Synopsis
Things are worse than you think. While there will be some turnover on City Council at a rate not seen since 2009, there are just as many rethreads running.
Greensboro's movers and shakers are busy trying to turn downtown into a gated community, and they also contain gatekeepers who have infiltrated the arts scene. By infiltrate, I mean that they determine which artists get to shine and which artists are shut out.
The city responded to the homeless crisis by attempting to outlaw mutual aid and vastly restrict WHOA from feeding the homeless downtown.
An Inattentive Public
Bloggers and writers alike have pointed out how most of
Greensboro’s population pays little attention to City elections. I can count on
one hand how many times residents have cared about local issues:
- The 2018 gun show fiasco that propelled Mark Robinson to national prominence
- The George Floyd protests, which had some input from local artists
- The entire Marcus Smith saga
- Dueling sides at City Hall in June 2023 after a firefighter was fired for bigoted Facebook comments
Half of these involve the ex-lieutenant governor—and
arguably, all of them have national inclinations. Even other significant
local issues since the GPD scandals of the late 2000s have only gotten the
public’s attention if there’s some kind of a link to a state or national issue.
At a recent candidate forum, the moderator brought up a hypothetical scenario of Trump sending troops to the city. On one hand, it came out of nowhere to the point of being irrelevant. On the other hand, the idea of D.C. interfering in everyday Greensboro life being a possible motivator for voters in a year that most candidates represent various shades of the status quo says a lot about the batch of people running in the first place--which is to say, negatively.
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