Ruby Sinreich's blog

I have been so incredibly upset since I heard about the Chapel Hill Town Council's swift decision to retire the Technology Advisory Board and the Horace Williams Citizens Committee last week, that I couldn't even write about it. I have been waiting to cool down, but the more I think and the more people I talk to about it, the madder I get.

So I will let Jason Baker do the talking for me (from his blog):

Last week, the Chapel Hill Town Council opted to end the service of both the Horace Williams citizens' committee and the technology committee.

Doing so was a mistake. With her sole dissenting vote, apparently only former citizens' committee member Laurin Easthom saw the value of the hard work and diversity of perspectives those folks would bring to the town in the years to come.

As a town, we're far behind where we ought to be in the technology realm, and disbanding our technology committee without a thoughtful replacement is only going to put us farther back.

WCHL (1360 AM) will holding its annual Forum on air today from 8 am to 6 pm. I can't find the schedule on their site, but they generally dedicate each hour to a different topic with 4-6 guests and a couple of journalists.

It probably won't be as exciting as in 2004, when the forum was kicked off by a tense 2-hour tete-a-tete over UNC development.

In 2005, I was a particpant in the "Civil Rights & Equality" topic. This year I'll be on during the 3 pm hour in which the topic is "Community Diversity," which appears to be a re-phrasing of the same issue(s). And I'm still frustrated at the hourly separation of topics because of course I have things to say about all of them! ;-)

I thought for a while about whether to post this, but I think people should know that fear and homophobia are unfortunately alive and well in Orange County. In his e-mail newsletter last week Orange County Commission candidate Mike Nelson wrote:

Apparently, a representative of the Orange County Democratic Party leadership attended a recent precinct meeting and told folks that a vote for me would be a "wasted" vote. His contention, apparently, was that if I win the primary it will make it easier for the Republican candidate to win in November.

[...]

The same arguments this gentleman made---that voting for me would be handing a seat to the Republicans because of the perceived anti-gay vote in Northern Orange--these same arguments used to be made about African-American and women candidates. If people had listened to this kind of doom-and-gloom mess 20-30-40 years ago, we'd never have elected African Americans or women to office around here.