Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville Open Thread for Saturday, September 24th, 2022. (aka Day of Vengeance)
We offer this space every weekend to give readers a variety of links to local and regional news of interest, and open the floor for comment and discussion. Wishing all a good day from beautiful Western North Carolina.
“Daily Kos fights for a progressive America by empowering its community and allies with information and tools to directly impact the political process.”
Please jump the fold for local news, events and more.
Serving Local Since 2011
This reporting from Asheville Watchdog provides an excellent example of the pure propaganda that Fox News spreads to its willing audience.
Mountain Express, Sally Kestin, Asheville Watchdog , 9/23/2022
Fox News last week told a national audience that Asheville has seen a 31% increase in violent crime in the last five years. “Asheville once touted as a top-10 tourist destination back in 2017, but with crime raging, the city now ranks, get this, in the top 10% of most violent cities in America,” anchor Todd Piro said. “That’s tough to believe.”
Yes, it is.
The 31% increase is not current. It refers to a period ending in 2020, when crime had increased nationwide. Violent crime — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — went down in Asheville in 2021.
A sampling:
-----“Crime is a serious issue and one that I hear about as a top concern for our community,” said Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer. “Is our community unsafe as the picture is painted by Fox News? No, absolutely not.”
-----The Fox News report blamed Asheville’s left-leaning politicians for the city’s purported violent crime problem. “CRIME SOARS IN DEM-RUN TOURIST TOWN,” said the chyron. Another chyron proclaimed “TOWN BECOMING HUB OF ANTIFA.”
-----The segment featured ex-Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan, a former Democrat who blamed “leftist politicians” for what he said was anti-police sentiment in Asheville. Duncan, who retired as sheriff in 2018, ran the department for 12 years, replacing Bobby Lee Medford.
-----Mayor Manheimer said, “Fox News is doing their best to try to highlight these evil Democrat blue cities like New York and Chicago and L.A., and I guess now we’re going to focus on Asheville. It is a continuation of this theme of, ‘You should worry. You’re not safe in your own home. You’re not safe in your community. You’re not safe walking down the sidewalk.’ And that’s not the case in Asheville.”
Mountain Express, Brooke Randle, 9/22/2022
For anyone on social media, the flurry of back-to-school photos earlier this month was hard to miss. Parents, teachers and students alike marked the unofficial end of summer and began to settle into another academic year.
Perhaps less obvious — but no less important — was another set of scholastic developments. This year, the start of school coincided with the ramping up of campaign season for Asheville and Buncombe County school board candidates.
School board elections can slip under the radar for some voters, especially those without children, says Pat Bryant. He’s served as the Erwin District representative on the Buncombe County Board of Education for the last 16 years.
Express takes stock of the current school boards and examines what lies ahead for their future representatives.
Asheville Citizen Times, Andrew Jones, 9/22/2022
A miles-long stretch of the French Broad River has been placed on the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s impaired list, local environmental groups announced Sept. 20, emphasizing better stormwater management is one of the best paths forward.
The DEQ’s most recent tally of new impaired waterways shows a 19-mile section of the French Broad from N.C. 146 to Craggy Dam was added during the summer.
The list, updated every two years, also includes Bacoate Branch and Town or “Nasty” Branch, which originate near downtown Asheville and enter the French Broad River in the River Arts District, according to a news release from River Link and MountainTrue.
In this case, the river − which is an economic powerhouse in Western North Carolina, bringing in $3.8 billion annually − is considered impaired because of the presence of certain bacteria beyond standard levels.
National Public Lands Day 2022 in United States
WLOS, Rex Hodge, 9/23/2022
HAYWOOD COUNTY, N.C. (WLOS) — We're lucky to live with national and state parks along with forests in our own backyard. They've become popular destinations in recent years. It takes work to keep them pristine for all to enjoy. A big volunteer effort takes place this weekend to fix them up.
National Public Lands Day is 29 years old and is the nation's largest, single-day volunteer event to protect public lands like those around the Blue Ridge Parkway.
"It's nice that these hills are still here, that we can all enjoy them," says Peter O'Bryan.
O'Bryan and his wife, Susan, make it a habit to visit North Carolina's mountains often from their Florida home. They said they're encouraged to see public lands like Waterrock Knob along the Parkway in good shape.
Over the last decade, over 1 million volunteers have donated nearly 5 million hours to protect public lands. That has a value of about $133 million.
Asheville Citizen Times, Frances Figart, Word from the Smokies, 9/24/2022
Returning this year after a pandemic-induced hiatus, Smoky Mountain Elk Fest will be held Friday, Sept. 30, and Saturday, Oct. 1 in Maggie Valley. Although the public had to miss the festival last year, which marked two decades since the ungulates’ reintroduction to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the herd was still having its own kind of fun.
From September to early November, the fall breeding season, hormones kick in and elk go into overdrive. Bulls’ antlers reach maturity, and their ethereal bugling calls resonate through fields and forests within the park and beyond its boundary.
The bull elk’s call inspires awe not only for its otherworldly splendor, but because it is still a relatively “new” sound in these environs. Though once as many as ten million elk ranged from coast to coast in North America, the European settlers who arrived in the 1700s brought what author David Brill calls a “combination of landscape fragmentation and unsustainable hunting customs” and, as a result, elk were extirpated from this landscape for a century and a half.
Thank you for reading and contributing, I hope your weekend is a fine one.