Editor’s Notes
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Editor’s Note: The Capitol Insurrection Was the Illogical Next Step
Like anyone with half a heart, brain and/or soul, I watched the events of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection unfold with a certain level of shock and disgust. Surprise, though? Not so much. The next day, I saw people posting on social media about their inability to focus due to…
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Editor’s Note: Proud New Year’s Eve Party Pooper
The time we’ve all been waiting for is here. The end of 2020, a year that will live in infamy. Any other time, that would call for a New Year’s Eve party to end all New Year’s Eve parties, but we’re not out of the woods by a damn sight. …
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Best in the Nest 2020: The Best People Show Up In a Bad Year
What the hell just happened? It seems like either 10 years ago or yesterday we were coming into the new year excited about a new Charlotte MLS team, a new Panthers head coach, or whatever big events you had planned for this year that did not come to pass. Now…
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Editor’s Note: A Community Stands Up
When I spoke with him on Nov. 13, Sam Smith had put in countless hours of community organizing over recent months to push back against a massive industrial development proposed just a half-mile from his home that he and many of his neighbors believed would put his community at a…
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Election Day Editor’s Note: Where Do We Go From Here?
What a weird time for a print day. As I’m writing this, it’s right around noontime on Election Day. In a few hours, we will send Vol. 2, Issue 25 to print, and I have no idea what sort of landscape the paper will be dropped off in tomorrow morning.…
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Editor’s Note: Ghost Stories and Abandoned Cemeteries
This week’s issue has a spooky theme running through it, with it being Halloween and all, but in putting it together, I ended up learning a lot about Charlotte history. What are stories about haunted houses and abandoned cemeteries, anyway, if not history stories? As the son of a genealogist,…
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Editor’s Note: When the Masks Come Off
In the Talk of the Town section of Queen City Nerve’s Sept. 16 email newsletter, I wrapped a segment on recent COVID-19 numbers by stating, “All you folks out there showing your mouth are showing your ass,” meaning wear a mask and don’t put others in harms way. It’s been…
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Editor’s Note: Trump Flags Are The New Red Flags
In early September I took a trip down to Kure Beach to vacation with my immediate family, our first opportunity to spend time together since early March when COVID-19 clamped down on the country. It was during this trip that I began to notice a relatively new trend, one that…
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Editor’s Note: Transparency Is Not Accountability
Every day it becomes a little more clear that nobody is willing to hold the police accountable in this city. On Aug. 28, we published a detailed account of the now-infamous kettling incident that took place during protests in Uptown on June 2. For those who aren’t aware, the incident…
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Editor’s Note: One Hour in a Republican National Convention Parking Lot
I honestly had no idea what to expect as I walked toward the parking lot at First Baptist Church on Monday, Aug. 24, on the arrival of the long-awaited Republican National Convention to Charlotte. My business partner and publisher Justin LaFrancois and I were heading to check out a rally…
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Editor’s Note: Digging the COVID Hole Deeper
Looking back now on an Editor’s Note I wrote for our March 25 issue, which in COVID time was five years ago, I can’t help but shake my head at the naïveté of my younger, more hopeful self. In that column, I wrote: “When [crisis] happens, the cliché that many…
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Editor’s Note: The All-Too-Human Habit of Dehumanization
On July 17, I took part in a panel discussion hosted by the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in which we discussed racism and mental health. I was brought on to discuss allyship regarding racial injustice, something I don’t consider myself an expert on by any…
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Introducing Our New Online Editor: Lea Bekele
We’re excited to announce that today we welcomed our newest member to the team: Lea Bekele, who will serve as our new online editor. Bekele, a 2017 Appalachian State University grad, will use her experience with social media, public relations and content creation to build the presence of Queen City…
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Editor’s Note: In Defense of Activist Journalism
The recent protests in Charlotte have got me thinking a lot about our role as community journalists, and the age-old condescension around so-called activist journalism. During an ongoing court case, the ACLU of North Carolina and others, including Queen City Nerve publisher Justin LaFrancois, have aimed to restrict CMPD’s use…
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Editor’s Note: Momentum in an Age of Irreverence
“What would the Native Americans think of this?” That was a question my dad used to pose to me when faced with some awe-inspiring thing. The question was meant to reference indigenous people who lived on this continent before white people arrived, not their descendants whose reservations we would regularly…
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Editor’s Note: The Revolution Will be Live-Streamed
When I arrived to the Express Mart across the street from the CMPD Metro Division office on May 29 to attend a protest in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, I felt like I had been in that same situation many times before, and…
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