INDY Week 8.12.20 by Indy Week

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill August 12, 2020

Bida Manda may mean “Father and Mother,” but this famed Triangle restaurant and its counterpart, Brewery Bhavana, harbored a culture of abuse. Here’s how — and why — things went so badly awry.

Troubled Family BY SARAH EDWARDS, P. 9

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August 12, 2020

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Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 37 NO. 29

CONTENTS

THE REGULARS

NEWS 8

Braggtown residents take on the forces of gentrification.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD

FEATURE 9

4 Voices 5 Op-ed 6 A Week in the Life

How Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana harbored a culture of abuse behind a progressive facade. BY SARAH EDWARDS

CULTURE 18

Two new petitions hold North Carolina art institutions accountable for white supremacy. BY BRIAN HOWE COVER Design by Annie Maynard

Visit indyweek.com to read our review of the new documentary about the classic rock mag Creem. PHOTO COURTESY OF GREENWICH ENTERTAINMENT

WE M A DE THIS PUBLIS H ER Susan Harper

Digital Content Manager Sara Pequeño

EDITOR I AL

Editorial Assistant Cole Villena

Interim Editor in Chief Brian Howe Raleigh News Editor Leigh Tauss Deputy A+C Editor Sarah Edwards Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald

Theater+Dance Critic Byron Woods Voices Columnists T. Greg Doucette, Chika Gujarathi, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Courtney Napier, Barry Saunders, Jonathan Weiler

Contributors Jim Allen, Will Atkinson, 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 Venutolo-Mantovani, Chris Vitiello, Ryan Vu

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August 12, 2020

BACKTALK

Our cover story last week was about Raleigh’s Indigenous landacknowledgement ceremony at Dix Park, and one reader said it was the best story she’d read in months. Another article, about UNC releasing records on sexual-assault cases, drew criticism for our framing. “While reading about the ceremony at Dix park, I thought of ceremonies I’d witnessed from a Navajo tribe back in Salt Lake City, Utah where I moved from,” writes JESSICA TAYLOR. “This is my third summer here in the triangle. I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to farm some land in Wake Forest this year and have been connecting deeply to it. I love this land of NC. I love learning the lost stories and native people’s history. I connect most to the unseen energies and stories of the peoples through being in nature. So thank you again for bringing that story to the news.” After we wrote about UNC-Chapel Hill handing over its sexual-assault case records to The Daily Tar Heel and other news outlets, another reader explained how this wasn’t good news and objected to our headline framing it as such. “Awful news for survivors of sexual assault,” DAVID HALLEN wrote on Facebook. “The stories released in the follow-up to this decision will inevitably lead to the exposure of survivor identities, rob survivors of the ability to share their own stories how they see fit, and lower the already low rate of reporting (confidentiality is key in encouraging reporting of sexual assault and misconduct on campus. One of the many reason why many survivors favor reporting to universities over local PD, though both are fairly atrocious in their treatment of survivors). “A group of Victims Rights Organizations filed an Amicus Brief supporting the University’s decision to ‘keep private things private.’ This brief spells out how survivors will be directly harmed by this forced disclosure. Organizations that signed onto the brief: Victim Rights Law Center, North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault, National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, National Network to End Domestic Violence, and the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “Your headline celebrating the fact that UNC is ‘finally’ releasing records is concerning at best ... an insult to survivors at worst. Please consider reading the amicus brief on behalf of Victims Rights Organizations and adjusting your reporting accordingly.”

voices

Left Ahead The new Democratic Party platform is marked by the inroads progressives have made BY JONATHAN WEILER @jonweiler

ast month, to even less fanfare than in a typical election year, the Democratic Party released its 2020 platform. Platforms are generally seen as a sideshow: documents that read more like florid wish lists than serious blueprints for governance. And insofar as broken promises—think the elder Bush’s “no new taxes” pledge in 1988—tend to draw more media attention and partisan ire than fulfilled ones do, it’s easy to dismiss platforms’ importance. But political scientists who study them argue that they are more relevant than conventional wisdom suggests. They reveal the balance of forces between factions within a political party and provide a decent guide, with plenty of caveats, to how that party will try to govern over the next four years if it assumes power. Joe Biden may be a moderate, but the platform he’s running on includes a long list of progressive goals and language. In part, that’s a product of the Joint Task Force that the Biden and Sanders campaigns formed to forge shared approaches to major policy areas. Of course, Biden is free to pick and choose which parts of the platform he will embrace, ignore, or actively reject. But it would be wrong to entirely dismiss the document as a guide to what goals a Biden presidency might pursue. One indication of the progressive influence on the platform comes in the introduction. For the first time, the Democratic Party includes a “land acknowledgment,” noting that the land on which drafters convened was “stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of tribal nations” and that “our country was built on Indigenous homelands.” Among the unsurprising but notable outcomes the platform says it is committed to are universal health coverage, vigorous action to reverse climate change, reinstating the full power of the Voting Rights Act, restoration of “humanity and decency” to our immigration system, and championing LGBTQ+ and disability rights. Reflecting the increasing impact of activists from movements like Black Lives Matter and the extraordinary swell of protest since the killing of George Floyd, the section of this year’s platform devoted to “reforming criminal justice” is more than three times longer than it was in 2016.

The phrase “police brutality” did not appear in the 2016 platform, despite the fact that BLM had already emerged as a major force in the wake of the killings of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and others. This year, drafters opined that “police brutality is a stain on the soul of our nation.” More broadly, the platform repeatedly highlights racial and other inequities as fundamental obstacles to a more just America and outlines approaches for remedying those inequities. The document is replete with specific policy proposals, including a $15 minimum wage, 12 weeks of federally mandated paid family leave (which is 12 weeks more than the current federal mandate), the provision of half a million EV charging stations around the country, statehood for Washington, D.C., and tuition-free public colleges and universities for students whose families earn less than $125,000 annually. The platform is not, however, a giveaway to Sanders, Warren, or progressive activists more broadly. The phrase “Medicare-for-all” appears just once, to acknowledge that there are people in the party who support it. Instead, the path to universal health care will pass through a more robust Obamacare, including a public option. There is no call to “abolish ICE” or “defund the police.” The Green New Deal is nowhere to be found. Not all of the platform’s promises will become law, of course. Even if Democrats control the legislative and executive branch next year (let us pray), the new administration will prioritize some of these items more than others. It will make compromises. It will be subject to lobbying influences that oppose much of what the platform calls for. The pandemic—a topic the platform also devotes a lot of attention to—and the economic fallout from it may well constrain a Biden administration. But with all those caveats, it’s not fanciful to hope that a Biden presidency, while it will surely disappoint in myriad ways, will pursue a range of progressive goals and strive to act on much of the platform. How successful it will be is another matter. 2 Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.

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August 12, 2020

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

OP - E D

Debunking Disaster Six myths about reopening UNC-Chapel Hill BY CAYLA COLCLASURE AND JULIO GUTIERREZ backtalk@indyweek.com

n Monday, August 10, UNC-Chapel Hill will reopen its campus for the 2020-21 academic year. Despite widespread criticism from students, staff, and faculty, the UNC Board of Governors has reaffirmed its commitment to a plan based mostly on in-person instruction. They have claimed there are no other options. Here are six myths about the university’s reopening: “Reopening UNC will be safe because everyone will abide by the Carolina Together community standards.” According to a survey conducted by the Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, only 52 percent of undergraduate students at UNC said that “they were extremely likely to adhere to physical distancing requirements on campus.” An additional 28 percent responded that “they are extremely or somewhat likely to go to parties or other large campus gatherings.” While training over the summer, dozens of student athletes, coaches, and staff in the athletic department tested positive in a “cluster” of COVID-19. Such outbreaks of the coronavirus among UNC undergraduate students and campus staff are likely to continue occurring once UNC’s campus reopens and students return to residential halls. “UNC does not have the financial capacity to go all-online.” In the past two decades, UNC System universities have undergone a process of corporatization by extending their sources of revenue through different investments. Most have endowment funds consisting of a diversified set of assets. According to the 2019 Annual Report of the UNC Investment Fund, cited in a petition drafted by graduate workers, UNC has a total of $433.9 million in cash and cash equivalents and more than $6 million in assets undesignated and without donor restriction. This is more than three times the amount raised in tuition and fees in 2019 ($145.7 million according to the same report). The point of having such a substantial amount of liquid resources must be, at least in part, to deal with unforeseen emergencies. If protecting students and workers from a deadly pandemic is not a worthy enough reason to draw on these, we wonder what these resources are for.

“Campus workers want UNC to reopen because they will be able to keep their jobs.” An all-online fall semester at UNC would not necessitate the termination of all campus employees. In the event of a severe outbreak, an indefinite shutdown of the university system after beginning in-person operations may actually endanger more jobs than the alternative. Many campus workers at UNC-CH have been actively involved in the Safe Jobs Save Lives campaign begun by members of the UE 150. These essential frontline workers have made unanswered demands for protections such as increased availability of personal protective equipment (PPE), hazard pay, and expanded sick leave. At a town hall meeting about COVID-19 held by the Workers of the UNC System on August 16, UE 150 Vice President Sekia Royall reminded listeners that the unjust treatment of campus workers is a form of institutional racism. Royall stated that “campus workers are disproportionately Black and Latinx. The deaths due to COVID-19 have been disproportionately Black and Latinx workers, mostly due to the exposure we get at work or traveling to work.” “Reopening UNC will save local communities from an economic disaster.” A potential decrease in the level of economic activity generated by students and university staff in the surrounding community has been a major argument in favor of in-person campus operations. The effects of such losses do not compare to the widespread impacts of an outbreak and its ramifications. The influx of students and personnel into the local community creates a higher risk for a severe COVID-19 outbreak, which could necessitate another round of business closures and increased unemployment. The impacts of this scenario would be felt most intensely by households with limited or no access to health care, who are already disproportionately affected by the pandemic. While economic distress is inevitable, the university system has the potential to mitigate these effects by protecting students, staff, and the surrounding community. “UNC is choosing in-person instruction because not everyone in the state has access to high-speed internet.” While access to high-speed internet is indeed a major obstacle for remote learning, universities in the UNC system have the ability to allocate a portion of their resourc-

es to the improvement of internet infrastructure in underserved areas of North Carolina. They also have the capacity to directly provide the necessary technology to students in need. The high fees charged by UNC to run campus facilities that will not operate during the emergency could be allocated to such endeavors. Given the urgency of this situation and the benefits of such services for students, building a better remote-learning infrastructure could become a concerted focus of donor contributions. “Holding classes in person will provide students with the ‘college experience.’” There is no viable option where students get a normal educational or social experience under the conditions of an ongoing global pandemic. Socially distanced mask-to-mask instruction is a poor imitation of a typical classroom setting. Masks present a practical barrier to communication by muffling instructors’ and students’ voices. For hearing impaired students, face coverings pose an additional hurdle to interpreting speech. Small-group discussions of class material and hands-on activities will be made difficult by social distancing requirements. The mode of instruction for classes will be impacted by individual cases of COVID-19. The hybridization of in-person classes will become increasingly necessary as more students are infected with or exposed to COVID-19 and subsequently required to attend classes virtually. If North Carolina continues on its current trajectory, rising cases of COVID-19 will almost certainly necessitate that the UNC system go all-online during the fall semester. According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, 1,167 people were hospitalized and 2,050 had died in North Carolina due to COVID-19 as of August 5, 2020. The lives of UNC students, instructors, and campus workers will be at an increased risk due to on-campus operations when compared to an all-online scenario. We must combat these pervasive myths about the safety and necessity of reopening UNC’s campus and work to protect the lives of Orange County residents and all those in the UNC community. W Cayla Colclasure is an archaeologist and PhD student in anthropology at UNC. Julio Gutierrez is a graduate student worker and PhD candidate in anthropology at UNC. INDYweek.com

August 12, 2020

The Weird, The Bad & The Awful

A WE E K IN THE L IFE

8/4

The CAROLINA HURRICANES SWEEP THE NEW YORK RANGERS to qualify for a Stanley Cup Playoff series against the Boston Bruins. RUFFIN HALL, RALEIGH’S CITY MANAGER SINCE 2013, announces that he will retire at the end of the year. The NCCU School of Law launches the SOCIAL JUSTICE AND RACIAL EQUITY INITIATIVE to provide educational outreach opportunities for students and community members.

8/5

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

Gov. Roy Cooper EXTENDS PHASE 2 OF NORTH CAROLINA’S REOPENING PLAN until September 11. MARK JACOBSON, the Durham used-car dealer and local celebrity whose smiling face, white hair, and shaggy dogs graced Triangle television screens for decades, dies at 73. Buncombe County commissioners vote 4-3 to JOIN ASHEVILLE’S RESOLUTION FOR REPARATIONS for Black residents.

rd wei

8/6

UNC RELEASES DISCIPLINARY RECORDS FOR THOSE FOUND GUILTY OF SEXUAL ASSAULT on campus after a four-year legal battle with The Daily Tar Heel and other local media outlets. Gov. Roy Cooper calls the FEDERAL RESPONSE TO COVID-19 “NON-EXISTENT” in a lengthy interview with the Associated Press.

8/7

Out! Raleigh kicks off a weekend-long PRIDE FESTIVAL HELD ENTIRELY ONLINE.

8/8

PROTESTERS GATHER AT SENATOR THOM TILLIS’S HOUSE to petition for his support on a $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. More than 200 demonstrators gather for a “BACK THE BLUE” RALLY IN DOWNTOWN RALEIGH to show support for law enforcement.

8/9

A MAGNITUDE 5.1 EARTHQUAKE rumbles through the northern N.C. town of Sparta, causing aftershocks through the Triangle and as far away as Atlanta. The United States records its FIVE-MILLIONTH COVID-19 case.

8/10

bad

UNDERGRADUATE CLASSES BEGIN at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University.

August 12, 2020

INDYweek.com

f aw

Earthquake We’ve seen Kanye West run for president, we’ve seen murder hornets, we’ve seen Trump try to ban TikTok, we’ve seen NASCAR ban the Confederate flag. This year’s been full of unexpected news, and honestly, Sunday’s 5.1 magnitude earthquake—despite being the state’s largest for over a century— might not even crack the list of top five weirdest moments of 2020. The aftershocks were felt as far away as Atlanta, but the epicenter was right around the northern N.C. town of Sparta. WRAL got to work reporting on the quake by bringing viewers live video from Sparta—in Greece. (Oops.) In a sign of how truly bizarre 2020 has been, that’s arguably not even the biggest North Carolina weather reporting blunder in the past week: Remember when the Weather Channel called Ocracoke Island “Corncrake Island?”

UNC sorority members Last Tuesday night, two dozen students were filmed leaving a house near UNC’s campus to head to a party. None of the women, who seem to be part of UNC’s Chi Omega sorority, were wearing masks, and they were all standing side-by-side rather than social distancing. It’s a frustrating but predictable result of recalling students back to campus for fall classes. A July survey published by the university found that, while 84 percent of surveyed undergraduate students said they were likely to wear face masks on campus, only 52 percent said they were “extremely likely to adhere to physical distancing requirements on campus.” Worse still, 28 percent said they were likely to attend some sort of party or large campus gathering. These actions put people’s lives in danger, from students to university employees to business owners and residents in college towns across the state.

Piecemeal COVID-19 response Of course, the fact that those students were made to return to campus at all speaks to a larger issue with our country’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States’ response to COVID-19 has been all over the place, and it looks abysmal when you look at other how other countries fought the virus. New Zealand, for example, hasn’t seen a new COVID-19 case from an unknown local source in over 100 days thanks to a strict nationwide lockdown enacted early in the pandemic by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. By contrast, the responsibility for tackling the pandemic here has been left up to state and local governments. It’s encouraging to see states like North Carolina making the hard choice to extend lockdown measures or cancel beloved events like the State Fair, but the lack of a coordinated national strategy has led to a world-leading 5.3 million cases here in the United States.

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August 12, 2020

N E WS

Durham

Housing Crisis Braggtown fights for its life and soul against the forces of gentrification BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

or this generation of Black folk, gentrification is just another name for the urban-renewal programs that displaced Black-owned homes and businesses more than 50 years ago. Today, Black people in Durham are being forced to leave a city where they have lived and worked for decades. They can no longer afford to live in a place where home costs and property taxes are soaring. The Black Lives Matter signs planted on the front lawns of Durham’s white homeowners are admirable, but for some observers, the displacement of Black families from their homes is a fundamental example of how Black lives really don’t matter in America. Residents of the historically Black Braggtown neighborhood in North Durham— where major developments are poised to take place—understand the embittered observation of the character Turnbo in August Wilson’s play, Jitney, about the urban renewal that razed Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the 1970s. “They won’t be satisfied until they tear the whole goddamn neighborhood down!” On March 9, members of the Braggtown Community Association, some with roots in the neighborhood dating back to the end of slavery, started an online petition to preserve their neighborhoods. That fight will reach a crescendo at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday night, when the city’s planning commission will vote on proposed developments. The community association, chaired by longtime residents Vanessa Mason-Evans and Constance Wright, resorted to the petition after six months of working to ensure that the developments are in line with their recommendations for affordable 8

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housing, community support, public safety, and environmental protections. They point to a proposed development of 900 new homes along Danube Lane, where the builders have agreed to construct 20 affordable housing units. “At first they said they would build 10 affordable homes. Then they said 20,” Mason-Evans said. “Ten was a slap in the face.” The community is also asking the planning commission members and city leaders to heed the recommendations made last month by Durham Racial Equity Taskforce members, who said the city should clarify the intended beneficiaries of its policies, explore who will benefit and who is most burdened, and ensure community members are engaged in all stages of any given project. John Killeen, the director of the nonprofit DataWorks, found that in 2010 nearly 70 percent of home sale prices in Braggtown were affordable to residents. In 2018, only 47 percent of residents were able to afford a home in the community. Killeen notes that the costlier homes have led to higher taxes and the threat of displacement. “As of April 2020, Braggtown was the location of 270 of the 3,207 tax-delinquent properties in [Durham] County,” he notes. He also pointed out that Braggtown residents make up more than 8 percent of the county’s total tax-delinquent properties. Killeen says the housing crisis in Braggtown has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The community is within a zip code that, in February, had the county’s highest caseload at 29.2 per 1,000 people. Nearly 60 percent of community members work in essential job

sectors such as health care, education, retail, and food service. Braggtown Community Association vicechair Wright owns a bungalow in Bluefield that’s adorned with potted plants and ornamental trees. “It’s so, so greedy, the way they do everything,” she says. “My taxes pay for just as much. It may not be as high, but it’s high for me.” Community association member Celeste Richie points to a feel-good spiel about Durham that includes “hearing about all kinds of housing available.” “But it’s never affordable housing,” she says. “I wonder about a future where no one who makes a certain amount of money gets to live in Durham anymore.” The proposed increase from 10 to 20 homes falls short of the community association’s recommendation that developers commit to making at least 50 percent of homes affordable for Braggtown residents, meaning rent or a mortgage of $850 a month or less. Another association member, Billy Dee, says the developers “chose not to engage in a collaborative discussion, and did not make substantive changes to their proposals, so the community is requesting that planning commissioners and city council members vote ‘no’ on the proposals as they currently stand.” Braggtown stretches north to Hebron Road and south to I-85 along Roxboro Road. The community is largely populated by essential workers and retirees on fixed incomes: teachers, bus drivers, restaurant employees, and construction workers. Many of the longtime residents purchased their homes in the 1960s and 1970s for well less than $100,000. Now, with the refurbishing and flipping of old homes for more $200,000, longtime residents worry about losing their homes because of exponential increases in property taxes. Braggtown was settled just after Emancipation by former enslaved people whose forced labor reaped fortunes for the owners of the Stagville plantation less than 10 miles away. At slavery’s end, the freedmen and women followed the railroad tracks and settled in what was then a heavily wooded area. They built homes. They worked as

farmers and sharecroppers and grew vegetable gardens to sustain their families. Today, the area is often cast as a troubled community because of deadly gun violence, but no one talks about the community garden club headed up by an octogenarian resident. The community’s parents appreciate the new playground equipment at the Lakeview Park. Free lunches have been provided to children all summer at the Lakeview School. Last month, the city approved the creation of a mural at the park and library by local and regional artists. “It’s all part of the effort to revitalize and bring a positive light to the community,” says community association member Stephanie Bigelow. Mason-Evans says a sense of collective purpose and kinship infuses the community.

“They won’t be satisfied until they tear the whole goddamn neighborhood down!” She remembers coming of age there in the 1960s, when public schools desegregated and a white school teacher asked her thirdgrade class what they wanted to be when they grew up. One white child announced that he wanted to grow up and become a cop so that he could “beat niggers.” Mason-Evans says that child is a Durham cop now. There’s a cemetery on Old Oxford Road that contains the remains of people who lived and died in the 1800s. Evans pointed to the fenced-in grave markers of whites who are buried next to the footstool-sized grave markers of those they enslaved. “It’s as if they wanted their slaves to serve them in Heaven, if that’s where they ended up,” Mason-Evans says. Now, the threat of being displaced or losing their community identity has opened unhealed wounds among the Braggtown residents, and no small amount of frustration with what feels like an invasion. “Predatory buyers are calling on the phone,” Mason-Evans said. “They want to buy your house at the price what it was built for, $48,000 or $50,000, not the price that it’s worth.” W

Troubled Family Bida Manda may mean “Father and Mother,” but this famed Triangle restaurant and its counterpart, Brewery Bhavana, harbored a culture of abuse. Here’s how — and why — things went so badly awry. BY SARAH EDWARDS

uring Raleigh’s Black Lives Matter uprisings, in late May, protesters smashed Brewery Bhavana’s storefront window. In response, the downtown icon, already shuttered by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, posted a statement to social media stating that the restaurant’s window was just a piece of property; Black lives mattered more. The post, polished and seemingly harmless, touched off a dramatic series of events that led, first, to an outpouring of firsthand accounts from employees alleging misconduct at the restaurant and its longer-standing counterpart, Bida Manda. This was followed by a quick succession of devastating reports of mistreatment of employees on WRAL and in The News & Observer. (At the time, the INDY came in for criticism, too—for failing to follow-up on a tip, a year earlier, about conditions at the restaurants.) The public reckoning led to management departures from the restaurants, including co-owner and general manager Van Nolintha. The restaurant announced that Nolintha’s sister, Vanvisa, who co-owns both restaurants, and Patrick Woodson, who co-owns Brewery Bhavana, would forge a new way forward. There would also be a search for a new CEO and a third-party investigation into the allegations. Since that time, the INDY has spoken to 16 current and former employees of Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana, in addition to numerous people close to the situation. Many employees spoke on the condition

of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs or being blacklisted in Raleigh’s restaurant industry. They tell a story about a workplace in which vulnerability was coerced by Nolintha and those loyal to him. This company value, employees say, made the prominent Raleigh restaurants uniquely susceptible to sexual misconduct and the emotional manipulation of employees. “The Nolinthas have always fostered a culture of vulnerability and Van Nolintha and Jordan Hester have both abused that trait with their staff,” former bartender Nicole Bivins wrote in an Instagram post on June 7. What follows is an in-depth report of the inner workings of Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana, as recounted by employees who experienced the restaurants’ cultlike environment. Two separate stories set the stage: One details serious allegations against one of the restaurants’ most prominent employees, former beverage director Jordan Hester, while the other outlines the national context of a restaurant reckoning like this one. Before the events of May, the two Laotian-influenced establishments had come to be known in the Triangle for their empathy and civic engagement in fraught times. That reputation was coupled with local and national renown for their food, beer, service, bookstore, and floral arts. “We have come to learn,” the May 31 Brewery Bhavana Instagram post read, “that the act of speaking out is crucial to what it means to be an ally.” This drew a blunt reply in the comments from Sara Dye, a former employee: “When are you going to address the

sexual abuse that also happens in your establishment?” Commenting on Nolintha’s post was quickly disabled, but not before an open letter from employees, “Keep Bida Manda Accountable,” began circulating, describing a racist incident that occurred earlier this year. The document was joined by a flurry of social media posts from employees, alleging sexual harassment by Nolintha and the restaurants’ beverage director, Jordan Hester. (Hester’s lawyer did not return repeated calls from the INDY.) The racist incident occurred in early February when Jibreel Parks, a Bida Manda server, was nearing the end of a shift. Manager Kate Shields stopped Parks to point out a table that needed clearing. He was, she said, her “slave.” Parks is Black. Both reported the interaction to other managers; Shields, who did not want to speak on the record to the INDY, offered to resign. Those managers then reported the incident to Nolintha, who waited two weeks before calling an all-staff Bida Manda meeting, at which Shields apologized and wept profusely and Nolintha announced she would resign. It was an uncomfortable afternoon. Employees say that its bungled handling reflects deeper issues at the restaurant. “He positioned himself to be so influential in the community,” Dye says of Nolintha. “When you have that combination of wealth and power and influence, I could see how you feel invincible, like, ‘Nobody's gonna speak out against me, and if they do, nothing will be done about it.’” In response to written questions from the INDY, a spokesperson for Nolintha INDYweek.com

August 12, 2020

issued the following statement: “Van has stepped down as a managing partner and is no longer involved in the operation of the restaurants. He has started the process of divesting his ownership, which is complicated and will take time. It would be inappropriate to comment further.” “I don't think any of this would have come out without [the pandemic and Black Lives Matter Protests],” Parks told the INDY. “It was definitely the perfect storm. Van’s the golden boy [with] perfectly crafted social media. After all this, it’s kind of like finding out how magic works.”

A culture of coercion

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Before all this, if you Googled Van Nolintha, you’d encounter a wealth of effusive results. There were profiles and interviews, lush images of foamy beer and sky-blue pools. One of the first search results, on the North Carolina Leadership Council website, outlined Nolintha’s journey to opening one of the first Laotian restaurants in the country. Van and Vanvisa Nolintha moved from Laos to Greensboro in 1998 and 1999, respectively, when both were around 11 or 12 years old. They lived with family friends until they graduated from high school there. Nolintha attended N.C. State University, where he was admitted into the prestigious Caldwell Fellows program and traveled widely, before pursuing graduate studies in “community building and the role of art and design in the peacemaking process” at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. These interests were reflected in Nolintha’s seemingly progressive approach to restaurant management. Bida Manda, located on Blount Street, opened in 2012. As Nolintha told Forbes in a 2019 oral history, he had graduated Trinity mid-recession and was having trouble finding a job. While visiting his parents in Laos, he decided he wanted to find a way to honor them. When Nolintha returned to Raleigh, he emailed acclaimed chef and restaurateur Ashley Christensen, who offered to help him establish a restaurant. More industry support followed from the likes of Angela Salamanca, owner of Centro, and Trophy Brewing co-owner Chris Powers. A coalition of friends reportedly spent 750 hours helping Nolinthas put the restaurant together. The name Bida Manda comes from the Sanskrit ceremonial term for “father and mother,” according to the restaurant’s website, and a focus on family is paramount in the company. Pictures of the Nolintha parents meet your eyes at the entrance of the 22-table restaurant, and a biography of the Nolintha siblings is printed on the first page of each menu. While it is common for restaurants to emphasize “family” when trying to define their work culture for employees, at Bida Manda, this emphasis was more pronounced. “I went in with this mindset, like, these are magical people,” says Taylor Quinn, who was hired as a server at Bida Manda in March 2017 and worked through the summer of 2018. “At the time, I thought it was so cool that they were so story-based and that they brought another element to dining.” Nearly everyone in the restaurant's management had close relationships with the Nolinthas or reflected their values in family ties. There were Jordan Hester and his brother, Casey, who both worked as managers. Siblings Deana and Elizabeth Nguyen also worked in management and are longtime family friends of the Nolinthas. Several other managers, including Luisa Jaramillo, knew Nolintha from the Caldwell Fellows leadership development program at N.C. State. The sprawling, elegant Brewery Bhavana opened in 2017, bringing in a third partner, Patrick Woodson, who also oversaw operations at the near-

Van’s the golden boy [with] perfectly crafted social media. After all this, it’s kind of like finding out how magic works.

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Van and Vanvisa Nolintha

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

by brewery. (Woodson is the son of N.C. State chancellor Randy Woodson). The name for the multi-concept space, which includes a flower shop, bookstore, and brewery, translates to “cultivation.” The company grew quickly. By the time the coronavirus shutdown closed the restaurants in April, the two restaurants collectively employed 211 people. Sara Dye, the woman whose question proved the catalyst for all the upheaval at the restaurants, applied for a job at Brewery Bhavana in 2018, after moving to Raleigh from San Francisco. By then, the restaurant had amassed glowing write-ups in virtually all local publications, including the INDY, and in national outlets like Bon Appetit. In 2017, Forbes went so far as to anoint Bhavana one of “The 10 Coolest Places to Eat in 2018,” writing that the restaurant had completed the capital city’s “transformation from an underachieving food town to a serious eating destination.” The following spring, Brewery Bhavana was named a semifinalist for a James Beard Award in the category Best New Restaurant in the Country. When Dye came in to interview, she says she found herself overwhelmed by the airy, open beauty of the space—ornamental flowers and bamboo baskets of dim sum, potted fig trees that reached toward orbs of light. The application process she underwent was different from others she’d experienced. For one thing, Nolintha didn’t seem to care about her CV. He wanted to learn about her. “They made it sound like they were looking for something really specific,” Dye says. “They didn't want you to just have retail or book experience. They wanted something more personal.” It was an attractive place to work. The money was good—better than at most places. There was an electricity and edge to working for two of the most celebrated restaurants in North Carolina. And, as employees have repeatedly stated, the restaurants could feel like a big family. Emotional openness was a quality particularly valued in prospective workers. Although his was a high-end restaurant, Nolintha frequently sought out young people without prior industry experience for front-of-house work. This, employees say, made it easier for him to shape them to fit in with his restaurants’ untraditional practices.

views with the INDY, employees emphasize how physical Nolintha and the other managers were toward employees. While on the job, there were frequent massages. Multiple employees use the word “encouraged” to describe management’s stance on staff dating. It was common for managers to make sexual comments about staff. “You probably weren’t going to get the same attention from management or praise at all if you weren’t giving in to vulnerability and being open and emotional at all times,” says Brandon Edwards, who worked as a host, server, and graphic designer at Bida Manda between 2016 and 2019. “My introduction to that world was the staff retreat I went on, where it

It was always angled like, ‘You would enjoy your time more if you did what the family wanted to do,’ which was be honest and open and emotional.

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The bookshop section of Brewery Bhavana.

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

There was, in other words, a type. And when someone didn’t fit that social mold, employees say that, too, was made clear by management. “I was an outlier because I was older,” says bartender Patricia Heath, who was hired at Bida Manda in 2014. “I’m 35 now. Every manager was younger than me, except for Jordan Hester. And I wasn't straight out of school. I was familiar with the area. I had different social circles.” A 37-page employee handbook, acquired by the INDY, includes detailed instructions on what to wear, how to greet guests, and how to handle conflict. Toward the back of the manual, a two-page section notes that sexual harassment is unlawful. Rather than discouraging hierarchical relationships between supervisors and staff, however, the manual says such relationships could not involve job leverage. “No supervisor or manager shall suggest that an applicant or employee’s acquiescence to sexual advances may favorably affect his or her conditions of employment or career development,” it read. The list of required reading materials on the Nolintha family history, beer culture, and the floral arts were extensive. But, as those materials made clear, working at the restaurant was a special opportunity to work in an intentional community. Dye was hired to manage the bookshop and found herself encouraged to promote envelope-pushing works like Ta

Nehisi-Coates’ Between the World and Me, Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, and Free Women Free Men by Camille Paglia. Whether guests would buy Dye’s selections didn’t seem to be the point; the books, she was told, were more of a statement piece. They told a story. Dye was also struck by the restaurant’s proximity to power. Early on, at the restaurants’ glitzy annual fundraiser, Bida Promda, she remembers Nolintha grabbing her arm as she walked past and pulling her toward him. “Get a wine for the First Lady, please,” he said, according to Dye. Dye was startled when she looked up and saw Governor Roy Cooper and his wife, Kristin. It was her first introduction to the powerful circles the Nolinthas ran in, which included Raleigh power brokers like Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and former mayor Nancy McFarlane, city council members Jonathan Melton and Nicole Stewart, developers like John Cooper and Greg Hatem, socialites like Eliza Kraft, and restaurant luminaries like Cheetie Kumar, Salamanca, and Christensen. In addition to serving on prominent local boards, Nolintha also was celebrated by national figures like John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. The company culture at Brewery Bhavana was also different from others Dye had experienced: closer, looser, more physical. In inter-

was crying around the clock, because it’s a lot of intimate storytelling. Of course, there was alcohol at all times, so that was fueled. I remember crying at the retreat and being like, ‘I’m never open like this; I don’t usually do this kind of thing.’” The Bida Manda staff retreats were not mandatory, although employees tell the INDY they felt there would be repercussions if they didn’t attend. Retreats consisted of drinking and cooking, drinking and talking, and drinking and trust-building exercises. “Every single person cried at least once a retreat,” says former bartender Heath. “[Manager Whitney Wilson] and Jordan [Hester] would deliberate for a long time about which groups they would put you into. And then they would ask you questions. And then they’d have these questions and so much alcohol. It’s like what cults do. They wear you down.” There were probing group questions: “What was your most vulnerable moment?” There were jokes about consent, including: “Oh no, we’re going to get sued.” “It was always angled like, ‘You would enjoy your time more if you did what the INDYweek.com

August 12, 2020

Beers at Brewery Bhavana.

PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA

[Van] helped me close, and after, he fired me. I asked him what I had done wrong. His response to me was that ‘the light in my eyes had gone out.’

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family wanted to do,’ which was be honest and open and emotional,” Edwards says. Back in Raleigh, karaoke was a popular activity for staff. After shifts, a group would often head to Flex on South West Street for long nights of singing and drinking; sometimes, managers, including Nolintha, would come along. Socializing off the clock wasn’t formally required, but many workers, especially new probationary ones, say they felt pressured to participate. “If you weren’t going to be all the way in the culture and drink the Kool-Aid, you wouldn’t be hired in one of the best restaurants in Raleigh,” says Taylor Quinn, who adds that she overheard managers disparaging employees who wanted to “just leave after their shift.” Extracurricular drinking often turned to touching. 12

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“There was a lot of, like, grabbing people’s hands and saying, ‘Let’s take shots,’” says Dye of evenings out. “That's very popular with Van. And it’s always multiple. It’s not one random shot, it’s multiple rounds of shots, and he always pays for everything. That was my first introduction to his vibrant, big personality and what I thought for a long time was generosity. Now, I don’t see it as generosity.” When that generosity was most needed, employees say it could be unevenly applied. Alex Shoemaker was hired as a bartender at Bida Manda in 2013. Less than a year into the job, Shoemaker’s girlfriend miscarried. She was several months into the pregnancy, and Sheomaker was devastated. “I had a pretty big breakdown,” he says. “I missed a couple of days of work, and I communicated this with Van at the time. He didn’t really seem all that compassionate about the situation, which was funny to me, coming from a guy who had talked about being compassionate to one another and trying to understand other people’s lives and the obstacles they’d overcome.” In retrospect, Shoemaker describes the restaurant as a “cult of personality.” At the time, though, he says he was thrilled to work with a cocktail visionary like Jordan Hester and felt that he’d stumbled into a transformative community. The week after his breakdown, Shoemaker says that Nolintha called and told him they needed to have a conversation. Shoemaker had been warned about his boss’s tendency to suddenly let employees go; still, he was shocked by Nolintha’s tone. “I closed on Monday, and he helped me close, and after, he fired me,” Shoemaker says. “I asked him what I had done wrong. His response to me was that ‘the light in my eyes had gone out.’” Shoemaker moved away from North Carolina shortly thereafter. “It feels like you’re cast out,” he says. “Your entire life is wrapped up in that community. All of my friends worked there. When I lost my job, I lost my entire support group. It felt like people were told not to talk to me.”

Reports of sexual harassment At a gathering at a coworker’s home in 2015, Helen Flowers—a server who briefly worked at Bida Manda—recalls someone turning on a video recording of staff singing karaoke. She says she was surprised by the physicality captured in the images on screen.

“In one of the videos, Van was kissing one of the servers,” Flowers says. “It was so weird, and I mentioned something like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was a thing.’ And the person I was talking to, she said, ‘Everyone. Everyone has made out with Van.’” Brandon Edwards began working at Bida Manda in 2016, when he was 21. He soon noticed Nolintha taking an interest in him and, shortly thereafter, began to receive suggestive text messages from his boss, including one that, according to Edwards, intimated that if the two had sex, Nolintha would “be the one on top, since he was the boss.” One night, Nolintha invited him to have an after-hours drink at the restaurant, and the two went upstairs to the apartment where Nolintha lived at the time. They made out and Nolintha put his hand on his crotch, Edwards says, before Nolintha sent him home. And while his boss’s attentions eventually wore off, Edwards says that the dynamic made for an unsettling, confusing work experience. Justin Moretto, who worked as a bartender at Brewery Bhavana in 2017, says he experienced numerous uncomfortable moments with Nolintha. His boss would compliment his appearance, he says. Once, while Moretto was behind the bar, he asked him to take his shirt off; later that night Nolintha rubbed Moretto's shoulder as he was using the urinal. When Moretto mentioned the harassment to a manager, he says that he was rebuked—and, shortly thereafter, let go. Phillip Ayers, a bartender, was part of the original staff at Brewery Bhavana. He recalls an instance when he and Nolintha were both in the men’s bathroom. His boss drew Ayers’s attention to the stylish room’s design, noting, according to Ayers, that it exposed the people using it from certain angles. “It was weird to have the owner point it out and laugh about it,” Ayers says. “All we’re taught with guests is, you gotta protect them, to do everything you can to take care of them and make them feel comfortable. Bhavana was often referred to as the ‘living room of Raleigh.’ That seems to not line up. It’s really inappropriate if you know about that and don’t fix it.” Ayers adds that he mentioned his discomfort with the bathroom design to Woodson, who, Ayers says, laughed it off. A spokesperson for the company states that the restaurant bathrooms meet all standards of sanitation and privacy. One male employee, who asked not to be named, lists numerous instances in which Nolintha acted inappropriately, coming up behind him at the urinals and touching him, or groping him aggressively at a party, once.

During one evening out, the employee says he had refused drinks from Nolintha multiple times, only to find Nolintha pouring a drink in his face as he clenched his mouth shut, alcohol running over his mouth and down his shirt. This same employee had been warned early on about Nolintha’s attentions toward young male workers. After these encounters, he says he went out of his way to avoid his boss. Later, during a performance review, an evaluation caught him off guard: He was, in his manager’s words, “not vulnerable enough.” One evening in July of 2018, Dye was working at the bookstore when she took a break to place a takeout order at Bida Manda. While there, another staff member was escorting an intoxicated server out the door. Dye jumped in to help bring the employee outside and waited with him until his Uber arrived. The employee groped Dye several times, despite her repeated protests. As soon as his car arrived, Dye says that she went to Nolintha to report her discomfort with the encounter. He assured her it would be dealt with. Then he asked her not to tell anyone.

Once you were in, you were in ... it was much more than a job. It was a way of life. And if you didn’t feel it or buy into it, you were out.

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The next day, Dye received an apology text from the server who had groped her. This unsettled her: She hadn’t given Nolintha permission to give out her phone number. She was also put off by the language Nolintha used to describe his conversation with the employee, which seemed to amount more to a heart-to-heart than disciplinary action. “It was really powerful,” Nolintha texted Dye, in a message she shared with the INDY. “He was really upset with himself. But I assured him that we knew who he is but that doesn’t take away from the need to address what happened.” In addition to the sexual harassment workers say they experienced from managers, the company was harboring an accused sexual predator, Jordan Hester. (See sidebar, p. 16).

No accountability For Dye, the incident with the drunken coworker made her more aware of the restaurant’s patchwork HR process, which was unwieldy, at best, for a company that employed more than 200 people. For several other women, Hester’s treatment at the company drove that point home. Over the years, his name has traveled among the whisper networks of Raleigh’s hospitality industry. Despite his public claim that he hired women bartenders to give them a leg up in the cocktail world, employees say Hester routinely upbraided and demeaned them. The INDY spoke with several female bartenders who left the restaurants and derailed their careers at the restaurant because of him. Dye began to advocate for better reporting systems at the company. As a department head, she reported directly to Nolintha but

Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana Reflect a National Reckoning in Restaurants Lauren C. Phillips, who was secretly recorded by Jordan Hester, has worked in the restaurant industry for years—everywhere from a Huddle House in Western North Carolina to high-profile restaurants in New York City. While she’s never worked at Brewery Bhavana or Bida Manda, much of her time in the restaurant world has been spent in Raleigh. She speaks lovingly about the romantic heat and rush of late nights, the flash of plans and clink of glasses. There’s brutal grace in being quick on your feet. The adrenaline bonds you to other people. You don’t forget. But Phillips also speaks candidly of how volatile these workplaces can be, and how the industry fails to protect workers—particularly back-of-house staff, people of color, and women. “These people donate enough money to the right people, publicly enough, and nothing else they do seems to matter,” Phillips says. “And truthfully, what diner really wants to know all the drama that's going on with the staff? You know, we like being able to go out to dinner and not think about what their problems are.” Restaurants have transformed downtown Raleigh, over the past two decades. The hospitality industry has become competitive but tight-knit. Reputation matters. Word-of-mouth between chefs and owners can get in, or keep you out. “I want some light shed on the fact that this is not a unique story,” Phillips says of the allegations against Jordan Hester. “I want a discussion started about how this happens all the time. And this is not okay. It is not acceptable on any level. For this to not only happen but for these places to harbor these men, even after knowing what they're doing. So many times I've seen people in prominent positions screw up in Raleigh, but just go to New York and then do it all over again to another set of women.” The #MeToo movement first swept through the food industry in 2018, when a number of national stars fell from grace, including Ken Friedman at New York’s Spotted Pig, New Orleans restaurant tycoon John Besh, and Mario Batali, who had restaurants all over the country. Scores of women came forward with accounts of groping, sexual coercion, assault, and pay disparity. Other restaurant implosions have taken place since then, including this summer, when employees at the trendy Chicago restaurant Fat Rice, took to social media to detail hostile treatment by chef and co-owner Abe Conlon. In mid-June, he stepped down. This plays out at the top. Women hold only 21 percent of head-chef roles at restaurants around the country, while only 18 percent of industry executives are women. It doesn’t help those power imbalances that a certain creative volatility is lionized in the men at the helm—a dangerous model for an industry that relies on invisible labor in the back of the house, and emphasizes appearance at the front of the house. Restaurant critic Tejal Rao wrote in a New York Times piece last week, “As chefs built big restaurant businesses, often referred to as empires, they became powerful brands, capable of obscuring abuse, assault and discrimination.” The pandemic has revealed much about the system itself. It has brought the restaurant industry’s endemic racism and sexism to the fore, as food media scandals at places like Bon Appetit and The Los Angeles Times have revealed the way that uncritical, whitewashed coverage of the food world has upheld toxic power structures. It has revealed the fragility of restaurants, which operate on razor-thin margins, and how few guarantees they are able to offer employees. It has also revealed much about consumers themselves: how, in the rush to reopen the economy, being served at all costs is an apparent American value. “I think that the unique thing about this right now is they don't have anything to hold over our heads anymore,” Phillips says. “We're unemployed, and we have very little promise of getting our jobs back. That power that they have held over us for so long is no longer looming.” INDYweek.com

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The bar at Brewery Bhavana.

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

The person I was talking to, she said, ‘Everyone. Everyone has made out with Van.’

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says that, because she was one of the only managers not to have had a prior personal relationship with him, she did not feel protected. The sentiment against upper management was not all negative. In early June, manager Sarah Yopp and flower shop creative director Deana Nguyen both wrote statements in support of staff. And employees say that they felt some managers, including Vanvisa Nolintha, maintained professional conduct. “I don't want to say anything about Vanvisa, besides the fact that I think she's a good manager and that I like and respect her,” says Patricia Heath. “I think she and her brother have their own, different relationship, and a whole other power thing going on there, with Van having more power over that relationship.” Nevertheless, reporting to upper management could be fraught, and employees say and there were not clear path14

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ways for addressing issues. Most managers had longstanding loyalties to Nolintha or porous boundaries with staff. Jessica recounted how manager Luisa Jaramillo would often yell at her, then quickly flip to effusive praise and physical touch. (The INDY reached out multiple times to Jaramillo, who did not want to comment, and Whitney Wilson, who never replied.) Jibreel Parks, the employee who was called a slave, says he isn’t one to “rock the boat.” A laid-back musician, Parks says his frustration with the February incident was exacerbated by the fact that he felt his hands were tied. Nolintha—whom employees recall saying that he “didn’t see color”—took several weeks before involving the entire staff in an attempt to resolve the matter. Employees say there were no Black staff in positions of management, and that it was rare for Black front-ofhouse staff to be hired. “Kate called me a slave and then it’s like, ‘Damn, am I a slave to my circumstances?’” Parks says. “Because I can’t even quit. I’ve got bills. As much as I’d like to pack my bags and go, I wasn’t in a financial situation either way where that was a realistic option.” Several employees recounted instances where Nolintha discouraged them from pursuing outside opportunities or going back to school. They worried crossing him would jeopardize other job opportunities in Raleigh. No one wanted to find themselves

several years out of college and blacklisted, with no other career experience. “Once you were in, you were in,” Lindsay, the employee mentioned in the sidebar [see page 16], said over email. “It was so much more than a job. It was a way of life. And if you didn’t feel it or buy into it, you were out. Van had such a mystical way about him, and his story and teachings were so moving. He was a moral and ethical pillar of the downtown Raleigh community, and his reach was growing fast. We literally used to joke about being in the ‘Bida Cult.’” Though the company emphasized vulnerability and empathy, those qualities did not seem to be rewarded in an HR context. One employee, a rape survivor, recounts feeling jolted when, on her way to serve guests, she walked past a whiteboard with a rape joke scrawled across it. When she told a manager that she was upset, the complaint turned into two separate meetings with managers, one of which dragged late into the night and involved Jaramillo grilling her on her sexual trauma and concluding that the employee hadn’t “gotten over” it. In December of 2018, Dye sent an email to management detailing her frustration with a beer club the restaurant ran, with suggestions for a more streamlined process. A few days later, Nolintha asked her to come in early to work. “I showed up and he fired me, pretty much on the spot,” Dye says. “And he said that the reason was that my email threw the brewery under the bus, and there was no coming back from that for me. I just remember thinking the whole time, ‘A man groped me and still works here.’”

Moving forward On June 9, Nolintha announced he was stepping away from the company permanently and would begin the process of ending his financial interest in Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana. That same day, a restaurant spokesperson announced that Jordan Hester no longer worked with the company; shortly thereafter, Jaramillo and Wilson also resigned. Denise Cline, a high-profile Raleigh employment lawyer, was brought on to investigate allegations of misconduct. Woodson wrote in an email to employees that the company intended to use Cline’s findings to implement change while acknowledging that many staff members had “questioned Cline’s impartiality,” due to the fact that she had been hired by the restaurant. Cline wrapped up her work in two weeks. All employees who were sources for this article say they declined to speak with Cline.

The siblings have lived together the past few years and Vanvisa is engaged to Brian Steffen, Van Nolintha’s close friend from college. When asked whether the siblings share finances, Vanvisa wrote, “Van has begun the divestment process and when the divestment is complete, we will not share any ownership.” The downtown Raleigh business community, struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, has largely stayed quiet as scandal engulfed Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana. In a Twitter thread, Ashley Christensen addressed the claims, writing that she had urged Nolintha to be accountable for “playing a central role in the hurt that has been inflicted at his restaurants.”

If you weren’t going to be all the way in the culture and drink the Kool-Aid, you wouldn’t be hired in one of the best restaurants in Raleigh.

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A meal at Bida Manda.

PHOTO BY JUSTIN COOK

When pressed by the INDY on July 23, Vanvisa Nolintha and Woodson stated that, for reasons of confidentiality, they cannot disclose Cline’s findings. “[But] many of the management, policy and HR enhancements we are considering are a direct result of the feedback we received from the investigation,” their email adds. In the wake of the scandal, Patrick Woodson has distanced himself, saying he was not privy to daily onsite operations. Several employees who spoke to the INDY say, though, that Woodson was frequently made aware of employee concerns. “I was told at a managers’ meeting almost two years ago that the company had hired an HR consultant, and I am aware of instances in the restaurant for which the consultant’s advice was sought,” Woodson wrote in the restaurant memo to the INDY. Vanvisa, for her part, has been quiet about how aware she was of issues in the restaurants. Many of the employees the INDY interviewed say that they do not hold her personally responsible, as her brother has been the public face of the company and primarily handled decisions over the years. Since they were children, Vanvisa’s life has been deeply enmeshed with Van’s. He took care of her when they moved to the United States as adolescents, and Nolintha has admitted he was strict with his sister, describing himself in interviews as a “parent figure” and “disciplinarian.” In a story he’s often told publicly, Van Nolintha said the idea for the annual fundraiser, Bida Promda, came about because he forbade Vanvisa, who is a few years younger, from attending prom when she was in high school; the gala was his way of making it up to her. The whole city seemed to turn out for it.

The original Instagram page for Bida Manda, which had included an apology statement related to the racist incident, has been deleted. The Brewery Bhavana page, though, still brims with snapshots from years past. These pictures are joyful and artful, full of the familiar, minimalist white-space aesthetic. Most are of employees—posing with beer, smiling and pressed close, or taking jumping pictures at the beach. Numerous portraits of employees detail their “light and empathy,” their “intentionality,” how they “show up for the job.” It is rare to see employers celebrate employees this way, especially in the service industry. But social media tells one story and employees, another. Many question whether they will return to the restaurants once they reopen, while others are taking legal action against the company. “It crosses boundaries to talk about how vulnerable we are,” Heath, the bartender, reflects. “Or, to just describe even the intention behind things—like, ‘this is all intentional’—you don’t get to control that. It’s a job. It’s good to have a nice one that’s healthy, but if it's requiring all this extra energy and different changes of perspective, that's not healthy.” In a text message, Heath further clarifies her thoughts: “It’s great to find meaning in your work. It’s not okay to establish a framework of purpose through service and encourage or insist that your employees adopt the same mentality—that is cult-like.” Today the company’s official line is that, once the dust settles, there will be a way forward. According to a restaurant spokesperson, Brewery Bhavana is in the process of training employees and hopes to reopen for curbside in the next few weeks. Plans for a third restaurant, Luang Prabang, however, are on hold due to the pandemic. “At the same time we are learning from our current and former employees about their concerns, we have been overwhelmed by messages of love, caring and goodwill from employees, guests and the greater community,” the owners wrote in their memo to the INDY. “We believe we will come back stronger than ever.” W Jane Porter contributed additional reporting to this story. INDYweek.com

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How Beverage Director Jordan Hester Preyed on Female Staff The restaurant industry can make stars of people.

Jordan Hester, arrested July 1, 2020

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I realized I was having nightmares, waking up with the exact same feeling in my stomach as the moment I woke up and it happened.

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Jordan Hester, who had worked at Ashley Christensen’s Fox Liquor Bar before joining Nolintha’s team, has been one of those stars. A quietly charismatic figure with a gift for crafting surprising flavor profiles, Hester was just getting his start in the downtown Raleigh restaurant industry when he met Nolintha, shortly before the opening of Bida Manda. The two developed what appeared to others to be a deep friendship. One Bida Manda regular contacted the INDY to describe attitudes in Hester she found troubling, even from across the bar. She says that she heard Hester routinely make sexual comments about female guests and hosts, confiding to her, once, that he hired female bartenders because they “followed directions better than men.” She added: “He said women have this sort of natural desire to please and he likes being able to leverage that in the people he hires.” In a June 7 Instagram post, Nicole Bivins, a longtime bartender at Bida Manda, recalls Hester saying he wanted to “dominate” female bartenders. In that post, Bivins also detailed unwanted sexual overtures from Hester—who was her boss, and who she said she considered a close friend and mentor—including an incident where he aggressively groped her. When she texted him a few days later to say that the encounter had made her uncomfortable, Hester responded by saying that, if he were fired, he might be unable to care for his child. Bivins wrote in her post that she feared that if she made a big deal out of the incident, "no other bar or restaurant worth mentioning in Raleigh would want to hire me.” She kept quiet but wrote that Hester soon became so hostile toward her that she was eventually edged out of the restaurant entirely. Another former employee, who didn’t want to be identified but whom we’ll call “Lindsay,” had a distressing encounter with Hester that led to an abusive relationship with him that lasted nearly three years. When she was 22, Hester approached her, while a group of staff was out partying. He asked her to meet him outside and, once there, pushed her against a wall. He began slapping her, biting her, and shoving his hand down her pants. The next day, Hester met Lindsay in the parking lot of a coffee shop and began pleading: If she told anyone what had happened, he said, his career could be ruined, and his child taken away. But also, he wanted her, he said. He wanted to help her. They would go on to have a semi-secret relationship that included more sexual violence and physical abuse, which often resulted in bruise and bite marks

on her body that became difficult to hide at work. Hester also liked to dominate her while she was on the clock, and Lindsay says that he would push, trip, and pour water on her when no one was watching. “I feel very consumed,” Lindsay now says, “by wanting to rewind time.” Another anonymous former employee, whom we’ll call “Jessica,” was 21 when she met Hester while working as a server and hostess at both restaurants. The two started out as friends, Jessica says. Jordan lent her books. He seemed interested in her as a person. Sometimes, after a night of drinking with coworkers, she went over to his apartment to have tea and sober up. All this changed one evening when the Nolintha siblings hosted a housewarming potluck at their home in downtown Raleigh. It was an especially wild night and, as revelers peeled off into quiet corners, Jessica recalls being drunk to the point that she was considering sleeping in her car. This was where Hester found her and peered in the window. He invited her to come sober up at his house—a routine enough invitation. She does not remember the walk back to his house, or having tea with him, or being put to bed. What she does remember is waking up in the middle of the night to find him having sex with her. It was confusing and distressing, Jessica says. She told herself a common story: that she was drunk and hooking up with him—so drunk, in fact, that she had only imagined passing out. Jessica continued to sleep with Hester. She says management was aware of the situation. Hester, her boss, was 36—a decade and a half older than she was. But Jordan Hester held a prominent position at the restaurants. And he was everywhere, including in the drink menu, where one rotating drink was named WWJD: What Would Jordan Drink? “After I was gone for a while,” Jessica says, “I realized I was having nightmares, waking up with the exact same feeling in my stomach as the moment I woke up and it happened.” On July 1, Raleigh police arrested Hester for secretly recording sexual videos of three women—Madison Roberts, Lauren C. Phillips, and Helen Flowers. Making such recordings is a Class 1 Felony in North Carolina. Roberts, who dated Hester, learned he had videos of her and other women on his computer and took his hard drive after they broke up. All three women, who’d had sexual relationships with Hester, spoke on the record to the INDY and detailed patterns of abusive, emotionally coercive behavior. Flowers met Hester around 2007, when, at the age of 18, she drove up from Florida and began waitressing at a Raleigh restaurant. Hester, who was several

years older, wrote a Craigslist Missed Connections about her. New to town and to the burgeoning downtown restaurant scene, Flowers considered Hester her only friend for a while; eventually, her circle grew. They fell out of touch. Later, during a period of uncertainty in her life, he reached out to recommend her for a job at Bida Manda. Until social media posts began circulating in June— and Roberts contacted Flowers to let her know videos of her existed—Flowers says she never knew Hester had filmed their sexual encounters. Phillips, too, says she was unaware of the videos until Roberts contacted her. Upon watching, she says, she realized just how calculated the films were. Once, when she had come over to Hester’s house, he’d left a computer camera running for 8 hours. After she left in the morning, the camera captured him walking over to switch it off. Another woman, Erica Steimetz, contacted the INDY in June with details about an encounter she’d had with Hester. Steimetz knew Hester socially and got a drink with him, once, after he’d repeatedly asked her out. She told him she wasn’t interested in anything romantic and considered the issue settled. One night in 2010, a few years after meeting Hester, Steimetz was walking home from the Raleigh Times Bar. Hester spotted her and offered to give her a ride home. She was blackout drunk, she says, but remembers being confused when the car passed her house and continued onward. The next thing she remembers, Steimetz says, is waking up naked in Hester’s bed. She grabbed her clothes, quickly left, and found her way home. She hasn’t spoken about the assault until this summer. “At this point in my life I am so much stronger and smarter and capable of caring for myself and able to be justifiably enraged by it,” Steimetz said over Zoom, her voice breaking. “But [back then], I wasn’t. I didn't know how to care about myself enough to care about what he’d done to me.” Roberts corroborates Steimetz’s account. She recalls Hester boasting to her about how disheveled Steimetz had looked while in his bed. “There's definitely people that have gone to Van about Jordan,” former host Taylor Quinn says. “His response was like, ‘It’s just Jordan being Jordan. He's not going anywhere.’ Jordan was on board when they first started, and there’s this magical thing that they talk about, with the first staff being the best staff in the world. They protect those people with their entire lives.” Accusations against Hester's brother, Casey, also surfaced in the reporting of this article. Jenna Calderone started as a host at Bida Manda in 2016, her senior year of college. She noticed the heightened social hierarchy right away, she says, but felt flattered when manager Casey Hester began paying attention to her. Out with staff at a bar one night, she and Casey were kissing when, she says, he pinned her against a wall and began choking her. It was terrifying, Calderone said, and for a moment she wondered if she would pass out. She told another staff member—who remembers hearing about the interaction—but says she was intimidated by how much weight the Hester name carried. “The Hester brothers were founding members of Bida Manda,” Calderone says. “[They] have the keys to the history and are liked by Van and Vanvisa so much.” Two other women, who wish to remain anonymous, also recount distressing encounters with Casey, who did not respond to the INDY’s requests for comment. One woman recalls a company retreat where he lay down beside her as she was falling asleep and began to grope her as she repeatedly struggled to fight him off, an encounter that she shared with another employee, who corroborates her account. Jessica, the pseudonymous woman who’d also had a physical relationship with Jordan Hester, recalls a consensual encounter that began while staff members were out drinking, and turned violent when Casey aggressively pushed her to perform oral sex on him, causing her to throw up. Two employees confirm hearing about the encounter. On August 9, in response to INDY queries, a spokesperson for the restaurant stated that Casey Hester had resigned the week before.

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the Raleigh Fine Arts Society specifically. One imposes a deadline and consequences while the other does not. But both carry hundreds of signatories, likeminded goals, and the same underlying message: Black artists and their allies have heard promises before, and they are tired of waiting.

Arts and Letters Two petitions hold North Carolina arts institutions accountable for deep-seated white supremacy BY BRIAN HOWE bhowe@indyweek.com

pair of petitions have emerged since July that challenge white supremacy and demand concrete changes in the local art world. The Raleigh-centered petition, which was developed by a local coalition, and the statewide petition, which was created by a new group called North Carolina Black Artists for Liberation, both took shape in the context of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, when deep-seated fractures in all kinds of institutions started cracking open. But the petitions rest on the ongoing history of white supremacy in the arts. Museums and galleries have long been far more likely to invite Black artists into image-burnishing guest exhibits than into their collections, board seats, and leadership roles. That has started to change in the last several years, since Black Lives Matter emerged as a cultural force and a wave-making Mellon Foundation study found that 76 percent of staff at the Association of Art Museum Direc18

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tors member institutions were white. This prompted the AAMD to exert more oversight over racial diversity, and certainly institutions have been falling over themselves to capitalize—whether meaningfully or superficially—on the new cultural cachet of all things Black. But with their heavy freight of history and wealthy donor networks, museums change notoriously slowly, and their racial-equity record remains dismal. Another study, released last year by a group of art historians and statisticians, found that 85 percent of works in major museum collections were by white people, while African Americans accounted for merely 1.2 percent. And while a 2018 follow-up to the 2015 Mellon study of staff found gains for women and people of color, white dominance suffered attrition of only 4 percent. Of the two local petitions aiming to move the needle faster, one appeals to North Carolina arts institutions generally while the other focuses on CAM Raleigh and

t was an offhand comment by an exhibit chair from the Raleigh Fine Arts Society that prompted hundreds of local artists and supporters to unleash stored-up demands for change at CAM Raleigh. The RFAS’s annual North Carolina Artists Exhibition, which continues virtually through August 23, features a diverse group of 57 artists from the state. The prestigious exhibit was curated by Nat Trotman, who is the curator of performance and media at the Guggenheim Museum. On June 6, as Black Lives Matter protests gripped Raleigh, Jan Woodard, the RFAS exhibit chair, reflected on the relevance of Trotman’s juror statement to “the issues we are facing in these troubling times” in an otherwise-routine email update to the artists. Quoting Trotman’s assertion that the artists in the exhibit “ponder issues of mortality or speak to the daily struggle to simply and sustainably exist: what we might call the matter of life and death,” Woodard then added her own comment: “Wow! Is that not the truth with the National Guard protecting our Capital city from destructive riots?” The casual characterization of the protests as “destructive riots” and the seemingly favorable view of militarized policing prompted outrage among many of the artists, who wrote to Woodard and CAM director Gab Smith to demand redress. Smith replied on June 8, writing, “CAM is fully committed to justice and stands in solidarity and support of Black Lives Matter. CAM never has and never will condone militarized violence. CAM is also fully committed to and stands in solidarity with all artists who show their work here.” She also invited the artists to share ideas for how the non-collecting museum could “galvanize and support our community.” Woodard replied the next day, apologizing for the offense and saying she meant to express “how powerful your individual and collective voices are during this time of anguish.” She said she had learned from the experience and was “committed to listening and learning.” Then came a more formal apology, signed by both Woodard and RFAS President Elizabeth Purrington. “We recognize that, in order for RFAS to remain relevant in the arts community, we must better reflect the diverse community we serve,” it said in part. “While we are taking immediate action toward diversity, equity, and inclusion, we understand that real change will take longterm commitment and education.”

This isn’t the first time CAM has promised change after community pushback exposed its racial blind spots. In 2018, the museum gave a solo exhibit to Margaret Bowland, a white artist who paints portraits of Black people in what can only be called whiteface, often with racially loaded signifiers, and then refuses to acknowledge that they have anything to do with race. CAM presented these paintings with almost no context and rushed together a public discussion only after they sparked controversy online. “I don’t care about Margaret Bowland as an individual artist,” one artist said at the heated community forum. “I’m more interested in systems, and in what does it mean for an institution that has a mission to curate art for a wider community to be responsible for the art they bring in.” At the time, CAM director Gab Smith acknowledged to the INDY that the museum had “a small staff of three white people” and a 30-person board consisting of “one African-American woman and several brown people.” “[W]e have to reflect the community better than we do,” she said. “And we need our community to help us with that.” But that breakdown hasn’t changed, and the things the community asked for then are the same things they’re asking for now.

eleased July 13 on the Facebook of arts-equity advocacy group Art Ain’t Innocent, the petition (bit.ly/31VIHaP) takes aim at CAM’s “overwhelmingly white board and staff, history of co-opting Black experiences, [and] passive stance on equity,” among other race-related issues. Titled “Public Letter and Demands to Raleigh Fine Arts Society at CAM Raleigh,” it says that Woodard’s email “reminded many artists of the systemic racism that permeates the art world, prompting us to look closely and critically at these art institutions. “Woodard’s statement demonstrates that the RFAS values the protection of property over Black lives,” the letter says. “By twisting the words of the juror and, by extension, the artworks in the show, to support this view, the RFAS has co-opted the work of artists, in particular BIPOC artists, to suit their own ends. This act should be understood as one in a long lineage of practices by institutions that exploit the work of BIPOC artists for their own institutional position and power.” While allowing that RFAS and CAM are separate institutions, the letter said that both are part of the same structure of white supremacy and called for “transparent actions” to address it.

Specifically, the letter calls for both entities to hire Black consultants, undertake racial-equity training, increase Black leadership, create timelines for pay equity, practice more transparency, and cut ties to the Pope Foundation, among other concerns. The last item is aimed not at CAM, but at RFAS, whose members volunteer for arts organizations and serve on boards across the state. The organization is funded by donations and an endowment created by the founding members of the John William Pope Foundation, which has a long history of supporting policies that harm marginalized communities: bankrolling the 2010 Republican takeover of the N.C. legislature, HB 2, climate-change-denial campaigns, and more. Art Pope’s mother was a charter member. Calling this “a hypocrisy that is impossible to reconcile,” the letter calls for RFAS to “address their funding relationships, their lack of resource allocation to BIPOC communities, and the ways that their organization upholds white supremacist values through their organizational structure and programming.” While RFAS has not responded beyond its apologies and promises to learn and improve, CAM created a new “Equity” page on its website that addressed the petition’s demands one by one. “Thanks to all of the North Carolina artists and community members for the love and support and for holding CAM accountable as we work together to dismantle systemic racism and to build racial equity in arts organizations like CAM,” it begins. Speaking to the INDY through Art Ain’t Innocent, the artists behind the letter said they appreciated that CAM’s response was public but still found it underwhelming. While the museum gives some timelines for racial-equity training and hiring BIPOC vendors, it lists what it has done rather than what it will do to “include marginalized communities in equity efforts,” and it only gives a general “commitment” to increasing Black board members beyond one in its December elections. “CAM’s equity statement response does not include an apology,” the artists point out. “We appreciate that they recognize that they have a lot to learn, but—as with the Margaret Bowland exhibition two years ago—it would also be appreciated if they could acknowledge their role in causing real harm.” CAM’s equity page also promises to reach out to more Black-led arts organizations to collaborate.

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“Black artists and their allies have heard promises before, and they are tired of waiting.” But as the artists who started a separate but similar effort, North Carolina Black Artists for Liberation, politely explained via Zoom last Friday to people from the institutions they’d called out, museums need to work hard to put their own houses in order before they subject more Black artists to tokenizing, even traumatic conditions. Just as politely, the artists reiterated that there would be real consequences if they didn’t.

n July 4, not long before the CAM/ RFAS letter, a new website appeared at ncblackliberation.com. Signed by the seven experienced North Carolina artists who spearheaded it—Marcus Kiser, Jessica Moss, Carmen Neely, Sherill Roland, J. Stacy Utley, Chris Watts, and Antoine Williams—and hundreds of others, it begins, “The signed North Carolina-based working and originating Black makers, performers, and artists are committed to building an equitable arts and cultural sector. It is our labor, dollars, sweat equity, and culture that make both burgeoning and prestigious North Carolina organizations culturally viable.” Citing the “history of predominantly white-led institutions benefiting from the disenfranchisement of the Black artist and community,” the letter calls for arts institutions to push racial equity beyond exhibits to include vendors, consultants, and other contractors. It calls for paid internships, free admission for BIPOC, internal racial-sensitivity training, and diverse programming. It calls for “material investment” in increasing Black leadership and collecting Black art. It also solicits donations to the NCBAFL and provides a list of resources, from reading material to other petitions. “It is your organization’s responsibility to design, develop and enact a clearly articulated racial equity plan (based on your capacity, size and funding) with measurable goals in the areas of hiring, organizational culture, leadership and organizational transparency over the next six months,” the letter says, and suggests hiring BIPOC consultants to aid in the effort.

After six months, organizations that have made significant efforts to implement these changes will be “publicly honored and promoted” by the NCBAFL. Those that haven’t will face consequences: The NCBAFL will notify high-level donors of racist policies and procedures and ask board members to divest. There were some notable absences among the representatives of N.C. arts power centers who showed up for the NCBAFL’s Zoom Q-and-A session last Friday afternoon, though one of the organizers the INDY spoke with gave them the benefit of the doubt—perhaps they wanted to engage privately, or perhaps they understood the work and didn’t have questions. Indeed, the benefit of the doubt pervaded the session. The organizers framed it by stressing that the issues were systemic, not personal, and that they understood arts institutions change slowly. They explained that the deadline was meant to be concrete, not punitive, and that they were seeking measurable effort, not perfection. They maintained the friendly, gracious tone of people accustomed to maneuvering their message past the barricades of white fragility. Still, while most of the museum directors and curators seemed excited and game, one was notably rattled by the threat hanging overhead and said so. The implication was familiar: We’re all on the same page, so why can’t we play nice? The reaction shows both the uphill battle the artists face and the need to climb it, though institutions would do well to lift most of that weight themselves. The artists, after their long experience of marginalization and their unpaid labor in creating concrete benchmarks, have done enough. Speaking with the INDY, Smith affirmed CAM’s commitment to using the NCBAFL letter as a guideline and promised to share more about its plans in the coming weeks. “We understand the structure around how CAM engages BIPOC leadership must also evolve,” Smith says. One hopes it will stick this time: As Black artists have clearly explained and history has borne out, goodwill won’t suffice. W

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