Archives for March 2022

Local News Roundup: NC, SC Senators question Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, CMS reading scores continue to fall

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee spent much of the week questioning Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had their chance to engage the nominee, and in the case of Graham, it got quite heated. We’ll hear what both had to say.

Third grade reading scores are getting worse in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, even after students have returned to in-person classes. Preliminary testing indicates that less than 15% of all third graders are expected to hit the mark for academic success in reading this year.

That and other academic challenges serve as a backdrop for Superintendent Earnest Winston’s budget proposal this week. How the school system and board plan to approach spending strategies for meeting academic goals.

In the ongoing funding dispute between the city of Rock Hill and the Carolina Panthers, leaders in York County approved a plan for providing economic incentives for the headquarters project. What they’re offering, and what happens next.

Those stories and more with our roundtable of reporters.

Guests

Joe Bruno, reporter for WSOC-TV

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Nick Ochsner, executive producer for investigations & chief investigative reporter for WBTV

Ann Doss Helms, education reporter for WFAE

Shining a light on truth, at any cost

Brent Renaud was an award-winning journalist, a documentary filmmaker and photographer, whose work took him around the country and the world, where he covered an earthquake in Haiti, cartel violence in Mexico and, in a Vice News series titled “Last Chance High,” a therapeutic school in Chicago. He won a prestigious Peabody Award for that last project in 2015. And, this past weekend, while chronicling the experiences of refugees and migrants, Renaud was shot and killed in Irpin, Ukraine.

Though I never met Renaud, I admired his work, and I appreciated an experience we both shared, a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, a magical year of learning and sharing with top journalists from around the world. During his Nieman year, Renaud “studied the effects of trauma and mental and emotional illness on rates of poverty and violence in America,” according to a story on the Nieman website.

Renaud’s Nieman classmate, visual journalist Juan Arredondo, who was on assignment with him, was wounded in the attack.

“This kind of attack is totally unacceptable and is a violation of international law,” Carlos Martínez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in response to the violent attacks.

EQUALibrium: A public conversation on race and equity in Charlotte

Eight years ago in 2014, Charlotte ranked 50 out of 50 of the nation’s largest metro areas in an upward mobility study from Harvard and the University of California-Berkeley.
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The “Land of Opportunity” study painted a bleak outlook for Charlotte’s poorest residents, but served as a wake up call for city officials and community members.

Leaders took action to address and correct the trends in mobility. Money was raised, programs were launched and attention was paid to areas like pre-K education, affordable housing and transportation.

So, where is Charlotte now?

In this special conversation, host Mary C. Curtis is joined by local leaders and experts at Project 658 in Charlotte to look at how far the city has come, and what still needs to happen to improve upward mobility in Charlotte.

GUESTS

  • Ely Portillo, assistant director of outreach & strategic partnerships at UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute
  • Sherri Chisholm, executive director of Leading on Opportunity
  • Vi Lyles, mayor of Charlotte
  • Charis Blackmon, executive director of West Side Community Land Trust
  • Daniel Valdez, senior director of external affairs at Welcoming America

Yesterday’s march, with lessons for today

March 7, 1965, is a day to remember.

That was never a problem for 90-year-old Ora Bell Shannon of Selma, Ala., then a young mother who ran with her children from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, or for Betty Boynton, who could see the tear gas rising and baton-wielding state troopers beating peaceful marchers.

Civil rights activists — among them Amelia Boynton, Betty Boynton’s mother-in-law, and a young John Lewis — put their bodies on the line to create the headlines and the international shock that forced action from Washington. In truth, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 simply put teeth into the enforcement of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ignored by state and local governments intent on blocking African Americans from the ballot box.

Back then, it was about the right to vote, and in 2022, it is still about the right to vote, reinforced by the hard-won Voting Rights Act of 1965 but increasingly under attack by state laws placing obstacles in the way of those least able to overcome them.

As many, including Vice President Kamala Harris, traveled to Selma this past Sunday to commemorate what has become known as “Bloody Sunday,” the landscape has changed in a country where many have lost the ability to be shocked or to find common cause with citizens different from themselves.

 It is a world where, as Senate Democrats hold their annual issues conference at Howard University in Washington, elevating the excellence of that institution, students seeking an education at historically Black colleges and universities face bomb threats.

It’s easy to forget that in the not-that-distant past, the annual ceremony in Selma, including a symbolic march across the bridge named for a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, had been bipartisan. In 2015, a chastened Kevin McCarthy, then House majority leader, attended the 50th anniversary of the historic march in Selma after initial reports that no GOP congressional leaders would be there.

A balancing act that’s worth it

In a brief mention in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden described his Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as a “consensus builder” and touted her support from the Fraternal Order of Police, before moving on to other topics.

That was understandable in a time of war and division, overseas and closer to home. But that doesn’t mean that Jackson’s spot is guaranteed. As she makes the rounds this week, visiting with senators from both parties, it’s a reminder of the tightrope she must walk, the challenges she must overcome even as the rules in this high-stakes game keep changing.

As an African-American woman who has achieved much, she’s proved she is up to the task.

Understandably, many Black women in America celebrated when Biden fulfilled his campaign promise and nominated Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court. She would be the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court, though there have been many who were deserving, one of the most obvious being the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench, Constance Baker Motley, whose life and work are chronicled in the new book “Civil Rights Queen.”

Black women formed a strong part of the coalition that put Biden in the Oval Office and have been stalwart citizens throughout American history, on the forefront of human rights, civil rights and voting activism through icons such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Height and Shirley Chisholm and so many others who never received the recognition they deserved.

I have a hunch that if former President Barack Obama had nominated Jackson, who reportedly was on his short list, instead of Merrick B. Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the court, her almost-certain dis by Senate Republicans, led by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would have triggered a groundswell that would have carried Hillary Clinton into the White House.

Jackson, then and now, would have to be prepared for whatever might come her way during confirmation hearings, set to start March 21 before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She’s already been subjected to a grilling from Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn. During her hearing last year for her spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Cornyn asked: “What role does race play, Judge Jackson, in the kind of judge you have been and the kind of judge you will be?”