More Protesters Laying Down In The Road In Durham

Posted on December 15, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

On December 10th and 13th, more protesters were arrested for their “die in” activities in Durham. Most of the charges were resisting arrest, failure to disperse and “impede traffic – sit/stand/lie”.  While protesting, the familiar Occupy chant, “whose streets? our streets!” was employed.

The list of arrests from the 10th, where protesters blocked traffic at the Streets at Southpoint, includes one protester arrested for attempting to incite a riot. On the 13th, one charge was for carrying a concealed weapon.

The list, via WNCN:

About 20 to 30 demonstrators gathered at the Streets at Southpoint, staging a “die-in” at Nordstrom, before walking to Fayetteville Road, where they blocked the exit ramp on to I-40.

Those arrested include:

1. John Lapp of Durham – failure to disperse, impeding traffic and resisting, delaying and obstructing officers

2. Fabian Hall of Durham – failure to disperse and impeding traffic. Two failure to appear warrants were also served on him.

3. Kevin Atkins of Durham – failure to disperse, impeding traffic and resisting, delaying and obstructing officers

4. Adam Pyburn of Durham – failure to disperse, impeding traffic and resisting, delaying and obstructing officers

5. Robert Stephens of Durham – failure to disperse, impeding traffic and inciting a riot

6. Tara Schmitt of Durham – failure to disperse and impeding traffic

7. Shayla Freels of Garner – failure to disperse and impeding traffic

8. DeLeon Gray – impeding traffic, damage to property and resisting, delaying and obstructing officers

9. Robert Foote of Apex – failure to disperse and impeding traffic

Protesters chanted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” in the middle of Fayetteville Road.

The man arrested for attempting to incite a riot was Robert Terrell Stephens. Mr. Stephens is the current director of alumni for Teach for America and former Obama for America field organizer.

Fabian Hall also had two charges of making harassing phone calls on top of failure to disperse and impeding traffic. The harassing phone call charges produced bond amounts of $4,000 and $8,000. The impede traffic bond was $2,000. That makes Hall’s total amount to bond out of jail $14,000. Overall, the charges for all nine totaled approximately $36,000. Most bonded out.

Who paid?

The WNCN article continues, noting that these protesters knew they were going to be arrested:

Protester Rachel Schankula said around 9 p.m., Durham police were not allowing anyone to wait inside the Durham County Jail to bail out arrested demonstrators.

“There was about seven of us waiting in the waiting room and we were completely quiet. We were chatting with each other. And they told us we had to leave,” Schankula said. “They made us stand out in the cold and it’s 38 degrees and we’re freezing.”

By the way, Ms. Schankula is also currently employed as an ‘Executive Coach’ at Teach for America. Her resume on LinkedIn goes back to 2001 and every entry is Teach for America.

Note WNCN says there were nine arrested on December 10th. I count ten if you include the protester with the stun gun:

“Durham police officers found a stun gun on an arrested protester.”


More Protests on December 13th
According to WRAL, 11 were arrested and this “happened around 9:45 p.m. on Swift Avenue near the Durham Freeway.”  WRAL lists the arrestees in their article and we see a repeat arrestee in Robert Foote, who was also arrested on the 10th.

 

  • Monica Marie Ganguly, 32, of Durham
  • John Michael Harmon, 35, of Durham
  • James Murphy Hoopes, 27, of Falls Church, Virginia
  • Justine Marie Johnson, 40, of Durham
  • Steven James Lorenz, 40, of Durham
  • Daniel Renteria, 19, of Durham
  • James Finley Cooper Wilson, 20, of Durham
  • Douglas Walsh Anderson, 32, of Durham
  • Brian Paul Dingledine, 40, of Chapel Hill
  • Travis K. Duprey, 30, of Walton, New York
  • Robert Michael Foote, 27, of Apex

 

Charges for this group to bond out we are a combined total of around $22,500.

A look at the Durham offender list located detailed charges for the December 13th protests as one having carried a concealed weapon. This person is one Daniel Renteria. Renteria’s charges per Durham Police were carrying a concealed weapon, failure to disperse and impede traffic – sit/stand/lie.

Monica Ganguly has been noted as a leader of Occupy Durham since around 2011. She was arrested as part of Occupy Durham in November of 2011. Ganguly was arrested for breaking and entering with 6 other “anarchists“.

At her plea hearing for that breaking and entering charge, Ganguly made a statement wherein she expressed her desire to “put the system to death”:

Ganguly delivered a short statement to the judge to say she was “entering a plea into a system I have no faith in to deliver justice.”

“The prison system casts an ever-widening net to turn its profit, and the criminalization of dissent expands to terrifyingly broad new territory. But in Athens, in Tunis, in London, in Cairo, in towns that are every bit the same as they are different from Chapel Hill, N.C., people burn with desire to put this system to death,” she said. – News and Observer

Update: Welcome Carolina Plott Hound readers!

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Occupy | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Wake Cty Schools And The Funds

Posted on December 15, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

News and Observer has an article up about Wake County Schools enrollment numbers being down and the subsequent potential loss of revenue for the school system.

I left a comment:

One has to be that Common Core is a major part of why we have such a huge jump in Homeschooling in the last 2-3 years in North Carolina.
Other states are showing similar increases.

I wouldn’t rule out all the NCAE/Organize 2020 protests that went on in the last two years at our schools or near school grounds either. As a parent, I was less than thrilled to see my child ferry home protest fliers in their homework folder last year.

What’s interesting to me is that Holly Springs students are being forced into Apex schools due to overcrowding. A look at what schools are losing students would be interesting.

A look at homeschooling in Wake County shows a steady increase. Wake County by far has had the highest numbers of homeschoolers in the state.  Common Core began in NC schools in 2012 and has been a factor in the increase in homeschooling in NC:

North Carolina, already a home-schooling hotbed, saw a 14 percent rise last year in the number of students being educated at home, according to a report fromHeartlander Magazine. Similar increases have been seen in Virginia, California and New York, according to education activists.

“If you look at national, and even state polls, you can see that the more familiar people become with Common Core, the more they dislike it,” Bob Lubke, a senior policy analyst for the North Carolina-based Civitas Institute, told FoxNews.com. “They feel like they are losing control of what their kids are learning.”

An official for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which oversees the state’s public schools, says that the uptick in home-school enrollment has had no negative effect. In fact they say it is the opposite.

“We have experienced a statewide increase in enrollment over the past few years,” Vanessa Jeter, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told FoxNews.com. “Since 2012-13, our statewide enrollment has increased by 27,512 students.” – Fox News, Opposition to Common Core Spurs Jump In Homeschooling

Note that DPI says the uptick in homeschooling has had no negative effect, yet here we have an article at News and Observer saying funding may decrease. That seems like a negative effect of sorts.

Here’s the list starting in 09-10 as reported by the Division of Non-Public Education. Over this period, there has been an increase of 1,683 students being homeschooled.

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, NCAE, Organize2020 | Tagged , | Comments Off on Wake Cty Schools And The Funds

#DM7 Article: The Death of Lennon Lacy

Posted on December 14, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

This is a reposting of my weekly Da Tech Guy Column: The Death of Lennon Lacy.

 

By A.P. Dillon

On August 29th, the body of 17 year-old black male was found hanging from a swing set in Bladensboro, North Carolina. That young man’s name was Lennon Lacy.  North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and the local Bladensboro police were involved in the investigation into Lacy’s death, which was ruled a suicide.  The Bladen county district attorney, Jon David, has issued a statement backing the findings of both the SBI and the local authorities.

The NC NAACP thinks this was a race based homicide, not a suicide. They contend this could have been a lynching. There has been some pointing of fingers at residents of the ‘white trailer park’ adjacent to where Lacy’s body was found according to a Guardian report. That same report includes the tidbit that Bladensboro is also called ‘crackertown’.   There was also a recounting from a sports blogger that contained reference to a confederate flag he remembered from when he apparently used to practice in Bladensboro back in 1995.

Also, it appears the 17 year-old was in a relationship with a 31 year-old white female named Michelle Brimhall.  Allegedly, Brimhall left her husband in February and the Lacy family has reportedly questioned why police had not questioned him. According to the Guardian, the family also said that Brimhall had broken up with Lacy weeks before his death. Brimhall denied it.

The NC NAACP has called for a Federal investigation. There seems to be a lot of calls for the DOJ to be involved these days.  The NC NAACP hired an outside pathologist, Dr. Christena Roberts, whose findings call into question the “quick” ruling of suicide according to an NC NAACP press release.  It is worth noting Dr. Roberts was brought in by the defense team for the former Duke Lacrosse rape accuser, Crystal Mangum, who was standing trial for the alleged murder of her boyfriend. Mangum was later convicted of 2nd degree murder in that case.

Bear in mind, the leader of the NC NAACP is Reverend Barber.  Barber leads the hyperbolic and hypocritical Moral Monday and is keen on theatrics with a history of seeing racism in ever corner – except his own. For what it’s worth, I’ve lived in North Carolina for almost 17 years and I can’t remember a time when Barber wasn’t ginning up discord somewhere in the state with the race card. As such, it is hard for me to take what he says seriously.

For example, in this case, Barber has also been calling up images of Emmett Till, likely referencing the relationship of Lacy’s with a white woman. That might be a valid comparison IF Barber hadn’t been throwing Till’s name around for shock value in the past during Moral Monday protests.  For another example of his theatrics, take in what Barber said about the memorial service; emphasis added:

But Barber also talked about the chilling thought that lingered, otherwise unmentioned, over the scores of black and white people attending the packed memorial. “The image of a black boy hanging from a rope is in the souls of all of us,” he told them. “It is in the DNA of America. In 2014, our greatest prayer is that this was not a lynching.”

Wait, what?

The image of a black boy hanging is in ‘in the DNA of America’?  I suppose that’s why we elected a black president. Twice.

I suppose that’s why “scores of black and white people” were attending the memorial.

Having said that, there are some weird things about this case.

1. The 911 caller who reported finding the body gauged Lacy’s age as between late 30’s and early 40’s.  The caller, a woman, also said she had nothing to cut him down with. Sometime between her call and police arriving, the body was indeed cut down.

2. Two belts, one black canvas and one royal blue canvas, were used to fashion the noose that was used. Relatives did not identify the belts as belonging to Lacy.

3. There were issues with the height of the swing set and being able to reach the beam that the belts were attached to. Also, there appeared to be no item used to stand on by the deceased for which to tie the noose and then kick it away in order to kill himself.  A copy of the press release that contains the report by Dr. Roberts contains the following observations; via WRAL with emphasis added.

“One end of the swing set has a climbing platform attached. The noose was reportedly tied to the supporting cross beam (appears to be a 2 x 6″) and then fed through a metal grommet that was screwed into the wood. This grommet was 22.5″ away from the platform. Lennon was 69″ tall. The height of the cross beam to the ground was 90”. In a photo provided his brother who is 6’4″ could not reach up and touch the beam. There were no swings on this swing set to act as a step to reach the beam. There was no item present at the scene that Lennon could have stood on, applied the noose and then kicked away. The only other way to reach the beam and grommet therefore had to be from the climbing platform. No measurements are available at this time for the noose (described below) but it does not appear long enough to have been tied around the beam, fed through the grommet and still allow a large enough loop for him to be able to place over his head. The side structure of the platform is a rather small square that is further obstructed by the v­shaped vertical supports of the swing.”

4. The body was found wearing sneakers the relatives say were not his. The sneakers found with the body were white with no laces and Lacy had been seen leaving for an evening walk in a pair of grey athletic shoes.  The white sneakers were allegedly size 10 and half, however Lacy wore a size 12. While all other effects of Lacy’s were described, the shoes were not with the body when it arrived at the coroner’s and was missing in the description of the personal items according to the autopsy report.

5. More related to the shoes, relatives also have mentioned that a new pair of Jordan basketball shoes have apparently gone missing. Lacy allegedly purchased the shoes recently before his death.

The detail about the shoes bothers me.

The family reports Lacy wearing gray sneakers of some kind when they last saw him. It is unclear if those gray sneakers were the Jordan’s the family alleges are missing.

If they were the Jordan’s, teens sadly have been murdered for their shoes before. Just recently, 3 men were sentenced in Georgia for shooting a man over his sneakers.

I would hope the police would be looking into who in the area possibly wears a 10 and half and perhaps has a new pair of grey sneakers on. Instead, they are likely doing battle with the Reverend Barber because ‘justice’… or something.

 

If you enjoyed this article, you should really check out other pieces written by Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent Seven writers and maybe hit that tip jar!

AP DillonA.P. Dillon (Lady Liberty 1885), is a Conservative minded wife and mother living in the Triangle area of North Carolina. A.P. Dillon founded the blog LadyLiberty1885.com in 2009. After the 2012 election, she added an Instapundit style blog called The ConMom Blog. Mrs. Dillon recently participated in Glenn Beck’sWe Will Not Conform. Mrs. Dillon’s writing, in addition to Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent 7, can also be found at StopCommonCoreNC.org, WatchdogWireNC and WizBang. Non-political writing projects include science fiction novellas that are, as of yet, unpublished. Her current writing project is a children’s book series.

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The Common Core Weekend Reads – 12-14-14

Posted on December 14, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

Common Core math 7 plus 8These are the Common Core Weekend Reads for December 14, 2014.

This is a review of the past week of news on Common Core nationwide and in North Carolina.

Articles are organized by category.

Prior Edition of Weekend Reads: 12-7-14
Weekend Reads archive at StopCommonCoreNC HERE.

NC UPDATES:

The next ASRC meeting is this coming Monday, December 15th.

APUSH UPDATES:

QUOTES OF THE WEEK:

He was a “very, very conservative governor in Florida; he cut taxes like Ronald Reagan did,” said Dan Henninger.

Henninger added:

So if conservatives generally are going to say that if – because – he said something about, or supported Common Core, or they don’t like something he said about immigration, therefore, he can’t even consider being a nominee, then the Republican Party is going to have a big problem.
​- Breitbart News, WSJ: Conservatives Should Get Behind Super Conservative Jeb Bush


Many teachers remain bitter over what they perceive as King’s mismanagement.

“He screwed up New York, and now he can go to Washington and screw up the whole country,” said Tony Felicio Jr., a teacher-union president in the Connetquot district.
– Newsday, State education commissioner tested by Common Core to leave NY

 

LEGISLATIVE/LEGAL:

 POLITICAL/PROTESTS:

 HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES:

THE WEEKEND READS:

TESTING UPDATES:

WEEKEND VIDEOS:

TWEETS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Academic Standards Review Commission, Common Core | 1 Comment

FL Teachers Union Takes Hit Over School Choice

Posted on December 14, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

A Florida judge dealt a blow to a teachers union and their allies in the state trying to end the state’s thirteen year-old Tuition Tax Credit Scholarship program according to the Daily Signal.

Teachers’ unions in Florida continue to threaten the educational opportunity of thousands of the state’s most vulnerable children.

But there is some good news: Last week, Leon County Circuit Court Judge George S. Reynolds III granted parents of these children the right to interveneon behalf of their children’s scholarships, which are awarded through the corporate tuition tax credit scholarship program.

“All three [of my] children are excelling academically and socially in their respective schools under the scholarships,” said Cheryl Joseph, a mother of three scholarship recipients and one of 15 parents who were granted a motion to intervene in the lawsuit. Cheryl, like the other parents who filed, will not be able to send her children to their chosen school without the scholarship funding.

In August, the Florida Education Association and allies—including the Florida School Boards Association, the PTA, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and others—filed two lawsuits challenging the state’s 13-year-old Tuition Tax Credit Scholarship program.

The first suit claimed that the scholarship violates the “no aid” clause and the “uniform public schools” clause of the state’s constitution by allowing students to take the aid to private schools, some with religious affiliation.

Read the rest, it’s similar to the push going on in North Carolina where Opportunity Scholarships have come under fire from similar suspects. Catch up on the fight in NC here.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, LEGAL, Unions | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A Tweet About NC’s Civics and Economics

Posted on December 13, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

A tweet from NC’s Superintendent, who is also President Elect of the CCSSO, caught my eye the other morning.

 

The tweet from Atkinson is a reply to a story on Mississippi, which doesn’t discuss North Carolina whatsoever.  Atkinson has proven to be twitter challenged, so I checked Ravitch’s latest tagged articles for North Carolina.

I thought the Atkinson tweet was a response to the article Ravitch did covering Atkinson’s latest machinations dealing with the hotly contested new APUSH framework (AP US History), but there adoption date of NC’s civics isn’t covered there or in the related article where Ravitch basically re-prints the News and Observer’s smear job. It would appear Atkinson’s tweet is a non-sequitor protestation of something Ravitch never said? YEP. Gee…Our schools are in the best of hands.

Atkinson’s non-sequitor tweet is correct (see the next paragraph), which begs the question why the big Koch brothers push. That question’s answer is easy: Skirt the Founding Principles act and save APUSH. After all, the Bill of Rights Institute’s work doesn’t line up with the new APUSH narratives.

The NC proposed coursework is rather simple. The last revision of North Carolina’s Civics and Economics that I found was in 2007. The current version was approved in 2011 and can be found here. This 2011 version notes “no standards have been changed.”. This 2011 version is also available at NC DPI’s Live Binder.  The 2011 version has an ‘unpacking‘ document. For those interested, here is the timeline of recent course of study changes in North Carolina, as well as the 2013 Civics and Economics test.  There are multiple additional resources listed at DPI’s wikispace for Civics and Economics.

jesus invalid argumentWhile I was on the first Ravitch article, I noticed she chooses to quote Bill Bigelow.  Bigelow, in turn, offers a half-assed smear job on the Bill of Rights Institute as a means of making sure people know how evil the Koch brothers are. I find it amusing the response to someone from the ‘far right’ is to choose someone from the ‘far left’ to debunk them.

To say Bigelow leans left would be a gross understatement. The only thing I agree with him on in this universe is that Common Core is bad.

Bigelow’s Resume includes teacher, occupier, climate change true believer, a fan of socialist Howard Zinn, obsessed with slavery and revisionist history teller via a modern morality lense – just see his book on Columbus, which has been banned in Tuscon, I believe.  Don’t miss what Bigelow says about Reagan and ‘bended knee Constitution worship’. Also, did you know Helen Keller was really a socialist? I laughed.  Oh, and he hates fireworks or something.

Bigelow makes the claim, in the article cited by Ravitch, that the Bill of Rights Institute is a Koch “front group”, but of course provides no proof.

I nearly spit out my coffee laughing at one of Bigelow’s passages Ravitch chose to include in her blog entry. The first sentence alone should tell you to what lengths Bigelow will go to make sure you know Koch = evil.  Notice he calls it “Koch curriculum”, not Bill of Rights Institute curriculum.

In its materials for teachers and students, the Bill of Rights Institute cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home its libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit. As one Bill of Rights lesson insists, “The Founders considered industry and property rights critical to the happiness of society.” This message that individual owners of property are the source of social good, their property sacred, and government the source of danger weaves through the entire Koch curriculum, sometimes with sophistication, other times in caricature. For example, in one “click-and-explore” activity at the BRI website, showing the many ways that government can oppress individuals—“Life Without the Bill of Rights?”—a cartoon character pops up with a dialogue bubble reading, “The gov’t took my home!” An illustration shows his home demolished.

 

How does one “cherry pick” the Constitution in a libertarian manner, exactly? How dare children be taught the property they own should be managed as they wish!  How dare children be taught to be wary of big government.  Funny words from an Occupy supporter.

A paragraph down from the above excerpt is this passage:

However, the materials at the Bill of Rights Institute avoid discussing how the free exercise of property rights has played out in the real world—especially with respect to historically oppressed groups.

The “real world”? As opposed to this fake one we live in?
Read the whole thing if you can stomach it.

He also gets into Castle Doctrine, because we all know that is what the Trayvon Martin case was about, right?   For as skewed as Bigelow says the Bill of Rights Institute is a mess, however, Bigelow’s own writing is far worse.

 

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, June Atkinson, Twitter | Tagged | Comments Off on A Tweet About NC’s Civics and Economics