Black Raleigh Voices – “Replacing Organic Community Engagement with Synthetic Community Engagement, that is the question and who benefits”

Back in 2016 or 2017 the Raleigh City Council established a “Blue Ribbon Committee”, to investigate the current CAC structure and to make recommendations.  

Two of our very prominent African American Leaders were tasked with serving on this Committee! One who possibly had a vested interest in replacing the Organic CAC community engagement structure with his very own Synthetic 501 c4 community engagement structure.  

The other person, I would lie to think, was blinded by the spotlights and just went along with the senior member from the African American Leadership ranks.  

The Committee members and the report are available upon request submitted to the City Manager, Ruffin Hall.

I knew at the time who the leaders were on the panel! I went to several of the meetings and deposed each of them after most of the meetings and knew they were headed in a direction that I did not agree with, but what I did not know was that the one with his version of Synthetic Community Engagement was in fact planning on possibly replacing the Organic version and that anything he asked or any comment he made had to be interpreted in that light.  

What I am trying feebly to say is that I was giving him the benefit of the doubt not knowing that he could be possibly setting the table for his Synthetic Community Engagement model to prosper at the expenses of the Organic CAC structure that was populated by the local citizens with published,  transparent meetings that anyone could attend and their issues discussed and most times addressed and resolved. 

Why, you ask have I set on this for so long?  Only this week have I been made aware of this Synthetic Community Engagement entity and this is how it occurred.

I was asked to serve on the community board to help craft the propose City of Raleigh Housing Bond.  When I got the call I was actually thinking about opposing the Bond, but I had a feeling that perhaps I could do more good participating.  

During the first meeting, in light of this whole citizen engagement matter currently confronting this council, it was suggested that we have townhall meetings.  On one of the power points slides, Wake Up Wake County was listed as a facilitator.  I immediately suggested that the Raleigh Wake Citizens Association be a co-facilitator.  

I am old enough to remember when the giants in our community that were truly community engagement experts, the likes of Ralph Campbell, Sr, John W. Winters, Sr, John Greene “Top”, Rev Charles Ward, Cliffornia Wimberley, Elizabeth Cofield and Linda Coleman were pounding the pavement!

These leaders in citizen engagement reached out to any and everyone to listen and work with them, through the then very powerful organization with  a firm foothold in Organic Community Engagement, otherwise known as the Raleigh Wake Citizens Association.

So at our last Bond meeting there was a young lady sitting behind Sonia Barnes named Jasmine Childs.  I  was happy that new faces were cropping up.  So we scheduled a Townhall meeting for Community Input for March 23^rd and after the shooting near Sheetz I called a mutual associate to get Ms. Childs number.  I called her and asked her would she reach out to her peers and ask them to attend and vigorously participate in the Townhall process.  

At that time she informed me that this Synthetic Community Engagement entity, which she worked for, was not going to participate in anything that Wake Up Wake County was involved in and she went on to talk about the context of the dispute.  

When that phone call ended I called Nathan Spencer with Wake Up, Wake County and asked him what the hell was going on! He then informed me, if I was hearing correctly, that the Board Chair of this Synthetic Community Engagement entity “wanted” the City of Raleigh, Community Development Director, Larry Jarvis fired and that they were going to file a lawsuit against the City.

When I heard this, I stated you got to be kidding, I know first hand the Board Chair stock in trade is be non controversial.  

Now since the Council disbanded the CAC’s everyone wants to blame our Mayor, Mary Ann Baldwin. She is tough, but she plays her cards in the open if you have a one-on-one conversation with her) and Saige Martin the District D Council person who I finally met at Grace AME for a community meeting on the new Wake County Real Estate Property Re-evaluations.  

But readers if you read the council back and forth from that sessions you will hear that the report from the “Blue Ribbon Committee” that our Board Chair of the Synthetic Community Engagement entity, endorsed recommended the abolishment of the CAC’s.  

Now remember you have a new council, elected by the ‘YIMBY’ (yes in my back yard) proponents with a  mandate for change and a report that was endorsed by the African American Leadership not yet known by many to also be the Board Chair of a Synthetic Community Engagement entity endorsing and I can only imagine lobbying for the abolishment of what, could possibly be his competition.  

So if you want to challenge anyone give Mary Ann and Saige a break and give Courtney Crowder a call.  Ask him his views on the value of Organic Community Engagement (like CAC’s aka Community Advisory Councils) vs. state wide Synthetic Community Engagement entities.  

Ask him why he feels he needs to be the Quarterback?

Daniel Coleman

A City of Raleigh Affordable Housing story! Development, not displacement!

Take a drive through College Park and you will see how the City of Raleigh’s director for Community Development, Larry Jarvis, defines Affordable Housing. With the help of others who have volunteered their time, he will be putting together a plan for the upcoming Affordable Housing Bond proposal.

When you drive into College Park, you will see newly constructed affordable housing starting at $200,000 to-$260,000 and Market Rate housing starting at $400k and beyond the limit of the sky.

Drive down Pender Street and you will see a community that lost it’s ownership a long time ago as most of the properties now are owned by LLC’s who bought in years ago now apart of clearing out the community of raiment’s of low income housing.

College Park, once one of our City’s oldest self-made African American communities was chosen as a Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy area because of its close proximity to downtown Raleigh.

The results of Larry Jarvis Affordable housing is heart breaking when you see how under the banner of ‘Affordable Housing, this community has become one of our City’s most gentrified neighborhoods.

In addition, Larry Jarvis’ affordable housing leaves long time tax paying seniors who have lived in this community for decades seeing the value of their land and taxes double since he completed the Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy for this area.

In College Park, you’ll see a place where infrastructure was laid for the new houses, but long time homeowner only got brown water for a spell are using the same pipes for the last 50 years.

Larry Jarvis’ Affordable Housings allows for his developer friend to take a lot from the affordable housing fund to build a house for one of his employees that is certainly one of the culprits for the increase in property values for this area. The house value is accessed at $447,048 and the Market Value is probably batting up to be around $560,000.00 if sold today. The house is being accessed at $332,048 and the land is being valued at $115,000.00 according to Wake County tax info.

We’ve seen Larry Jarvis actually approve a plan that took away affordable duplexes that have provided low income housing to this area all while carrying the banner of affordable housing.

Affordable for who, Larry?

This is the man we are supposed to trust. That is going to be kinda hard.

So he has called on the people to advise the City on what type of affordable housing the bond we should focus on.

That’s fine, but how are those advisors coming up with their recommendations?

Most of them are associated with non-profits who have developed other projects for the City of Raleigh and receive annual funding from the City.

Will their priority be what the non-profits needs or what the people need?

We can only hope that he will be challenged by the people he has chosen and that their priorities will not be just determined by their employers, but those who are rapidly being displaced and those who are hanging on as we all try to find our footing in this rapidly changing housing market.

Larry Jarvis called on people he feels would build the trust of the voting electorate and people he hopes will find a happy ground and not give him any pushback. That’s well as fine as long as the happiness of a few does not silence the need of the majority of those who are most in need of affordable housing.

So we will all be watching to see how this bond proposal comes together and hope that all involved gives it their best shot and use College Park as an example of what not to do.

How did Black Wallstreet get started?

Ottowa W. Gurley took notice of the oil boom in Tulsa from his home in Perry, Oklahoma, at the turn of the century. Soon after the boom began, he sold his land in Perry and moved to Tulsa with his wife, Emma. He was now thirty-five years old and saw an economic opportunity in Tulsa’s multiracial population boom.

In Tulsa he bought a 40-acre tract of land north of the train station and built a grocery store on a dirt road in the middle of the undeveloped swath of land that sat north of the train tracks that ran across the city. He also forged an informal partnership with another black businessman named John the Baptist Stradford. Stradford was tall and sinewy, with a prominent square jaw and piercing black eyes.

Both men, with their families’ roots in enslavement, shared a distrust of white people and went by their initials, OW and JB respectively, instead of their first names. It was the custom in the South that men were addressed by their title or surname and boys by their first name.

Black adult males were frequently called by their first names by white men as a form of emasculation.
OW was a subscriber to the philosophies of Booker T. Washington, while JB was a follower of the more radical W. E. B. Du Bois. Nonetheless, their differences aside, the two men began to develop an all- black district in the unincorporated stretch of land north of Tulsa’s train station.

They subdivided the plots they owned in uptown Tulsa on the north side of a set of railroad tracks into housing and retail lots, alleys and streets that they made available only to other African Americans fleeing the lynchings and terror of the South for the economic opportunity of Tulsa’s oil boom.

On a long street near the train tracks made of dry dirt and dust Gurley built boardinghouses in square two- story brick structures near his grocery store, naming the street Greenwood Avenue, after the town in Mississippi from which many of his first residents hailed.

There he also built a colored school and an African Methodist Episcopal Church. Soon the entire north side of Tulsa was referred to as Greenwood.
Gurley also built three brick apartment buildings as well as five detached homes, which he rented out to blacks.

His crowning project was the Gurley Hotel on Greenwood Avenue, which was valued at $55,000 and rivaled the best white hotels in Tulsa. OW and JB both became rich as the oil industry boomed on in Tulsa and hundreds of African Americans emigrated to Greenwood.

In 1914, the local black newspaper, the Muskogee Scimitar, reported Gurley’s net worth to be as much as $150,000 ($3.6 million). He used his wealth to help start a black Masonic lodge in Greenwood and an employment agency, and he contributed to efforts to push back against black voter suppression in the state.

Gurley was made a sheriff’s deputy by the city of Tulsa and charged with policing the black population in Greenwood. Gurley’s wealth and coziness with the white establishment in Tulsa created resentment of him among many black members of society, who saw him as having too much power in Greenwood. Many saw Gurley as an Uncle Tom.

In the Tulsa Star, which was operated by a militant black columnist and publisher named A. J. Smitherman, Gurley was pejoratively referred to as the “king” of “little Africa.”

Following behind OW and JB, white developers began to buy up plots of land north of the railroad tracks and sell them to blacks. By 1905, the district had attracted a black doctor and a black dentist, who each established practices there. A second school, a newspaper, a Baptist church, and a hardware store were also built. Gurley and Stradford’s vision of an all- black district was taking shape. At the same time, informal segregation was occurring in Tulsa as blacks converged to the north of the tracks and whites to the south.

In the morning, dozens of Greenwood residents walked across the train tracks to domestic jobs in Tulsa; the remainder stayed behind, working at the new black businesses that were being developed in Greenwood. Alongside the professional businesses were juke joints, saloons, and gambling houses. Their black proprietors grew rich in Greenwood catering to white men’s vices.

When the Oklahoma territory achieved statehood in 1907 and segregationist Democrats, led by the white supremacist Bill “Alfalfa” Murray, took control of all levels of government, they passed laws against interracial marriage and prohibited blacks from working at high- wage jobs.

In 1910, one of the first grandfather clauses preventing blacks from voting was passed. As OW and JB watched the state, led by Alfalfa Bill, who was now Speaker of the state house of representatives, enact Jim Crow laws, they knew they had been right all along in striking out on their own.

Black districts such as Greenwood existed across the country. In Atlanta, Alonzo Herndon helped found the Sweet Auburn District, an enclave of black politicians, professors, and deans from Spelman and Atlanta universities, and preachers such as Martin Luther King Sr. Tulsa was, however, different from places such as Memphis, Atlanta, Jacksonville, St. Louis, and Chicago; Greenwood was an affluent black enclave in a white city where blacks controlled no political institutions and could rely only on one another to protect themselves from racial hostility.

Greenwood was equal parts black mecca and Wild West. Both men and women frequently carried pistols with them, and disputes were often settled by street brawls and shootouts. Believing they had left hegemony behind in the deep South, Greenwood’s residents had little tolerance for racial violence. They were quick to respond to attacks or threats from whites with punches or bullets. In one such instance in 1909, J. B. Stradford was walking along Greenwood Avenue when a white deliveryman made a pejorative remark about his dark skin. Stradford jumped on the man and threw him to the ground. He then straddled him and beat him until his face was covered with blood. A group of black men came running up and pulled him off. “If you kill him, they’ll mob you,” one said. Stradford was charged for the beating but hired an attorney and was acquitted. Later, Stradford was kicked off a train in Oklahoma for riding in the first- class car, having purchased a first- class ticket. He was asked to move to the colored car but refused. He sued in an effort to desegregate Tulsa’s train cars but lost in court, to the chagrin of Greenwood’s residents.

In Oklahoma, the forces of segregation were gaining strength. Housing segregation was legalized, banning blacks from living in white neighborhoods. The segregation of Tulsa, ironically, strengthened Greenwood’s black business district. The dollars earned by Greenwood’s black professionals as well as the black domestics who made money on the white side of town seemed never to leave Greenwood. Merchants boasted that a black dollar circulated through the black community twenty- six times before it left. As Jim Crow laws were passed throughout the country, the economic effects experienced in Greenwood were replicated, as black communities became economically independent and black merchants and businesses marketed to a captive and loyal market.

Greenwood was thriving as segregation spread across the state and the country. On Thursday nights, Greenwood was the place to be for men and women of color, as well as whites, who would slip across the train tracks without being seen by their neighbors. On Thursdays and Sundays, domestics had the day off, and on Thursday nights they came together to party late into the evening.

The cooks, butlers, chauffeurs, and laundresses who worked in the white section of Tulsa took to the streets of Greenwood to dance. The dingy roads, which the white politicians in city hall neglected to pave or light, came alive as vendors lined the sidewalks with stands that offered candy, peaches, and water melons. Men dressed in navy blue and black suits with off- white shirts and gold pocket watches, and women in silk dresses that hugged their midsections and hips, flowed into the streets as the sun went down.

There was no music, no band, just the sound of people’s feet sliding on the dirt roads. Together they moved to their own internal rhythm, hollering, shaking, swirling down the streets in a communal strut like the second line of a New Orleans parade. “It was like a pantomime, people just moving up and down,” remembered the historian John Hope Franklin, who grew up in Greenwood.

“They were going in and out of restaurants and they were just there to be seen. They were dressed in their finest, and they looked beautiful to me.”
Greenwood was not the richest black town in the United States, not even close. Annie Malone’s industrializing St. Louis, Bob Church’s blues- filled Memphis, and Alonzo Herndon’s Atlanta, filled with black colleges and businesses, all had a much larger black professional class than Greenwood did.

What made Greenwood special was that it was a place a sharecropper, an ordinary person, could go to and have a respectable life, find decent- paying work, and hope for a better life for his children.

With oilmen relocating to Tulsa, the resulting high demand for domestics enabled blacks to attain unheard- of wages. Maids earned $20 to $25 ($500 to $625) a week; chauffeurs earned $15 ($375); gardeners made $20 ($500); janitors, shoe shiners, and porters earned around $10 ($250).

Domestics made up almost two- thirds of Greenwood’s population, the remainder being professionals and business owners, whom the maids and chauffeurs hoped their children could imitate one day. The children of Greenwood’s professionals attended Columbia Law School, Oberlin College, the Hampton Institute, the Tuskegee Institute, Spelman College, and Atlanta University. Greenwood’s culture prided itself on education; the area had one of the lowest black illiteracy rates in the country and a high school graduation rate above 50 percent. This was unheard- of in other areas of the country. Tulsa was indeed a Magic City for African Americans.

The stories of Greenwood’s prosperity became legend in black America. Annie Malone set up an office to sell her hair products in the enclave and it became known as one of the country’s most economically stable black districts. Booker T. Washington gave Greenwood a new name, “Black Wall Street.”
https://www.investopedia.com/insights/origins-black-wall-street/

OUR COMMUNITIES WERE RED LINED

Redlining is when a bank or financial institution rejects loans or insurance because that area is deemed a financial risk area. Examining predominantly African-American neighborhoods in St Louis Missouri disparity is evident. Usually, criticism comes shortly after blaming current residents. After strenuous research, I was baffled when I came across the Team 4 Plan. The Team 4 Plan never passed legislation but it’s obvious it was still implemented.

The Team Four Plan was basically a plan for St. Louis City officials to deprived predominantly African-American communities of resources and allocate funds to financially stable communities. After the white flight to north county majority of banks considered St. Louis City neighborhoods as financially unstable and risky. Not because African-Americans couldn’t afford the mortgages but because they were simply a different class of people. Eventually, federal lawmakers passed a bill to make that illegal.

Current city homeowners complain that houses and buildings next to them were left to deteriorate causing their property to decline. Rapidly forcing many to sell. A term widely used during my investigation was blockbusting. Blockbusting is when a neighborhood is left to deteriorate ultimately, leading to people moving out and outside investors coming in with resources to re-fix the neighborhood and sell for higher prices. So who is really to blame for these failing communities. Please share your thoughts

Story written by Aminah S. Ali

Black Raleigh’s response to Mayor Nancy McFarlane State of the City address

By Wanda Gilbert-Coker

Mayor Nancy McFarlane stated that social media is dividing this City.

However, we the people, in the Black community, are living a different truth. We see it’s clearly gentrification and not social media that is dividing us.

A lack of low income housing, racial equity and policy accountability are dividing this City not social media.

City Administrators have approved plans from predatory developers that will continue to divide and eradicate the Black community in SouthEast Raleigh.

The Black community in SouthEast Raleigh is an open target for developers with no protections for our most vulnerable citizens.

Developers are using our tax dollars to push, force and shut us out of our own Black communities.

In fact, if gentrification/colonization is allowed to legally continue… more Black communities like Smokey Hollow, Oberlin & Fourth Ward, Worthdale, South Park, Apollo Heights will be not just divided, but completely erased off of the maps in SouthEast Raleigh, as well.

The Mayor said she fought for Dix Park because she wanted to secure an open space of leisure her grandchildren could enjoy in the future. The City of Raleigh has invested millions and will soon pour $100s of millions more into the park while we have close to 5000 children homeless in our city because she failed to provide an environment that has inclusive and equitable development in our city!

#2019StateOfTheCity #HistoryRepeatingItSelf #NegroErasure #FourthWard #SmokeyHollow
#HousingforPeopleBeforeParksForDogs
#RevitalizeDontGentrify #BlackLivesMatter
#ralpol #ncpol #ncleg #blkpol #BlackRaleigh #CityOfRaleigh #TwoRaleighs #SouthEastRaleigh
#BlackIssuesMatterToo #Colonization #Gerrymandering #AbolishGentrification

Black Raleigh Voices: The YIMBYS, the NIMBYS, local politics and YOU – by Wanda Gilbert-Coker

If you have an article for Black Raleigh voices, please email us at Blackraleighnews@gmail.com

By Wanda Gilbert-Coker

While these Raleigh YIMBYs are calling for density, ADUs and inclusionary zoning, they have never called upon themselves to stop colonizing our Black communities in SouthEast Raleigh. Instead, they supported developers such as John Kane & DHIC & etc.

These Raleigh YIMBYs have quietly sat back & watched the tearing down of low income affordable housing in our Black communities… while it makes way for their ridiculously expensive & often hideous… high rise structures.

Drive around the gentrified communities in SouthEast Raleigh and see whose yard signs are in these Raleigh YIMBY colonizer’s yards…???

These signs endorse those who are knowingly, maybe a few unknowingly, pushing forward the Raleigh YIMBYs political agenda.

Even after pushing us out… getting the houses and jobs close to the parks & downtown… the Raleigh YIMBYs & developers still want what they are now missing… control of… SouthEast Raleigh’s voting base… they want our political voice and power…

In 2021, can you imagine a white gentrifying colonizer as our City Councilperson…??? Well, they are “banking” on it.

Therefore, we as Black Liberators need to create our Anti-Colonization YIMBY organization & movement… just like those Black folk in Los Angeles did.

The original creators of the Los Angeles YIMBYs were disenfranchised Black community members, advocates, activists, small business owners, entrepreneurs & leaders etc not white Republicans or colonizers.

In SouthEast Raleigh, we need a Black Liberation housing movement… that will:

1. fight for racial equity on all housing issues…

2. that will advocate for transparency, clarity and representation in the City’s five year comprehensive plan…

3. that will create and advocate for a community benefits agreement and participatory budget…

4. that will fight against the predatory developers & lenders their political gerrymandering agenda…

5. that will fight for the reinstatement of the Fair Housing Hearing Board’s Subpoena Powers…

6. that will insist that City of Raleigh & Wake County Courts, AOC & Legal Aid and invest in the creation of a Tenant & Landlord Court…

7. that will insist on accountability and transparency from not only the City Councilors & Mayor but from all City Directors, Managers and Officials…

8. that will monitor & ensure that the City’s housing department is fairly distributing equity via contracts funding & projects to BLACK developers, contractors, builders, realtors, bankers, non profits that are committed to growing & sustaining SouthEast Raleigh’s Black communities and businesses.

Because history has shown us, that white males/people who hold political power like Brent Woodcox,…who is an Attorney for the Republicans(special interest groups & conservative developers)…whose policies & practices gerrymandered & disenfranchised Black Voters…can never ever lead or fight for the very people their legislation & lines are violating… (the most vulnerable and marginalized populations, the disenfranchised Black communities in & around SouthEast Raleigh & its Black Voters)

About the writer:

Wanda A. Gilbert-Coker, is a SouthEast Raleigh resident with experience working in a multi-cultural environment where commitment to diversity based on race, ethnic origin, gender, age, sexual orientation and physical ability is an important institutional value.

She has an extensive background in field organizing, campaigning, voter mobilization, voter registration, customer service, administrative management, legal assisting and event management.

Now, she utilizes her years of experience to mobilize, organize, empower, liberate and educate SouthEast Raleigh community members on various local and state political, social and environmental issues.

Mama Dip’s daughter ❤️ opens restaurant downtown Raleigh at the Nc Museum of History

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — A new Southern comfort food restaurant run by the granddaughter of a culinary icon is opening at the North Carolina Museum of History, the museum announced in a press release.

Sweet Tea & Cornbread Grill and Eatery will be run by Tonya Council, the granddaughter of the late Mildred Council, also known as Mama Dip.

According to the release, Tonya Council began waitressing Dip’s Country Kitchen when she was a teen and has been in the restaurant industry ever since.

Sweet Tea & Cornbread will feature “traditional Southern comfort food like barbecue, chicken salad, fried green tomatoes, and (of course) sweet tea and cornbread,” the release says.

If that’s not your style, the restaurant will offer “lighter fare like salads and grilled chicken, and family-friendly favorites like hamburgers, French fries and chicken tenders.” They will also feature daily specials and desserts.

“I’m thrilled to open the Sweet Tea & Cornbread Grill and Eatery at the N.C. Museum of History,” said Council in the release. “I grew up surrounded by classic Southern food, so the museum is the perfect venue to both continue that legacy while exploring more modern iterations of my family’s signature dishes.”

The Sweet Tea & Cornbread Grill and Eatery is located on the R Level and is open Monday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Click here for the menu and more information.

Granddaughter of culinary icon Mama Dip opens restaurant at NC Museum of History

What does Gov. Cooper’s “Death by Distribution” bill mean for the Black community?

What does the Death by Distribution law signed by Gov. Roy Cooper mean for the Black community?

One important part of the opioid issue we must understand is that it is not just about prescription drug pills or is it only a white suburban issue!

Opioids also include heroin and fentanyl, which are becoming very common street drugs among black communities throughout North Carolina and other cities in the county where there are high populations of black people.

The last round on the “War on Drugs” many of us remember is from the “Crack Era” and the 1994 Crime bill. That same strategy has morphed into what we are now seeing with the “Opioid Epidemic” and the “Death by Distribution’ law.

The same type of “war” that caused destruction of urban communities throughout America, contributed to mass incarceration and caused financial decline of black communities has reinvented itself in the form of the Opioid crisis.

So what is our individual and collective responsibility for making sure all those issues compounded with today’s issues will not become the fate of another generation of black Americans?

What we saw with the Crack epidemic, is the reality today, of a growing number of people being affected by the Heroine (opioid) epidemic. In cities and towns throughout North Carolina, young black men and women growing up with limited opportunities to support themselves. We see them get pulled into the life of selling drugs, but now, instead of 3 strikes, this new law has the potential of giving them up to 40 years in prison because they sold drugs to someone who died from an overdose.

“The law will allow prosecutors to charge drug dealers with murder. Penalties would include a Class C felony of death by distribution of certain controlled substances and a Class B2 felony of aggravated death by distribution of certain controlled substances.

The “certain controlled substance,” according to the bill, includes “any opium, opiate, or opioid; any synthetic or natural salt, compound, derivative, or preparation of opium, opiate, or opioid; cocaine .. methamphetamine … or a mixture of one or more of these substances.”

According to the bill, someone would be guilty of death or aggravated death by distribution of certain control substances if the following requirements are met:

The person unlawfully sells and delivers at least one certain controlled substance to the victim.The ingestion of the certain controlled substance or substances causes the death of the user. The person’s unlawful sale and delivery of the certain controlled substance or substances was the proximate cause of the victim’s death.The person did not act with malice.”

So what do we do?

We need to make sure our people know what this law means and admit that addiction to opioids affect us too.

We should all make an effort to learn how to reverse a opioid overdose with narcan, know where users can get clean needles, know what resources are out there for treatments, know what resources are out there for young people and old to help them find other options aside from being a dealer to support themselves and make sure that if they understand by choosing to use drugs that contain opioids, they are playing a chance game of death with their lives.

We have to look at all the areas this crisis is having on our communities and define for ourselves what we need specifically to #fixit.

Not only are we to expect incarceration numbers to increase for another generations, senseless death by drug overdoses that could often times been prevented , but we have to consider how this crisis will impact recidivism rates of users along with the new cases of HIV tied to intravenous drug use.

People with mental health and substance use disorders are often in the cycle of being in and out of jail. It can be difficult for someone to get better when floating between jails, homeless shelters, group homes and emergency departments. Make sure you know also what resources are available locally (Sheriff Baker) to help people leaving prisons and jails to help reduce recidivism.

We also need to pressure our lawmakers to make sure they are working equally hard to break up the chains of commerce bringing these drugs to our community by any means necessary.

Most of all, let’s look at what this new phase of the “War on Drugs” means for us and make sure the “Death by distribution” law will not punish the wrong people. Let’s not give them any more reasons to build more prisons.

And on top of all of that, Doctors are seeing black and white!

North Carolina received $54,000 in federal grant funding to address the opioid crisis. Money that should cover people across the state from every race and socio-economic background, but the majority of people benefiting from the grant treatment are white.

Of those served by the grant, (9,085 (or 88%) were white, while 775 (or 7.5%) were Black. Fewer than 1% were Native Americans.

In a recent Cureus medical journal article, authors of “Racial Bias in the US Opioid Epidemic: A Review of the History of Systemic Bias and Implications for Care” conducted a literature review of dozens of published studies and attempted to explain the discrepancies in access to treatment.

“Although public and medical professional attitudes have shifted since the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s to a treatment-focused resolution, similar issues regarding care equity remain,” the study authors wrote.

“One of the most significant obstacles that minority groups face in opioid abuse treatment is limited access to qualified healthcare providers who can assist with pharmacological treatment opportunities and medication-assisted treatments (MATs).”

We have a lot of work to do to make sure our people don’t fall victim to another ‘War on Drugs’. Our knowledge is our defense. Technology is our tool. Let’s use it.

Why I support the #ADOS movement

Why do I support the #ADOS movement?

Any one who thinks reparations is just about cutting a group of people a check is wrong. It’s about more than that! It’s about making an atonement for wrongs that systematically prevented our ability to conquor our dreams!

#Reparations is about ownership + production in every facet of what makes this country thrive! It’s about economic justice for the American Descendents of Slaves who have been systematically delayed in the attainment the American dream!

Financially, the bottom 50% of Black America is worth less than a $1.

We didn’t arrive to this point in 2019 with all our troubles on our own free will or as a collective goal.

Consider the times we did have political power and remember how it was destroyed along with the political voices who were not afraid to fight for us after 1865 silenced after reconstruction.

Remember when we had thriving and independent cities like Tulsa Ok or Wilmington, NC that were destroyed.

Think about the creation of black wealth through homeownership was hindered because of redlining and how jobs were taken away because of industrialization.

Consider how both took away our ability to retain and maintain an economy that we could internally create jobs and opportunities for our own people like everyone else is able to do.

A Lot that has been done over the last 400 years to account for our present state. So much that a check alone cannot simply fix.

Reparations for slavery is something that is owed to us and promised and it’s time America pays it debt.

Reparations will give us a chance to have equal footing in this country because if something is not done, we will always be dependent on others and never a self sustaining community able to take care of our own needs!

We have been fighting for the pursuit of liberty and justice for all since the American Revolutionary War and we all know any kind of justice begins with the ability to provide for oneself economically.

J. Cole to launch music festival on land that was once a slave plantation now a destination park in Raleigh, NC as low income residents struggle through gentrification and displacement!

J. Cole announced that he would be launching a music festival that will take place in Raleigh at Dix Park. The festival is called Dreamville and will feature many artists on his record label Dreamville records. But the decision by J. Cole to have his festival at Dix Park raises concern because the land that Dix Park sits on was once a 5,000-acre slave plantation in which unimaginable violations of human dignity took place.

J. Cole’s festival may be called Dreamville, but for the slaves who worked on the land in which his festival will be held, it was a nightmare. It also raises concern that the proceeds from this event will partly go to the Dix Park Conservancy, an organization that supports commercial development on the park which in turn will affect the land price and affordability of housing surrounding the park. But to go even deeper into why this is bad we need to look at the people who have ties with the development of Dix Park and their historical relationship with Slavery and White Supremacy.

For example, the man who owned the land when it was a slave plantation was Theopolis Hunter Sr. This man played a key role in establishing White Supremacy in Raleigh’s foundation and he even played a role in establishing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as he was on the Board of Trustees during its foundation.

Why are the ties with UNC important? As it so happens, UNC is working with the Dix Park Conservancy to offer them ideas on how to use the park. In fact, earlier this month a meeting was held at the City of Raleigh museum to discuss how the park site can be used. And featured a presentation from students enrolled in UNC’s graduate school program dealing with urban planning. One suggestion that stood out called for building a hotel like the 21C in Durham or the Aloft hotel near N.C State. This concept was further explained in detail from a UNC graduate who is now an Urban planner for Empire Properties, which owns some of downtown Raleigh’s most popular businesses and has their founder Greg Hatem, as a member of the Master Plan Executive Committee for Dix Park.

In other words, the same school that benefitted from the contributions of the man who owned slaves on the land Dix Park now lies on, has people who support building expensive hotels on that same site.

A closer look should also be given to the people who sit on the Master Plan Executive Committee for Dix Park. One honorable mention would be Raleigh City Council representative, Kay Crowder, who has said publicly that she is a direct descendent of the same Hunter family who owned slaves on that land.

The fact is that most people who play a key role in shaping the park, support the growth that is happening in Raleigh with little consideration of the chain of effects this rapid development is having on some of our most vulnerable residents. With rent rising, and poverty going up, new houses are being built and neighborhoods are being gentrified overnight, the city has invested more than $50 million dollars for a urban park as child homelessness in our city has risen 50% over the past few years.

Dix Park itself reflects the city’s priorities in putting the interests of developers over people. And while J. Cole probably did not know the site of the park was a plantation or has some many oppressive qualities to low income persons living in Raleigh, it does not do good to ignore what the site was. One could also argue that events such as this only make the kind of people in the same economic class as those who owned slaves 160 years ago, only feel good about themselves. Because it helps support their “vision” of what that land can be. It would be like Kanye West doing a concert to raise money for people like Trump on land that was once a plantation.

I think more should be done to raise awareness of the history of that land and to preserve the memory of what happened there, similar to how Germany treats the sites where the Holocaust took place at. The land should be a place to pay respects to the victims of slavery not a playground for wealthy developers.

About the writer:
John is a writer born and raised in Raleigh, N.C he has written about politics and International affairs since 2011. He previously worked for Examiner.com and is now a freelancer. In 2012 and 2014 he covered the United Nations General assembly meeting. He is also passionate about local affairs and what happens in Raleigh.