North Carolina
Anti-poverty advocates call on lawmakers to change course during legislative short session • NC Newsline
On Wednesday, nearly 200 supporters of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign traveled to Raleigh to remind lawmakers returning for the legislative short session that low-income voters make up more than 41% of the state’s electorate.
If low-income eligible voters voted at the same rate as higher-income voters, campaign leaders warned, they could control the outcome of elections.
“That is a sleeping giant that is ready to be activated,” said Rev. Rob Stephens, Repairers of the Breach North Carolina Organizing Committee coordinator and member of the NC Poor People’s Campaign. “If we could just turn out 19% of that group who haven’t voted before, we could fundamentally shift the entire landscape of elections in North Carolina.
Rev. Wayne Wilhelm, one of the chairs of the NC Poor People’s Campaign, said lawmakers need to know that North Carolinians are watching them.
“Your vote is your voice, but showing up before the vote lets them know we’re serious about the changes we need to see,” Wilhelm said. “Poverty is a policy choice. To allow poverty to continue when there is really more than enough for everyone is a moral failure and we will stand up and call it out.”
Before marching to the Legislative Building, speakers rallied outside of the State Capitol to criticize the Republican-led General Assembly for what they called excessive tax cuts, spending millions of tax dollars on private school vouchers, and not increasing the minimum wage in more than a decade.
Instead of addressing the crises of poverty and low wages, lack of healthcare, underfunded public education, voter suppression and environmental collapse, the General Assembly slashed taxes for the wealthy and corporations, promoted a culture of fear and hate, failed to fully fund public education, and cut protections for the most vulnerable North Carolinians, the speakers said.
They also took lawmakers to task for not supporting legislation to improve pay for child care workers. The state will soon spend the last of $1.3 billion in federal grant money that helped child care providers make it through the pandemic. Some of the money was used to increase worker pay.
NC Newsline’s Lynn Bonner reported recently that a February North Carolina Child Care Resource and Referral Council survey found that 88% of childcare providers will need to increase parent fees when the federal money runs out. Forty percent said they would have to raise parent fees immediately. About half said they would lose administrative and teaching staff and about two-thirds said they would have trouble hiring new employees with comparable experience and education.
Nearly one-third of the programs surveyed said they would have to close within a year. That’s equivalent to more than 1,500 programs and close to 92,000 childcare and early education slots.
During the 2023 legislative long session, lawmakers took no action on legislation asking for $300 million this fiscal year to extend the compensation grant portion of the federal Childcare Stabilization Grant. Supporters said the money would reduce teacher turnover, improve the quality of child care and keep rates affordable for parents.
Without state funding, Emma Biggs, a Charlotte child care advocate and provider, said the coming year will be a tough one for families.
Biggs said all of the state’s 100 counties are considered “child care deserts,” meaning there are not enough child care centers or teachers to accommodate children and families.
“We don’t have a shortage of children,” Biggs said. “We have a shortage of teachers due to a broken system where parents cannot afford to pay more, and teachers cannot afford to make less.”
On Wednesday, Gov. Roy Cooper’s recommended budget for fiscal year 2024-25 called for a $745 million investment in child care and early education. The investment would help to avoid the “fiscal cliff in child care funding” and keep child care centers open with $200 million for Child Care Stabilization Grants. It would also provide $128.5 million for child care subsidies to increase reimbursement rates for providers in rural and low-wealth communities.
Private school vouchers were also a top target for speakers at Wednesday’s event. Last year, lawmakers expanded the state’s controversial voucher program to make it accessible to the state’s wealthiest families. The program was created a decade ago to help low-income families in struggling schools pay private school tuition.
Yevonne Brannon, a Public Schools First NC board member, noted that House Speaker Tim Moore said he will ask for $300 million more in the short session to fund private school vouchers.
“They had already planned to spend $5 billion on school vouchers over the next few years, so that’s not enough,” Brannon said. “Now they’re going to make sure that the wealthy families — that $300 million is not for low-income or struggling children — it is for wealth families that are already in private school and can afford private school.”
Sangria Noble, an organizer for the NC Poor People’s Campaign, said poverty is a policy choice. For example, she noted, that the state hasn’t increased the minimum wage since 2008.
“We cannot survive here off of $7.25,” Noble said. “We will end up homeless. We will end up dead.”
Noble was one of the activists assisting unhoused people forced to move from an encampment off of U.S. 70 near Garner on Tuesday. The inhabitants were ordered to move or face arrest after police deemed the encampment unsafe, citing an uptick in crime.
Noble spoke with one man and his pregnant girlfriend who lived in the encampment. He told her that he could probably save enough money in three months working a $10 an hour job to find a place for him and his girlfriend to live, but only after he pays a fine for loitering for sleeping outside.
She said homelessness, poverty and low wages all go hand-in-hand.
“We don’t really have a solution for that man right now,” Noble said. “It looked like the solution yesterday would have been jail. If helped had not come down for protection, it would have been jail.”
In a statement, Bishop William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign said the United States loses 800 people a day to poverty-related causes.
“Poverty by America is an abolishable and unnecessary reality that can be eradicated by enacting policies that address the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of healthcare, militarism, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism,” Barber said. “When our politics makes it easier to get a gun than to get food, quality education, living wages, or healthcare, then there’s a problem with the soul of our nation.”
MACON, Ga. (WBTV) – A North Carolina man is in custody and federally charged with allegedly mailing an antisemitic threat to a Georgia rabbi.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia, Ariel E. Collazo Ramos, 31, of High Point, is charged with one count of mailing threatening communications. The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury on April 9 and was unsealed on May 2. Collazo Ramos was taken into custody at his High Point home Thursday.
His initial appearance will occur in the Middle District of North Carolina at a time determined by the court.
According to the indictment, Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar of Temple Beth Israel in Macon received a threatening postcard at her home via the U.S. Postal Service on Feb. 1, 2024, allegedly from Collazo Ramos. On one side of the postcard, there was a handwritten message: “Is there a child rape, torture, and murder tunnel under your house? We have the Zyklon B. Use Code “GASTHEJEWS” for 10% off!” The reverse side of the postcard displayed a hand-drawn image depicting a purported Jewish man wearing a rat costume and the words “JEWS ARE RATS.”
If convicted, Collazo Ramos faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The case is being investigated by FBI.
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Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina, is in an ongoing battle with the IRS and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Board of Trustees after the historically Black school’s previous finance department “mismanaged” a $34 million budget, according to university officials.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), both public and private, have been underfunded due to lower endowments, less alumni support and state and federal underinvestment.
Recently, HBCUs have faced several challenges. During a funding crisis, Tennessee State University had its board stripped away in a complete overhaul by state lawmakers. In Mississippi, lawmakers proposed a bill that would have shut down the state’s only public HBCUs.
Now teachers and staff at Saint Augustine’s have not received a salary for three months following the institution’s plunge into debt of $32 million. The dire financial situation places the university at a high risk of losing its accreditation, a crucial aspect of its credibility and reputation.
“We’re still unpacking, but the biggest piece starts with our missing audits from 2021, 2022 and 2023,” Saint Augustine’s Interim President Marcus H. Burgess told ABC News in an interview in March. “A $34 million budget. There was only $130,000 that can be accounted for. So a new finance team was brought in, and they “literally had to recreate all of those financials. And it took them about two years to do that.”
Saint Augustine’s University accreditation appeal was denied.
ABC News
Christine Johnson McPhail, the previous president of Saint Augustine’s University (SAU), was terminated on Dec. 3, 2023, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Board of Trustees voted unanimously to remove Saint Augustine’s status as an accredited institution. On Feb. 20, the school had an appeal hearing with the Board of Trustees. The committee that heard that appeal rendered the decision to fire McPhail.
ABC News contacted McPhail’s attorney, who declined to speak on the financial issues at SAU.
Dr. Christine Johnson McPhail is the 13th President of Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, N.C., March 18, 2022.
Mauricio Richardson
“We are not at liberty to discuss the financial situation at Saint Augustine’s University. It is our position that Saint Augustine’s termination of Dr. McPhail’s employment was unrelated to the school’s financial situation.”
According to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), the university’s accreditation is currently on hold due to financial and governance issues. The institution has been put on probation and, in response, the university sent a letter of arbitration to SACS on Mar. 11. The school will retain its accreditation until the arbitration process is complete, according to a statement on its website.
“It gave us 90 days. So, within that 90 days, we still accredit it,” Burgess said. “It allows our seniors to graduate from an accredited institution.”
If SAU loses its accreditation, 85 percent of its students will lose their financial aid.
“Transferring is just not something I would have ever thought,” SAU student Tinaya Eason said. “And I’m still thinking about it. Nothing is really finalized right now.”
SAU needs to raise nearly $32 million to pay its debts and remain operational.
The university received a tax lien of nearly $7.8 million from the IRS for unpaid payroll taxes dating back to 2020, putting the university’s financial stability at risk.
Due to the school debt, Burgess and his staff have been working without compensation since February.
“Staff have not been paid, but they still fight for this institution,” Burgess said. “They still teach our students. They want to see this class get to the graduation day, but they are hurting.”
Despite an outpouring of support from alumni and community donations, the amount raised is hardly enough to solve the problem.
“We need capital, and need cash,” Burgess said. “I don’t want to have to sell any of our land. In the Black community and African American community, we know how hard it’s been to get this land.”
“I’m forever reminded of my senior year; $1,200 is what I needed to graduate,” Burgess said. “One of our board members, Barrett Jackson, was on campus and handed me an envelope, and it was several checks from his Sunday school class. And he told them about this young man at Claflin University who just needed a chance. I’m a living testimony to why you should always look to help somebody. We need that chance.”
North Carolina
North Carolina student indicted for kidnapping, assault of teacher in viral incident, charged in 2nd attack
Two weeks after a North Carolina high school student allegedly slapped and threatened a teacher in an incident that was captured on video that went viral, the student has been indicted for kidnapping and assault on a government official, the Forsyth County DA announced Thursday.
Aquavis Hickman, 17, has also been indicted for the alleged assault of another teacher at the same school — Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — in February.
“A grand jury was convened last week, last Monday, comprised of members of this community and the grand jury returned two bills of indictment against the defendant now in this case, Aquavis Hickman,” Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill said at a press conference.
He said Hickman, who will be charged as an adult, faces second-degree kidnapping charges in the April 15 incident with a female teacher “by unlawfully confining and restraining her without her consent for the purpose of terrorizing her. That defendant was also indicted on that same bill for assault on a government official, that being a teacher, and finally communicating threats against that teacher.”
STUDENT ACCUSED OF VICIOUSLY BEATING AIDE IN VIRAL VIDEO BLAMES SCHOOL IN NEW LAWSUIT: ‘TICKING TIME BOMB’
Police outside the school where a teacher was attacked by a student on April 15 in North Carolina. (WGHP)
He said Hickman told the teacher he was going to kill her, and the “threat was made in a manner and under circumstances which would cause a reasonable person to believe that threat was likely to be carried out, and the person threatened believed it would, in fact, be carried out.”
The viral video shared on social media appeared to show Hickman violently slap his teacher twice amid a profanity-laden rant against her.
“Do you think that affected me in any way?” the teacher can be heard asking. “Want me to hit you again?” Hickman says, while stepping up and repeating the question. “I don’t want it,” the teacher says, before she is struck again. The hit is so hard that her glasses fly off her face while the teenager continues his profanity-filled rant.
“Ain’t nobody even coming. You got slapped,” Hickman says. “B—-, go back to teaching.”
He was also indicted on the same charges for the alleged assault on the second teacher in February and was indicted on a misdemeanor count of riot based on allegations Hickman gathered with at least two others and “engaged in a public disturbance, kidnapping the second teacher in this case, attempting to fight him. This disorderly and violent conduct created a clear and present danger of injury to the victim in this case.”
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill announced this week that Aquavis Hickman has been indicted by a grand jury for kidnapping and assault on two teachers (WGHP)
“Sheriff Kimbrough, Chief Penn and myself made a promise to this community that we would not tolerate any assaults on our teachers, plain and simple,” O’Neill said. “Nobody should go to work and expect to be assaulted.”
He added, “We stand with the teachers, we will fight to protect those teachers and if you lay a hand on a teacher and assault a teacher you can expect that the punishment will be swift and severe. Promise made and promise kept.”
Kimbrough, at the press conference, said “everyone sitting in this room owes a debt to the woman or man who educated you: teachers. All of us are who we are because of the men and women that educated us.”
UCLA STUDENT DISMAYED TO SEE PEERS ‘CELEBRATING’ HAMAS ATROCITIES
He added, “How can we in good conscience allow anyone to assault a teacher?” adding, there are “some things in society that have to be sacred,” and “we have to protect the people that educate us.”
The assault caught on video took place at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, last month. (WGHP)
Kimbrough said every day in the community he sees teachers breaking up fights, getting injured and deputies even forced to mace students.
He said that incidents with students have steadily increased since 2020.
Winston-Salem Police Chief William Penn, Jr. added, “Our schools aren’t a battleground nor a boxing ring … Our schools must be safer.”
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He said the video that went viral “put us on the map in a negative manner. I’m also glad today that the rest of the nation will hear that we do not tolerate that in Winston-Salem and in Forsyth County.”
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