Sunday, January 21, 2018

THE CASH JOURNAL 01-25-18

EXCLUSIVE
PROPOSED 1898 HISTORIC MARKER
LANGUAGE RELEASED
By Cash Michaels
staff writer

            Nothing becomes official until the NC Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee meets on May 22nd to formally review, and ultimately if it sees fit, approve it, but as of now, the proposed 1898 historical marker planned for Market Street between Fourth and Fifth streets later this year, has new language.
            And that new language eliminates the previous guesswork of exactly how many African-Americans were killed on Nov. 10, 1898 – the day the Wilmington race massacre began.
            Titled “WILMINGTON COUP,” the new proposed language for the approved historical marker reads:
            Armed white mob met, Nov. 10, 1898, at armory here, marched 6 blocks and burned office of daily Record, black-owned newspaper. Violence left untold numbers of African Americans dead. Led to overthrow of city government & installation of coup leader as mayor. Was part of a statewide political campaign based on calls for white supremacy and the exploitation of racial tensions.
            The initial language of the marker that caused considerable controversy inaccurately stated that “Violence left up to 60 black dead…,” but research by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission in 2006 determined that the true number of black killed during the massacre on that first day, let alone ultimately during the entire racial siege of Wilmington by white supremacists, was “unknown,” and may never be known.
            The new draft language also leaves off the name of Alex Manley, the publisher of the Daily Record (primarily because there already is a marker with his name at the spot on Seventh Street where the Daily Record was burned down). The new proposed marker language also deletes the name of Alfred Moore Waddell, the coup leader who was ultimately installed as mayor after the violent takeover.
            The term “race riot” is also removed from the previous language.
            In an recent exclusive interview with The Wilmington Journal, Michael Hill, Research Supervisor at the NC Office of Archives and History, a division of the NC Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources, confirmed that staff at the NC Highway Historical Program determined that some the proposed language of the planned 1898 marker needed to be changed before it is unveiled.
            “We wish to seek input from the local community. We’ve received several emails, including from the local NAACP, and probably about a half dozen others,” Mr. Hill told The Journal.
            Ansley Wegner, the administrator of the NC Highway Historical marker Program, developed several new drafts, based of community input.
            “The next stage will be to share the new drafts with all interested local parties,” Hill continued, including Rend Smith of the nonprofit group, Working Narratives, which made the original application for the 1898 marker, and Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the NHC NAACP.
            The New Hanover African-American Heritage commission will also be included.
            Smith, as the applicant, will then have the right of first appeal to the marker advisory committee when they meet on May 22nd.
            Editor’s note – Those wishing to write the NC Highway Historical Marker Program to express your thoughts about the proposed inscription on the 1898 race massacre marker, should address your correspondence to : 4610 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4610, attention Ansley Wegner, administrator., or email Ms. Wegner at ansley.wegner@ncdcr.gov
                                                            -30-

WILL US SUPREME COURT STAY
LEGISLATIVE MAPS RULING TOO?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer

            A federal three-judge panel has ruled that the NC legislative redistricting maps produced by its special master will be used for the upcoming 2018 midterm elections – the candidate filing period for which is scheduled to begin on Feb. 12th unless officially delayed.
            And that delay very well may happen. Republican legislative leaders have vowed to, once again, appeal yet another negative redistricting ruling they don’t like to the US Supreme Court.
            “It is a shocking move for one of the same judges just reigned in by a bipartisan U.S. Supreme Court less than 24 hours ago to again attempt to create chaos and confusion in an election process set to begin in just three weeks,” wrote Rep. David Lewis [R-Harnett] and Sen. Ralph Hise [ R-Mitchell], co-chairs of the joint Redistrict Committee, referring to US  Fourth Circuit Court Judge James Wynn, who served on both separate three-judge panels that ruled against Republican NC redistricting plans for both congressional and legislative districts.
            It was just two weeks ago that Judge Wynn, an Obama appointee, led two other District Court judges in ruling that the NC Legislature’s partisan congressional redistricting was unconstitutional, and ordered that they be immediately redrawn. State Republican petitioned the US Supreme Court to stay that order, which it did last week, pending review.
            NC Republicans are hoping the US High Court will also stay the legislative map order.
            “It is now up to #SCOTUS to preserve the role of State Legislatures under our Constitutional System,” tweeted Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NC Republican Party.
            Some legal analysts say while SCOTUS stayed the NC congressional redistricting ruling because the question of partisan gerrymandering is one yet to be decided by the US Supreme Court (a case involving Wisconsin was heard late last year, an a similar case in Maryland has yet to be heard), North Carolina’s legislative redistricting case was already proven to involve racial gerrymandering, which the High Court had already declared unconstitutional, and sent back to the three-judge panel to remedy after concurring.
            Part of that remedy was ultimately ordering the special master redrawing on new legislative maps because the judicial panel determined that 9 of the 28 districts redrawn were still legally problematic.
            Republicans are arguing the state legislature should have been given the opportunity to fix those nine districts, not the special master. The GOP adds that the court had no right appointing the special master to do their job.
            In it’s 92-page order, the three-judge panel, this time led by federal District Court Judge Catherine Eagles, firmly disagreed.
            “The [US] Supreme court long has held that when a federal court concludes that a state districting plan violates the [US] Constitution, the appropriate state redistricting body should have the first opportunity to enact a plan remedying the constitutional violation. But after finding unconstitutional race-based discrimination – as this Court did here – a district court also has a “duty” to ensure  that any remedy “so far as possible eliminate(s) the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar(s) like discrimination in the future.”
                                                            -30-

                                                        DR, TALBERT O. SHAW



DR. TALBERT O. SHAW, FORMER
SHAW U PRESIDENT, DIES AT 89
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer

He will forever be known as “the man who saved Shaw University.”
Dr. Talbert Oscall Shaw, the 12th president of Shaw University, died last week in Boca Raton, Florida. He was 89.
Dr. Shaw served a president for 15 crucial years in the school’s history – from 1987 to 2002. During that time, he literally save “the oldest historically black university in the South” from closing due to fraud and fiscal mismanagement; dramatically increased the endowment; doubled the enrollment; renovated various buildings on campus; and constructed the Talbert O. Shaw Living Learning Center.
Per the curriculum, Dr. Shaw, an ordained minister in his native Jamaica prior to coming to the United States in the late 1950’s, implemented an Ethics and Values course that was hailed as trailblazing.
In a Dec. 2002 interview with the Black Press shortly before he retired, Dr. Shaw, then 74, said he never dreamed of becoming the president of a distinguished HBCU. He had earned his M.A. and Ph. D. in Ethics from the University of Chicago, going on to become the interim Dean of Howard University Divinity School, and tenured Dean of Arts and Sciences at Morgan State University (where he said he was “quite comfortable”) when he was approached in the late 1980s by a member of the Shaw University Search Committee.
Shaw said “no” at first, but later relented. However, he had no idea just how large the challenge would be, given the dire financial condition the school was in.
“Yes, Shaw was in dire need when I got here,” the then outgoing president confirmed. “Dangling on the [edge] of extinction. But I came with a vision and courage.”
The IRS had filed two liens against the school because of $750,000 owed in unpaid withholding taxes, interest and penalties. There was no endowment. Employees weren’t being paid. Over $1.2 million in federal loans were in default, and the university was drowning in over $5 million of red ink.
Slowly but surely, under Dr. Shaw’s leadership, faculty, staff and students embraced his school credo, “ Strides to Excellence. Why Not The Best?,” and it wasn’t long before the university was on solid footing again. Funding was raised, debts paid off or restructured, and the business community began investing.
Even the major white newspaper in Raleigh, The News and Observer, which had been publishing stories on why Shaw University needed to be closed, switched gears after Dr. Shaw confronted publisher Frank Daniels Jr., who then gave the school a $100,000 donation.
  Shaw alumni from all over the state and nation reacted to the news of Dr. Shaw’s death with sadness, but also with pride that they attended the school during his tenure.
“He planted the seed of becoming a college president in me when I was 19 years-old,” says former Shaw University President Tashni-Ann Dubroy. 
“He is someone I respected, loved, cherished and endeared, she continued. “Rest in peace, Uncle Talley. The Shaw family was blessed to have you as our president.”
“This institution has a purpose,” Dr. Shaw said before stepping down in 2003. “It is deeply rooted in the Christian faith.”
There will be a public viewing from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Gardens of Boca Raton in Boca Raton, Fl. for President Emeritus Talbert O. Shaw on Saturday.  The funeral service will be held Sunday at 12 noon at the Deerfield Beach SDA Church in Deerfield Beach, Fl.
-30-

STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 1-25-18

STATE PRISON SYSTEM PUTS “INCARCERATION” BOOK BACK ON SHELF
            [RALEIGH] Faced with a possible lawsuit from the NC American Civil Liberties Union, The NC prison system has decided to unban a controversial book it had previously removed from its library shelves. “The New Jim crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander was the book prison inmates were not allowed to read. But a terse letter from the NCACLU to prison officials made it clear that it had no legal grounds for banning the book, and to continue to do so would be unconstitutional. NC State Director of Prisons Kenneth Lassiter says he will now review the system’s list of “disapproved publications” to determine what other titles can be unbanned, and placed back on prison library shelves.

REV. WYATT TEE WALKER, MLK ADVISOR, DIES AT 89
            [CHESTER, VA] Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a close advisor to civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., died Tuesday morning at an assisted living facility in Chester. Family members say Dr. Walker had been in failing health for several years. Under King, Dr. Walker served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization Dr. King founded. Prior to leading the SCLC, Rev. Walker was a well-known civil rights leader in Virginia. Rev. Walker is also credited with assisting Dr. King with his historic, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

RUSSIAN SPY SHIP SEEN 100 MILES OFF COAST OF WILMINGTON
            [WILMINGTON] What was the Viktor Leonov, a Russian spy ship, doing 100 miles off the coast of Wilmington Monday? US military officials would like to know. They ordered the USS Cole and other naval vessels to track the Leonov. CNN reports that the Leonov had been traveling up the eastern seaboard near US naval installations at Cape Canaveral, Kings Bay, New London and Norfolk.
                                                            -30-




           










             


Tuesday, January 16, 2018

THE CASH JOURNAL FOR 01-18-18

STATE NEWS BRIEFS 01-18-18

DR. TALBERT O. SHAW, FORMER SHAW UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT, DIES
            [RALEIGH] Dr. Talbert O. Shaw, former president of Shaw University, died Tuesday morning, the historically black university announced. Dr. Shaw served the school for 15 years, and is credited with leading it out of dire financial straits that threatened to close its doors. Under Dr. Shaw, the institution also raised its endowment to $15 million, renovated campus buildings, and erected the Talbert O. Shaw Living Learning Center. Dr. Shaw stepped down in 2003.

FORMER NC STATE TROOPER MUST PAY $1.2 MILLION FOR WRECK
            [GREENSBORO] A deputy commissioner for the North Carolina Industrial Commission has ordered a former NC highway trooper to pay over $1.2 million to the family of a woman whose vehicle was struck by the trooper’s patrol car in May 2010. Evidence shows that former Trooper J. D. Goodnight was traveling at 95 mph when his vehicle struck a car being driven by Sandra Allmond. There was also a 9-year-old boy who was also killed in the collision. Good night currently works for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Dept.

NC TO REQUIRE MEDICAID BENEFICIARIES TO WORK
            [RALEIGH] North Carolina could become one of the first states in the nation that requires Medicaid beneficiaries to work, in exchange for getting free health insurance coverage from the state. The Trump Administration has signaled that it will waive legal restrictions to the federal law governing Medicaid that currently prohibit forcing recipients from working. Kentucky was the first state last week to receive a waiver. North Carolina is the only one of ten states on the list with a Democratic governor.

                                                            -30-


ADAMS BLASTS TRUMP
OVER “S---THOLES” SLUR
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer"

At least one North Carolina congressperson joined a plethora of critics expressing utter outrage over confirmed reports that President Trump, in a meeting with Senate leaders last week, referred to Haiti and African countries as “sh-thole” nations while expressing disdain for the prospect of more immigrants from those nations coming to the United States.
Trump reportedly expressed a greater interest in seeing people from Norway, and overwhelmingly white country, immigrate to America.
       “I am personally offended and appalled by today's comments which are yet another example of President Trump's racist ideologies," said Congresswoman Alma Adams (D-12-NC) in a statement January 11th after reports of Trump’s vulgar remark hit the fan. "My concern now is solely with the millions of people and our allies who will be impacted by this administration's policies that are clearly driven by racism. These prejudiced beliefs are a betrayal of our American values and tantamount to an abdication of his basic responsibility to represent all Americans.”
        A spokesperson for Rep. Adams added that she would support a call for the censure of Pres. Trump by Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) and Rep. Jerold Nadler (D-NY), expected to be introduced now that Congress is back in session after the MLK holiday.
       “The President’s bigoted fearmongering is not acceptable and his remarks completely warrant total condemnation and censure from Congress. American immigration policy cannot and should not be guided in any way, shape or form by racism,” Richmond and Nadler said in a joint statement last week.
Neither of Rep. Adams’ two Democrat colleagues from North Carolina – Congressman G. K. Butterfield (D-1-NC) or David Price (D-4-NC) issued statements weighing in on the controversy.
But here in North Carolina, criticism of the president’s acid remarks lingered at Martin Luther King, Jr. Day marches and events, even with state lawmakers on Monday.
        “The importance of the national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday is more clear today than ever before,” said Sen. Angela Bryant (D-Nash), chair of the NC Legislative Black Caucus, said in a statement from the caucus. “This annual call to action and remembrance to oppose racism and discrimination in all its forms is needed to expose and root out the deep-seated beliefs in group domination, superiority and oppression that are still prevalent from the highest governmental levels to the personal level of our day to day interactions.”
That sentiment was shared by the new president of the NCNAACP, Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman.
  “I really don't mean to be trite here but my mother, one of the most intelligent people I know, filled with mother-wit, would often use an economy of words to respond to such an inquiry that works quite well to sum up the derangement of the being who occupies the White House,” Rev. Spearman said. “My mother would say "…an empty wagon makes a lot of noise." In choosing my battles, I am careful not to feed into him. I'd rather ignore #45's ignorance.” 
-30-


GOP FIGHTS REDISTRICTING RULING;
NCNAACP PROTEST JUDICIAL REDISTRICTING
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer

Not allowing yet another redistricting defeat to stop them during a crucial midterm election year, NC Republican legislative leaders, through their attorneys, have asked the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court to not only stay last week’s devastating federal court ruling striking down their 2016 congressional voting maps as “invidious partisanship” and “illegal,” but have actually also asked the High Court to reinstitute those maps for the upcoming 2018 elections.
A federal three-judge panel blasted Republican lawmakers in their over 200-page opinion last week, saying that they deliberately set out to draw 10 of 13 NC congressional voting districts heavily Republican in 2016, thus denying voters in those districts their constitutional right to elect the representation of their choice. The court ordered that the districts be immediately redrawn by Wednesday, Jan. 24th.
“I applaud the decision of the federal judges,” said Congressman G. K. Butterfield (D-NC-1). The decision reaffirms my long held belief that Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly drew the congressional map with the express purpose of maximizing the number of Republican congressional districts.  Republicans comprise 30 percent of registered voters in North Carolina, yet they crafted a congressional map that would ensure Republican success in ten of thirteen districts, or 76 percent.  The Republicans made this case relatively simple when they admitted in court that the congressional map was drawn for partisan political advantage.”
Butterfield continued, “As the Court stated, North Carolina voters have been deprived of a constitutional districting plan for the past decade.  So I urge the Republican dominated General Assembly to promptly comply with the Court’s order by developing a fair congressional map that doesn’t disadvantage Democratic voters.”
The federal court also warned that it would hire it’s own special master to draw the map if the GOP didn’t move immediately to fix the problem.
But in an emergency motion to the US Supreme Court Jan. 12th, attorneys for the Republican lawmakers petitioned that that ruling be thrown out by Monday, Jan. 22nd because the congressional maps can’t be adequately redrawn before the upcoming Feb. 12th candidates’ filing period for the 2018 midterm primaries without causing confusion.
The GOP lawmakers didn’t atop there. They also argued that the North Carolina ruling should be stayed until two other partisan redistricting cases being considered before the US Supreme Court, this time in Wisconsin and Maryland, be decided.
Last week’s federal court decision dealt with congressional redistricting, not the similar NC legislative redistricting case that another federal three-judge panel is expected to rule on any day now. That case involved racial gerrymandering, which is also unconstitutional.
Meanwhile the NC NAACP and its coalition partners, led by NCNAACP Pres. Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, demonstrated in front of the legislative building in Raleigh on Jan. 10th to protest the special session called to consider judicial redistricting, which many critics say is based on the same racial gerrymandering criteria the legislative maps were thrown out for, and is targeting many black district court judges for elimination by having them run against each other.
“Our courts should be as free as we can make them from partisan politics,” former NC Associate Supreme Court Justice Patricia Simmons-Goodson told hundreds of cheering protesters, some holding signs saying, “Fair Courts Now,’ and “No Voter Left Behind.”
-30-



Monday, January 8, 2018

THE CASH JOURNAL FOR 01-11-18

EXCLUSIVE
CHANGES COMING TO
1898 “COUP” MARKER
by Cash Michaels
contributing writer

            Armed crowd met, Nov. 10, 1898, at armory here, marched 6 blocks S.E., and burned office of Daily Record, black-owned newspaper edited by Alex Manley. Violence left up to 60 blacks dead. Led to overthrow of city government and the installation of coup leader Alfred Moore Waddell as mayor. “Race riot” was part of a statewide political campaign based on calls for white supremacy & exploitation of racial tensions.
                                                            Current inscription for planned 1898
                                                            Historical Marker to be unveiled in the fall

The NC Historical highway marker commemorating the 1898 Wilmington race massacre has already been approved by the NC Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee, but when it is finally unveiled on Market Street between Fourth and Fifth streets later this fall, expect changes to the marker’s controversial inscription describing the bloody events that started on Nov. 10, 1898.
The primary change will be to the sentence, “ Violence left up to 60 blacks dead,” which several in the community, including the NHC NAACP, have indicated is incorrect because a six-year inquiry into the massacre by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission noted that the number of known dead was “unknown.”
The new inscription will indicate that number of African-Americans killed during the massacre was undetermined
            In an exclusive interview this week with The Wilmington Journal, Michael Hill, Research Supervisor at the NC Office of Archives and History, a division of the NC Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources, confirmed that staff at the NC Highway Historical Program met last Friday, and determined that some the proposed language of the planned 1898 marker needed to be changed before it is unveiled.
            “We wish to seek input from the local community. We’ve received several emails, including from the local NAACP, and probably about a half dozen others,” Mr. Hill told The Journal.
            Hill went on to say that the agency has “set aside plans to order the sign,” and plan at the next marker committee meeting in May to revisit the 1898 marker language issue. “The point of the reassessment is to revisit the text, and to accommodate people’s wishes and suggestions.”
            Mr. Hill added that Ansley Wegner, the administrator of the NC Highway Historical Marker Program, has been working on redrafts of the 1898 marker inscription.
            As indicated before, per the inscription, the number of blacks killed will be changed to “unknown,” in addition to the term “race riot” deleted. The name of the 1898 massacre leader, Alfred Moore Waddell will also be dropped, and the name of Alex Manley, the publisher of the black newspaper that was burned to the ground, The Daily Record, will also be dropped, though the Record will continue to be cited by name on the marker.
            There already is a historical marker citing Manley by name on Seventh Street where the Daily Record was torched by an angry mob of white supremacists on Nov. 10, 1898. The new marker on Market Street will denote the spot from where that mob gathered at the armory, and then proceeded to Seventh Street to burn down the Record.
            “The next stage will be to share the new drafts with all interested local parties,” Hill continued, including Rend Smith of the nonprofit group, Working Narratives, which made the original application for the 1898 marker, and Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the NHC NAACP.
            The New Hanover African-American Heritage commission will also be included.
            Smith, as the applicant, will then have the right of first appeal to the marker advisory committee when they meet in May.
            Members of the New Hanover County House delegation to the NC legislature seem to be in agreement about making sure that the 1898 marker inscription is historically accurate.
            “The marker is long overdue and I hope that it will serve to inform the public of the horrific events of 1898 so that our community in time can heal,” Representative Deb Butler [D-New Hanover] told The Journal. “To that end, and in order to prevent any further revisionist views of history, it must be as accurate as possible.”
            Her Republican colleague in the state House from New Hanover County, Rep. Holly Grange, agreed.
“Not only do I support a historical marker commemorating such a notable event in the History of Wilmington, I believe it also important that the marker be historically and factually accurate.  Therefore I agree with the report by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission and [the public’s] request to modify the historical marker.”
Editor’s note – Those wishing to write the NC Highway Historical Marker Program to express your concerns about the proposed inscription on the 1898 race massacre marker, should address your correspondence to : 4610 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-4610, attention Ansley Wegner, administrator., or email Ms. Wegner at ansley.wegner@ncdcr.gov.
                                                             -30-

STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 01-11-18

FEDERAL COURT STRIKES DOWN NC CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING
AS “UNCONSTITUTIONAL PARTISAN GERRYMANDER
[GREENSBORO] A federal three-judge panel for North Carolina’s Middle District  struck down North Carolina’s 2016 congressional plan Tuesday as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.  That 2016 plan was developed after a federal court invalidated two congressional districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.  When the legislature purported to “remedy” that racially gerrymandered plan with an unabashed and admitted partisan gerrymander, the League of Women Voters of North Carolina and several voters from across the state filed suit.
Allison Riggs, senior voting rights attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, offered the following statement after the opinion was released:
“A bipartisan three-judge federal panel agreed with us today that partisan gerrymandering is an affront to our Equal Protection Clause.  They recognized the egregious nature of what the North Carolina General Assembly did in 2016, purportedly to remedy another unconstitutional congressional redistricting plan.”  
“We’re enormously gratified on behalf of our clients and all voters in North Carolina that no one will have to endure another congressional election under an unconstitutional map.  The court was clear in demanding a real remedy before the 2018 elections, and we expect the General Assembly to respect that order.”
Per the ruling, the North Carolina General Assembly has until January 29 to enact a remedial plan; the federal court plans to employ a special master to draw an alternative remedial plan, and the remedial plan should be enacted before the 2018 congressional elections.

                                                -30-

                       

FEDERAL COURT CLOSE TO
DECIDING ON NEW DISTRICTS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer

            If political body language means anything, Republican legislative leaders in the NC General Assembly, and their attorneys in the Covington vs. North Carolina redistricting case, seem almost resolved that the federal three-judge panel hearing the case is going to rule against them sometime soon, and implement the special master’s redrawn voting maps in place of their own.
            That much seemed clear during the Jan. 5th hearing in Federal Court in Greensboro last Friday, as attorneys for the state did their best attacking Special Master Nathaniel Persily’s work, which effectively removed the illegal racial gerrymanders evident in the GOP’s 2011 voting maps, and their 2017 redrawn districts that the three-judge panel found 29 to be legally problematic as well.
            At stake is the 2018 NC legislative mid-term elections coming up in November. With Democrats energized to retake the state legislature from the Republican majority, many political observers expect Republican attorneys to appeal an expected negative ruling to the US Supreme Court, thereby delaying the scheduled Feb. 12 through 28th candidate filing dates for the May primaries, and possibly throwing off the entire election year schedule until they can get a favorable ruling that will help them retain legislative power.
            Led by Republican attorney Phil Strach, the Republican argument was the special master redrew certain districts with race in mind, contrary to what they believe the judicial panel originally wanted.
            "The way you remedy the use of a quota is you take the quota out," attorney Strach told the court.
Strach added that Persily was never needed because GOP lawmakers were fully capable of redrawing their own maps, and should have been given the opportunity to do so by the federal court.
            Strach even called their own expert witness, who submitted his own maps, to the stand to testify that Persily used black voting age percentages in the districts he redraw. The special master denied the charge.
            Persily, a Stanford University law professor and considered an expert in redistricting mapping, defended his work saying that his job was to follow the directives of the three-judge panel to correct nine NC House and Senate districts, making sure that there was no racial stacking and packing, which the Republicans had previously employed in order to lessen black Democratic voter influence throughout the state.
            Federal Appellate Court Judge James Wynn chastised Strach and the Republican attorneys, alleging that instead to working to undermine Persily’s work, they could have had their expert work with him to produce maps both sides could live with.
            Attorneys for Sharon Covington and her co-plaintiffs suing the state, gave a rhetorical thumbs up to Persily’s work, and urged the court to adopt his redrawn maps.
            I think they’ve been pretty honest that they intend to seek appellate review,” plaintiff’s attorney Allison Riggs told reporters after the four-hour hearing. “So we’ll be prepared.” 
                                                            -30-

 NCNAACP LEERY OF

GOP SPECIAL SESSION
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer

            On Wednesday, supporters of the NCNAACP came from all across the state to rally at the NC General Assembly to protest why they believe the state legislature is back in session weeks before they’re officially scheduled to come back.
            “The independent judiciary is under attack in North Carolina,” says Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the NCNAACP,”…and the people understand that this attack…is a threat to our democracy.”
            Thus, the reason for “Fair Courts Day of Action.”
            A coalition of social justice groups, led by the NCNAACP, Democracy North Carolina and Progress NC, reacting to bills either passed or introduced by the Republican-led legislature in 2017 that gerrymanders the state’s judicial districts targeting black judges by packing them so they would compete against each other (passed), or would cut judicial terms from the state Supreme Court to Superior Court from eight years and four years, down to just two years (proposed), or even institute a merit selection system where state lawmakers appoint the judges they want to the bench (also proposed).
            No other state in the nation has such a system in place.
            “It targets black judges and women judges and black voters, which is really racist,” Linda Sutton, organizer for  Democracy N.C.  told the Times-News. “[The Republicans] plan to take over the courts to appoint their own judges … so when we challenge them, we won’t have anywhere else to go.”
Indeed, one of the key legislative measures passed last year was in the state House, canceling the 2018 primaries for judicial candidates. Earlier last year, the GOP majority also passed HB 239, which reduced the number of judges on the state Court of Appeals from 15 to 12, in an effort to deny Democratic Gov. Cooper the ability to fill the three court vacancies that would occur during his term.
            That plan was partially thwarted when Appellate Court Judge Douglas McCullough retired early, allowing Cooper to appoint his replacement before the bill could be enacted.
            So exactly what are both the state House and Senate planning in terms of revamping the state’s judiciary – the one branch of government that in recent years, has successfully countered much of the Republican social agenda for North Carolina?
            Last week, during a special Senate committee appointed by Senate Pres. Pro-tem Phil Berger (Rockingham), four possible plans were revealed to be under consideration -
1.     The Blue Plan – where judicial elections for appellate judges are suspended; the governor nominates candidates; both state houses confirm the nominations within 60 days; and a general election is held for voters to either accept of reject the legislative confirmation.
2.      The Orange Plan – a 15-member Judicial Nominating Commission picks two candidates. The governor appoints one of the two, with that judicial appointee serving a 14-year term, and is eligible for re-nomination by the Commission.
3.      The Red Plan – The General Assembly appoints a candidate when a judicial vacancy occurs. That judicial appointee serves for life or until the age of 72.
4.      The Purple Plan – a non-partisan independent Merit Selection Commission appointed by the state Supreme Court Chief Justice. That 7 or 9 member panel will forward all nominations to the NC General Assembly for further consideration. Local commissions will do the same for superior court and district court nominees. Upon review, state lawmakers forward the three best nominees to the governor, who then appoints. Voters vote to confirm or reject
the governor’s choice, which is confirmed would serve  ten-year term. That appointee is not eligible to be re-appointed to the same court.

          What plan the NC General assembly ultimately chooses will become evident during the Special Session.
                                                  -30-