Council candidate Sage Turner bills herself as a progressive reformer, but her real record is mired in terrible worker treatment, shady hotel deals and pushing relentlessly for more cops and gentrification

Above: Turner tending her hives, photo from the French Broad Co-op’s public relations material.

[As our readers know, the Blade never endorses candidates. Criticism and condemnation is a very different matter. We’re publishing this piece because an increasingly prominent city leader has a troubling record, especially inflicting considerable hardship on local workers while pushing for more gentrification. This story is an all too common one in this city, where cruelty and entitlement are just beneath the liberal veneer. — David Forbes, editor]

The political career of Sage Turner has taken off in recent years, with prominent spots heading multiple government commissions and on the board of well-known non-profits. As a Council candidate, she’s pushed a narrative of rising from managing the accounting books of the French Broad Food Co-op to become an increasingly influential city leader.

As a candidate Turner’s attracted a slew of high-profile endorsements. One of her latest campaign mailers boasts the smiling faces of downtown business notable Franzi Charen, former Council member Gordon Smith and conservative Council member Vijay Kapoor. Mayor Esther Manheimer’s a major supporter, and Vice mayor Gwen Wisler has donated to her campaign.

While Turner has been honing her buzzword-laden resume for years, the actual contents of her record tell another tale. Drawing on the accounts of multiple co-op workers, emails, documents and extensive records of her time on city commissions, an extensive investigation by the Blade found a much bleaker picture.

Former Co-op workers tell of a manager whose incompetence and arrogance hurt workers and members while she remained focused on pouring funds into schemes for expansion and a dubious hotel deal. Behind her boasts of the Co-op as “the first living wage certified grocery” they tell of being underpaid, sick and overworked. Turner’s record on local commissions reveal not an advocate for affordability or equity but someone who’s pushed relentlessly for more gentrification and police crackdowns, even earning a rebuke from the Co-op itself for her stances.

Turner, who did not respond to requests for comment, is the Finance and Project Manager of the French Broad Food Co-op, which describes itself as “a grocery store that focuses more on people than profit…This is a no-sellout scenario…We pledge to maintain a pleasant environment that fosters goodwill, cooperation and participation.” Those lofty words are a stark contrast to her record there.

Stories such as Turner’s are far too common among local gentry with eyes for power and position, willing to regard cash-strapped locals as expendable to their personal ambitions. So let’s discard the shiny p.r. and listen to workers instead.

A rising resume

Prospective Council member Sage Turner’s career began in 2001 at the Haywood Road Market, a cooperative store in the throes of failure. But while that co-op collapsed, her career didn’t. In 2009 she was hired by the downtown French Broad Food Co-op. Steadily accumulating power and positions by 2014 she held seats on at least four different city and non-profit boards and committees.

Particularly 2013 and 2014 were important years on Turner’s resume. Following two consecutive years of nearly 20 percent growth — much of it due to resurgent interest in co-ops in the wake of the local Occupy Asheville movement — the Co-op pondered use for its additional resources. But despite the organization’s supposed aims, at Turner’s direction an expanded store on pricey downtown real estate somehow became the goal.

The people who trusted the Co-op, in this case, might have made a mistake due to the state of the store’s management. Speaking of the Co-op as a whole, three employee reviews on Glassdoor called attention to “large communication issues with management,” an inaccessible board of directors, and few opportunities to advance.

John Brinker, a former scanning coordinator who originally spoke anonymously via Asheville Solidarity Network, claims that Turner was distant on key matters, creating a “bottleneck” that hurt workers and Co-op members.

Shelley Hale, a former deli worker who also reached out to ASN and whose account was passed on to the Blade, remembers a distracted and difficult Turner. “Sage dragged her feet on everything.” This would include a month’s delay on this former worker’s final paycheck and food stamp form, something that hit her finances hard.

Choosing to speak anonymously, another worker, a former cashier, recalled going a month without seeing Turner, recalling that she was a rare sight on the floor and mostly unaware of those involved in daily operations.

Brinker in a later interview would describe Turner as “careerist. It was about building a brand for herself at the expense of the Co-op and the institution.”

While the workers buzz below

It takes guts for a low wage worker to speak out against unjust working conditions in such a brutally gentrified city such as Asheville. Their accounts should always be taken seriously, and they offer a truer picture than Turner’s glossy p.r.

Turner and Brinker worked together at the Co-op for nearly a decade before Brinker exited in 2018. In early January, this professional — formerly in charge of the Co-op’s owner and product databases — came forward to share his story. In a Jan. 13 account published on Asheville Solidarity Network, he explains that “Turner demonstrated a combination of incompetence and self-importance so extreme that it threatened the viability of the business.”

He goes on to explain a Turner coordinated massive migration between membership databases in 2014 that failed. “At the time, the member database was one of my areas of responsibility,” says Brinker. But Turner insisted on taking charge. “After the transition, it became clear that a major mistake had been made, resulting in a large number of members no longer being in the database.”

After Brinker’s account was published online, Co-op members revealed in ensuing online comments that this failure had hurt them directly.

Noticing that scores of Co-op members were unable to access the benefits for which they had paid, Brinker documented the problem, listed the missing members, proposed solutions, and asked for permission to correct the issue promptly. His advice was ignored for weeks until members began reaching out to the board of directors.

“Turner denied having received any communication,” Brinker says, “and tried to blame me personally for the botched transition, suggesting I should lose my job.”

Brinker attests that emails were given to the Co-op’s management showing as much. The response tells the story of a Co-op where those at the top were focused on maintaining their hold. General manager Bobby Sullivan “declined to take any action regarding Turner’s behavior and continued to award her more important project responsibilities.”

The Co-op has repeatedly placed raises for management and grand projects ahead of concern for daily operations and workers’ rights. Brinker recalls that Turner’s expansion idea, put off again and again, played a major role.

“The mooted expansion was used for years as an excuse to underpay staff and put off necessary upkeep of the existing building and retail appliances,” explains Brinker.

There’s more. Rather than paying workers more, during Turner’s reign the Co-op billed itself as a living wage employer but “this was done by flattening wages so that all but two or three [of the] longest serving staff members would… [make the same wage] as new hires, and by encouraging and exploiting loopholes.”

The living wage, it should be remembered is a “more just minimum,” intended as the bare amount necessary for a worker to have a shot at making it in Asheville. Management like Turner, however, saw their salaries continue to grow while worker pay stagnated.

Turner touts the Co-op as a unionized living wage grocery store, but Brinker, a former union member, considered her relationship with the union to be “not sincere.”

Under Turner’s management, the Co-op mercilessly exploited loopholes in the living wage certification process, especially counting “food-dollars” only good for purchasing things at the store as part of wages. In fact, the Co-op’s misuse of this approved substitute for a portion of pay caused a delay in its recertification. Using the anonymous reporting process found on the website of Just Economics, the non-profit that oversees living wage certification, a fourth former worker helped to hold the Co-op to account. Vicki Meath, director of Just Economics, told the Blade it was a “long process” for the Co-op to come back into basic compliance with living wage rules.

While Turner bragged about the Co-op’s living wage certification Hale was laboring in the deli, scraping by on $9.10 an hour.

Alarmed by the reckless working conditions she faced, Hale sent an account to the Blade in January 2016. Hired in August 2013 as a temporary worker covering for an elderly worker undergoing surgery by late September Hale covered not only for the worker, but also for the deli manager. Her wages stayed the same, far below living wage.

Upon hire she was given her first “The Scoop” Co-op newsletter, which proclaimed “working together that we will attain our goals. If we are to be a truly ‘transformative force in Asheville, we need to turn our backs on some of our differences and start focusing more on how much we have in common.” Hale faced a very different reality.

Despite being told the gig would last six to eight weeks, she would work into April of the next year, usually tallying between 20 and 30 hours per week. One week, while her manager was out, Hale even pushed into overtime (for which Turner would never pay her). When the living wage was instituted, an email exchange shows the Co-op denying Hale the wage.

She describes that in spite of her more than half year of employment, “I was being treated like a ‘sub’. I did not get a living wage raise because I was not technically an ‘employee’ despite that I had two shifts.”

Hale tells of a cooperative “all about the PR” while refusing to support its workers. She describes rooftop bee-hives, a hot bar and a disoriented raw food expert brought on in an already overcrowded deli while the store remained understaffed by increasingly overwhelmed workers.

When the elderly worker returned early because of financial woes, Hale remained at her job as the two chose instead to split shifts. In November and December, Hale would pick up two permanent shifts. “I worked many holiday hours, filling in while everyone took their leave, pre-Christmas, post-X-mas, to NYE and New Years day.”

Despite having been on the job for more than four months, covering for a co-worker and a manager simultaneously, working overtime one week and covering holiday shifts without bonus, Hale’s pay remained at $9.10 an hour, well below living wage. Additional duties piled up with a new hotbar in February 2014, an upgraded salad and olive bar, and less space to work in a kitchen now accommodating a raw foods expert caused increasing stress. “The deli’s duties continued to stack up and grow, but the staff did not.”

Hale was not allowed to join the union because she was still considered a temp. Then, following union and living wage negotiations, she saw her shifts taken out from under her, as the business created two living wage positions – one with 14 hours and another with 16 hours.

Volunteer “worker-owners” at the Co-op often worked 10 hours or less per week on tasks such as cutting fancy cheeses (and perhaps even cutting into a few paid workers’ chances at overtime). These volunteers were invited to apply for the new positions. The Co-op then chose to hire the member instead of Hale.

She was given the opportunity to stay on and pick up shifts, but not for a living wage, as confirmed in a May 7, 2014 work email, where deli manager Greg Mosser explained, “sub pay rate is $9.10/hr and is apparently not changing…[this is] not something i have any power to affect.” The Co-op was violating its Living Wage Certification, and the deli department charged with maintaining the safety of its products, was reportedly struggling to keep up due to understaffing.

Brinker would make the same living wage as brand new hires for four years and remembers Turner cutting corners in ways that put everyone’s health at risk. “It was almost a daily site to have multiple people in the store to fix the coolers. Massive amounts of money went to fixing the coolers Sage had gotten for cheap.”

Both Brinker and Hale tell of massive work-related injuries brought about by working conditions at the Co-op.

Brinker suffered an arm injury in 2012, which due to ill-suited ergonomics in the co-op’s office area caused him more than a week of work. Upon his return, “I was accused of making it up,” Brinker says.

Hale experienced her first and only seizure in February of 2014 — the same month when she had received extra duties due to the new hot bar. Ironically, in January the Co-op had begun distributing Zingerman’s Natural Laws of Business with each paycheck. The first contained a heading: “For this business to survive and thrive in Asheville, we must be a necessity for people – a place that is profoundly different than the rest.”

For all those platitudes, the story above is one all too familiar in Asheville: sick and underpaid workers struggling to survive while high-paid management seek to cash in on gentrification.

Hatle would return for her next shift a few days after the seizure, partly following advice from her doctor to ask her coworkers what they witnessed in order to help build a diagnosis — and partly to keep her job at a time when her future at the Co-op was unclear.

To top everything off, Turner delayed filing Hale’s final paycheck for an entire month, as evidenced in the email thread with Mosser. The former deli manager also questioned Turner’s competence: “I’m sorry, i don’t know what sage has been doing. i just asked her about it again (after two separate emails with no response) and she was like, ‘i have it here, should i pay it this week?’ wtf. i said good lord yes. i asked her if it would be check or direct deposit, but don’t know if she’ll answer.”

The simple food stamp form requiring Turner’s signature stalled as well, leaving Hale in a dire situation.

“I don’t even have words for this extreme amount of classism and disregard,” she says.

Upon hearing of the co-op’s practice of paying “temporary” workers $1.75 per hour below the living wage at the time, Just Economics’ Vicki Meath explained that the practice is permitted by the Living Wage program for the first ninety days but usually not with such a wide pay gap.

Clearly, as Hale had been employed continuously by the co-op for about eight months and had been so overworked and stressed she had a seizure, the loophole was used to cover up horrific conditions. Promising to look into whether or not the practice continues, Meath explained, “the intention was never for that to be the case.”

Many Ashevillians know the humiliation of receiving a living wage along with the expectation that we will double our efforts. Making even less is absurd.

But while food safety was at risk, workers had to seek medical attention and members were being kicked off due to her incompetence, Turner’s attention was elsewhere. She remained fixated on pouring time and funds into a massive expansion project.

“We began to see that Sage had these bigger ambitions,” Brinker remembers. She kept saying that “after the expansion, it’s all going to be different. We’ll have these better paying jobs.”

Chasing the hotel

One might think that following two consecutive years of massive growth largely due to the radical Occupy movement, the Co-op would decide to focus its resources on partnering with nonprofits and building stores that helped counter the food deserts in so many of our Black and Brown neighborhoods. They could have used their resources to support their workers and their platform to push against gentrification. But under Turner’s leadership they did something very different.

The first mention of the potential expansion project can be found in the August 2013 newsletter, which contains a financial assessment of the Co-op’s sudden growth and its options moving forward. But expansion of the current store onto pricey downtown real estate wasn’t the only option being considered at the time: “there are USDA designated food deserts in Asheville and we have been looking at possibilities of teaming up with other nonprofits.”

What changed is unclear, but the Co-op, finding itself “essentially debt-free” due in no small part to its rank and file workers, its union, and Occupy, wielded its “living wage certification” and began publicly discussing the expansion in its current downtown location in 2014, loosely aiming for construction in late 2016. This whole plan would prove to be an illusion.

In these first few years we already see Turner’s fascination with the hotel industry. In March 2015, she was looking to “create a destination in downtown”, and by October, she seemed alone in promoting a part Co-op, part city-owned hotel, as no publicly-available documents seem to show support among the Co-op’s membership for such an idea.

Even Manheimer, who has rarely seen a hotel she doesn’t like, balked at the idea. “While Turner notes that some cities in other states have built and operate hotels, Manheimer said that likely would prove difficult in North Carolina, which generally prohibits governments from competing with private sector companies,” the Citizen-Times reported at the time.

Meanwhile, the Co-op pushed the expansion project to 2017, and Turner continued pushing fantasies: “One owner inspired me, saying, ‘It isn’t affordable housing if our Co-op staff can’t afford it.’” At the same time, it was her management that played a major role in keeping workers drastically underpaid.

The Request for Proposals and Qualifications, what Turner wanted contractors to build for the Co-op expansion, tells the truth. Clearly showing her desire for a Co-op owned hotel, the document also describes a commitment to outside ownership of housing units that would be rented at “work-force” and barely affordable rates. The housing would only be available to those making 80 to 120 percent of area median income – which in 2015 was $31,000 and $47,000 respectively — far more than the annual income the co-op supplied to most of its staff.

Images of high rises of glass facade fill the document. “Art infused parking structure” and “Parking deck with food systems” caption renditions of grandeur, but no proposals for housing staff.

Notes from Co-op board meetings show a project shifting in scope and purpose along with various land transactions, including the purchase of 76 Biltmore and the selling of the lot next to City Bakery, progressed. 76 Biltmore would become the site of the Lazoom Room bar the next year, and with the sale of the neighboring lot, the expansion plans decreased. Brinker shared that Turner was a major proponent of turning the Co-op into a place to drink alcohol. Turner might not have gotten her hotel, but she got her bar, or at least the Co-op rented to one.

As the Co-op was leasing 76 Biltmore Ave to a place to go and drink, Turner was ramping up her support for a controversial police expansion. Meanwhile, the Co-op Board was noting various iterations of councils and committees to handle the expansion project, from the “Owners Council,” to the “Capital Campaign Committee,” to the “Development Committee.” Little, however, was actually changing.

The announcement about the Lazoom Room was all the rage. Citizen-Times reporter Mackensy Lundsford writes, “That’s the former location of Build it Naturally, which is likely to be demolished as the French Broad Food Co-Op enters into its long-planned expansion next year,”. But this too was another public relations stunt.

In March 2017 the Co-op reported an exploration of geothermal energy to heat its promised project. The packed discussion also included the board and Turner considering memberships for tourists and admitting that any affordable housing that would be part of the project would not be under Co-op ownership, thus quietly abandoning the “we want staff to be able to live here.” Meanwhile the Co-op pushed to Spring of 2018 its capital campaign launch, which was meant to raise additional funds for the project.

Members grilled Turner in the upstairs board room during a May 2017 meeting about her recent decision, while riding under the Co-op banner, to support the police expansion pushed forward by blatantly racist former APD chief Tammy Hooper. Owners at the time, myself included, pleaded with Turner and the board to sign the “A Million Dollars for the People” petition opposing the police expansion, which would eventually contain 32 business owners’ signatures.

Darcel Eddins stated bluntly at that meeting, “Sage would not be that board [the city’s downtown commission) if the Co-op did not exist.” DeeDee Hyde pled as a Co-op worker: “We all have interests outside of work. How do we participate in a way that’s respectful to a community we’re part of here at the Co-op?”.

In response to Turner pushing a policy so against the Co-op’s will, the outrage prompted the board to issue a policy at the meeting:

“No employee, owner, or member of the Board of Directors of the FBFC shall serve as a spokesperson or agent of the co-op without being explicitly authorized by the Board of Directors or designated by the GM within the scope of their responsibilities.”

However, by refusing to reverse Turner’s decision by signing the petition, the Co-op rejected the Million Dollars for the People movement. Turner continued to tout her position with the Co-op even as she continued to push policies hated by many of its members.

At a time when it was rushing to add new members, the Co-op watched its reputation collapse in the eyes of many locals. At a time when it should have been standing with poor people and Black and Brown neighbors by opposing the APD expansion, the Co-op stood beside its CFO who flanked a racist police chief.

Failing to learn from its mistakes, the board selected Turner as chair of its newly independent “Development Committee” in August. In September, Turner’s new committee met with Self-Help Credit Union and Mountain Housing to discuss financing. Unlike the Co-op, Self-Help had taken its boost from Occupy and opened a location in the majority Black Southside neighborhood.

The Co-op predictably failed to rally support from the groups, so yet another market study was now in order. In November 2018, the board seemed to turn on Turner by requesting a spreadsheet listing every consulting service the project in the last five years. Seeming to tire of the Development Committee’s tricks, in January of 2019, the Co-op voted to downsize its contract with its consulting firm then known as CDS (Cooperative Development Services).

Beginning in 2014 and lasting until 2017, at least three Mountain Xpress articles and four Citizen-Times articles covered the the proposed expansion. Now, no trace of the expansion project can be found on the Co-op’s website.

However, just three days after Brinker’s account was posted, a Co-op social media post promised “exciting updates soon! 2019 was our best year ever and we are so thankful for our Co+op Community.” Or whatever that means.

‘The unvarnished truth’

Responding to Brinker’s then-anonymous account published on ASN, many Turner supporters were outraged, calling the account a “swift boat attack”, “overly personal”, “defamation”, and “a hit piece.” According to ASN, which has been supporting workers since May Day 2016, including workers at the former Rolled and Roasted, Brinker’s story has garnered over 5,500 views.

ASN defends their actions: “However distasteful people may find the unvarnished truth, informed awareness of each candidate is essential to any electoral process, even in Asheville where niceness (and ass-kissing the right folk) is often prized above frankness and accuracy.”

Following the Jan. 13 post, local transit and homeless rights activist Sabrah n’haRaven — who’s formed an assessment of Turner through watching her actions on local boards — shared her own thoughts of Turner in a post, calling the candidate’s oozing classism to account:

This here is the Turner so many have come to know, especially since 2017, when she began to make a name for herself on local boards and commissions. The Million Dollars for the People campaign brought Turner’s actions into more scrutiny when — alongside hotels, banks, law firms, real estate firms, and breweries — she supported that year’s police expansion while touting her affiliation with the Co-op.

Despite the fact her role as financial and project manager of the Co-op was part of her official introduction on the Downtown Commission, Turner continued to press a view far more conservative than that of the members even after the board warned her. In spite of APD’s long and nasty record of abuse, Turner promoted the “Coffee with a Cop” program each of her first three meetings. In addition to former Hooper’s record of cracking down on those protesting police brutality, later accounts revealed that the APD chief also authorized spying on civil rights activists. Hooper also, of course, played a key role in the cover up of Officer Chris Hickman harassing beating a Black pedestrian. She was ousted in late 2018 due to growing public outrage.

At an April 2017 meeting of the city’s downtown commission, Turner rejected multiple speakers calling for the board to reject the police expansion including Jerry Williams’s mother, Najiyyah Avery. Turner instead wanted the community to sympathize with cops and have coffee with them, “You can meet the officers and understand they have families too.” All while drinking a nice latte, apparently. One agenda item later, the only crisis she acknowledged was the “parking crisis.”

Speaking of parking, Turner would share the table at the Downtown Commission Parking and Transportation Subcommittee with Stephanie Pace Brown, president of the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority for more than a year and a half starting that Fall.

Turner became chair of the downtown commission in January 2018 and increasingly courted developers. She essentially kissed Kassinger Development Group, a company seeking to take over a chunk of city-owned land, on the hand in February asking, “How could [the] process be better for the developer?”

Notably as vice chair of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee in 2019, she would claim even that adding more market-rate housing — which locals overwhelmingly can’t afford — was good for affordability.

Moreover, as the Transit Master Plan was nearing its final stages, Turner pushed for the downtown circular shuttle (which the plan didn’t call for until four years after its other reforms were implemented) to precede basic services such as route improvements and extended services hours that directly assist low and fixed income folks who depend on transit for employment and other needs. She has continued to push for the downtown shuttle, though many of the basic service improvements called for by the plan to go unfunded.

Even as backlash against hotel development increased sharply, Turner still sided with the industry. She publicly wished in July that the 72 Broadway hotel — which would have kicked out a local farmers’ market and was unanimously rejected by Council — had come 3 months before Council narrowly voted to turn the Flat Iron building into a hotel despite massive problems with the deal. Furthermore, she made a motion that included a “Request that City Council be informed about the new tax bases created by [72 Broadway].”

And in August, as the TDA’s Tourism Management and Investment Plan began collecting public input, in typical pie in the sky fashion Turner suggested these potential gentry-friendly uses for TDA funds:

“Self-cleaning toilets, more parking decks, commuter bus, lawn improvements, public art funds, port for outdoor market, [and a] dancing crosswalk booth…Other project ideas included investing in trees, crosswalk art, green roof installations, free downtown wifi and pocket parks.”

That’s right. The dancing crosswalk booths and pocket parks of her list far outshine the crucial supports for workers, families, and folks on fixed incomes. Adding to insult, she would add more police — Asheville already has the largest police department, per capita, of any city in the state — to her wishlist of recipients of TDA funds in November, when she proclaimed, “Public safety is expensive. How can the TMIP process relate to these needs?”

As the Co-op expansion project was stalling, Turner was supporting police repression, hoteliers, luxury development, a downtown shuttle and a dancing crosswalk booths. But perhaps most alarming is Turner’s support for a Business Improvement District (BID), as evidenced in a August 2019 planning document. Turner’s suggestion that a revised hotel review process could bypass “politicization,” as noted in September 2019 is similarly disturbing, and as we saw in the Feb. 25 City Council work session on possible new hotel rules, these ideas which Turner has even outright supported are making their way to a vote.

A BID would essentially privatize downtown, providing a chunk of tax revenue and a private police force to a separate agency run by the wealthy (including hoteliers). The idea’s been proposed before, from 2011 to 2013, and the ensuing public backlash defeated it. A less “politicized” hotel review process could similarly remove public input, thus giving hoteliers and real estate developers significantly more control over Asheville. In fact, that’s what happened from 2010 to 2017 and it led to a wave of hotels with little public input. And now, city staff is discussing both ideas openly as Turner supporters like Vice mayor Gwen Wisler lean towards supporting a BID.

Reality check

When we believe workers, we act in ways that support them in accomplishing their goals. In this case, we prevent candidates such as Turner from ascending the dais. For most of the past decade, Turner has grabbed power at every opportunity behind an image of a progressive manager with a smile and a project hides an insidious truth.

Instead of actually talking to low wage workers and asking them how she might improve their working conditions, Turner has chosen to prioritize wealthy developers. Turner’s record of ignoring workers, neglecting their basic needs such as overtime pay, a final paycheck, a living wage, a food stamp letter, and a healthy work environment, and attacking those who offer constructive criticism while pushing for pie-in-the-sky projects on pricey downtown real estate are blaring warning signs that could affect the lives of tens of thousands of locals. But if that doesn’t scare you, then her record of supporting police expansions and luxury and projects certainly should.

The former deli worker, Hale, remembers that she “desperately” wanted to be part of the Co-op. Instead, she succinctly concluded her 2016 email to the Blade: “While those on the top with comfortable salaries take lucrative vacations every month, those of us on the bottom can barely pay our rent.”

Hale and Brinker’s stories ring true, because so many of us understand the horrors of working low wage, even living wage jobs in our local service industry. Away from the facade, the bricks fall across the city, and the Co-op is in fact no different.

The values the Co-op claims to uphold as a cooperative, the values that Asheville residents are supposed to uphold, if nothing else because this is our home, require us not only to deeply consider the ramifications of allowing those like Sage Turner to claim elected office, but to truly consider the damage inflicted by corrupt and exploitative businesses such as the Co-op.

“So here I am, speaking up,” said Hale. It’s time for Asheville to listen.

—

Matilda Bliss is a local writer, Blade contributor and activist. When she isn’t petsitting or making schedules of events, she strives to live an off-the-grid lifestyle and creates jewelry from local stones

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