More disconnected from the public than ever, Asheville city council tries to fill a vacant seat as they pretend nothing will ever change

Above: Asheville city hall. File photo by Max Cooper

Facing more public distrust than ever, Asheville City Council has ripped free the reins and presented six finalists for former Council member Vijay Kapoor’s seat – a seat that will be filled not by an election but by an appointment from Council itself. Council had a chance to let the public decide who would fill this seat, but they allowed Kapoor to stay in office just a few days past the deadline, meaning they get to fill the vacancy.

It was the latest in a slew of acts showing a marked contempt for the public from a Council that seems more determined than ever to do as little as possible and change nothing. While locals are facing violent cops in the streets, building powerful mutual aid and leaderless movements, the pool of potential new Council members includes a far-right hotelier and the owner of a real estate company in one of the fastest gentrifying cities in the nation. Council paired this with police crackdowns on anti-racist protesters, medics and press and sharp restrictions on public comment at their meetings. They even issued an official report that was a blatant defense of police tear gassing residents and destroying a medic station in June, an act that drew international condemnation.

While defunding the police department is an overwhelmingly popular demand, none of the six applicants council’s going to interview outright support it. Even if the new council member does insist on a budget that defunds the department, they may be outnumbered by current members — including even the supposedly more left-leaning ones — who have balked at defunding.

This tawdry farce is also going on at the same time as the election for three council seats. Late last month candidate Nicole Townsend — who has a long history of anti-racist activism — dropped out of that race. Townsend came to the decision “after deeply analyzing the current state of Asheville and the role I would play in the continual perpetuation of systemic harm.” She continued that “elected officials have never, and will never save us or transform our communities.” In this season, it’s been a rare act of responsibility from a political figure.

That public outrage Council’s so terrified of has already turned defunding into a mainstream demand, forced officials to delay their plans to (again) give the cops more money and seen them go to blatant lengths to shut out the public. As unfortunate as the selection and upcoming election may be, it comes nowhere close to erasing the creative organizing and rage filling Asheville’s streets and communities.

Council’s response matches with its history of believing public anger is simply a storm to ride out, while using police, bureaucracy and networks of compliant non-profits to block any actual change. Yet they wonder why people don’t trust them. Gone from their chambers they meet over zoom calls, sticking to their cushy homes and descending into bitter aristocratic rants. Council is more disconnected than ever. Even as they fill Kapoor’s seat city hall is, in every sense that matters, already vacant.

The vacancy

“Cutting the police budget by 50 percent today – or probably in three months – isn’t going to change the police. It will just mean that everybody will wait longer for the police when they really need help…when there are drug addicts needing narcan…when there is a mentally ill person who needs to get picked up and taken to a hospital or a safe place. When a woman needs protection from her abusive partner… [also] banning tear gas isn’t going to change the culture of policing…the police will simply find another tool. We can’t just take things away from police.”
-Council member Julie Mayfield, 23 days before Asheville police officers would summarily shoot a schizophrenic man having a mental health episode on Aug. 20

“[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.

“It’s so clear why there’s no trust, because you don’t deserve trust…’What do you do when a woman needs to get away from her abusive partner?’ Police do not help with that, Julie. I have been that woman in an abusive relationship, and the police condescended me, they made fun of me, and they told me it was my fault. They do not help.”
– Alex Lines, July 28 council meeting

Over the last few months hundreds of comments in favor of defunding the police poured in. Council had received thousands of comments and three days worth of voicemails for their June 9 budget hearing, many calling for an at least 50 percent defunding of APD. Naturally, they canceled the hearing entirely instead of listening to them. In the ensuing meetings, they would make public comment harder and harder, while claiming the public should attend rigged public input sessions to “reimagine public safety.”

Council’s decision on Kapoor’s vacant seat amount to blocking an election during a tumultuous time. As this happened, city manager Debra Campbell stated in her presentation on July 28, “Community trust in city government has been eroded, and it may be difficult for us to regain.” She somehow made this statement with a straight face just weeks after she’d given the police the broad authorization to crack down on protests, including using tear gas.

Naturally, council spent the rest of the meeting demonstrating why that lack of trust exists. City attorney Brad Branham attempted to answer for his leaked March 16 memo to Council, in which he provided a legal scenario under which they could choose to avoid an open election for Kapoor’s seat. Branham revised his opinion in this meeting, stating that Council in fact had no choice but to appoint Kapoor’s replacement. He now based his claims on city charter trumping state law.

Ironically, all the council members have an extra year in office because they pointedly spent last year refusing to take action on a racist gerrymander. One of their main excuses was that state law outweighed the city charter. Laws are funny things.

North Carolina state law would have permitted a special election had Kapoor resigned at least three months before the November election. Kapoor, who had consistently backed the racist gerrymander, exorbitant police budgets, hotel development, and paltry wages for firefighters, announced he was leaving in March but continued to vote for months and withheld his official departure until Aug. 8. Appropriately, he spent his last meeting railing against the public for not appreciating politicians and cops enough, reminding all of us why he will not be missed.

When Julie Mayfield leaves her post in December, few will miss her either. Many of the members of the groups she asserts are protected by police would be among the first to prove her wrong. Indeed locals have been saying that police don’t keep us safe. For years. One even got arrested just feet away from her seat in a 2018 action against yet another police budget hike. All they’ve gotten from Mayfield are lectures to be nicer to the police chief.

At that July meeting Council passed a three-month budget — with no cuts to the police. In fact, due to other departments facing budget cuts, cops now got an even larger share of the budget (26 percent) than before. APD started August by taking a $1,500 bribe in gift cards from a far-right caravan and then allowing them to cover their license plates with blue tape and run red lights. APD has botched a response to Black shooting victim and effectively prevented him from accessing the care that might have saved his life. They attacked protesters for picketing a hotel and allowed Fraternal Order of Police President Rondell Lance to impersonate an officer and assault protesters. The police even dragged an Asheville Blade reporter from their vehicle, sexually assaulted and arrested them.

While Council was taking a vacation for most of August, APD was making the unprecedented decision to blast the images of the protesters they arrested on vague and minor charges, thus opening them up to doxxing and attacks by the far-right. Finally, under the guise of “crisis intervention,” APD shot a schizophrenic man after he exited a bus he had barricaded himself inside during a mental health episode.

No, police provide no support to those who use drugs. In fact they do the opposite. City government has tried to destroy harm reduction programs such as Steady Collective and enabled overdose deaths by treating users as criminals. Locals recently protested this status quo by more than 60 people carrying a coffin to the APD’s West Asheville precinct on Overdose Awareness Day. Locals are dying in prison (including a protester). By keeping policing the same, by signaling they were ok with abuse, Council made a brutal August even worse.

Furthermore, these are the kind of locals Council wants to keep out of its meetings while promoting myths about police, who in fact abuse their partners at four times the rate of the rest of the population.

Commenters, including those quoted at the start of this section, repeatedly countered Mayfield and the rest of Council. “‘People have been working on ways to keep us safe, we’ve kept us safe for years,” Katy Hudson said in response to Mayfield’s comments defending the police. “Please also don’t use mentally ill people as your excuse. Police do not help us in crisis. That’s the last thing that’s helpful. We still expect a 50 percent funding reduction in this year long budget.”

As Council waited to defund the police, a man experiencing mental illness has two gunshots wounds because he exited a bus in front of a hoard of police. Enraged locals, including teachers, nurses, business owners, and even locals who had seen APD botch a sex trafficking case pled with Council to defund APD immediately. Not months from now — immediately. Locals also demanded that voters be given the reins for choosing a new council member to replace Kapoor. But, being as they are, Council refused, and on Aug. 3, they decided to pick his successor themselves.

The questions

“I hear what some people are asking for. They are asking for an immediate 50 percent cut to APD’s budget and a reallocation of those funds. They also say they don’t trust our government…All that I’ve heard is to defund APD by 50 percent immediately…I don’t believe that no matter what we come up with in September, the people we’ve heard from will be satisfied. For two months, we’ve heard our city manager say that defunding APD by that amount immediately is not responsible….. Some people say I lack courage. [City staff] wants to make our dreams come true…But we don’t give them magic wands, much less funding and staff…We know that defunding APD by 50 percent immediately is not doable.”
-Vice Mayor Gwen Wisler, before the July 30 vote to keep giving the police more money

“Defund the police.” — mural, painted by the public in front of city hall in early July

Along with chastising locals and refusing to defund APD, during the week of July 28, Council refused to allow locals to decide who would replace Kapoor on Council. Then on Aug, 3, they started accepting the first of what would be 30 applications for his replacement. The application included essay questions such as “Please explain if you believe systemic oppression and racism exist…Do you or do you not support reparations?”

Asheville is the most policed city in the state with more officers per capita than any other. Additionally, salaries exceeding $100,000 for a couple dozen staff and a city manager, whose salary is nearly a quarter of a million per year. The same city puts firefighters on the front lines for less than a living wage, lets rental prices (and evictions) soar, and keeps area buses broken down and parked before sunset. This is systemic oppression and council and the city manager are busier thane ver keeping it that way.

The question of reparations, of course, was what recently garnered Asheville national attention for its resolution that is now believed by many to be an attempted cover up for recent police violence, including the destruction of the medic station in early June. The resolution approved by Council, in keeping with previous pronouncements and promises, supplied zero actual budgetary or policy changes. The essay questions continued.

“Do you support Black Asheville Demands call for defunding the APD by 50%?” The question asked. “If yes, what sort of timeline do you envision to reach that goal?” Councilmembers such as Esther Manheimer, while running out the clock on the minimum $15 million cut that was asked for by Black Asheville Demands in early June, have expressed increasing opposition to defunding, including outright saying the demand [currently being implemented in other cities] is not realistic.

In fact, while ignoring outrage by locals, Council on July 30 rallied some amount of aristocratic indignation, with both Kapoor and Wisler echoing far right ‘silent majority’ conspiracies while yelling at their constituents, and they voted to give the police nearly $8 million over the next three months anyway, which was about a half million dollar raise compared to any given three month period from last year’s budget. APD has already received promises of $10.4 million this year out of its usual $30 million budget, and it looks increasingly unlikely that $15 million will be made available to fund the long-term safety strategies called for in Black Asheville Demands as published in early June. This was the shifted playing field under which applicants filed.

Other questions on the application included: “If selected, how do you plan to communicate and work with other Council members?” Presumably this would include the council members who throw tantrums and yell at constituents when they turn out in record numbers opposing their policies and happen to cuss.

Presumably this would include the mayor whose law firm’s windows were smashed during protests. In response, she and other top officials decided to approve a draconian curfew and applauded the APD tear gassing adults and children during a respiratory pandemic and forcing the hospitalization of protesters by hitting them in the head with canisters for two days straight, destroyed thousands of dollars of medical supplies, attacked locals with pepperballs, and arrested dozens including medics, journalists, houseless people, and people in wheelchairs over the next four nights.

Presumably this means working with people in gentrified areas where poverty is rare and their neighbors are disproportionately white. Eviction, police violence, food insecurity, and houselessness to them are distant realities that must be kept out of their neighborhoods. “Give examples of your working collaboratively in the past,” concluded the question.

This summer, Council meetings that are controlled by these gentry, have been marked by added barriers seemingly reinforcing a wall to block the public rage that could force resignations, firings, and that could create the changes asked for by Black Asheville Demands. When nearly 3,000 voicemails, emails, and live calls were logged for the June 9th City Council meeting, locals needed nothing more than a phone and a few minutes to leave a message or to navigate the live call in system. Voicemails were played during the meeting, and all voicemails and emails were posted days later.

But by July 28, Council was refusing to play voicemails, was requiring those giving live comment to register with their name, phone number, email, and area of residence by noon the day before the meeting, and when they received comments that required more than an hour to play, the Mayor arbitrarily shortened the time limit for comments from 3 minutes to 2 minutes. It seems that at least 20 residents attempted to give live comment but were dropped while trying to use Council’s new call system. Almost all of them were speaking in support of defunding the police.

Whereas two days were required for staff to publish thousands emails and voicemails in early June, not until 4:45 pm on Aug. 24 the more than 100 voicemails and emails in favor of defunding or divestment for the July 28 meeting were withheld from public view. They were only published in response to a legal demand for them. This was, naturally, too late for locals to register to comment on Council’s meeting the next day.

Recent events have clearly shown that council is an exclusive club where abuse is rampant and not even left-leaning “allies” say a word. On Aug, 20, the application period for Kapoor’s seat officially closed.

The first cut

“We might not have the product that we’re looking for, and I don’t want the people to be disappointed, because it is going to be a process…They’re just going to be able to scratch the surface, because we don’t really have a lot of time…Our focus is really the people who are most impacted.”
– Sheneika Smith, Aug. 25

“You as City Council have had plenty of opportunity to behave appropriately as our elected officials. “You need to ban tear gas instead of suppressing our right to express ourselves publicly…Earlier, Debra Campbell said that it was disappointing that community trust in local government has eroded, but that’s not going to change if you actively block and undermine our right to enact the democratic process.” — Chole Moore, July 28 Council meeting

“As a Black woman born and raised in Asheville, I’m tired of the amnesia that’s grown rampant in this city as y’all try your hardest to erase and forget what this city has put Black and Brown people through…I’m honestly growing tired of the lip service, your list of apologies is less than sufficient. That money not only needs to come from the state, it will come from defunding 50 percent of APD’s budget. The local government constantly regurgitates this pathetic attempt at equity and inclusion in this city as they destroy neighborhoods, inflate property taxes and push Black and Brown people out of their homes and neighborhoods.”
— A caller during the July 14 city council meeting

City Council’s vote on appointing Kapoor’s replacement will require at least four votes out of the remaining six council members. With at least four members signalling (or angrily stating even) that they will refuse to defund APD by at least 50 percent (if at all), they appear set on welcoming a new member who probably won’t either.

Instead of competing for the votes of tens of thousands, six applicants who are competing for the votes of four very disconnected government officials. Naturally, the vice mayor looked around at everything going on in the city and decided who people needed to hear from was a right-wing hotelier who doesn’t believe racism exists.

Pratik Bhakta, most recently a failed council candidate, hails from South Asheville and specifically census tract 22.04, which is one of the wealthiest areas in the city. Whether his title, his wealth, or his far-right political votes won him a spot among the six is irrelevant. He was chosen by the same Wisler who ranted about her ‘ungrateful’ constituents and here is what Bhakta, a registered Republican, had to say:

“Is it a wonder why foreigners (of all races, religion, and color) want to immigrate to America? Is it because they see systemic oppression or the opportunity to succeed where they cannot in their own country,” he answered to the question of whether or not systemic oppression exists.

After writing — probably from his million dollar home with a state of the art security system — that defunding the police by any amount would decrease the safety of all “people who do not commit crimes,” he complained that Council was just considering his rich hotelier application as “a formality.” Additionally, he proclaimed that what he does is “always a TEAM effort.” I wonder what Latinx and Black housekeepers at his hotels would, if they were free to speak without intimidation, have to say.

In conclusion, he implied that tourism agency cash for infrastructure were being held hostage because the public hates hotels.

“Are there opportunities to acquire some of those funds? Quite possibly, but not with the animosity shown towards [the tourism] industry,” Bhakta threatened. His businesses of course are part of an industry that exploits workers, damages local infrastructure and the environment, ramps up gentrification, and is pumping more COVID-19 into the area on a daily basis. He was one of Wisler’s two choices.

Though not as blatantly awful, other selections are cause for concern as well.

Sandra Kilgore and Rich Lee received endorsements from both the mayor and the departing Kapoor this spring, though as a result of Council’s refusal to hold a special election, Manheimer could expend her two choices in ways far more powerful than an endorsement.

“I would prefer not to put a timetable on [the] decision,” Kilgore responded to the question whether she would defund APD by at least 50 percent. Kilgore was the top initial vote in this appointment process receiving three votes that included a vote by Wisler. Kilgore, though Black, owns a real estate company and lists million dollar luxury homes to the highest bidder in historically Black neighborhoods. Even so, she finds “The divisiveness [of the time] unacceptable and intolerable.”

It is no surprise that Wisler, who is a millionaire, chose Bhakta and Kilgore.

Rich Lee, a financial adviser, started and facilitated Asheville Politics, a centrist political forum that has removed racial justice and labor activists for years. He had this to say about defunding: “That may come with a budget savings, or not. That may lead to dramatic cuts in police staffing or budgets or not,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect to vote on a big police department cut this fall or winter.” Lee, the only white person chosen for interview, was the fourth place vote getter in the March primary. He hasn’t found a grassroots effort to back or even a milquetoast reform by the local Democratic establishment that he would not support in the three attempts he’s made for the seat.

Even the three remaining applicants, all heavily connected to the local nonprofit scene, skirted the issues. Zakiya Bell-Rodgers, instead of discussing the nuts and bolts of defunding, listed ways she would hold the police accountable (without necessarily cutting their budget).

She also stated, “As our city continues to build hotels to sustain the necessary tourist economy, the wages for those hotel employees do not reflect the demand for pricey hotel accommodations,” thus suggesting that she is at least conciliatory to the hospitality industry – as long as its ready to pay its workers a living wage (also know as a “more just minimum”) that constantly rises due to gentrification.

Rob Thomas, community liaison with the Racial Justice Coalition, the group that supplied the city its recent (and toothless) reparations resolution, has backed off of his insistence that the city defund APD.

“I don’t know if it is realistic to call for a 50% divestment because I don’t know what the budget looks like in a line by line breakdown,” he said to a city that has been disregarding his and thousands of others’ cries to defund the department across three different budget hearings this year.

Thomas explicitly stated that he was ready to work with people across income levels, and according to the Racial Justice Coalition’s website, this would include professions. Though APD has compiled a laundry list of abuses this summer, “RJC is well positioned to make a significant impact because we…are working with the APD Chief,” states the website.

Council seems set on refusing to defund APD by 50 percent and providing an underwhelming beginning to a “process” of vague reforms. Antanette Mosley was selected by Sheneika Smith (who has voted to increase APD’s budget twice now). Even so, on its surface her application appears to hold the most promise. In response to whether or not she would support the call to defund APD by 50 percent, like nearly all applicants, she refused to answer in plain terms.

Mosley chose instead to connect the demands to Asheville City Council’s 2036 Vision (a liberal fantasia Council has discarded at will). However, she would justly proclaim, “fundamentally stated, Asheville cannot and will not become a truly equitable and diverse society until intentional investment in the Black community occurs.”

Whatever their reasons for selecting a hotelier or an applicant like Bell-Rodgers who described awful and lasting trauma inflicted by police, its possible and likely that at least four council members who choose to swear in their new colleague will vote for only marginal cuts to APD, if at all. That said, and as we’ve seen all summer, a lot can change and other visions are being put into practice as we speak.

The selection and the election

“We Demand a Divestment from the Police and Investment in Black Communities
50% of the APD’s budget should be invested in long-term safety strategies including supporting Black startups/business, eliminating the racial opportunity gap in Asheville City Schools, and funding an all-civilian oversight committee with the power to hold the APD and individual officers accountable”
– Black Asheville Demands

“I don’t want to continue to drive this expectation that by the end of September we will be defunding the police department.”
– Esther Manheimer on July 28, at a meeting where the city manager claimed they were working to meet Black Asheville Demands

Police accountability and defunding the police have been issues that decided elections in years past. The Million Dollars for the People movement, against yet another APD budget hike, took place in 2017. Siding with investment in the community instead of the police – markedly during the spring 2017 candidates’ forum on policing at the Edington Center – helped win Sheneika Smith and Kapoor seats on council. Voting to give the police more money lost Cecil Bothwell his seat in the primary and nearly eliminated Wisler in the general election.

Had the Johnnie Rush video been made public when it happened in August of that year, Wisler would have almost certainly lost. Locals wants council to defund the police and fund basic community services programs. The “long-term safety strategies” are in fact part a laundry list of needs that have gone long unmet.

By building ambitious mutual aid and community supportprojects such as the local Black Mamas Bailout, Steady Collective, and the Asheville Survival Program, locals increasingly look beyond the need for police at all. Likewise, to those who are building this new world, those officials who refuse to keep campaign promises — such as Kapoor and Smith — are increasingly in the way.

Tonight, Council will choose Vijay Kapoor’s replacement. Next month, this new council member will vote on an amended police budget that will affect the lives of thousands of locals. Furthermore, after this key budget vote, on Nov. 3, locals will elect at least two (possibly three) brand new members of council who will have control over APD’s budget, staffing, and policies for years to come.

As conversations circle around the question of which councilperson chose whom, what council candidates might pair up for this year’s final stretch, and what calculus council members who are up for reelection in 2022 might have after pissing off most of the city’s population, it’s also important to look at who is no longer part of the race this fall.

On Aug. 21, Nicole Townsend a police abolitionist who moderated the Spring 2017 candidate forum, exited the Council race. Family tragedy wasn’t her only reason.

Her decision was principled and prioritized community-based decision making instead of council’s endless bullshit. A veteran of past defund movements and mutual aid projects and an advocate for direct action, Townsend stated:

“Electoral Politics is a piece of the work, but it is not the work in its entirety. Elected officials have never, and will never save us or transform our communities. Progress and transformation has always come due to those on the ground doing the long term relentless work of systems change in which systems are dismantled, and alternatives are put in place.”

Meanwhile Council’s true selves shine through, and they’re terrible. Most of them are rich, are white, and have no reference for what its like to be a Black person, a Brown person, a poor person, and especially a poor Black or Brown person in Asheville. They don’t know drug users, mentality ill people or domestic violence survivors who are out about their experience whether openly or without choice because they have no homes in which to use, vent, or hide away until the bruises pass.

By and large, Council members don’t talk to these constituents, and they clearly don’t care about them other than as symbols or excuses. Otherwise, they’d act differently.

That was made sharply clear when, on Sept. 4, just days before tonight’s council meeting, city hall’s official report on the late May/early June crackdown was released. A thoroughly scum-laden document, it blames protesters and medics for the police’s spree of violence and tear gas. It even defends the infamous destruction of the medic tent. It reveals that Campbell broadly approved of the APD’s actions and gave them the go-ahead to continue. The report shows that Council — who could have overridden the mayor’s curfew, banned tear gas and removed Campbell — did absolutely nothing as the violence ramped up.

Council may appear to hold all the major cards for who fills Kapoor’s seat and the ‘ticket’ for November looks increasingly unappealing, but defeat is only a reality if locals let city hall decide the terms. Council and its friends are few, and their facade, already crumbling, with effort will fall. The biggest decisions aren’t made by governments.

Locals such as Victoria Estes acknowledge the new world that protesters are building while Council delays. “I’ve become invigorated watching our community become radicaiized and invested in politics… We’ve been making art and holding rallies, feeding each other and holding rallies in solidarity with each other. Our communities are not going to back down any time soon, and we are just getting started,” she said during the July 28 hearing.

“Which side are you on?” Townsend asked in her exit letter. City hall is vacant, but that’s not where the real power resides. Not if we wish it otherwise. The people’s side is waiting, and with crises of white supremacy, capitalism, and climate change converging, the hour is late.

Which side are you on?

—

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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