NORTH CAROLINA OPEN THREAD Sunday, April 16th, 2023
WEEKLY EDITION #412
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 take back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please stop by each week. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads. If you are interested in starting your own state blog, weekly to occasionally, we will list your work below.
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
Please jump the fold for links to North Carolina news and opinion. Today’s diary features the work of Facing South and NC Newsline, formerly NC Policy Watch. I found these interesting and useful, I hope you do as well.
Who gets to rest in peace? The complications of repatriating remains for Southeastern tribes
Facing South, Maydha Devarajan, 4/14/2023
On a Saturday afternoon in late March, a small group of Native American tribal members gathered at an auction house in rural Mebane, North Carolina, protesting the sale of a 600-year-old human skull. Local law enforcement had been made aware of the auction just days prior but determined that the sale didn’t violate state or federal law, as reported by The News & Observer. The day before the planned sale, a member of the state’s Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation had created a TikTok video that drew thousands of views, fueling outrage and demands to pull the skull from the auction.
Tribal members were ultimately able to halt the sale of the skull, and its owners have since indicated their interest in repatriation. But the incident underscores complications surrounding protections for Native American burial remains in Southeastern states.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) passed by Congress in 1990 sets out a process for federal agencies and museums that receive federal funding to repatriate cultural items — including human remains and funerary objects — to Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. But the landmark legislation doesn’t apply to tribes without federal recognition, leaving many in the Southeast — most of which have only state recognition — to the mercy of institutions that may or may not be willing to engage them in the repatriation process while grappling with laws that vary from state to state.
More than three decades after the passing of NAGPRA, hundreds of thousands of Native American remains have not yet been returned to their descendants or laid to rest but instead are locked in storage facilities and research labs across the country. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned electric utility corporation, maintains the largest collection held by a federal agency. The agency only recently completed a NAGPRA inventory of the remains of nearly 5,000 Native Americans it removed from Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky, with repatriation set to begin later this month.
INSTITUTE INDEX: Southern states weaken gun laws following Nashville school massacre
Facing South, Sue Sturgis, 4/14/2023
Number of people who died in a March 27 shooting at The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in the Tennessee capital of Nashville, including three 9-year-olds: 6
Number of rounds of ammunition the shooter — carrying an AR-15 military-style rifle, a 9 mm Kel-Tec SUB2000 pistol caliber carbine, and a 9 mm Smith & Wesson M&P Shield EZ 2.0 handgun— fired before being fatally shot by police: 152
On average, number of people who are shot to death every year in Tennessee: 1,385
Rank of Tennessee among states with the highest rates of gun violence: 10th
Rank of Tennessee among states with the strongest gun laws, according to Everytown for Gun Safety: 29th
Of the 21 states with gun laws weaker than Tennessee's, number that are in the South: 6*
A week after the Nashville shooting, number of area students who walked out of class and marched on the state Capitol to demand stronger gun laws: over 1,000
Rather than heeding that call, date on which Tennessee's Republican-controlled House instead expelled two Black Democratic members for violating chamber rules by vocally joining the nonviolent protest while standing at the House well — but not the white Democratic member who joined them: 4/6/2023
Thirteen more dates and numbers follow in this index.
SPLC Report: Seven Confederate monuments removed in NC last year, 173 remaining
NC Newsline, Joe Killian, 4/14/2023
North Carolina was among the states that removed the most Confederate monuments and symbols last year, according to new data from the Southern Poverty Law Center. But just seven such symbols were removed, according to the SPLC; 173 remain across the state.
This week, as the North Carolina Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities held a symposium on the importance of removing monuments to the Confederacy, the SPLC urged states to do better.
“Despite progress in removing Confederate iconography from the American landscape, a critical part of telling the hard history of slavery and racism in this country, Southern states continue to block the removal of Confederate symbols,” said Susan Corke, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, in a statement on the group’s new data.
The group has been documenting the removal of Confederate symbols since 2015’s mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, where Dylann Roof killed 9 people. The shooting energized a renewed movement to remove symbols of the Confederacy from public places, rename buildings and events honoring the Confederacy and enslavers, and illuminate the true history of these symbols.
A total of 482 Confederate symbols have been removed, renamed or relocated from public places since 2015 — 48 of them in 2022. For the third straight year, Virginia removed the most — 13. Louisiana and North Carolina followed, removing seven each. New York and Texas each removed five.
NC CRED: The harms inflicted by Confederate monuments — and why they should be toppled
NC Newsline, Keylan Lyons, 4/14/2023
Every October, Ronda Taylor-Bullock’s hometown would come alive on Goldston’s Old Fashion Day. Vendors would line the streets of the small rural community, selling wares and performing music. But there was one booth that wasn’t for her, a Black child. It made her feel unsafe, even though no adults had explicitly told her to stay away.
It was filled with Confederate memorabilia.
“I knew in my body, it was time to turn around and go back,” she said. “We carry history in our bodies. My ancestors told me, ‘It’s time to go back.’ As a child, I knew that.”
Taylor-Bullock, the co-founder and lead curator of we are, who gives children and adults anti-racist training, was one of four panelists convened Thursday morning at Shaw University by the North Carolina Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System, known as NC CRED. The goal of the all-day symposium was to help attendees grapple with the harms inflicted by the Confederate monuments so that they can understand why they should be removed.
“In this battle for justice and equality and freedom, sometimes you just have to name it,” said James Williams Jr., the board chair of NC CRED. “And we are here today to help name ‘harm’ as another reason that these monuments should be removed.”
Rep. Tricia Cotham seals GOP move with bill giving lawmakers more control over charter schools
NC Newsline, Greg Childress, 4/14/2023
Former Democratic lawmaker Tricia Cotham sealed her move to the Republican Party this week by co-sponsoring a bill that would remove the State Board of Education from the charter school approval process. Under House Bill 618, that approval would be handed over to a new Charter School Review Board, whose members must be “charter school advocates in North Carolina.” The new review board would replace the Charter School Advisory Board.
Most members of the new review board would be chosen by the General Assembly, which is currently led by state Republicans. The review board’s membership would include the State Superintendent of Public Instruction or a designee, four members appointed by the House, four by the Senate and two members appointed by the state board. The state board’s appointments to the new panel must come from outside its own ranks.
As Newsline previously reported, HB 618 first appeared as a provision in the House budget. Jamey Falkenbury, director of government affairs for the state board and N.C. Department of Public Instruction, discussed it last week during the state board’s monthly meeting.
The state board would establish rules for the operation and approval of charter schools, allocate funding, hear appeals generated by review board decisions, and ensure financial and academic accountability.
Thank you for reading and contributing, wishing all a good week.