Buchanan found not guilty of assaulting, resisting officer

Ashley Buchanan, a Bennett College graduate who had been charged with two misdemeanor offenses stemming from an April incident, was found not guilty during her hearing in Guilford County District Court today.

Judge Wendy Enochs announced the verdict at approximately 5:30 p.m, following testimonies from witnesses, as well as closing statements from the state, and Buchanan's representative, Jason Keith.

Buchanan was one of four women arrested during an April graduation party at the Sebastian Village apartment complex. She was charged with assaulting a government official and resisting an officer while police attempted to disperse the party due to excessive noise and occupancy.

Buchanan and six other attendees of the party testified during the hearing. They all claimed that police used profanity and excessive force in the incident.

Fresh allegations of Greensboro police misconduct

The Beloved Community Center posted this pretty disturbing video interview with Marie Robinson earlier this week alleging unprovoked abuse and wrongful arrest by Greensboro police officers in April. Robinson's story is just the latest allegation of police misconduct that the Beloved Community Center has highlighted, most of which are made by residents of color.


 Watch this video where Robinson describes being slammed against her car in her fiancé's driveway after police accused her of being a prostitute. Robinson, who is diabetic, says her fiancé was helping her with her blood sugar when police appeared. Ultimately, she says, police arrested both of them.

YES! Weekly has not yet verified any of the claims in the video. Chief Ken Miller was not immediately available for comment.

Related:
Police treatment of Bennet, A&T students leaves sour taste
Speakers urge citizens to mobilize against police abuses

Charles Cherry has more choice words for mayor, city manager

Former Greensboro police captain Charles Cherry has developed a reputation amongst Greensboro City Council members for his choice words at council meetings to such an extent that they considered limiting speech and the public comment period at their meetings last summer. Mayor Robbie Perkins, a frequent target of Cherry's criticism, explained his thoughts about speakers like Cherry again this April:

"Frankly, the concern I have is that they are taking away from folks that really need our help," he said. "Some may want to come in and don’t because they don’t want to be in middle of acrimonious discussion." 

Today, the saga continues. In a dual complaint/public-information request to the city, Cherry wrote to "Deadbeat, Non Taxpaying, Looking for Preferential Treatment Mayor Perkins and the other eight members of city council." Cherry criticized Perkins' bankruptcy and non-payment of taxes, going on to call City Manager Denise Turner Roth "a corrupt stupid liar."

Cherry has repeatedly argued that the city refuses to investigate his complaints about police misconduct. Roth contends that the city has answered his requests and staff recommends that council not address Cherry directly because of his pending lawsuit against the city. 

There is another gem in Cherry's complaint, too:

"Robbie, never forget, I am strengthened by the Mighty God in Heaven. Greensboro, observe the power of a God-fearing man, as I mentally dominate, control and force this corrupt deadbeat mayor to do his job." 

He ends the letter by requesting the name, dates, result and amount of money spent on each pending or current lawsuit involving the Greensboro Police Department since January 1, 2010, including outside lawyer fees or estimated cost of staff time based on salary. YES! Weekly asked the city to release the results of Cherry's public-information request to us as soon as it is available to him. 

Cherry's case is one of many cited by a report, Our Democratic Mission, released by the Beloved Community Center earlier this year highlighting issues that point to a "subculture of corruption and double standards" in the police department. The center is holding a community meeting on June 13 to discuss issues related to the department.

Read: Bennett and A&T student complaints about Greensboro police

Today's dirt article about two incidents between Bennett College students and Greensboro police references the complaints that students filed with the city after the incidents in Sebastian Village apartments. In the first incident, students describe how they were treated when police knocked on their door looking for an armed robbery suspect and in the second, Bennett students celebrating graduation give their version of a night that led to four arrests after noise complaint calls.

Read the complaint and other relevant documents from the first incident here.

For some reason I am having technical difficulties uploading the complaints from the second incident but I will update this post as soon as possible. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Beloved Community Center Meeting calls for action

Fired police officers Charles Cherry, Joseph Pryor and A.J. Blake

Amidst prayers and passionate speeches, a plan of action came to the forefront of the Beloved Community Center meeting on police misconduct.

Beloved Community Center board chair Pat Priest and community organizer Joseph Frierson asked for participation the entire night of April 4, and they got more than they might have expected when Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson said she believed the Greensboro City Council could muster five votes to create a police citizens review board.

After an audience member asked how to go about getting a review board, Johnson replied, “All you have to do is bring a request to city council, and we’ll vote on it…. I think you probably have five people who will vote for it.”
 
The night centered on Our Democratic Mission, a Beloved report released in January detailing 14 separate cases of alleged police misconduct. The document was referenced throughout the night as a way to mobilize the community to address concerns raised in the report. The first speaker of the night, the Rt. Rev. Alfred C. Marble, assisting bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina and board member at Beloved, commented on the necessity of community involvement.

“Greensboro is predominately a black and white community, but it is an international community,” Marble said. “We need everyone to get involved.”

After speeches from Marble, and the Rev. Nelson Johnson, executive director of the Beloved Community Center, and case reviews from Bennett College student Imani Wilburg-Folds and Brian C. Sims of NC A&T University, Beloved conveners opened the floor to questions. The first inquiry stirred the crowd as A&T student Alicia Funderburke asked how she could get involved. A series of answers led to the greater idea, brought forward by lawyer and civil rights activist Lewis Pitts.

“The most patriotic thing we can do is stand up and fight,” Pitts said.

Later, Pitts hit at the heart of the issue: “Who do we allow to wear guns and lock up citizens?” he asked. “We must be able to hold them accountable.”

Guilford College associate professor Sherry Giles agreed. She stated more than once a need for a citizens review board to hold the police accountable. Working with her students, she said they most often came to a recurring question: “How do we give power back to the citizens?”
The question rang true throughout the meeting. Before a video showing some of the more harrowing cases in Greensboro’s troubled past with police brutality, Vice-Chairperson Dale Tonkins introduced three former Greensboro police officers, Joseph Pryor, Charles Cherry and A.J. Blake, who are characterized in the report as having been wrongfully terminated.

While those cases dominated the night, the meeting’s framework built around a cry for citizen involvement. Marble called for Greensboro leadership to sit with Beloved staff and board members to discuss the past and the future.

“List every error in our publication so we can talk about this,” Marble said. “The council wants to blame it all on Nov. 3, 1979 and though no justice was found for that day, the problem continues.”

Marble referred to a case detailed in Our Democratic Mission involving Greensboro police. According to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report on the incident, “the majority of commissioners find the single most important element that contributed to the violent outcome of the confrontation was the absence of the police.”

Rev. Johnson echoed Marble’s sentiments during the question-and-answer period. He called for a meeting about Our Democratic Mission before saying, “I know there is corruption because I have seen it. The internal police mechanism is flawed.”
 
He called for organization at every level, “every campus, every neighborhood and every church,” to bring forth the change Beloved eagerly desires.

Document: Beloved Community Center report on police

My staff column in today's paper about police investigations encourages readers to check out an extensive report by the Beloved Community Center for themselves. The report covers various cases that the center says point to a pattern of "corruption and double standards" within the Greensboro Police Department, impacting treatment of officers of color and communities of color.

 You can download the document here.

PHOTO: FLOC supporters rally at Kangaroo

A coalition of about 30 supporters of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, or FLOC, rallied outside of the Kangaroo on the corner of Cone Boulevard and Yanceyville Street in Greensboro on Monday. Members of Jobs with Justice, the Greensboro Industrial Workers of the World and Cakalak Thunder joined the Beloved Community Center and FLOC to encourage Kangaroo to publicly ask Reynolds American to meet the farmworkers' demands. 

Kangaroo representatives have told the Beloved Community Center and FLOC that it privately asked Reynolds to meet with the union, FLOC organizer Justin Flores said, but Kangaroo refused a visit to see the conditions of farmworkers in the state and hasn't made any public statement. 

Supporters chanted "workers rights are human rights" and waved red union flags before a smaller contingent of supporters delivered a letter to the Kangaroo store manager. The letter requested that the company publicly tell Reynolds that its customers are concerned about the rights of farmworkers FLOC represents and urge an agreement. 

Photo and story by Eric Ginsburg

Subsidizing Greensboro's Southside

The City of Greensboro is considering a $200,000 loan to developers Bob Isner and Nate Bowman to rehabilitate the historic William Field House on Arlington Street near the intersection with Lee Street. Once construction is complete, the loan would be forgiven.

The two-story Italianate brick house built around 1876 is described by the Greensboro Housing and Community Development Department as "one of the oldest remaining homes in the city." The rehabilitated Field House will provide office space. Behind the historic house 14 luxury condos at the planned Fountain View at Southside are already offered for sale.

The professional-class live-work complex will mark a striking contrast to the Beloved Community Center Homeless Hospitality Center, a rambling structure with peeling paint next door where homeless men and women show up for breakfast and showers between 8 and 9:30 a.m.

The historical building and new condos will tie into the celebrated Southside neighborhood, also developed by Isner.

The loan is included in the consent agenda -- items considered noncontroversial -- prepared for the Greensboro City Council's approval on Tuesday. Items on the consent agenda are approved in one vote, unless a council member requests that an item be removed for discussion and separate vote.

The developers estimate construction costs at $335,000. The housing and community development department calls it a "much needed project."

Revolutionary Christianity in North Carolina

The recent news that 43 percent of white Ohio evangelicals voted in the Democratic primary might be heralded as evidence that the Republican Party no longer has a lock on religious voters.

Of course, it would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to coast on its good fortune and assume the demographic trends are tilting in its favor over the long run. The truth is there are stirrings of discontent within both evangelical (solid Republican voters since Reagan) and mainline Christianity (solid Democratic voters since probably Kennedy). Christians are yearning for transformation that is both spiritually authentic and socially grounded, which neither party is likely to be able to fulfill.

Some of these ideas can be found in the Revolution in Jesusland blog, self-described as “a plea to the progressive movement, to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms.” The blog is authored, in part, by Zach Exley, a former union organizer, organizing director for MoveOn.org and director of online organizing and communications for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004.

On its surface, the blog might come across as a handbook to help the Democratic leadership cynically maneuver Christian true believers into the party's column, but consider the theology and lived experience discussed on the blog, and it's hard to not come away with the impression that this stuff is way too unruly to fit comfortably in either party’s agenda.

One term for the nascent movement: The New Monasticism. That doesn’t quite encompass the breadth and variety of the nascent movement though. It’s also Christianity as a critique of consumerism and extravagance, as radical community uplift, as rejection of status and power for their own sakes. Too, it's an old movement that can be traced back to the founding of the Catholic Worker in the 1930s.

Several communities where Christians are trying to figure out how to practice their faith in revolutionary modes are located here in North Carolina.

Durham’s Rutba House was recently featured in the Boston Globe, which also mentions the Dogwood Abbey in Winston-Salem.

Zach Roberts, dean of the Dogwood Abbey, doubles as interim associate pastor of education and spiritual formation at First Baptist Church in Greensboro.

"Allowing ourselves to be taught and re-taught by the revolutionary Jesus of the gospels" is how the Dogwood Abbey describes its purpose. "The white-American Jesus who saves certain individuals, according to a formula, for a better life later while the world disintegrates is not what we mean…. The focus of all that we practice is the God whose animating Spirit wore the flesh of Jesus of Nezereth. And like them, our dream is to see the kin-dom of God's grace, justice, and reconciliation come to life on earth as it is in heaven."

It would be easy to neglect the Beloved Community Center, because the radioactive reputation of its cofounder, the Rev. Nelson Johnson, so often overshadows the work that he actually does. A fusion of the black church, a singular liberated institution in the midst of overwhelming white oppression when it was established during slave times, and the transformational civil rights politics of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which was founded in Raleigh in 1960 shortly after the Woolworth’s sit-ins here in Greensboro, the Beloved Community Center comes by its identity honestly.

Citing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ella Baker, a founding elder of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, as influences, the Beloved Community Center describes its mission as “to model a spirit of community that promotes social, economic, and personal relationships that affirm and realize the equality, dignity, worth, and potential of everyone.”

Perhaps King articulated a political third way of spirituality best. Here’s what he said in Atlanta in 1967 about the great ideological struggle of his day:

"Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated."

Why Greensboro needs a homeless day center

There's been some talk circulating in Greensboro about the need for a homeless day shelter in the past couple days. Of course, people have been talking about this for awhile. Staff writer Amy Kingsley wrote about a discussion between Liz Seymour, who, like me, is active with Food Not Bombs Greensboro, and the Greensboro Public Library in February 2006. Establishing day centers in Greensboro and High Point is also a "strategy" of Guilford County's ten-year plan to end chronic homelessness.

I think it's fair to say there's a lack of political will to get the job done at this point.

The most recent ripple of conversation was initiated with Mayor Yvonne Johnson's visit with homeless diners at the the downtown central library on Monday. Food Not Bombs serves meals at the library every Monday, and is collaborating with the library and advocate Cara Michele Forrest to create programmed events called the Winter Series. The mayor visited as part of "government official" night.

Seymour reiterated the need for a day shelter with Johnson, and after the mayor left we talked in more detail about the increasing scarcity of places where homeless people can congregate during the day and what to do to address this challenge.

According to Forrest, St. Mary's House is the last remaining place where homeless people can legally congregate in the UNCG/Tate Street area. Other churches have locked their doors during the day, and filed notices of intent with the Greensboro Police Department, allowing the police to come onto the property and arrest people for illegal activities, including for trespassing. Now, for complicated reasons, St. Mary's House, on whose steering committee is serve, is contemplating following suit.

Alongside St. Mary's House, the Beloved Community Center hospitality house on Arlington Street also serves as a geographical anchor for the homeless community. Although I know of no plans by the Beloved Community Center to discontinue services to the homeless, the gentrification brought on by the burgeoning Southside neighborhood must surely create some pressures.

The third leg of this trend of increasing displacement of homeless people is the anti-loitering ordinance passed by the Greensboro City Council last year. Forrest, who is a friend, tells me there have been at least a couple crackdowns on the stretch of South Eugene Street between Urban Ministry and the Salvation Army, although enforcement has been sporadic. The Rev. Kevin Matthews, my pastor at St. Mary's House, says police similarly cracked down on Tate Street over the Christmas break. And on Monday I talked to a homeless man who said police asked him to move along when he was merely sitting on the wall at St. Mary's House. If the man wasn't breaking any laws, as he says was the case, he should not have been asked to leave since no letter of intent has been filed with the police.

Here's a little background on St. Mary's House's historical role as a center of hospitality for homeless people in the Tate Street area, and its recent decision to shift emphasis back to its primary mission as a campus ministry.

First the history, as articulated by Matthews in St. Mary's September/October 2007 newsletter:

"[In the late 1960s and early '70s] St. Mary's House took on the challenge of the influx of young people in the Tate Street area (once referred to as Hippie Hill, but, alas, no more). St. Mary's House was well placed as an informal center to provide ministry to these young people, who were, of course, in the same age group as the students. Indeed, many of them were college dropouts, or students on summer break from here and elsewhere. Somewhere in the midst of this, we became St. Mary's House Episcopal/Anglican Campus and Community Center (what a mouthful!) in order to reflect this emphasis on serving the people living here, often on the streets."

Last summer, Matthews decided to drop the phrase "community center" and shorten the title to "St. Mary's House Episcopal Ministry."

"If the nature of homeless ministry on Tate Street is changed or has already changed, it is still clear that there are students, faculty, and staff at our area campuses who are seeking answers, seeking aid, and seeking community," he writes. "In other words, they are seeking Christ. Unless that changes, our founding mission should remain our primary one."

As secretary, I brought the discussion about the need for a homeless day center to the St. Mary's House steering committee last night. Without taking formal action, the committee assured me that St. Mary's House would like to participate in any coalition that emerges to pursue this goal.

Matthews also discussed his hesitation to follow through on his plan to file a notice of intent with the police.

"St Mary’s House has served the homeless community for many years, and if we file the notice of intent we know that we would essentially give them no place to be," he told me this morning.

Without singling out St. Mary's House, Forrest took this concern to the Greensboro City Council last night (yes, I managed to attend two meetings in one evening).

"Our homeless folks are having less and less places to be, including Tate Street and the UNCG area," she told council members. "We understand the concern of business owners, but when we keep asking them to move on without giving them a place to be, we ask them to do the impossible. We do desperately need a day shelter in Greensboro. That's one of the items on the 10-year plan to end homelessness, but we need to put our heads together to get it done."