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Edgecombe and Nash counties, located in Eastern North Carolina have a long history that has been defined by a rail line that separates the two counties predominantly in Rock Mount, North Carolina. In 1871, state legislators voted to relocate the boundary line between Nash and Edgecombe counties and separated the counties with a rail line that was controversial then and continues to have racial, economic and educational implications today for residents of Rocky Mount. After years of struggle, African Americans are positioned to elect candidates of their choice in Edgecombe County, which is 57.8% African American. Elected representation includes a diverse board of County Commissioners, a diverse Rocky Mount City Council, and African-American representatives in the NC House and Senate. According to retired N.C. Sen. Angela Bryant, “These electoral gains have been challenging as a result of some intra-group black power dynamics along with continuing impact of racially polarized voting by whites, racial gerrymandering and voter suppression, which is amplified by increasing housing segregation and the roll-back of voting rights. As (blacks) slog our success by channeling resources into our long underserved and neglected communities, whites counter with in essence, reverse discrimination or charges of incompetence or overreaching because development is going to much in the black, inner city or Edgecombe direction. A community that is governed by a majority of African-Americans is very likely to be subject to backlash by whites regarding distribution of the resources and how to manage the power that comes with being a black majority.” The Carolinas Gateway Partnerships reports there is significant economic growth coming to the region. Corning is investing $87 million, which is slated to generate approximately 149 jobs. Triangle Tire Co. a Chinese based company that manufactures tires for passenger and construction equipment, will create 800 new jobs at its two $580 million plants in Edgecombe County and will generate $2.1 billion in economic impact. CSX (intermodal facility) has broken ground in Edgecombe County. And the city of Rocky Mount has been selected for the new NC Division of Motor Vehicles headquarters in 2020. To provide youth with career opportunities, The NC Simulation Station will be utilizing electronic software games to assist in and out of school youth explore career occupations through online simulations. Additionally, there has been new investment to redevelop the 200-year-old Rocky Mount Mills and there is growing entrepreneurial investment in the city of Rocky Mount. The Nash and Edgecombe educational systems face high complexity grounded in historical integration and segregation of its schools. The state legislature’s merger of Rocky Mount City Schools and Nash County Schools in 1991 did not resolve segregation issues, but created a complex set of issues around funding, educating and addressing the issue of segregation and poverty. In a report written by Kris Nordstrom of the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education and Law Project for NC Policy Watch, integration can transform North Carolina schools and the lives of its students. North Carolina has made progress, however there is plenty of room for progress in Edgecombe and Nash counties. The research on school segregation and integration has reached general consensus on three points according to Nordstrom: School segregation has negative impacts on low-income students and students of color. School integration has positive impacts on low-income students and students of color. School integration does not have negative impacts on high-income white students. The report goes on to state that “leaders at all levels of society can do more to create an inclusive, integrated system of public schools. The state’s public schools are becoming increasingly segregated by income, and while the trends in racial school segregation in North Carolina are mixed, the overall level of racial segregation remains far too high. The good news is that integrating our schools is an incredibly low-cost proposition…” Despite its history of slavery, reconstruction, political disruption, segregated schools, and economic downturns, the City of Rocky Mount is positioned to leverage the growing economic headwinds and change the lives of its residents, thanks to public and private leadership and cooperation. Now is the time to move away from the historical issues and give many of its residents an opportunity to elevate from poverty and live and thrive in a vibrant and integrated community.

America’s democracy, its position as a world leader and its values are under attack by our own governmental leaders and our adversaries — namely Russia, North Korea, Iran and China. When you consider the events and challenges that have taken place since January 2016, the world wonders what Americans stand for. Actions taken by President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Congressional members have been emulated by Republican lawmakers in North Carolina, as evidenced by the N.C. House vote taken to override the budget veto of Gov. Roy Cooper. On Sept. 11, a day for honoring those who fell that fateful day in 2001, N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) and Rep. David Lewis (R-Harnett) misled House Democrats and the press by telling them the House would not hold a vote at the morning session. Unfortunately, they did hold the vote while most of the Democrats were away honoring the fallen of 9/11. The Washington Post accurately said, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Kudos to Rep. Deb Butler (D-Brunswick, New Hanover), who would not yield her voice in speaking out against this attack on fairness and democracy. This is not democracy as “we the people” have believed as stated in our U.S. Constitution. The N.C. Republicans have learned well from their party leader, Trump, who has made lying and misdirection a common practice. We expect more from the our president. The Washington Post reports that President Trump has over 12,000 recorded lies and falsehoods. Not only has the president misspoken thousands of times, his actions have challenged the decency and democracy he has sworn to protect by acting in the interest of himself, his political voting base and his family. Here is a sampling of some of the president’s actions: Claiming the media is “the enemy of the people.” Trump and McConnell refuse legislation to protect our citizens from gun assaults by not tackling the issue of background checks, which 83% of gun owners support. Trump advocating for Russia against the will of the democratic nations of the G7 and blaming an American president for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea. Trump ignores the missile tests of Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Trump ignores the deficit and we find out the Republicans are not truly financial conservatives. Trump enriched himself with the almost 300 days at his clubs at the expense of the American public. The President appears to not recognize Puerto Rico as an American territory. Trump is fighting through the courts to keep his federal taxes from the view of the American public, despite the audit claim which does not prevent disclosure. Trump’s continued waffling and obedience to the NRA on background checks to stop the gun violence and carnage in the nation. Trumps embrace of white nationalism. Taking away citizenship of children born out of country for military personnel. Potential witness tampering in the Manafort trial. Separating children from their parents, some whom may never reunite. Placing limits on immigration based on who will likely use public benefits. Ethical violations with Attorney General William Barr paying the Trump hotel in DC over $30,000 for his Christmas party. Demeaning and hijacking Colin Kaepernick’s legal protest of police killings of unarmed black men, with a bogus claim of disrespecting the military. Trump’s support of Vladimir Putin over U.S. government intelligence experts. The question for us as Americans is: Are we the beacon of hope? Or are we the bullies of the world? Are we the people who turn our backs to children; to immigrants who seek political asylum from tyranny in their home countries, which the Supreme Court has voted to support. We can impact this president over the remainder of his term by going to the polls and electing legislators who will provide the oversight that the Constitution requires. The upcoming state legislature and gubernatorial elections in some states this year and in North Carolina next year will affect redistricting after the 2020 Census. This will have a tremendous impact on the near-term future of the nation in shaping the political balance of Congress. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks the United States 25th on the Democracy Index and is listed as a “flawed” democracy. North Korea comes in with a score of “0”, yet our president continues to support its brutal dictator. The Democracy Index reports that U.S. deterioration in the functioning government category is primarily due to political polarization and weakening of public confidence in institutions. The report states that Trump has tapped into partisan tensions in an effort to rally his conservative political and voter base around the sensitive issues of immigration and security. Basically, stoking fears with the American electorate. What are we as Americans going to do to protect our state, the republic and the future of our children?

North Carolina State Superintendent Mark Johnson was elected in 2016, defeating incumbent June Atkinson by 53,860 votes, or 1.2 percent. Johnson attended public schools, specifically the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts. He went on to earn two degrees in political science and environmental studies. He earned a law degree from the UNC School of Law in Chapel Hill and graduated with honors. Johnson has taught in the classroom in West Charlotte High School. “I realized that opportunity is not available to every student in this country, and it needs to be,” he has said. His background also includes serving as a school board member in Forsyth County. Mr. Johnson appears to have prepared himself for the top job for public education and educating more than 1.5 million K-12 students in North Carolina. While campaigning, he talked with reporter Jeffrey C. Billman of Indy Week about a number of important issues facing K-12 education. He discussed the ACT, where half of graduates were failing to meet a single benchmark on the ACT. He also discussed Workforce Preparedness, preparing diplomas for work rather than targeting the graduation rate, and improving African American student performance in obtaining a minimum ACT score required for college admission. Teacher Pay has been an issue for many years with North Carolina teacher pay being in the lower spectrum for national teacher pay. Johnson identified the importance of tackling the issue of over-testing for teachers and students. The goal was to focus students on how they are performing daily rather than at the year-end of grade or end of course test. Johnson spoke of the importance of using digital technology in the educational process and had great concerns on the impact of poverty on education. As we come to the end of his third year as the state’s educational leader, it is important to ask a question: Are North Carolina public schools better off today than when Mr. Johnson assumed his role as the state’s top educator? Johnsons’ outlines a focus on school safety, career pathways, early childhood education, computer science and coding, and reducing over testing. The digital initiative for third-grade reading, was met with strong opposition from the Department of Information Technology. The competing bidder argued that Johnson awarded the $8.3 million contract improperly. Johnson also was successful in achieving two major legislative goals that tie to his strategic focuses, House Bill 75 (School Safety) and Senate Bill 621 (Reduced Testing). He alienated the N.C. Association of Educators, who did not invite him to the annual convention in March of 2018, breaking an historical precedent of inviting the N.C. Superintendent to their annual convention. The reason cited in the Raleigh News and Observer was “his disruptive actions such as support of private school vouchers and controversial comments about teacher pay.” A recent Charlotte Observer editorial, “A state superintendent who wants to be a czar, speaks to the challenges and leadership style of Johnson, who came into the role with credentials as an educator, but has led like a czar as opposed to a leader that children and educators need. Unfortunately, as one looks back on the tenure of Johnson, it’s worth noting his tenure got off to an inauspicious beginning when Republicans passed House Bill 17, which gave the inexperienced superintendent more authority and control over public education issues than the State Board of Education itself. In retrospect, this move crystallizes the ups and downs of Johnson’s educational agenda, as no man is an island and the trendy superintendent would be wise to listen to the wisdom of members of the State Board of Education. His forward-thinking goals can be reached if he works as a team player and not a czar as the Observer charges.

In 1997, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in the Leandro v. State case that the state educational apparatus systematically violated the constitutional rights of North Carolina children by failing to ensure the universal opportunity to a sound basic education. Despite this ruling, for over twenty years the state has not provided a basic education for all its children, especially children of lower social economic status and minority children, specifically African Americans. In reviewing a report written by Ethan Roy and James E. Ford for the Center for Racial Equality in Education entitled “Deep Rooted” A Brief History of Race and Education in North Carolina, it is clear that education in North Carolina has been controversial and racially polarizing and continues to be to this day. The state is very proud of its educational system, and there is a belief that the state is a special place in the nation where education is championed, especially the UNC system. However, history tells us that as one of the original 13 colonies in 1663, North Carolina, like other southern states, built its economy on the backs of uneducated slaves. African-Americans were denied any opportunity for the most basic education. During this time slavery was the primary labor system supporting the economic power engine that created stability across the state and great wealth today for many families. A major concern of NC slave owners during this time and for many years later was to not expose slaves to literacy. The slave owners believed that not exposing slaves to literacy reduced the potential for uprisings and independent thinking. Despite these restrictions on learning, many slaves and free blacks sought stealth methods to educate each other, especially those slaves who gained their freedom. This was the situation for over 100 years and was highlighted by legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1830 that said, “Any free person, who shall hereafter teach any slave within this state to read or write, the use of figures excepted, or shall give or sell to such slave or slaves any book or pamphlets, shall be liable to indictment in any court of record in this State.” Poor whites were also lacking in education. However, i n 1825, the North Carolina legislature created a state literacy fund and later offered matching grants to support primary schools. North Carolina became the first state to offer publicly funded universal white education. Blacks were left out of this legislation. Many blacks gained their education as soldiers in the Union Army during the Civil War and after the Emancipation Proclamation. For many years there was violence and intimidation to keep blacks in their place with regards to education. In 1868, North Carolina officially adopted black education and created a universal public-school system for blacks that was challenged by whites who feared integrated schools. In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision created a legal precedent of separate but equal education. But it was not equal. As an example, the per pupil funding in 1920 was $3,442 for white schools and $500 for black schools. The Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that public schools separated by race where inherently unequal and violated black children’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. Despite this ruling, whites continued to seek separate schools for their children. In 1964, President Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act. This law enabled the US Attorney General to bring forward lawsuits on behalf of black plaintiffs in local school districts practicing segregation. This legislation and the resistance to integration resulted in black community schools being closed and thousands of black teachers and administrators losing their jobs. As more time passed, busing was implemented. The 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg ruling gave school districts the authority to mandate busing of students which resulted in most black students being bused to white schools with white teachers. A result of busing was white flight to the suburbs in the 1970’s and 1980’s so that urban schools became increasingly occupied by black students. As we fast forward to today, we have a similar circumstance where families are moving to NC Charter schools, private schools (through vouchers) and home schools appear to be a new mechanism for white flight and re-segregating NC schools. It’s important to note that non-growth in traditional public school enrollment due to families leaving for other options critically undermines public schools’ ability to have basic funding to provide a sound basic education to all children. Enrollment shifts to other options means a lack of clarity about whether the children who leave traditional public schools are receiving a sound basic education-as the schools are not held accountable to the same standards that traditional public schools are. The Leandro decision addresses the issue of public schools not receiving the basic education they deserve in North Carolina. Challenges and ongoing litigation have kept the Leandro ruling from being implemented. In 2019, WestEd, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research, development and service agency that works with education communities to promote excellence and achieve equity, published a court-ordered plan that provides recommendations for actions to advance the state’s efforts to achieve compliance with the Leandro decision. The report was made public in December. According to the report prepared by WestEd, “the future prosperity and well-being of the state’s citizens requires successfully educating all of its children. North Carolina’s current education system fails to meet the education needs of many of its children and thereby fails to provide for the future success of these individuals, their communities, and the state.” We would hope that despite the history of racial segregation, separate but unequal education, white flight, the advent of charter schools, that this report will change 300 hundred years of unequal education. The future of North Carolina in a world that is becoming smaller everyday depends on implementing the findings for the betterment of students, parents and everyone involved in educating the children of North Carolina.

The looting of consumer goods at mass protests symbolically shouts the desperate message of people fed up with police killings and a political system that excludes them from health, wealth, and equal treatment. The long, hideous, racist history of police killings of Black people is execution-style violence that harks back to the days of slave patrols and lynchings. The latest demonstrations ignited, but also united, people of all stripes who want the killing to stop. They want justice: in courts, on streets, and in the economy. But looting isn’t only practiced by angry protesters. The Trump administration, abetted by an obsequious Senate, loots our economy by selling our national lands to oil and gas interests, serving up tax cuts for the rich, at our expense, which jeopardizes our future wealth. Even the pandemic rescue package buried more than $135 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy; the act itself was ineptly administered, and of scant help to minority businesses. Gutted environmental regulations loot our health and safety, today and tomorrow. Other policies, for instance, human rights actions—widespread maltreatment of immigrant detainees, including abuse of children—rob us in less obvious ways, by eroding U.S. influence and reputation abroad. Among other effects, this makes it difficult to attract talent and business investment. Two recently-announced North Carolina state task forces, one to rout racism in criminal justice, another to tackle racial differences in health care, are laudable, but for real results in the quality of life for poor people, economic justice should be served. It’s called progress. It requires active intervention. Otherwise, those who can’t now fully participate in labor, housing, credit, and other markets—Black, Latinx, Indigenous people—will continue to suffer, and so, too, will the economy, which is a national shame. The hugely profitable, Charlotte-based, Bank of America ($53 billion in earnings, the past two years) has pledged $1 billion over four years toward affordable housing, health, job training, and small business programs. “Things aren’t going to quiet down, they shouldn’t quiet down on making the economic progress and core social progress we need to make here,” CEO Brian Moynihan said on CNBC. There’s no reason why the phrase economic justice should be an oxymoron. People should earn wages on which they can live, wages that allow full participation in the economy. Economic justice means closing wage gaps. Providing sick leave. H elping people find jobs that reflect their skills and potential, and, when necessary, retraining. This is what a civil society does. Especially a rich civil society. Covid-19 deaths and record job losses hit minorities hard, exposing the deep, wide chasm in wages and wealth, especially between Black people and white people. When low wages and persistent racism keep people from labor, credit and health care markets, the legacy of discrimination is transferred from one generation to the next. With little or no household wealth, a legacy of slavery, to sustain them, Black families can’t weather recessions. Median Black household wealth is 10 percent that of median white households, according to the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke. Though Black people represent 13 percent of U.S. population, they hold less than three percent of its wealth, according to William “Sandy” Darity, an economist at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He cites centuries of harm, dating back to slavery, for today’s systemic inequality that drives disparities between racial health and wealth. He and co-author A. Kirsten Mullen, who writes about race, politics, and history, recently published, From Here to Equality. The book details a case for reparations. Along with slavery, he cites apartheid (Jim Crow and “white terror”), along with wage penalties, psychological and physical wounds, ongoing educational disparities, labor and housing market discrimination, confinement to certain neighborhoods, often sub-standard, and, disproportionate levels of incarceration . Disparities are the result of cumulative historical effects, not behavior. Reparations can help “alter this terrain,” Darity says. Innovative social policies, in which reparations could play a role, could help right this history of social wrongs, and end police killings of unarmed Black people. Betty Joyce Nash reported for the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Virginia where she worked as an economics writer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. She co-edited Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, published in 2017 by the University of New Mexico Press; the anthology probes Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms. Betty Joyce Nash writes for Carolina Commentary. For more information, see www.bettyjoycenash.com

With the 2020 election looming, some of “we the people” ponder the public-interest protections once found in the now-defunct 1949 Fairness Doctrine. Rooted in the 1927 Radio Act, passed to manage the public’s airwaves, the Federal Communications Commission revoked it in 1987, part of the Reagan administration’s commitment to deregulation. Resuscitation efforts have failed. As competing communication channels opened, the scarcity of broadcast spectrum became moot. The concept of airwaves as a public trust fell by the wayside. Cable television and satellite signals gained ground, and the internet, with its promise of diversity, lay on the horizon. In 2011, during the Obama administration, the FCC scrapped the doctrine’s last provisions. Today, the Restore the Fairness Doctrine Act of 2019, introduced in September (U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-HI), languishes in committee. That’s a shame. “Although the Fairness Doctrine’s effectiveness and enforceability are debatable, it encouraged sensitivity toward programming biases and provided local communities an important tool with which to hold broadcasters accountable,” writes Victor Pickard in a 2018 article in the International Journal of Communications. Pickard is professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communications. The doctrine’s larger purpose, often overlooked, was to make sure broadcast licensees covered issues of public importance in a fair manner. A lamentable loss, given continued consolidation and the polarizing, partisan news that sprang up after the doctrine’s death. Public interest issues back in the day included workers’ rights, nuclear plant construction, even diet and health. If stations failed to seek and air opposing views, they could lose licenses or face renewal problems or be required to provide time for competing views if they hadn’t been aired. In its ruling, the FCC cited the “chilling effect” on broadcasters’ free speech. Since most violations centered on failure to air valid opposing views, some broadcasters quit airing public-interest issues, and even paid programming, that might trigger their Fairness Doctrine obligations. President Reagan vetoed the bill Congress passed to reinstate the doctrine; President George H.W. Bush’s veto threat prevented another effort. The doctrine had survived one free speech challenge in 1969 when the Supreme Court upheld its first-amendment constitutionality. In its finding, SCOTUS weighed audiences’ rights more heavily than those of broadcasters, with reasoning since questioned. In 1987, the FCC found the Fairness Doctrine violated the first amendment rights of broadcasters, though no court has addressed the constitutional question. The original doctrine’s public-interest provision has often been conflated with the equal opportunity rule, which still exists, but only for political candidates, not supporters, and with exceptions. Scheduled appearances in interviews, documentaries, and spot news coverage are exempt. This applies to a wide-range of programs, even “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert, entertainment that sometimes features candidates as guests. Without a candidate’s recognizable voice or image, the equal time rule doesn’t apply. Complaints were filed against license renewals of two Wisconsin radio stations because they failed to give equal time to supporters of Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s opponent in a recall election, after the stations aired support for Walker. The FCC in 2014 dismissed those complaints: “A licensee has broad discretion—based on its right to free speech—to choose the programming that it believes serves the needs and interests of the members of its audience.” While it’s tempting to wholly blame the rise in partisan news on the doctrine’s demise, the issue is not so simple. Deregulation fueled consolidation as advances in technology changed the media-scape. Personal listening devices, for instance, made radio’s music formats less appealing and less profitable. Talk helped fill that void. The Fairness Doctrine does survive, in public discussions, though it’s often raised by conservatives as a symbol of regulatory overreach. They link it to net neutrality, the idea that internet providers should treat all data the same, rather than privilege one type of content, user, platform, website, equipment and such, over another. But this principle is irrelevant to the Fairness Doctrine. The only parallel between the two ideas, Pickard notes in an email exchange, is that “both are public interest protections that are trying to address commercial excesses in communication systems.” These days, losses in journalism and concentrated commercial media have undermined public-interest news. Policy interventions could help restore public trust. British broadcasters follow “due impartiality” rules in political coverage, Pickard notes, which sensitizes media firms and audiences to balance. What might a 21st century vision of public interest coverage look like? I posed this question to Pickard. “That news outlets should feel compelled to cover important policy issues from multiple perspectives. What, for example, Fox News is doing would not be acceptable. But it is difficult to imagine how as a society we can mandate this responsibility of highly profitable media conglomerates whose first loyalty will always be the bottom line, democracy be damned. Well-funded public alternatives may be our last, best hope.” Betty Joyce Nash reported for the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Virginia. She writes journalism and fiction from Charlottesville. In 2017, the University of New Mexico Press published Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, a book of short stories she co-edited with a colleague. The stories probe Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms. For more information, see www.bettyjoycenash.com

Protracted effects of the pandemic are laying waste to larders in households reeling from job loss and eviction threats and, possibly, illness. State lawmakers should plow more money into providing food through federal block grants known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF.) Here’s another idea: Go on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) diet. Feed the family on $396 per month, the average 2019 monthly benefit for N.C. households with children. Some 29 million of all adults in the U.S., 14 percent; 18 percent in households with children, reported that households lacked sufficient food in the past seve n days, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. (Real-time data were collected December 9–21, 2020.) In North Carolina, food insecurity gnawed at 13.9 percent of adults, well above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.4 percent over the 12 months of 2019. Eighty-fo ur percent of respondents blamed money, not worries about safety or lack of transportation. Black, Latino, and Indigenous adults were twice as likely to report food worries, 24 percent and 21 percent, respectively, compared to 10 percent of White adults,. Hunger costs individuals and society. Providing resources in utero and early childhood influences health and economic outcomes later in life. Inadequate nutrition puts people at higher risk of hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, kidney disease, and hepatitis. These problems increase the risk of mortality from COVID-19. And, food-insecure adults are 50 percent more likely to show up in the ER; if admit ted they stay in the hospital longer. Our best hunger stabilizing policy, our only universal welfare program, is SNAP. Benefits far exceed costs: https://www.cbpp.org/research/snap-is-effective-and-efficient finds that every spent SNAP dollar feeds $1.70 into the economy. N.C. SNAP participant numbers grew by 20 percent between February (pre-pandemic) and July/August 2020. Thirty-five percent are working families, typically earning low wages in restaurants and stores. This amounts to we-the-taxpayers subsidizing private, often highly profitable, firms that pay lower-than-living wages that include no benefits. Right now, SNAP isn’t enough. Food banks are running out of food. Feeding America estimates a shortage of 6 billion to 8 billion meals over the coming year. Time to re-think TANF’s allocations to basic assistance. North Carolina in 2019 spent $564 million federal and state TANF dollars; six percent went to provide cash assistance. (Most states spent about 20 percent of TANF funds on basic assistance for families with children; funds sometimes went to unrelated budget areas.) Funds als o can support work-related services, including child care, administration, child welfare, and pre-K. When people are forced to skip medications, rent, mortgage, car, or other payments in order to buy food, more people will need Medicaid. More people will lan d in hospitals. Poorly-nourished children suffer later in life. Hunger hit me especially hard one day when a man showed up o n my doorstep and asked for a loaf of bread. “Anything,” he said. My mom grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina and ate oatmeal three times a day during the Great Depression, she told me, after I asked why we never ate Quaker Oats. She’d puked oatmeal too many times. That week, I put my family on the ‘poverty diet’ and wrote about the experience, donating my https://m.styleweekly.com/richmond/sharing-the-pain/Content?oid=1373441 honorarium to the food bank. My children called it the starvation diet. For us it was temporary. Hunger terrifies me, not only because of its effects, but because if we can’t fix this, who are we-the-people? Betty Joyce Nash reported for the Hendersonville Times-News and the Greensboro News & Record before moving to Virginia where she worked as an economics writer. She co-edited Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, published in 2017 by the University of New Mexico Press; the anthology probes Americans’ complicated relationship to firearms. She writes for Carolina Commentary. For more information, see www.bettyjoycenash.com

Five months ago, coastal North Carolina residents sat in the crosshairs of a monster storm. Some 43 people died during and immediately after Hurricane Florence, which left $17 billion in damage. Hurricane Michael followed one month later. Three people died and millions more in damage resulted. Wilmington and many other affected communities have not fully recovered. Water damage remediation equipment churns 24-hours a day outside the 100-year-old Alton Lennon Federal Courthouse, closed indefinitely. Blue tarps dot the rooftops of a partment buildings, businesses and churches awaiting roofing crews. Power saws drone in neighborhoods where gutted homes undergo repairs. Hurricane season returns June 1, and with it the threat of new storms. Gov. Roy Cooper testified on Feb. 6before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, to the increasingly powerful and erratic storms that have hit North Carolina in recent years. He cited the two, 500-year floods experienced in two years, and three in fewer than 20 years. Cooper described mudslides in the mountains that have damaged apple orchards and ski areas, record heat in the Piedmont that has killed poultry and damaged crops, and wildfire and flooding risks to Fort Bragg and the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point. The worst of the damage, however, has occurred in Eastern North Carolina, which faces the prospect of more storms and floods, he said. Two years after Hurricane Michael hit, Hurricane Florence “decimated coastal communities and crushed coastal tourism and fisheries.” As Florence pounded the coast for days with punishing winds, it dropped trillions of gallons of rain. Communities went under water under historic flood levels, livestock and crops drowned. Cooper told the committee, conducting month-long climate hearings, about steps taken in North Carolina to respond, with a new North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency to administer federal block grants to fund disaster recovery and plans to develop and implement strategies to protect the state from future storms. He discussed the North Carolina Flood Inundation Mapping and Alert Network that will identify areas facing the most risk during disasters and the safest places to rebuild. “But when storms are becoming more destructive, it’s not enough to pick up the pieces,” he said. “We must take action to prevent this kind of devastation in the future. I urge this Congress and all our federal partners to match the same level of determination brought to disaster recovery in our fight to reduce the effects of climate change.” Cooper got the ball rolling at the state level last year, with an executive order to achieve a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in North Carolina by 2025. This includes increased state building efficiency and 80,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road. But states and researchers rely on federal funds to pay for scientific research and drive innovation “that can help solve our climate crisis,” he said. Federal legislation and regulation will further protect the state, plus government leadership to work on a global level to effect international solutions. TheGreen New Dealresolution proposed Feb. 7 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.), is a beginning. It offers a framework for the kind of bold environmental change needed to combat the devastating effects of global warming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationrecently reported that 247 people died in 14 weather and climate disasters last year, with greater than $1 billion in losses from each event. Since 1980, there have been 241 weather and climate disasters in the United States, each with at least $1 billion in overall damages and costs. Total costs came to $1.6 trillion. In North Carolina so far, the storms exacted a price to be paid: more than $1 billion in state and federal funds for recovery efforts, and counting. How do we move forward? Government legislation and policy can either curtail or fuel climate change on a major scale, from the greenhouse emissions permitted by industry to the decision on whether there is a bus route serving your neighborhood. Call and write local, state and federal representatives to advocate for action. Attend town halls and other public meetings so the urgency of climate change remains top of mind for those who represent you. Consider a run for public office yourself. Perform an inventory of your home and an honest assessment of your life choices. From reducing the amount of red meat you consume to installing solar panels on your house, there are things you can do. Here is ahandy calculatorfrom the Nature Conservancy that can guide you on steps to take to reduce your carbon footprint. While the state continues post-disaster recovery, we must remember that the next big hurricane, fire or flood will cost more lives and destroy property. This is a fight for the future.

America is the world leader for incarcerating its people. The Prison Policy Initiative estimated that in 2018, the United States had over 2.3 million people incarcerated in state prison, local jails, federal prisons, youth correctional facilities, immigration detention camps, territorial prisons, Indian Country and U.S. military prisons; out of a population of 324.2 million. The United States incarcerates more of its people than any nation in the world, according to The World Prison Brief. The Prison Policy Initiative reports that one in five prisoners in American jails and prisons have been convicted of drug-related crimes. Behind these disheartening numbers are more disheartening statistics: racial disparities, according to The Sentencing Project, are stunning when it comes to incarceration. Black Americans are more than five times more likely than whites to be imprisoned. Daryl Atkinson, an attorney and Co-Director of Forward Justice, is a black American who was incarcerated for a non-violent drug crime in 1996. Atkinson says, “America is a nation that is founded on values like liberty, equal opportunity, and redemption for all human beings’ rights and that all people have the right to inalienable rights.” He goes on to say “the way our criminal justice system is operating is contrary to liberty, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness.” He was incarcerated in Alabama where he was subject to a 10-year sentence of which 40 months were mandatory. Recently, USA TODAY reported Alabama was cited by the U.S. Department of Justice for deadly brutality in the men’s prison and put state officials on notice for flagrant “disregard” for inmate safety and the constitutional rights of people in prison. Atkinson was incarcerated at St. Clair Correctional Facility, which was 170 percent over capacity; 60 percent of inmates were serving life without parole During Atkinson’s incarceration at St. Clair Correctional Facility, he met a jailhouse lawyer named James McConico. McConico challenged him and 40 others to learn the 10 Amendments, the Bill of Rights and Alabama rules of evidence and criminal and civil procedure. Atkinson did the research, was released and is now a practicing attorney. The question of punishment or rehabilitation hangs over prisoners across the nation. When prisoners are released from prison, they are stripped of basic rights as American citizens. Without family support most people end up back in prison and lose the sense of self-worth. They are denied student aid, a driver’s license, admittance to college or even a job. Because of his drug conviction, Atkinson was denied federal financial student aid, admittance to college and several law schools, as well as several jobs. Fortunately, Atkinson had the support of his wife and family and was able to earn associate, bachelors and law degrees. In 2014, as a result of his hard work and success, Atkinson was recognized and rewarded by working in the Obama administration as Champion of Change for removing barriers for people with criminal records and other issues facing incarnated people. When asked what public policy changes he would recommend to move from punishment to rehabilitation; Atkinson stated the following for inside and outside of prison. Internally End solitary confinement, which denies acerbates human dignity; he argues the “deprivation of liberty is the punishment”, and any additional measures like solitary confinement are overkill and do more harm than good. Robust identification of people’s mental health issues so they can be placed in therapeutic rehabilitation. Offer vocational and educational opportunities to rehabilitate and prepare inmates for their return to society as productive law-abiding citizens or residents. The NC Department of Public Safety calculates approximately 37,000 inmates will be released into society. Externally There is a need to shrink the prison population, modify and reclassify the bail system, which as currently constructed acts as ransom for poor people. Opening up opportunities for people who have done their time and paid their debt to society by removing barriers to employment, housing and education. Create a hiring initiative providing opportunities for inmates who completed their sentence. Advocating that money should be taken out of prison and re-invested into the communities that have been most harmed by criminal activity. Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy at New York University, said: “The notion that you need huge amounts of incarceration to control the crime rate doesn’t seem to be supported.’”North Carolina would do well to consider the recommendations submitted by an attorney of the state, a person who has suffered the demeaning aspects of prison and who has dedicated his life to make the prison system a rehabilitation process as opposed to demeaning and cruel punishment exemplified by the Alabama system. Passing of North Carolina Senate Bill 562 would give prisoners with non-violent felony convictions and 10 years of good behavior, a second chance. This bill would be a step towards rehabilitation for North Carolina inmates.

Carolina Commentary launched two years ago, the vision of former Asheville Citizen-Times Publisher Virgil Smith. This not-for-profit platform was inspired by Smith’s work as a member of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation board of trustees and by a friend who said she felt he was being called to bring facts and balanced analysis to the forefront regarding issues dividing North Carolina and the nation.He brought in three former Citizen-Times editorial page editors to help with the effort: Jim Buchanan, Joy Franklin and Julie Martin. We agreed from the beginning that we wanted to provide commentary promoting collaborative and realistic approaches to solving public policy issues. We also agreed that every commentary would follow these editorial standards: Integrity:We commit to the highest standards in professionalism, intellectual honesty and transparency. We will be balanced, accurate and fair in our commentary. Quality: We will provide content that is thorough, fresh and innovative. Diversity: Our content will reflect the communities we serve, responsive to a diverse public. Service:Our content will be free from outside influence, political pressure or economic interests. Commentary: We will comment on issues of public interest. Our first commentary spoke to the crisis of deportation of undocumented parents of American-born children.Since then, we have published 67 commentaries and built a following: 9,974 subscribers who receive a posting notification on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month via email. When news events merit, we provide additional commentaries. As journalism has continued its historic, tectonic shift with dwindling resources, we have pitched in to help those serving on the frontlines. Online and print news media statewide have picked up our commentaries (provided free of charge) and published them. We show our readers why they should care about specific threats to North Carolina’s system of democracy, its economy and justice for all. Our particular public policy topics of public policy interest include the environment, education, immigration and health care. Our writers are moderate progressives who hope to promote thoughtful debate that renounces ideology in favor of dialogue based on facts. Guest commentators have included academics and former/current newspaper columnists: DeWayne Wickham, founding dean of Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication. For 30 years he was a columnist for USA TODAY and GANNETT Samuel P. Martin, publisher of The Birmingham Times Leslie Winner, former executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and former N.C. senator Christopher Cooper, professor and department head of political science and public affairs at Western Carolina University Antionette Kerr, syndicated columnist, news contributor & nonprofit consultant Jason Giersch, assistant professor, political science & public administration, UNC Charlotte W. Noah Reynolds, member of the Monument Study Committee on the North Carolina Historical Commission North Carolina news organizations are invited to pick up and publish Carolina Commentary editorials (guidelineshere). They also are invited to email their editorials to commentary@carolinacommentary.com for publication on the website. Readers who aren’t already subscribers are invited to sign up for our free commentarieshere. You will receive an email notification twice a month when commentaries are available on this site. We also want to hear from you. Join the discussion, using the comment function at the bottom of this page. We’ll keep writing and growing.

Take a bill from your wallet or purse. If it’s a $1, you can probably buy a convenience store coffee. A $5 might get you lunch, a sawbuck can purchase half a tank of gas, and so on. But take a moment to consider what you’re holding in your hand. You might say it’s a piece of paper. (Technically it’s a mix of cotton and linen, but whatever). But it’s not a piece of paper. It’s an act of faith. That’s the reason that bill is worth something. In reality it is just a piece of paper, but it’s a piece of paper backed up by the United States government. That means you can expect to work and be paid in a currency that will be universally accepted for goods and services. The reason that works is that we’re all in on it. We have faith the government represents us all, and that, despite a sometimes patchy record, it will enforce the rules (laws) that we, collectively, have agreed upon through those we elected to represent us. That’s the way the founding fathers set things up. We’d just disentangled ourselves from King George III and the rule of a man. A nation of laws, not men, was the formula to ensure we wouldn’t find ourselves ruled by the whims of a single individual. Today that formula, and our faith in it, is being tested. The founding fathers established a system of checks and balances, one that specifically delegated to Congress the power to impeach a president whose actions could be construed to constitute “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The transcript, released by the White House, of President Trump’s telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the face of it, implies just such “high crimes and misdemeanors.” President Trump personally ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine in the days before his phone call with Zelensky, administration officials have said. Then, according to the transcript, Trump asks Zelensky to do him a favor by investigating Hunter Biden, the son of his potential rival in the 2020 election. Yet, despite the appearance of a quid pro quo, we have a President who has essentially declared that Congress has no authority to investigate whether he has committed an impeachable crime. University of North Carolina Law professor Michael Gerhardt, who wrote a book on impeachment, told an L.A. Times reporter, “For a president to urge a foreign leader to investigate a political rival is a clear instance of impeachable misconduct. The framers believed such self-dealing was the essence of corruption and invented impeachment to get rid of it.” Congress not only has a right, it has an obligation to determine whether the evidence is sufficient to justify articles of impeachment. But Trump has called that Congress, composed of the elected representatives of the American people, a “kangaroo court” and refused to cooperate in any way with the impeachment inquiry. Being President doesn’t place Trump above the law or allow him to defy the branch of government the Constitution charged with the responsibility of holding him accountable. This same President, snatching a term Joseph Stalin used to describe political rivals, calls the media the “enemy of the people” and all news except that favorable to him “fake news.” He does this in an attempt to undermine the free press, which the framers of our system of laws considered so essential to a functioning democracy that they protected it in the First Amendment to the Constitution. He undercuts the bureaucracy that supports our system of government by calling it the “deep state,” implying some sort of dark conspiracy with no evidence to justify such reckless and disrespectful condemnation. Trump’s self-serving, heedless and increasingly rash behavior undermines faith in our nation at home and abroad. It is the kind of behavior the rule of law is intended to protect us from. It’s a breach of faith. As we said at the outset, without faith, money is only a piece of paper. The same can be said of our Constitution.

The recent announcement that Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey-based hedge fund, won the bankruptcy court auction to buy McClatchy Newspapers is momentous news for North Carolinians. McClatchy owns three newspapers in North Carolina, including the two most important when it comes to covering public policy issues of statewide importance. McClatchy bought the Raleigh-based News & Observer in 1995 and acquired the Charlotte Observer in 2006 when it bought the Knight Ridder chain. It also owns The Herald-Sun in Durham. All three will now be owned by Chatham. Undoubtedly, the sale of McClatchy Newspapers to a hedge fund is not what the thousands of employees and the McClatchy family envisioned for this iconic employer. In the early 70’s it was common place to see Eleanor McClatchy, the matriarch of the family and the company, walking the halls in her unassuming way as she greeted employees by name. In the early days McClatchy owned three newspapers all named “Bee.” The newspapers and several radio and television stations were located in Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno. These were the days when media companies were permitted to own multi-media operations in the same market. The McClatchy company was well known for treating its people well and was a place with long tenured employees highlighted by the large membership in the 25-year club. The company was generous in the communities, with venues such as McClatchy High School, McClatchy Park bearing the name of the family and the company. Eleanor McClatchy was a generous sponsor of the Music Circus, a theatrical and musical venue and so much more. The company took a turn towards corporate in the mid 70’s with the hiring of North Carolinian Erwin Potts as the director of newspaper operations. He later became the first non-McClatchy family member to serve as CEO of the company, from 1989 to 1996. Potts is credited with leading the growth years of McClatchy into a national media company. In 2006, McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt and the Board of Directors made a dramatic decision under pressure from investors to purchase the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, an award-winning company with 84 Pulitzers. The purchase by the smaller McClatchy newspaper company for $4.5 billion in cash and stock was viewed as a great move by many journalists. But it was questioned by newspaper business leaders. Many in the industry would argue this was the beginning of the end for McClatchy. The company took on massive debt and made a bet that the future was bright for the newspaper industry. In fact, newspapers have been battered by the generational change towards technology and readers’ desire for immediacy coupled with fleeing advertisers who moved from print to digital and direct contact with their customers. The purchase of McClatchy by Chatham Asset Management signals a new and uncertain future for the proud company. Like newsrooms across the state, those at the Charlotte Observer and the News & Observer have already been cut to the bone. Chances are, the cuts will continue under Chatham’s ownership, further diminishing North Carolinians’ access to news about state and local governments they need to be informed participants in the democratic process. In 2016, Chatham acquired two-thirds ownership of Postmedia, the largest newspaper chain in Canada, and the publisher of the Vancouver Sun. Current and former employees told the New York Times that “the company has cut its work force, shuttered papers across Canada, reduced salaries and benefits, and centralized editorial operations in a way that has made parts of its 106 newspapers into clones of one another.” Postmedia’s chief executive, Andrew MacLeod, told the New York Times that Chatham isn’t involved in the day-to-day operation of the business, and that the cost cuts were “natural outcomes of a legacy business that’s been in structural decline.” He said Chatham was one of the few financial players willing to take a risk on a newspaper business. It’s hard to argue with that rationale. In less than a lifetime, the industry has changed dramatically from the days when highly profitable family-owned newspapers, like those owned by the McClatchy’s, took great pride in their watchdog role and willingly expended their resources to produce great and important stories. In a new book titled “Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy,” Margaret Sullivan quotes a PEN America study, “As local journalism declines, government officials conduct themselves with less integrity, efficiency and effectiveness and corporate malfeasance goes unchecked…” Another result, according to the PEN study, is that citizens are less likely to vote, are less politically informed and are less likely to run for office. We can only wait to see how the new owner of three of North Carolina’s most important newspapers discharges the responsibility the First Amendment guarantee of a free press carries with it. But it is a sobering time as the restructuring continues of an industry that, like public education, is critical to our ability as North Carolinians and Americans to govern ourselves. Joy Franklin is a journalist and writer who served as editorial page editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 10 years. Prior to that she served as executive editor of the Times-News in Hendersonville., N.C. Franklin writes for Carolina Commentary. Virgil L. Smith formerly served as president and publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times and Vice President for Human Resources for the Gannett Company. Smith worked for McClatchy Newspapers for twenty years in Sacramento and Fresno, CA. He is the principal for the Smith Edwards Group and writes for Carolina Commentary.