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CHARLOTTE, NC — Less than 30 days until election day and Wednesday night vice president Mike Pence and senator Kamala Harris will go face to face in Salt Lake city – in the first and only vice presidential debate.
WCCB Political contributor Mary C. Curtis has a preview of the debate and why it matters.
CHARLOTTE, NC — The first presidential debate is in the books!
President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden took the stage in Cleveland Tuesday night.
WCCB Political contributor Mary C. Curtis discusses the biggest takeaways from the debate.
It was one of lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s cases before she took her place on the Supreme Court or in pop culture memes. It is only occasionally mentioned, perhaps because the details illuminated a truth people prefer to look away from, so they can pretend that sort of thing could never happen here.
But something terrible did happen, to a teenager, sterilized in 1965 without fully consenting or understanding the consequences in a program that continued into the 1970s in the state of North Carolina. The girl became a woman whose marriage and life crashed before her story became the basis of a lawsuit Ginsburg filed in federal court that helped expose the state’s eugenics program. While North Carolina’s was particularly aggressive, other states implemented their own versions, long ago given a thumbs up by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1927 decision written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Video has been released of a June 2 incident in uptown Charlotte where tear gas was used on protesters. We’ll talk about the conversation caught on body cam that led to a suspension for one CMPD officer.
The RNC was in Charlotte this week, but occurred in a much different way than was planned two years ago. The political speeches did happen, the roll call of states did happen, the expected uptown protests did happen, and in a surprise move, President Trump did visit. But area businesses saw little impact. We’ll give a rundown.
CMS continues to work to improve connectivity for students learning online as the school year gets underway, with several drive-up Wi-Fi sites for students access. This is happening as plans are forming on phasing in a return to in-person school, with the youngest and those with special needs coming back first.
And as colleges return and COVID-19 clusters change the way classes resume, we’ll get an update on coronavirus numbers in Mecklenburg County and around the state.
Mike Collins will tackle those stories and much more with our panel of local reporters on the Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup.
Guests:
Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal
Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s executive producer for investigations and chief investigative reporter
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com and WCCB
David Boraks, reporter for WFAE
Just three months away from the presidential election in the U.S., what does it look like for the two major candidates?
On November 3, millions of Americans will choose to either re-elect President Donald Trump or elevate former Vice-President Joe Biden. For now, the polls suggest a victory for Biden.
Trump has been criticized for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic downturn and social unrest in the country.
To discuss:
Many Americans, when they remember the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, reflexively turn to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, quoting selective passages about content of character. But my sister Joan, who stood under a shaded tent that day, making signs with freedom slogans for out-of-towners to raise high, had a different answer when I asked for her thoughts. Not to take anything away from King, she told me, “It wasn’t just that speech. It was all the speeches.” And what impressed her teenage self most were the words of a man who was just 23, a few years older than she was.
On that day, John Lewis was already stirring up the “good trouble” he favored when he said: “To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now!”
It was a speech that, in an early draft, was a tad fiery for some elders in the movement for equality and justice. Lewis did tone it down — but not enough to lose its urgency.
Some of the tributes to Lewis, who died last week at the age of 80, emphasized his generosity of spirit, evident in his ability to forgive and embrace those who beat him into unconsciousness. But the picture is incomplete without acknowledging the impatience, the fury to make it right, that saw him through more than three dozen arrests, five after he was elected to Congress. Just as those who would have been or probably were in that majority of Americans who considered King a rabble-rouser then and revere him now, many are all too eager to recast Lewis as a secular saint who just wanted everyone to get along.
Of course, they would. It would let them off the hook.
Coping with COVID-19, Sree Sreenivasan’s call-in show on WBAI in New York City: featuring a tribute to civil rights icon John Lewis
CHARLOTTE, NC — Over the last few weeks we’ve seen the removal of confederate monuments across the United States.
Here in North Carolina, the controversial “fame’ statue was removed from downtown Salisbury.
In Gaston county, a panel is having talks this week to decide the future of a confederate statue outside the courthouse.
Here’s WCCB Political contributor Mary C. Curtis with more on the debate.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – President Trump, at Mount Rushmore on Friday night, set the stage for a campaign increasingly focused on “culture war” issues.
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” the President said.
So, is the appeal of a “culture war” campaign too narrow?
Or is there a Nixon-esque “Silent Majority,” as the President is saying, ready to show up in November?
Click above for more with our political contributor, Mary C. Curtis.
