r/TrueCarolina

At a meeting filled with speakers criticizing the Greensboro City Manager’s unexplained choice of an external hire for Police Chief, one speaker pointed out the common interests of City Council.

Even new councillors such as Irving Allen and Cecile “CC” Crawford—who ran on progressive platforms, with backgrounds in community organizing against police brutality—refused to dissent from supporting the City Manager’s unpopular choice. Luis Medina noted they have apparently surmounted their differences to achieve a remarkable level of solidarity.

All nine councillors consolidated to support the new police chief, including Tammi Thurm and Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter.

A lifetime ago, in 2019, Thurm and Abuzuaiter voted to remove their now-colleague Irving Allen from the Police Community Review Board, “for reasons.” Back then, Allen was willing to criticize government abdication and opacity. (See Ian McDowell, I Ain’t Resisting, p.191.)

Medina claimed the recent activities of city council demonstrate a ruling-class solidarity, and called for a working-class solidarity to combat it.

Though speakers are generally granted a few seconds’ grace on their allotted time, Medina’s microphone was cut exactly at the 3-minute mark. The mayor proceeded to demand that he be escorted out, though he was already walking away. It seems the mayor realized her demand was excessive, as she immediately began justifying it to council members:

“He hit the podium,” Abuzuaiter claimed. “I’m not gonna put up with it.”

Whether “it” referred to threats to the safety of the podium, or something else, remained unspecified.

source: Battleground

With all the news on various states gerrymandering their house districts, I wanted to see how hard it was to NOT gerrymander and have fair districts. So, I attempted and made one for NC and its 14 house seats. I followed the following rules as I built out the map. Link to map: https://districtr.org/plan/382147

1. All 14 districts must contain approximately the same population. No one districts population can deviate more than 10% from the goal of 745k per district. (745K comes from the 2020 census population for NC divided by 14)
2. A county cannot be split into two separate districts, except for Wake and Mecklenburg County. The population of Meck and Wake County will be split equally into two separate districts.
3. The counties that make up a district must be contiguous

Let me know if you think it is fair … or not. What would you change? Will the US ever ban gerrymandering so bored people online stop making fake maps?

Concern over data centers continues to dominate local government forums.

Data centers use increasing amounts of land, electricity, and water. Residents are seeing unprecedented electricity rate hikes and levels of drought in North Carolina, at the same time data centers are proliferating. Governor Josh Stein has said data centers are partially to blame for rising energy prices, stating they account for 80 percent of additional demand Duke Energy expects. Data centers also pollute environments with toxic waste, light, noise, and heat. Research shows data centers raise surrounding temperatures by 4 degrees, and use as much water as entire towns.

In North Carolina, half a dozen towns along with six counties have declared moratoria on data center construction. Greensboro has not, and the position of city councillors on data centers is unclear.

In response to speaker Del Stone at the last city council meeting, five councillors commented on the concerns raised. Read their responses here: https://battlegrounddrafts.substack.com/p/city-councillors-respond-to-request

Speakers packed city hall this Monday to denounce the selection of out-of-town Police Chief Kamran Afzal to head the Greensboro Police Department, just over a week before he is set to start the job.

Speakers were united in their demand that City Council rescind the decision. 

Many expressed feelings of betrayal from city councillors who won last November’s elections on promises of “people-centered action,” “prevention instead of over-policing,” and “people-powered leadership that builds from the ground up.” Though many of the freshly elected city councillors have backgrounds in community organizing and activism against police brutality, the whole of City Council has either tacitly or explicitly approved of City Manager Trey Davis’s choice to hire a four-time police chief from out of town, with a dismal record on public safety. 

For instance: data on Dayton’s traffic stops in 2025 under Chief Afzal shows significant racial disparities. Black drivers—despite making up 40% of the population—were stopped more than twice as often as white drivers, who constitute half the population.

And, just two months ago, Chief Afzal’s police killed a Dayton resident who was homeless, Reginald Thomas, after detaining him during a regulatory stop for not having a bike light. Speakers connected Thomas’s killing to victims of GPD violence including Marcus Deon Smith, Joseph Lopez, and Duke Crenshaw. 

Others mentioned that City Council has authority over the City Manager, making their deference to his selection of Chief Afzal unacceptable in the face of mass public disapproval. 

The meeting concluded with councillors saying they heard the concerns and they appreciated people expressing themselves, while speaking as if the decision for the new chief of police was solidified. As the session adjourned, chants of “rescind the offer now” filled the hall. 

Source: Battleground

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deals\_Gap,\_North\_Carolina

LSG Sky Chefs, a prominent global catering service provider to major airlines, has come under scrutiny for allegedly engaging in unfair labor practices. Employees have reported instances of wage theft at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) Sky Chefs flight kitchen, where they claim that their wages were docked for break times whether or not they were given 30 minutes free from all job duties, resulting in significant financial distress for many workers and their families.