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2

June 3, 2020

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Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill

Th e B e s t - L a i d P l a n s

VOL. 37 NO. 19

A

t about eight o’clock on Saturday night, I realized that almost everything we had planned for this week’s paper—the feature story I’d spent most of Friday editing, the news stories already in progress, much of our culture coverage—no longer mattered, at least not right now.

The story was what was happening in Raleigh, the same story that was playing out in every major city in the United States: mass protests of police killings of Black people, most recently George Floyd in Minnesota. Raleigh news editor Leigh Tauss and staff photographer Jade Wilson were downtown documenting the protests, which were, at that point, large, powerful, and mostly peaceful.

Not long after I checked in, however, the evening went sideways.

We’ll get into that more in the feature package on page 8, including the destruction of our Raleigh office. I wanted to stress a few things here before we begin.

First, property damage sucks. But property can be replaced; people can’t. As painful as it is to see downtown businesses already struggling during the COVID-19 shutdown have to deal with this, too, we shouldn’t lose sight of the very important, very righteous cause driving these protests. Related: Property damage is vandalism, not violence. Shooting protesters with rubber bullets and dousing them with tear gas is violence.

CONTENTS PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

FEATURE

DEPARTMENTS

8

Two chaotic nights in Raleigh, minute-by-minute.

5 15 Minutes

21

Why were Durham’s protests so much more peaceful than Raleigh’s? BY THOMASI MCDONALD

7 A Week in the Life

6 Quickbait

Second, we don’t know the looters’ ideology or motives. The reality is likely complicated: There were certainly opportunists and people who came specifically to cause trouble. There were others who were swept up in the moment or were pissed off at the police. And there might have been white supremacists trying to make the Black Lives Matter crowd look bad; it seems dubious that BLM activists graffitied a white power sign downtown, after all. In any event, it’s worth pointing out that they composed a very small percentage of the thousands who protested this weekend.

Third, I want to acknowledge our team in Raleigh this weekend: Tauss, Wilson, digital content manager Sara Pequeño, editorial assistant Cole Villena, and Triad City Beat writer Jordan Green, as well as freelance reporters Charlie McGee and (former INDY staff writer) Paul Blest and photographers Justin Kase Conder and Brenna Berry. Their dogged work to bring you this story, amid tear gas and rubber bullets and fear and frustration, makes me so incredibly proud.

MUSIC 26 For artists like Curtis Waters, TikTok is tip-top. BY HANNAH MIAO CULTURE 28 Meet the new director of Duke Performances. BY BRIAN HOWE

Finally, I want to thank our readers. Within 24 hours of learning that our office had been destroyed, more than 450 people had joined the INDY Press Club, contributing a crazy amount of money to our journalism in difficult times. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate each and every one of you.

COVER Photo by Jade Wilson

WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER Susan Harper

Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald

EDITO R I AL

Digital Content Manager Sara Pequeño

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

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

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

Intern Mary King

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June 3, 2020

3

BACKTALK

In last week’s Editor’s Note, Jeffrey C.

Moral Hazards

Billman asked what the difference was between a brewery (allowed to open On Thursday, bar owners announced

Million-dollar giveaways to the rich? No problem!

Subsistence for the struggling? Well, we can’t have people dependent on the government, now, can we?

that they’d file a lawsuit to force the

BY JONATHAN WEILER @jonweiler

in phase 2) and a bar (not allowed).

voices

issue, and the General Assembly passed a bill to allow bars to have outdoor seating.

“Restaurants have been allowed to open,” writes PATRICK BURROWS. “The issue is the inconsistency that seems to be based more in moralizing about alcohol than about actual science.”

“There are tons of bars without any outdoor seating so the point is hardly moot if Governor Cooper signs [the bill] into law,” adds BEN YANNESSA. “Bars with no outdoor seating will remain closed, and bars with outdoor seating are not allowed to let customers inside other than for bathroom use. We have a long way to go before it’s an even playing field.”

“Having worked in the restaurant industry in many forms, including as a bartender, I think keeping bars closed makes perfect sense,” counters TROY REVELL. “They’re crowded. Their purpose is to get tipsy and socialize. I know several bartenders that agree. Be patient, hope to open them up in a few weeks after we see COVID-19 data following other businesses opening.”

“Breweries and distilleries are allowed to produce product,” adds KRISTEN K. HERNANDEZ, “Not have people come in and drink it. Have you ever known a drunk person who can respect social distancing, stay out of someone else’s face, and wipe down surfaces before/after touching them? I damn sure have never.”

“People were out drinking at breweries this past weekend, and even more breweries are opening back up this week,” KENNY LLERA points out. “The brewers guild made enough noise, and Cooper let them open.”

“If people can hang out drinking beers at Lowes,” argues NEK ZEUGIRDOR, “they should be able to do it in a taproom as long as the same rules and guidelines are followed.”

“Yes,” replies JANET JONES, “certain grocers have a bar area where you can sit and sip. I’ve never had reason to inquire about ‘drinking in the aisles,’ so I’m guessing consumption is limited to that immediate area. Our society is becoming a more alcohol-saturated one. Just an observation.”

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June 3, 2020

INDYweek.com

Moral hazard: “lack of incentive to guard against risk where one is protected from its consequences, e.g., by insurance.”

T

he United States continues to plunge ever deeper into a calamitous economic crisis, throwing tens of millions of people out of work and bringing food insecurity to millions more, including perhaps one in six children. As Congress debates how to respond, a familiar complaint is wafting through our political discourse: the moral hazard.

That’s the idea that if you do too much for people—if you make things too easy for them—they won’t face the risks or consequences necessary to behave properly. The result of such indulgence, it is said, is the depletion of scarce resources, moral corruption, and/or other social ills.

In the first major COVID-19 bailout package, Congress provided a substantial supplement to our usual penurious unemployment benefits, and many Republicans grumbled bitterly that people would have no incentive to return to work since the benefits now paid them more than their full-time wage did. (Indeed, a new working paper from the University of Chicago found that with the $600-a-week supplement, the median unemployed person is earning 34 percent more than they did while working.) Never mind what that says about how crappy full-time wages are for so many Americans. Or that those extra benefits are time-limited and expire at the end of July. The point was that some people can’t be trusted to behave themselves.

Similar warnings have long been sounded about food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP provides, on average, about $250 a month in assistance to eligible families and a small number of single individuals. It expands during economic downturns, for obvious reasons. But as Democrats have attempted to fortify SNAP in response to the current crisis, Republicans have trotted out the familiar complaint—that doing so is a Trojan horse for Democrats’ nefarious plans to prevent more kids from going hungry even in the absence of a crisis.

For example, according to The New York Times, Texas congressman Mike Conaway, the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, recently balked at “Democrats’ narrative of ‘hardhearted Republicans.’”

Instead, Conaway “warned against tempting people to become dependent on government aid. ‘I don’t want to create a moral hazard for people to be on welfare.’”

If the government is just throwing steak and caviar at you, you lazy leeches will just make yourself fat and happy at the expense of hardworking Americans, right?

What kind of expense are we talking about? The total annual cost of SNAP is roughly $60 billion. To be eligible, a family of four can have an annual gross income of no more than about $33,000. A third or more of families that receive SNAP benefits still rely on food banks and other charitable food donations.

Sixty billion dollars may sound like a lot. But many of the same folks who typically complain about such indulgences have said nary a peep about a tax break tucked into the March coronavirus package that will cost at least $100 billion in 2020 alone. About 80 percent of the benefits of that tax break—a repeal of limitations on write-offs for certain businesses—will flow to households with incomes of over $1 million a year. The average windfall for those families will be $1.6 million. Only 3 percent of households with incomes of less than $100,000 will get anything.

This giveaway is considerably more than the entire cost of SNAP. But no one’s worried about moral hazards for the yachted classes.

To hear these arguments in the age of moral reprobate Donald Trump is especially gobsmacking. The president lies constantly, is unconstrained by conscience, and has little or no empathy or concern for anyone who cannot help him personally. He will say and do anything to give himself an advantage, no matter how ludicrous or destructive.

And Republican officeholders, with few exceptions, have decided that he is to be protected, at all costs, from the consequences of his extraordinarily reckless actions.

Conaway—who is just a stand-in for a wider moral failure—has voted with Trump an impressively slavish 98 percent of the time and, of course, voted no on both articles of impeachment. It’s fair to say that, when it comes to the most powerful person in the world, his concern for moral hazard is nowhere to be found. Instead, Trump must be fully shielded from accountability precisely so that he might continue indulging himself.

His entire presidency is a textbook case of moral hazard. Enablers like Conaway betray an astonishing lack of shame in trying to direct our attention to costs that are, by contrast, obscenely petty and inconsequential. 2 Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.

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

15 MINUTES

Wake up with us.

Olivia Robertson, 21

Sign up for Primer, our daily email newsletter indyweek.com/newsletter-signup

Server, Carolina Coffee Shop in Chapel Hill, UNC grad ’20

BY MARY KING backtalk@indyweek.com

How long were you home from work, and what prompted you to go back?

We closed about a week after spring break, and we just opened back up [on May 23]. Phase 2 started on Friday at 5:00 p.m., and we opened the next Saturday. We were closed for that long, and I ended up getting a different job because I pay my own rent and everything. I did that, and then I wanted to come back because I’ve worked at Carolina Coffee Shop for almost two years, and it’s my home. Since I’ll be here all summer, I figured I’d go back and get my last few months there before I move on at the end of the summer.

How safe do you feel at work?

I feel like we as a restaurant are taking all of the necessary precautions to make sure that ourselves and the guests are as safe as possible during their dining experience. But there are times where guests won’t follow the six-feet-apart rule or they won’t wear a mask when ordering and all that kind of stuff. But overall, I feel safe.

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Is there any sort of testing going on?

Yeah. Every time an employee comes in, we have screening questions that we got from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. They ask, like, “Do you have a fever?” “Have you been in contact with anyone testing positive for COVID-19 or the symptoms?” “Do you have A, B, and C symptoms?” We also have the infrared thermometer, which you just point at someone’s forehead and it takes their temperature without having to actually touch them. We take every employee’s temperature at the start of their shift.

SUPPORT LOCAL

What do you do if a customer is not wearing a mask?

Because there’s not a policy in North Carolina or Chapel Hill—like there is in Durham—that you have to wear a mask, so we can’t turn them away. But if there is someone who doesn’t have a mask on, we do try to just keep our distance, take their order from six feet away, all that stuff.

What sort of precautions is the restaurant taking?

What’s something that you’d like customers to know?

We don’t use physical menus unless they’re requested. We have QR code menus now to kind of reduce contact. We sanitize pens after every use. We don’t keep any of the regular condiments on the table—the salt and pepper shakers and the sugar caddies, we don’t keep those on the table, and if someone requests them, we clean them off after every guest.

We only seat guests six feet apart, so every other booth, and we also cleared out the entire middle section to allow for social distancing. There are a million other things—like, we provide the employees with masks and gloves.

I want them to know that we are doing everything in our power to make sure that everyone is safe. Because I know a lot of people are still scared about going to restaurants— which, I mean, honestly, I am about going out in public in general. I think as long as they know that if they decide to go out to a restaurant, we are being safe and we are doing what we can to make sure that all of our employees are healthy and there’s no chance that we will give it to a guest—which, you never know if there’s that chance, but we are trying our best to reduce that likelihood. W

businesses by purchasing gift cards, shopping online, donating, ordering takeout, and tipping more KeepItINDY.com

June 3, 2020

5

Q UIC KBA I T

Our Pandemic, on Google

APRIL

n March 17, Governor Cooper ordered North Carolina’s bars and restaurants to close. On May 22, he moved the state into phase 2 of reopening, allowing restaurants to open at limited capacity and relaxing the state’s stayat-home order, which went into effect on March 27. For the 67 days in between, many of us were stuck at home, trying to figure out this strange new world of Zoom business meetings and FaceTime meet-ups.

We wanted to get a sense of how our part of the world experienced this strange moment in time. So we looked at what people from this region were searching for online. Using Google Trends, we found the top rising search terms in Raleigh and Durham—and Fayetteville, because Google lumps them in, for some odd reason—for each of these 67 days.

1

O

MAY

Dame Jean Macnamara (Australian medical doctor, died 1968)

2 Zaxby’s, Big Lots

17 Stimulus check, Kevin Durant (NBA player,

2

Phil Hartman (American entertainer, died in 1998)

3 Asian giant hornets (signs of the

songwriter, died)

apocalypse)

4 Hawaii Five-0 5 Youtube to mp3, Palm Sunday 2020

4 Don Shula (football coach, died)

6 Thank you coronavirus helpers 7

Transparent image

5 Moe's (seriously, y’all?)

8 Wisconsin primary, Snapchat down 9 Amber alert

6 Adele

10 Siblings day

7

11 YouTube to mp3, hardboiled eggs

Earl Thomas (NFL player allegedly held at gunpoint by wife after allegedly cheating)

8 6ix9ine (musician)

12 The Clark Sisters (American gospel group) 9 Little Richard (musician, died)

14 James Taylor 10 Betty Wright (singer, died),

targeted in new book)

18 Utah earthquake

Anderson Cooper (announced birth of son)

3 Coronavirus tips, Bill Withers (singer-

13 Power outage

MARCH

1

15 Zoom login

Happy Mothers Day quotes

11 Jerry Stiller (comedian/actor, died) 19 Spring season, kingdom in Tangled

(the name of the kingdom in the Disney movie Tangled was “corona”)

20 Madam C.J. Walker (subject of Netflix series Self-Made), California lockdown

21 Kenny Rogers (died), Woodland Terrace (senior living community in Cary where residents tested positive for COVID-19)

22 Jamal Murray (NBA player, sex tape leaked on IG),

16 Howard Finkel (WWE announcer, died), Brian Dennehy (actor, died)

12 TJ Maxx

17 Fiona Apple (released new album), Starbucks near me

18 Lady Gaga concert 19 Teddy Riley (American singer, songwriter, and producer), Eddie Vedder

13 Weather Durham NC 14 Richard Burr (resign!)

20 Coronavirus tips, Dow Jones

Rand Paul (senator diagnosed with COVID-19)

23 Di'Ja (Nigerian singer-songwriter) 24 Easter 2020 25 Wake County stay at home

21 Kim Jong-un, Gronkowski (NFL player Rob Gronkowski joined Tom Brady in Tampa Bay)

16 Fred Willard (actor, died) 22 Advance Auto, Taco Bell menu 17 Kevin Gates (musician), Phyllis George (former

26 Dow futures now

Miss America, sportscaster, died May 14)

23 NC governor update 27 NC stay at home rules, hantavirus (virus

25 Kim Jong-un death

28 Harbor Freight (tools retailer, closed),

26 POF (Plenty of Fish?), Kristin Cavallari (split 27 Popular Google Doodle games 28 Wizard of Oz

30 Di'Ja, Post Office, Pizza near me

29 Remdesivir, Irrfan Khan (Khan, an Indian

31 What is the 2020 census #census, Chris

30 Rishi Kapoor (Indian actor, died)

Cuomo (CNN host, diagnosed with COVID-19)

June 3, 2020

with husband Jay Cutler)

29 Joe Diffie (country music singer, died), John

Prine (legendary folk singer-songwriter, died)

6

24 NFL draft picks Eddie Vedder

spread by rodents)

Carole Baskin (featured in Netflix series Tiger King)

INDYweek.com

15 Scoob (movie released digitally)

actor, died)

18 Stock market 19 Ravi Zacharias (Christian apologist, died) 20 Israel Kamakawiwo´ole (singer-lyricist, died 1997)

21 Jesse McCartney (singer-songwriter-actor) 22 Cephalic (of or relating to the head), Jerry Sloan (NBA coach, died)

The Good, The Bad & The Awful

A WE E K IN THE L IFE

5/26 5/27

A group of GYM OWNERS filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that they should not be excluded from phase 2 of Governor Cooper’s reopening plan.

5/28

NORTH CAROLINA BAR OWNERS announced that they planned to sue over being left out of phase 2 of Governor Cooper’s reopening plan.

Both houses of the GENERAL ASSEMBLY passed a bill that would allow bars to reopen with outdoor seating.

COVID-19 HOSPITALIZATIONS in North Carolina reached a record high for the second straight day.

National Republicans gave Cooper an ULTIMATUM: Approve their plans for a fullattendance Charlotte convention by June 3 or they’ll go somewhere else.

The state House passed a bill to expand access to VOTING BY MAIL.

5/29

BAR OWNERS backed off their lawsuit threat—for now—after Cooper agreed to meet with them.

Governor Cooper told national Republicans he needs more details on the party’s plans for its CHARLOTTE CONVENTION before he can approve it.

5/30

MORE THAN 300 DEMONSTRATORS rallied in downtown Durham to demand justice for George Floyd, the Black man killed by a white Minneapolis cop. The protest was powerful while still—because of the cooperation of the Durham Police Department—remaining relatively calm.

A peaceful demonstration against police brutality in downtown Raleigh turned chaotic after POLICE DISPENSED TEAR GAS and looters and vandals began smashing storefront windows and setting fires. Police made 12 arrests.

Governor Cooper said that he had called in the NATIONAL GUARD in cities that had requested it—Raleigh and Charlotte—in the aftermath of Saturday’s riots.

PROTESTERS AND POLICE clashed in downtown Raleigh for the second straight night, with police shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds of demonstrators, often without provocation.

6/1

Barnhill Contracting Company, which frequently does business with the city of Raleigh and other local governments, announced that it hired a new head of Triangle business development—MARY-ANN BALDWIN, who happens to be the mayor of Raleigh.

Amid mounting complaints, Governor Cooper replaced LOCKHART TAYLOR as head of the state’s unemployment office. Former lawmaker Pryor Gibson took over.

The Department of Justice informed defense attorneys for Senators Dianne Feinstein, James Inhofe, and Kelly Loeffler that it was no longer pursuing investigations into possible insider stock trading. It pointedly did not tell SENATOR RICHARD BURR the same.

Eleven inmates at the FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL COMPLEX in Butner filed a lawsuit alleging that prison leaders’ “deliberate indifference” had led to a COVID-19 outbreak. They asked to be released, saying that only reducing the prison population could make the complex safer.

5/31

(Here’s what’s happened since the INDY went to press last week)

SENATE LEADER PHIL BERGER said the protests of police brutality look “more and more like organized domestic terrorism.”

After two nights of unrest in Raleigh, MAYOR BALDWIN enacted a curfew.

d goo

bad

ul

f aw

Durham Police Department In so many cities across the country, the protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis turned chaotic, destructive, even violent: tear gas and rubber bullets, looting, and vandalism. But not in Durham. In a city known for activist leftist politics, about 300 demonstrators protested without incident, arrests, or reports of vandalism. Much of the credit, of course, goes to the organizers themselves, who were determined not to “tear up our own community,” as organizer Skip Gibbs told The News & Observer. But save some praise for the Durham Police Department, too. Unlike other law enforcement agencies, which geared up for these demonstrations like they were Russian invasions, the Durham police blocked off streets, cleared intersections, kept their distance, and took care not to escalate. Amazing how that worked.

Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin To some degree, the controversy in which Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin found herself last week wasn’t her fault. It’s a system problem. There’s no reason that the position of mayor of Raleigh—a fast-growing city of about a half-million people—should be “part-time,” especially when its responsibilities are anything but. Considering the “part-time” job pays just $24,000 a year, such a designation forces the officeholder, if he or she is not independently wealthy or retired, to hold a “real” job, which can raise the possibility of conflicts of interest, particularly if that employer does business with the city. That was the case with Holt Brothers Foundation, Baldwin’s previous employer, for which she did marketing and ran the nonprofit.

And it’s even more the case with Barnhill Contracting, where she’ll be the director of Triangle business development. Baldwin says she’ll recuse herself whenever Barnhill’s on the agenda, and she no doubt will. But you can’t help but wonder whether the city’s staff will look a bit more favorably on Barnhill’s proposals now when ranking bids for contracts. Besides, the optics are terrible: As the INDY first reported, a few weeks before a Barnhill recruiter contacted her, the city council unanimously awarded Barnhill a more than $6 million contract to resurface some city streets.

Law enforcement in Raleigh Early Monday morning, law enforcement officers—maybe Raleigh police, maybe Wake County sheriff’s deputies—walked by Ruby Deluxe downtown; owner Timothy Lemuel was outside with water and snacks to hand to protesters.

A cop yelled at him to go home. “This is my business. I rent this place. I rent here,” Lemuel protested, pointing out that he had a legal right to be where he was. Then the cops opened fire: rubber bullets and flashbangs, per a video posted on Facebook. Another video clearly shows an officer shooting a rubber bullet into a protester’s back and then tackling him from behind as he flees a cloud of tear gas. WRAL footage from Saturday evening around 6:55—before there were any reports of rioting—show the police shooting tear gas into what looks to be a crowd of peaceful protesters. The next night, the same thing happened: The Raleigh police tear-gassed peaceful protesters, then claimed on social media that the protesters wouldn’t make way for an emergency vehicle.

We don’t mention this to absolve looters and vandals of responsibility for the damage they did, including to the INDY’s Raleigh office, which was destroyed.

But where Durham police de-escalated, the cops in Raleigh escalated—with terrible consequences.

KeepItINDY.com

June 3, 2020

7

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

THE LANGUAGE OF THE UNHEARD You don’t have to like what the rioters did.

But you should hear what they’re saying.

BY JEFFREY C. BILLMAN jbillman@indyweek.com

A

Martin Luther King Jr. quote has been making the rounds on social media since civil unrest erupted from protests all over the country in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder-by-cop last Monday: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

But we do ourselves a disservice by reading this line, nodding wisely, and stopping there. It’s far more poignant and cutting in context.

King first said this in an interview with 60 Minutes in 1966, when he was addressing militant factions within the civil rights movement.

“I contend that the cry of ‘Black power’ is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. And I think we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard,” he told correspondent Mike Wallace. “And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”

A year later, delivering a commencement speech at Stanford University, King elaborated on this idea: “But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises 8

June 3, 2020

INDYweek.com

of freedom and justice have not been met.

And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.”

In context, King’s point isn’t just about the general frustration of the marginalized. It’s a specific condemnation of white America—of ostensible allies who voice passive support so long as they don’t have to sacrifice their “tranquility” in the name of Black “justice, equality, and humanity.”

For years and for decades, we have failed.

According to The Equality of Opportunity Project, a Black child born into the bottom fifth of household incomes has just a 2.5 percent chance of rising to the top fifth, while a white child born into the same circumstance has a 10.6 percent chance of climbing to the top. Black kids born into the top quintile, meanwhile, are almost as likely to fall to the bottom as they are to maintain their economic position. On average, white households are about 20 times wealthier than Black households—and that statistic hasn’t changed in a half-century.

Meanwhile, African Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites.

And while surveys show that Blacks and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates, Blacks are about six times more likely to be imprisoned on drug charges. National-

ly, Black people are nearly three times as likely as whites to be killed by police, and nearly twice as likely as Hispanics.

America has failed to hear.

The protests this weekend weren’t just about the viral video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while three officers stood around and said nothing. Nor were they just about the reality that, without that video, there is zero chance Chauvin and his fellow cops would have been fired and less than zero chance Chauvin would have been charged with third-degree murder.

They were also about Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and Philando Castile and Walter Scott and Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland and Botham Jean and Jordan Davis and so many others. They were about decades of criminal-justice policies that targeted Black Americans and decades of economic policies that impoverished them. And they were about a political system that ignores them: on one side, a party that often takes their votes for granted; on the other, a president prone to racist, incendiary, and atavistic rhetoric.

Mix that with depression-level unemployment, a pandemic that has killed more than 105,000 in four months, and militarized police forces eager to bust heads, and you had a powder keg waiting to blow.

It didn’t take much to set it off.

My point isn’t to excuse or condone the vandalism that took place in downtown Raleigh and elsewhere this weekend. It’s to acknowledge that it didn’t happen in a vacuum.

There were, of course, opportunists who came to the protest not because they cared about the cause but to cause trouble. And there were probably some white supremacists trying to make Black Lives Matter activists look bad; presumably, a BLM marcher didn’t graffiti a white power sign onto Ruby Deluxe. But there were also people who got swept up in the adrenaline of the moment, perhaps after confrontations with the police, perhaps when builtup frustration and resentment boiled over.

This is the language of the unheard.

Martin Luther King Jr. was talking to me, a comfortable, middle-class white American. He was telling me to do better, to rouse myself from this status quo, grapple with uncomfortable questions, and not just mouth platitudes about equality and humanity but be willing to do the work to lift up those our society has relegated to second-class status.

You don’t have to like what the rioters did.

But you should hear what they’re saying. W

RALEIGH ON FIRE Two chaotic nights in downtown Raleigh, minute by minute

O

TIMELINE BY Paul Blest, Jordan Green, Charlie McGee, Sara Pequeño, Leigh Tauss, Jade Wilson, Cole Villena PHOTOS BY Brenna Berry, Justin Kase Conder, Leigh Tauss, Jade Wilson

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

n Saturday evening, about 1,000 people gathered in downtown Raleigh for what began as a peaceful demonstration marking the murder of George Floyd and protesting police violence. Within a few hours, however, things had taken a turn toward the chaotic.

Police unleashed tear gas and rubber bullets; some protesters smashed windows and started fires. By the night’s end, few buildings were left unscathed.

Sunday night saw an even more aggressive police presence and defiant protesters who came knowing what was in store.

The INDY’s reporters and photographers blanketed downtown Raleigh this weekend, covering these events as they unfolded. Here, we want to tell this story as it happened—as they experienced it, from different vantage points, at different times and in different places. What they witnessed was joyful, moving, powerful, discomfiting, and frightening.

This is how we saw two chaotic nights in downtown Raleigh.

Saturday, May 30 5:00 p.m. Protesters gather in front of the Wake County Courthouse; the speeches are difficult to hear. —JG KeepItINDY.com

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5:09 Chants of “I can’t breathe” come from well over 300 people scattered along Fayetteville Street. —CM 5:22 A new chant—“Fuck Trump”—rises in volume.

5:35 Black community members speak about George Floyd’s death and what it means to them. “If y’all don’t see the fuckin’ pain of these families that police be leavin’ behind, the pain of these kids that they leave behind, the pain of the brothers and sisters they leave behind, what the fuck is y’all out here for?” one asks. —CM 5:48 The mother of Keith Collins, who was shot and killed by Raleigh police earlier this year, is brought to the stage. A representative of national NAACP President Derrick Johnson stands behind Collins’s mother and delivers an emotional speech: “He was shot one time, two times, three times, six, seven, eight, nine …. On behalf of the national president of the national NAACP, Derrick Johnson, he told me to deliver one message to the people in the city of Raleigh today, and that message is, ‘We are done dying.’” —CM 6:00 Protesters begin marching north on Fayetteville Street, eventually circling past the General Assembly building.

6:21 Protesters are social distancing on sidewalks in solidarity with protesters marching on Hillsborough Street. —JW

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

6:30 Several hundred gather at the Old Capitol grounds, chanting while police keep their distance. Most are wearing masks and holding handmade signs. There are children present. Autumn Ashbury, who works at the state Department of Revenue, says she is there “because I cannot escape my Black skin. I’m not a thug. What President Trump is doing, that’s a dog-whistle. He’s a thug.

He’s the biggest criminal in America.” —LT 6:39 Protesters make a pit stop in front of the Wake County Public Safety Center. —CM 6:40 The crowd in front of the Old Capitol Building chants, “No justice, no peace.”

One Black family holds up handmade signs naming George Floyd, Breonna Taylor (who was killed by Louisville police in May), and Ahmaud Arbery (who was shot by white men while jogging). A young girl in a pink facemask holds up a sign reading, “I can’t breathe.” —LT 6:43 The leading segment of the initial wave of protesters is on the move again, walking near Hargett and Salisbury, loudly chanting, “George Floyd” and “Whose streets? Our streets!” —CM 6:45 Two groups of protesters converge on Salisbury Street in front of the Confederate monument on the Capitol grounds.

Organizer Kerwin Pittman leads a chant, “No justice, no peace. No racist police.” Cops keep their distance. —LT

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

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PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

6:47 Protesters climb the Confederate monument and raise their fists. Cheers and “Black Lives Matter” chants break out. Protesters start directing traffic. Signs: “Stop killing our people”; “Silence is the enemy.” —PB 6:52 We hear someone say that cops are teargassing people on the other side of the Old Capitol Building and make our way towards Jones Street. —PB 6:55 We hear cheering at the Museum of Natural Sciences. When we get there, a guy is on his knee proposing to his girlfriend next to the globe. A young Black woman rolls a cooler through the crowd handing out water. —PB

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

6:55 At the front of the line, our ship captains are leading a vibrant chant of “We gon’ breathe today.”

One Black man next to me with dreads and a skateboard smokes a blunt. —CM

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7:15 Police blockade the road near Wade Avenue and ask protesters to turn around.

They comply and head back downtown, walking the opposite way up Wilmington Street through traffic, which has stopped dead in the sea of people. —LT 7:25 There’s a smaller group in front of the Old Capitol as police surround the building.

Protesters on the Confederate monument chant, “Black lives matter” and yell, “They don’t give a fuck about us.” —PB 7:32 “Oh, we takin’ over Raleigh now?” one protester says. The protest wave splits in two. —CM 7:39 One section of the now-split protest crosses the intersection of Wilmington and Hargett. The group engages two RPD vehicles; some protesters rattle the cars’ bodies as they pass. —CM 7:44 The group moves back to the county courthouse. There are more speeches, but this section soon departs. —CM PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

6:56 WRAL captures video of law enforcement firing tear gas into what appears to be a peaceful crowd of protesters.

It is unclear what provoked the police.

7:00 Several hundred protesters march down Dawson Street to Capital Boulevard, blocking traffic and chanting. Cars honk and drivers raise their fists in solidarity. They make their way nearly to the Wade Avenue exit. —LT

7:48 Three officers ride horses near the front of the section on Fayetteville Street as it approaches the Raleigh Convention Center. Some protesters are throwing traffic cones and bottles. —CM 7:50 The protesters who sent the horse police fleeing shove over orange construction barricades; they are laughing with each other. Worth noting: They are nearly all white guys. —CM

7:01 The front of the line is still 300 people deep—likely much deeper—and has occupied Capital Boulevard, but people are more fragmented. Police vehicles are backing up and shut down traffic. —CM 7:06 Protesters are seen running eastward on Davie Street near the courthouse after police shoot tear gas. —JG 7:12 The front section’s pace has quickened.

Eventually, the group huddles in front of a U-Haul dealership, the chants continuing, before returning downtown. —CM 7:13 More tear gas at McDowell and Davie.

Protesters respond by throwing water bottles at the police.

7:15 We’re part of a large group making its way down Jones Street away from the legislative building. Cars are honking as we pass; there’s lots of cheering. It’s completely peaceful. —PB 12

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PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

8:20 Another standoff at Cabarrus and McDowell is dispersed after several cans of tear gas are thrown into the crowd of protesters. —JW 8:23 A much smaller group of protesters remains on Davie Street. A Fuquay-Varina man with “All Lives Matter” scrawled in green marker on a white T-shirt stands beside a woman in Hawaiian-print shorts, which could indicate affiliation with Boogaloo, a fringe right-wing ideology that wants to initiate a second civil war. I ask why he wrote that phrase on his shirt at a Black Lives Matter protest. He responds, “I dunno.” —LT 8:36 “If the police turn this violent …”

Protesters, gathered back at the courthouse, prepare for war but maintain a message of peaceful demonstration. —CM PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

7:56 Tear gas is deployed in front of the convention center as speeches begin. From my vantage point on high ground, I can see no provocative actions. WRAL footage suggests the tear-gas canister was dropped from the roof. —CM 8:00 Groups of protesters begin to break off; some gather at the courthouse chanting, “Take Your Freedom.” Another group converges near the Red Hat Amphitheater, and a third forms a human chain and blocks Salisbury near Davie Street. The protesters then break into a spontaneous, joyous dance in the middle of the street. —LT 8:05 A Black mother pleads for calm in front of police officers. —JW

8:37 Tensions are high at Davie Street as more protesters surround officers, some of whom are holding batons. A water bottle is thrown into the crowd, but nothing happens.

Suddenly, a man who has been revving a motorcycle loses control, and the bike falls over. Several people fall to the ground, but it’s unclear if anyone was struck. —LT 8:42 A breaking point: As protesters stream from the courthouse steps to Davie Street, a police vehicle speeds through into the crowd, followed by an apparent decoy tear-gas launch. A battle at the courthouse steps begins. —CM 8:44 Police, with no clear provocation, unload tear gas at the intersection of Davie and Fayetteville. —CM

8:12 Protesters circle around cars and motorcycles, singing and dancing across from a standoff taking shape at Davie and Salisbury. —JW 8:15 A standoff ensues between police and protesters, who block the road and surround about a dozen officers. —JG 8:17 Protesters form a chain around the officers on Davie Street, linking hands. Some shout at the cops. Others stand silently. The sun is starting to set, and the clouds are backlit like a Renaissance painting behind the downtown skyscape. Some pops go off that sound like fireworks. —LT 8:20 The crowd at Davie Street quickly breaks up after one woman shouts, “They are boxing us in,” motioning to a line of approaching police officers. —LT

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

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who’d seized the courthouse, ambushing them in sporadic gaps from all sides with tear gas. —CM 9:02 After firing tear gas, police retreat from Davie and Salisbury, eliciting cheers from protesters.

9:03 I see the night’s first act of vandalism.

A man—who is not Black—in a ski mask smashes a window of the Wake County Sheriff’s Office. Other protesters scold him.

A light-skinned man in a gas mask tells me to back off and not take pictures. —LT 9:05 Protesters pelt the Wake County Public Safety Center. At least a handful of windows are busted out. Police respond with heavy tear gas. Protesters (and journalists) flee. —JG 9:06 In between tear gas ambushes, protesters at the courthouse prepare for the next round. A few commit the first blatant acts of property damage this section of protesters has indulged in. —CM

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

8:45 At least 60 cops in riot gear and batons line up and form a perimeter near Poole’s Diner on McDowell Street. A small group of protesters forms around them. A woman shouts, “Is this gathering illegal?”

Nearby, one young Black man in a medical facemask paces the street with his hands held up. —LT 8:54 The crowd at the county courthouse laments its failed effort at a peaceful engagement with the police, saying that all violence was incited by the police: “We don’t even have guns.” —CM

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

8:58 Back at Davie and Salisbury, police don helmets and riot gear. Someone shouts through a megaphone for the protesters to keep moving. Suddenly tear gas rises at the corner of Davie and Fayetteville. I hear things smashing and begin tearing up from the gas. Tear gas canisters litter the pavement, and a cop kicks it up the street as someone yells, “These are our streets.

Fucking fascists.” The red police lights glow through the clouds of gas. —LT 9:00 Riot police unveil the first appearance of “less-lethal guns.” They’re 15 minutes into an effort to converge on the protesters

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9:08 Chaos on Davie Street quickly escalates as protesters throw rocks and bricks through multiple windows of the Sheriff’s Office. Others light fireworks. It’s hard to tell where the cops are staged, but multiple canisters of tear gas are suddenly deployed in the street nearby. Protesters try to run, but the gas consumes the crowd. My skin and throat burn, I cannot see, and I am running blind away from the toxic fog. —LT 9:20 Protesters fleeing tear gas at the Public Safety Center (and probably others) spill onto Fayetteville Street and begin smashing windows, chanting, “When the shooting stops, the looting stops.”

9:21 I make my way to Fayetteville Street following groups of protesters. Already, windows are being smashed and businesses are being broken into. I watch a white man in a ski mask attempt to knock out the security camera at First National Bank. —LT 9:22 A police armored vehicle passes through Davie Street and Fayetteville.

Protesters barricade the street.

9:25 A small group of several dozen protesters smashes the windows at Jimmy John’s, Happy and Hale, and Fire Wok using bricks from a nearby construction site. A man with a baseball bat enters Jimmy John’s and starts smashing the counter. Others go inside to steal bags of chips. Nearly every business on the street is soon targeted. —LT

RALEIGH POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY: A BRIEF HISTORY OF FAILURE

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

9:27 After 45 minutes of being flooded with tear gas, protesters snap. They unload on the Wake County Courthouse entrance with fireworks—a consistent counter-measure of the night—and leave a mark. —CM 9:30 A wall of tear gas begins to rise at the other end of Fayetteville Street as the smaller group of protesters continues to smash windows. No cops are in sight. —LT 9:33 Riot officers fire multiple tear-gas canisters at either side of my feet as I stand near the intersection of Fayetteville and Martin, visibly donning my press credentials, 15 feet away from scattered protesters. —CM 9:39 The smaller group of protesters on Fayetteville Street gets hold of a flag and attempts to burn it, but after multiple attempts to create a blowtorch, the fire does not take. Instead, a man grabs the charred flag and attempts to use it to smash a window. —LT 9:40 A SWAT team arrives on a public transit bus. —CM 9:42 A standoff is underway in front of the courthouse between cops in riot gear and protesters. There’s a grapefruit-size hole in the glass at the front entrance. —JG 9:46 Cops finally gain a dominant position at the courthouse’s mangled entrance. I cannot report one dispersal order issued by any officer before using force on a protest crowd all day. —CM

On February 29, 2016, Officer D.C. Twiddy fired four shots at Akiel Denkins on Bragg Street, killing him. Twiddy was never charged. Denkins’s mother, Rolanda Byrd, later became the leader of the Police Accountability Community Task Force, which has lobbied for a police oversight board that investigates incidents of police force with subpoena and disciplinary power.

Although fulfilling this request would require asking the legislature to alter state law, the movement began to gain traction. That September, Raleigh announced the creation of a Citizens Police Academy to give residents an opportunity to experience firsthand police training, and in November, the city started a “Community Conversations Series” to facilitate a dialogue between residents and police officers. The city’s Human Relations Board also added police accountability to its docket.

Fast forward to 2018: There’s been little tangible progress toward creating a police accountability board. Activists blamed Mayor Nancy McFarlane for failing to act. The Human Relations Committee returned a report unanimously recommending that the city council create a board with investigatory and subpoena powers, but it was never presented to the city council. Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said she opposed any police board, believing it would interfere with officers' ability to do their jobs.

In April 2019, Soheil Antonio Mojarrad, a man with a history of mental illness, was shot and killed by police. Then, in August, a video of Raleigh police drawing a gun and handcuffing Kazeem Oyeneyin, a Black man, in his own home went viral. That fall, city leaders hosted a series of community discussions to get input on how to move forward. The sessions were attended by many members of the Raleigh Police Department, but nothing happened. A new city council took office in December.

January 2020 marked a bloody month for the RPD, beginning with the police shooting a man who was accused of trying to steal a dump truck, followed by another viral video of Raleigh cops beating a 22-year-old accused of striking several parked cars while driving. On January 30, Raleigh police shot and killed Keith Dutree Collins after a 911 call accused him of having a gun, which was later found to be a BB gun.

The following week, the city council voted to create a five-person police review board to examine police policy, though it would have no disciplinary or subpoena power, frustrating activists who called it a step backward and “the illusion of progress.” By April, only 10 people had applied to serve on the toothless board, prompting officials to reopen applications through May. —Leigh Tauss KeepItINDY.com

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9:54 Protesters lounge on either side of the courthouse, preparing for the next battle. They pass out snacks (they offer me one, I decline), and some apparently are getting drunk. —CM 9:58 I go back to the INDY’s office on Wilmington Street to get some water. While inside, a brick smashes through the glass window. Scared, I hide behind a retaining wall inside the office until the looters are gone. I step outside but immediately inhale more gas and retreat back into the building.

I enter the main lobby of the building and listen as rioters enter the office. I hear smashing. I take the elevator to the basement and wait. —LT 10:00 Lucettegrace owner Daniel Benjamin sees the destruction happening nearby and heads downtown. His business hasn’t been targeted. He stands outside, guarding it as rioters smash the windows of surrounding businesses. Protesters were “strangely” very polite, Benjamin says. “They were asking me if this was my business, and when I said yes, they were giving me essentially props for being out here protecting it and just walking right by to then go smash a window down the street. My twin brother showed up, and we collectively just stood out front until about 6:30 this morning.” —LT 10:00 Fayetteville Street convenience store owner Mohammed (who did not wish to give his last name) gets an alert from his security company that the store has been broken into. He rushes downtown and finds it ransacked. “I found almost 10, 15 people in my store, and they were just literally stealing everything: cigarettes, tobacco, money, cash registers, lottery. They destroyed it— they broke the glasses, broke shields, broke cooler doors. They kind of just destroyed things. They were not protesting. They were destroying.” He remains on guard outside the store until 5:00 a.m. —LT 10:12 After hiding for about 10 minutes, I go back upstairs. I hear a knock on the door; it’s fellow reporter Jordan Green, who had been alerted to my situation. We walk outside and see the rioters have taken a jug of water and a lamp. At this point, only one window is shattered. —LT

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PHOTO BY LEIGH TAUSS

10:28 After flooding the crowd with tear gas from their new position, the courthouse cops unleash less-lethal bullets for the first time as protesters refuse to stay scattered.

—CM 10:43 Protesters, armed only with fireworks, rocks, and water bottles, use all available resources to turn away police attacks. —CM 10:45 I leave downtown, a little shaken. I see another window in the office has been smashed as I drive by. —LT 10:55 A car drives by about a dozen protesters standing around the corner from the courthouse on Martin Street. The driver and passenger stop to yell at the police from a distance, and they are teargassed without incitement. —CM 11:05 The Dollar General is in flames. “Ain’t nobody here to stop a fire,” one person laughs. —CM 11:11 A Black man, about 25, identifying himself as “B,” appears to be deciding between “hits” on buildings most deserving of damage: “I used to look at police and think like, damn, they serve and protect us. Give ’em the benefit even though, you know, I’m a three-time felon. Tonight, that shit made me look way differently at them. I looked a man in his face, one of the officers today, I told him, ‘You gon’ kill me?’ He couldn’t look me back in my face, then he told me right there he could kill me.” —CM

PHOTO BY LEIGH TAUSS

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

PHOTO BY LEIGH TAUSS

Sunday, May 31 2:00 a.m. The fire alarm at the INDY office goes off. Looters have broken into the building again, this time stealing a desktop computer and setting fire to two couches.

—LT 6:00 By morning, the sprinkler system has been running for four hours and has flooded the office, destroying the remaining electronics. Nearly every exterior window has been smashed. —LT 7:00 Volunteers converge downtown and begin to clean up local businesses. Meghan Boland and her mother, Rachael, help scrub off graffiti from the wall. “It’s really sad,” Meghan says. “It’s really sad, but it’s also really nice to see everyone come out and help.” —LT 9:00 The only business unharmed on the INDY’s block is Taz’s—and that’s because he stood outside all night, armed, multiple people say. —LT 11:00 Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin, and members of the city council address the public. Deck-Brown condemns the violence, noting that 12 people were arrested and five police officers were hospitalized. “Destroying our city is not the answer,” she says, while also saying she will not risk officers’ lives to protect property. —LT

PHOTO BY BRENNA BERRY

12:00 p.m. Dozens of volunteers work to clean the streets of glass and debris and board up businesses. —LT 4:00 Governor Cooper calls in the National Guard at the request of local law enforcement in Raleigh and Charlotte. While condemning the violence, Cooper praises the peaceful protesters who demonstrated earlier. The violence is “wrong and must be stopped, but I fear the cry of the people is being drowned out by the noise of these riots,” Cooper says. “Let me be clear about one thing: People are more important than property. Black lives do matter.”

7:00 A group of heavily armed cops in riot gear marches downtown. Several dozen protesters have peacefully gathered, some lying down in the street. The cops fire tear gas at the protesters to clear the streets.

Police later state: “We utilized tear gas to move protestors out of the path of an EMS vehicle on its way to an emergency medical call after they refused to move.” Video of the incident does not show an emergency vehicle. —LT 7:30 At least 300 protesters are gathered near the Old Capitol grounds, peacefully chanting, “Black Lives Matter.” —LT KeepItINDY.com

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8:30 A dozen clergy stand in front of the Fayetteville CVS, which was set ablaze last night, arms raised in solidarity. —SP 8:35 Several cops kneel and put on gas masks, sparking concern among protesters.

—LT 8:40 The cops march back toward the Old Capitol grounds. I and a group of several dozen protesters follow them. We merge with another group of several hundred already in front of the “To Our Confederate Dead” monument. Another standoff is underway with police as protesters chant in front of the statue with their hands up. —LT

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

9:00 Someone tosses a rope around the statue. The rope breaks. Police deploy several rounds of tear gas. The crowd screams and scatters. —LT 9:00 I didn’t see any violence before tear gas was deployed. —SP 9:07 Protesters return to the monument, but police deploy more tear gas, sending them scattering again. I get my first face full of gas of the night. —LT 9:15 Cops in riot gear carrying semiautomatic weapons start to clear protesters off the Old Capitol grounds. —LT

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

7:44 I arrive at the intersection of Salisbury and Morgan near the Governor’s Mansion as the chanting picks up. One person says, “We need to keep this as peaceful as possible.” A few minutes later, the riot police near the Governor’s Mansion board two GoTriangle buses and ride away.

A large white armored vehicle drives by. —CV

9:20 Once again, riot police board GoRaleigh buses near the Confederate monument. A separate group of riot police has started to form a human wall on the lawn in front of the Capitol building, facing Fayetteville Street. —CV

8:00 I head downtown and find a group of several hundred protesters in a standoff with cops in riot gear near the Governor’s Mansion. A helicopter is circling low to the ground. —LT 8:15 A group of protesters links arms and sits on the ground in front of a line of cops in riot gear. Among them is Raleigh pastor Jason Butler, who says he is there to keep the peace. —LT 8:18 Police throw smoke canisters at protesters, who are blocking an intersection near the Governor’s Mansion. —CV 8:25 Officers in riot gear form a perimeter around the street. Most of the protesters march back downtown, with those sitting on the ground acting as human shields. Police do not follow them and slowly back off and regroup down the street. —LT 18

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PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

9:23 Protesters begin to cluster where Fayetteville meets Morgan Street. One woman holds up a sign saying, “I can’t breathe.” Police form a line in front of the Old Capitol building, wielding wooden batons. The protesters hold up their hands and chant, “Don’t shoot.” —LT 9:50 Protesters are marching peacefully on the streets bordering the Old Capitol grounds. There are maybe 200 left. They circle back to the Confederate statue and approach a line of riot cops with their arms up. Those in the front sit at the cops’ feet.

—LT 10:00–10:30 For about a half-hour, things quiet down. The protesters sit on the ground. When someone gets up and yells at the officers, others tell them to sit down and shut up. The helicopter continues to circle overhead. “I don’t see no riot here, why are you in riot gear?” the protesters chant. —LT 10:25 News breaks that Mayor Baldwin will declare a curfew in Raleigh beginning Monday. —SP 10:30 About 20 more cops show up. The protesters are mostly still sitting on the ground with their hands up. Some have climbed the Confederate monument. A few are scattered on the Capitol lawn. —LT

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

10:42 I don’t see what prompts it, but police deploy more tear gas into the crowd of protesters, clearing the street in front of the Confederate monument. A protester throws a red smoke bomb, which an officer kicks away. Slowly, some protesters return and sit again in front of the officers. —LT

11:02 Someone next to me throws a water bottle from the Capitol building lawn and hits a police officer in the shoulder on Morgan Street. Police respond by throwing a firework into the street and then working their way down Morgan. —LT

10:46 Police set off a very loud flashbang, sending dozens of protesters running down Hillsborough Street. —LT

11:17 Protesters light a trash bin on fire at the corner of Hargett and Wilmington. Riot cops watch it burn. —LT

11:01 With tear gas still lingering in the air, dozens of cops march down Morgan Street. At this point, there are at least 200 armed law enforcement officers clustered downtown, but the protesters have spread out. —LT

11:31 A squad of riot cops arrives at the fire at the same time as a firetruck, which is briefly blocked by protesters. A block away, another fire is lit using trash bins and newspaper boxes. Protesters circle the fire, including one man who shouts, “Who the fuck is next? Your daughter? Your grandma?” —LT 11:45 Two cars full of riot cops speed up, and protesters begin to run away, screaming. Fireworks explode, and I am struck by something that leaves a purple, circular welt on my knee. It’s a minor injury.

Later, Cole Villena picks up a blue rubber object that appears to be a rubber bullet. It is the exact shape and size of the bruise on my knee. —LT

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

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Monday, June 1 12:00 a.m. Loud flashbangs, tear gas, smoke bombs, and fireworks erupt on Morgan Street. —LT 12:30 Raleigh police announce that the National Guard has been deployed. —LT 12:34 Riot cops staged in front of the Capitol charge at a small group of protesters on Fayetteville Street, deploying tear gas as they shout, “Go! Go! Go!” Several fireworks and smoke bombs go off as the protesters flee. At this point, there are only about 50 protesters left. —LT 12:43 Three cops charge at and arrest a Black man who is standing on the street. He did not appear to have done anything. While he’s being pulled away, four heavily armed riot cops in camo charge at me while I’m filming, guns pointed directly at me. I hold my hands up in the air as I continue to film them. I leave soon after. —LT 1:30 Law enforcement officers shoot less-lethal weapons at Ruby Deluxe owner Tim Lemuel, who is giving water and snacks to protesters outside of his business. Video shows Lemuel informing the officers that he rents the property and owns the business.

An officer shouts, “The game is over!” and opens fire. —SP

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

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TOLERATED, NOT CELEBRATED

Protesters burn a flag in Raleigh on Sunday, May 31.

Raleigh protesters tore up the city on George Floyd’s behalf. Why didn’t Durham?

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

W

hen the worst of white America finally decided to take a knee, it was on the neck of a Black man as he lay dying, begging for his life.

The death of George Floyd was a tipping point. But the anger that exploded and damaged American cities over the weekend was payment due for a decades-long litany of the killing of Black people by the police and self-appointed vigilantes.

Saturday marked the 99th anniversary of a race massacre in Tulsa, and 35 years ago, on May 13, Philadelphia police bombed the home of MOVE, a Black liberation group.

Black people’s distrust of the police across America is not happenstance, and those here in the Triangle are aware of that history. They feel it in their bones.

So why did protesters tear up Raleigh over the weekend, prompting Governor Cooper to call in the National Guard, while Durham demonstrators gathered peacefully, marched, and at one point sang “Lean on Me” in front of the downtown police headquarters?

Quiet as it is kept, it’s because downtown Raleigh is a place where diversity, inclusion, and equity aren’t celebrated, but merely tolerated.

To put it more bluntly, Raleigh treats Black people like shit.

In Durham, values of inclusion and diversity are celebrated every day, even as the city grapples with the racially informed issues of affordable housing, gentrification, violent crime, poverty, and a pandemic that has laid bare racial disparities in health care.

“I’m glad they stayed on message,” a cashier at a Moroccan-owned convenience store downtown says of the protesters.

“If they get off-message, then people who want to support them will get distracted, and nothing will change.”

Durham’s demonstration briefly threatened to flare up into ugliness early Saturday afternoon, when the protesters gath-

PHOTO BY JUSTIN KASE CONDER

ered in the middle of Corcoran Street, near the Durham bull. It was just after 1:00 p.m. when a motorist behind the wheel of a copper-colored BMW X3 tried to drive through the demonstrators.

“A news crew caught it on camera,” says Michael Taylor, one of the protest organizers, who had just finished an interview with WRAL and was about to do another with NBC’s local affiliate when the BMW approached the demonstrators.

As the female driver approached the crowd, she starting blowing her horn.

She rolled her window down and began screaming when some of the protesters approached the BMW. Another one of the Durham organizers, Skip Gibbs, used a megaphone to shout a warning as the protesters approached the BMW. Mindful of potential violence, Gibbs told them, “You can’t roll up on people like that! She’s got a right to defend herself!”

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To put it more bluntly, Raleigh treats Black people like shit.

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“We had to make that known,” Taylor says.

Instead of venting their anger at the woman, the protesters helped the driver back up and go down the street, Taylor told the INDY on Monday.

Taylor says he received “a million phone calls” from Raleigh protesters telling him to come out and join them. He declined.

“That’s not how we do what we do,” he says. “Everyone expected Durham to get torn up. But hey, the people who helped me organize our thing—we love our city. Our problem is not with the city. It’s with people in the city who hold important positions that need to be held accountable. We’re not going to burn down the police building.

We have to channel that anger to where it needs to be. We have to assume those elected positions. We need Black federal judges and Black legislators.”

Taylor wonders if outsiders invaded the Raleigh protests for reasons other than to demand justice for George Floyd.

“Last night in Raleigh, community organizers weren’t part of the protests,” Taylor says. “There are protesters and there are looters. Looters raise hell and chaos. Last night [in Raleigh], the looters were there.”

Durham’s origins are rooted in racial interdependence. It’s the kind of city where white residents plant Black Lives Matter signs in their front yards. There’s a proprietary feel here. It’s a place where every voice—Black, white, Latinx, LGBTQ folk, young and old, rich and poor, Jew and Christian and Muslim—can gather in the marketplace of ideas and argue long and loud.

Last year, the Durham Beyond Policing coalition presented detailed research to city council members who decided to not fund the police chief’s request for additional officers and instead raised the salaries of the city’s part-time employees.

In early March, Mayor Steve Schewel called America’s legacy of racism “our great

national sin,” and he asked council members to join a coalition petitioning Congress to enact reparations “for all Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the United States” to close racial wealth and income gaps.

“That wealth gap, more than $10 trillion nationally, is the most powerful indicator of the full effects of racial injustice in the United States,” Schewel said during his State of the City address, in which he shared a vision of city policy that connects racial equity, climate change, poverty, housing, and public transit.

There were a significant number of white people at the Durham protest, including Ben Rippie, a state parks employee who held a sign that read, “White Silence Must End. Black Lives Matter.”

Rippie’s takeaway should inform Durham residents and beyond: The death of Black people at the hands of the police is an American problem that everyone must work together to end.

“It’s outrageous,” he says. “And I don’t think it will stop until white people stand up as well.”

Durham is no utopia, and racial arguments remain front and center. On Monday, the nonprofit Organizing Against Racism released a statement that expressed a lack of confidence in Wendy Jacobs, who chairs the Durham County Board of Commissioners.

On Monday, an anonymous Durham resident submitted a letter to county commissioners saying that the public is still awaiting answers on whether county manager Wendell Davis, who is Black, violated state law and the International City/County Management Association code of ethics.

Also on Monday, Durham County Commissioner Brenda Howerton woke up with a heavy heart. For her, George Floyd’s death prompted heart-wrenching personal memories.

On September 8, 1994, her youngest son, college sophomore Daryl Howerton, was killed by a rookie officer with the Greensboro police 32 seconds after his arrival in response to a call about a disturbance.

About a year and a half before, on January 14, 1993, her oldest son, Lamont, who was completing his final year at Hampton University, was shot and killed by a naval officer.

“I lost both of my sons to men in uniform,” Howerton says.

Howerton wasn’t sure why Durham protests did not lead to the ransacking of the downtown district.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I do know that racism is alive and well and that justice cannot happen without us addressing racism.

That’s the underlying reason for all of this stuff. They see us, but they don’t see us.” W

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M U SIC

15 Seconds to Fame TikTok is the new route to breakout success, as Cary musician Curtis Waters can tell you

BY HANNAH MIAO music@indyweek.com

O

n April 7, Curtis Waters, a 20-yearold musician who lives with his family in Cary, uploaded a video to the social network TikTok. It showed Waters and his brother doing a step-touch dance in their backyard. The soundtrack was Waters’s new single, “Stunnin’,” a groovy beat with a catchy hook. The caption said, “dancing to my song everyday until it goes viral tbh.”

After Waters posted seven more videos, “Stunnin’” started to do just that in May, garnering millions of views from its inclusion in more than 36,000 videos by other users. When Waters officially dropped the single on May 19, it racked up a million Spotify streams in ten days and earned placements in almost a dozen Apple Music playlists. The music video, released on May 22, already has more than 250,000 views on YouTube. Waters’s Instagram following has more than tripled.

“This is the biggest I’ve done, and it’s definitely because of TikTok,” Waters says.

TikTok, where users create and share 15-to-60-second videos, originated in China and didn’t launch in the U.S. until 2018.

Initially seen as a cringeworthy platform for tweens, it has become a game-changing force in the music industry with astonishing speed.

Some of the most popular videos on TikTok involve dances or challenges set to certain songs. When they go viral, the songs make their way across the internet and even onto the Billboard Hot 100, from Doja Cat’s “Say So” to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage.” With 800 million users worldwide, including 60 million and counting in the U.S., TikTok’s already considerable influence is still growing.

26

June 3, 2020

INDYweek.com

Curtis Waters

PHOTO BY DOMINIQUE BROWN

What sets TikTok apart from predecessors like Vine—the short-lived but beloved platform for six-second video loops—or even YouTube is its immersive “For You” landing page: an endless feed of recommended videos generated entirely by algorithms.

“TikTok is so powerful, man,” Waters says. “You could have no followers and reach thousands of people if your content is engaging enough.”

It’s a bet that social-media-savvy artists are making to jumpstart their careers.

Lil Nas X is the blueprint; his instantly meme-able “Old Town Road” made waves on TikTok before becoming the number-one song in the world in 2019.

Shortly after his single blew up, Lil Nas X signed with Columbia Records.

Waters aimed to replicate this formula with “Stunnin’.” When it started gaining traction on TikTok, he says he began fielding calls from major labels. Ultimately, he chose to remain independent for now, searching for a holistic investment in him as an artist rather than as a one-hit-wonder.

“I don’t want to give this impression that I’m a guy that’s just going to make ‘Stunnin’’ over and over,” he says. “I hope people stick around to see what I can do in an album format or with different types of songs. There’s also other music that I make, which is a bit more personal.”

Waters is self-taught and avoids categorizing himself by genre or medium. Punk,

hip-hop, folk, and country music are equally likely to inspire him. Already juggling roles— producer, rapper, graphic designer—he hopes to add filmmaking to his repertoire.

“A creative person is a creative person,” he says. “I don’t think you need to limit it to one thing. It’s just about having fun. I enjoy a lot of things, so I started making everything.”

Originally born in Nepal, with stops in Germany, India, and Canada before his family moved to North Carolina three years ago, Waters started designing album art for musicians online at age 14. He decided he could better showcase his artwork by producing his own music, so he learned how to make beats from YouTube tutorials. After getting frustrated with tailoring his beats to the needs of other artists, he sought more autonomy by adding his own vocals and writing his own music.

He made his first EP, The Hot Boy Tape, in 2017, followed by his first album, Prom Night, in 2018. Almost entirely self-produced in his bedroom, his earlier work picked up press from the Canadian version of Complex and music blogs like Earmilk and Lyrical Lemonade. In February 2020, he dropped his second album, Pity Party, though he has since removed it from streaming platforms to further develop it and re-rerelease it later this year.

Chris Anokute is a veteran A&R executive who has worked with some of the biggest names in music, including Katy Perry,

Kelly Rowland, and Fifth Harmony. After discovering Waters on Soundcloud about two months ago, Anokute took him on as a client with his artist-development company, Young Forever Inc. “I was listening to Curtis Waters’s music like I was listening to Kanye West almost 15 years ago,” Anokute says. “His story was obviously different, but there were a lot of themes in his music that really resonated with me spiritually. He’s probably one of the most hardworking, driven, and creative people I know.”

Waters embodies a new generation, raised by the internet, that has never known a world without hyper-connectivity and immense possibility. Stubbornly self-sufficient and decidedly multi-hyphenate, these young artists are breaking all the rules and using social media to do so.

“I was never waiting around for a record label or for industry people to notice me.

I was just uploading music,” Waters says.

“There’s not really a lot of borders or gatekeepers to stop the creativity, which is awesome.”

Whether learning music production from YouTube or recording albums on their iPhones, Gen Z artists are making things happen on their own terms, and the music industry has taken notice.

“Generation Z is the smartest generation on the planet,” Anokute says. “They understand technology better than any other generation, but more importantly, they have the freedom, opportunity, and ability to do it themselves.”

Waters is thankful for his success on TikTok but has his sights on the future.

He has a song coming out soon with his friend and frequent collaborator Felix Wood. With a few more singles, he hopes to generate enough attention to give a proper rollout to Pity Party, perhaps even as a multimedia project with music videos for each track.

“I think my music so far has really focused on how I feel internally,” Waters says. “For the next album, I’m trying to move past how I feel and into how my community feels. I just want to speak in a broader sense.”

For now, Waters is riding out quarantine with his family and continuing to make music at home. “The only difference now?” he says with a grin. “I’m getting a lot of phone calls all day.” W

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STAGE

Follow the Leader New director Bobby Asher brings apt experience and a community focus to Duke Performances

BY BRIAN HOWE bhowe@indyweek.com

A

fter 17 months under the steady hand of Eric Oberstein, who has been interim director since Aaron Greenwald departed, Duke Performances has a new leader.

For Bobby Asher, who starts the job on September 1, the move is a homecoming to academia. Though Asher spent the past year as the interim director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut, the bulk of his career has been spent at universities such as the University of Maryland, doing the same kind of work he’ll be doing at Duke Performances.

With so much uncertainty stretching between now and September, it would be premature to talk to Asher about his plans for Duke Performances, but we wanted to learn more about his past and perspective as he prepares to lead one of the area’s most prestigious performing-arts institutions.

We found his casualness refreshing and his focus on engaging students, listening to the community, and broadening his horizons promising, and a good fit for Durham.

INDY: You’re coming to us after a year at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut.

BOBBY ASHER: Like everybody else, we had to unravel

a year’s worth of work in about two weeks and look at what we could provide our community now. We focused on helping the local artistic ecology and the restaurant scene. We’re doing virtual food events where people go to local restaurants and pick up ingredients, and then Zoom in for a cooking event. After this is all over, I don’t want to hear the word “pivot” for at least a decade, but we tried to take the resources that we had and help the local community.

We’re also doing something called Arts on Call, where folks can order a performance by a local artist at a particular time. The artist shows up at a place of their choos28

June 3, 2020

INDYweek.com

Bobby Asher

PHOTO BY DAVID ANDREWS

ing and performs a little set. This was a way to bring joy to folks in a socially distanced way and also get artists working again, and that’s been really successful. We’re moving into another phase where we’re sending those artists to care homes and essential workers, other places where people might need some joy from the arts during this astonishingly strange time.

So it’s going pretty well logistically, and people are showing up?

Yeah, I think New Haven is a lot like Durham in this way.

It seems like Durham’s a place where people show up, people are involved in their community.

One component of the festival is the Ideas program, talks from authors and thought leaders from around the country, and this year our theme is democracy. We tried to make it less about really smart people talking at our community from a dais and more about participation, starting by having listening sessions with our community. Last night there was a discussion about the artist’s role in democracy with the poet Richard Blanco, Katy Rubin from Theatre of the Oppressed, the great indigenous playwright Larissa FastHorse, and Angelique Kidjo, the great singer. We’re talking about everything from prison abolition to fair housing to truth in journalism, all the things that our community told us that they wanted to talk about.

That’s a very democratic approach to democracy. You spent a much longer time as the programming director at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, right?

Yeah, almost my whole career has been spent in university settings. One of the biggest innovations we did in my time at Maryland was to focus the programming on serving the student body, and not just in a way that’s about, you know, I’m required by one of my professors to go to this performance—which is an absolutely great thing to do!—but to put things on stage and in a format that students were excited about.

We started the NextNOW Fest because we wanted students to realize that they could have an artistic and cultural experience as part of their college education, to be welcomed into our facility, and to know that we’re available and interesting. I’ve learned that when folks of my generation and older bemoan the fact that young people don’t like the arts, what they’re really saying is they don’t like my arts. There’s participation in hundreds of things, from Bonnaroo to Burning Man to online cultures, that belie that misinterpretation. There’s never been a time in history when people had more tools to be creative. I’ve gotten to be a real TikTok fan.

So anyway, we asked students what they wanted to see, and students now curate most of it, rather than me, a 41-year-old white, straight, cis-male, deciding what I

think is interesting and cool. My approach is to open up that conversation and be a person that has a very well-developed and well-researched personal aesthetic but also serves an institutional aesthetic that brings as many voices into the curation as I possibly can. And what better way to attract people to an experience than to just ask them what they want that experience to be?

We presented some really interesting artists: Reggie Watts, JPEGMAFIA, cupcakKe. These are names I’m not necessarily listening to at home on a regular basis, and I don’t need to. What I need to do is find talented folks at the student level who are in the culture and give them the support they need to bring things like that to their fellow students.

I’m sure younger readers will be encouraged that you know the power of TikTok and aren’t scratching your head as to why they’re not showing up in droves for the Emerson String Quartet.

This is the beautiful thing about the arts: There’s nothing I love better than sitting in an acoustically excellent room like Baldwin Auditorium listening to a virtuoso on stage playing music from the 1700s on an instrument built around that time in a way that can bring tears to your eyes. The beautiful thing about what we do, because it’s so episodic, is we can do that, and we can put JPEGMAFIA in the lobby and bring the house down. I’m very resistant to the generational false choice that you have to do one or the other. Because I love the Emerson, but I also love things that are from a completely different genre and generational space.

I was going to ask about your view of the role of the performing arts at a teaching university, but I think you’ve mostly answered it.

A lot of university administrators use the phrase that athletics are the “front porch” of the university, a way that we connect with our community and the outside world. Well, I think that the arts should be that, but they should also kind of be the kitchen of the university: places where we can have our family meetings, where we can discuss really challenging topics, where we invite in our neighbors.

They should be extensions of the laboratories and classrooms and studios on our campus, an extension of the research of our faculty, connected to the learning of our students in as many ways as possible.

Any performing arts series is going to be influenced by the passions of its director.

Between music, dance, and theater, is there a particular center to your passion for the arts?

My parents were intensely religious people and all I was really allowed to listen to was Southern gospel music and some bluegrass. That was my musical origin, and even now, if I hear those church chords on a Hammond B-3 organ through a Leslie cabinet, it still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It’s something I’m really connected to.

I think that sense of limitation gives me an appreciation for the breadth of things that you can explore in the world of the arts. I can’t say that there’s any center to it, other than trying to be in as many experiences as I can. I average about 200 live performances a year. The idea that you can go from hearing a really beautiful Mahler to some rough-and-tumble downtown theater to a bluegrass festival—“eclecticism” is an overused word, but I try to never not experience something that I have the opportunity to experience.

In theater, I tend to lean toward sort of issues-based work, things that are about something in a very direct way. I don’t like to go to the theater and get beat over the head with work that’s too on the nose, but I do like work that addresses the current moment and the hard questions that the country is wrestling with.

And I also just love things that are beautiful. I love watching virtuoso artists, like a great jazz musician, do things that, very clearly, they were born to do.

How are you feeling about starting a new job in a new city when things are so uncertain?

It’s like the universe said, what’s the one thing that could really challenge artists?

Take away the ability for people to gather in a space to experience something together. I’ve watched artists around the world really rise to that challenge. I think that whatever we do in this interim needs to keep people engaged, meet them where they are, but then also point toward a time when we will be able to gather again. I think that this will stretch us as presenters and artists into new areas. It’s going to force us to address the digital divide, but I think it’s also going to make people really appreciate sitting in a room with other people, experiencing something on a very human level. W

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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.

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HISTORY TRIVIA: • On June 5, 1910. The Greensboro native writer Sidney William Porter, known under the pseudonym O. Henry, died. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville.

• The trademark for the hot sauce “Texas Pete” was registered June 9, 1953 to the TW Garner Company of Winston-Salem. As of 2019 “Texas Pete” was the 6th most sold hot sauce in the US. Courtesy of the Museum of Durham History

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