Archives for April 2019

Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup: CMPD Releases Full Body Camera Video; 9th District Early Voting

Earlier this week, a Mecklenburg County judge ordered the full release of the body camera video in the police shooting of Danquirs Franklin. The video was released on Wednesday. The ruling came after Monday night’s debate in city council about CMPD’s handling of the initial release of a shorter version of the video.

On the same day as the video’s release, CMPD announced a series of changes in policy to release all relevant video footage of incidents, like officer-involved shootings, to a judge to seek redactions.

Early voting for the special 9th District primary began this week and on Tuesday night, some of the candidates participated in a forum that covered topics from House Bill 2 to the Mueller report and more.

Movement on the incentives from the South Carolina legislature to relocate the Panthers’ headquarters may be on the horizon, as details come out about the plans David Tepper has for the new facility there. The team hopes to begin construction as early as later this year.

Guests:

Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com and WCCB

David Boraks, reporter for WFAE 

Jonathan Lowe, reporter for Spectrum News

It’s called accountability, but only for some

OPINION — When I was a little girl growing up in West Baltimore, my parents (especially my mom) gave me some truth along with the love. “You will have to work twice as hard to get half as far,” they told their working-class African American child, schooled as they had been in life’s challenges. They also warned about what everyone on my side of town knew: There was little to no room for error because folks like us seldom got the benefit of the doubt.

This was not to discourage me — far from it. It was to prepare me. Better to know what the deal was upfront.

They did not live to observe the spectacle of the president of the United States and members of his family get away — for now, at least — with all sorts of dishonest doings, things an African American president and his family would have been marched across the White House lawn in cuffs and shackles for. Things anyone in my neighborhood would have been tossed under the jail for even thinking about doing.

To Impeach or Not to Impeach

CHARLOTTE, NC — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is urging amid the divide in her own party over whether to impeach President Trump. Pelosi says the party should continue to push for the entire Mueller Report instead of the redacted version released last week.

The Mueller report said the president of the United States did not commit crimes; but it expressly refused to exonerate him on possible obstruction of justice.

Democrats and Republicans face risks and rewards as they choose what to do next. And the process is happening a year and a half before the 2020 presidential election.

Are Young Voters the Key to the White House in 2020?

CHARLOTTE, NC — For Democrats, will it be the past vs. the future? The old guard or fresh faces? The two older gentlemen at the top of every poll judging 2020 Democratic presidential maybes or not? And does any candidate possess the “it” factor that can beat President Trump.

Pew research center report shows millennials will make up roughly a quarter of eligible voters in 2020. Generation Z, those born after 1996, will make up another 10%.

WCCB political contributor Mary C. Curtis takes a look at how Democrats are hoping to get the youth vote for the 2020 presidential election.

For serious primary voters, the parade of Democratic candidates is no joke

OPINION — CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The number of Democratic hopefuls declaring, thinking about declaring or being pushed to declare their interest in the 2020 race is increasing so rapidly, it has already become a reliable punchline. But for voters looking to discover the person who offers sensible policies on the issues they care about while exuding the intangible “it” quality that could beat Donald Trump, it is serious business.

Forget about what magic the letter “B” might hold — think Bernie, Biden, Beto, Booker, Buttigieg and I know I’m forgetting someone, oh yes, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet — these voters are digging deeper on the candidates who will crowd a debate stage in Miami two nights in a row in June.

When a hate crimes hearing goes very wrong, something’s not right in America

OPINION — When people are being threatened, intimidated and murdered, you would think that partisan bickering would take a back seat. But this is the U.S. Congress we’re talking about. Instead, what was supposed to be an examination of white nationalism and the rise of hate crimes on Tuesday devolved into what Americans have wearily begun to expect from their elected representatives. The House Judiciary Committee members inhabited different parties and different planets.

When what’s at stake is this serious, that’s pretty frightening.

2020 Democratic Presidential Field

CHARLOTTE, NC — The first scheduled debate for the growing field of Democrats ready to take on President Trump in 2020 is to take place in Miami over two days in June. They will need both days to accommodate all the men and women on the growing list. Just this week, Iowa-born California congressman Eric Swalwell joined the crowd. Though it is way too early to judge, how is the field shaping up?

Does the ‘content of their character’ still matter in the 2020 race?

OPINION — “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It might be the only quote by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that many Americans can recite by heart.

There is good reason for that, as political partisans have twisted a 1963 speech to suit their 2019 conservative agendas, despite the fact that those who now embrace him as one of their own would be horrified by King’s belief in extensive change in the system.

That quote can mean whatever you want it to, dressed up as approval of an American hero whose luster has only grown as his often revolutionary work fades into memory. That short snippet expresses a sentiment judged far more benign than others from that same speech, as when the Nobel Peace Prize winner said: “We’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

Finding the Solution to Growing Gun Violence in Charlotte

CHARLOTTE, NC — The country has been talking about the murder of Nipsey Hussle in Los Angeles, shot outside a store he owned. The young Grammy-nominated rapper was making a difference in his community, stressing education and entrepreneurship among young people, even as he moved on from former membership in a gang to business and personal success.

Gun violence is a problem beyond Los Angeles, reaching many communities, including Charlotte. There have been more than 300 shootings in Charlotte this year, more than 30 of which were homicides. Members of the community – students, community leaders, citizens – gathered Tuesday night in a vigil to confront the problem and talk about ways to turn around the dangerous trend and turn toward a safer city. (Mary C. Curtis)

Rev. Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte NAACP said: “All the talking we’re doing has to stop, we need some real concrete changes, some tangible changes.”

Mary C. Curtis on Column-Writing in a Polarized Time

When Mary C. Curtis speaks at our Buffalo conference on June 22, she plans to discuss how opinion writers can approach sensitive issues – and deal with the reader reaction that follows.

Ms. Curtis is the perfect person to talk about that, because her Roll Call column and other media work often focus on “the intersection of politics, culture, and race,” as Mary described it in a March 15 phone interview. Those three topics can be fraught in any era, but are especially so in this polarized time of Trump.

Actually, Ms. Curtis said the response she gets to her writing is mostly positive, and she attributes this to several factors. “I try to put a lot of reporting in my column,” noted Mary, which makes it harder for spoiling-for-a fight readers to refute her points. “And I use humor when I can, and pop-culture references – including music and movie metaphors. Many readers can relate to that.”