Today, Friday, August 18, 2017, South Main in Durham, NC, is closed to traffic. Civil employees have been sent home. Some banks and many businesses in the downtown area have closed early. And a group of people have gathered on the Courthouse lawn. All this because of the possibility that a group of White Supremacists would march there at noon today. That hasn’t happened yet and now the news is they will march at 4pm. The official news from City Hall is that no permit was obtained by anyone to…
Post-Charlottesville: What Trump Said, and When
When President Trump stepped to a White House lectern on Monday and rebuked the instigators of the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., that had erupted two days before, he was essentially doing what he’s said to do often on the golf course – taking a mulligan. This time, he got off a pretty good shot. But wouldn’t you know it: He shanked his next one out of bounds. So much for the brief redemption. Trump’s first drive, as it were, had landed way over yonder in the poison ivy. That…
Response to the Violence in Charlottesville
Before I came to call the great state of North Carolina home, I was a proud Virginian for the first twenty-six years of my life. I grew up in a small, rural town 90 miles south of Charlottesville and spent some of my most formative years just on the other side of the mountain at James Madison University in Harrisonburg. What happened in Charlottesville this weekend is deeply disturbing. I have walked the streets of Charlottesville with friends and family many times and this weekend white supremacists clenched torches and…