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What is the deal with Alamance County?

Thats a question that many caring and thinking North Carolinians have posed a lot in recent decades as theyve confronted and digested repeated reports of racial tensions, discriminatory misconduct by law enforcement, and displays of white supremacy.

At first blush, Alamance seems an unlikely locale for such issues. With a population of more than 160,000, bisected by a major interstate, and sandwiched between two large and increasingly diverse and tolerant metro areas (the Triad and the Triangle), Alamance is no off-the-beaten-path, Old South backwater.

Indeed, North Carolinas 17th largest county is home to a sizable private university of growing renown and at one point, its textile industry was a thriving economic engine that employed thousands and attracted skilled transplants from around the country. Alamance has also elected at least a smattering of progressive politicians to public office down through the years, and in 2020, it elected the first Latinx Democrat to ever serve in the North Carolina House a son of Salvadoran immigrants named Ricky Hurtado.

Sadly, however, as Alamance looks ahead the 175th anniversary of its founding in just under three years, such attributes arent the things for which it has come to be best known.

While the county is increasingly diverse and home to many forward-looking residents determined to build a 21st Century economy and a community of real and sustainable tolerance, Alamances chief cause clbre in 2021 is its status as locus of reaction, repression, and conflict.

Just last year, the county seat of Graham was the site of multiple racially charged incidents involving demonstrations against abusive law enforcement and jail practices, access to the polls, and the future of Confederate monuments incidents that gave rise to several highly questionable arrests and multiple complaints of civil rights violations.

And of course, these events happened in a county whose best-known politician Sheriff Terry Johnson is a hard-right law enforcement officer who has gained regional and national attention for targeting Latinx immigrants and uttering Trump-like pronouncements for nearly two decades. Trump himself bested Joe Biden in the county by 8.4% in 2020 and Hillary Clinton by 12.6% in 2016.

So, what gives? How did this complex situation arise? What does one find today when one looks beyond the headlines? And what might the future hold?

Over the coming weeks the NC Policy Watch team of journalists will provide at least partial answers to these and some related questions in a series of special reports examining different aspects of the Alamance story.

Today, we begin the series with a fascinating but sobering report from Investigative Reporter Joe Killian on the deep-seated racism and frequently horrific incidents of violence and repression that have long plagued the county.

Reports in the coming weeks will include:

Its our hope that, taken together and in the best tradition of investigative journalism, these reports will shine a spotlight on several important problems that have remained hidden below the surface too long, and ultimately, lead to the kind of open and honest discussions that are a necessary predicate to progress.

We welcome your questions, feedback, and suggestions for additional reporting going forward.

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The battle for Alamance: Check out the new Policy Watch special report | The Progressive Pulse - The Progressive Pulse

Watch the CBSN Originals documentary Do We Still Need the Electoral College? in the video player above. It premieres on CBSN on Sunday, March 21 at 8 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. ET.

When Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, he became the fourth president in American history and the second since 2000 to win a presidential election despite losing the popular vote. Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes nationwide. But in the Electoral College which ultimately decides who wins the presidency Mr. Trump received 306 votes to Clintons 232. In 2020, despite Joe Bidens commanding 7 million vote lead in the popular vote, just a few thousand votes in key states could have swung the election for Donald Trump.

Cases like these have fueled efforts to reform the Electoral College or do away with it entirely, but some say it still serves an important purpose.

How did we end up with this system for choosing a president? Stanford University professor of history and political science Jack Rakove says the Founding Fathers had little precedent for the institution they were creating.

Executive power in the 18th century was either monarchical, king-like, or ministerial, the sense of a British Cabinet, Rakove explained. So you had to create an office that was completely new.

The founders considered three main proposals for electing the president: direct democracy, election by Congress, and an election by state-based electors.

The idea of direct democracy whoever gets the most votes, wins was appealing to many of the founders. In states like New York and Massachusetts, direct democracy was already being used to elect governors. However, it was unclear how voters of that era would be able to identify qualified national political figures, and some worried that the general population would be too ill-informed to take on the responsibility of choosing the president.

The problem was what you could do at the state level might not be transferable to the national level, Rakove said. The thing that happens from the 1790s on is that the growth of the popular press, and the growth of an evolving political press, where newspapers are committed to particular candidates or particular parties, became a prominent feature of American politics.

For the founders coming from Southern states, direct democracy would also mean that executive power would likely be dominated by the North because it had a larger voting bloc. At the time of the constitutional convention, nearly 40% of people living in the South were enslaved Black people who were not allowed to vote.

A big part of the Southern population consisted of African American slaves, who have no political existence whatsoever, Rakove said. If you have a truly popular election for a single officer chosen from the whole nation, there would be a big regional disadvantage for the South.

For Southern states at the time, having Congress choose the president would solve both of their main concerns with direct democracy. Congressional representatives, the countrys political elite, would have no problem identifying qualified national political figures.

And Congress had also already addressed potential Northern dominance with the so-called three-fifths compromise. The compromise stated that 60% of a states enslaved population would be counted towards the states total population for the purpose of allocating seats in Congress giving Southern states more political clout.

That was emboldening and empowering the South, said Wilfred Codrington III, an associate professor of law at Brooklyn College. It really disincentivized the desire to get rid of slavery because the more slaves you had, the more political power you had.

A presidential election by Congress, however, would infringe on the founders desire to establish a separation of powers.

If we have a congressional election and the president is ambitious then the president will become, in their terms, the lackey or the tool, the toady of Congress, Rakove said.

The compromise that was eventually enshrined in the Constitution is a system of state-based electors based roughly on state population. For the founders, this solved a whole array of potential problems: the risk of leaving too much power in the hands of an ill-informed public, Northern dominance of the executive branch, and breaching the separation of powers.

The upshot is the system having presidential electors became attractive, not because it was attractive in itself, but because it was the least unattractive option, Rakove said.

The Constitution specifies that each state gets same number of electors as its total number of representatives and senators in Congress, and the founders left it up to the states to determine how to they would choose their electors. All but two states Maine and Nebraska have adopted a winner-take-all system that awards all their electoral votes to whichever candidate won the popular vote in the state.

Advocates of the Electoral College celebrate its check on the power that large cities would have in a purely popular vote election.

Tara Ross, author of The Indispensable Electoral College, says it forces presidential candidates to court the votes of a more diverse electorate across the country.

We have a system where you have to win simultaneous victories in multiple parts of the country and the only way to get there is to build the biggest coalition you can, Ross said. Because of the Electoral College, presidential candidates serve themselves best if they try to appeal to a wide variety of people.

But in recent years, as discrepancies between electoral votes and the popular vote have become more common, reform efforts have gained momentum. Electoral College reformers and opponents say the system is confusing, outdated and anti-democratic.

Critics note that states with small populations have disproportionately more clout under the current system. And the winner-take-all rules mean a handful of battleground states have an outsized influence on determining the winner, leading presidential candidates to devote much of their campaigning to just a few states.

One leading reform initiative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which calls on states to agree to allocate their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. So far, 15 states and Washington, D.C. have signed on not enough for it to take effect.

Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party who now works with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, says determining the president by who wins the popular vote would be more truly democratic and could help restore public confidence in the system.

I think unfortunately too many people in this country think their vote doesnt matter, Anuzis said. I think that has a horrible effect on politics in those states that are ignored, as well as public policy.

Malcolm Kenyatta, a Pennsylvania state legislator who served as a presidential elector in 2020, has seen the system from the inside and thinks it needs to change.

The Electoral College sets up a system where every vote is not equal. And a vote in one place is more important than a vote somewhere else. Thats unfair, he said.

Kenyatta believes our democracy will only endure if we work towards improving the institutions it relies on.

I think we dont always think about the fact that this thing that were doing, its an experiment, he said. Theres nothing written on some tablet somewhere that says America has to succeed. It happens because every generation recognizes the role we play in ensuring that theres something to pass on.

Read the rest here:
Why does America have the Electoral College and should we keep it? - WSGW

March 1993: Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female attorney general of the United States.

January 1997: Also nominated by Clinton, Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the nations first female secretary of state.

January 2007: U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) became the House's first female speaker. In 2019, she reclaimed the title, becoming the first lawmaker to hold the office two times in more than 50 years.

Probably taken outside Margaret Sanger's Brownsville clinic trial at the King's County Court of Special Sessions, Jan. 30, 1917.

January 2013: The U.S. military removed a ban against women serving in combat positions.

July 2016: Hillary Clinton became the first woman to receive a major political party's presidential nomination. During her speech at the Democratic National Convention, she said, "Standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother, I'm so happy this day has come."

January 2021: Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first woman and first woman of color vice president of the United States. "While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last," Harris said after getting elected in November.

Womens economic status:

You would think with the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that women in general and women of color would have wage equality with white men. However, this is far from the case. Today in the U.S., women in general make 82 cents for every $1 men earn. For women of color, it is even worse, with Black women earning 62 cents and Latina women earning 54 cents for every white mans dollar. On the surface, this would seem to be racism and sexism. However, it is much more complicated than that, and white men are not the villain.

Read more:
Judith Dale: Womens History Month are we there yet? - Lompoc Record

Some of the biggest names in the US's Democratic Party paid tribute to the late John Hume on St Patrick's Day yesterday.

ormer US president Bill Clinton, his wife and ex-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi spoke of their admiration for the former SDLP leader in a virtual broadcast from Washington DC.

The pre-recorded segment was introduced by Bono, who famously invited Mr Hume and fellow Good Friday Agreement architect David Trimble to share the stage with his band during a Belfast concert held on the cusp of the peace deal being signed.

Mr Hume, who died last August, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, along with Lord Trimble, for his efforts to build peace.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood also contributed to the tributes, along with retired party colleague Mark Durkan and former SDLP deputy leader Brid Rogers, as well as the UUP's Mike Nesbitt, former Irish President Mary McAleese and Taoiseach Micheal Martin.

Mr Eastwood said Mr Hume would be spoken about in the same way as historic Irish leaders such as Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell.

Mr Martin said that he was proud to participate in the transatlantic tribute, describing the late politician as having the "heart of a lion".

"We were lucky to have him and we will treasure his memory," the Taoiseach added.

Mr Hume's grandchildren read a poem written by his son, Aidan, in memory of his father, who also featured in the broadcast.

Musician Phil Coulter performed Mr Hume's favourite song, The Town I Loved So Well, written in homage to Derry in the city's Guildhall.

Mr Clinton said it was thanks to Mr Hume and people like him that a generation of young people had grown up away from the shadow of the Troubles.

"He treated everyone as a human being, someone who could agree that they wanted their children and grandchildren to grow up free from the horrors of sectarian violence," he said.

Recalling their 1994 visit to Northern Ireland, which included a peace rally in Derry, Mrs Clinton said that through his tireless efforts and "dogged determination", Mr Hume had brought others along with him on the road to peace.

"John was a visionary who believed that what we have in common is far more important than what divides us," she said.

The broadcast finished with a recording of Mr Hume singing Danny Boy.

Belfast Telegraph

Read more:
Grandees of Democratic Party pay tribute to 'visionary' John Hume - Belfast Telegraph

Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state

It seemed like a fairly innocuous request.

In 1997, when Hillary Clinton was the first lady, she organized a conference on child care to discuss its challenges, and to request increased federal funding for programs like Head Start or tax incentives for businesses. She asked the treasury secretary at the time, Robert Rubin, to start the panel.

He was puzzled by the invitation. I think he was taken somewhat aback in being asked, Mrs. Clinton recalled in a phone interview with The New York Times. It was a little bit outside his comfort zone.

In the end, Mr. Rubin agreed to speak on the panel. But the broader issue of convincing men that they should prioritize and care about so-called womens issues never went away not even for Mrs. Clinton.

She kept pushing the agenda anyway: In an attempt to make womens rights a priority, the Clinton administration created the countrys first-ever presidential body focused on gender issues the Interagency Council on Women and the then-first lady served as its honorary chair.

That council didnt just shine a powerful spotlight on womens issues that had not had much attention at the time, it also set up something of a precedent for future administrations.

The Obama administration took that council a step further, expanding its power and plans, under the leadership of Tina Tchen and Valerie Jarrett, who both also faced their fair share of eye-rolls and glazed looks.

We got a little bit of pushback externally, with things like Gee, wheres the council on men and boys? said Ms. Tchen, who now serves as the president and chief executive of the anti-sexual harassment movement Times Up. I was like, I think thats every other council.

And now, President Biden has announced the creation of a new White House Gender Policy Council, with two full-time chairwomen: Jennifer Klein and Julissa Reynoso. Its goal is to ensure that every government agency considers how all of its policies, whether its curbing climate change or building new infrastructure, may intersect with the lives of women and L.G.B.T.Q.+ people.

Whether the council will have an easier time bringing high-level agency heads and lawmakers aboard remains to be seen. But the structure of the council, against a backdrop of the twin crises of the pandemic and an economic downturn that have disproportionately upended womens lives, suggests it might have more power than anything that had existed before.

In Her Words caught up with Mrs. Clinton to discuss how effective she thinks this new council can be, compared with the one that was created when she was first lady, and what had or had not changed in the past quarter century.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What are your thoughts on how the Gender Policy Council is structured? Does it have the power and tools to really help women in this time of crisis?

The council is an absolutely critical first step. It sends a very clear message to the rest of government that there is going to be constant attention paid to how important it is to integrate the concerns that women are facing, especially post-pandemic, in every walk of life, and that the administration is expecting to highlight a governmentwide focus on uplifting the rights of girls and women, not only in our country but across the globe.

But clearly the work is making it a reality by coordinating among all of the agencies of the federal government who have a seat at the table and actually bringing forward legislative and regulatory changes that will fulfill the mission of the council.

Is a council in the White House the best way to help women right now? Or is there a better way to approach it?

Ill answer your question by saying its necessary, but not sufficient. If you dont have a council in the White House, you dont signal the importance of these issues to the incoming president and vice president. If you dont staff it with really smart, experienced people, then youre setting it up for failure.

Part of the challenge for the council is to get very specific, and then set up both a structure and a timeline for involving the rest of the government.

I know how effective both Jen and Julissa are, having worked with both of them. They know that youve got to drive a bureaucracy. You cant just say, OK, we care about everybody, go out and do good. You have to implement it. You have to have measures of accountability. You have to be absolutely on it every day.

Weve seen how easy it is to disband these gender-focused councils, as has been done under multiple Republican presidents. So how can the American government institutionalize something like this?

What you really want is to institutionalize the legislative and regulatory changes. Setting up a council is not, by itself, going to move us toward paid family leave. Its not going to improve child care quality. Those things require the kind of hard legislative and regulatory work that can lead to lasting changes that cannot be so easily eliminated.

Should the U.S. have a dedicated gender department, like the Office for Women in Australia or similar setups that other countries have adopted?

There are different approaches that are certainly worth looking at. But in this country right now, where we have so many incredible challenges, I think what we want to do is focus on getting results for people and not letting a bureaucracy become the goal. Because I dont think most women would care about that. I think they would rightly say, Well, how does that help me get better access to quality child care?

Twenty-five years after your speech in Beijing with your now iconic statement womens rights are human rights the world still talks about womens rights in a condescending way, as if its something that is granted to women not something they inherently deserve and that can be easily taken away. Should the discussion around womens rights be reframed?

I wrote an article in The Atlantic to commemorate the Beijing speech in September, and I made the case that we needed to shift our attention and certainly our rhetoric from a rights-based framework to a power-based one. You cannot continue to argue about whether women deserve certain rights or not. Why are we still having to demand our rights? Isnt there an equity agenda that treats mothers and fathers equally? The power imbalance that still exists is what I think has to be the basis for the debate going forward.

If you just call for equal pay, for example, and you dont look at the disparities as to where women are working, which weve now seen painfully exposed because of the pandemic with all of the essential workers in health care and other frontline businesses, then youre missing the bigger picture.

Robert Rubin was puzzled when you invited him to participate in a conference on child care. Is this kind of interaction mens befuddlement, their eyes glazing over commonplace for you when youre advocating rights for women and girls?

All the time. In fact, I wrote in my book Hard Choices about my four years as secretary of state, that Ive grown somewhat tired of watching otherwise thoughtful people smile and nod when I brought up the concerns of women and girls. Even some of the men who worked with me in the State Department at high levels I would say, OK, were going to India and were going to obviously do all the official meetings, but then were going to a place called the Self-employed Womens Association because its the largest collective of women in the world. And you could just see, it was like, Oh, here she goes again.

In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Write to us at inherwords@nytimes.com.

More:
Hillary Clinton Thinks a White House Gender Council Is a Crucial First Step - The New York Times