Local government’s usual tactics fail to contain public outrage, as their meetings are hit with an unprecedented number of locals are fed up with their violence and hollow excuses

Above: An Asheville police vehicle in front of a wall with graffiti neatly summing up the public’s outrage. Special to the Blade

“You must defund APD…You allowed the use of tear gas which attacks airways during a global pandemic…Do you see now? There is no accountability! Only misrepresentations, lies, abuse of power, blatant abuse, and mistrust.”
Pearl Foster at the June 9 Asheville city council meeting. She recounted a riot cop shooting at her head with a tear gas canister

“I went to school here and I was first hand witness of the [racial] disparities…[APD] waited until we had marched away from Pack Square, and then they arrived behind us, and immediately jumped out of the truck and started firing tear gas, no warning. Everything was entirely peaceful and then it was entire pandemonium, people were screaming. People were corralled into a parking garage. Police shot tear gas into the parking garage, which is a dangerous nervine gas which can kill people. People could have been entrapped. I jumped from the second story. I then waited and caught others who were jumping from the second story.”
– Justin Hall, June 23 city council meeting

Asheville has witnessed years of abuse and broken promises from the Buncombe County sheriff, the jail and especially the Asheville police department. Since its inception back in the days when funerals for apd officers were held in full klan regalia, their true purpose has been sowing violence and terror against Black, Latinx, houseless and working class locals.

Now, with thousands in the streets, thousands of angry calls and comments bombarding city officials and “Defund the Police” writ large outside the police station, growing numbers of locals are fed up and fighting back.

The recent battles in the streets have justifiably received significant attention. From the attacks on anti-racist protests on the Jeff Bowen Bridge and in Pack Square — where APD fired tear gas and pepper balls at a crowd including children — to the assaults on medics that made international headlines, the bloodshed underneath the liberal tourist town veneer is clearer than ever. The cops didn’t stop there. They threatened the press and arrested nearly 60 including houseless folks, street medics, and people in wheelchairs over four nights of draconian curfew. More recently they arrested two protesters guarding a “Defund the Police” mural where only hours before they’d cracked jokes and chatted amiably with heavily armed white supremacists.

But the injustice isn’t new, and these attacks aren’t the first to show that nothing, other than the outfits, has changed since the days when apd officers went around in klan robes.

Indeed, the demonstration that saw the painting of the “Defund” mural was dedicated to Jerry Williams, who police Sgt. Tyler Radford brutally killed in 2016 before leaving his body in the street for over two hours (the apd harshly cracked down on the anti-racist actions that followed). The last few years have seen increasing outrage over multiple incidents of police brutality and mounting anger against a city hall hellbent on pouring more resources into the police department while many locals worry about housing, food and crumbling infrastructure. Ashevillians have packed council chambers — still bedecked with the racist paintings of yesteryear more than once, even held a sit-in there to stop them from ramming another police budget through. But council largely ignored them, pretending each time that the issue was somehow new to them.

The difference now is that locals already enraged by the response to the Covid-19 pandemic — local government’s consistently prioritized tourism over people’s lives and the virus is running rampant — refused to let this behavior slide. Residents are taking the streets, of course, but they are also rallying behind ambitious demands and filling the halls of the city and county’s institutions, even when they can’t do so physically.

The pandemic still rages, and only the county commissioners have so far displayed the gall to force locals to give comment in person. But the people of Asheville and Buncombe remain steadfast, demanding in no uncertain terms major cuts (50 percent or more) to police budgets, with the funds instead in the hands of local communities to meet their many needs – meaningless resolutions not required.

Though the tactics to quell dissent that are used by the City and County governments differ, by and large neither’s attempts are working and the same old “reforms” being proposed are noticeably weakening against a tide of locals refusing to give up ground.

June 9

“I am asking for an immediate defunding of the police…At the protests there were a lot of things that happened that were really kind of beyond the pail. There was someone in a wheelchair who was arrested…We are watching you and you’re going to be held accountable”
Paloma Burr

It was shortly after 5 p.m. on the steps of city hall. Court Plaza was packed as protesters answering the call of Black abolitionists raised their signs, their chants echoed, their numbers swelled. Black Asheville Demands had been released only two days before, and the energy around demands including defunding a racist police department by 50 percent (or $15 million) and the removal of Vance monument had quickly overtaken tepid reform requests by area nonprofits long accustomed to using those tactics to co-opt and kill social movements.

While hundreds pressed outside, inside city staff reviewed nearly 3,000 calls and voicemails in a town of 92,000 residents. City council meeting’s had never seen this kind of sheer outpouring of public rage. Aware of the full onslaught this would be, staff had just announced the budget hearing would be delayed. Protesters remained, and at around 5:15 p.m., a truck driver with plates from Tennessee plowed into them.

Luckily no one was physically harmed. Without even a mention, Council would continue its meeting and do everything it could to delay and deny the voices of locals. Some of them — including mayor Esther Manheimer, who declared a draconian curfew after her law office got its windows smashed — even thanked the police department. Even the ones elected on promises to fight for racial justice stayed silent or only offered mild criticisms of the same officials who’d ordered the gassing of hundreds of the city’s people.

By the night of the June 9 meeting, locals inspired by the demands had logged nearly 1,400 registered voicemails, more comments than ever recorded on a city issue within memory. The vast majority of 1,148 voicemails on the budget called for the defunding of the police. Council often elects to pay consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars to collect this level of input over weeks and months, but in this case, no one made a dime. Meeting the people’s courage with their own cowardice, Council chose to delay the budget hearing so they wouldn’t have to directly face even vocal outrage about their actions. That didn’t calm things down.

“We are a mountain family. Do you have manners?…Police in Asheville tore up the medic station…Make an example of the police who refuse to have manners, as [we] pay for their salaries,” Mark Leatherwood said.

Calls to defund the department rang out under nearly every agenda item. Nearly four times as many callers demanded 50 percent cuts to its budget as opposed to more milquetoast calls by area nonprofits to just stop the latest apd budget boost. Dozens called for the abolition and disbandment of the department. Calls for Manheimer, APD chief David Zack, and city manager Debra Campbell to resign or be fired were also tallied. The more than 900 pages of emails that included hundreds of additional calls showed an even greater number of locals demanding defunding by at least 50 percent as opposed to simply canceling the increase. Overnight, “cut the police department in half” had become the moderate position.

“This budget hearing should have gone down today,” said Jazmin. “I am completely disappointed that y’all would pull a last minute switch like that to suppress people’s voices…Take a look at the demands listed by the Black community leaders and really consider defunding.”

“In 2019 alone, Black [Ashevillians] were 7 times more likely to be arrested compared to white people,” Kat Terbio also contributed. “I believe in the call for defunding the police.”

Locals came out not only in numbers, but in fury.

“The fact that you get on the TV and lie about what you’re doing claiming to protect and serve…It’s fucking false. It’s fraudulent and we’re not staying for it anymore. Y’all want to address the fact that the memorial burned down in the park. You all claim it happened to be wind when there’s lighter fluid all over the goddamn place. Investigate the fucking Asheville Police Department independently not within their own fucking bounds. Y’all are all fucked. Fuck you.”
– a commenter who was excluded due to council’s “rules of decorum”

Fourteen calls (all in favor of reining in the police department) were excluded because the delicate souls in city hall apparently couldn’t face such honest anger. But if weeks of abuse and the destruction of a memorial to Black people including locals Jerry Jai Williams and AJ Marion who were killed by racist cops is not something to cuss about, then what the fuck is?

While protesters outside risked their lives in the face of angry motorists, inside, council members apparently resided in another world, ensconced in their homes or city hall offices. They thanked the police chief, discussed the “aesthetics” of an I-26 expansion project that will again demolish dozens of homes Black and Latinx neighborhoods, and by and large ignored a flood of locals calling for drastic and necessary cuts. The hearing on the fate of the Vance Monument and the Robert E. Lee memorials had also provided council with a taste of the public’s fury, where locals overwhelmingly favored the immediate removal of the all three memorials.

Notably, the mayor disabled her video feed during the general public comment period. She would only return at 10 p.m. to close out the general public comment period early (she made up a new rule out of thin air capping public comment at an hour), choosing to exclude callers whose comments would have taken another half hour at most out of what should have already been three days worth of comments on next year’s budget.

Outside, the driver of the truck that almost killed anti-racist protesters made his way home. Though stopped by police, he was never charged or arrested.

Inside, Campbell claimed, “we hope the community feels we are listening.” Council and staff, however, did everything to do the exact opposite. Despite their best efforts to save face for themselves and a racist police department, they were in the end unable to stem this avalanche of calls and emails.

If Council thought that the virtual realm would be a haven from the battles in the streets, they were consistently wrong as a public enraged found them there, too, and despite their best efforts they would be the ones grasping for legitimacy in the weeks that would follow.

June 16

“I learned that the health department is slated to get a decrease of funding during a global pandemic that kills people. Putting more money toward an already bloated Sheriff Department while cutting public health funding tells me that you would rather your constituents live with police violence and die of Covid-19.”
Taija Ventrella

Though approached by locals less often, the Buncombe County Board of Commissions holds the purse strings to institutions such as the Tourism Development Authority, jail and sheriff’s office. They took the opposite approach to the city, on June 19 deciding to quickly ram through a budget that included a $3.1 million increase for the sheriff and cut off public comment by requiring locals show up during a pandemic to directly speak to them.

With new Covid-19 case numbers refusing to decrease, Buncombe County extended the welcome mat to in person comments in its third-floor meeting room, and disturbingly removed the public’s opportunity to call in live. This forced locals to risk their health to oppose millions more going to the sheriff and jail in a budget that cut public services.

Though experts have shown that the chances of exposure are much higher indoors, especially in spaces where people are using their voices and spending large amounts of time, eight locals risked their lives to appear and told the county to defund the sheriff and the jail.

“It seems tone deaf to increase funding for the sheriff’s office while decreasing funding for the Health Department…There are plenty of much more responsible ways to spend county money,” said Jacob Blair of Irwin.

Ian Quinn of Weaverville brought the heat, “I believe that Black Lives Matter…Defund the police, defund the sheriff’s department, defund the county jail, and fund the works that the public really need.”

And on the same night that Veronica Coit of Asheville Cat Weirdos received the Governor’s Award for Volunteerism, she refused to thank the commission:

“Ordering public comment in person during a global pandemic while our state and county rise in hospitalizations and positive cases is…a slap in the face to the health and safety of the people that you represent…You must defund the Sheriff’s Office and radically change the spending habits of the jail…I demand you stop cowering to the hoteliers, breweries, and tourists over your own people…If you will not stop and help now, you must resign”

An additional three locals called in and one emailed before the Monday deadline to tell the County to defund the police, and far more participated in the comments on the livestream in lieu of live call ins.

A commenter named Lauren echoed these concerns in a voicemail: “I recognize the importance of trust between the community and the police, and currently there is little to none,” she said.

Emails on the budget were read by county chair Brownie Newman himself. As the majority Democratic board waited to approve the removal or repurposing of Vance Monuments, Katie Estrada, a teacher, small business owner and mother of three hit home home with her comment: “I am asking the County Commissioners to make a more overt and visible commitment to racial justice. I demand that the budget vote be delayed so that County Managers and Commissioners may find ways to redirect money away from the sheriff’s department.”

But even as some called for the vote to be delayed for a week, an option county government had previously entertained, the officials were intent on rushing the budget through. They refused to give the public additional time to share their views during a pandemic, and voted unanimously to give an additional $1.8 million to the sheriff’s office, to bloat the jail budget by $1.4 million, and to decrease the budget for the health department by nearly $20,000. Compared to last year’s actual budgets, the Sheriff and the Jail received an extra $7.7 million.

If the dozen or so demanding Commissioners defund these institutions was noteworthy, the hundreds of locals participating in the county’s discussions over use for Vance and other racist downtown monuments was overwhelming. Locals by a margin of 549 to 19 favored the removal and or repurposing of the Vance Monument and the Robert E. Lee plagues. 53 of the 76 comments that were played or read during the meeting favored the complete removal of Vance while only three favored repurposing. Two of those who commented added pleas to defund the police to their requests, with two more believing that the monument should not only be removed, but should be thrown into the river.

The board then voted to remove two of the monuments and study the fate of the Vance, and Democratic members read polished and vague statements about one day (maybe, sometime in the future) addressing systemic racism. But after shutting down live calls, refusing to delay their budget vote during a pandemic, and then voting unanimously to give more power to the jail and to the sheriff, commissioners showed that their commitment to fighting racism didn’t run that deep.

While residents of Minneapolis, still under the jurisdiction of a fully funded Hennepin County Sheriff, continue their efforts to ensure that the disbandment of their city’s police department creates the justice long battled over in the streets, it will be interesting to see what the defunding of the Asheville police department looks like in the shadow of Buncombe County and the millions just added to the carceral state while hundreds sicken and dozens die in Buncombe County.

Five days later, protesters again showed their force by marching in memory of Jerry “Jai” Williams and writing “Defund the Police” in giant letters front of the police station, city hall, and the courthouse.

June 23

“I’m incredibly disgusted by the neutralities I am seeing here, the lack of anger, the lack of emotion…if you are complicit in this system, then you are just as wrong as the people who are walking around using intimidation tactics against people who are fighting for their lives…If you sitting here and being called to resign, and you are just trying to be resilient and sit through it, then you are wrong…If police here are seriously scared of water bottles then imagine what it’s like to be a Black person.”
London, a caller into the June 23 City Council meeting.

As city council returned on June 23 for a vote on a budget not for 12 months but for one, locals would not relent. They wanted defunding (plenty wanted abolition), they wanted resignations and firings. They absolutely did not want business as usual.

Completely missing from comments was any support for attempts to moderately tweak the department, especially after officers were seen conversing jovially with white supremacists in violation of local ordinance for holding guns at a protest in a public park (the only people arrested were two anti-racist protesters, for “failure to disperse”). In this meeting, Campbell acknowledged that calls to defund and disband the department were numerous. But she still pushed a $2.5 million allocation for apd for July anyway.

Instead of turning off her video, this time Mayor Manheimer, perhaps chastened by the many people rightly dubbing her a coward, joined the video stream for the onslaught as more than 50 callers over three separate public comment sessions blasted the city, its police chief, and its mayor for refusing to listen, for refusing for so many years to take meaningful action.

Michael Jamar explained during the hearing to change the budget calendar: “It takes 90 to 120 days to become a police officer…these are people who take lives away quickly. Quickly…there is so much wrong when it comes to quality control that it is so real…we definitely need to start defunding APD.”

Rob Thomas of the Racial Justice Coalition, a group which initially called for the merely withhold apd’s proposed $400,000 budget increase, now demanded the halving and reallocation of the interim budget allocating nearly $2.5 million to APD just for the month of July. “[What’s] really on my mind is reparations…our people in this community need to be in a better position and in a better situation,” he said.

“We are all paying very close attention to this budget process, and we’re not going to forget about it by [the budget hearing],” Emma Hutchens promised during the period to determine use of CARE Act funding.

Despite Council’s refusal for the first meeting since the pandemic to collect and play the voicemails of locals in real time, for the second straight meeting, Manheimer capped a public comment period at one hour.

The rage seemed not only still alive, but growing, as for the third straight meeting, locals largely defied the attempts by local government to suppress public input.

The vast majority of the 55 live calls asked for the defunding, reallocation of police funding, or the abolition of the police. Nine emails called for defunding of the police or questioned the logic of the police existing at all. Eight voicemails which Council refused to play live demanded defunding.

And So July Begins

As July begins, one public meeting has already been cancelled. After voting to reopen local hotels to full capacity on June 24, County commissioners elected to cancel their July 7 meeting in order to take extended vacations and avoid tirades from locals only fighting for their lives.

June started the morning after APD gassed children. June started with Council expecting to approve yet another hike for the police, public be damned. June ended with Council rescheduling its budget hearing twice, and the mayor cutting off public comment to avoid facing an angry populace. Despite dozens of public (and surely hundreds of private) calls for Manheimer and Zack to resign, both refuse to do so. Conservative member of Council Vijay Kapoor, who initially planned to resign at the end of June, has decided to stay in office at least until the end of July anyway.

The county didn’t have to cancel live call-ins and then ask people to give in person comment during a pandemic. Commissioners didn’t have to vote on next year’s budget under these conditions. They didn’t have to cancel their July 7 meeting after approving the full reopening of area hotels, thus opening locals to an ever greater level of threat. But they chose to do so. They will start their July 21 meeting expecting our patience to be infinite. Until then, they will savor their vacations while locals grow sick and die of Covid-19. In the days leading up to this meeting they — and their colleagues at city council will fall asleep hoping that we just go away.

The actions of the Asheville police and known white supremacists patrolling the streets show clear maintenance of an order that predominantly white and owning class members of council and the commission truly want.

At the July 14 Asheville city council meeting, the city will grant the Asheville Area Art Council permission to install a “Black Lives Matter” mural (they ordered the removal of the “Defund the Police” mural installed by locals). They also plan to dedicate more than $80,000 to the hiring of more consultants to investigate a police department locals have made abundantly clear needs to be defunded. Finally, they will roll out a plan to pay reparations to Black locals (perhaps some amount someday). This being Asheville, the reparations resolution doesn’t actually contain any reparations, just some hollow acknowledgements and apologies — far more for state and federal actions than those of city hall — and a promise to establish a city commission to (what else) study the issue.  It is the latest in a long history of resolutions, commissions and sham “community input processes” intended not to foster change, but to kill it.

It is all too clear that the city would rather fill their policy documents with empty promises than actually give locals what they are asking for. Though apologies for white supremacy are warranted, more task forces and “community conversations” are not reparations. The communities of Asheville made their will clear in streets full of tear gas. City hall just doesn’t want to do it.

Their budgets and their policies over the years have shown that to the Asheville City Government, despite all of the grandstanding, the concept of reparations has no meaning. In January 2019, while stealing an extra year in office by refusing to act on a racist gerrymander of local elections, council acknowledged its role in the infliction of racial trauma. Mayor Manheimer delivered the proclamation claiming, “Asheville has the unique responsibility and opportunity to transform institutions and systems…[Asheville government] commits as a municipality to make systemic changes in policies and practices that foster racial healing.”

There were similar resolutions and committees in 2016, 2017 and 2018. On paper the city’s committed to fighting racism since at least 2006.

The police, of course, never got the memo and arrested Black locals at seven times the rate of their white cohorts. Their more recent responses to protests against their own brutality speak for themselves.

As long as the police receive tens of millions of dollars to maintain the racial and economic order while programs that serve Black, brown, poor, and houseless people only receive hundreds of thousands of dollars at most, this bill of goods is meaningless. Posturing about (maybe, one day, if we’re polite enough) finally addressing systemic racism or (maybe one day) removing the Vance Monument changes nothing and helps no one.

Included in the resolution to create the Black Lives Matter street mural is a clause stating that the City can remove the installment at any time. Its officers still have to the power to intimidate, beat, kidnap, and kill locals at any time.

The level of rage and commitment shown by people over the past month and a half. We’re here not because of government commissions and resolutions, we’re not here because of the mayor’s useless tears. We’re here because Asheville showed up in force and refused to back down. Vance is shrouded and the Robert E. Lee plague is gone because of the people of Asheville. The people know what needs to be done. City hall, like every government, is just in the way.

Hundreds of years of dominance and control are built into these systems. But as we are seeing across the country, they can topple so quickly.

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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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