Ask Pittsboro Mayor Chuck Devinney what he did when he worked for AT&T, and he offers evasions straight out of an X-Files script. “I wiped it all out of my head,” he says. “When I went out the door, I never looked back.” Coming from a public utility employee turned small-town public official, that might […]
Jon Elliston
Posted inNews
White vs. Right
“Heritage, not hate.” Like most slogans, the mantra of modern Confederacy boosters puts a simple spin on complicated circumstances. It’s tricky, after all, to honor a part of Southern heritage often associated with slavery, the embodiment of racial hatred. The 39 members of the Siler City-based chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, aka Col. […]
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CIA’s Man on Campus
Like a lot of college seniors, Alison Carollo says she doesn’t know what she’s going to do after graduation. An economics major at UNC-Chapel Hill, she has studied in Spain and is interested in international affairs. So when she went fishing for career ideas, she sought counsel from Robin Watson, one of her professors. What […]
Posted inGuides
Rabble-Rousers
Customers who walk into Internationalist Books and Community Center this Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, will be greeted by empty shelves, a dormant cash register and a most unlikely sales pitch: “BUY NOTHING.” That’s because the only items Internationalist will be selling the day after Thanksgiving are the store’s ideals, which include […]
Posted inGuides
Where Credit is Due
One afternoon in May 1999, John Herrera made his pitch for starting a credit union for Latinos before a powerful audience. Sitting across the table from him were officers of the N.C. State Employees Credit Union and the Community Center for Self-Help, the latter a Durham nonprofit that offers loans and other financial services to […]
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Counted out
A nightmare scenario: You walk into a voting booth, select the presidential candidate of your choice, feed your ballot into the machine–and with that tiny sucking sound, your vote disappears. Now wake up: This is what happened to Green Party loyalists in North Carolina who wrote in Ralph Nader’s name despite the certainty that their […]
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Radical cheers
“Direct action gets the goods,” says Cathie Berrey, sitting on a hill beside Polo Park in Winston-Salem. “Tonight it’s going to get our voices heard and show that people in this city are demanding a real democracy.” An Asheville-based activist, she’s one of about 800 protesters who came to press that demand at the gates […]
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Eddie Hatcher’s Last Stand?
It’s hard to say whether Eddie Hatcher has ever been in a worse situation than the one he is in right now. After you’ve taken a local newsroom hostage at gunpoint, fled your home state on the run from law enforcement (twice), been locked up four times, stabbed and infected with HIV while in prison, […]
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Foreign students under scrutiny
Education is a building block, a powerful force for change, and a way to expand mental horizons and economic opportunities. The list of education’s commonly cited virtues goes on and on, but here’s another, less familiar observation: “Education is an export.” That’s what Catheryn Cotten, director of the Duke University and Medical Center International Office, […]
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The methadone mile
It’s 11 a.m. on a Saturday, and the cool late-summer morning is giving way to what will soon be a steamy day. Eric Peterson is taking a break, leaning against a pickup truck bed full of the fruits of his labor: five bright orange, government-issue garbage bags bulging with roadside refuse. Picking up trash is […]
