Categories
Public Education

Leandro As Failure

Among the main characters of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House is Jarndyce and Jarndyce, an unresolved, long-lasting chancery suit of unclear origin and nature. The suit, which may have something to do with an inheritance, features attorneys on all of its many sides “engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping […]

Categories
Election 2022

Democrats’ “Country Over Party” Strategy Reeks of Weakness

Of course elected officials ought to put country over party. Of course the people ought to prefer representatives who govern for the sake of the common good. Of course congressmen and senators ought to do their work in a manner that honors the nation’s values — even when doing so might conflict with their own, […]

Categories
Police Violence

America’s Caste System Decides Who Counts

The resolutions of two recently concluded homicide cases — one involving a Black man and the other a white cop — gave us fresh examples of the biases of our criminal justice system, inequities that both reflect and reenforce broader social perspectives. The results raised key questions: Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who […]

Categories
Charlotte Pride

Stonewall Is Dead

Another Charlotte Pride Festival is in the books — and not a single rock went through a single plate-glass window of a single anti-queer bank or business. I pondered this omission last weekend while strolling down Tryon Street past the countless tents of corporations hocking their wares to the festival’s attendees, and I was reminded […]

Categories
Election 2022

N.C. Green Party Launches Campaign of Garbled, Dishonest Nonsense

Incoherence animates the Green Party’s budding Senate campaign in North Carolina. The thicket of confusion and contradiction in which the party finds itself stems from its refusal to forthrightly confront two questions — one empirical and the other moral — while forgetting it’s now engaged in the practical work of electoral politics, not the performative […]

Categories
Criminal Justice

Charlotte Cops and Reporters Embrace “Bail Reform” and Abandon Liberty

The Queen of Hearts grew impatient at the trial where she presided. “‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day,” Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first–verdict afterwards.’” “‘Stuff and sense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the […]

Categories
City Council

Tariq Trolls Us Again

It’s not practical politics, but amateur performance art on civic themes. Every now and then, for the sake of getting a little media attention, Charlotte Councilman Tariq Bokhari trolls the city with ostentatious, meaningless publicity stunts — often while exploiting vulnerable groups like people of color, workers, and the LGBTQ community. Bokhari offers not policy […]

Categories
Election 2022

Charlotte GOP Campaigns Against “the Other”

When a hundred members of the white supremacist Patriot Front marched through Boston this weekend, they carried a banner announcing their hope to “Reclaim America.” A desire to take back what has been lost — or, worse yet, stolen — finds frequent expression not only on the fringes of the American Right, but in its […]

Categories
We Are Being Used

All That Glitters Is Not Gay

As Pride Month winds down under the shadow of emboldened reactionaries on the Supreme Court, let’s take a moment to appreciate that Charlotte’s self-proclaimed gay-friendly corporations fund the homophobic agenda threatening to overtake us. Consider just three examples: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Truist, each of which sought to mollycoddle the LGBTQ community by […]

Categories
America At War

Neither Civility Nor Courtesy

Israel seemed surprised. Shocked, even. After explaining my commitment to liberty of conscience, I told him I had no intention of arguing about the correctness of his religious views. Nor would I attempt to defend my own. I couldn’t convince him, and he couldn’t convince me. To try would be folly. He believes life begins […]