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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Outside the gates of Charlotte’s municipal government sits a modern-day Trojan horse from which members of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis’s political party hope to take seats on City Council. They will succeed in their efforts only if local voters forget that membership in a political party means something. There exists no better short-hand expression […]
Whenever mass murderers armed with assault weapons turn classrooms into crime scenes and school kids into corpses, we understandably seek out a villain. The National Rifle Association usually holds pride of place in our reactions, and deservedly so. The NRA’s commitment to a reckless, absolutist vision of the Second Amendment has prevented the adoption of […]
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 […]
The recently concluded race for Mecklenburg County district attorney reminded me of nothing so much as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” — with the incumbent prosecutor and most of our community cast in the role of the go-slow clergy whom Dr. King criticized in his famous missive: We had a chance to […]
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 […]
Charlotte Citizen 