Hillsborough has become a battleground against bigotry:

Hillsborough gathered together Saturday afternoon as part of the March Against White Supremacy. Hundreds of people participated by walking through downtown. They gathered at the Old Slave Cemetery to get ready to march. Without knowing exactly what to expect a crowd of about 700 began the walk from the Cemetery to the Courthouse.

The rally comes a week after members of the KKK came to the town while Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris was in Durham to speak at an event. Officials in Hillsborough said the KKK's presence wasn't expected and there was no documentation filed to gather and protest. People from all walks of life came together to show solidarity.

Several people I know were involved in this march, and it has to have been one of the largest gatherings downtown Hillsborough has ever seen. My Facebook feed was inundated with updates and photos of the march, but then I noticed something else happening. Some of my friends are also in Eastern North Carolina, and in Greenville there was another march taking place in defense of The Squad:

A better name might be, "Gentrification On Steroids":

President Trump has portrayed America’s cities as wastelands, ravaged by crime and homelessness, infested by rats. But the Trump administration’s signature plan to lift them — a multibillion-dollar tax break that is supposed to help low-income areas — has fueled a wave of developments financed by and built for the wealthiest Americans.

Among the early beneficiaries of the tax incentive are billionaire financiers like Leon Cooperman and business magnates like Sidney Kohl — and Mr. Trump’s family members and advisers.

Personal anecdote time: Last year my town's merchant's association held a "business social," bringing in bankers and other Very Important Persons to discuss economic growth possibilities. One of the topics I was very keen to hear about was Opportunity Zones, because we have some areas that really need a lift. But the investment advisor (woman) who presented did not even mention economic improvement, or helping marginalized citizens. It was all about how to leverage the program to reap the most financial benefits. And another quick take: The more the merrier. The more expensive the project, the more tax savings reaped. Which means, the finished product (luxury apartments, high-end retail) would be inaccessible for people on the low end of the totem pole:

Compounding the catastrophe with more irresponsible behavior:

The TVA paid for as many as 900 people to contain and remove the pollution, some working 12-hour shifts for months at a time. The sludge dried into a fine dust that sparkled like glitter and sometimes whirled into clouds so thick, drivers could barely see past the hoods of their trucks.

In Associated Press interviews, workers said they were healthy before breathing the ash, but have since suffered unusual symptoms. They recalled joking darkly about "coal ash flu" before suffering strange lesions and seeing their skin flake off like fish scales. At least 40 co-workers have died, they said, some gruesomely, collapsing and coughing up blood. "We cleaned it up in a little over five years, and it would've took 25 years to do it the right way," said Doug Bledsoe, who drove trucks there and now has brain and lung cancer.

Let's say it again for those in the back rows: "Heavy metals persist." Mercury, Arsenic, Lead, are all heavy metals that survive the coal-burning process, often in the form of fly-ash, which is such a fine particulate that it remains airborne longer than other residuals, and more easily penetrates the soft tissues (and even bloodstream). That fly-ash also contains radioactive isotopes, which are probably responsible for many of the cancers. It's not just nasty, it's deadly, and the civil court system in Tennessee is allowing even more of these folks to die because of the "phases" they have to go through to get relief:

I guess you could call this trickle-down economics, albeit of a deadly form:

She preyed on the parish of Clarendon, carrying out nine confirmed kills, including a double homicide outside a bar, the killing of a father at a wake and the murder of a single mother of three. Her violence was indiscriminate: She shot and nearly killed a 14-year-old girl getting ready for church. With few clues to identify her, the police named her Briana. They knew only her country of origin — the United States — where she had been virtually untraceable since 1991.

Briana, serial number 245PN70462, was a 9-millimeter Browning handgun.

As many of you already know, I served in the Army for several years. I taught weapons and tactics to foreign military and Guard/Reserve/ROTC here in the States. A few years after I left the service, I purchased a couple of weapons, a Russian Makarov pistol and a Chinese (Army issue) SKS 7.62 assault rifle. I did not have a weapon safe to store them in, but I did have trigger locks on both. I simply couldn't imagine anyone breaking into my home, but they did, in the middle of the daytime. And yes, over the years I have lost sleep worrying about what those weapons may have been used for. I wish other Americans worried about that too: