
{"id":15046,"date":"2011-01-06T11:35:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=15046"},"modified":"2011-01-06T12:15:29","modified_gmt":"2011-01-06T17:15:29","slug":"grounds-for-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/01\/06\/grounds-for-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Grounds for justice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_15047\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15047\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2011\/01\/06\/grounds-for-justice\/michelle_laws\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15047\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/michelle_laws.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"michelle_laws\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15047\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/michelle_laws.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/michelle_laws-113x75.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/michelle_laws-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/michelle_laws-120x80.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15047\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Local NAACP chapter president Michelle Laws visits Pritchard Avenue Extension, where her social activism began to take shape. PHOTO BY ALEX MANESS.<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<strong>By Taylor Sisk<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<\/em><br \/>\nThe playground is in many respects a microcosm of the real world. There are rules to be observed and hierarchies to reckon; infrastructure (bats and balls and slides and swings) is required.<br \/>\nIt was on such grounds that Michelle Cotton Laws became an activist.<br \/>\nBorn in Chapel Hill to a young, single mother who was sent north by her family to college, Laws was raised by her grandmother, Annie Freeman (later Annie Freeman Peay), in Pritchard Avenue Extension public housing.<br \/>\nMs. Annie was one of a group of women, including Mildred Pierce and Carrie Farrington, who served on the public-housing residence council. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153These women were fierce,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Laws admiringly recalls, in seeking justice.<br \/>\nYoung Michelle was totted along to meetings, one of which involved playground equipment.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The merry-go-round was wobbly, the sliding board was coming loose and all this stuff,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Laws says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So I got up and made an appeal. I was, like, in the fourth grade. And I made an appeal about how we too in the public-housing communities deserved good playground equipment.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do remember them being so proud of me. And that was when I first got recognition from the community. I remember Miss Carrie telling my grandma, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThat child can talk. She sure can talk.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 They just loved to hear me talk.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So I decided then that anytime times would come where I could speak on behalf of our community, I would.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nAnd she has.<br \/>\nmmunity leader and the first female president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the NAACP. The fierce desire for social justice that was nurtured on that playground led her, as a UNC student, to hone her chops at the forefront of the drive to establish a freestanding black cultural center on campus.<br \/>\nShe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a resolute advocate for the civil rights of university employees and recently has spoken on behalf of Kerry Bigelow and Clyde Clark, public works\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 employees fired by the Town of Chapel Hill, and against perceived resegregation of the Wake County schools.<br \/>\nAlong the way, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s learned that though the wheels of justice may move slowly, they do in fact budge.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As Dr. King has said, the moral arc of the universe indeed is long, but it always bends back toward justice. I have to believe that. I do believe that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<strong>Beyond race<\/strong><br \/>\nMichelle Laws\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work is about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pushing back\u00e2\u20ac\u009d against what she calls the three greatest ills: ignorance, racism and poverty.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about fighting against those evils, and the way in which they manifest themselves. We have a duty to treat everybody like everybody else. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been blessed to come a long way from public housing, and I believe that to whom much is given much is also required. \u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nLaws earned an undergrad degree from UNC in mass communications and a master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in sociology from N.C. Central. She worked in Washington, D.C. for the National Crime Prevention Council, was legislative liaison for the state Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services and now teaches sociology at Central.<br \/>\nShe cites a number of mentors, black and white \u00e2\u20ac\u201c- among them, lifelong community leader Rebecca Clark; her grandmother; her great-grandmother, Annie Cotton; Valerie Foushee, now an Orange County commissioner; and Al Baldwin, a sociology teacher at Chapel Hill High School.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I know that my path was opened in a very different way,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and I believe it was to equip me to fight for others. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take that lightly\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fight for human dignity and human rights.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fight, Laws says, that transcends race:<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right now, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more of a class struggle, though certainly there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this intersectionality of race and class that we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t disentangle.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have trouble convincing well-to-do, affluent black folks that they need to be a part of the struggle. I have [black] people who will look at me as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m absolutely crazy when I talk about the agenda of the NAACP and why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so important to fight for education, to continue to fight for fair and affordable housing, for us to continue to fight for jobs.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You really want to get me mad? Put me in front of what I call \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbourg-y,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in bourgeois, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black folk \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nBut the journey brings its rewards. Laws speaks of the long struggle for environmental justice in the Rogers Road community, where her grandmother eventually moved and her great-grandmother lived until passing away at 103.<br \/>\nAs community members fought to keep a solid-waste transfer station out of their neighborhood, arguing that, after nearly four decades of proximity to the county landfill, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d carried a sufficient burden for the greater community, Laws spoke before the county commissioners of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153foul odor that smells of racism and classism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The tenacity and the determination to stick with what you know is right, after defeat, after defeat, after defeat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that battle, in a lot of ways, gives me hope that eventually things do indeed turn out in favor of those who are fighting for what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right and just.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nBut, she adds, the battle was also sad to experience.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was sad because most of those residents out there were service workers. They worked for families, they worked for the town, they worked for the university as housekeepers and so forth.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Despite their service, they were abandoned, she feels, in their struggle for fundamental amenities.<br \/>\n<strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNo shame in losing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/strong><br \/>\nAs president of the local chapter of the NAACP and champion of the disenfranchised, Laws sees education as the first priority: investing wisely in public schools, closing the achievement gap and assuring affordable access to colleges and universities. Economic disparity is of equal concern.<br \/>\nThough not by any means anti-capitalist \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she points out that her husband, Quintin Laws, comes from a long line of entrepreneurs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Laws laments \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this uncontrollable greed on Wall Street, people going uncensored, unaccountable, and acting like it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an entitlement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nMeanwhile, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the unemployment rate in the African-American community is in double digits; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s awful. Then you disaggregate that even more, and you look at black males \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nEffecting real change will take true courage, Laws says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen it in our president. It takes courage to say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to push back because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d On the pressure put on President Obama to extend tax cuts, for example: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI dare you. I dare you.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I was hoping he was going to say. Courage.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nOf the future, she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hopeful; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hopeful. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if optimism is warranted at this point. But my faith requires that I be hopeful.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nHer greatest joy, Laws says, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m part of a movement where there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such great diversity, and people are coming together in this human spirit, and saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDoggone it, we may go down like the Titanic, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to fight.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d almost rather be on that ship, going down like the Titanic, with people fighting for human rights and social justice, than to be on the other side with the people that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re fighting against.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no shame in losing, only in not fighting.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nThat fight, Laws says, is in her DNA.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know anything but that.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I still believe in the good in mankind and that if you keep reminding people of that, you keep insisting that that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s indeed the standard \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an exception; that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the standard \u00e2\u20ac\u201c then eventually that moral arc will bend back.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nAnd though the merry-go-round may wobble, a solid shoulder, a sound voice, will right it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The playground is in many respects a microcosm of the real world. There are rules to be observed and hierarchies to reckon; infrastructure (bats and balls and slides and swings) is required.<br \/>\nIt was on such grounds that Michelle Cotton Laws became an activist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":15047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15046"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15067,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15046\/revisions\/15067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}