When Hurricane Floyd-induced floodwaters ran their devastating eastward course last September, the swelling currents swallowed everything in their path: wastewater treatment plants, junkyards full of chemicals, hog waste lagoons, pesticide runoff and thousands of carcasses. The environmental impact was devastating, and while politicians seem to see the flood as an unavoidable act of God, others […]
Patrick O'Neill
Posted inNews
To vaccinate–or not?
A dozen young parents gathered recently to discuss something that sets them apart from their peers: They don’t vaccinate their children. They’re the minority who resist a 40-year worldwide vaccination campaign almost universally embraced by health care professionals. Parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated have been told by physicians, friends and family members […]
Posted inNews
Creative Dialogue
When Palestinian Salim Shawamreh tells the story of his home being demolished by Israeli soldiers, it’s hard not to feel moved. Armed with large, glossy color prints and slides showing his modest West Bank home getting bulldozed, Shawamreh calls July 9, 1998, “the black date of my family’s life.” Shawamreh and Israeli anthropology professor Jeff […]
Posted inNews
True to life
A budding playwright, Samantha Gellar, then a 16-year-old Charlotte high-school sophomore, was encouraged by a teacher to submit an original play to a contest for young writers. Her play, Life vs. the Paperback Romance, won top honors in the Charlotte Young Playwrights Festival. Winners were told their plays would be produced for live audiences. In […]
Posted inNews
The good fight
Fred Battle graduated in 1962 from Chapel Hill’s segregated Lincoln High, sat in movie-theater balconies, rode in the backs of buses and was refused service at whites-only lunch counters. Battle, 55, a lifelong Chapel Hill native, has experienced racism and discrimination firsthand, an experience to which few white people can relate. “Most of the white […]
Posted inNews
Activism 2000
A healthy lawn starts at the grassroots. You have to work the soil, add organic material and plenty of loving care, and soon you’ll see a pretty patch of green. Get the picture? If you’ve got the love, and you’re ready to dig at the grassroots, this story is for you. The Independent called activists […]
Posted inNews
Report cards
War is back, by popular demand. How else do you explain the fact that in 1999, North Carolina’s senior senator, Republican Jesse Helms, was considered no more of a hawk than the likes of Democratic congressmen David Price and Bob Etheridge? Sad, but true. According to the 1999 Congressional Report Card released last week by […]