Opinion

Opinion Roundup: Protesters arrested at General Assembly, funding school nurses, gun storage laws and more

Tuesday, May 22, 2018 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: Poor People's Campaign protestors arrested at General Assembly, state to overhaul formula for funding school nurses, Constitution Party earns spot on ballot, NC food icon 'Mama Dip' passes away, how schools are wasting some of their best talent and more.

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The Poor People's Campaign outside state Sen. Phil Berger's office
Tuesday, May 22, 2018 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: Poor People’s Campaign protestors arrested at General Assembly, state to overhaul formula for funding school nurses, Constitution Party earns spot on ballot, NC food icon 'Mama Dip' passes away, how schools are wasting some of their best talent and more.
LEGISLATURE 2018
Signs of the times at the legislature (Wilmington Star-News) -- Thousands of N.C. teachers marched last week in Raleigh and elsewhere, urging more money for public schools, more funds for school construction, support staff, school counselors, updated textbooks and other useful things. And what did they get? A new sign, reading “In God We Trust,” somewhere in the school hall, in the cafeteria or, well, someplace.
JOHN TOMASIC: Poor People’s Campaign Protesters Land in Jail in State Capitals Across the Nation (Route 50 reports) -- Protesters continue to march this week in an updated version of the Poor People’s Campaign headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. On Monday, police arrested participants in Washington, D.C., and in states across the country, including North Carolina, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. This is the second week of the planned six-week action, which aims to draw attention to the way politics and public policy continue to fuel poverty, violence and pollution in ways that disproportionately affect minorities.
TRAVIS FAIN: Chanting protesters arrested at General Assembly (WRAL-TV reports) -- Singing, changing, reading a list of demands, the N.C. People's Campaign demanded meetings with lawmakers but wound up getting arrested.
GARY ROBERTSON: 13 protesters arrested at N Carolina Legislative Building (AP reports) -- More than a dozen people were arrested Monday inside North Carolina's Legislative Building while demonstrating against Republican policies in the state and the nation and supporting a long list of liberal-leaning demands.
LAURA LESLIE: State to overhaul formula for funding school nurses (WRAL-TV reports) -- The state is poised to make changes in how it pays for school nurses.
What's the future for net neutrality in N.C.? (Charlotte Observer reports) -- NC Sen. Jay Chaudhuri wants to ensure open broadband internet access. His bill would essentially restore in N.C. the net neutrality rules in place under former President Barack Obama's administration.
CAMPAIGN 2018
BILL HAND: Constitution Party earns spot on N.C. ballot (New Bern Sun Journal reports) -- The Constitution Party is coming to a ballot near you. Party member and advocate Dennis Haggett of Bridgeton announced that the fledgling, conservative party obtained the needed number of signatures to get on the state ballot in November at 10:59 p.m. on Tuesday. That magic number was 11,925 – based on .25 percent of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election. The total number of signatures the party collected was 12,557, of which about 700 came from Craven County.
POLICY & POLITICS
ADEEL HASSAN: Can Parents Be Charged for Failing to Keep Their Guns Locked Up? (New York Times reports) -- Texas is one of 14 states with a “negligent storage law,” which can make gun-owning parents criminally liable for crimes committed with their firearms by their under 16-year-old children. In addition to Texas, versions of the law are on the books in North Carolina, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia. The laws generally apply when a gun owner “knows or reasonably should know” that a child is likely to gain access to the firearm, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
EMERY DALESIO: Autopsies describe fatal prison attack NC hasn't detailed (AP reports) -- Inmates used hammers to crush skulls and scissors to spear flesh when they killed four employees last fall in the bloodiest prison escape attempt in N.C. history, medical examiners determined.
TAYLOR KNOPF: NC Prison Breaks Its Own Rules for Suicide Prevention (N.C. Health News reports) -- Prison staff recently held an inmate with mental illnesses in solitary confinement for more than 150 days despite the Department of Public Safety’s policy to limit restrictive housing of prisoners with such diagnoses to one month. And this issue appears to be widespread.
HARVARD JENNINGS: Our civil war has to end (Wilmington Star-News column) -- Republican leaders, neo-conservatives, tea partiers and separatists, please let our ongoing civil war end! Please let the America defined by our Constitution come to fruition. I believe you have divided this nation in every possible way -- by race, gender, religion, class, caste, lifestyle and migrant status. So much for E Pluribus Unum.
Teacher, ex-mayor, running for GOP lieutenant gov. nomination (AP reports) – Deborah Cochran, former mayor of Mount Airy, says she's running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2020.
RODGER MULLEN: Hope Mills votes to censure mayor pro tem (Fayetteville Observer reports) -- By a 3-2 vote, the Hope Mills Board of Commissioners voted to censure Mayor Pro Tem Mike Mitchell. The vote came after Mitchell raised concerns about some members’ involvement in a private Facebook group called Hope Mills Chatter.
A week to celebrate a storied division (Fayetteville Observer) -- Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Ferrusi, the senior enlisted leader of the 82nd Airborne Division, nailed it. It was, as he said, “a massive display of American power represented by American sons and daughters and the premier Airborne division in the world,” It wasn’t a massive parachute drop — although that’s plenty impressive too, and we’ll see one later this week
EDUCATION
Report blasts plan to let towns open charter schools: 'A nightmare for taxpayers' (Charlotte Observer reports) -- A consultant hired by Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools says a bill that would allow the town of Matthews to open its own charter school is "fatally flawed." Critics say the could lead to the breakup of CMS.
Long past time for action (Winston-Salem Journal) -- One of these times it’s going to be North Carolina. It might be a school in Charlotte or Raleigh. It might be one in Davie County, or Surry. Maybe Winston-Salem.
How schools are wasting some of their best talent (Charlotte Oberver column) -- CMS and other NC schools have too few counselors, social workers and psychologists. Students are under pressure and need more help.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
JENNIFER ALLEN: Oyster Restoration Partners Detail Progress (Coastal Review reports) -- Groups and agencies that have joined in a public-private partnership to restore and expand oyster habitat in N.C. hosted a behind-the-scenes tour in Morehead City.
JEFF HAMPTON: Popular OBX fishing site of Cape Point closed for first time in nearly 2 years (Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports) -- A buffer around a nesting pair of least terns caused the closure.
… AND MORE
KATHY HANRAHAN: NC food icon 'Mama Dip' passes away (WRAL-TV obit) -- One of North Carolina's most beloved chefs and restaurant owners, Mildred Cotton Council aka "Mama Dip," has died.
MARTHA WAGGONER & ALLEN BREED: Restaurant owner 'Mama Dip' dies at age 89 (AP obit) -- A North Carolina restaurant owner known as much for generosity as her fried chicken has died at the age of 89.
DREW JACKSON: Mildred Council, owner of famed Mama Dip's Kitchen in Chapel Hill, 89 (Durham Herald-Sun obit) --Mildred Council, owner of the famed Mama Dip's Kitchen in Chapel Hill, has died. She was an icon of Southern cooking, who was known not just for her famous food but for her activism and community service.
Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Barrier-Breaking Lawyer, Dies at 104 (New York Times obit) – Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree’s victory in the Crump case was not her first noteworthy accomplishment, and it was by no means her last. Born to a family of slender means in the Jim Crow South, Ms. Roundtree — or the Rev. Dovey Johnson Roundtree, as she was long formally known — was instrumental in winning a spate of advances for blacks and women in midcentury America, blazing trails in the military, the legal profession and the ministry. … The second of four daughters of James Eliot Johnson, a printer, and Lela (Bryant) Johnson, a domestic, Dovey Mae Johnson was born in Charlotte, N.C., on April 17, 1914. Her father died in the influenza epidemic of 1919, and Dovey, her mother and sisters were taken in by her maternal grandparents, the Rev. Clyde L. Graham, a minister in the A.M.E. Zion Church, and Rachel Bryant Graham.
JEFF HAMPTON: Plymouth embraces wild, remote location with national bear day and paw print logos (Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports) -- The Black Bear Fest expects to draw more than 20,000 on June 2 and 3.

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