THE WAKEUP RALEIGH CITY COUNCIL

April turned out to be a stellar month for WakeUp Wake County as it increased its control over the Raleigh City Council. 

1. Karen Rindge, Executive Director of WakeUp Wake County, appointed to the Raleigh Transit Authority. She joins WakeUp Wake County Vice Chair Veronica Alcine who serves on Raleigh's Planning Commission. 

2. Raleigh celebrates WakeUp Wake County's efforts to push through a regressive tax increase on South Park residents for a flawed transit system. 

3. The City of Raleigh serves as a "Community Champion" for WakeUp Wake County's leftist progressive agenda. And how does one become a Community Champion?

4. You take $2500 from Raleigh taxpayers and give it to them. 

Again - stellar month for WakeUp Wake County as they further exert their control over the City of Raleigh. 

THE WAKEUP RALEIGH CITY COUNCIL

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, 

Raleigh-Apex NAACP Branch and Legal Aid of NC

YOUR RALEIGH TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK

The Justice Theater Project, has received $163,082 of your Raleigh tax dollars over the last several years to push socialist projects such as this. 

RALEIGH NOW PARTNERING WITH GEORGE SOROS FUNDED GROUP?

Raleigh Public Record - June 17, 2016

IndyWeek - June 21, 2016

MyNC.com - June 17, 2009

News & Observer - June 26, 2016

At last week's Raleigh City Council meeting, Councilman Russ Stephenson publicly broached the topic that Raleigh plans to contract with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity 

Indyweek.com - June 21, 2016

You can watch the video here. 45:55 mark. 

At last week's Raleigh City Council meeting, Councillor Russ Stephenson publicly noted that the City of Raleigh was finalizing a contract with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity. Councillor Stephenson has specifically noted he wants Raleigh to hire on the services of Julie Nelson with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity. 

So the questions become:

1. Who is the Government Alliance on Race and Equity? 
2. What services will they provide to the City of Raleigh?
4. How much will Raleigh taxpayers pay for this privilege? 

1. Who is the Government Alliance on Race and Equity?

"The Government Alliance is a joint project between the Center for Social Inclusion and the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society."

They are based out of the University of California at Berkeley. 

"The Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) is a national network of government cohorts working to achieve racial equity and advance opportunities for all."

Who is the Center Social Inclusion?

"George Soros is behind a newly uncovered effort to teach Democratic congressmen how to smear their opponents as racist.

Last week House Democrats invited the radical, left-wing, Soros-financed group called the Center for Social Inclusion “to address the issue of race to defend government programs,” according to documentation reviewed by Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner.

“The prepared content of a Tuesday presentation to the House Democratic Caucus and staff indicates that Democrats will seek to portray apparently neutral free-market rhetoric as being charged with racial bias, conscious or unconscious,” Gehrke writes.

According to Gehrke, trainer Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion blasted “conservative messages [that are] racially ‘coded’ and had images of people of color that we commonly see used” and suggested ways to combat Republicans’ supposedly racially-coded rhetoric.

Facts don’t matter in Wiley’s estimation. “It’s emotional connection, not rational connection that we need,” she said.

Wiley offered that Newt Gingrich calling Obama a “food stamp president,” cannot be “a race-neutral statement, even if Newt Gingrich did not intend racism.” In other words, all criticism of Obama is rooted in racism.

Wiley, a so-called civil rights attorney, is the daughter of the late George Wiley, the leader of the now-defunct National Welfare Rights Organization. NWRO created ACORN in 1970 and President Obama worked for ACORN in his community organizing days,

Wiley’s group gets its money from anti-American philanthropists such as Soros. The Soros-funded Tides Foundation has given $879,800 to the group since 2005. Soros’s Open Society Institute has donated at least $75,000 to the group since 2002. Other hard-left institutional donors to the group include the Public Welfare Foundation Inc. ($308,355 since 2010) and the Surdna Foundation ($60,000 since 2008)."

and ...

• Views the U.S. as a nation infested with white racism and discrimination
• Seeks to counteract America's "structural racism" by means of taxpayer-funded policy initiatives
• Supports the training of local community organizers to serve as agents of social change

The Haas Institute has worked to promote racial presences as well. 

2. What services will they provide to the City of Raleigh? 

We don't know. Raleigh says they are "finalizing a contract." 
All we can go with are Councillor Stephenson's remarks:

"Stephenson says proposal to have an equity consultant come in and do training for senior staff. He says council should also have a session with the equity consultant." 

4. How much will Raleigh taxpayers pay for this privilege? 

We don't know. Raleigh cannot/will not provide this figure. 

Now Raleigh City Councillor Russ Stephenson wants to push a far-left University of California at Berkeley organization into Raleigh's municipal government - courtesy of your tax dollars. 

APPLICANTS TO DIX PARK MASTER PLAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Dorothea Dix Park Master Plan Advisory Committee Applicant List

RALEIGH BUDGET PRIORITIES

Raleigh can't manage wage increases for their police force, but they have money available for this:

El Pueblo gets $23,514 in proposed funding from the City of Raleigh. Must be real encouraging for the Raleigh Police Department. 

RALEIGH STILL IN BYPASS VOTERS MINDSET

We've talked endlessly about how Raleigh has bypassed voter approval for downtown Raleigh projects - amounts that run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of those projects include City Plaza, Fayetteville Street, Convention Center, Amphitheater, Moore Square, Exchange Plazas and most recently Dix Park. 

Next Up? 

TRANSIT

From the City of Raleigh's website:

"The City of Raleigh is one of three cities in the nation chosen to receive the first round of assistance from a new national planning initiative. Smart Growth America and PNC Bank have teamed up to create Planning for Successful and Equitable Revitalization. The project is designed to help communities make revitalization successful and capture benefits from the revitalization process for families of all income levels.

The initial round of this new assistance was available by invitation-only for civic leaders working to revitalize neighborhoods in ways that benefit and include communities with low or moderate incomes. In addition to Raleigh, Jersey City, N.J., and Birmingham, Ala., were chosen for first-round assistance from the Planning for Successful and Equitable Revitalization initiative.

In Raleigh, representatives from the initiative will work with the City Planning and Housing and Neighborhoods departments to create equitable development around planning bus rapid transit stations. This will help the City revitalize neighborhoods around stations areas as well as make sure the new service accommodates and understands the concerns for long-term residents."

We found the quote from Raleigh's City Planning Director Ken Bowers of interest:

“The Wake County Transit Plan proposes to bring frequent bus rapid transit service to some of Raleigh’s lowest-wealth communities,” City Planning Director Ken Bowers said. “With the plan receiving approval from Wake County, now is the time to ensure that these investments benefit rather than displace households and families who stand to gain from the increased access and mobility improved transit service will provide.”

Raleigh is spending money already and moving forward with developing plans on a project that has yet to receive voter approval. What's troubling is that Raleigh treats the Wake County Commissioners, rather than Wake County voters, as the authorizing entity. 

Premature, but par for the course. 

RALEIGH: A CAPITAL CITY OF BIGOTRY

Yesterday we reviewed the hysteria created by Wake County's progressive community and elected officials concerning HB2. We also pointed out the hypocrisy. 

We continue with that today. 

Let's start with Mayor McDowntown's own lofty denunciation of HB2: 

Mayor Mcfarlane is proud to stand with her transgender allies in Raleigh and in solidarity with Charlotte's "bathroom" ordinance.

Tim Giuliani and the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce got on the pedestal also: 

And of course the local LGBT community has chimed in: 

So the question arises, what legal ordinances govern the use of bathroom facilities within the City of Raleigh? Sec. 13-2015. speaks to that: 

"it shall be unlawful for a member of one sex to enter or use a facility provided for members of the opposite sex."

Maybe when the local left quits using this issue as a whipping boy to attack Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly and Governor McCrory, they can head a few blocks down to Hargett Street to address the hard core transphobic bigotry found there. 

Maybe Tim Giuliani and the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce can issue a statement condemning Raleigh's intolerance and bigotry. They won't - because they're hypocrites. The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce only condemns local government when it comes to neighborhood schools. 

#keepraleighvibrant (UPDATED)

Last week we wrote about the challenges concerning police calls at two adjoining locations on New Bern Avenue. We have updated that information for the current year and added one more address - 3120 New Bern Avenue - Wake Inn.

For the time period from January 1, 2016 to February 12, 2016. We show 191 police calls to these three addresses, less than a mile from one another. 

Raleigh City Councilman Corey Branch has said he is looking into this situation. We will follow up with him regarding his findings and observations. We appreciate his interest. 

Look for regular updates via www.wakecitizens.com and via Wake Citizens Coalition on Facebook. We plan to do further updates on these and other locations throughout the year. 

New Bern Avenue Calls, 1-1-16 to 2-12-16

WHILE LOCAL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES AND ESTABLISHMENT CONSERVATIVE NON-PROFITS COURTED AND STILL CONTINUE TO COURT THE DOWNTOWN ALCOHOLIC VOTE ...

This:

Unfortunately we had no difficulty acquiring this photo. The two hotels seen above (located where Trawick Road ends at New Bern Avenue) garner considerable police visits. Stop there for gas often and you'll see the patrol cars.

They were also the subject of two high-profile crime incidents this fall:

How many you ask? A whole lot.

Calls - New Bern Avenue

773 per the City of Raleigh records provided to us. 

This post is not an assertion of blame for the problem. It is however an assertion of a problem that needs review by the Raleigh City Council and the Raleigh Police Department. What would happen if this was within one block on Fayetteville Street? 

Those who have lived in Raleigh for more than the past decade remember the saga with Plum Crazy and Kamikaze's and more recently with Club Envy. As this WRAL story notes:

According to Raleigh police records, officers have been called to Club Envy and its predecessor, Black Tie Nightlife, more than 200 times since January 2009 on complaints that included two shootings, five stabbings, two strong-armed robberies, one rape, one attempted rape, 31 assaults, 10 disturbances, fighting and eight reports of shots fired.

WRAL - July 6, 2010

And less than a mile up the road stands the two hotels in question with 773 calls in just one year. 

While groups like Americans for Prosperity's signature Wake County issue was preserving the right of downtown alcoholics to have a beer on a sidewalk after 1 am on the weekends, there's a whole world of issues affecting the well-being of Raleigh citizens that evade them. Same with Generation Opportunity. There's a disconnect between them and the actual community where they work. A disconnect from the Alinsky they claim to teach. 

I also suspect there's a lot of folks who have made residences out of these hotels that could use a bridge to well being - not a training class. 

Making this area less riddled with crime would truly add more to #keepraleighvibrant. There's more to Raleigh than 1 am beers and food trucks. 

Thanks to Bob Geary for pointing this out last fall.