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Confederate monument in Edenton will remain in place for now

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carolinapublicpress.org – Lucas Thomae – 2025-03-03 12:25:00

Despite outcry, NC town’s Confederate monument is staying put. For the moment.

After a secret agreement to relocate a controversial Confederate monument fell through, the Edenton Town Council and Chowan County are back to the drawing board.

This time, though, it’s in the public eye.

Even so, the five residents who sued over their right to have a say in the monument’s fate aren’t satisfied with the town’s attempt at transparency, their attorney told Carolina Public Press.

According to a lawsuit filed in January by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the Edenton Town Council broke open meetings law when it quietly negotiated a deal with Chowan County and several neo-Confederate groups to transfer ownership of the monument to the county and relocate it to the courthouse.

As a part of that deal, three neo-Confederate groups agreed to settle a separate lawsuit they filed against the town that has prevented the monument’s relocation since 2022. They have since backed out, and that lawsuit is still pending with a hearing scheduled for April.

Arguments over the fate of the monument, which was first erected in 1909, have been ongoing since Edenton first considered relocating it in 2020.

Although estimates can vary, it’s believed that North Carolina has at least 40 Confederate monuments in front of courthouses and roughly 170 such symbols statewide.

Usually, efforts in towns and cities to get them removed or relocated don’t come without a fight. And invariably, those disagreements often wind up in court.

A few years ago in Edenton, a town-created commission comprised of residents recommended that the monument be relocated from the historic waterfront. The town took that recommendation seriously but has been met by obstacles at each attempt to find a compromise.

Now, it appears that deadlock will continue.

A deal is undone

In early February, the town notified Chowan County that it and the neo-Confederate groups who sued to keep the monument in place could not reach a resolution to the lawsuit.

With the collapse of the initial deal, town and county officials sought a new path forward — this time with public input.

A week ago, the Edenton Town Council held a special joint meeting with the Chowan County Board of Commissioners with the intention of dissolving the memorandum of understanding from November and coming to a new agreement.

Edenton Mayor W. Hackney High Jr. acknowledged the lawsuit filed by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice during the meeting’s opening remarks and welcomed input from residents through a public comments session.

Twenty made speeches in front of local leaders, most of whom were against the monument and didn’t want it either downtown or on courthouse grounds. A few speakers voiced their support for keeping the monument in a prominent place.

One of the speakers was John Shannon, a local pastor who is one of the five plaintiffs in the Southern Coalition for Social Justice lawsuit. He was also a member of the town commission that recommended the monument be relocated.

“As of right now, every attempt to move the monument has been delayed, redirected or ignored,” Shannon said. “I hope that one day soon the recommendation from the (town commission) will be considered as a move in the right direction to better the relationships of all the citizens in Edenton.”

Despite having the opportunity to share their misgivings about the town council’s plan, a spokeswoman with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice told CPP she’s worried Edenton officials won’t take residents seriously.

“We are concerned that this meeting is a hollow attempt to check a box when it comes to hearing public input,” Sarah Ovaska said, “and not a sincere attempt to consider the wishes of the community.”

‘The right road’

After an hour of public comments, the town unanimously adopted a new memorandum of understanding.

The agreement closely mirrors the previous memorandum adopted in November — except it cuts out the neo-Confederate groups as a signatory, meaning their endorsement is not required for this new deal — and slightly changes the language describing where on the courthouse grounds the monument is to be relocated.

In this version of the deal, the transfer of the monument to Chowan County and its relocation to the courthouse will only take effect once the lawsuit involving the neo-Confederate groups is dismissed by a judge.

And there’s precedent for that. In March 2024, the state Supreme Court ruled that a neo-Confederate group did not have the standing to sue over Asheville’s decision to remove a Confederate monument. 

Edenton expects the judge to rule similarly here.

But although the Edenton Town Council adopted the new memorandum of understanding with little discussion, Chowan County officials were more apprehensive.

The Board of Commissioners decided to table the issue and vote on it sometime after considering the public comments and consulting with legal counsel.

Usually, efforts to get Confederate monuments removed or relocated don’t come without a fight. Southern Coalition for Social Justice / Provided

“I would like to think that this Board of Commissioners really needs to think hard and have a good discussion with our counsel,” Vice Chairman Larry McLaughlin said. “My reservations are if we take this monument, then we are stuck with any court cases coming up and the cost associated with that, and all the other rigamarole that we’ve been through. So my reservation is to be cautious to make sure that we’re going down the right road.”

Representatives from neither the town nor the county responded to CPP’s request for comment.

Additionally, the United Daughters of the Confederacy — one of the groups that sued to keep the monument in place during 2023 — also did not respond to a request for comment.

Confederate monument lawsuit continues

The lawsuit filed in January by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice takes issue not only with how the town’s business was conducted, but also the proposal that the monument be moved to a courthouse.

Along with the claim that the town violated open meetings law, the suit also asserts that having a Confederate statue on courthouse grounds would violate the plaintiffs’ rights under the state constitution.

That is something the town did not address in last week’s special meeting, opting instead to continue to move forward with relocating the monument.

Holding a public meeting just to vote on a similar deal shows that the town is not serious about taking residents’ comments into account, according to plaintiffs’ attorney Jake Sussman.

“The fate of Edenton’s Confederate monument has already been decided,” he said, referring to the town’s commitment nearly two years ago to relocate the statue. “As our lawsuit makes clear, however, following through cannot involve moving it to the county courthouse. That would be a huge step back for the community and North Carolina.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Analysis: ‘Valley’ of AI journey risks human foundational, unique traits | National

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-02 14:21:00

(The Center Square) – Minority benefit against the majority giving up “agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills” in what is described as a valley of an artificial intelligence journey is likely in the next few years, says one voice among hundreds in a report from Elon University.

John M. Stuart’s full-length essay, one of 200 such responses in “Being Human in 2035: How Are We Changing in the Age of AI?,” speaks to the potential problems foreseen as artificial intelligence continues to be incorporated into everyday life by many at varying levels from professional to personal to just plain curious. The report authored by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center says “the fragile future of some foundational and unique traits” found only in humans is a concern for 6 in 10.

“I fear – the time being – that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs and the tools will remain too centralized and locked down with interfaces that are simply out of our personal control as citizens,” writes Smart, a self-billed global futurist, foresight consultant, entrepreneur and CEO of Foresight University. “I fear we’re still walking into an adaptive valley in which things continue to get worse before they get better. Looking ahead past the next decade, I can imagine a world in which open-source personal AIs are trustworthy and human-centered.

“Many political reforms will reempower our middle class and greatly improve rights and autonomy for all humans, whether or not they are going through life with PAIs. I would bet the vast majority of us will consider ourselves joined at the hip to our digital twins once they become useful enough. I hope we have the courage, vision and discipline to get through this AI valley as quickly and humanely as we can.”

Among the ideas by 2035 from the essays, Paul Saffo offered, “The first multi-trillion-dollar corporation will employ no humans except legally required executives and board, have no offices, own no property and operate entirely through AI and automated systems.”

Saffo is a futurist and technology forecaster in the Silicon Valley of California, and a consulting professor at the School of Engineering at Stanford.

In another, Vint Cerf wrote, “We may find it hard to distinguish between artificial personalities and the real ones. That may result in a search for reliable proof of humanity so that we and bots can tell the difference.”

Cerf is generally known as one of the “fathers of the internet” alongside Robert Kahn and for the internet protocol suite, colloquially known as TCP/IP.

Working alongside the well-respected Elon University Poll, the survey asked, “What might be the magnitude of overall change in the next decade in people’s native operating systems and operations as we more broadly adapt to and use advanced AIs by 2035? From five choices, 61% said considerable (deep and meaningful change 38%) and dramatic (fundamental, revolutionary change 23%) and another 31% said moderate and noticeable, meaning clear and distinct.

Only 5% said minor change and 3% no noticeable change.

“This report is a revealing and provocative declaration to the profound depth of change people are undergoing – often without really noticing at all – as we adapt to deeper uses of advancing AI technology,” Anderson said. “Collectively, these experts are calling on humanity to think intentionally and carefully, taking wise actions now, so we do not sleepwalk into an AI future that we never intended and do not want.”

In another question, respondents answered whether artificial intelligence and related technologies are likely to change the essence of being human. Fifty percent said changes were equally better and worse, 23% said mostly for the worse, and 16% said mostly for the better.

The analysis predicted change mostly negative in nine areas: social and emotional intelligence; capacity and willingness to think deeply about complex concepts; trust in widely shared values and norms; confidence in their native abilities; empathy and application of moral judgment; mental well-being; sense of agency; sense of identity and purpose; and metacognition.

Mostly positive, the report says, are curiosity and capacity to learn; decision-making and problem-solving; and innovative thinking and creativity.

Anderson and Rainie and those working on the analysis did not use large language models for writing and editing, or in analysis of the quantitative data for the qualitative essays. Authors said there was brief experimentation and human realization “there were serious flaws and inaccuracies.” The report says 223 of 301 who responded did so “fully generated out of my own mind, with no LLM assistance.”

Results were gathered between Dec. 27 and Feb. 1.

The post Analysis: ‘Valley’ of AI journey risks human foundational, unique traits | National appeared first on www.thecentersquare.com

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Trump urged to reconsider order gutting agency that gives grants to libraries, museums

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ncnewsline.com – Shauneen Miranda – 2025-04-02 13:00:00

SUMMARY: On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dramatically reduce funding for seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which awarded $266.7 million in 2024. The order aims to eliminate non-essential functions and cut agency personnel to legal minimums. The move sparked backlash from library and museum organizations, warning it would severely impact early literacy programs, internet access, job assistance, and community services. Critics urged Congress to intervene, while the administration framed the cuts as part of efforts to reduce government waste under the U.S. DOGE Service initiative led by Elon Musk. 

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The post Trump urged to reconsider order gutting agency that gives grants to libraries, museums appeared first on ncnewsline.com

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Raleigh City Council discusses transforming area near Lenovo Center, hears concerns

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www.youtube.com – ABC11 – 2025-04-02 08:44:01


SUMMARY: Raleigh City Council is considering a major redevelopment project near the Lenovo Center that would create a new sports and entertainment district with high-rise buildings, restaurants, shops, and upgraded arena facilities. The proposal, supported by city leaders and the Carolina Hurricanes—who agreed to stay for 20 more years—has drawn both excitement and concerns. Students and staff from nearby Cardinal Gibbons High School support the project but worry about pedestrian safety and construction impacts. City leaders suggested annual reviews to address ongoing issues. The council postponed rezoning decisions until April 15 to allow for more discussion and public input.

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New details are emerging about the bold new development that could transform the area around Raleigh’s Lenovo Center, creating a new entertainment district around the arena in west Raleigh.

More: https://abc11.com/post/raleigh-city-council-will-discuss-future-including-wake-bus-rapid-transit-project-housing-security/16114907/
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