March, he and about a dozen Triangle residents founded La Semilla. Vergara says it was important to create a faith team that is part of the community and “immigrant leaders, many who are undocumented themselves.”

A little over a year later, Durham Mayor Steve Schewel announced a stay-at-home order that went into effect on March 29.

Vergara says the challenges the Latinx community was already grappling

Ivan Almonte, left, shares a meal with Wildin Acosta at the Durham Green Flea Market in 2017. PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

with were magnified, particularly among undocumented families who aren’t eligible for the federal benefits available to American citizens.

Not only are undocumented immigrant families denied the $1,200 to $2,400 stimulus payments, but they are also not eligible for food stamps, medical services through the Affordable Care Act, temporary assistance to needy families, or Medicaid.

Vergara says the faith team relied on virtual meetings and instant messaging to organize a rapid response to the crisis in Latinx communities amid the pandemic.

Some Triangle leaders are mindful of how undocumented families have been denied access to public relief. Last week, Schewel, along with six Raleigh and Durham city council members and the chairwoman of Durham County’s board of commissioners, joined 157 North Carolinians contributing all or part of their stimulus checks to Siembre NC’s fund for undocumented families.

While undocumented immigrants can’t access public benefits, they do contribute toward them.

In 2018, for instance, undocumented taxpayers in North Carolina paid an estimated $639 million in state and federal taxes. Nationally, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports that undocumented immigrants contribute

about $11.74 billion each year to state and local economies.

La Semilla member Ivan Almonte says that however well-intentioned, the fund— known as the #ShareYourCheck Challenge—isn’t enough, and ultimately will have little impact on Durham families.

Almonte—a founding member of Alerta Migratoria, a grassroots organization that lobbied on behalf of Wildin Acosta, the Riverside High School student who was detained by ICE in 2017—says he’s talked with four families whose members have tested positive for the virus. Only two members of one family have returned to work, he adds.

He’s also heard from an elderly couple who lived for three weeks without power after their electricity was cut off just before Governor Cooper’s executive order barred utility companies from disconnecting service. He raised money to get their electricity back on, and community members donated a stove, groceries, and hot meals.

Almonte says there are at least 100 undocumented families in Durham with a household member who is unemployed and can’t get help.

“I feel ashamed to live in Durham and found out these types of histories,” Almonte says. “We live in a society where we don’t know our neighbors. We, Durham, need to do better.” W KeepItINDY.com

April 29, 2020

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A Ticking Time Bomb At Stewart Detention Center, immigrants are worried about the coronavirus. Advocates say ICE doesn’t care.

BY LEIGH TAUSS ltauss@indyweek.com

O

n April 9, a rumor spread through several units at Stewart Detention Center, the for-profit federal immigration prison camp run by CoreCivic in Lumpkin, Georgia, that some of the facility’s 1,211 detainees would be released to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Activists had been calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release Stewart’s most vulnerable detainees for weeks, claiming that an outbreak was inevitable.

But they weren’t going anywhere.

The men pounded on the cell doors, becoming “disruptive and confrontational” with the guards, according to ICE. About 70 detainees barricaded a door within their housing area. The guards flooded the housing area with pepper spray, then entered in riot gear and gas masks. The detainees were, in ICE’s terminology, “compliant.”

Until a week ago, the detention center’s use of personal protective equipment was “haphazard” at best, says immigration attorney Marty Rosenbluth, who currently represents almost two dozen clients detained at the facility in their fights against deportation and has helped four secure their release during the pandemic.

Rosenbluth lives a few minutes from Stewart, a remote facility in rural southern Georgia, and visits almost every day.

Until last week, he says, detainees weren’t given masks and were scolded when they tried to construct their own from towels.

“Nobody down here has the slightest idea what they are doing,” Rosenbluth says. “It’s just chaos.”

Stewart is where undocumented immigrants from the Triangle often find themselves after falling into ICE custody. Samuel Oliver-Bruno, who sought sanctuary at a Durham church, was held at Stewart 8

April 29, 2020

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for 11 months before being deported last year. Wildin Acosta, a student at Riverside High School who was detained by ICE in 2016, spent six months at Stewart before being released.

As of Tuesday, nine detainees at Stewart had tested positive for the virus. Nationwide, 375 immigrant detainees have tested positive for COVID-19, according to ICE. The largest outbreak is at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, where 75 detainees tested positive. Forty-nine cases were reported at Buffalo Federal Detention Center in upstate New York.

In response to the pandemic, ICE agreed to release about 700 low-risk detainees throughout the country after “evaluating their immigration history, criminal record, potential threat to public safety, flight risk, and national security concerns.” They are currently being monitored with ankle bracelets.

New arrests have also slowed, ICE says.

There are 4,000 fewer detainees in custody since March 1, with a “60 percent decrease in book-ins” compared to March 2019.

Stewart, meanwhile, has decreased its population by about 500 people (the facility normally contains about 2,000 beds), and while some of those detainees may have been deported, Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Gracie Willis believes ICE is transferring detainees to “artificially deflate the number at certain detention centers,” making it seem like they’re following federal guidelines on social distancing.

ICE says that deportations have slowed, but the U.S. has still deported thousands of people in April. One hundred deportees arrive at the Mexico border each day, according to The Washington Post, which has led to at least one outbreak

“People are so cheek-byjowl that there’s no way social distancing is even a remote possibility.” at a migrant border camp. Fifty people deported to Guatemala tested positive for the virus, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s coronavirus cases, the Post reported. ICE doesn’t test deportees for the virus before putting them on a plane.

Without adequate testing or facilities capable of practicing social distancing, the SPLC says the only way to keep vulnerable prisoners safe is to get them out of the detention camps.

On April 9—the day of the quickly subdued riot at Stewart—the SPLC filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of several vulnerable Stewart detainees, arguing that the facility failed to comply with federal safety guidelines and conditions there put them at risk of serious illness or death.

Social distancing at the facilities is impossible, the lawsuit says, as “detained people live in extremely close quarters, often in shared dorms with dozens of people sleeping feet apart from each other, or in small shared cells.”

Immigration officials argued that releasing the prisoners would not improve their chances of avoiding COVID-19. “Even assuming a concentrated detainee popu-

lation, crowding in and of itself does not cause COVID-19 infection,” the federal government said in its reply.

CoreCivic, the largest for-profit prison company in the U.S., has every incentive to keep as many detainees behind bars as possible. It is paid by the detainee, according to a deal the company, which earned nearly $2 billion in revenue in 2019, worked out with ICE and Stewart County in 2006.

Although Stewart has taken steps to curtail the spread of the virus, including ceasing group activities outside of housing units, the lawsuit says the facilities simply aren’t built to handle an outbreak of this nature, and neither are the area hospitals: “If they remain detained in southern Georgia, where hospitals are wholly unprepared to treat the impending volume of COVID-19 patients, there is also an unreasonably high risk that Petitioners will be unable to access life-saving medical treatment.”

A day after the SPLC filed its case in Georgia, a federal judge dismissed it, though on somewhat narrow grounds.

The SPLC had better luck in California last week, when a federal judge required

ICE to conduct assessments of all detainees with COVID-19 risk factors, ruling that the agency had exhibited “callous indifference to the safety and well-being” of the detained immigrants.

Martín Muñoz, a plaintiff in that case, was in ICE custody for three years at Adelanto Detention Center in California.

He suffers from type-2 diabetes and high blood pressure and says he lived in fear of the coronavirus.

“I was always very worried for my health in ICE custody for the three years I was detained,” Muñoz said in a statement.

“When the pandemic arrived, I felt even worse; I was resigned that something bad was going to happen, and I felt lost. ICE never responded to me, they never took steps to protect me. I am so happy the judge is forcing ICE to take steps to protect others.”

The SPLC amended its complaint in the Stewart case on April 24, calling for the release of more prisoners. Aristoteles Sanchez Martinez, a 47-year-old with type-2 diabetes who recently underwent hernia surgery, was recently released from custody, Willis says, but the four other plaintiffs remain at Stewart.

“I met so many people inside who were in really poor conditions and really need to be released,” Sanchez-Martinez said in a statement. “I used to tell people, ‘what you see in here from ICE is the worst of America.’ Now that I am out, I have it on my heart to continue to help the others still inside.”

For the detainees left behind, routine labor has been stretched thin with social distancing protocols. NPR has reported that detainees in many immigration facilities are locked in their cells up to 23 hours a day, disrupting regular jobs like cooking meals. Without people to cook meals, prisoners say they are getting less food than they used to—sometimes only a third of a normal meal, Willis says. In response, one unit staged a hunger strike, Rosenbluth says.

Rosenbluth says he worries not only about his clients but about the hundreds of employees who work in the facility who could bring the virus home.

If the prisoners aren’t safe, the guards aren’t either.

“People are so cheek-by-jowl that there’s no way social distancing is even a remote possibility,” he says. “It is a ticking time bomb not just for the people inside the detention center but for the surrounding communities. It’s just a disaster waiting to happen.” W

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC

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SKYLAR GUDASZ NPR LIVE SESSION

Saturday, May 2 | 3:00 p.m. www.livesessions.npr.org/live/skylar-gudasz

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For her breakthrough second album, Skylar Gudasz shined a spotlight on the essential humanity of workers and artists. She couldn’t have guessed how relevant it would turn out to be.

BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com PHOTO BY CHRIS FRISINA

I

t’s last call at Kingfisher in Durham and Skylar Gudasz is sitting at the bar, chatting with the bartender as she drains her glass. As patrons shimmy and shimmer in the dark, it seems like a typical Friday night out.

But then, as the ambient chatter quiets, Gudasz turns to face the camera.

She begins to sing.

It was the shoot for Gudasz’s “Actress” music video in early December, and she was in full command of the room. The bar hummed with energy as she moved between takes and a makeshift greenroom.

When Gudasz returned to the barstool, her back straight with the poise and cool of a 1970s starlet, she seemed to con10

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jure the silver-screen dreamer that she sings about on Cinema, her second fulllength album, which was released April 17 on Suah Sounds. During the leadup to the release she rolled out several singles—“Rider,” “Play Nice,” “Actress,” and “Animal”—which received attention in outlets like Billboard and NPR’s All Songs Considered, placing her music in the national spotlight.

“Actress” is a late-night ballad of the service industry, a song swoony with old-Hollywood references. Gudasz says that after spending time in LA with her brother, the filmmaker Jason Gudasz, she kept thinking about the secret ambitions of everyone she encountered in the ser-

vice industry. What song might a bartender put on after the bar had cleared?

Gudasz’s answer is the lilting “Actress,” which compels listeners to “ditch your diner dress” for a French kiss and a cigarette, to practice an award-acceptance speech in the stockroom. That music video shoot and its particulars—bars, nights out, the ability to lose yourself in a crowd—now feel like a distant dream.

But while Cinema was born in a world shut down by COVID-19, it also feels eerily timely, shining a spotlight on the essential humanity of the service industry and the sacrifices that artists often undertake. Bars and theaters may be closed, but dreaming, it turns out, is evergreen.

espite Cinema’s glamorous West Coast sheen, Gudasz is no stranger to the service industry nor to the South. In an essay for Southern Cultures, she vividly described the farmhouse where she grew up in Varina, Virginia, as being tinged with witchiness; poisonous pokeweed stalking the yard, her grandmother’s quilts on the beds, and an old Steinway piano at the foot of the stairs.

At age five, she began playing the flute; later, Jason taught her the guitar.

She learned the piano on her own. Her childhood tape collection included Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, Bach, a collection of flute solos, and a nature tape of thunderstorms. The house often felt haunted and, when she was alone, she made up songs to keep the ghosts at bay.

“Reba McEntire was the first tape I bought,” Gudasz says by phone in early April. “My family is very musical. My dad is into classical music, so we were always talking about composers and there were always instruments around. I used to sing to myself. We grew up in the woods, and it was dark, and there was no one else around.”

Gudasz’s father played ragtown piano, and her mother sang with an old-time group that would occasionally play at the house. The old-time practices made an impression, as did her parents’ interest in theater and storytelling. Her father had a flair for the dramatic: His mother was one of 12 siblings, and he grew up among them on the second floor of a funeral home.

He and Gudasz watched movies together; he loved Bette Davis. His sprawling family history was like the cast of a movie to her, she says, and he instilled in her an ability to see high drama in ordinary moments.

“He’s very poetic with the way that he views the world,” she says. “He just sort of sees the dramatic arc of things. He’s very good at making a narrative and expressing, and experiencing, awe and wonder.”

Gudasz’s first job, at the age of 13, was as a page at the General Assembly, followed by a patchwork of other odd jobs— as a lifeguard at the YMCA, at a barbecue restaurant, at Applebee’s, at a farm, and at the theme park Kings Dominion, where she sold candid pictures of people on rollercoasters.

At UNC-Chapel Hill in the mid-2000s, she studied theater and creative writing.

She worked as a barista and a waitress and sold earrings at the Franklin Street Light Years alongside a formative group of co-workers, including the musicians Laura King and Heather McEntire. After graduating, she stuck around and found herself amid a scrappy, welcoming community of artists.

“It’s been a great place to be a musician,” Gudasz says. “People are able to do the things here that they wouldn’t be able to do if they’re paying higher rents in a bigger city—they’re able to tour, which is very expensive; they’re able to make records because there’s all these amazing studios at varying degrees of affordability and mentorship.”

In 2011, she released her first EP as Skylar Gudasz and the Ugly Dolls, Two Headed Monster, a collaborative project with Jeff Crawford (The Old Ceremony) and Casey Toll (Mount Moriah), who is now her partner. In 2013, Chris Stamey recruited her to join his Big Star tribute, which gave her the chance to perform on stages around the world alongside the likes of Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, and The Posies’ Ken Stringfellow.

Her rendition of Big Star’s “Thirteen” is especially memorable. Her vocals—open, confident, and unpretentious, the kind of voice that, as Mills has said, can “command a room”—alchemize adolescent angst into something bigger. When Alex Chilton sang “rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay” in the 1972 original, there was a searching fragility.

Gudasz turns that fluttery phrase into an assurance: Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay.

In 2016, she released her debut solo EP, Oleander, which Chris Stamey produced.

With its teasing piano and acoustics, the album earned comparisons to Joni Mitchell. There’s also something of Courtney Barnett’s winking wit in the writing, a wry humor that sticks after the last note fades away: “Don’t ask me if I believe in God / I believe in Gibson guitars / Don’t ask me if I believe in goodbyes / I believe in a fast car,” Gudasz sings on “I’ll Be Your Man.” Salty breakup banger “I’m So Happy I Could Die” plays directly off of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Underwritten by twangy electric guitar, the sarcasm hits like a sledgehammer. The music video, in which Gudasz wields an actual sledgehammer, was shot in more than 30 locations across North Carolina.

In it, Gudasz sings defiantly from a bathtub, a hair salon, and a waterpark. Music videos are an integral part of Gudasz’s aesthetic, and she’s a natural performer.

When she deadpans to the camera or tilts her head back archly, it’s easy to see how life as an actress might have taken off.

Skylar Gudasz, going up PHOTO BY CHRIS FRISINA

I

n late February, I met Gudasz at The Carolina Theatre. It was a thematically appropriate place to talk about performance, with its red carpets and theater that seats 1,000, although, she told me, she also likes it because she enjoys going to see movies alone. We sat outside and talked about how few references Cinema makes to either romantic love or men. It’s an album that focuses, rather, on the transformative power of performance.

“I think about Dolly Parton, in this way of somebody who has mastered performance and I don’t think that it has mastered her,” Gudasz says. “There’s a line in “Have We Met, Sir” [from Cinema] that’s like, ‘I do not write on love / I write on the inevitability of death.’ Not that love is not worth writing about; I’ve written a lot of songs about love. But I just didn’t want that to be the focus of the album.”

To make Cinema, Gudasz recruited a host of collaborators for the album, many of whom are local: Brad Cook, Shane Leonard, Pete Lewis, Ari Picker, Nick Vandenberg, James Wallace, Jeff Crawford, Casey Toll, and Libby Rodenbough.

It had been a lot of work to pull an album and tour together, she says, even as a seasoned artist a decade deep in the Triangle music scene, but she was feel-

ing hopeful about the release that she’d poured so much into.

In early March, she left for a short tour.

The reality of a shutdown seemed far away.

“We had a promo thing and left, and my publicist was there and said, ‘They’re talking about canceling South by Southwest,’” and I was like, ‘That’s not real,’” Gudasz later said by phone. “And then, on the drive home from New York to North Carolina, everything just shut down.”

During a crisis, art inevitably takes on more potency. But it’s hard not to feel that Cinema, with its glitz and grit and longing, packs a particularly resonant punch.

“Actress” is not the only song that exists in the service world: There is also “Rider,” a song about the open road, with a video shot by her brother in the pristine interior of Saint James Seafood. She plays the part of the devoted waitress; elsewhere on the album, there is a song titled “Waitress” that is peppered with details about apple pie and lipstick smudges and the blues.

Neither “Actress” nor “Waitress” follow the usual script about aspiring actresses, though: The romance comes equally from having one foot in the working world and one foot in the clouds. Four of the nine songs contain mention of stars: star-chasing, yes, but also stargazing, star-blaming, and finding one’s true north.

Gudasz says people have told her that “Animal” has taken on more meaning in isolation. She wrote it while walking on the Brighton Pier in England, after locking herself out of a club. It’s a song grounded in the touring life but is also, more broadly, about making sense of chaos and figuring out how to be alone. When Gudasz gently croons, “Is there any place I haven’t left my heart?” it’s hard to not feel homesick for a time when public spaces felt safe and free.

“Play Nice” is the poppiest and most cathartic song on the album. The fourth wall seems to drop a bit as the Southern girl who has been raised to be “decent at pleasantries” bares her teeth at sexist expectations (“Babe, I’m as nice as a guillotine / You say play nice, babe / I’m as nice as gasoline.”). Gudasz recorded the song with Picker in his wooded Goth Construction Studios; she was his first client. Picker says that he and Gudasz watched Heart videos while recording, and worked intensively to capture the album’s pop sensibilities. Picker added a drum machine to amplify what he describes as a “nighttime-driving, fist-pumping, Tom Petty kinda song.”

“When I think about the voice of Oleander, it was a person willing to be malleable,” Gudasz says. “Cinema is still personal in terms of the multitudes of identities that you have to walk through in the world, like in Whitman’s ‘I contain multitudes,’ but there’s some boundary-ness, some self-knowledge. It’s less being looked at then looking.”

The shutdown necessitated an improvised kind of promotion. As with other independent artists, Gudasz has taken to livestreams, including an upcoming NPR Live Session on May 2. She’s waiting and taking a lot of walks. She’s worried about her friends—the artists, the musicians, the bartenders, the waiters—but she’s hopeful that our new reality will usher in urgent political change, like Medicare for All. On April 17, she staged an Instagram Live album release that somehow felt both intimate and elaborate—as, perhaps, a good performance should.

She wore bright red lipstick and thanked her fans. The singer-songwriter Molly Sarlé, with whom Gudasz had been in a wooded production of Macbeth with, a winter ago, guested into the livestream, and the two read a violent scene from the play. Gudasz also dropped into The Pinhook’s virtual karaoke stream and sang a cover of “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt.

There was also, during her livestream, a lime-green cake with “CINEMA” spelled out in icing. Skylar Gudasz blew out the candles and, despite everything, an album was born. W KeepItINDY.com

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INDY PRESS CLUB, ONE YEAR LATER Happy Birthday, INDY Press Club!

Around this time a year ago, we secured the domain name KeepItINDY.com and ran a test donation through our new system, the final steps in a frantic three-month sprint to set up the INDY Press Club.

We had no idea what we were doing. And we had no idea what was about to happen.

I’d been pushing for a membership program for more than a year—since I had to lay off people in early 2018, something I never wanted to do again. It was obvious the media’s financial landscape was changing. Print ad revenue was disappearing, and you could pump out all the clickbait in the world, but digital ads couldn’t replace it.

National magazines and newspapers were pushing subscriptions, but that didn’t jibe with the INDY’s model. A couple of alt-weeklies created nonprofits; I did, too, on paper, though I failed to do anything with it, as I had neither the time nor the inclination to write grants or kiss foundations’ asses. (If you are so inclined, please contact me.) Some news websites I frequented simply began asking readers to donate to support their journalism, and that struck me as a real possibility.

Why not ask people for money? I asked. I encountered resistance. What would this program look like? (I didn’t know.) Wouldn’t it suggest that the INDY was on its last legs? (Maybe.) Would that scare off advertisers? (Hm.) We dragged our feet. Then, last February, I went to a conference where the new owner of the storied Chicago Reader laid out how she’d relaunched a paper that was near death with a hugely successful fundraising campaign.

That sparked something. I returned to Durham tired of merely surviving. I wanted this paper to thrive, to grow, to have the resources it needs to do the journalism this community deserves. If that meant asking for money, by God, we’d swallow our pride and do it.

Apparently, I can be persuasive.

Richard Meeker, our owner, signed off—if nothing else, we’d be a good test case for the other papers he co-owns—and we got to work: the branding, the collateral, the website stuff, the launch campaign.

The theme was simple: The INDY is and will remain a free publication for everyone. But to keep our journalism viable, we need those who can to support us.

Keep it free. Keep it INDY. What we didn’t know was how it would be received, a cause of no small amount of anxiety. What if nobody gave us money? Worse, what if it backfired and gave the INDY the stench of death?

On the evening of Tuesday, May 6, we hit publish on the INDY Press Club announcement, then watched nervously.

A donation came in: $12 a month. Then another: $100. Then another: $30 a month. Then another. Then another. Then another.

It was remarkable to watch, far exceeding our expectations.

By the end of May, we’d brought in more than $12,500.

We used Press Club funds to pay Nick Williams, our restaurant critic, as well as our Voices columnists and a handful of features we otherwise couldn’t have afforded. We eventually used the money to help relaunch my long-dormant morning newsletter, Primer, too.

Then the world went nuts.

I can’t adequately describe what mid-March was like for journalism, especially for alt-weeklies. At least a half-dozen went dark, some permanently. Everything that we rely on for revenue— concerts, bars, restaurants, events—closed indefinitely.

Meeker assured us that we’d get through it. He secured funding to see us through the short-term, and we applied for a $129,000 loan through the Paycheck Protection Program, which came through and will float us through May. That’s terrific.

But we also owe our continued survival to you.

When the pandemic hit, I asked—begged, really—for help.

Your response blew me away. In March and April—mostly in the last five weeks—the Press Club has raised about $37,000. That money’s allowed us to not only weather the storm but to plan for the Press Club’s growth in its aftermath.

This week, we want to celebrate the Press Club’s first birthday—and finish year one strong.

Here’s the deal: As I write this on Tuesday morning, we’ve raised almost $85,000 since we launched. I’d set a goal of $100,000 over our first 12 months, a number I picked out of thin air. That seems like a stretch given the timeframe. (In fairness, Meeker thought we wouldn’t get to $50,000.) But I do think we can hit $95,000 by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, May 8.

Let’s call it 10 Days for 10K. We’re going to make it fun. All of the wonderful companies to the right have offered killer goodies for us to give to Press Club members, which we’re going to do between Wednesday, April 29, and Friday, May 8. Some we’ll raffle among our members, while larger packages will go to our daily champions: whichever contributor puts us over $1,000 for the day.

Even better: We’ve made some amazing limited-edition t-shirts for the occasion. Contribute $20 a month or $100 or more, and it’s yours (while supplies last). Contribute $12 a month or $30 or more, and you can get one of the few original INDY Press Club tees we have left. (And we know we’re behind on sending out membership cards. That’s high on our list.)

But don’t join for the swag. Join because our work matters.

Local journalism matters, especially during a crisis.

Over the next several pages, you’ll see testimonials from Press Club members telling you why they joined—and why you should, too. Better journalism makes for a better community. And right now, we need our community’s help to sustain us to help us in the difficult weeks to come.

10 Days, 10K. Let’s do it. Keep it free. Keep it INDY. —Jeffrey C. Billman (jbillman@indyweek.com) To join the INDY Press Club, visit KeepItINDY.com today, or mail a check to the INDY Press Club, PO Box 1772, Durham, NC 27702.

An INDY Press Club membership isn’t required to enter the raffle. Email Susan Harper at sharper@indyweek.com if you’d like to enter without joining.

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GIFTS PROVIDED BY: Alamo Drafthouse Raleigh Arts NC State Live Barriskill Dance Co. Best Clean Ever Carolina Brewery Carolina Performing Arts Carolina Theatre of Durham Chatham Cider Works Cheeni + Sugar & Spice Kitchen Chrystal Bartlett & Company Citrine Salon CQC Home Cubic Dissection Current Wellness Designed for Joy Doggie Spa & Day Care Dreamville Festival Durty Bull Brewery Emerge Pediatric Therapy The Flourish Market Goosehead Insurancee Herbivore CBD Hillsborough BBQ Honeysuckle Tea House Horse & Buggy Press The Kraken Locals Seafood Magnolia Manor Natural Esthetics Ruff Stuff Treats Rush Hour Karting Saltbox Shop Local Raleigh / Greater Raleigh Merchant’s Association Special Treats Thousand Petals Yoga Triangle Music School V Pizza Walk & Wag Whole Brain Escape WRAL First Night Raleigh The Wine Feed Thank you to these local businesses for supporting the INDY Press Club!

WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? Why Did You Join the INDY Press Club?

A couple of weeks ago, I asked our Press Club members a simple question: Why did you join?

After all, they don’t have to contribute to access our stories or our newsletters. And sure, there’s some swag every now and then, but unlike other local media organizations that occasionally ask for your support, we’re not about to put you on a plane to Antarctica when the quarantine lifts.

I asked this question for us. I wanted to know what we were doing that our most engaged and committed readers were enjoying; from a strictly business perspective, you want to keep them happy, especially when there’s very little advertising revenue coming in.

But as the answers started pouring in—dozens and then hundreds of them—it occurred to me that we shouldn’t keep them to ourselves. They say so much about the INDY’s relationship with the community it serves, about how the work we do matters, and reading them reminded me why it is such a privilege to work here.

The INDY has been publishing since 1983, and in 37 years, neither we nor our industry has faced a moment like this. Here, in their own words, your friends and neighbors explain why they’ve chipped in $12 a month or $30 a month or $50 or $100—sometimes more, sometimes less—to keep this paper going for 37 more years. (I’ve kept them anonymous to avoid accidental privacy hiccups. But these are all straight from my inbox.)

If, after reading their answers to our one question, you’d like to join us, too, it’s easy: Just go to KeepItINDY.com. It’ll take two minutes.

—Jeffrey C. Billman

I joined because I have been a regular reader since the mid-1990s. I have come to depend on INDY Week to provide me insightful news and opinion from the Triangle and the state. There is no other source for this type of journalism, and I would sorely miss it if the INDY could not continue. That is why I am supporting your work.

I joined the INDY Press Club because I really appreciate the Primer newsletter. I no longer live in North Carolina (though I do plan to move back ASAP), and I like that I can keep up with both local and national/world news in a single newsletter.

I like the spotlight on the local food and arts scene (super helpful for when I get to visit!). I also (naively?) hope that independent journalism will save us all.

[Editor’s note: If you’d like to subscribe to Primer, our morning newsletter, visit INDYPrimer.com.]

First moved to the Triangle (specifically, Durham) about 30 years ago, and have loved the INDY for almost as long. For free! So when you make an appeal, it seems not too much to ask. Also, I sincerely appreciate print journalism as opposed to broadcast journalism. And really appreciate the voting guides. They help me to vote early and vote often.

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WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? Initially, I joined because I’d grown tired of reading news articles that had a right-wing slant or left out vital facts and wanted to support your efforts to continue to provide the news without ads.

Then, as I became a daily reader of Primer, I looked forward to reading the news with humor threaded throughout and details I found fascinating. You’re doing a hard job especially right now.

Thank you for your dedication and your staff ’s commitment.

I have been reading this paper for a long time, maybe 20 years. I’ve always enjoyed the honest reporting, even though it ruffles some feathers sometimes.

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I was lost without the Primer during its hiatus.

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[Ed. note: Primer took an extended break from 2018 until February.]

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I wanted to support local journalism. And the INDY is the best source for events and restaurant info in the Triangle.

Living in Chapel Hill for the past three and a half years, I always grab a copy of the INDY when I spotted it at entrances to places I frequented. I love your coverage of politics and, as an outsider, your insider views are valued. Your request for membership came at the right time. How could I continue to take a copy of the INDY and not contribute?

It’s like all the supporters of WUNC who say they feel an obligation to support a news source that they value. Keep up the good work.

Because I believe local news outlets are so important—especially those that are as responsible and dedicated as the INDY. I just wish I could donate more.

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Since our very first date, my now-husband and I have sat down at Boulted Bread each week with a croissant and a copy of the INDY. We work on the crossword first, then flip through and circle shows we want to check out. Then we take the issue home and spend the rest of the week reading the articles and feeling a little more connected to our adopted city of Raleigh. We rarely finish the crossword, and we’ve only made it to a handful of shows. But nothing can beat the feeling of living in a city with enough spunk to maintain an independent newspaper.

The INDY is the best source of news for local government and community issues, and it can’t go away.

Because local journalism is dying, and y’all are what little remains of the Fourth Estate in the Triangle. The N&O is in such bad shape, it’s truly disturbing.

In a better world, you’d both have your shit together, but at least I feel like I can help keep the INDY alive. Thanks for caring and working hard!

WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? I vote Republican, voted for Trump in 2016, and intend to vote for President Trump again in 2020. I get my news from a variety of sources, including the INDY, which I have read since the mid-90s. I appreciate your thoughtful point of view even though I don’t always agree with it. I like your insight on local issues, especially local government. I also get my music news and see who is playing where.

I intend to enjoy the INDY for years to come.

I joined because I believe a free and independent press is the foundation of a healthy democracy (and we surely have a lot of work to do on that front). And to honor my dad, a career journalist who believed there was nothing more sacred than the pursuit of telling the truth in print.

As a former journalist, I know that media is a watchdog that keeps everyone honest. We need you even when we may disagree.

We'll be back.

Oh man, where to begin? To narrow it, though, I joined for Primer, The Pride Issue, and Best of The Triangle. Keep on keepin’ on!

In the meantime, visit us at www.cheeniraleigh.com to order for delivery or pick-up.

I joined the INDY Press Club because I LOVE the Primer. It gives me everything I need to know each day. I’m happy to support local, truthful journalism.

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I joined because I am a recovering journalist and have been disturbed by a lot of trends that have worked against the industry over the last 20 years or so. I also support ProPublica and NC Health News. I have subscriptions to The Washington Post and the HeraldSun. I’ve also sent a donation to my hometown alt-weekly Cleveland Scene. I do what I can and only wish I could do more.

I joined the INDY Press Club because the paper is valuable to me. After my initial gift, I set up a recurring donation in an amount similar to the subscription price I pay for our local paper. The INDY is good local journalism, focusing on stories that are important to me.

I joined because I want you to be able to continue your political coverage and investigative reporting, especially this year.

Why? Many reasons. I grew up reading the Independent. I vividly remember our family’s weekly trips to Foster’s Market where I could grab a copy of the latest issue when I was a child. As the world has changed, we’ve seen massive shifts in the way media, especially print media, have had to operate to survive. It’s important as media outlets disappear or get gobbled up by larger conglomerates, that we still have free and independent sources that are not beholden to others and are free to speak the truth. Keep up the good work!

Because I enjoy reading Primer. It gives me good info on local, state, and national politics that I need to read about. And no sifting through the fluffy news from The N&O and WRAL to get to it.

KeepItINDY.com

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WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? I was an early adopter because a) I think the steady death of local journalism is a threat to our democracy, b) I like Primer, and c) it just seemed like the right thing to do.

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I joined because the morning newsletters showed up in my inbox right around the time when there was a lot of news—presidential nominee and coronavirus. I love that it’s factual but witty and absolutely understands how beleaguering all of this can be. I could spare a few dollars a month to support that—and did so as soon as I saw the first ask. I’m really glad you guys asked, otherwise I’d never have known there was a need.

I support the free independent and fearless journalism of the INDY. I also value the local Durham news. I enjoy the social commentary and the reviews of food, restaurants, and music. Please keep it up!

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Because the INDY provides great Triangle and state news, and as The N&O encounters more and more stress, it’s important to keep up the coverage. P.S., I support the N&O, too.

I moved to Chapel Hill from Berkeley seven years ago when I retired.

I missed Northern California quite a lot but found a few things that reminded me of home.

The INDY is one of those things. I joined just to support the cultural scene in some small way.

I feel strongly that an independent newspaper is a guarantee of truthful information and freedom.

I love the diversity of the INDY and want the publication to continue.

Because local journalism is endangered, and if I don’t support it, I might lose it.

I value INDY Week’s take on a lot of things. They confirm some things I think I know, they challenge my beliefs on other things, and they generally stretch my mind to understand and appreciate the larger community I live in. It’s worth supporting friends like that.

Now more than ever before, I feel the need for help to make sense of what is going on in our world. The thoughtful and rational reporting and analysis of local, state, and national issues that I find in the INDY help me to stay informed of what is happening and also feel that I am not alone in my anger, frustration, and concern. I also value the INDY’s coverage of the local and state elections and its picks of candidates.

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WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? We’ve been reading the INDY for years! But the reason I decided to become a member of the Press Club is that I began relying on your outstanding local journalism to guide me in decision-making during the 2019 elections. I looked to your reporting to help make my decisions on the local slate of candidates. That kind of quality reporting deserves support, and I’m happy to give it.

Also, the headlines of some of your pieces are laugh-out-loud funny.

This one, “Dan Forest, an Idiot, Thinks the Media Is Overhyping the Coronavirus to Sell Advertising,” just begs to be clicked on and read. Oh! And the article on the Raleigh Rickshaw owner made me almost cry with mirth. You cannot get better sentences than this: “INDY publisher Susan Harper could not be reached for comment, as she was busy lighting hundred-dollar bills on fire.”

Top marks, INDY. Well done.

PS: I am also a subscriber to the Raleigh News & Observer, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. You guys are right up there with the best of the best.

I joined your Press Club because the INDY is the best aggregator of information and supporter of local culture.

Because [publisher] Susan Harper is a very cool woman…

1) Because of the people— in particular, because of the arts-beat reporters whose coverage is vital to a thriving arts ecosystem. 2) Because of the history of the Triangle contained within those papers. Without the INDY, who will record the future history of the area?

[Ed. note: We agree, and not just because she signs the paychecks.]

I joined the INDY Press Club because I read the INDY every week! I hate to see it shrink! It’s the only local journalism we have! We need it!

I joined to support the INDY because there is no other reliable source for the valuable information on local candidates.

To support local journalism. I read the INDY fairly regularly in print and Primer almost every day. I want to support local journalism through this time when the entire financial model of the newspaper and journalism industry has been upended by the internet.

Why did we join the Press Club? Because we like your snappy, irreverent take on the news. We think it’s important to have a local news source and, although we’re no longer local, we love hearing what’s going on in the Triangle.

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THANK THANKYOU, YOU,INDY INDYPRESS PRESSCLUB CLUBMEMBERS! MEMBERS! A. A. C. C. Garner Garner Aaron Aaron Huslage Huslage Aaron Aaron Sanchez Sanchez Guerra Guerra Abby Abby Kellerman Kellerman Adam Adam David David Cohen Cohen Alan Alan andand Linda Linda Rimer Rimer Alex Alex Bowden Bowden Alex Alex Hardy Hardy Alex Alex Ripp, Ripp, in honor in honor of Brian of Brian Howe Howe andand hishis invaluable invaluable work work uplifting uplifting artsarts criticism criticism Alex Alex Rosen Rosen Alice Alice Gerrard Gerrard Alice Alice Osborn Osborn Alison Alison Arnold Arnold Allison Allison Bryan Bryan Allison Allison Buehler Buehler Alysia Alysia Tacinelli Tacinelli Amanda Amanda J Smith J Smith Amanda Amanda Sosebee Sosebee Amee Amee EarlEarl Anchala Anchala Studios Studios Andrew Andrew Janiak Janiak andand Rebecca Rebecca Stein Stein Andrew Andrew Morton Morton Andy Andy Riddle Riddle andand Emily Emily Feidelson Feidelson Andy Andy Vanderford Vanderford Angela Angela Jo Verdone Jo Verdone Angela Angela M. M. Jeannet Jeannet Angie Angie Vorhies Vorhies Anita Anita Lynch Lynch Ann Ann Levy Levy Ann Ann Rosar Rosar Ann Ann Tlley Tlley Anna Anna Anne Anne Fleming Fleming Anne Anne Smith Smith Anne Anne West West Annette Annette andand JoeJoe Swain Swain Annie Annie Lo Lo AnnMargaret AnnMargaret Cole Cole Anonymous Anonymous Anthony Anthony L. Clay, L. Clay, in honor in honor of former of former Indy Indy Week Week General General Manager Manager Tanja Tanja Atkins Atkins Antonia Antonia Randolph Randolph Ardath Ardath andand Reagan Reagan Weaver Weaver Arielle Arielle andand Arnold Arnold Schechter Schechter Asabi Asabi Ashley Ashley Popio Popio Aviva Aviva Starr Starr B. Fenhagen B. Fenhagen B. Leddy B. Leddy Barbara Barbara C. C. Freedman Freedman Barbara Barbara Wasserman Wasserman Barrie Barrie Trinkle Trinkle

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Barry Barry Olson Olson Barry Barry Tuch, Tuch, MDMD BenBen Williams Williams Benjamin Benjamin Williams Williams BesBes Baldwin Baldwin Bess Bess Sadler Sadler Beth Beth Jakub Jakub andand Mark Mark Katz Katz Beth Beth Lindsey Lindsey Beth Beth Navon Navon Beverley Beverley S. Clark S. Clark BillBill Neuffer Neuffer BillBill Yoder Yoder andand Ashley Ashley Montague Montague Blandy Blandy Fisher Fisher Bob Bob andand Diane Diane Steinbeiser Steinbeiser Bob Bob Gotwals Gotwals Bob Bob Proctor Proctor Bob Bob Reinheimer Reinheimer Bob Bob Woodbury Woodbury Bobbi Bobbi Wallace Wallace Brendan Brendan Flanagan Flanagan Brent Brent Lawrence Lawrence Brian Brian Geisinger Geisinger Brian Brian Porter Porter Brook Brook Osborne Osborne andand Tony Tony Thomas Thomas Bruce Bruce Wilks Wilks Bruce Bruce andand Sharon Sharon Stevens Stevens Bryan Bryan Davis Davis Bryce Bryce Tennant Tennant Bryna Bryna andand Greg Greg Rapp Rapp C. C. Becker Becker C. C. Douglas Douglas Maynard, Maynard, in in honor honor of Annie of Annie Maynard Maynard Cady Cady Whitehurst Whitehurst Caitlyn Caitlyn Swett Swett Caleb Caleb Easterly Easterly Capen Capen Rhew Rhew Cara Cara Brunello Brunello Carol Carol andand Mark Mark Hewitt Hewitt Carol Carol Retsch-Bogart Retsch-Bogart Carol Carol Thomson Thomson Carol Carol Wills Wills Cassie Cassie Irwin Irwin Catherine Catherine Goldman Goldman Cathy Cathy Kielar Kielar Cathy Cathy Murphy Murphy Celeste Celeste Burns Burns Celia Celia Dickerson Dickerson Charles Charles C Kroner C Kroner Charles Charles Kast Kast Charles Charles Meeker Meeker Charlie Charlie andand Bryan Bryan Hubbell Hubbell Charlotte Charlotte Wray Wray Chase Chase Pickett, Pickett, Actual Actual Size Size Builders Builders Cheryl Cheryl Sebrell Sebrell Chloe Chloe andand Xander Xander Madsen Madsen Chris Chris Brodie Brodie Chris Chris Chato Chato

INDYweek.com

Chris Chris Dragga Dragga Chrissy Chrissy andand JoelJoel Huber Huber Christina Christina Rodriguez Rodriguez Christine Christine andand Keith Keith Poole Poole Christy Christy Brooks Brooks Christy Christy Ferguson Ferguson Cierra Cierra Hinton Hinton Claire Claire Long Long Claire Claire Sellers Sellers Colleen Colleen McNamara McNamara Connie Connie Cohn Cohn Cory Cory Quammen Quammen Courtney Courtney L. Vien L. Vien Craig Craig Carter Carter Cynthia Cynthia Vester Vester Damon Damon Circosta Circosta Dane Dane West West Dani Dani Underwood Underwood Daniel Daniel Blanchard Blanchard Daniel Daniel Scurry Scurry Daniel Daniel Singer Singer Daniel Daniel Williams Williams Danyelle Danyelle B. B. Dave Dave Wofford Wofford (Horse (Horse & & Buggy Buggy Press) Press) David David andand Joyce Joyce Gordon Gordon David David C Smith C Smith David David J Kroll J Kroll David David Mummy Mummy DDampier DDampier Deborah Deborah C Christie C Christie Debra Debra C Levin C Levin Debra Debra Schafrath Schafrath andand Matt Matt Craig Craig Delila Delila Serra Serra Dena Dena Verdesca Verdesca Denise Denise Thomas Thomas Dennis Dennis Nagy Nagy Devra Devra Thomas Thomas Diane Diane Hundley Hundley Diane Diane Lennox Lennox Diane Diane Meyer Meyer Dolly Dolly Butler Butler Donald Donald Gallagher Gallagher Donna Donna Crocetti Crocetti Dorie Dorie Clark Clark Dorothy Dorothy Butler Butler Doug Doug andand Linda Linda Hopkins Hopkins Downtown Downtown Days Days InnInn Dr.Dr. Lucille Lucille Keenan, Keenan, Psy.D. Psy.D. Dr.Dr. Terri Terri Creagh Creagh Duke Duke Williams Williams Dustin Dustin Britt Britt Dustin Dustin Ingalls Ingalls Dylan Dylan West West E. Megan E. Megan Davidson Davidson Averill Averill Ed Ed Neely Neely Edward Edward Averett Averett andand Perdita Perdita Holtz Holtz Elijah Elijah Bernstein-Cooper Bernstein-Cooper

Elise Elise Oras Oras andand Chad Chad Engelgau Engelgau Elizabeth Elizabeth A Kreick A Kreick Elizabeth Elizabeth Ault Ault Elizabeth Elizabeth Finley Finley Elizabeth Elizabeth Hipps Hipps Elizabeth Elizabeth Peel Peel Elizabeth Elizabeth Weichel Weichel Ellen Ellen andand Arturo Arturo Ciompi Ciompi Ellen Ellen Manning Manning Emily Emily Berkeley Berkeley Emily Emily EveEve Weinstein Weinstein Emily Emily Graham Graham Emily Emily Osterhus Osterhus Emily Emily Rush Rush Emma Emma Webb Webb EricEric andand Susanna Susanna Henley Henley EricEric Bauer Bauer EricEric M. M. Braun Braun EricEric Page Page Erica Erica S Rothman S Rothman ErinErin andand Will Will McPherson McPherson ErinErin BellBell ErinErin Mullaney Mullaney Ethel Ethel Simonetti Simonetti Evelin Evelin andand Paul Paul Brinich Brinich Eyra Eyra Dordi Dordi FairFair K. Pickel K. Pickel FayFay Cathles-Hagen Cathles-Hagen ForFor Rumbly!

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Fraioli Fraioli family family Frank Frank Hyman Hyman Frank Frank Jackson Jackson Frank Frank Konhaus Konhaus andand Ellen Ellen Cassilly Cassilly Freda Freda Salatino Salatino Frederick Frederick Cubbage Cubbage Gareth Gareth Price Price Gary Gary Cozzolino Cozzolino Geoffrey Geoffrey Dunkak Dunkak George George Nickel Nickel Georgette Georgette Foster Foster Gerald Gerald Main Main andand Jessica Jessica Rozier Rozier Gerry Gerry Bernstein Bernstein Ginny Ginny Going Going Girolami Girolami Martha Martha Gloria Gloria Mock Mock Grant Grant Gardner Gardner Gretchen Gretchen Cooley Cooley Grey Grey Dane Dane GusGus andand Doris Doris Gusler Gusler HalHal andand Anne Anne Bogerd Bogerd Halle Halle Amick Amick Hampton Hampton Dellinger Dellinger TheThe Harkraders Harkraders Harold Harold andand Linda Linda Carmel Carmel Harry Harry Johnson Johnson andand Kreth Kreth Ball-Johnson Ball-Johnson Heather Heather A Settle A Settle

Heather Heather Chandler Chandler Hettie Hettie Johnson Johnson Holmgren-Sidell Holmgren-Sidell Hope Hope Breeze Breeze Huston Huston Paschal Paschal Ilene Ilene Speizer Speizer In honor In honor of Judy of Judy Ellington Ellington IzaIza Wojciechowska Wojciechowska J. A. J. A. Flora Flora J. Andrews J. Andrews J. P.J. Streich P. Streich Jack Jack Hutcherson Hutcherson Jackson Jackson BlyBly Jacob Jacob Downey Downey Jaimie Jaimie LeaLea Jake Jake Stanley Stanley James James Daniels Daniels James James Dardig Dardig James James Goodnight Goodnight James James Lambert Lambert James James Stephen Stephen Harring Harring Jamie Jamie Glover Glover Jane Jane Fellows Fellows Janice Janice Travis Travis JayJay andand Susan Susan Levy Levy JB JB Finley Finley Jeanne Jeanne Canina Canina Tedrow Tedrow Jeanne Jeanne Robinson Robinson JeffJeff andand Yael Yael Symes Symes JeffJeff Bryant Bryant JeffJeff Gordon Gordon Jeffery Jeffery Beam Beam jeffrey jeffrey Gordon Gordon Jennie Jennie Faries Faries Jennifer Jennifer A. A. Delcourt Delcourt Jennifer Jennifer B. Albright B. Albright Jennifer Jennifer Rogers Rogers Green Green Jennifer Jennifer Thomas Thomas Jenny Jenny andand LeeLee Bennett Bennett Jenny Jenny Warburg Warburg Jeremy Jeremy Farber Farber Jeremy Jeremy Loftis Loftis Jeremy Jeremy Sprinkle Sprinkle Jerry Jerry Hartzell Hartzell JessJess Stanford Stanford Jessalee Jessalee Landfried Landfried Jesse Jesse Daniel Daniel Bikman Bikman Jesse Jesse Gephart Gephart Jessica Jessica McCann McCann JimJim andand Sara Sara Craven Craven JimJim Haverkamp Haverkamp Jimmie Jimmie Vaughn Vaughn JK JK Horne Horne Joanie Joanie Alexander Alexander Joanna Joanna andand JosJos Purvis Purvis Joanne Joanne Abel Abel Jody Jody andand Gregg Gregg Stebben Stebben JoeJoe Brockmeier Brockmeier JoeJoe McLean McLean JoelJoel Bulkley Bulkley

John John Banker Banker John John Godzilla Godzilla John John I. Davis I. Davis John John Keller Keller John John Ladd Ladd John John M. M. Laing Laing John John Maier Maier John John Reynolds Reynolds andand Rebecca Rebecca Fensholt Fensholt John John W. W. Shaw Shaw JonJon andand Marlene Marlene Hubbard Hubbard Jonathan Jonathan Choi Choi Jonathan Jonathan Jones Jones Jonathan Jonathan Markow Markow Jonathan Jonathan Russell Russell Jordan Jordan Dalton Dalton Joseph Joseph Ritok Ritok Josh Josh Fraimow Fraimow Josh Josh Paterni Paterni JotiJoti Sekhon Sekhon JoyJoy andand Zack Zack Turkal Turkal JoyJoy Sotolongo Sotolongo Joyce Joyce H. H. Gad Gad TheThe Joyful Joyful Jewel Jewel Judith Judith Bergman Bergman Judy Judy Schneider Schneider Juliana Juliana MaMa Julie Julie andand Lise’ Lise’ Julie Julie Blume Blume NyeNye Justin Justin R. Davis R. Davis JWJW Karen Karen Barrows Barrows Karen Karen Burns Burns Karin Karin Yeatts Yeatts Karl Karl Brenneman Brenneman Karyn Karyn Hlad Hlad Kate Kate CoxCox Kate Kate HillHill andand Chris Chris Dragga Dragga Kathe Kathe Vaughan Vaughan Kathleen Kathleen Lockwood Lockwood Kathleen Kathleen Williams Williams andand Michael Michael Sharp Sharp Kathryn Kathryn Pegoraro Pegoraro Kathryn Kathryn Visocki Visocki Haynes Haynes Kathy Kathy andand Alexander Alexander Silbiger Silbiger Katie Katie andand Steve Steve Murray Murray Katie Katie Rose Rose Katie Katie Todd Todd Katy Katy Maehl Maehl KenKen House House Kenneth Kenneth andand Jamie Jamie Flowers Flowers Kenneth Kenneth Morehead Morehead Kevin Kevin Brown Brown Kevin Kevin LaBar LaBar Kevin Kevin Webb Webb KimKim Pernicka Pernicka TheThe Kirks Kirks Kirsten Kirsten Firminger Firminger Kirsten Kirsten Hagopian Hagopian Kirsten Kirsten Moe Moe

Kirsten Kirsten M “San “Sandy cont contrib of Ja of Jane Pau Paul B Kitty Kitty BerB Kristen Kristen a Mon Monah Kristen Kristen W Kristin Kristin La KristinK Kristina Kruska Kruskamp Krysta Krystal Jo Kyle M Kyle Misk L. Iann L. Iannot Lani Lani anda Ru LaoLao Rube StevS Steve Larry Larry anda Larry Larry anda Larry D Larry DeG R. LR Larry Larry Laura A. Laura Laura Arw Laura Laura Be Laura John M John Laura Fri Laura Laura G. Laura Laura Mi Laura Laura Se Laura Laurel Vi Laurel Laurelle LaurelP Lawrence Lawre Layla Kho Layla LeeLee Creig Cr LenLen Stan St Leon Mey Leon M Leslie Eld Leslie Leslie Ge Leslie Letters LetterB LewLew andan Lincoln LincolH Linda and Linda Thomp Tho Linda Bu Linda Linda L. Linda Lindsey LindseB LisaLisa Brac B Robert Rob LisaLisa E. K E LisaLisa McC M LisaLisa Misr M LisaLisa Wat W LizLiz BallBa LizLiz Heste He LizaLiza andan LJ Freem LJ Free Lois Balle Lois B LORRIE LORRI Lucia K. P Lucia K

Kirsten Mullen andand William Kirsten Mullen William “Sandy” Darity, Jr., Jr., “Sandy” Darity, contribution in honor contribution in honor of Jane Wettach andand of Jane Wettach Paul Baldasare Paul Baldasare Kitty Bergel Kitty Bergel Kristen andand Michael Kristen Michael Monahan Monahan lt Kristen Westfall Kristen Westfall Kristin Lang Kristin Lang Hubbard bard Kristina K. Troost Kristina K. Troost Kruskamp/Bowling Family Kruskamp/Bowling Family Krystal Jones Krystal Jones Kyle Miskell Kyle Miskell L. Iannotte L. Iannotte Lani andand David Parker Lani David Parker LaoLao Rubert andand Rubert Steve Schewel Steve Schewel Larry andand Jennifer Deppa Larry Jennifer Deppa Larry andand Karla Diener Larry Karla Diener al Larry DeGraaf Larry DeGraaf Larry R. Lane Larry R. Lane Laura A. A. Thomas Thomas Laura Laura Arwood Laura Arwood Laura Benedict andand Laura Benedict John Morris John Morris Laura Friederich Laura Friederich Laura G. G. Garfinkel Laura Garfinkel Laura Mikesell Laura Mikesell Laura SellSell Laura Laurel Vincenty Laurel Vincenty Laurelle Palmer Laurelle Palmer Lawrence H. H. Greenblatt Lawrence Greenblatt Layla Khoury-Hanold Layla Khoury-Hanold LeeLee Creighton Creighton LenLen Stanley Stanley Leon Meyers Leon Meyers Eldredge Leslie Eldredge sragga Dragga Leslie Leslie Gernon Leslie Gernon Letters Bookshop Letters Bookshop d LewLew andand Sally Wardell Sally Wardell dand Lincoln Hancock Lincoln Hancock Linda andand George Linda George Thompson Thompson aynes es Burdett Linda Burdett ilbiger r Silbiger Linda Linda L. Shaw Linda L. Shaw urray ay Lindsey Barlow Lindsey Barlow LisaLisa Brachman andand Brachman Robert Roubey Robert Roubey LisaLisa E. Kaylie E. Kaylie McCaskill McCaskill eowers Flowers LisaLisa LisaLisa Misrok Misrok d LisaLisa Watts Watts LizLiz BallBall LizLiz Hester Hester LizaLiza andand Danny Green Danny Green LJ Freeman LJ Freeman Lois Ballen Lois Ballen LORRIE LORRIE Lucia K. Powe Lucia K. Powe

Lucy Eckert Lucy Eckert Luke Blount Luke Blount Lyman Collins Lyman Collins Lynda Stinson Hollar Lynda Stinson Hollar Lynn Poole Lynn Poole M& MM & Weitzel M Weitzel M. M. Kamali Kamali M. M. Morrissey Morrissey M. M. Richard Cramer Richard Cramer M.R. Pennell M.R. Pennell Maddy Bloomer Maddy Bloomer Magda Corredor Magda Corredor Manifold Recording Manifold Recording Marcia Koomen Marcia Koomen Margaret McCann Margaret McCann Margaret Rush Margaret Rush Margaret Slate Margaret Slate Margie andand LewLew Bass Margie Bass Maria Bilinski Shain Maria Bilinski Shain Marilyn Pinschmidt Marilyn Pinschmidt Mark Hutchinson Mark Hutchinson Mark Marcoplos Mark Marcoplos Mark Neill Mark Neill Marshall Freeman Marshall Freeman Mary Belle Davis Mary Belle Davis Mary Beth Stillwell Mary Beth Stillwell Mary Cardinell-Daldry Mary Cardinell-Daldry Mary Deifer Mary Deifer Mary Grigsby Mary Grigsby Mary Hulett Mary Hulett Mary Johnson Rockers Mary Johnson Rockers Mary Matthews Mary Matthews Mary McMorris Mary McMorris Mary Oxendine Mary Oxendine Mary Purcell Mary Purcell Mary Woodbury Mary Woodbury Mary-Ann Baldwin Mary-Ann Baldwin Marybeth Dugan andand Marybeth Dugan Kenny Dalsheimer Kenny Dalsheimer Matt Morain Matt Morain Matthew andand Olivia Matthew Olivia Raufman Raufman Matthew Clayton Matthew Clayton Matthew P. Clements Matthew P. Clements McChesney McChesney Megan Bryan Wood Megan Bryan Wood Meghan Haviland Meghan Haviland Melinda BoxBox Melinda Melissa Graham Melissa Graham Meribeth Howlett andand Meribeth Howlett Mark Mintz Mark Mintz Michael Bacon andand Michael Bacon Kathryn Lester-Bacon Kathryn Lester-Bacon Michael Daul Michael Daul Michael Eisenberg Michael Eisenberg Michael Finger Michael Finger Michael Galinsky andand Michael Galinsky Suki Hawley Suki Hawley Michael McElreath Michael McElreath Michael Neiswender Michael Neiswender

Michael Spink Michael Spink Michael Thompson Michael Thompson Michael Walker Michael Walker Michelle Lievsay Michelle Lievsay MigMig Murphy Sistrom andand Murphy Sistrom Mike Sistrom Mike Sistrom Mike andand Leah Beatty Mike Leah Beatty Mike’s ArtArt Truck Mike’s Truck Miriam Lamey Miriam Lamey Mitchell Loeb Mitchell Loeb Moira Smullen Moira Smullen Molly M. M. Stuart Molly Stuart Munashe Munashe TheThe Murdocks Murdocks Nancy Beach Nancy Beach Nancy Goudreau Nancy Goudreau Nancy Lane Nancy Lane Nancy Lesesne Nancy Lesesne Nathan Brown Nathan Brown Nelson Wetmore Nelson Wetmore Nick Faber Nick Faber Nicolas Gunkel andand Nicolas Gunkel Marie Agosta-Gunkel Marie Agosta-Gunkel Nicole Archibald Nicole Archibald NilsNils Brubaker Brubaker P. Suzette OrrOrr P. Suzette Pam McClure Pam McClure Pamela Herbert Pamela Herbert Pamela Pittenger Pamela Pittenger Parry/Montgomery Parry/Montgomery PatPat McAulay andand McAulay Margaret Roesch Margaret Roesch PatPat Roos Roos Patricia Fullagar Patricia Fullagar Patricia McClary Patricia McClary Patrick andand Celynd Malone Patrick Celynd Malone Patrick Nalley Patrick Nalley Patrick Wallace Patrick Wallace Patty F. Daniel Patty F. Daniel Paul andand Evelin Brinich Paul Evelin Brinich Paul Blest Paul Blest Paul Jarrett Paul Jarrett Paul Leslie Paul Leslie Peter klopfer Peter klopfer Peter Zasowski Peter Zasowski PhilPhil Stapleton Stapleton Phillip Griffin Phillip Griffin Pinky Smith Pinky Smith Ponce from Critz Ponce from Critz Rachel andand Dillon Rachel Dillon Rachel Adams Rachel Adams Rachel M. M. Jordan Rachel Jordan Rachel Westermann Rachel Westermann Rajeev Rajendran Rajeev Rajendran Randall Gaugert Randall Gaugert Rani Dasi Rani Dasi Raul E. Ochs Raul E. Ochs Rebecca Christian Rebecca Christian Rebecca O’Connell Rebecca O’Connell Rebecca Woltz Rebecca Woltz

TheThe Redneck BBQ LabLab Redneck BBQ Renee andand Burt Rauch Renee Burt Rauch Rhonda Cohen Rhonda Cohen Rhonda Faircloth Rhonda Faircloth Rich andand Andrea Kells Rich Andrea Kells Rich Tapper Rich Tapper Richard Eckberg Richard Eckberg Richard H. H. Meeker Richard Meeker Richard Hess Richard Hess Richie Kahn andand Richie Kahn Nina Baltierra Nina Baltierra Rick Runyan Rick Runyan RobRob andand Janet Napier Janet Napier RobRob Bucklin Bucklin RobRob McAllister McAllister Robbie Rikard Robbie Rikard Robert A. A. Proctor Robert Proctor Robert K. Peet Robert K. Peet Roberta Masse, in memory Roberta Masse, in memory of Richard of Richard Robin A. A. Smith Robin Smith Robin Griffin Robin Griffin Robin Madalena Robin Madalena Robin Smith Berger Robin Smith Berger Rochelle Sparko Rochelle Sparko RonRon andand Mary Sinzdak Mary Sinzdak Rosemary Dalessandro Rosemary Dalessandro TheThe Rowland’s of of Durham Rowland’s Durham Ruth Boulter Ruth Boulter Ryan Berkowitz Ryan Berkowitz Ryan Cocca Ryan Cocca Sabrina Carr, in honor of of Sabrina Carr, in honor journalism, needed now journalism, needed now more than everever more than Saige Martin Saige Martin Samantha Gradle Samantha Gradle Samuel Montgomery-Blinn Samuel Montgomery-Blinn Sandy Hoeflich Sandy Hoeflich Sandy Portnoy Mills Sandy Portnoy Mills Sara Branch Sara Branch Sara Musetti Sara Musetti Sarah Broz Sarah Broz Sarah Carroll Sarah Carroll Sarah Jessica Farber Sarah Jessica Farber Sarah Rogers Sarah Rogers Sarah Thuesen Sarah Thuesen Scott Reston Scott Reston Scott Milford-Beland Scott Milford-Beland Scottie Ballard Scottie Ballard Shannon Blakey Shannon Blakey Sharleen Sharleen Sharon P. Holland Sharon P. Holland

Sierra Davis Sierra Davis Sierra Shell Sierra Shell Silvia Tomaskova andand Silvia Tomaskova Peter Redfield Peter Redfield SimSim Sitkin andand Vivian Olkin Sitkin Vivian Olkin Sir Sir Mudgeon thethe Mudgeon Gimlet-Eyed Gimlet-Eyed Skillet Gilmore Skillet Gilmore Sonia Katchian Sonia Katchian Spaulding Tansey Family Spaulding Tansey Family Spence andand Jennifer Spence Jennifer Anderson Anderson Stacey Hamilton Stacey Hamilton Stacey Hamilton Stacey Hamilton Stefany Y. Ramos Stefany Y. Ramos Stephanie D. D. Hawkins Stephanie Hawkins Stephanie Dorko Austin Stephanie Dorko Austin Stephanie Miller Stephanie Miller Stephen andand Georgiana Stephen Georgiana Snyderman Snyderman Stephen Dong Stephen Dong Stephen Dovenitz andand Stephen Dovenitz Jane Howard Jane Howard Steve andand KimKim Andrews Steve Andrews Steve Burnett Steve Burnett Steve Celestini Steve Celestini Steve Cummer Steve Cummer Steve Godwin Steve Godwin Steven Jones Steven Jones TheThe Stimmels Stimmels Studio 200 Studio 200 SueSue andand Marc Segre Marc Segre SueSue Bielawski Bielawski SueSue Kocher Kocher SueSue McDowell McDowell SueSue McMurray McMurray Susan andand Mike Roth Susan Mike Roth Susan andand Tyler Craft Susan Tyler Craft Susan Baldwin Susan Baldwin Susan Carl Susan Carl Susan V. Baker Susan V. Baker Suzanne Krill Suzanne Krill Suzanne Manning Suzanne Manning Suzi Suzi Sylvie Leaver Sylvie Leaver Tamara Kissane andand Tamara Kissane Greg Myer Greg Myer Taylor Parsons Taylor Parsons TedTed andand Jennifer Whiteside Jennifer Whiteside Terri Coats Terri Coats Thaddaeus Edwards Thaddaeus Edwards Thaddeus S Lee Thaddeus S Lee

Thom Haynes Thom Haynes Thomas C. C. Keeler Thomas Keeler Thomas Edds Thomas Edds Thomas Hull Thomas Hull TimTim Devinney Devinney TimTim Dunn Dunn TimTim Gage Gage TimTim Hackett Hackett TimTim McMackin McMackin Timothy Deal Timothy Deal Timothy DeWitt Timothy DeWitt Timothy James Stark Timothy James Stark Todd Cuddington Todd Cuddington Todd Stabley Todd Stabley Todd Vision Todd Vision Tom andand Jane Benfey Tom Jane Benfey Tom Harmon Tom Harmon Tom Haydon Tom Haydon Tom Keeler Tom Keeler Tom M. M. Tom Trent Oliver Trent Oliver Trisha Lester andand Trisha Lester Jerry Oster Jerry Oster Tristan Hardy Tristan Hardy Turnip Films Turnip Films Tyler Brown Tyler Brown TheThe Ullman Family Ullman Family V. Childers V. Childers ValVal Schwartz andand Schwartz Aaron Benson Aaron Benson Victor Schoenbach Victor Schoenbach Virginia Reed Virginia Reed W. W. andand O. O. Kamkwamba Kamkwamba W. W. Wingfield Wingfield Wanda B. B. Wanda TheThe Weinsteins Weinsteins Wendy Jacobs Wendy Jacobs Wes Tripp Wes Tripp Whit Walker Whit Walker Whitney Magendie Whitney Magendie WilWil Heflin Heflin Will Alphin Will Alphin Will Butler Will Butler Will Harriett Will Harriett Will Pugh Will Pugh William David Austin William David Austin William R. Cole William R. Cole Woody Campbell Woody Campbell Woodystyle Woodystyle YellowDog : creative YellowDog : creative Zach Hall Zach Hall Zack T. Medford Zack T. Medford

ToTo learn learn more more about about how how you you can can help help support support vital vital local local journalism journalism byby becoming becoming a member a member ofof the the INDY INDY Press Press Club, Club, visit visit KeepItIndy.com KeepItIndy.com

KeepItINDY.com

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WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? I became an INDY fan back in the Hal Crowther days and have been a regular reader ever since. I enjoy the local insight that I can’t find other places. And by god, if I can give The N&O some $800+ dollars a year to land in my driveway (almost) every day, I darn sure can cough up something for the Independent! Keep up the great work, my friends!

I joined because I believe in the power of local journalism. I hope you’re doing well despite the current situation.

I’ve been trying to pull away from the news in general during this time to not get overwhelmed. I love Primer, as it provides me with updates on both local and national news.

I wanted to make sure it stuck around, so I decided to become a member of the Press Club.

Thank you for keeping me informed and not terrified!

I joined the Press Club recently because you do a great job of covering local issues, unearthing skullduggery, and knocking bad guys unceremoniously on the head. I like your style, and I like hearing the truth.

I joined because I find your commentary on the news both eyeopening, refreshingly honest, and even personal at times, something I savor when I can no longer stand the spin of what comes out of the mouths of conservative pundits and GOP politicians who are using this pandemic to attract donors, win points, and profit while real people are dying every day. But we can’t just turn off the news and ignore it all. We need dedicated journalists and citizens everywhere to stand up and demonstrate what real strength there is in knowing and believing in the truth. Thank you for your tireless commitment to doing just that!

To keep independent journalism alive in the Triangle. Plus reviews of art and music. I would like for you to go back to having a movie page, however.

I value the thorough analysis of both local and national news.

So much work goes into each day’s Primer, and I learn so much!

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INDYweek.com

In about 2005-ish, when I was initially contemplating relocating from Pennsylvania to a warmer climate with solid graduate school and job prospects, my preconceived notions about “The South” gave me pause. It was when I was here on business travel that I picked up a copy of what was then the Independent Weekly—and came to realize that progressive thinkers could, in fact, live and thrive in the Triangle. I joined the INDY Press Club because this publication gave me the push I needed to make what has proven to be a very positive personal and professional move, and helped contextualize my experiences as I transitioned to my new life in Raleigh.

WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? My answer is really a combination of (1) why I joined the INDY Press Club and (2) why I think is it important to be a member of the INDY Press Club.

(1) I followed Primer soon after it began. I loved it—it was the highlight of my day. And I recognized even then that it required a great deal of time, effort, and other resources to produce on a quasidaily basis. I was disappointed when Jeff had to put Primer on hiatus but was delighted when he later announced it would resume! In (or soon after) that announcement, I believe Jeff also described the opportunity to support the INDY by becoming an INDY Press Club member. He explaining how membership money would help support the INDY but wasn’t pushy/too salesman-y about it. That was the moment I decided to join. I wanted to support the machine that put out something I valued and enjoyed. I like NPR, and I like other news outlets, but I was/am not a sustainer or subscribing member. Jeff ’s personal, honest, but not over-the-top email made me, for the first time, come to the conclusion that I couldn’t not support my go-to media/news outlet.

(2) Why do I think it’s important to be a member of the INDY Press Club, and why do I plan to keep donating over time? I believe in the spirit and purpose of the INDY and have for just over a decade. I would look forward to reading about local music/arts events when I was a “cool” UNC undergrad (and if I’m being honest, when I thought I was a “cool” UNC graduate student). I look to the INDY for news about my community, for events and local artists/restaurants/bars/culture/ initiatives/problems/etc. in the community I’ve made my home, and for political guidance during local/national elections. I value the INDY’s commitment to free journalism, and I figured it was actually time to put a spendable dollar amount on that emotional value. So there you have it!

I believe in supporting good journalism, and I like the INDY! The business model for the press is changing. A direct contribution for a free paper is the right thing to do.

ards Gift Cable!

Avail

RushHourKarting will reopen when appropriately safe.

Be safe, be well and we'll see you at the starting line!

I joined because independent journalism is important. Also, the INDY has been a part of my life for a long time, and I don’t want it to disappear.

I generally agree with the viewpoint of the paper, and I like the food and arts sections. Mostly Primer. With what’s happening in the newspaper business, we need someone local for things around the Triangle, and having The N&O get more watered down since I’ve moved down, I wanted to support the INDY.

I just recently joined because of the daily effort being made by the editor with Primer, which I appreciate. Plus because of the loss of ad revenue in the print edition (which is the main edition I read during normal, pre-COVID days, and to which I hope will be able to return).

Why do I support the INDY? I’ve been a reader for years, and the viewpoint and fair journalism it gives me is something I value. It also provides a view that is fun, playful, and creative.

KeepItINDY.com

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WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? Good reporting of local government (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) is extremely important, for there are few other sources, particularly as The N&O/Herald-Sun become increasingly thin and are dropping much coverage of local government. The INDY also is now covering lifestyle and the arts better than the local papers. I only wish I could get it in the mail, but I assume you have decided that mail subscriptions cost more than they earn.

[Ed. note: Yep.] Strong investigative journalism and local reporting are critical to being an informed voter and thus to our democracy.

I joined because Primer is incredible (although I understand it’s a total burden and is mammoth these days). It’s unique, digestible, and I always feel like I’m walking away with new insight/info. INDY Week is incredible all around, but Primer is something else.

I joined because I think it is imperative to have independent, thoughtful, and local journalism.

Thank you!

I joined the INDY Press Club because I enjoy reading your commentaries, news briefs, and entertainment calendars.

I strongly disagreed with your candidate choices in our most recent city of Raleigh election— thought you had been bought out by the pro-developers who already control many or most of our landuse decisions. I do like the way you take critical feedback by not hiding or hitting back. That takes some courage and confidence.

We joined the INDY Press Club because we value the local journalism offered at the INDY and read the paper weekly.

Because of this, when the Press Club started, we thought it was a resource we use, so supporting you was a no-brainer. Kind of like supporting NPR or other community resources we use.

I joined INDY Press Club because I feel the need to support independent journalism in this time of ongoing attacks on the free press by Trump and his followers. Since I moved here in 2012, the INDY has helped me understand and become active in Durham and North Carolina politics. It has also been a valuable resource for finding community activities, services, local businesses, and restaurants. Both the INDY and The News & Observer play an essential role in our Durham community. It would be a tremendous loss to not have them around.

I’ve been reading the INDY since the very beginning. In fact, I remember meetings in people’s houses to talk about the possibilities that were then just a gleam in Steve Schewel’s eye. I believe fervently in the value of a vigorous free press and find myself, in the midst of this current crisis, treasuring and relying on local institutions more than ever.

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WHY INDY PRESS CLUB? We moved to Durham almost three years ago. When we were out about town, I would see stacks of these free newspaper-looking things.

Eventually, I picked one up, and to my surprise, it was full of actual journalism! Full of interesting culture pieces and political goingson! Not only that, it was all about my new home and what was going on around me. I’d never seen a free paper with anything other than coupons inside of it. The fact that the Triangle has INDY Week is one of my favorite things about living here, and something I brag all the time. So, when the opportunity to help support the INDY through the Press Club came about, we had to chip in to support it.

Supporting local journalism.

Y’all kill it on political reporting.

We joined the INDY Press Club because it is vital for someone to be watching and reporting on local governments and organizations. The Herald-Sun/News & Observer seems to have lost the critical mass to do much local investigation or detailed reporting, or what they have is focused on the state level. That’s OK. But someone needs to keep an eye on the city councils and county commissions, etc. That’s what I like about the INDY.

A couple of reasons. First, I’ve always enjoyed the INDY. Having adopted a hermit lifestyle long before it became coronavirus-chic, I did not have a chance to pick up a copy very often. When I did, I read it cover-to-cover. As journalism has increasingly moved online, I found the INDY coverage about the matters of greatest interest to me was, in fact, some of the best being written. Stuff like the HB 2 idiocy and the other dark maneuvering of the Republican supermajority in NCGA. Silent Sam. The “hard journalism” is the reason I joined. But the arts, food, music, and local events have always been the backbone of the INDY. The other big reason is, simply, money. Living in the Triangle for over 40 years, there’s so much hyperbole and fanaticism associated with the athletic teams of the local institutions of higher learning. One night, I was coming home from a R.E.M. show at Walnut Creek. Making the left onto I-40, I clipped the median island and the sawed-off remnants of a signpost. Limped to the next exit with a flat tire. After midnight, Raleigh south side, nope, I’ve got AAA. When the tow truck operator arrived on the scene, his first impression of me was the fact I had three university stickers in the back window: State, Carolina, and Duke. The first words out of his mouth: “A bit conflicted, are we?”

But that’s it, isn’t it? Every dime spent is in support of whatever business or industry that your new product is a part of. If it’s automotive decals, championship t-shirts, or “Wash Your Horns” charity Bulls gear, the money is consciously going somewhere.

I chose the INDY. The Fourth Estate is under attack. It’s like the line about baseball labor relations—“Millionaires vs. billionaires”— and journalism is that as well as still having to appeal to the average person on the street.

Targeted Consumerism. Supporting Local Journalism.

Besides, what are you wrapping your fish in these days?

KeepItINDY.com

April 29, 2020

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The ArtsCenter Arts NC State Carolina Theatre of Durham Carolina Performing Arts Cat’s Cradle Duke Performances Dr. Jodi Foy, DDS, PA GoRaleigh Haven Medical Kane Realty Corporation Kenan Institute of Ethics MotorCo Music Hall Nasher Museum NC Museum of Art Peace Street Playmakers Repertory Company Quail Ridge Books & Music The Regulator Bookshop Teaser’s Men’s Club Unscripted Hotel Contact advertising@indyweek.com today to learn how you can become a member of the INDY Corporate Press Club.

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FOOD & DR I NK

Business, Interrupted The coronavirus pandemic is a disaster to everyone but insurance companies

BY ADAM SOBSEY @sobsey

P

erhaps nowhere in the commercial sector has the novel coronavirus struck harder than the bar-andrestaurant, entertainment, and recreation industries. Among the handful of these businesses that haven’t closed, most are trying to scrape up enough money to pay whatever employees they have left, as well as rent, taxes, and insurance.

The latter has led to a heated dispute and lawsuits all over the country.

The point of buying insurance, after all, is so that you can access help when you need it most, such as during disasters— like now. Yet many business owners are operating under the assumption—largely handed down from the insurance industry itself—that their business interruption policies don’t include COVID-19 coverage. Some have been told as much by their brokers.

Insurers, they say, are categorically denying claims, often without explanation.

“The bureaucratic hurdles they put up to try to obfuscate the process is as close as you’ll get to Kafka’s The Castle,” says Ari Berenbaum, the owner of Ninth Street Bakery in downtown Durham, which has managed to stay open during the pandemic, but with revenue down by more than 50 percent. Berenbaum never filed an insurance claim. His broker told him he didn’t have a case. (He says he likes his broker, but she, too, is under the insurance industry’s heavy influence.)

Some local small businesses received federal assistance from the Paycheck Protection Program, but others ran into hurdles: Their banks mishandled their applications, or the $349 billion program ran out of money before their loan came through.

Last week, Congress pumped $310 billion more into the program; those funds became available on Monday. There’s no telling how long it will last.

The PPP’s unreliability leaves insurance as one of the few wells left to try to draw from. In Washington, major restaurateurs and the insurance industry are gearing up for a lobbying battle. The restaurateurs say the insurer lied to them about their policies; the insurers say the policies were never intended to cover a pandemic. Unexpectedly, perhaps, President Trump has signaled his support for the restaurateurs, saying the insurers should pay out unless policies specifically excluded pandemics.

In Texas, a local theater chain sued its insurance company for denying its claim even though it had purchased “pandemic event” insurance. An Indianapolis theater sued its insurer, which said that it only had to pay a business-interruption claim if the building was damaged, though that wasn’t in the policy.

In North Carolina, a local lawyer has taken up the cause and is seeking out local businesses that may find themselves in this predicament.

Gagan Gupta grew up near Charlotte, got his law degree from Stanford, and moved back to North Carolina in 2018, drawn with his fiancée to Durham’s “cultural richness,” he says. He lives near Ninth Street Bakery, where he’s a regular who’s friendly with Berenbaum.

“Watching the devastation happening around our city,” Gupta says, “I was talking to Ari about how they were dealing with everything, and I asked to see his insurance policy. I realized there’s an opportunity for coverage and financial recovery here.”

Ari Berenbaum and Alex Ruch of Ninth Street Bakery PHOTO BY BOB KARP

That possibility joined Gupta’s professional métier to his personal priorities. He launched a project at Paynter Law, a national boutique firm he’d recently joined, inviting any North Carolina business to submit its policy for him to read and evaluate, at no charge, so that he can pursue the possibility of a class-action lawsuit.

“My main motivation was that I have so many friends who work for restaurants and small businesses,” he says.

The answer will vary from policy to policy, but in Gupta’s eyes, the question of coverage is certainly more nuanced than the blanket no he says insurers have given. The issue tends to be less what policies say than what they don’t. In many policies, there’s no language whatsoever about viruses, pandemics, or anything associated with COVID19. And there are other ramifications that need to be explored. For example, although the coronavirus led to the closures, it was the government that ordered them.

“You may still be able to get coverage as part of the shelter-in-place order,” Gupta says. “Not because of the virus itself.”

With so many businesses consumed by emergency-level survival—and with the language of insurance policies often too byzantine to parse—Gupta says he’s “encouraging businesses everywhere to have somebody they trust look at their policies. We can fight this particular fire for them.”

Gupta was connected to Russell Dudley through the area’s collegially branching network of small businesses. Dudley owns and operates Top Notch Performance, an East Durham fitness studio that closed under the shutdown order. Like Berenbaum, he didn’t file a claim because he was told his policy wouldn’t cover it.

For now, Dudley has frozen his clients’ accounts, and instead of sending out monthly dues bills, he emails at-home workout regimens (and also offers online classes for free).

“One of the ways to fight COVID is to keep healthy, keep your lungs strong,” Dudley says. “I think about people’s health and their safety.”

There’s little else he can do.

“I came from nothing and built something,” he says. “I’m going to take my beating. I’m going to fight as long as I can fight. But it depends on who you’ve got on your team.

You don’t get too many people in the world who will fight for you.” W KeepItINDY.com

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M U SIC We would get offers to do something like this and be like, yeah, it’s logistically impossible. But we had a year coming up where we were just writing and playing a bunch of shows, and our manager was like, this is actually a time when we could put this together if we just do a handful of cities.

AMELIA MEATH: So instead of booking our normal venues, which are usually all-standing, 2,000 or 3,000 capacity clubs, we decided to do it in theaters with everyone seated.

Why seated?

SANBORN: It felt more appropriate to that kind of ensemble experience—at least how we planned it, even if it’s not quite how it turned out. We didn’t think it was going to be very loud.

MEATH: Yeah, when we planned it, I worried it was going to feel really stuffy, so I was like, well, we can’t have them standing [laughs].

And so everyone wound up standing up in DPAC. SANBORN: The Echo Mountain Sessions, which started this whole thing, was relatively muted, so that’s what we were basing these decisions off of. But I’ve been to a lot of theater shows recently with livelier, bigger bands. We’ve just seen that David Byrne American Utopia tour, both at a festival and a theater, and it worked in both.

Sylvan Esso’s WITH tour at DPAC

PHOTO BY GRAHAM TOLBERT

Forward to Basics How minimalist duo Sylvan Esso’s maximalist WITH tour is shaping its next album BY BRIAN HOWE bhowe@indyweek.com

T

he title of the Durham electro-pop duo Sylvan Esso’s Grammy-nominated second record, What Now, was more apt than anyone knew.

After releasing it in 2017, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn felt a bit disconnected from what they had done and unsure about where they were going. So they started teaching the songs to their friends, first just for fun, then for a “visual EP,” Echo Mountain Sessions, in which they reinterpreted What Now songs with an ensemble at an Asheville studio.

The climax of the minimalist duo’s maximalist adventure was last December’s WITH tour, in which they whisked a 10-piece band (including Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, and Meath’s other band, Mountain Man) through a week of sold-out shows in legendary halls like New York’s Beacon Theatre and Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Raleigh production company Remedy filmed the rehearsals and the two spectacular homecoming shows at DPAC, which resulted in an hourlong concert film that premiered on YouTube on April 23, to be followed by a surprise live album the next day.

But the most important result might be yet to come. In the process of teaching the songs to their friends and taking them on tour, Meath and Sanborn reconnected with What Now and gained an insight that will shape their new album—they’re mixing it now, and plan to release it this year—and all to come: that Sylvan Esso can be anything as long as they’re at the center.

INDY: Walk us back to the origins of the WITH tour.

NICK SANBORN: After the second album, we were kind of in this weird space where we lost sight of what the record was. It happens to a lot of bands, right at the end of making a record, when there are a lot of decisions that aren’t really musical, like how the bass drum fits into the mix. You kind of lose the forest for the trees. We had this idea to get our friends together and teach them the songs. It just seemed like a fun excuse to hang out, but then it reminded us what the songs were in the first place, why we wrote them.

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Was the idea to turn WITH into a concert film and live album there from the beginning?

MEATH: No, not really! We hoped we might get a live album out of it, and we’re trying to get better at documenting, so we had Remedy film our rehearsals and our friend Graham [Tolbert] document the whole thing with photos, which is also the album artwork. But we weren’t like, we’re going to make a doc.

From effortless to arduous, what was the process of arranging the songs like?

MEATH: We were really lucky that everyone we asked to be in the band are such pros. We sent out an initial email, like, we want you to learn these 21 songs, and made suggestions of parts people could cover with different instruments. But then everybody not only listened, but also thought about the songs. The first day, we sat down and went through “Wolf” together, and it was almost there already. So in some ways it was pretty effortless.

SANBORN: We tried to tell everyone what to aim at while making sure they knew we asked them personally because we trusted them artistically. We were trying to walk that line of making sure everyone was focused on the same point but could get there however they wanted.

You put together an interesting palette, with two drummers and a saxophone.

MEATH: We wanted to cover all the bases in drumming, so we got Matt MacCaughan, who’s incredibly metronomic but also very versatile, and Joe Westerlund, who’s super lyrical.

SANBORN: Some of it was just logistical, too. Before we asked anyone, we went through every song and figured

out how many musicians we’d need to make it happen, and then we honed that master list that’s got to be 800 people [laughs].

MEATH: I also just kept asking people that I liked.

You’re used to touring as a more streamlined duo. What was it like with all these people?

MEATH: It was a totally different experience to go to an airport with—how many people?

We had 44 checked bags. It was like being on a school trip.

SANBORN: You know when you see the college basketball team at the airport? It felt like that.

MEATH: We should’ve made matching jackets.

SANBORN: We usually have a pretty big crew, but there’s only two of us. We have a family on the road, but this tripled it. It felt bigger and wilder and somehow more comfortable at the same time.

Did the shows feel consistent or were there highs and lows?

MEATH: The tour was so short, seven days instead of two weeks, that I can remember each date, which is super rare. We got good at the songs practicing in our garage and then immediately flew from our studio to Walt Disney Concert Hall.

SANBORN: Literally, our garage to the LA Philharmonic.

MEATH: And having a band—normally, when there’s a problem, it’s just turning to each other like, fix this thing, you.

SANBORN: That’s really how we talk to each other.

MEATH: It was amazing to have the work of being a band be communal. The second night in New York was totally transcendent, and both nights at DPAC were, too.

Did this experience alter the way you think about your trajectory as a band?

MEATH: The loveliest part is that it showed us Sylvan Esso can be whatever we want it to be. I was worried that we were going to accidentally turn into a different band, and that didn’t happen.

SANBORN: Or that it’d just be gimmicky. You know those old CD compilations of, like, bluegrass covers of Radiohead? I was worried it would have some flavor of that. The craziest part was that the shows felt exactly like Sylvan Esso shows, the same energy and feeling in the room. We were kind of rounding third base on our new record, and I was like, oh, I don’t have to worry about what we’re supposed to sound like, because if the two of us make it, it’ll probably sound like we made it. Sylvan Esso can be anything.

So it rejuvenated us to finish songs and write new things in a way we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Do you know when the new record will come out?

MEATH: We did do, but now … [laughs]. I hope that it’s released this year.

SANBORN: It’s definitely going to be released this year. The only thing that changed is we’re not locked into a day, so we get to think about how we want to release this record in this climate.

How are you feeling about the new record?

Anything you can tell us about it?

MEATH: It feels a lot different from the last record to us. It’s simultaneously more dance-y and also much sadder. It’s the best record we’ve ever made.

What about Betty, the studio you’re building in Chapel Hill?

SANBORN: It’s just about done. As people who spend the majority of our time and make our whole living on the road, it’s serendipitous, in a certain way, that we’re forced to stay home right as this purely creative space becomes active. Most of the projects are going to be things that I or Amelia or our friends brought there. This first year or two, we’re interested to see how it grows naturally without trying to push it too much.

So the coronavirus shutdown is delaying your album release; how else is it affecting you?

SANBORN: Brian, we had such a good plan.

MEATH: We had such a beautiful plan!

SANBORN: It’s the least of disasters, but yeah, we canceled everything for the entire year. Lots of festivals, pulled tours, big hometown shows. We’re thinking about new ways to connect to people who care about what we do, and how can we challenge ourselves to break out of our routine and make this resonate?

Is it worth trying to do a virtual thing that won’t satisfy anybody or better to wait it out?

SANBORN: Exactly, these are the things everybody’s trying to figure out right now.

MEATH: I don’t want to do an event that just makes people sadder, because music is about community. The saddest for me is that we were going to announce a show at the old Durham Bulls park, and I’ve been wanting to play there since we moved here.

It’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful we did document WITH, just to be like, this happened, and it’ll probably happen again; we’ll be able to be together! W

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April 29, 2020

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M U SIC

Album Review

Abstract Rap Hip-hop’s long, strange trip from the Bronx in the 1970s to Japan in 2020

BY BRIAN HOWE bhowe@indyweek.com

I

n the beginning, there was hip-hop, a set of cultural art forms in the Bronx.

This is the radically abridged story of how, almost half a century later, it begat Strolling Company, a dizzyingly abstract sample-fest by Japanese crew DRS, which Durham label Raund Haus released in April.

As hip-hop traveled through the music industry, it changed. It became a commercial art form centered on the rapper and the DJ, abstracted from the culture that produced it—at least in the wider world, if not in the outer boroughs of New York.

But if hip-hop’s loosening from its context was cultural, it was also technological.

One of the original arts was deejaying, the repetition and intercutting of short instrumental passages from vinyl records for dancing and for MCs to rap over.

The practices DJs invented out of technical limits and personal ingenuity—the breakbeat, the beat juggle, the turntable scratch—became the terms of a musical language, 28

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DRS: STROLLING COMPANY

HHH1/2 [Raund Haus; April 17]

and they continued to be reproduced on the samplers, sequencers, and software that made them anachronistic.

By the mid-‘90s, this language took on the golden glow of nostalgia, and its lighthouse-keepers started to gather in subgenres.

One of them went by the deceptively simple name of “instrumental hip-hop.”

It produced its own stars and stewards, from the mainstream to the underground—from the baroque sampledelia of DJ Shadow to the crate-digging classicism of Peanut Butter Wolf, and the hip-hop storytelling of Pete Rock to the dusted soul of J Dilla.

It flourished throughout the ‘00s on Californian and British labels like Stones Throw, Mush Records, Ninja Tune, and Warp, where it mingled freely with the brainy side of electronic music that used to be known as “IDM,” and it developed its own language, several times translated—“hip-hop” only in a scare-quotes sense.

Often, you could neither dance to it—it was too rhythmically lax or off-kilter—nor rap to it, unless you were MF Doom, who seems to have taken it as a lifelong challenge to wrestle the most broken beats into submission.

But you could nod or nod out to it—it was very blunted music—and its worship of the original materials of hip-hop, from the warp of vinyl records to the crackle of analog sound, made it a haven for conservationists, with barrier islands of oldschool values set against the changeable sea of rap-industry trends.

By the time the likes of Prefuse 73 and Daedelus came around, we were already a long way off from DJ Cool Herc, and today, the classic instrumental hip-hop tradition persists mainly as an almost-academic practice—vibe-y stuff to fill out “chill study beats” playlists—or in the more vital Raund Haus manner, as the basis for freewheeling excursions into all corners of the capacious contemporary category known as “beat music.”

Thus, at last, do we arrive at the state of affairs in which a Durham label can release a Japanese album that opens with

a Cam’ron verse from a 15-year-old Jim Jones song being throttled and panned into a weird little self-contained world.

DRS, which formed almost 10 years ago in the Kansai region, stands for “Daily Recording Shit.” The compilation album Strolling Company bustles with all the layers hip-hop has accumulated along the way, a striation apparent not just in its cultural qualities, but in its sonic ones: Beats are chopped, staggered, gated, and filtered to the edge of structural cohesion, and sometimes beyond; samples are strangled, pitches are shifted, and playback speeds are erratic, as though running over dirty tape heads. Silence is a snare drum. Stereo space is a Möbius strip.

The aforementioned Cam’ron flip was produced by elamp, who generally likes to wreath tough-talking rap verses in woozy samples and bullet-hole-ridden frequencies. He’s joined by the rest of the beat-making crew—Ballhead, 6-SenS, Blackshadow, 2seam, and sszzaa—who bring a variety of styles to bear.

At one point, 6-SenS smuggles in a deconstructed-brostep vibe, while on “Wolf_s blood,” holographic record scratches fly off a moody ‘80s video-game theme.

2seam is more of a classicist, a stone’s throw away from a Stones Throw compilation, while sszzaa scores a poppy highlight with “Hostel,” cutting hard into a snake-charming melody.

Ballhead favors a kind of ankle-twisting strut through junkyard funk, while Blackshadow stands out by hewing closer to full songs than the evocative fragments and interstitials that pervade the album.

Raund Haus’s Nick Wallhauser spent some years in Japan before moving to Durham, which explains the connection here, though really it takes a bit more explaining than that, as we have just witnessed.

Strolling Company is about as far away as you can get from the Bronx, and it’s a testament to both the low-key innovation of its producers and the limitless malleability of the almost-50-year-old language that, however distantly and improbably, it speaks. W

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VOTING PERIOD

April 3 – May 3 Every year the Triangle votes on its favorites, from coffee shops to orthodontists.

The top nominees in each category make it to the final ballot for voting from April 3 – May 3.

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April 29, 2020

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STAGE

A Way with Words Ayanna Albertson’s rapid rise to the upper ranks of the poetry-slam world

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

W

e had just finished reporting a story on local poet Ayanna Albertson—who, in early March, won second place at the annual Women of the World Poetry Slam in Texas—when the world turned upside down.

But if the coronavirus called our attention elsewhere, it didn’t stop Albertson. Soon after the pandemic took root in Durham in March, she was a featured poet in an online open-mic reading hosted by the famed Busboys and Poets cafe in Washington, D.C. On April 2, closer to home, she was featured in an online poetry-and-jazz event at The Hayti Heritage Center, and she has upcoming online appearances at Stanford University and a high school in Pennsylvania, where she’ll teach a master class.

Clearly, this woman’s words matter. We didn’t want to let National Poetry Month slip by without telling you the story of her path to budding poetry stardom.

“I wrote my first poem in elementary school,” the bespectacled writer with long, thick braids told the INDY. Albertson, 27, is a Durham resident who graduated from Hillside High School in 2011. In early March, she was one of 96 slam poets who performed in venues in downtown Dallas and nearby Deep Ellum, the city’s art and entertainment district.

Albertson grew up in Goldsboro, where her parents divorced. Writing has always been a part of her selfhood.

She moved with her mom to Maryland before settling down in Durham in 2008. While attending Hillside, she became involved with the school’s theater program, headed by influential director Wendell Tabb.

After high school, Albertson went to Oakwood University, a private, historically black Christian university in Huntsville, Alabama. She earned a degree in broadcast journalism and currently works as a communications writer with Community Change, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. Nearly a decade ago, during her sophomore year in college, Albertson joined the poetry and arts collective “Art ’n’ Soul,” which sponsored monthly poetry readings in a small theater in the English department. She says there was always a good turnout, with an open mic before the featured poets would perform.

“The vibe was so good,” Albertson says. “It was, like, so sultry. I felt like it was one of the places on campus where people could be transparent.”

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At a private Christian HBCU, those poetry readings allowed students to express themselves, to question authority and the world around them.

“They were strict about things that are religious,” Albertson says. “They didn’t want us to talk about our sexual experiences. They didn’t want us to use the n-word.”

It’s telling that both of the educational institutions where Albertson studied are predominantly black spaces.

She had studied cosmetology at Hillside and was big on doing her hair as an expression of black womanist pride.

“I was definitely walking in my blackness unapologetically,” she says. “I wore my puffs and my big Afro.”

One of the first poems Albertson performed at the Oakwood University English department’s Moran Hall was about her father. She was nervous because the event was being recorded and she thought that maybe he would see it one day.

“I talked about how my dad was always around but never present,” she says. “I felt as though my dad gave himself a lot more credit than I experienced. I didn’t know how to express that to him, but I knew I had to get it out some way.”

Ask Albertson if she has influences among major African-American female poets like Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, June Jordan, or Jayne Cortez and she shrugs.

“Honestly? No. I appreciate, but don’t try to emulate,” she says. “Just blackness. … It’s important for me to have my own voice, especially from the black perspective. Different people go through different things.”

Albertson found she was in her element as a freshman standing behind that microphone before her peers.

When she started reciting the poem about her father at Moran Hall, her nervousness eased. She was pas-

Ayanna Albertson

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

sionate about her words, and by the poem’s end, she felt affirmed.

“They were a vocally responsive crowd, always,” Albertson says. “There was some ums and talk about it. You know black people.”

Albertson kept writing, and themes started to emerge.

Poetry became a key to unlock stories about being black and being a woman, anchored by her Christian faith.

After graduating in 2015, Albertson interned at WEUP 103.1, a hip-hop and R&B station in Huntsville. One year later, she returned to Durham.

“I felt like it was stuff I needed to be doing in Durham.

It was like a calling,” she says. “I just felt like I needed to be in this community.”

Back home, Albertson began performing at open mics at City Soul Cafe in Raleigh, where she met prominent Triangle poet Dasan Ahanu, who hosts the Jambalaya Soul poetry slam each month at The Hayti Heritage Center. Ahanu, who also manages the Bull City Slam team, encouraged her to participate in the Hayti’s Bull City Poetry Slam.

She grabbed top honors performing three poems in three rounds. It was her first time even attending a poetry slam.

A

lbertson didn’t realize her victory meant she would represent the Bull City team at the 2017 Women of

the World Poetry Slam in Dallas. The threeday event, sponsored by Poetry Slam, Inc., was first held in Detroit, Michigan in 2008.

According to its website, it’s open to “women-identifying” and “gender non-conforming poets” who travel internationally to vie for the title.

Albertson also had no idea that the competition was a pretty big deal. She would compete against women poets who she describes as “YouTube famous,” and she was a little intimidated, but she managed to place 18 out of 96. She left the competition feeling vindicated as a poet.

“The big takeaway was that I could hang,” she says. “As far as my craft, I learned that performance is just as important as content. You can have good content on paper, but you have to sell it for people to believe it.”

Albertson thought 2018 was going to be her year because she had done so well the year before, but she was disappointed by her showing. She began to have second thoughts about competing. Was she willing to subject herself to that disappointment again?

By 2019, Albertson was a stalwart member of the Bull City Slam Team. While the Women of the World Poetry Slam did not take place that year, she wrote new poems that she tried out at different venues, including a stint as a featured poet at City Soul Cafe and a signature performance at Busboys and Poets. She says the one poem that “got everybody going” that night was the one she ended with, “What That Mouth Do,” which is about the way a man approached her in a social setting at Alabama A&M State University.

“He asked me, ‘What that mouth do?’

Literally. And the poem was born,” she says. “The poem says, ‘Here’s what I can do with my mouth.’ There’s sexual innuendo. But I want to educate you that this mouth is really smart. All of my poems are about my experiences.”

This year, Albertson again won the Bull City Slam competition and a third trip to Dallas. After twice finishing in the top 20, she was confident.

The competition took place on March 5–7. On the first night, she performed at a winery. The highlight was the wordplay of “Mourning People”—“Each morning black people wake up to something new to grieve about and in the same moment they figure out how to overcome new grief.”

She advanced and read “A Funny Way of Feeling,” about people’s willingness to make a joke out of anything as a coping mechanism, in the second round. The third round took her back to the same bookstore where she first performed in

2017. Her standout poem was “Lineage.”

The work is about black people making sure their homes are tidy when people are coming over and the larger effort to make sure that others don’t see the messes in black folks’ lives.

She advanced again and read “Gun Control & Vaginas.” Ranking eighth overall, she moved into the finals, where the top 14 performers would compete at the Black Academy of Arts and Letters downtown.

She went to a nearby mall before the finals and found a black-and-white bohemian-style top. She wore gladiator sandals and her hair was in braids. There were more than 200 people in the audience, including artists who were finalists in years past.

Albertson did “Gun Control & Vaginas,” her “go-to,” for the first round. It got her into the second, where she read “Suicide,” a reflection about an ex-boyfriend who tried to commit suicide in her presence. She was hesitant about doing that piece, pointing to a culture in poetry-slam competition “where people talk about traumatic things, but they haven’t healed yet” and “score high because the judges are sympathetic. Someone will break down crying. But why do the poem if you’re not in a place of healing?”

Albertson advanced to the final round. A new rule prohibited her from reciting work from the earlier rounds, so she unveiled a new poem, “Sacrificial Offering.” It pays homage to civil rights leaders who were a voice for their people even in the face of controversy and death, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She started the poem by singing “Oh Freedom,” an old Negro spiritual.

At night’s end, Albertson was one of four finalists on stage vying for the title of best woman slam poet in the world.

After Carolyn Newhouse and Lady Brion took third and fourth places, she was giddy with anticipation.

“I was thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’

I might win this thing, yeah!’” she says. “I was like, ohhhhh snap!’”

The audience was silent. Albertson looked into the crowd, but she couldn’t see anyone because of the glare of the stage lights. Then her name was called.

Imani Cezanne, a spoken-word veteran, took home top honors.

Still, the Bull City Slam team member felt like a winner. Her mother caught a flight to Dallas and was in the audience to see her perform in the finals. She got a trophy and a $1,000 prize. But she took home more than accolades and cash.

“Your story matters,” she says. “Sometimes I get feedback from people in the audience who are crying. They hug me. One person told me, ‘Damn, you told my life.’” W

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PAGE

HEAVEN AND HELL: A HISTORY OF THE AFTERLIFE

Bart Ehrman (Simon & Schuster, $28)

Everything Sunday School Taught You About the Afterlife Was Wrong

Jesus was an apocalypticist, you write.

Could you explain what that term means?

UNC professor Bart Ehrman’s new book explores the origins of heaven and hell—and why our notions of the hereafter would have been completely foreign to Jesus

BY JEFFREY C. BILLMAN jbillman@indyweek.com

F

ew people anywhere know more about the early Christian church than Bart Ehrman. He’s a distinguished professor of religious studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, a leading authority on the New Testament, and a prolific author.

Ehrman is not, however, a Christian.

Not anymore. He grew up Episcopalian and was “born again” at age 15—a decision made in part, he says, out of a desire not to burn in hell for all eternity. That led him down a fundamentalist path, studying first at the Moody Bible Institute and then Wheaton College, before heading to Princeton Theological Seminary—which was Presbyterian and not fundamentalist.

It was there, he says, that he “started realizing that, in fact, there were difficulties that I simply couldn’t reconcile anymore.” He moved away from fundamentalism and eventually from Christianity itself, though he never lost his interest in the faith or his curiosity about the afterlife.

His long literary career has focused on the historical Jesus and early Christianity, with best-sellers that took a critical, scholarly eye to stories many of us have been told since childhood. Ehrman’s latest, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, was released on March 31, in the midst of a global pandemic.

Last week, the INDY spoke with Ehrman about his new book, the pandemic, and the 32

April 29, 2020

INDYweek.com

found in the scriptures. And one of my arguments in the book is that our ideas of heaven and hell—that a person dies and their soul goes to be eternally rewarded or eternally punished—those ideas are not taught anywhere in the Old Testament, and they’re not the views of Jesus. The point of the book is, where did they come from? And why do we think they’re in the Bible when they’re not?

Bart Ehrman PHOTO COURTESY OF SIMON & SCHUSTER

great beyond. This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

If you’d like to know more about Ehrman’s work, visit the nonprofit forum The Bart Ehrman Blog (ehrmanblog.com); member fees go to fight homelessness and hunger.

INDY: What made you decide to write about the afterlife in this book?

BART EHRMAN: I would say there are three

things. One was my personal story because I was very concerned about heaven and hell growing up, and for a good chunk of my life, I didn’t want to go to one and not the other. Secondly, it’s a topic that’s important to everybody. I mean, everybody wants to know what’s gonna happen when [they] die.

The third thing is that most people in our country believe that their views of heaven and hell have been given to them by the Bible. They’re Christians. And they just assumed that whatever they believe is

Throughout the Old Testament, there’s nothing like what I’m calling apocalyptic views. The apocalyptic view says that the reason there’s so much pain and misery in the world, especially among God’s chosen people, it’s not because God is punishing them. People are suffering because there are forces of evil in the world that are aligned against God. About 200 years before Jesus, Jewish thinkers started talking about the devil and demons and principalities and powers and forces in the world, and the idea of apocalyptic Judaism—it’s called “apocalyptic” because it comes from the word apocalypses, which means “a revealing.” God had revealed to people that this suffering was almost over. He was soon going to intervene and destroy all of these forces of evil, get rid of them permanently, and bring people back into the paradise that he had originally designed for them. And it’s going to happen very soon.

It was a popular view in Jesus’s day; many people held to this view, probably the majority of Jews in his day, at least in Israel. This is [Jesus’s] view, that God is going to destroy the forces of evil and bring in a new kingdom on earth.

Jesus and other Jews didn’t think that the soul lived on after death. The soul doesn’t exist apart from the body. What’s going to happen on the Judgment Day is that God is going to breathe life back into bodies, and the body is going to be raised from the dead.

Every body will be brought back, and those who have sided with God will be rewarded by being brought into the paradise of the kingdom of God. Those who opposed God are going to realize the errors of their ways and be annihilated for all time. For Jesus, the choice was entering into the kingdom, the paradise here on Earth, in the body, or being annihilated. He didn’t believe in eternal

torment. And he didn’t believe that your soul went up to heaven when it died.

When did the church’s thinking change?

The only passage in the New Testament that seems clearly to have the idea that after death, you go to reward or punishment is this parable in Luke chapter 16.

It’s a later parable. I tried to show in my book why it’s not actually a parable that Jesus himself said. It’s one of the many sayings that was put on his lips by his later followers.

Jesus and other apocalyptic Jews thought that the Judgment Day was coming soon, and the resurrection was going to happen right away. Years passed, and then decades passed, and it didn’t come.

So people changed their views to think that, well, actually, it doesn’t come at the future judgment day, it comes when I die.

By this time, 40, 50 years after Jesus, most of his followers were not from Jewish circles that didn’t believe in the independent existence of the soul. They came from Greek circles, who had been influenced by Greek philosophy and Plato, who argued that the soul lives on forever. They had no trouble thinking that when you die, your soul lived on. And if [the soul] was on God’s side, it went to heaven; if it was on the side of evil, it went to hell.

The thing about the immortality of the soul was [that if] the soul is eternal, obviously, it can’t ever die. The righteous will live forever with God. But it also meant that the unrighteous, the wicked, will be in hell forever because the soul can’t die. That leads to the idea of eternal conscious torment.

That ends up creating problems for Christianity itself. Many people realize it’s just not fair. I mean, I’m kind of a semi-simple schmuck who’s been around sinning for 30 years. Then I go to hell, and I’m tortured for 30 trillion years. And that’s only the beginning? That can’t be right. So that’s what eventually leads to other ideas, such as the idea that everybody eventually will be saved, or the idea of purgatory, that you can pay for your sins for a while before being led into heaven.

You write that Revelation was written for the author’s time, not ours.

This is actually the subject of my next book—how expectations that the end is

near crept into [popular] thinking through a misinterpretation of the book of Revelation. People for over 100 years now have read Revelation as predicting what’s going to happen in our near future. The book of Revelation was written for its own time. The author expected his readers to find it heartening. What he was trying to say was that if they’re suffering now, they don’t need to wait long, because God is soon going to destroy everything that’s evil in the world and bring in a good kingdom here on Earth.

So the Beast was Nero, the Whore of Babylon was Rome, and the author was saying that God was going to avenge what Nero and Rome were doing to the church?

To the church and to the world. It’s economic exploitation. It’s injustice. It’s the persecution of Christians. It’s martyrdom.

And God has had enough, and he’s very soon going to wipe it out and bring in a perfect place here on Earth.

By the way, in Revelation, people don’t go to heaven to live. They live here on Earth. The new Jerusalem descends from heaven here on Earth, and people live bodily in this new Jerusalem. As is the case with both Jesus and Paul, the wicked in the book of Revelation are not tormented forever in the lake of fire. They’re annihilated.

Your book arrived in the middle of a global pandemic. Do you think the coronavirus has focused people’s minds on the afterlife?

Historically, crises have always driven people back to religion. Churches grow after major crises. I think the pandemic will almost certainly increase religiosity in the country because American religion tends to have easy answers for why things like this happen.

Already, we have people who are saying that God is punishing us. Then on the other side, you get people saying, oh, this is the sign that evil is increased in the world, and the end of time is near. You get these two groups, which are actually saying opposite things, although they may not realize it. On the good side, religion provides hope for people who are in despair.

I think that’s a very good thing. I’m not personally a Christian. But that’s a highly valuable thing that people are given hope.

I’d say now people are less thinking about what’s going to happen to me after I die than thinking about, how am I going to pay my rent—you know, how am I going to eat? In a sense, for those who can get by, [Heaven and Hell] is a timely book, but a lot of people just want to figure out how to survive. W

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HISTORY TRIVIA: • The last recorded duel among North Carolinians, both of Wilmington, took place on May 3, 1856. The first recorded duel between native North Carolinians was fought in Wilmington in 1787.

• Bluesman Rev. Gary Davis died on May 5, 1972. He got his start as a street musician in Durham in the 1930s. In 1935, Davies recorded with Blind Boy Fuller in New York.

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