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Belhaven mayor wraps march to DC to save
hospital, Teams With Moral Monday Protest
By Emery P. Dalesio
RALEIGH (AP) - A North Carolina mayor fighting for the hospital that closed in his rural North Carolina town finished his protest march
■0 the nation’s capital.
Belhaven Mayor Adam O’Neal was planning to complete his march Aug. 1 in Washington, D.C. The 45-year-old registered Republican
tarted his two-week, 300-mile march to protest the closing of Vidant Pungo Hospital in Belhaven on July 1.
Getting the hospital chain Vidant Health System to reverse the closing is “one of the things that keeps driving me north and hoping for
ome justice - the mere idea that a non-profit - a non-profit - whose mission is health care in northeastern North Carolina” will reconsider,
)’Neal said as he walked along a busy commuter highway in the northern Virginia suburbs.
Greenville-based Vidant agreed in April to operate the hospital until July and provide $1 million if local officials would provide an ad-
litional $2 million. A Vidant executive said the town wasn’t ready as of June to take over the hospital.
“After multiple attempts throughout the 90-day extension to contact the town of Belhaven to help coordinate plans for assuming hospital
iperations, the lack of response made it apparent that the town knew that it did not have a plan to take over hospital operations,” Vidant Com-
nunity Hospitals President Roger Robertson said the day before the closure.
Vidant Health officials said in September they would close the hospital in May, in part because North Carolina lawmakers refused federal
unding to expand Medicaid that would pay bills of poor patients. Vidant CEO Dr. David Herman said the hospital had provided more than
2 million in unpaid health care since 2011, when Vidant took it over.
“The condition of the 60-plus-year-old building, changes in new health care regulations and declining patient volumes led us to move up
lur plans to change the model of health care in Belhaven to better meet the needs of the community,” Robertson said in a statement.
About half of all states have refused to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama’s health care law, adding to the pressure on hos-
litals. But the problem of maintaining rural hospitals, which tend to operate on narrower margins, has existed for decades.
I President Barack Obama meets with National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice
and Tony Blinken, Deputy National Security Advisor, in the Oval Office, Aug. 1.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Thousands Rally in Asheville
for Moral Monday
ASHEVILLE - Two days after the North Carolina Elouse of Representatives passed another
egressive budget, thousands of people from the mountains and across North Carolina rallied in
Asheville Aug. 4 to raise their voices at the second Mountain Moral Monday against the legisla-
ure’s continued refusal to govern for the good of the whole.
The Forward Together Moral Movement took its Moral March to the Polls to the mountains to
nobilize voters in the western reaches of the state. Throughout the afternoon, Moral Freedom Sum
ner organizers and other volunteers moved through the crowd, registering voters.
The people turned out, fired up and ready to go. Thousands gathered in downtown Asheville,
:arrying signs, wearing T-shirts, waving flags and carrying clipboards with voter registration forms.
“This is no mere hyperventilation - know this is a fight for the future and soul of our state!” said
Lev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP. “It doesn’t matter what the
:ritics call us. They deride us and deflect because they can’t debate on the issues. They can’t make
heir case on moral and constitutional grounds. We stand here today- a quilt of many colors, faiths,
ind creeds. We stand united in our full color against our state government’s current attack on the
most vulnerable. We stand together to lift up the most sacred principles of our democracy.”
Speaker Thom Tillis, Senate Leader Phil Berger and their allies thought that passing a budget
•vith a marginal teacher raise would pacify the Moral Movement, but it didn’t seem to have fooled
he mountain folk. With each speaker - young and old, black and white alike - the crowd roared,
:heered and chanted their support.
“There is not a lot of difference between civil rights activism and progressive mountain popu-
ism,” Dr. Barber told the crowd. “We all believe in justice, fair play, treating people right and using
lolitical power to better society. These principles are rooted in our deepest moral virtues.”
One young mother decried the state legislature’s continued attempts to demonize and marginal-
ze low-wage workers.
“As we mothers try to make ends meet, we-are met with public disdain for being poor,” Ewat
aid. “This is leaving us not just disenfranchised, but disenchanted. But we are far from hopeless.
We raise our voices today to say that our elected officials have a responsibility to us.”
Barry Summers from Water Victory spoke against the state’s attempts to wrest control over
rater from the people and give it instead to corporations.
“Water is not a source of profit,” he told the crowd, “or a means to balance your budget after you
tave cut taxes for the wealthy.”
Whatever the policy issue, the speakers continued to stress the urgency of voting this November.
“We teach our students to stand up to bullies,” Buncombe Co. teacher Lindsay Furst said. “Public
education should not have a party line. We must vote out those who play politics with our students’
futures. In November, step into a voting booth to stand up for the children of North Carolina.”
At the rally outset, the organizers recognized the six mountain counties that started new NAACP
tranches last year - Haywood, Yancey/Mitchell, Transylvania, Watauga and Jackson Counties. As
Dr. Barber put it, the Forward Together Movement is winning the fight for the public consciousness.
And the work is just beginning.
“The costs are too high if we don’t address systemic racism and poverty; it costs us our soul as
I state,” Dr. Barber said. “Every time we fail to educate a child on the front side of life, it costs us
in the back side - financially and morally. Every time we deny living wages, leaving whole com-
tiunities impoverished, it costs us on the back side. Evety time we fail to provide health care on the
front side of life, it costs us on the back side. Every time we attempt to suppress the right the vote,
it tears at the heart of our democracy and the necessary foundations to establish justice. This is why
we can’t turn back.”
Researchers from the Univer
sity of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill studied the economic impact
of 140 rural hospitals across the
country that closed during the
1990s. They found that within a
few years the community’s un
employment rate was about 1.6
percentage points higher and the
per capita income fell by more
than $700.
Beaufort County’s unemploy
ment rate was 8 percent in May,
compared to 6.4 percent for the
entire state.
O’Neal said the fight for the
hospital could determine the
economic future of a community
surrounded by rivers and sounds.
“Not only have they taken
emergency room services away
from our town, they’re also tak
ing every industry we’ve got
away - which is retirees moving
into our area. They’re not going
to move to an area without a hos
pital,” O’Neal said.
O’Neal said he and North
Carolina NAACP President Rev.
William Barber met Monday
with members of the state’s con
gressional delegation.
The NAACP has filed a
complaint with Holder’s agen
cy, which helped facilitate the
agreement that kept the hospital
open until this month, seeking
an investigation into whether the
hospital’s closing violates the
Civil Rights Act.
O’Neal met last week in
Richmond, Virginia, with Gov.
Terry McAuliffe. Neither Vir
ginia nor North Carolina has ex
panded Medicaid under the fed
eral health insurance overhaul
law, something McAuliffe favors
and O’Neal blames for his local
hospital closing.
Meanwhile, the mayor said
he’s ready to complete his mis
sion.
“Everybody’s got blisters,
even my mother driving the car”
supporting his march, O'Neal
said. “But thanks to moleskin, I
think I’ll be fine.”
Durham Charms hold Original “Mad Hatters”
Luncheon. See pictures on page 7.
Durham assistant
police chief sues city
(AP) - Durham Assistant Police Chief Winslow Forbes
is suing the city and Police Chief Jose Lopez, alleging
civil rights violations.
Forbes’ lawsuit says he was passed over for promotion
because of complaints he had made about discrimination
in the department.
The lawsuit also accuses Lopez and city officials disre
garded Forbes’ right to be free from illegal race discrimi
nation in the workplace.
Lopez said he could not talk about the lawsuit. City
Attorney Patrick Baker also said he could not talk about
the lawsuit.
“We’ll respond to the allegations and look forward to
defending the city in this matter,’ Baker said.
The suit comes after a discrimination complaint Forbes
filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission last August. That complaint charged dis
crimination on the basis of race.
After the federal investigation, the Justice Department
indicated earlier this year it would not pursue the case
itself.
The lawsuit says Lopez promoted a white lieutenant to captain
over a black female lieutenant who was at the top of the rating list
for promotion.
The lawsuit also says Forbes was passed over for promotion to a
deputy chief position at least twice, including at least once where he
was the top-rated candidate.
Forbes’ suit requests a jury trial and asks that the defendants be
assessed punitive damages “exceeding $10,000,’ and his attorney’s
fees and other costs.
The city has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit.
Man who shot NYC choke video held on gun charge
NEW YORK (AP) - The man who recorded video of a fatal police chokehold in New York City has
been arrested on gun charges, police said Sunday.
Police said 22-year-old Ramsey Orta was arrested Saturday night on Staten Island, a few blocks from
where officers confronted his friend Eric Garner on July 17.
Orta, whose recording of an officer restraining Gamer with a chokehold fueled outcry against the po
lice, is charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
Police said Orta had a previous weapon conviction that prohibited him from possessing a firearm.
He is due in court this month on robbery charges stemming from a May arrest and an assault
from an arrest three days before Garner’s death, according to court records.
Orta’s latest arrest came a day after the city’s medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide
caused by the officer’s chokehold, as well as the compression of his chest and prone positioning “during
physical restraint by police.”
Patrick Lynch, the president of the city’s largest police union, described the encounter between Gamer
and police as “a tragedy” but said Orta’s arrest “only underscores the dangers that brought police officers
to respond to a chronic crime condition” in Staten Island’s Tompkinsville community.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who called Orta to the lectern at Gamer’s funeral and said the city should “thank
God” he was there to record video “when the police and EMS failed us,” called the arrest irrelevant.
“No one is questioning the validity of the tape, and the medical examiner has validated it,” Sharpton
said Sunday.
Police said plainclothes officers from a Staten Island narcotics unit saw Orta stuff a silver-colored,
,25-caliber handgun into a 17-year-old female companion’s waistband after they emerged from a brief
stop at the Hotel Richmond. Police called the location, on Central Avenue, a “known drug prone loca
tion.”