Archives for May 2022

For Asian Americans, celebration, challenges and action

May, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, has special significance in 2022, as both an acknowledgment of contributions and a reminder of a resurgence of xenophobic rhetoric and violence. Civil rights groups, academia and businesses have responded with action, education and activism, part of a “Stop AAPI Hate” coalition.

Mary C. Curtis speaks about the past, the present and future solutions with Anne Lee Benedict, active with MCCA — a national organization dedicated to advancing diversity, inclusion and equity in the legal profession — and Joanne L. Rondilla, an assistant professor of sociology and interdisciplinary studies and Asian American studies at San José State University.

Ex-Charlotte mayors McCrory and Cannon lose comeback bids: An analysis of the NC primary

In this episode Inside Politics: Election 2022, we discuss the results of the May 17 primary in North Carolina and look ahead to the general election.

Election night in the U.S. Senate race came to a predictable outcome. Former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley cruised to victory in the Democratic primary. And U.S. Rep. Ted Budd easily defeated former Gov. Pat McCrory in the GOP primary.

Budd was complimentary of McCrory on election night. But McCrory did not return the favor — he refused to endorse Budd and questioned the direction of the Republican Party.

Another big story from May 17: Controversial GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn was ousted in the primary by a fellow Republican.

We’ll also talk about the upcoming July election for Charlotte City Council.

Voters winnowed down candidates for mayor and council last week. Former Mayor Patrick Cannon, who served prison time after being arrested for corruption while in office, lost his bid to return to public office with an at-large seat on council. Meanwhile, incumbent District 1’s Larken Egleston will exit from council after losing in the Democratic primary for an at-large seat, and some districts will have new representatives. Incumbent Mayor Vi Lyles cruised to an easy victory in her Democratic primary.

Our guests for this week are retiring Charlotte City Council member Julie Eiselt and journalist Mary C. Curtis of Roll Call.

Local News Roundup: Recapping the NC primary and reflecting on the Buffalo mass shooting

The North Carolina primary this week was full of stories, including the seeming end of Pat McCrory’s political career, a decisive loss for U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn and some surprises in the Democratic City Council race. Sheriff Garry McFadden kept his seat in Mecklenburg County, and Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles won her primary.

People around the country — including Charlotte — are reacting to Sunday’s shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where a gunman killed 10 and injured three.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law that will ban transgender students from playing women’s sports.

And yet another earthquake is felt just outside the Charlotte area.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and all the week’s top local and regional news on the Charlotte Talks local news roundup.

GUESTS:

Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Steve Harrison, WFAE’s political reporter

Seema Iyer, chief legal correspondent WJZY Queen City News

What happens to America when optimism dies?

When I interviewed Majority Whip James Clyburn in 2014 about his memoir “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black,” the South Carolina Democrat was confident in America’s ability to find its way, no matter how extreme the political swings might appear at any given time.

“The country from its inception is like the pendulum on a clock,” the congressman told me. “It goes back and forward. It tops out to the right and starts back to the left — it tops out to the left and starts back to the right.” And remember, he said, it “spends twice as much time in the center.”

I have always appreciated Clyburn’s wisdom, his passion and his commitment to his constituents. But most of all, I have admired the optimism of this child of the South, who grew up hemmed in by Jim Crow’s separate and unequal grip, yet who believed in the innate goodness of America and its people. Clyburn put his own life on the line to drag the country — kicking and screaming — into a more just future.

He was convinced, I believe, that no matter how off balance America might become, the country would eventually right itself.

A lot has changed since that afternoon, when he sat at a long table, signing books and chatting in the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, N.C., right beside his beloved wife. Emily Clyburn, a passionate civil rights activist, died in 2019, though Clyburn often references her wise words.

That optimism, however, has lost its glow.

Clyburn’s worries drove our conversation in July 2021, the second of two times he was a guest on my CQ Roll Call “Equal Time” podcast. The topic was voting rights, and Clyburn had opinions about the Senate procedure that would eventually stall legislation to reform those rights and restore provisions invalidated by a Supreme Court decision in 2013.

“When it comes to the constitutional issues like voting, guaranteed to Blacks by the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, that should not be filibustered,” he said. And about restrictive laws being passed in states? “I want you to call it what it is. Use the word: nullification. It is voter nullification.”

“This isn’t about just voting; this is about whether or not we will have a democracy or an autocracy.”

With those remarks in the back of my mind, it was still startling to hear Clyburn last week on MSNBC, talking about his GOP House colleagues, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, and their waffling about complying with subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

When asked if the government and Capitol Hill could “be fixed,” Clyburn, known for his philosophical “this too shall pass” mantra, instead replied, “I don’t know.” He talked about threats to undermine democracy and said the country is “teetering on the edge.”

And that was before the shooting in Buffalo that claimed the lives of 10 beautiful Americans doing something as routine as Saturday supermarket shopping. African Americans were targeted by an 18-year-old who wore his “white supremacist” label like a badge of honor in a heavily plagiarized racist screed, a man whose stated goal was to “kill as many blacks as possible.”

Is it any wonder Clyburn’s optimism has been waning in these times?

An examination of replacement theory in America

The racist shooting in Buffalo, New York, over the weekend left 10 people dead and injured three others. Law enforcement is investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

It is the latest in a list of similar acts of violence: Charleston, South Carolina, Charlottesville, Virginia, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Texas and Atlanta to name a few. All have an element of fear of the other. This is part of the basis of the “great replacement theory.”

The great replacement theory began as a white nationalist movement last century in Europe, according to the anti-defamation league. It has grown into the fear, especially in America, that white Christians will be replaced by nonwhite, non Christian people and immigrants.

This refrain has become more mainstream in recent years. In Charlottesville, the mob chanted “Jews will not replace us,” while the El Paso shooter said he was fighting against what he called a Hispanic invasion.

Increasingly, GOP leaders and commentators have championed this dialogue. They have complained about how race is taught in schools and pushed back on efforts to expand voting rights. U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House, used ads that echoed part of the replacement theory.

GUESTS:

James E. Ford, executive director at the Center for Racial Equity in Education

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Shannon Reid, associate professor at UNC Charlotte specializing in white supremacy

What’s the state of our rights? Stay tuned

The concept of states’ rights has never been pure.

The Confederates who eventually went to war over the right of their states to own men, women and children ditched their reasoning — that what they did was none of the federal government’s business — when the enslaved escaped to states willing to grant these brave human beings their freedom.

Then, it was time for Southern politicians to demand revisions and ever harsher penalties added to existing Fugitive Slave laws that punished those who escaped and anyone who aided them, including offering bounties that ensnared even freed Black citizens (“12 Years a Slave,” true story).

Hypocrisy has always been a feature, not a bug in the American way, especially for those deemed not worthy, not possessing “rights which the white man was bound to respect,” as Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford opinion in 1857.

You don’t have to reach back to pre-Civil War days for examples that prove the philosophy of states’ rights can be quite malleable when it interferes with a desired outcome.

A current proposal favored by a Missouri legislator, aimed at a clinic in neighboring Illinois, seems cut from the same cloth. It would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion, including the out-of-state doctor or the person who connected patient to clinic.

Such laws, if approved in Missouri and elsewhere, while unconstitutional on their face and sure to be subject to a slew of lawsuits, could nonetheless serve as chilling warnings for anyone tempted to help a desperate client, friend or family member.

Local News Roundup: Ripple effect of leaked Supreme Court draft opinion; $3.2 billion proposed budget for Charlotte; Cawthorn in the headlines again

The leaked draft Supreme Court opinion on the possible overturning of Roe vs. Wade has people talking all over the country about the potential impact of the ruling. We’ll talk about how overturning Roe vs. Wade would impact North and South Carolinians and what local people are saying about it.

No property tax increases are in the plan for the Charlotte’s new budget, with employee bonuses and raises at the top of a $3.2 billion proposed budget. We’ll talk about some of the budget details and reactions.

Madison Cawthorn continues to make headlines, this time after a nude video was released.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police holds a news conference calling attention to a series of sexual assault cases in Charlotte. We’ll talk about the cases highlighted and why.

And despite work to improve them, Mecklenburg County’s park system ranks among the worst in the country.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and all the week’s top local and regional news on the Charlotte Talks local news roundup.

Guests:

Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Claire Donnelly, WFAE health reporter

Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter

The Daily Drum: Supreme Court Document Leak, Roe v. Wade

It has never happened before in the modern history of The Supreme Court.  A draft of a court decision… leaked to a news organization and now very public… before the court takes the  vote.  This draft on the issue of abortion… suggests that the landmark 1973, Roe v. Wade decision could be overturned.  Chief justice John Roberts saying today… the draft is authentic… but not a final decision of the court. We look at what this means for the independence of the court, abortion rights, even election politics.