5.25 Indy Week

Durham • Chapel Hill May 25, 2022

By not putting his intimate new album on streaming platforms, Durham rapper Defacto Thezpian is taking the road less traveled. So far, it’s paying off. BY KYESHA JENNINGS, P. 12

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 21

The inside of a Little Free Library in Durham, p. 15 PHOTO BY MADDIE WRAY

CONTENTS NEWS 4

Bob Phillips of government watchdog group Common Cause NC talks with us about the influence of PAC money on the recent primary elections.

BY LENA GELLER

6 9

Advocates say law-enforcement shouldn't be in charge of transporting patients experiencing mental health crises. Sheriffs increasingly agree with them. BY TAYLOR KNOPF Durham nonprofit leader Ronda Taylor Bullock is fighting fascism through education while state leaders publicly attack her and her work.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD

10 The Wolfline's reduced capacity and issues with its bus tracking app are making it hard for students to move around NC State's campus.

BY NICHOLAS SCHNITTKER, ALLIE REMHOF, CARYL ESPINOZA JAEN, AND CADE CROSS

ARTS & CULTURE 12

By opting out of streaming platforms, the Durham rapper Defacto Thezpian is taking the road less traveled. So far, it's paying off.

BY KYESHA JENNINGS

14

CALAPSE's sophisticated fourth EP, New Era, is its best yet.

BY BRIAN HOWE

15 An introduction to some of the characters behind Durham's Little Free Libraries. BY HANNA RUMSEY 18

Remembering the life of Raleigh theater champion Elizabeth Grimes Droessler. BY BYRON WOODS

19 Remembering the life of Durham painter Sue Sneddon.

BY LAUREL FEREJOHN

THE REGULARS

3 Backtalk/Op-Ed

20 Culture Calendar

COVER Photo by Brett Villena

WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER S

Arts & Culture Editor

Wake County

Sarah Edwards

MaryAnn Kearns

Staff Writers

Durham/Orange/ Chatham Counties

Jasmine Gallup Thomasi McDonald Lena Geller

John Hurld EDITOR I AL Editor in Chief

Copy Editor

Iza Wojciechowska

Jane Porter Managing Editor

Geoff West

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May 25, 2022

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

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BACK TA L K

Last week for the web, Jasmine Gallup wrote about Raleigh’s homelessness crisis, especially following the closure of the Quality Inn hotel on New Bern Avenue, and how the city and county’s main resource for people experiencing homelessness—the Raleigh-Wake Partnership to End Homelessness—is overwhelmed with hundreds of local residents seeking assistance.

Reader MARTHA BROCK had this to say:

[Thank you] for your story on the local homelessness crisis. Just today I contacted The Salvation Army on Capital Blvd to talk with them. The call went to voice mail, and that vm box was full. This is frequently true at Alliance Health, too. Is this all the result of Covid absences? Hard to say.

I am focusing on the City of Raleigh’s budget priorities including over $276 million for parks compared to approximately $88 million to care for the homeless and those at risk of homelessness.

I hope to learn more about Raleigh spending.

And reader JOE DALY, the director of marketing for Durham’s Urban Ministries, reached out to us with the following idea of a way to address Durham’s housing crisis: Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD) has teamed with award-winning ad agency McKinney to create Let’s House Durham. This fundraising and community engagement campaign launches today … and dispels the idea that solving homelessness is too costly. The price tag is actually $15.76.

If each resident of Durham County gave $15.76, every homeless individual in our community could be housed for one year. This is based on the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s estimate of average affordable monthly rent in Durham for those living at 30% of the area median income ($648), current community estimates for the number of homeless (670), and the most recent census population estimate for Durham County (330,506).

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OP - E D

Cite and Divert North Carolina can fix its broken justice system. Here’s how.

BY VIOLET WANG backtalk@indyweek.com

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orth Carolina has many accolades: first in flight, capital of college basketball, and top in the nation for imprisonment rates. With 67,000 people currently behind bars, the state’s total jail population has increased 615 percent since 1970.

Our current system drives previously incarcerated people to resort to crime again, creating a cycle of incarceration that is both costly to taxpayers and detrimental to the livelihood of offenders. We did not, however, get here overnight. Low income and undereducated populations have been the primary victims of a broken criminal justice system.

This is not an irreparable issue. North Carolina should follow the lead of other states and implement a civil citation and diversion program throughout the state.

A “cite and divert” program allows police officers to issue a civil citation for petty, nonviolent offenses instead of jail and arrest. Currently, six counties—Durham, Wake, Orange, Cumberland, New Hanover, and Buncombe—implement a pre-arrest diversion option for youth. This option creates a compromise between verbal warning and criminal punishment.

Civil citations allow officers to use their expertise to determine a level of punishment that best protects public safety. Notwithstanding the arguments citing unprofessional use of officer discretion, this level of discretion is the safest option compared to arrests, which can escalate to physical altercations.

Instead of entering the criminal justice system, cited low-level offenders pay a fine, attend treatment programs, or perform community service. If the individual does not comply with their specified conditions, they are still subject to arrest and prosecution. However, if the individual successfully fulfills their obligations, they can avoid the collateral consequences of having a criminal record, including loss of future employment and housing and increased recidivism rates.

This reduction is crucial for combating barriers for offenders to return to their communities safely. Currently, 71 percent of people released from prison are rearrested within five years of release. In North Carolina, underprivileged groups, especially economically disadvantaged communities and people with little education, are disproportionately incarcerated. This disparity makes offenders even more prone to poverty and reentry into the criminal justice system. Unsurprisingly, studies show that individuals with civil citations are less likely to commit more crimes.

North Carolina can build on models used successfully by other states.

Adult civil citation programs are already used across Florida. In Broward County, a diversion ordinance was passed in response to “overburdened courts, arrests for minor offenses, racial disparities, and an expensive system for taxpayers to fund.” Civil citations are now used for offenses such as possession of marijuana, littering, loitering, disorderly conduct, and other low-level crimes. Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, police stations began to successfully employ more alternatives to arrest policies in an effort to reduce jail populations.

Research from the International Association of Police Chiefs shows that the use of citations supports law enforcement by holding low-level offenders accountable, enhancing security in jails, and increasing public safety. Citations reduce the likelihood of harm to officers and suspects because injuries most often occur during custodial arrests. By reducing these when public safety does not demand them, law enforcement could also decrease officer-involved shootings.

Furthermore, the cost of jailing low-level offenders is over $35,000 a year, while the cost of issuing a citation is negligible. As a result, counties that use civil citations save millions in taxpayer funds. The positive effects aren’t just monetary; the use of civil citations reduces jail populations, which improves staff-to-inmate ratios and enhances security for violent offenders. This helps maintain jail efficiency, reduce inmate assaults, and enhance correctional officers’ safety.

Granted, the use of civil citations cannot and should not fully replace arrests. Civil citations for low-level crimes, however, have proven to offer monetary and practical benefits for both police and citizens.

We must call upon our elected officials to develop procedures to put such programs in place. Policy makers should work in partnership with police departments to develop a civil citation program that incorporates the specific needs and public safety of a community.

By implementing diversion programs like civil citations, North Carolina’s communities become safer and stronger through more efficient law enforcement. W Violet Wang is a rising junior at Duke University studying public policy and economics.

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May 25, 2022

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North Carolina

Big Money Candidates backed by PACs and special interest donors swept Democratic and Republican primary races this spring.

Elections watchdog Bob Phillips explains why that’s not great for democracy—and how we can advocate for a better system.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

I

n keeping with the nationwide trend, big money-backed candidates swept races in North Carolina’s statewide primary last week.

Political newcomer Bo Hines and U.S. Representative Ted Budd, who secured the Republican nominations for the 13th Congressional District and the U.S. Senate, respectively, received more than $10 million combined in outside spending from conservative super PACs to support their campaigns.

Big money also figured heavily in a number of Democratic races, despite the party’s grassroots values. Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, won the Democratic primary after amassing sizable contributions from a wide range of out-of-state PACs, and winning Democratic congressional candidates and state senators Don Davis and Valerie Foushee were each backed by the United Democracy Project, a super PAC created by the pro-Israel lobbyist group AIPAC. Outside spending for Foushee made the race for NC-04 the most expensive congressional primary in North Carolina history; she received roughly 20 times more bundled AIPAC money than other North Carolina candidates, according to FEC records, and also benefited from $1 million in outside spending from the cryptocurrency billionaire-backed Protect Our Future PAC. Once publicized, the support became a source of controversy, particularly in the race for North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, where the once-amicable supporters for Foushee and Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam—two qualified candidates with strong progressive platforms who would each make history if elected— became polarized and hostile.

Criticizing Democrats who receive massive PAC support is warranted: if elected 4

May 25, 2022

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to Congress, they become part of the small group that actually has a shot at expunging big money from politics, so it’s reasonable to question a candidate’s progressive integrity if big money is what’s getting them a seat at the table.

Particularly in social media spheres, though, the conversation around the primary’s big money spending rapidly devolved into unproductive banter, with many progressive voters spewing expletives and posting screenshots of FEC records with rage as their only context. When the discourse loses nuance, we turn our swords toward each other and lose sight of some key questions: Why are these contributions problematic? Why is our campaign finance system structured in a way that allows for them?

And if this is the system we exist under, to what extent are candidates required to play the game for a chance to sit at the table?

To help answer these questions and widen our lens in the wake of the North Carolina primary, the INDY spoke with Bob Phillips, the executive director of the left-leaning government watchdog group Common Cause NC, about the impact of big money on election outcomes and the worrying trajectory of our current campaign finance system.

INDY: How much does money impact election outcomes compared to factors like a candidate’s qualifications or platform?

BP: Money is a differentiating factor

for helping a candidate establish name recognition and credibility, particularly in a primary. There’s a saying that the first duty for a candidate running for office is to win the “money primary”: to raise the most money and crowd out potential competition at the get-go. Money is not always determinant of who’s going to win, but it does make a difference.

Bob Phillips

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Do you think big money contributions drove the outcomes of the North Carolina primaries?

That seems to be the story in both the Democratic and the Republican U.S. Senate primary, for sure. And outside dark money probably did have an impact in terms of elevating a candidate’s name, particularly in—perhaps you’re referencing one of the congressional districts in the Triangle, where both candidates weren’t widely known. That’s what money does; commercial television is still one of the top places where people get their information, and I don’t think there’s any way to deny that [TV ads] did not have some significant impact.

Why do some voters take issue with candidates receiving big money contributions?

It’s always the appearance. It’s hard to prove, but there’s an appearance that special interest, big money sources are going to have undue influence on a candidate. Even if the candidate swears that that’s not going to be the case, and the entity providing says it’s not going to be the case, it has that appearance. We need a better way of financing campaigns to eliminate the influence of big money contributions.

And what would be a better way to go about financing campaigns?

Some form of public financing—which North Carolina actually had, once upon a time. When you have a public fund—we can say that our elections are owned by the public, and the public fund is just another part of that, where candidates prove their validity and credibility and then receive a grant—that’s a system that works. It helps level the playing field and takes the pressure off candidates who are having to go out and raise money, and it also prevents the appearance of a donor or a PAC having influence over a candidate. In many ways, it cleans up campaigns; another rule of politics is “define your opponent first,” and oftentimes all those negative, nasty campaign commercials are the work of dark money PACs. I think those create the cynicism and apathy that we have, and depress voter turnout—for young people particularly, when they get inundated and barraged with [negative ads], they feel like, “Why would I want to participate in something like this?” What we have now is—there’s a seat, but at what price? Do we want to accept the people who represent us to be for sale? It is undeniable that it takes money to run for office, and North Carolina is a big state. People who are running

statewide particularly need money, and even people who are running for a legislative seat. Money is necessary, but where it comes from has always been a concern.

We should separate or cut the ties off from PACs and individual donors and put it into something more like a public fund.

Why did we move away from that public fund model?

A combination of litigation, which opened up the floodgates for undisclosed money from PACs and corporations, and the shift in power that occurred here in North Carolina 12 years ago, where the majority party simply repealed the public finance program we had—which had actually benefited candidates from both parties.

Unfortunately, and not to sound too cynical, everything is about winning, and political parties want to maintain what they feel gives them the greatest advantage. Public financing may not be something that they want to embrace, because they feel like it perhaps takes away an advantage that they have.

What options does a candidate really have, if a PAC contributes a lot of money to their campaign and voters are upset about it? Many people voiced concerns about big money contributions in the recent primary, but I’m not sure exactly what steps they wanted candidates to take. Should candidates denounce the contributions? Or reject them, if that’s possible? Or would rejecting a large amount of money be a dumb move on a candidate’s part, even if it’s making people upset?

Sometimes, candidates will take pledges not to take PAC money. It would be great if all candidates could adhere to that. But when you’re running for office, it’s all about winning, and no one wants to unilaterally disarm. There are organizations that do this kind of “follow the money” thing—in the campaign that we just got through in North Carolina, there was certainly knowledge about who was behind some of the outside money—but to what extent it matters is hard to know.

I wish I had an answer other than just having some other way of financing campaigns, and that’s not easily done in the climate we’re in. All that citizens can do right now is to continue to express their desire for a better system, and demand that the people who are running adhere to something better. That would maybe mean that a candidate pledges not to take PAC money, and pledges to call for a cease and desist of any funds that are being spent on their behalf—either to

support their campaign, or to denounce their opponent.

To your other question, though, [rejecting big money contributions] is hard to do. When you’re a candidate, the reality is that you’re looking for every advantage you can. If some outsider comes from afar and is spending money against your opponent, or for you, it is tough for them to denounce it. I wish that more candidates would, but I understand why they don’t.

Has there historically been evidence of a quid pro quo implied in big money contributions, despite candidates saying that contributions won’t impact how they’ll govern?

There have been some cases of clear bribery, but generally, it is very hard to prove.

But regardless, in a democracy, why do we want to have a system that elevates people with the most money to a place at a table?

There are so many good people that could serve but will never consider it because they don’t have the means to get into the game. This is a longtime issue that has festered our election cycles and is only getting worse, and we have to reform it if we want to save our democracy.

Some candidates have “red boxes” on their websites that essentially spell out information for PACs to include in ads, in the event that a PAC wants to finance an ad supporting them. To my understanding, the red box is a way to circumvent laws that prevent candidates from working directly with PACs. Could you talk a little more about this, and why it’s legal?

That’s one thing that’s really fuzzy in the law. When Citizens United came down, unlimited money could be spent on behalf of electing or defeating a candidate by a wealthy individual or corporation, and the law was that there could be no direct coordination. And yet we see that, oftentimes, it’s former employees of the candidate who go to work for these PACs; [if asked about red boxes], candidates would say, “We’re just letting folks know they can help us,” but it’s a definite signal telegraphing to these PACs what they need. There should be bright lines. It’s legal, I guess, because it has withstood challenges that say it’s proof of clear-cut coordination. But again, there’s the appearance—it’s hard to deny that that’s what they’re for. It’s just part of what adds to the cynicism and the lack of trust that a lot of people have about our government, democracy, and the people who we elect. And it is a shame. It’s not so much that the candidates are bad but that the system is rotten to the core. W INDYweek.com

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North Carolina

Patients, Not Prisoners Patients under involuntary commitment orders describe being traumatized by law enforcement involvement in mental health care, which often comes with handcuffs and added stigma.

BY TAYLOR KNOPF backtalk@indyweek.com

W

hen two sheriff’s deputies showed up at the hospital room of John Noel’s husband, Chris, he thought he was being arrested. No one had told him they were coming.

The deputies handcuffed Chris and escorted him to the back seat of a patrol car, according to Noel. Driving away from the hospital, Chris asked the officers if they were taking him to prison. They ignored his questions.

(NC Health News verified Chris’s identity and chose not to identify him by his real name due to the ongoing stigma of mental illness and involuntary commitment.)

The officers were taking Chris from the emergency department at Duke Regional Hospital in Durham to Holly Hill Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Raleigh under an involuntary commitment order.

Meanwhile, Noel was at home and had no idea. Had he known about the order, Noel says he would’ve tried to prevent it or driven Chris to Holly Hill himself.

Involuntary commitments are ordered by a judge when a person is determined to be a danger to themselves or others. In most North Carolina counties, a commitment order triggers a call to law enforcement to transport the patient to a hospital to be evaluated or to an available psychiatric bed. The nearest opening could be located at a hospital several hours away.

Amid local and national conversations about “defunding the police,” this practice is getting a new look. Even law enforcement officials are asking if some of the roles assigned to them—such as transporting mental health patients and responding to mental health crises—should be done by professionals with a different set of skills.

Increasingly, sheriffs across North Carolina appear to be agreeing with mental health advocates on this point.

Transporting psychiatric patients More and more patients have found themselves handcuffed in the back of a police car over the last several 6

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Psychiatric patients under involuntary commitment are frequently transported to Holly Hill psychiatric hospital in Raleigh by sheriffs’ deputies. PHOTO BY TAYLOR KNOPF years. NC Health News reported a 91 percent increase in involuntary commitment petitions over the decade prior to the pandemic, far outpacing population growth in the state.

North Carolina counties are required by state law to provide secure transportation for psychiatric patients under an involuntary commitment order. In most counties, sheriffs’ departments are tasked with this job.

But many sheriffs say they do not want this responsibility anymore.

In March, the NC Sheriffs’ Association released an updated report on “law enforcement professionalism” in response to the national protests and conversations about the responsibilities of law enforcement that erupted after the death of George Floyd.

Among the list of changes and requests, the sheriffs ask state lawmakers to pass legislation removing their role of transporting patients under involuntary commitment. The sheriffs said that mental health professionals should be transporting these patients and they also ask for more state funding for substance use and mental health treatment.

“I believe that it is the general feeling of the law-enforcement community that persons with mental health needs should more appropriately receive the services that they need from mental health professionals and mental health facilities rather than from law-enforcement officers or the county jail,” Eddie Caldwell, general counsel to the NC Sheriffs’ Association, told NC Health News in an email.

Caldwell has previously explained how transporting patients under involuntary commitment orders strains those sheriffs’ departments with fewer resources, especially when they have to drive patients hours across the state.

The request from the sheriffs’ association could be a pivotal point for North Carolina’s involuntary commitment process, which advocates say currently compounds the trauma

for many patients by involving law enforcement. However, there’s a concern that county officials may shift transit responsibilities from deputies to contracted security companies that have less oversight than government agencies.

“Felt like a prisoner” One night in February, Noel and Chris were getting ready for bed at their home in Durham when Noel said his husband suddenly seemed to be in a “parallel universe.” He was restating claims from a past psychotic episode and trying to leave the house carrying a backpack full of mustard to fix a problem at a six-figure job he no longer had, Noel recalled.

Noel said they needed to go to the emergency room, and Chris—who was recently diagnosed with type 1 bipolar disorder—didn’t argue and went willingly.

What Noel didn’t expect was five days to pass before he heard Chris’s voice, calling from Holly Hill. Noel claims that no one at Duke Regional or Holly Hill would confirm where his husband was during the five-day interval.

Chris described how confused he was when officers handcuffed him and put him in the back of a cruiser. He said he felt like a prisoner and asked Noel, “Why did you put me here?”

“It really just broke my heart that he went through that,” Noel told NC Health News later. “I was both angry and crying at the same time. I just felt like I had failed him somehow.”

In 2019, counties were tasked with rethinking how they transported patients like Noel’s husband after a state law went into effect aimed at reforming parts of the involuntary commitment process. County leaders met and most submitted updated transportation plans to the state health department.

NC Health News reviewed those plans and previously reported that most counties chose to continue using local law enforcement for patient transportation. A very small number opted to contract with private security companies or local EMS to transport patients.

Opting for private security guards Mental health advocates are concerned that as counties and behavioral health management groups look for alternatives to police transports, more will default to contracting with G4S, a private security company already used by a couple of counties. The state of Virginia recently awarded G4S a $7 million contract to transport nearly half of its mental health patients under involuntary commitment instead of law enforcement.

“Having off-duty police officers or security guards transporting is not what is meant by an alternative to police transport,” said Cherene Allen-Caraco, director of Charlotte-based Promise Resource Network, a mental health services agency run by people with lived experiences of mental illness, incarceration, homelessness, and substance use.

Allen-Caraco advocates for noncoercive, nonrestrictive mental health treatment and support. She doesn’t want to see more patients transported by private security officers, who she said receive little pay or training for the role. She also pointed to an incident last year in Charlotte when a G4S security guard was charged with sexual assault of a minor after allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl he was transporting to the hospital under an involuntary commitment.

G4S has been transporting mental health patients since 2012, according to a spokesperson for Allied Universal, which acquired G4S last year.

“Allied Universal employees entrusted with this role go through enhanced training focused on healthcare essentials, de-escalation, safe driving, and safety near or around stairs. Additionally, Allied Universal has a certified Mental Health First Aid Trainer on staff to train all new hires in this role. Allied Universal employees also receive training from third parties and client-specific training on working with individuals with autism and other conditions,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to NC Health News.

A number of North Carolina counties’ updated transportation plans included a clause with an option to use a contractor like G4S in the future. Other plans had details about using officers of the same gender as the patient when possible or officers in plain clothes rather than full uniform.

A handful of plans went so far as to lump together prisoners and mental health patients in their transportation plans. And in some cases, the transportation of incarcerated people and psychiatric patients looks very similar.

Criminalizing mental health Nine years ago, sheriff’s deputies loaded Susan Silver’s daughter, Anne, into a prisoner transport van and drove her from an emergency department in Wilmington to a psychiatric bed two hours away in Greenville. It was the same kind of vehicle Silver would see sitting outside the courthouse each weekday.

(NC Health News verified Anne’s identity and chose not to identify her by her real name due to the ongoing stigma of mental illness and involuntary commitment.)

Silver recalls watching her then 25-yearold daughter shuffle out of the hospital to the van with her wrists and ankles shackled together and attached to a chain around her belly.

“This, of course, in full view of everybody in the department and in the hallways and everywhere else, and with a deputy on either side of her like she was a criminal,” Silver said.

Inside the van, Anne sat on a wooden bench in the middle compartment closest to the front of the vehicle.

She couldn’t see outside. Silver remembers her daughter being locked inside the van in the parking lot for close to an hour as the deputies waited on a second male patient they needed to drive to Greenville too.

“I was pretty nearly hysterical,” Silver recalled. “I’m shouting at someone to let her out and give her some air, and they’re telling me that they’re not doing any such thing because this is policy.”

On the drive, the second patient urinated onto the metal floor of the van, and the fluids swished back and forth between the two caged compartments. Anne told her mother that she sat with her legs on the bench to avoid getting wet.

“Mom, don’t ever let me do that again,” Anne said when they finally spoke in Greenville. That incident prompted Silver to complain to the New Hanover County sheriff, saying her daughter was treated like a “dangerous criminal.”

“People like my daughter suffer long-lasting consequences from that kind of trauma,” she said. When Silver adopted Anne as a young child, she already had a history of trauma as well as an intellectual disability and emotional and behavioral health issues.

Some time later, Anne needed another ride to a psychiatric hospital, and New Hanover deputies showed up in a regular patrol vehicle without the handcuffs. There were magazines and a blanket in the back seat. Silver said she thanked the sheriff for the improved treatment.

However, some psychiatric patients in New Hanover County are still transported in vans with caged compartments inside, according to the sheriff’s department.

The kind of vehicle the patients are put in depends on logistical factors, including their age, availability of staff and vehicles, and how many patients need to be transported from one hospital to another at the same time.

Advocates have cautioned against the use of vehicles with caged compartments to transport mental health patients for safety reasons after two South Carolina women drowned inside a law enforcement van swept away by floodwaters during Hurricane Florence.

The officers driving the van managed to escape.

In New Hanover, the transport vehicles have no markings on them that would distinguish them as law enforcement vehicles, according to Doug Price, a major with the New Hanover Sheriff’s Office. He said his officers dress down when transporting patients and only use handcuffs when necessary.

“It really just broke my heart that he went through that.

I was angry and crying at the same time. I just felt like I had failed him somehow.”

“Strain on the squad” Though law enforcement officers have been transporting psychiatric patients for decades, some patients are still caught off guard when the deputies arrive at their home or hospital room.

“I can say from experience that when they go to the hospital voluntarily and they get put on [involuntary commitment] papers, sometimes the hospital staff might not tell them that they’re getting placed somewhere,” explained Christopher Miles, head of the transportation unit at New Hanover Sheriff’s Office.

“So sometimes it’s a shock to them when they see us come in, but once we speak to them and tell them the situation, from my experience, they tend to relax,” Miles said.

Price added that his officers receive more pushback from family members of patients who want to drive their loved one themselves, something allowed under North Carolina law. Getting an exception to drive a loved one can be tricky, as hospitals tend to be risk averse and prefer law enforcement officers to transport patients.

In New Hanover County, the sheriff’s department has a dedicated transportation unit that’s responsible for taking incarcerated people to court and doctor’s appointments and between prisons. The unit also drives mental health patients under involuntary commitment.

Not all counties have that luxury.

“There’s 100 counties in North Carolina, and some of the smaller agencies don’t have as robust of a transportation unit and it becomes a strain for them,” Price said.

“When I first started, you would carry your IVC patient to the hospital and you would sit with that IVC patient sometimes for four, five, six, seven hours and then you would carry him somewhere else, so it was a strain on the squad,” he said.

Over time, New Hanover deputies were asked to transport more patients farther distances across the state, so the department made a change to address the rising demand. Now, one frequent placement for patients from Wilmington is Old Vineyard Behavioral Health Services three and a half hours away in Winston-Salem, Price explained. His department recently met with local hospital officials to ask if patients could be placed closer to the county.

“Warm receiving atmosphere” The presence of law enforcement doesn’t help a person in a mental health crisis, whether they’re in the hospital or experiencing a crisis in the community, according to Mecklenburg sheriff Gary McFadden.

“The uniform presence is threatening, no matter what we do. And the car you’re coming in is threatening also. It escalates the situation,” McFadden said. “Khaki pants with a polo shirt that says something else on it—you’ll be fine.”

McFadden added that the hours and hours of transporting patients under involuntary commitment are stressful for his officers and the patients.

“It’s that warm pickup,” he said, pausing.

“If we could change anything, it could even be the car that they travel in or how they travel. They travel with an officer with a gun INDYweek.com

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and a badge, and they’re in a caged area in the back of these vehicles. Why can’t we take a look at how we can give them better transportation to the next facility?”

Law enforcement doesn’t need to respond to every situation, especially to nonviolent incidents involving people with mental health issues, McFadden explained while sitting on the porch of Promise Resource Network’s new peer-run respite after its launch event last year. McFadden supports using mobile mental health response crisis teams and peer support inventions, offered by trained people with their own experiences of mental illness, substance use, or homelessness.

“A warm receiving atmosphere helps soothe these people. An organization like this, we can learn from,” McFadden said, gesturing to the new space available in Charlotte as an alternative to hospitalization for people in mental health distress.

“These are people who have been through this. They are the consumers of what we’re talking about.”

Wrong role for law enforcement While zigzagging down a dark street in Greensboro in 2018, Marcus Deon Smith encountered police officers and asked for help. With blue lights blinking around him, Smith appeared distressed and disoriented as officers shined flashlights in his face and tried to usher him into the back of a police cruiser.

In a video captured by police, 38-year-old Smith told the officers that he wanted to go to the hospital and that he was not resisting them. Smith appeared more distressed inside the vehicle so the officers used a controversial, but legal, “hogtie” restraint on him which triggered a heart attack. Smith died before reaching the hospital.

The medical examiner ruled Smith’s death a homicide, and his family recently reached a $2.57 million settlement agreement in their wrongful death lawsuit against the

Greensboro Police Department. However, the officers involved were not disciplined.

The mayor and then police chief said the officers didn’t do anything wrong and acted as they were supposed to, according to a report by The Assembly.

In response to Smith’s death and the following conversation in Greensboro, two North Carolina–based researchers wrote a model law that municipalities could adopt to better respond to people in mental health crises. “[Smith] needed help from someone who understood his lived experience and who could deescalate his behavioral health crisis humanely. He needed a person-centered behavioral health crisis response team,” argue Taleed El-Sabawi and Jennifer Carroll, authors of the model law.

Their model could be used as a legal framework to start a program such as Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets— better known as CAHOOTS—where mobile response teams made up of a medic and a mental health crisis worker respond to 911 calls related to mental illness, homelessness, and substance use. Each CAHOOTS team member has more than 500 hours of training.

The program was established over 30 years ago in two Oregon cities and has since been replicated in other states. In 2019, the CAHOOTS teams in Oregon responded to more than 24,000 calls and only requested police backup 250 times. The program in Oregon estimates that it saves the local government $8 million on public safety and $14 million on ambulance and emergency room treatment annually.

Studies have shown that people with mental illness are more likely to be injured by law enforcement during an encounter and that people who have psychotic episodes have more interactions with law enforcement as a result of their mental illness than others. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police, according to a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

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In their academic paper, “A model for defunding: An evidence-based statute for behavioral health crisis response,” El-Sabawi and Carroll explain how Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for officers—a favored program aimed at helping them better understand mental illness—isn’t actually working.

The core of the program is a 40-hour training in the signs of mental illness and crisis deescalation techniques. Since the training was born in the late 1980s, more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies have adopted it.

“Little evidence exists to show that the CIT approach is effective at reducing incidents of police use of force (or even simply reducing incidents of excessive police use of force) during behavioral-health-related calls,” El-Sabawi and Carroll argue.

They conclude that officers lack training, institutional support, infrastructure, culture, and public image to respond to mental health calls effectively. They say the program is asking law enforcement “to be something that they are not.”

“Therefore, first responders to behavioral-health-related calls for service should not be law enforcement,” they argue. “First responders should consist of a different set of service professionals entirely.”

Not going back Patients and their family members are often shocked and traumatized when officers arrive at their home or their hospital room to transport them to the hospital, often in restraints.

“This is a person who’s in a crisis already, and they’re just making it worse,” Noel said, recalling the effects of the process on his husband. “I think this is a broken process here and it needs to be fixed.

“The hospitals aren’t happy with it. The sheriffs aren’t happy with it. The patients aren’t happy with it. The families of the patients are not happy.”

In Mecklenburg County, assistant public defender Bob Ward represents patients under involuntary commitment almost daily and says his clients often describe the additional trauma they feel due to law enforcement involvement in the process.

“It does get in the way of them fully embracing the treatment,” Ward explained.

“They are angry. They are anxious. They feel belittled. They feel dehumanized. They say, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, but I felt like I was being treated like a criminal.’”

Noel said his husband is doing better right now. Chris got a new job, and his medications and treatment appear to be working. But Noel said he lives “in dreaded fear” of what he’ll do if Chris has another severe psychotic episode.

“Because I cannot turn to the emergency room,” he said. “I will not do that again.”

Noel and his husband aren’t alone. Many family members and psychiatric patients say they will not return to the emergency room for psychiatric care in the future after similar experiences.

Studies show that this type of forced treatment deters people from seeking help in the future and increases the risk of suicide. A survey of about 450 people who have gone through coerced psychiatric hospitalizations, created by people who had been subjected to involuntary commitments, found that 53 percent said they attempted suicide after their hospital stay and 78 percent said they had post-traumatic stress symptoms from the experience.

The majority said they would hesitate to or not tell their mental health provider about suicidal crises in the future. W North Carolina Health News is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org.

This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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Durham

Battling the Backlash A Durham nonprofit leader is fighting fascism through education while state leaders publicly attack her and her work. BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

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ast Thursday on Malcolm X’s birthday— days after a heavily armed teenaged white supremacist outfitted in tactical gear shot dead 10 Black people in Buffalo—the cofounder of an antiracist education nonprofit in Durham quoted the fiery human rights leader during a press conference.

“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda. I’m for truth, no matter who tells it,” said Ronda Taylor Bullock. Bullock cofounded the Durham-based nonprofit Working to Extend Anti-Racist Education (we are) with her husband, Daniel Kelvin Bullock, in 2015.

(Daniel Bullock is the executive director for equity affairs with Durham Public Schools.)

“I’m for justice, no matter who it is for, or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I will work for whatever and whoever benefits humanity as a whole,” Ronda Taylor Bullock said before wishing Malcolm X a happy 97th birthday as she stood behind a podium on the campus of the former W.G. Pearson School in the heart of the Hayti District.

Bullock, a former Hillside High School teacher, told the crowd that had gathered for the press conference that her nonprofit’s work has been recently targeted “by people who don’t share our values,” including NC House speaker Tim Moore and state senator Phil Berger.

The scholar, who left the classroom in 2014 and earned a PhD in education from UNC-Chapel Hill, did not mince words about the growing right-wing backlash following the election of Barack Obama: the miserable ongoing reality of Donald Trump, voter suppression, book bannings, the threat to end legal abortions, and a loud, potentially violent minority of the American population so thoroughly ashamed of this nation’s racial history that state houses across the country are criminalizing the teaching of it in public school classrooms.

“I know during this time we must come together and stand together against white supremacy, against racism, each and every

time it rears its ugly head,” Bullock said.

“We cannot let one comment, one moment, one slight pass as if it will go away. They are not going away. They are mobilizing. They are organizing, and if we don’t do our part, it’s going to be trouble for us.”

Since its founding seven years ago, we are has made impressive inroads here in the Triangle, statewide, nationally, and internationally by relying on the framework of Critical Race Theory to teach the pernicious legacy of systemic racism. Part of we are’s work includes summer camps for children, workshops for parents and families, and microgrants from $500 to $1,500 for teachers and educators.

The funds are used to start racial equity teams at schools or create projects through the use of educational materials and events that “disrupt racial discipline disparities that all too often shunt Black and brown students into the school-to-prison pipeline,” Bullock told the INDY this week.

Bullock says the nonprofit’s work “caught the attention of white supremacists, conservatives, and ‘anti-truth tellers’” in March at the start of the grant cycle when an educator at Millbrook High School applied for a grant.

“We were already on their radar,” says Bullock. She adds that the educator had to appeal to the Wake County school board for the funding, and the nonprofit’s name appeared on the board’s consent agenda last month.

Moore, the state house Speaker, took to Twitter on April 18 to criticize the Millbrook High educator’s grant request.

“This is wholly unacceptable,” Moore wrote. “No North Carolina school should be teaching anti-American Critical Race Theory in our classrooms, much less competing for a grant from an organization focused on promoting CRT.” Amy Marshall, a former Wake County public schools teacher and founder of the Carolina Teachers Alliance, also weighed in to voice her disapproval.

“Wake Co NC Schoolboard forcing CRT on students & staff again with ‘Dear White Parents’ ‘We Are’ anti-racist grant to ‘train’ teachers & students,” Marshall huffed in a tweet. “The only thing this school board is disrupting & dismantling is education.”

Months before, in early August, Berger took a photo of multiracial, elementary-aged children and their teachers at the nonprofit’s annual summer camp from a WRAL newscast. The state senator posted the images on social media along with a lengthy statement condemning the nonprofit and Critical Race Theory.

“Democratic politicians in North Carolina claim that Critical Race Theory–inspired doctrines in public schools ‘doesn’t exist,’” Berger wrote. “They claim this even as an organization partnered with Durham Public Schools hosts antiracism summer camps and teacher workshops to ‘facilitate K-5 lessons with an antiracist lens.’”

Berger identified the nonprofit as “WEARE,” and wrote that “an organizer for WEARE told WRAL their work is critical right now ‘with there being so much pushback of this critical race theory.’”

Berger sarcastically added that “antiracism sounds nice—who wouldn’t want to be an antiracist? But the doctrine of antiracism, an outgrowth of Critical Race Theory, teaches adherents to view everything in the world through the lens of race.”

Bullock says she was livid after hearing about Berger’s post and frightened for the summer camp children after reading the comments, some that sounded appropriate for a 1940s KKK meeting.

“They are all brown and probably not from this country,” wrote one commenter despite the fact that most of the children were white.

“Indoctrination at its worst,” wrote another, whose commentary would have been in concert with public school segregation supporters before the US Supreme Court’s Brown decision outlawing public

Ronda Taylor Bullock PHOTO COURTESY OF WE ARE

school segregation in 1954. “Get our kids out of school. No school is better than brainwashing.”

“Now they are teaching racism in public schools,” read a third. “CRT sucks and so do the people who teach it.”

Bullock says Berger’s use of the photograph is immoral and, given the rise of white supremacy across America, potentially dangerous.

“To use their images to stir up your base is dangerous, reckless, and part of a win-atall-costs mentality,” she says. “What he did was evil and unacceptable.”

Bullock also likens Berger’s and Moore’s attacks to similar attacks that powerful, white male politicians have made against Black people’s advances throughout America’s history, including the violent racial overthrow of Wilmington’s duly elected, multi-racial government in 1898.

“They are stirring their base against a Black and brown, women-led organization of social justice advocates,” Bullock says.

“Any time there’s racial progress, white men in power use their power to harm …. Moore and Berger know exactly what they’re doing.

And after Buffalo, we know [racial violence] can happen anytime, in any place. This isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a national fascist movement.”

Bullock says what’s needed is an uplifting counternarrative to fight back the fascist tide.

“They look like the majority because of all the space they are taking up,” she adds.

“But they’re not.” W INDYweek.com

May 25, 2022

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Raleigh A Wolfline bus on NC State’s campus PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

The Wolfline running at reduced capacity

Transit Trouble The Wolfline’s reduced capacity, and issues with the TransLoc app, are leaving NC State students dissatisfied with the ability to move around campus.

BY NICHOLAS SCHNITTKER, ALLIE REMHOF, CARYL ESPINOZA JAEN, CADE CROSS backtalk@indyweek.com

F

or Audrey Simons, a second-year fashion textile management student at North Carolina State University, catching the university bus to class is no easy task.

More often than not, the unreliability of the Wolfline bus system at NC State has Simons glued to her phone, running across campus as she uses the TransLoc app to try to figure out exactly what route will let her make it to class on time.

While most of Simons’s classes are on Centennial Campus, roughly a 20-minute bus ride from the main campus, she spends most days on the main campus with her friends. But with the Wolfline system running at a massively reduced capacity, taking the bus between the two campuses isn’t always reliable.

Simons, like many students, has been dissatisfied with the Wolfline system and TransLoc app since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, in the university’s first full year back in person, the bus system is running with only 35–40 drivers, roughly half the number it had in 10

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September 2020, and the students are feeling the brunt of the shortages.

From full buses rolling past stops to the TransLoc app showing inaccurate times or no buses at all, some students have started to view the Wolfline as an unreliable, yet necessary, means of getting around campus. While the university’s transportation department says it could be running at full capacity if it had the drivers, the Wolfline has to regain students’ trust. According to transportation experts, it can do this by improving its programming and working conditions for bus drivers, as well as being more accessible for all riders.

At one point, Simons stopped using the TransLoc app to aid her travels because of its unreliability.

“I feel like sometimes it’s hard to figure out if there’s different routes that I can take,” Simons says. “I usually just kind of do the one that I usually know. But you’re not sure if other ones would be better, would be more direct, like [there is no way] to see all the stops that are on it.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted employment in nearly every sector, and transportation is no exception.

Early on in the pandemic, the Wolfline was still running at a full capacity of bus drivers, roughly 65–70, but now, that number is down significantly.

“Honestly, the driver shortage right now is hamstringing us for putting out more service,” says Connor Jones, the transit manager of NC State’s transportation services. “In an ideal world, this semester we could have maybe 85–90 percent of what we were running pre-COVID instead of 65 percent. We just don’t have the drivers to put on the wheel.”

Kai Monast, the associate director for the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at NC State, explains how the pandemic has resulted in fewer bus operators.

“A lot of people were able to work from home; public transportation workers were not able to work from home,” Monast says. “That started to wear on people. The risk they were taking and the contact that they were having with the public was becoming a lot. Having to wear a mask every day. So you start to see resignations.”

The reasons for leaving the public transportation industry are many, according to Monast.

“You also have an industry that has low wages to begin with,” Monast says. “And a lot of people were working public transit or a lot of them are retired from other jobs. So they’re at risk of serious COVID complications.

You take all that together and, over time, end up with an operator shortage where we don’t have enough people to drive on the streets.”

According to Monast, public transportation operators left the industry for a variety of other transportation jobs.

“You need a certain license to drive a large vehicle,” Monast says. “People with those licenses can change jobs.

So they can go work for schools …. Also, they could go work for a private trucking company or be delivery drivers for Amazon.”

In September 2019, the Wolfline saw 487,990 monthly riders, according to data Jones provided. By comparison, September 2021 had 333,492 monthly riders, a 31.66 percent decrease in just two years. Bus service hours also dropped approximately 30 percent between those two years, from 9,511 to 6,598 hours.

What this means for the Wolfline is that when there are disruptions to service, such as a bus driver getting sick, a common concern during a pandemic, there are no other drivers to pick up the shift. That leads to fewer buses on routes and more riders on the buses that are running.

With buses often running near full capacity, drivers sometimes roll right by students waiting at a Wolfline stop. According to Jones, the most common place for this to occur is the Wolf Village stop on Route 30, usually

around nine a.m. Jones says full buses were a problem before COVID-19 as well and that “for the reduced service running now, they’re not as frequent as I would expect.”

Jones adds that a full bus rolling by stops is a standard practice, and he has seen it at similar universities to NC State.

The TransLoc app, how it works, and its role in the issue While intended as a resource meant to help students use the buses more efficiently, the TransLoc app’s inaccuracy has made some students stop using the app entirely.

“Sometimes I feel like the times aren’t always very accurate, but I think it’s definitely better than last year,” Simons says. “I honestly didn’t use it a ton last year because I didn’t know how to use it. I felt like it was kinda always off or not as accurate …. I can usually rely on it to at least get an estimate of maybe it’s three minutes away instead of two minutes away.”

TransLoc is a bus-tracking app that allows students to get the real-time location of buses as well as maps of routes. For TransLoc to work, Jones says he creates a construct of scheduled times for stops and bus shifts, which is sent to TransLoc to create a blueprint for where the buses are supposed to be and helps determine the predicted times.

Jones also says there are GPS systems on each bus, which feed into the TransLoc app and provide what students see on the app.

According to Monast, TransLoc discloses bus changes through a banner on the app.

“If you go online and try to look at the schedule for public transportation in the Triangle at least, they’ll often see a disclaimer,” Monast says. “The printed schedule may not be what we’re offering today. So there’s a lot of uncertainty. You actually have to go and look at your TransLoc app or the other apps that you use to navigate public transportation to see if the vehicle trip that you’re looking for is actually running.”

Merrietta Boachie, a third-year student studying computer engineering, also moves frequently between Centennial and the main campus. To get to and from Centennial Campus, she uses the TransLoc app.

“It’s kind of bad with tracking the times and like where the buses are,” Boachie says. “Like, ‘Oh, great, it’s gonna be here in like, 12 minutes,’ and then it won’t come for like 30 or something …. Sometimes we’ll be looking for a route and it just won’t show it.”

Other problems students mention include floating bus icons, bus icons going black and disappearing, inaccurate times, or buses not showing up at stops at all, despite the predicted times.

“When you reload the app, rather than showing where the bus’s updated location is, [the icons] just kind of slide across the screen, so you could miss the bus because of it,” says Bradley Clardy, a second-year student studying computer engineering.

Clardy adds that students don’t need fancy animations, they just want the app to be accurate.

Christof Spieler, author of Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit, former board member of Houston METRO, and senior lecturer at Rice University, says

A screenshot from the TransLoc app transit users should not expect 100 percent accuracy in bus-tracking apps because there is no perfect way for algorithms to predict how long it takes transit users to get on a bus or bus drivers to get back on the road.

“It may be that what happened is at the next stop before you, that bus stopped and there were two people in wheelchairs waiting at that stop,” Spieler says. “So the bus operator had to lower the ramp and let them both on, strap them both in, and that took the operator three minutes or something. So the prediction was wrong, but there’s no way to make that prediction correct. There’s no way the app could have predicted that those two people were waiting at the stop.”

A TransLoc spokesperson declined to comment for this story but directed requests for information about “TransLoc’s technology and how college campuses use it” to the app’s website where a page, “Key Solutions and Features,” provides more details.

What’s next for the Wolfine?

According to Jones, the issues are getting better, with more drivers being hired and less service missed, but the transportation department is still short on drivers.

“We had kind of a more comprehensive system that we tried to roll out and we just couldn’t cover everything with the drivers, and we scaled back,” Jones says.

“That was kind of what we wanted to run, and then we realized, a few weeks in, that we actually couldn’t do it, but we are hiring more drivers, it is getting better. We have less missed service each day, but still we’re short on the drivers.”

According to Spieler, bus routes primarily catered to the nine-to-five workday schedule until the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp drop in ridership. Now that ridership has come back with a bus driver shortage and a decrease in people following the nine-to-five workday schedule, transit institutions have recently focused on improving service.

“It also speaks to the fact that driving a bus is actually a really hard job,” Spieler says. “And agencies are starting to do a lot of good thinking about how you can actually make that job better, how you can improve working conditions, and how you can pay bus operators better.”

With massive improvements in GPS and wireless technology over the past two decades, Spieler says bus-tracking apps have come a long way. According to Spieler, problems with software like TransLoc happen due to improper programming from either users or developers.

“Frequently, if you’re using a bus-tracking app and there’s basically a missing bus, what they call a ‘ghost bus,’ where a bus shows up that wasn’t being tracked, it’s probably because either the on-board tracking system on the bus isn’t working properly or because the on-board tracking system was improperly programmed,” Spieler says.

However, Spieler says, transit companies should be less concerned with technical problems found on apps like TransLoc. According to Spieler, transit companies can better combat discrepancies in bus-tracking apps by making bus stop infrastructure and public transit vehicles more accessible and easier to board for all riders.

“The solution to the wheelchair boarding issue really ought to be bus stops which makes it much quicker for wheelchairs to board and buses which are designed to be much more convenient for wheelchair users to use,” Spieler says. “There is a data problem, but I’d say there’s a much bigger problem, which is the basic reliability problem.”

Currently, Jones says the university’s transportation department is figuring out how to get more buses on Wolfline routes to mitigate the high demand, and students should not expect changes to happen right now.

Instead, Jones recommends students ride the bus earlier if possible in order to spread out demand during peak hours.

“We try to tell students that instead of taking the bus five minutes before the class starts, try to take the one that’s 15 minutes before,” Jones says. “Just to spread everyone out a little bit.” W INDYweek.com

May 25, 2022

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DEFACTO: TALENT ISN’T EVERYTHING

[April 4; Self-released]

Rapper Defacto Thezpian at his home studio in Durham PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Home Truths You won’t find Defacto Thezpian’s intimate new album on streaming platforms. But purchasing Talent Isn’t Everything directly from the Durham rapper has its own rewards. BY KYESHA JENNINGS music@indyweek.com

I

t is not often that I invite a musician into my home for an interview—in fact until this moment, I’ve never invited a musician into my home for an interview. But take into account chaotic work schedules, a new baby, and a talented but carless rapper—whose latest project isn’t even available on streaming platforms—and an in-person listening experience begins to make sense.

Tuesday was taco night. While preparing dinner, my partner Maliq (who is a producer), Defacto, and I caught up. I didn’t want to jump too deep into his latest project, Talent Isn’t Everything, which was released on April 4, just yet—multitasking with a 10-month-old is like an Olympic sport. Instead, Defacto and Maliq reminisced about collaborating on Defacto’s 2017 project Burgundy 12

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Skylines, and in between bites of chicken tacos we broadly discussed the marketing and content creation to support the new album’s release.

Having a dynamic, well-executed album rollout is no easy feat. But Defacto—whose real name is Raheem Royal and whose rap name is Defacto Thezpian—has been releasing music since 2011. It’s evident that experience has taught him a thing or two.

The Durham musician is also a trained actor who successfully merges his love for theater and rapping. His rap name reflects this, but Talent Isn’t Everything was also first announced in a sketch comedy-style video on March 4 (a feature of the video: Schnozell Kerrington, a Defacto character, who is a hater from Durham). The album rollout also includes a minidocumentary, a podcast, and exclusive

access to the album, which is priced at $20 on Defacto’s personal Shopify site.

It’s a marketing move that subverts the unwritten expectations for independent artists, who are often expected to distribute their projects on as many streaming platforms as possible in order to drive up momentum. This is why platforms like Distrokid and TuneCore have attracted more than 600,000 users.

Defacto, though, took a page out of West Coast rapper Nipsey Hussle’s book: In 2013, the then unsigned Hussle, sold his Crenshaw mixtape for $1,000 per copy, and within 24 hours he’d sold 1,000 copies.

Despite its lower price point, this scarcity model that Defacto has replicated has proven beneficial. In addition to identifying his core supporters, in less than a month he has sold almost 100 copies. With six musical projects and a number of singles under his belt, well organized on Bandcamp and available across streaming platforms, this is the first time self-distribution has helped him identify his audience—and set him apart.

“Everybody is doing the same thing putting their stuff on streaming services,” he explains. “All that shit gets lost in a storm because listeners can say, ‘I’m not gonna put as much emphasis on this album because I know I can always come back to it—I got Spotify.’ People are just undervaluing how valuable ownership is, all across the board.”

The album artwork for Talent Isn’t Everything also deftly showcases Defacto’s producing talents. Its summery cover depicts him as two separate talents: Defacto the rapper, who is relaxing in the pool, and Raheem Royal the producer, who is hanging out by the pool’s edge holding an Akai MPK Mini.

“I started producing out of necessity,” Defacto says. “I felt like I wasn’t getting back what I really needed, whether it be interaction or actual production from people. So I made a decision in June of 2020 to produce the entire album even though I never produced anything before. I told myself that I would take my first beats and put them out.”

The decision to separate his creative identities—rapper, novice producer—is a wise one as it gives listeners an opportunity to both resonate with Defacto the rapper and meet Raheem Royal the producer. When I listened to the project, the production immediately felt familiar. For a first-timer, Raheem Royal positions himself as a student of Kanye: he uses samples from the 1970s, samples loops with vocals, works in unanticipated beat flips, and takes sonic risks like using his voice as an instrument.

The overall production is impressive, though Royal does miss out on an opportunity to discover his personal sonic aesthetic. There are, after all, some moments that only Kanye can get away with. On the track “Kunkeeda,” for instance, the sampled loop in the first minute competes with Defacto’s rapping, and as a result, what can be understood as beautiful chaos could also be read as simply chaos.

“Everybody is doing the same thing putting their stuff on streaming services.

All that shit gets lost in a storm.”

th

us

ke up w a W i

Still, by the time the beat flips, listeners have an opportunity to appreciate the shift.

The same chaotic sampled loop is also present on “Christmas Baby.”

Where the production especially excels is capturing the essence of each track. The sonic structure enables each track about love and heartache to literally feel like they’re about love and heartache. And on each track where Defacto addresses the complicated relationships within his family, listeners, too, can feel his vulnerability.

Prior to this project, Defacto had already established himself as a talented rapper.

What Talent Isn’t Everything allows him to do is show listeners how broad his range is.

He makes no attempts to execute his lyrics in a rapid manner on every track, nor is his lyrical content solely about relationships. This time around the rapper/ actor focuses on vivid storytelling and vents about irreparable friendships, contentious relationships with his parents, and the importance of valuing the elders in his family—and he accomplishes this with great company.

Although two of the features, Cam James and ScienZe, are not native to North Carolina, the album is a well-curated demo that highlights North Carolina’s top talent, including Lil Bob Doe, Zone, Johnny Unite Us, Maestra, and Mique from Young Bull.

All of the rappers featured are rapping, and the vocals provided by Mique and longtime collaborator Maestra on “Heartfelt” are equally soulful, silky, and textured.

As Defacto and I wrapped up the interview, I realized my home was an appropriate space to talk about the album, given its implicitly intimate, domestic feel. With his deep vulnerability, Defacto invites us into his home and heart—if, that is, listeners continue to decide that $20 is a worthy investment. My hope is that they will and that his ambition, in turn, will also motivate other artists to bet on themselves—and move away from streaming platforms. W

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May 25, 2022

13

M U SIC

CALAPSE: NEW ERA | HHHH

[Raund Haus; May 27]

Sensitive Propulsion CALAPSE’s sophisticated, emotional fourth EP— really, an LP in miniature—is its best yet.

BY BRIAN HOWE

T

music@indyweek.com

here is a species of electronic musician who peeled off from indie rock, trading guitars and trap kits for digital audio workstations but bringing along their formative sense of melody, arrangement, and immediacy. Take Durham’s Reed Benjamin, who drummed in Greensboro’s Lilac Shadows before heading for the dance floor as CALAPSE. Over the last six years, Benjamin has released three EPs and a number of singles, some with local tastemakers like Raund Haus and Maison Fauna, developing a distinctive blend of The cover of New Era PHOTO BY NOLAN SMOCK film-grained minimal techno and dark, driving ambient house. His brand of sensitive propulsion seems near its ideal form in New Era, the fourth and best CALAPSE EP, which is really an LP in miniature. These eight tracks contain a lengthier, weightier emotional journey than 20-some minutes should be able to contain. They’re digitally composed with the emphasis on “composed,” sometimes suggesting staff paper as much as Ableton Live.

Not that New Era is indie in club clothing: The first song strongly suggests a cut as tasty and sophisticated as Moderat’s “Eating Hooks,” with that flexed tremolo creeping around the stereo channels, as if fearful of waking the great slumbering bass. It awakes anyway on “Neurogenesis,” a monstrous sandworm tunneling through lashing drums and arpeggios but also misted with new-age melody, all very redolent of the techno-organic guru Jon Hopkins. In many places, the supple builds and drops subside into even more meditative moods. “Flashback” resembles a preoccupied piano etude, the percussion like rain pelting a window, with a sunny flourish of what sounds like nylon strings near the end.

Of course, we’re often not quite sure what we’re hearing on New Era, which features no samples and has drums made of sine waves, chiseled from digital marble. There is also pure electrosymphonic fanfare, which rises through shining, almost screaming peaks in “Translated” and revolves in monolithic intervals in “Lucent.”

Afterward, the EP utterly succumbs into the tender mood threaded through even its brawniest tracks and pulls us down with it. W 14

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PAGE Amanda Waldrop says that when books pop up in her Little Free Library, “it’s a nice little reminder from the universe–oh, this is a book you wanted to read.” PHOTO BY MADDIE WRAY - 9TH STREET JOURNAL Some contain more than books. Everything from old magazines to glittery high heels and pieces of garbage have made their way into Durham’s little libraries. A repurposed kitchen cabinet with a living roof at 1402 Vickers Avenue played host to three books and a crushed Celsius energy drink can. The can—although recyclable— was not quite in keeping with the spirit of the literature recycling project.

Trash is not the only threat that little libraries face.

Some in other cities have fallen victim to zoning violations, others to the elements, and some have been the subject of skirmishes over which officially qualify as “Little Free Libraries.” But the fundamental betrayal of the “take a book, return a book” model is likely the most damaging. One of Durham’s little library owners took to Facebook to explain that “every time I fill my library with books, they’re all cleared out the next day.”

Amanda

Small Print Meet some of the characters behind Durham’s little free libraries.

BY HANNA RUMSEY backtalk@indyweek.com

T

here’s a minifridge in a front yard on Shepherd Street.

At first glance, it looks like the Whirlpool has lost its life to the vicious cycle of college move-in and move-out.

In its heyday, it would have been home to half-eaten Taco Bell orders and 12-packs of Bud Light, but it is now filled with books new and old. The minifridge in Morehead Hill is one of Durham’s many tiny libraries.

On this day it contains a random assortment of what Durham is reading (or…not reading): A History of Japan to 1334, Fluffy Bunnies, and The Maddie Diaries: A Memoir. Like in all the tiny libraries, the books in the fridge are free for the taking and borrowers are encouraged to replace the book they take with one of their own.

There’s no official count, but a map kept by Kat Barbosa, an enterprising tracker of the little library movement, indicates more than 150 in Durham. Some are part of a national nonprofit called Little Free Library that sells, standardizes, and tracks the outposts for literary

freecycling. Others are unaffiliated—and even include the occasional minifridge. Together they provide Durhamites with all the James Patterson novels (there seems to be one in every box) they could ever read.

Typically, the tiny libraries aren’t former beer chillers.

Usually they are wooden boxes, about half the size of a minifridge, mounted on posts and planted where passersby might notice them. Some are utilitarian, resembling birdhouses. Others are more ornate—carved into the side of a tree or built out of a repurposed newspaper box.

In the age of e-this and upload-that, with the contents of infinite libraries available to readers at the click of a button, the thought of even heading to the local public library seems to be a dream of days gone by. Little libraries, with an even littler selection—often of wornout books and, sometimes, a tinge of mildew—seem the antithesis of the digital age. And yet, they’re thriving.

Donations are the lifeblood of the little library movement, but they can also be a bit of a pain when people, “not fully understand[ing] the ‘take a book, leave a book’ kind of thing,” drop “baskets or boxes of books” at the bases of little boxes that couldn’t possibly accommodate them. That’s what Amanda Waldrop, 38, the steward of the brightly colored wooden library on North Willowhaven Drive, experienced.

“There were a lot of people who were purging during the pandemic too, so I feel like I got a lot of the purged items and they [were] making it my problem now,” Waldrop says.

The doula and mother of two wasn’t thrilled about adding another task to her to-do list, but the occasional cleanup doesn’t dampen Waldrop’s enthusiasm about her Little Free Library. A 2019 birthday present from her family, it was the perfect addition to her front yard.

Killing time while her daughter is at dance class, she is dressed in blue jeans and a white short-sleeve T-shirt that shows off the elegant floral tattoos on each arm.

Her eyes widen as she talks about her love of books.

Her job, which she also loves, gives her the flexibility to spend time with her kids and to spend most of her day reading.

The Little Free Library prods her curiosity too. “It’s exciting,” she says between sips of green juice, “to see books that I might have on my ‘to be read’ list that maybe I forgot about” getting delivered to her library.

When they “pop up it’s a nice little reminder from the universe: oh, this is a book you wanted to read.”

But she emphasizes that her little library isn’t about her: it’s about her community. Her front yard is a playdate paradise, complete with a swing set, set back from INDYweek.com

May 25, 2022

15

Nightstand Check Raleigh's Community Bookstore

Latest on Bookin’ Available

5.23

Jarred McGinnis, The Coward Events @TWO ROOSTERS

Release celebration for Scott Reintgen’s The Problem with Prophecies

THU

5.26

6–8PM

featuring Scott’s author-inspired ice cream flavor at the Person Street location Coming up in June IN-STORE

FRI

6.3

7PM

Rick Reilly, So Help Me Golf

IN-STORE

TUE

6.7

7PM

Therese Anne Fowler, It All Comes Down to This

Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com. www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 Offering FREE Media Mail shipping and contactless pickup!

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I’ve long believed that browsing through someone’s bedside pile of books— the stack that they are “going to get to”—is more revealing than reading their emails. You find out who they are…and who they want to be. (It wasn’t too long ago that my bedside pile was a blend of French existentialists and the entire That Boy series—That Boy, That Wedding, That Baby.) Lately I’ve concluded that Durham’s little libraries are our communal nightstands.

So let’s get nosy.

We’ll start in Morehead Hill on Vickers Avenue, where the creak of a rusty hinge and faint scent of mildew mingling with that sitting-in-the-stacks-duringfinals book smell announces the opening of this box of stories. The catalog is eclectic to say the least.

Adam Schiff, the congressman from California, is sharing a shelf with Catherine Hart, author of steamy not-so-historically-accurate romance novels.

Schiff’s Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could and Hart’s Summer Storm both promise drama but of very different sorts.

The jacket of Midnight in Washington says, “If there is still an American democracy fifty years from now, historians will be very grateful for this highly personal and deeply informed guide to one of its greatest crises.” Summer Storm is also, um, highly personal, promising a “tumultuous joining” that “would be climaxed in a whirlwind of ecstasy.”

There are only three other books in the Vickers library: two recent(ish) mysteries and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

If you are worried about your immortal soul after all that romantic rapture and death o’ democracy, I suggest you swing by the little library in the 1100 block of Woodburn Road, which has a robust spiritual collection. The books include Pleasing God, Peace with God, and two copies of The Case for Christ. You’ll also find Cornelia Nixon’s decidedly not religious Angels Go Naked: A Novel in Stories.

If books about God aren’t your speed, you might want to stop by the little library outside McMannen United Methodist Church on Neal Road—sure, you’ll find Bible Stories for Special Times and one for kids called God Made Nature. But mostly there are thrillers, romances, and good mom-book-club reads like The Last Bookshop in London.

The trashy, churned-out thrillers from James Reich, James Patterson, and Clive Cussler are coupled with books by New York Times best-selling authors written to be deep and … to be New York Times best sellers. There’s Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, which, according to its front cover, is “a great summer read.” There’s The Small Backs of Children which, according to the Los Angeles Times is “a tour de force” and according to an Amazon reviewer is “just trying way too hard.”

My survey found only one author whose books were seen in nearly every box: James Patterson. That’s not surprising, since Patterson has published more than 200 novels, but his presence, in tattered paperback and the occasional hardcover, was still impressive. Could you read his entire Alex Cross series by going from tiny library to tiny library? Perhaps.

My last stop is the biggest of the little libraries I’ve seen, and as I try to peruse, I find myself struggling to unlatch the door. But the prize I find inside is well worth the struggle. It’s the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love. For the first time I am not just tempted to take a book; I do. I take it and stash it in the bookstrewn back seat of my car.

I know my obligation and have come prepared. I return to the not-so-little library with something to leave: The Easy College Air Fryer Cookbook: The Complete Guide with Simple, Affordable Air Fryer Recipes for Campus Life.

Take a book. Leave a book. Add Shakespeare in Love to the pile that sits by my bed and taunts me.

a sidewalk-less road. At first she worried that people wouldn’t see her little library, but she’s found that neighbors stop by almost daily. She loves when they do— sometimes even taking a moment to chat with her about the books and the magic of reading.

Kat Kat Barbosa, 33, is neither an owner of a little library nor a big reader, but she is a key player in the ad hoc Durham community: She meticulously keeps the color-coded, ZIP code–sorted, master list (a Marauder’s Map) of Durham’s little libraries. But she is quick to point out that she is not affiliated with the official “LFL organization.” Her map, which has been posted and reposted in many a Facebook group, was not “made in any ‘official’ capacity”; she is, in her words, “just a nerd.”

But Barbosa, an administrative assistant at an organic grocery broker, isn’t just anything. Sure, she’s got the glasses to back up her nerd assertion, but they are funky, paired with an ever-cool floppy pixie cut and a wide smile.

In a town of book lovers served by the official “LFL organization” as well as plenty of other passionate but unaffiliated library owners, Barbosa realized “that there was not really a central way to find them all.” In Durham, she estimates that at least half of the little libraries were not on the LFL’s official map, so Barbosa sought to fill this gap.

Barbosa hasn’t gotten around to getting her own little library. She is a relatively new homeowner, and her energy has been focused outward, on getting a little library for her daughter’s school.

What’s more, when asked if she’s a big reader, Barbosa—voice lowered as if she’s admitting a guilty pleasure—responds, “You know…I’m actually not.” She bursts out laughing.

“I do think that books are really important,” she says, “and I think access to books is really important.”

This proclamation seems abstract until her daughter wanders into the kitchen where we are chatting. Barbosa says Eliza, 11, is “a super avid reader” who is “always acquiring more books.” When Barbosa notices that, “oh, the books are literally falling off [her] shelf,” it’s time for Eliza to pick a few that she doesn’t want anymore. The little libraries are also convenient places to donate—especially when you know where all of them are.

Karen Stinehelfer with her mini-fridge-turned-little library.

PHOTO BY MADDIE WRAY - 9TH STREET JOURNAL

Karen The minifridge in the 800 block of Shepherd Street is not on Barbosa’s map—yet.

The librarian of the minifridge is longtime purveyor of books Karen Stinehelfer, 78.

Before landing in Durham, Stinehelfer owned the Genealogists Bookshelf, a rare book store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side once heralded by mention in The New York Times. Now, instead of selling outof-print manuscripts, she gives away teen romance novels. A downgrade? Stinehelfer doesn’t think so. It’s not about the press, the ZIP code, or the price tag (or lack thereof); it’s all about the love of books.

Rocking gently on her pillow-laden patio couch, she gestures toward the converted dorm room appliance and boasts that it “stays watertight through snow, through rain, through everything.”

The former bookstore owner has found joy, once again, as a curator of books. When she gave that minifridge new life—TROSA trash turned into literary treasure—each book was chosen with care. Her approach was simple: “Good books only.” “Good” was everything from a set of American Girl doll books to an anniversary edition of Kerouac’s On the Road. “There wasn’t any garbage at all,” she says, chuckling.

And there never will be. Stinehelfer keeps bins of great reads on her porch, on deck to become the newest editions in the little library. No longer worried about turning a profit, she tends to her little library, curating its collection like the bookshop owner that she is—or at least, was.

She relishes the little moments of her little library, such as seeing someone get a book and walk away.

“Once in a while somebody’ll pass my car and they’ll have a book in their hand,” they’ll walk down the street the rest of the way, “waving it,” Stinehelfer says, cracking a smile.

Her quote about her bookstore, published in the Times in 1977, still rings true when you’re searching for a book in Durham’s tiny libraries. She told the paper: When people “can’t find anything it’s not because there’s nothing to find but because they don’t know where to look.”

I’d suggest starting on Shepherd Street. W This story was produced through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is published by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.

INDYweek.com

May 25, 2022

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STAGE

ELIZABETH GRIMES DROESSLER: A CELEBRATION OF HER LIFE

McIver Amphitheater at Meredith College, Raleigh | Monday, June 6, 5 p.m.

Stage Light Remembering the Raleigh theatrical artist, technician, and teacher Elizabeth Grimes Droessler.

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

A

fter helping change the face of arts education in her city, county, and state, Elizabeth Grimes Droessler—a deeply revered theatrical artist, technician, and teacher—left the world optimistically, while making plans for a summer class. At the end of April, the sought-after lighting designer filled one last production with gravitas and shadow—and then, in a fitting final grace note, called the cues for a gleeful weekend send-up, celebration, and fundraiser for a company she’d served since the 1990s.

Four days later, she was gone.

On May 4, the Wednesday after Droessler ran tech for Raleigh Little Theatre’s annual tongue-in-cheek fundraising pageant, Divas!, and StreetSigns Center’s world premiere of Jim Grimsley’s Cascade, whose lighting she designed, closed in Pittsboro, the multifaceted artist and former arts administrator died at her home in Raleigh, at age 63.

“I find it incredibly touching—and incredibly Elizabeth—that she used the last of her energy to create in the theater,” says StreetSigns’ artistic director Joseph Megel. “She used her last bit of energy to do her art.”

The death of Droessler, whose work touched thousands of lives in theaters and educational institutions from elementary schools to colleges across the area, came at the close of what she courageously called, in a February 2022 video, “the best year of my life”: a period that followed her terminal diagnosis of colon cancer. Responding to that prognosis, she set a year-and-ahalf-long course to fulfill a number of final personal and artistic dreams and opportunities, including travel to New York, San Francisco, and Washington, and a December run in the Lady of the Lake Tiger 5k race in Baton Rouge.

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That agenda ultimately left one box unchecked: a summer class in arts integration at Meredith College.

It would take more than one career to alter the course of arts education in Wake County, change its future across the state, mentor two generations of artists (including recent Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, who said she owed her career to Droessler in a May 6 Instagram post), and light well over 60 productions for theater and dance groups, small and large, across the region over the last 40 years.

Thankfully, Droessler had several careers.

After rising from an initial position as a dance and theater teacher in the Wake County school system, she built its arts education department into the largest such program in North Carolina, managing over 500 music, dance, theater, and visual arts teachers as the system’s senior arts administrator.

During that tenure, Droessler helmed Pieces of Gold, an annual showcase featuring the work of over 1,000 students, and produced county-wide theatrical productions of Aida, Les Misérables, and A Chorus Line with professional guest instructors including Broadway actors Terrence Mann and Charlotte d’Amboise.

“She had an innate ability to see people’s potential,” says Freddie-Lee Heath, the system’s current arts education director. “She made sure arts had a seat at the table, for everything from core instruction to facility construction, making sure there was space in new buildings for programs to grow.”

But her work championing the emerging field of arts integration as a consultant and faculty member at Meredith College has had an even broader impact in her field.

Local theater champion Elizabeth Grimes Droessler PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS DROESSLER

In a state where arts funding has historically fluctuated in the schools, Droessler developed a way to better insulate the arts against the whims of elected officials: by teaching teachers to integrate arts into core curricula including history, math, science, and social studies.

“If you have funding cuts, you can’t always have [arts] specialists in a school. This was a way around that, that still exposed students to the arts,” says Catherine Rodgers, a professor and theater program coordinator at Meredith. “It took a lot of calculation and work on her part to convince different institutions of higher education to incorporate that, but there are programs all over the state that are doing this now.”

“We learned you don’t have to be fabulous to be an artist,” says Heather Bower, head of Meredith’s education department.

“All children—and all teachers—are artists.

We just have to give them the tools.”

Among these achievements, Droessler found time to design lighting for a who’s who of regional theater companies

including Manbites Dog Theater, North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre, and Raleigh Little Theatre, where she served on the board. “She really elevated people to their best selves,” says RLT artistic director Patrick Torres. “I looked to her as a mentor, who I could trust to give me her honest assessment, encouragement, and wisdom.”

Droessler also toured with Baba Chuck Davis and designed lights for Donald McKayle at the American Dance Festival and the legendary choreographer Pearl Primus at Kennedy Center in Washington.

“It’s really hard to talk about her not being around,” says Ragen Carlile, interim president for United Arts of Wake County where Droessler served on the board.

“She had the ability to storm into a room full of fire—but, at the same time, children performing would bring her to tears. She exuded leadership in every way, but she was so easily moved by truth, onstage and in life. She was always unafraid to show that passion.” W

A RT

Dreaming in Color Remembering longtime Durham artist Sue Sneddon.

BY LAUREL FEREJOHN arts@indyweek.com

M

any Durhamites have seen at least one of Sue Sneddon’s early contributions to our local culture, like the Regulator Bookshop’s fanciful logo, painted decades ago on the side of its Ninth Street building.

Graphic arts were Sneddon’s “day job” while she established herself as a painter— and what a painter she came to be. From her first local exhibition at Somethyme Restaurant on Broad Street in 1979 through her presence over the years in coastal galleries from Duck to Hilton Head and her many solo exhibitions at Craven Allen Gallery on Broad Street, the last of which took place in 2020, Sneddon drew a devoted following of hundreds of collectors and admirers. Craven Allen is planning a fall retrospective of her work.

Few may recall that Sneddon—who was born September 7, 1953, and died from cancer on January 10, 2022—was the first illustrator of the Independent, founded in 1983 by Steve Schewel and Dave Birkhead and produced in its early years in a bungalow on Durham’s Hillsborough Street.

“Sue Sneddon’s illustrations were crucial to the Independent in our early days, sharp and beautiful and marked with her wonderful sense of humor,” recalls Schewel. “Sue was unfailingly kind and warm, with an impish twinkle in her eye. Everybody wanted to be around her because she was a blast—the kind of person who kept life interesting.”

It didn’t take Sneddon long to develop into a full-time exhibiting artist, her lifelong goal.

As she did everywhere she went, Sue made friends in her 1977 quest along the North Carolina coast for the perfect place to inspire the next four decades of her art.

One of those friends is Julia Batten Wax, owner of Emerald Isle Realty.

“Sue chose Emerald Isle for its special quality of light,” Batten Wax says. Back

then, in search of a place she could afford to rent for each year’s autumnal equinox, Sneddon had spent a season stopping at realty offices along the coast. At first she received a string of gentle nos, but then, Batten Wax recalls, “Sue met Mary Batten, my mother, at Emerald Isle Realty’s first office on the corner of Second Street.

It became one of those life-changing moments … that grew into deep friendship spanning four decades.”

Sneddon soon contributed her graphic artistry to the realty’s printed materials, from the sea-oats logo to the rental catalog and the annual guidebook, featuring her delightful hand-drawn and illustrated children’s puzzles and crosswords. Her evocative paintings have graced the months of the annual realty calendars and made them collectors’ items. Recent years focused on Carteret County, each set of 12 paintings following a theme: workboats of Down East; fish houses; creeks and rivers.

By 2003, Sneddon and her partner of 44 years, Donna Giles, had transitioned from the Triangle and moved into a house they had built at the coast, including a freestanding studio for Sneddon—a dream come true. For the next two decades, Sneddon created her art with a view of the Shallotte River and the Intracoastal Waterway, still spending each September at Emerald Isle.

As a child in Uniontown, PA, Sneddon began to develop an artistic eye almost as soon as she could hold a pencil. She knew that her second-grade teacher was wrong to insist that a sky could not be white and a cloud must be white. Her mother, also an artist, was a particular influence on Sneddon in her understanding of color. Later, Sneddon would find mentors, inspiration, and lifelong friends among the professors in her undergraduate fine arts program at

The artist Sue Sneddon

PHOTO BY CAROLYN VAUGHAN

Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. It was a “full-circle moment,” Sneddon told friends when 45 years later one of those former professors purchased a painting from Sneddon’s 2020 Craven Allen exhibition, From Memory, with its COVID-era online opening event.

“How I see the world has changed because of Sue Sneddon,” says the gallery’s John Craven Bloedorn. “I see colors or details of the landscape that I might have missed before.”

For Sneddon’s 14 exhibitions at the gallery over the course of 25 years, Bloedorn recalls that “we would spend hours together hanging and lighting each show.

We could tell each other years later where we had hung certain paintings and why. It was a privilege to spend that kind of time with Sue, learning about each piece. There was always lots of laughter, and often a few tears.”

Sneddon’s final exhibition, From Memory, was documented in a video by Donna Campbell and Georgann Eubanks of Minnow Media. The video, along with images of Sneddon’s art, photos from her life, her

own writing on her journey as an artist, and audio recordings of Sneddon speaking on art, can be found on her memorial website.

Throughout her Durham and coastal life, Sneddon also delighted listeners and dancers with her percussion accompaniments to a variety of bands, hands flying over congas or a drum set or her beloved bongos.

Her music performance spanned folk, newwave punk with the Mutettes, rock with the Mobile City Band, and jazz with Alison Weiner of Mahalo Arts. She played her bongos for a relaxing musical interlude while she awaited surgery in December.

On January 10, Sneddon died from cancer at the age of 68. The family asks that memorial contributions be directed to the Sue Sneddon Art Fund of the Durham-based Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, where Sneddon served as an artist-in-residence and through which she offered her much-loved Emerald Isle workshops and retreats; and to the North Carolina Coastal Federation, in her memory. W Laurel Ferejohn is a Durham editor and longtime friend of Sue Sneddon.

INDYweek.com

May 25, 2022

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CULTURE CALENDAR

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

Julia performs at Local 506 on Saturday, May 28.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOCAL 506

QTBIPOC Wonder Ball $10. Sat, May 28, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Carolina Cutups & Friends Sun, May 29, 5 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Charles Latham & the Borrowed Band $10. Sun, May 29, 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Herbie Hancock $68+. Sun, May 29, 8 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Louis Landry Sun, May 29, 8 p.m.

Arcana, Durham.

music Béla Fleck: My Bluegrass Heart $50+. Wed, May 25, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Blends with Friends (Open Decks) Wed, May 25, 6 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Drag Drag Revolution $7. Wed, May 25, 8:30 p.m.

The Fruit, Durham.

Emily Wells $15.

Wed, May 25, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Orville Peck: Bronco Tour $30.

Wed, May 25, 8 p.m.

The Ritz, Raleigh.

Post Animal $15.

Wed, May 25, 8 p.m.

Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Al Strong Presents Jazz on the Roof Thurs, May 26, 7 p.m.

The Durham Hotel, Durham.

An Intimate Evening with Robert Glasper $49.

Thurs, May 26, 8 p.m.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Below Decks Thurs, May 26, 8 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Jon Shain & FJ Ventre $12. Thurs, May 26, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Mellow Swells Thurs, May 26, 7:30 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill.

Ravine / Get’em / Yairms / Ohmygosh Nevermind $10.

Thurs, May 26, 8:30 p.m. Nightlight Bar & Club, Chapel Hill.

Parthenon Huxley & His Ridiculous Band $15. Fri, May 27, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Rachel Despard $10. Fri, May 27, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Remona Jeannine Thurs, May 26, 7 p.m. The Oak House, Durham.

Toothsome $5.

Fri, May 27, 8 p.m.

Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Bring Out Yer Dead $12. Fri, May 27, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

YOLO Karaoke Fri, May 27, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Little River Band $45+. Thurs, May 26, 7 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Mitch Butler & Thomas Heflin Quintet $15+. Fri, May 27, 8 p.m.

Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Maple Stave $8.

Thurs, May 26, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

New Morning Jazz Fri, May 27, 7 p.m.

Vecino Brewing Co., Carrboro.

Julia $8. Sat, May 28, 9 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Michigan Rattlers $14. Sat, May 28, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

The Pinkerton Raid $5+. Sat, May 28, 6 p.m. Down Yonder Farm, Hillsborough.

Shakedown Street $7. Sun, May 29, 2 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Live Jazz with Danny Grewen & Griffanzo Mon, May 30, 6 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill.

Ryan Singer $13.

Mon, May 30, 8 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra $25.

Tues, May 31, 8 p.m.

Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Brian Horton Trio Tues, May 31, 9 p.m.

Kingfisher, Durham.

Daniel Romano $15. Tues, May 31, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Jesse McCartney: The New Stage Tour $30+. Tues, May 31, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

screen Blue Velvet $12.

Wed, May 25, 9:15 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.

The Iron Giant $5.

Wed, May 25, 11 a.m.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.

Pissarro: Father of Impressionism $10. Wed, May 25, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Boy $6. Thurs, May 26, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Movie Loft Presents Citizen Ruth Thurs, May 26, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

page Story Time on the Roof with Victoria Scott-Miller Wed, May 25, 11 a.m.

The Durham Hotel, Durham.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg $6.

Thurs, May 26, 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

No Country for Old Men $8. May 27–Jun. 2, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? $8. May 27–Jun. 2, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Dr. Strangelove and Seven Days in May $10. Fri, May 27, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Lilo & Stitch $6. Fri, May 27, 5 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Top Gun: Maverick Brunch $10. Sat, May 28, 11:45 a.m.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.

Watch Durham: A VERY Durham Film Screening Series Tues, May 31, 7 p.m.

Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

John Allore: Wish You Were Here Thurs, May 26, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Scott Reintgen: The Problem with Prophecies Thurs, May 26, 6 p.m. Two Roosters, Raleigh.

K.D. Edwards: The Hourglass Throne Tues, May 31, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

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CULTURE CALENDAR The Last Dance: A Photo Exhibition will be held at the Historic Durham Athletic Park on Saturday, May 28.

PHOTO BY AL DRAGO

LOCAL ARTS, MUSIC, FOOD, ETC.

in your inbox every Friday

art Guided Tour— Modern Black Culture: The Art of Aaron Douglas Thurs, May 26, 1:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

The Last Dance: A Photo Exhibition $10. Sat, May 28, 10 a.m. Historic Durham Athletic Park, Durham.

stage

Deon Cole $39.

May 26-28, various times. Goodnights & Factory Restaurant, Raleigh.

Peerless $20. May 13-29, various times.

Walltown Children’s Theatre, Durham.

Theatre of Movement Presents The Resistance Project: Celebrating Black Women in the Arts Thurs, May 26, 7 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Hamilton $109+.

May 17–June 5, various times. DPAC, Durham.

A(VOI D)ANCE $20+. May 27-28, various times. The Fruit, Durham.

What Is the Archive? Sat, May 28, 8 p.m. Power Plant Gallery, Durham.

Alyssa Edwards: Life, Love & Lashes Tour $35+. Fri, May 27, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Cary Ballet Company Presents Spring Works $36+. Sun, May 29, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Danny Canoe Improv & Variety Show $12. Sat, May 28, 8 p.m.

The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Neptunes Comedy Presents: Ryan Erwin Sun, May 29, 6 p.m. Hartwell, Raleigh.

the Triangle’s Arts & Culture Newsletter

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P U Z Z L ES

NEWDED AN S! EXPO R H U

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

In-Store Shopping Curbside Pick Up www.regulatorbookshop.com 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705

Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7 | Sunday 10–6

su | do | ku

this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

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

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

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

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

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

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LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE SERVICES

Timeless Skills to Survive and Thrive Join us in Franklinville for classes, workshops, and skillshares covering everything you need to know to shelter, feed, and equip yourself in any environment Every 3rd Saturday March 2022 - November 2022 www.deepriverfolkschool.com (919) 799-6819

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