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Radio clip: The State of Things
Michael Walden, agricultural and resource economics
Grand
jury to hear protest case
3 are charged with vandalism
Getting
involved
Kwanzaa celebration
Radio clip: The State of Things
Nov. 29, 2004
WUNC
Host Frank Stasio
© Copyright 2004
Dell In The Triad: On Nov. 9th, the Dell Computer Company accepted a $242 million tax incentive package from North Carolina to locate its new manufacturing plant in the Triad. Now, several counties are vying for the plant -- by offering even more tax breaks. Host Frank Stasio talks to Justin Catanoso, executive editor of the Triad Business Journal; and Mike Walden, professor of economics at NC State University, about the Dell deal and the wisdom of tax incentives for large employers. (32:00)
Letters Segment: On Wed. Nov 17, SOT spent an hour with North Carolina born filmmaker Ross McElwee whose new movie, "Bright Leaves" chronicles his obsession with his family's sketchy connection to a 1950's Hollywood movie called "Bright Leaf" about two warring North Carolina tobacco families. In our occassional letters segment Host Frank Stasio speaks with Terence Fitzsimmons, son of Foster Fitzsimmons who wrote the novel "Bright Leaf," upon which the Hollywood movie was based. (17:00)
Nov. 30, 2004
News & Observer
By ANNE SAKER
© Copyright 2004
A Wake County prosecutor said Monday he will ask a grand jury to consider the case against three young protesters charged with the Nov. 5 damage to the state Republican Party's Raleigh headquarters.
About a dozen supporters of the protesters squeezed into a District Court courtroom for the brief formality of binding the case over to Superior Court. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Ford will ask the grand jury, perhaps as early as December, to determine whether enough evidence exists to schedule trials.
David Hensley, 20; his girlfriend, Melissa Brown, 18, and Vanessa Zuloaga, 24, all of Columbia, S.C., appeared Monday for the hearing. Each is charged with one felony count of causing malicious damage to property by use of an incendiary device.
District Judge Paul Gessner allowed them to stay out of jail on $50,000 bail bond each. A fund-raising drive organized over the Internet raised the money to free the protesters.
The damage to the Republican headquarters occurred after a protest march near N.C. State University just before midnight Nov. 5. The GOP headquarters is on Hillsborough Street a few blocks east of the campus.
When police arrived, they saw people dressed in black around the brick building; the people scattered, and police found broken windows, a broken front sign and a two-headed effigy featuring President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.
Someone also spray-painted slogans on the building as well as the circle A symbol of anarchism.
A citizen who lives on Forest Street behind the Republican headquarters said he found the two women near his garage that night changing out of black clothes. He detained them until police arrived; Hensley was arrested nearby.
At the hearing Monday, lawyers for Hensley and Brown accepted Ford's decision to take the cases to the grand jury. But Zuloaga, who did not have a lawyer, asked Gessner to appoint one for her. The judge gave her a form and a clipboard.
Having no place to sit down and fill out the form, Zuloaga stood in the courtroom's aisle and began writing. Her fiance, Jason Clark, 22, summoned some friends to stand around her as a shield from the prying eye of the two television cameras in court.
Gessner told the group to sit or leave. The dozen supporters walked out of the courtroom, and as the TV cameras followed them into the fourth-floor lobby, a young woman steered Zuloaga to the women's restroom. The cameraman trailed them until the door closed on his lens.
Outside on South Salisbury Street, the supporters held signs protesting the arrests of the "Raleigh 3" as political and complained that they had been hounded by law enforcement agencies. Raleigh police and FBI officials say they are still investigating the Nov. 5 incident to see whether there is any connection with a similar demonstration Nov. 4 in Buffalo, N.Y.
Yolanda Carrington, 26, an N.C. State student, said the arrests were an overreaction to a political demonstration, and she said that other kinds of damage by young people goes unpunished.
"At Carter-Finley, people tore down the goal posts" after a N.C. State football victory, "and they weren't charged with the kind of crime that these people are. This was petty vandalism. Why are they saying it's terrorism?"
Nov. 30, 2004
News & Observer
By Joyce Sykes
© Copyright 2004
KWANZAA CELEBRATION: Charles McDew, community organizer and professor of the history of the civil rights movement at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis, Minn., will be the keynote speaker for the 13th annual Kwanzaa Celebration at N.C. State University. McDew's lecture "The Lens of History, Stories We Should All Know" will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the multipurpose room of the African-American Cultural Center, located on the first floor of the Witherspoon Student Center. The program will also feature traditional Kwanzaa rituals, dance and food. Free and open to the public. Information, contact Dr. Tracey Ray, director for African-American student affairs, at tracey_ray@ncsu.edu or 515-3125.