Local News Roundup: Charlotte’s Redistricting Maps Unveiled; COVID-19 Update; Streetcar’s Low Ridership

Featured at WFAE

Charlotte’s redistricting process progresses this week as City Council’s committee on redistricting releases three possible maps for public review. We’ll talk about what the maps look like and what council members said.

North Carolina, as a state, is also preparing for redistricting. We’ll hear what people had to say at a recent public meeting on the topic.

After Latta Plantation closed earlier this year following concerns about an event planned around the Juneteenth holiday, the county is discussing the future of the historic site. We’ll talk about the group that has been assembled to figure it out.

This week, 375 employees from Novant Health were suspended for not following the company’s COVID-19 vaccine policy. We’ll talk about what will happen to those workers and give an overall update on the virus, the vaccine and compliance in our region.

Charlotte’s new, free streetcar’s ridership is low, so will they start charging people to ride? The city holds a public hearing to get consensus.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and all the week’s top 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, and host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Steve Harrison, WFAE’s political reporter

Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter

Read the rest atWFAE
Sep242021 TAGS: , , , ,

‘It’s always urgent when it’s about vote, voice and power’

Featured at Roll Call

Climate change, a major concern of this week’s United Nations General Assembly, affects people across the globe through immigration, food production and the economy, to name a few. But as Ashley K. Shelton tells Mary C. Curtis, climate change is also spurring voter suppression. Shelton, who leads the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and is a founding member of the Black Southern Women’s Collective, is turning her attention to policies that need to be in place to ensure that Americans disproportionately affected by devastating weather events can fully participate in democracy.

Read the rest atRoll Call
Sep232021 TAGS: , , , , ,

Reporters’ Roundtable

Features at WHUR

We’re at the Reporters’ Roundtable with a look at the top stories of the week.  As always… there’s a lot to talk about.  Hurricane Ida, back to school in the DMV, recapping the March On Washington, and gun violence in our communities.  We start with the end of the war in Afghanistan.

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Aug312021 TAGS: , , , , ,

Voting Rights, Student Loans, and FDA Approved COVID Vax

Featured at PBS

Panelists Mary C. Curtis, Jessica Holmes, and Dawn Blagrove weigh in on the recent rule of NC judges to eliminate the waiting period and give formerly convicted individuals the right to vote, effective immediately, and the impact of Biden’s moves to reduce student debt. Dr. C. Nicole Swiner offers her take on the FDA-approved Pfizer vaccine, booster shots, and family politics of COVID.

Read the rest atPBS
Aug292021 TAGS: , , , , ,

MLK III: ‘Listen with your ears, hear with your heart’

Featured at Roll Call

Martin Luther King III joins Equal Time to talk with Mary C. Curtis about his father’s “I have a dream” speech, voting rights today and personal memories of his father. Fifty-eight years after his father’s iconic words, MLK III joins John Lewis’ family and others to galvanize the nation to, once again, ensure voting rights for all Americans.

Read the rest atRoll Call
Aug262021 TAGS: , , , , ,

Clyburn: Pass voting bills or Democrats will lose majorities

Featured at Roll Call

As a young civil rights activist, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn was involved in protests that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act. Now, the 81-year-old Democrat from South Carolina, whose endorsement is widely credited with helping Joe Biden turn around his bid for the 2020 presidential nomination, says Congress needs to act to stop a new assault on voting.

The House has passed one sweeping bill — dubbed HR 1, or the For the People Act — that sets standards for voting and overhauls campaign finance and ethics law. But an attempt to bring it up was defeated in the Senate. Another measure — dubbed HR 4, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — is being drafted in the House and getting attention in the Senate. Clyburn joined CQ Roll Call’s Equal Time podcast last month to discuss what’s at stake and how he expects it to play out. An edited transcript:

Read the rest atRoll Call
Aug092021 TAGS: , , , , , , ,

‘This is about whether or not we will have a democracy or an autocracy,’ Clyburn says on voting rights

Featured at Roll Call

Voter nullification, authoritarianism and the end of democracy — that’s what Rep. James E. Clyburn says are the very real consequences of not passing legislation to protect voting rights. The South Carolina Democrat emphasized that voter suppression is not just an issue of access to the ballot box, but includes who gets to overturn elections.

“I want you to call it what it is. Use the word. Nullification,” said Clyburn, “It is voter nullification.”

There are currently two bills on the issue, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, before Congress. Senate Democrats are meeting to hash out a revised bill that could be released next week.

Mary C. Curtis sits down with the House majority whip to discuss voting rights, and to understand what are the very high stakes and what can be done with dwindling time on the clock.

Read the rest atRoll Call
Jul302021 TAGS: , , , ,

Reporters’ Roundtable

Featured at WHUR

We’re at the Reporters’ Roundtable with a look at some of the top stories of the week.  On deck tonight… a pedestrian bridge collapse in dc,  President Biden announces a crack down crime and illegal guns.  Capitol Hill politics, voting rights, DC statehood, Loudoun County schools and an active NFL player comes out.

Read the rest atWHUR
Jun242021 TAGS: , , , , ,

With freedom rides and ‘states’ rights’ refrains, old times in America are not forgotten

Featured at Roll Call

Buses of civil rights demonstrators are on the road carrying Americans who want to send a message to their political leaders. They want to add their voices to the Washington debates over stalled infrastructure legislation, voting rights protections and every important discussion that could affect participation in democracy.

Shades of the 1960s activism that spurred history-making laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, all steps toward a more inclusive country — the goal, unfulfilled, in the idealistic words of America’s founding documents.

An unfortunate throwback also front and center is the opposition, exalting the primacy of “states’ rights.” It is not showing out in the violence that met the earlier bus occupants at stop after stop. But that familiar phrase or the sentiment animating it, the condemnation of interference from the big, bad federal government so dear to the heart of obstructionists back then, was the refrain from Republican senators who on Tuesday voted down any attempt to discuss proposed legislation that would protect the fundamental franchise for all.

Read the rest atRoll Call
Jun242021 TAGS: , , , ,

If corporations are people, they just might have an opinion

Featured at Roll Call

That Pepsi bottle on the counter looks so out of place. My husband has always been a Diet Coke man. It’s a matter of principle, he tells me, even as he admits he prefers “The Real Thing.” Coca-Cola’s statement disapproving of Georgia’s new voting restrictions was too little, too late, and that’s that, he says. All of that puts the Atlanta-based soft drink giant in a bind, since even its belated critical stand was too much for backers of the bill, who are also banishing Coke from their own fridges, they say.

What’s a company to do?

I can’t feel too sorry for Coca-Cola, Delta and the rest, though, since they’ve been playing the political game forever while pretending to be above it all. And I have to stifle a laugh at the Republican politicians who are admonishing corporations and sports leagues now that the bills the GOP instigated aren’t getting a pass. These are the same pols who eagerly accepted campaign donations and good PR in days past.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is astute enough to recognize why his furrowed brow and outraged words are landing with a thud. It’s why his story is constantly changing. He told companies to stay out of politics, was called on it, then said he meant to only offer advice that business leaders read the fine print before opening their mouths and closing their pocketbooks.

Read the rest atRoll Call
Apr152021 TAGS: , , , , , , , , , ,
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