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 […]
Charlotte’s politically respectable residents greeted Larken Egleston’s electoral defeat last month with stunned dismay. Larken, who has served on City Council since 2017 representing Plaza-Midwood, NoDa, Dilworth, and surrounding neighborhoods, finished fifth in this year’s six-way Democratic race to earn one of four at-large spots on the general-election ballot. While hoping to make the transition […]
A push is underway in the Queen City to advance a kinder, hipper slate of GOP candidates for municipal office. But underneath self-consciously cool, mostly millennial packaging lurks a tolerance for the authoritarianism that defines today’s Republican Party. The contenders themselves told us so. When candidate filing opened in March at the Mecklenburg County Board […]
While darkness has enveloped much of American politics since Donald Trump descended his escalator to announce a bid for the presidency, one bright spot has offered some hope that decency would yet prevail in politics and the public square: the work of so-called “never Trump” Republicans. Faced with a candidate and president plainly unfit for […]
When hundreds of anti-choice zealots marched outside a health clinic last month, Charlotte’s noise ordinance limited the harassment and heckling they could heap on women seeking care. The city’s code prevented protesters from using amplified sound too close to the facility and cordoned off certain areas in front of the doctor’s office to create room […]
The 2021 platform of the North Carolina Republican Party puts liberty first. “We are the party that stands strong against tyranny and will fight at home and abroad to protect the lives and fundamental liberties of all people,” it proclaims. “The fundamental role of government is to protect those inherent rights as recognized in our […]
The mayor pleaded powerlessness. With the delta variant of COVID-19 tearing through our community, several reporters asked at a recent press conference if Mayor Vi Lyles intended to impose a new municipal mask mandate in Charlotte. “I’ve been really, really consistent that we should follow the science,” she responded without answering the question. The science, […]
Gay rights are coming to Charlotte, and to my own surprise, the prospect fills me with near-perfect ambivalence. City Council will soon enact a prohibition banning discrimination in employment and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation — with virtual unanimity among Council members as to the appropriateness of such a regulation, though with […]
Independent investigators have scolded Charlotte City Councilman Tariq Bokhari for his actions trying to steer municipal COVID relief money to a program to be run by a non-profit he oversees, but they failed entirely to engage a broader ethics complaint that documented Bokhari’s years-long entanglement of his public duties with his private financial interests in […]
The injection of Black lives into white, wealthy space proved too much. So Charlotte City Council voted last week to allow cars and trucks to grind our Black Lives Matter mural into oblivion. On South Tryon Street between 3rd and 4th Streets, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we had made a promise to […]
Charlotte Citizen 