NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD for Sunday, May 9, 2021
312th Weekly Edition
This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. We hope this weekly platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we work on taking back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please join us every week. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads.
Colorado: Mondays, 7:00 PM Mountain Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern Missouri: Wednesday Evenings Kansas: Monday Evenings
Something you want to highlight? kosmail or email at randalltdkos at gmail. Twitter: @randallt
5/9/2021 1:00pm EDT
Click here for Covid-19 data from Worldometer Real Time World Statistics.
USA NC Total Cases New Cases Total Deaths New Deaths Total Recovered Active Cases
980,498 12,780 938,740 28,978
Please jump the fold, the floor is yours…
Vaccine hesitancy is rife in rural North Carolina
scharrison, BlueNC 05/07/2021
Robeson County is stuck at about 25% vaccinated:
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday more than 50% of adults 18 and older in the state have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and more than 43% of the adult population is fully vaccinated against the virus.
In Robeson County, 25.6% of adults are vaccinated, according to Bill Smith, county Health Department director. The county has 101,622 residents who are 18 years old and older. Of that population segment, 26,033 have been vaccinated. For the entire Robeson County population of 130,620 people only 20% have been vaccinated. That takes into account that almost 26,000 Robesonians are too young to get vaccinated.
We're not talking about a slight deviation from the state average, that's half of it. And this attempt to focus on young people doesn't account for that huge gap either.
Widening the school-to-prison pipeline
BlueNC 05/07/2021
NC GOP PUSHES FOR HARSHER SCHOOL SUSPENSION GUIDELINES: North Carolina Republican lawmakers want to toughen how school discipline is handled, but Democrats warn that a change could lead to more minority students being suspended and dropping out. The N.C. House approved legislation on Thursday that removes language from state law listing violations not serious enough for a long-term school suspension. That includes inappropriate language, noncompliance, dress code violations and minor physical alterations. Those four examples were added to the law in 2011 in a bipartisan effort to reduce long-term suspensions of more than 10 days. The belief was that if students were in school more, they’d be less likely to have poor grades and drop out when they fell behind.
ALAMANCE COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT SPECIFICALLY TARGETING BLACK PROTESTERS
Following three arrests Wednesday, Alamance County organizers expressed frustration with what they describe as constantly shifting, unconstitutional and discriminatory regulations concerning public demonstrations in Graham. "I'm just tired of this system," said Avery Harvey. "This whole thing is quite tiring." "Yesterday, when Avery was arrested he was standing with [a group of] white people and they came for him and only him," said Occupy Graham organizer Carey Griffin. "I'm just angry." Last week marked the first time officers arrested Occupy demonstrators as they protested the killing of Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City, N.C. In an official statement on the behalf of Occupy Graham, Griffin condemned both the arrests and what she described as biased enforcement. "We continue to see that they are targeting these two black men and black leadership in Alamance County that are part of the Black Lives Matter movement," Griffin said. "We are fed up and are no longer going to stand for it. It's uncalled for." Members of the sheriff's office and Graham police declined comment on Wednesday.
A Senate committee on Wednesday shut down public discussion of a contentious portion of the Farm Act, which coincidentally, sharply curbs public input on swine farms that install biogas systems and anaerobic digesters.
The hog and energy industries support biogas, arguing the systems help alleviate climate change by capturing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that would otherwise be released into the air.
But many environmental groups and neighbors of industrialized hog farms oppose the digesters. They say these systems don’t solve the many other problems posed by the farms: open lagoons and spray fields, both of which emit methane; the risk of degraded groundwater from applying feces and urine on farm fields; other air pollutants, including particulate matter and ammonia; and the environmental justice issues the farms raise for communities of color.
The public was allowed to comment on Tuesday before the Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee, which approved the bill and sent it on to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Under amended legislation, 8th graders will still be able to wed in North Carolina, but not buy a lottery ticket or work with commercial ovens
Dr. Judy Wiegand was only 13 years old when her mother accompanied her to get married to the 16-year-old father of her unborn child in Virginia.
Wiegand, originally from Kentucky, told Policy Watch that she was sexually assaulted when she was 13. She had a crush on a boy who asked her to have sex. Wiegand didn’t consent, but she didn’t resist, either. She simply didn’t know what sex was or what the repercussions were. Her family had never taught her about puberty, boys and sex.
Wiegand said her parents felt pressured by the church and other community members for her to marry the boy. “I don’t blame my parents,” said Wiegand, who testified before the Kentucky legislature in 2018, which then raised the minimum age to 17 with parental consent. “I blame the community and the community’s way of thinking.”
That’s why she decided to submit her testimony to the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee last week in support of a bill (Senate Bill 35) that originally raised the minimum age for marriage from 14 to 18 years old. However, several key lawmakers (none of whom ever heard Wiegand’s testimony read in committee thanks to a last minute decision to limit witness testimony on the bill to two minutes each) suddenly gutted key provisions aimed at raising the minimum legal age. Instead, the amended bill would still allow teens as young as 14 to obtain a marriage license as long as they were marrying someone no more than four years older. The bill passed the committee.
Enjoying Spring in North Carolina: 20+ Things to Do, Local Events, and More
Click for some spring travel ideas.
Thanks again, please stay safe!
