Two city council candidates have records of far-right bigotry

Developers David Moritz and Jared Wheatley are running for Asheville city council seats. But behind their attempts to rebrand as…

Analyzing the 2026 city elections

In a wide-ranging segment with Asheville FM’s Community News, we analyze a mayoral rematch, a crowded city council primary and…

Help the Blade survive in 2026

Like so many in our city the journalists in the Asheville Blade co-op have faced serious struggles in the aftermath…

COVID WAVE ALERT LIFTED — May 7

Reduced tourism and more vaccinations help lead to the mildest winter wave in years. Here’s more about what’s happening, and…

Rezoning for Raytheon

Buncombe County commissioners are once again bending over backwards for the giant, blood-soaked arms dealer, with a massive rezoning to help build its new plant Above: Anti-Raytheon graphic circulated by locals opposed to massive government handouts to the notorious weapons company. Special to the Blade…

Tower of Babel

Touted as an innovative transformation, Project Aspire is instead something all too familiar: gentrification pushed forward to the detriment of a local Black community. Inside the mega hotel project and its modern-day redlining Above: Plans for Project Aspire overlaid with the 1930s redlining maps. Graphic…

Another day, another crackdown

Yet another brutal APD ‘special operation’ arrests the homeless for being poor and asking for help. It’s past time to face the growing police state in our city Above: Asheville police before raiding the Aston Park houseless camp in April 2021. In recent years the…

‘Clearly these folks weren’t littering’

Emails reveal Asheville city hall’s own waste manager contradicted their lies on bogus ‘felony littering’ charges Above: Art at the December 2021 Aston Park Build. Asheville police and government officials would later claim this was grounds for felony littering charges against 16 locals. Photo by…

Southside crowd halts murderous cops

Neighborhood outcry stops Asheville police’s brutalization of a Black local and a community mobilizes against police brutality Above: Asheville police piled on top of Devon Whitmire on May 13, with one officer pressing down on his throat with her elbow. The brutality only stopped due…

COVID WAVE ALERT — April 9

Asheville’s long covid wave continues to hit our communities. Here’s our regular alerts on what’s going on and what you can do to keep each other safe Graphic by Matilda Bliss You can support the Blade‘s covid alerts — and everything else we do —…

What the cameras showed

Over 12 hours of body cam footage from the Aston Park Christmas night crackdown shows police bigotry, casual cruelty and an open attack on the rights of journalists and protesters Above: Blade journalist Matilda Bliss is hauled into the detention wagon on Dec. 25, 2021.…

And not a drop to drink

Sweetheart deals for the wealthy pushed Asheville’s aging water system to the brink. Incompetence and arrogance shoved it over. This is the story of our city’s water crisis Above: A tap in Candler, one of the areas hardest hit by the water crisis, runs dry.…

Asheville Bladecast, Ep. 4 — The Most Corrupt Time of the Year

Graphic by Matilda Bliss Welcome back, readers and listeners. Our latest Asheville Bladecast episode, recorded just before Xmas, is a wide-ranging look at a bevy of recent stories with a very common theme: corruption. That’s right, we’ve got corrupt politicians, preachers, gentry gays, non-profit hatchetmen,…

Asheville’s non-discrimination ordinance is a sham

The city’s non-discrimination ordinance was supposed to help protect against bigotry, and its architects are touting it in their runs for office. But over a year later it has helped no one. It wasn’t meant to. Above: A pride flag flies from city hall in…

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