Secrets of State

Neurology Chief Named To Stanford Post

UNC Hospitals' Neurology chief Dr. Frank Longo has been named Professor and Chairman of the Stanford University Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences. Longo leaves behind a legacy of achievement at UNC in his 4 1/2 years, including new programs or improvements in the areas of stroke, sleep, epilepsy, movement disorders, pain, neuromuscular disorders, multiple sclerosis and child neurology.

In a farewell event, past University system presidents William Friday and Molly Broad joined former UNC-CH chancellor Christopher Fordham and friends, donors and UNC Neurology doctors and officials to bid a sad farewell to Longo and his wife Anne, the development director for the department.

The athletic Longo-he enjoys skiing from helicopters-said, "I enjoyed my nearly five years at UNC immensely. If California were not home, Anne and I would certainly enjoy staying at UNC." He was featured in the March 2003 issue of Metro.

Pat Patterson Rides Again

It's deja vu all over again. Legendary disc jockey Pat Patterson is back on AM radio spinning many of the same tunes from his golden era as the "morning man" on WKIX-AM radio from 1969 to 1974. Back then KIX was king of Top Forty radio in the region until FM radio stepped up to reflect the change in the musical mood of the country.

Patterson left for a stint in Boston in 1974, a foray into the Houston market in 1976 and returned to Raleigh in 1977 to host a program on the new WQDR-FM, owned and kept dormant by then powerhouse WPTF-AM radio until radio pioneer Carl Venters created the nation's first "album-oriented rock" format. Patterson then moved over to KIX's 96.1-FM, later changed to the call letters of the old AM (currently 850 The Buzz), before settling down at WDNC-AM in Durham, then part of Curtis Media, the biggest operator in the market.

WDNC was sold and a majority of its content was switched over to the Raleigh-based and Curtis-owned 570-AM-now called WDNZ-where Patterson has launched Million Dollar Music, a Saturday oldies show from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

But the music is only incidental to Patterson fans. They tune in for the unique humor that works as well today as it did in the glory days of AM radio. Back on the air are fan favorites "Letters From Home," "Hard-hitting Editorials," "Two Flags Over Fuquay" and the accident prone "Fundermotz Airlines."

Welcome home Pat...

See NC First

The North Carolina Outdoor Advertising Association is donating space to the Commerce Department's Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development to encourage North Carolinians to travel in their home state.

Last year, residents of the Tar Heel State accounted for 36 percent of the state's travelers. The new billboards key in on the message: "A million miles away is just down the road," and will line every interstate and major highway in North Carolina.

The artworks displayed on the 55 billboards appearing statewide feature LakeJunaluska, PisgahNational Forest and the town of Ocracoke on the Outer Banks.

The Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development estimates the campaign is worth $1 million in annual exposure donated entirely by NCOAA.

Color images of the new campaign are available at www.visitnc.com/press_room .asp. Click on "Latest News."

The Russians Are Coming

IVA Quartet, a Russian musical group formed in the spring of 1994 by four professors from the Krapotkin Conservatory of Music in Russia who decided to take their music to Poland during difficult times in Russia, will perform traditional folk music and famous contemporary Russian songs on April 30 and May 5th at the Fletcher Opera Theater in Raleigh. For times and additional information, including a Russian Cultural Evening with the group at the Vespa restaurant in Cary, go to www.russianartcary.com or call 919-468-1800 or 919-757-5251.

IVA, which means willow tree in Russian, decided to move forward with their musical career after meeting Olga Korol-one of the owners of the Russian Art Gallery in Cary-on the streets of Warsaw. The group was an instant success in Poland, later becoming well recognized in Russia in the late 1990s as economic conditions improved. The former professors have achieved near-stardom in Europe and have performed throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, including a special performance for Russian President Vladimir Putin in summer 2004.

-Rebecca Heslin

Reflections on Boylan Bridge

Artist Jen Coon, who has been a resident of historic BoylanHeights in Raleigh for 13 years and is a member of BLAM! Artist studios, located directly beside the BoylanBridge, has created an exhibition, "A Storied Span: the BoylanBridge," now on view at Rebus Works, located at 301-2 Kinsey St, Raleigh.

Raleigh's original Boylan Bridge, a one-of-a kind Warren Truss bridge built in 1913, was completely demolished in 1982 after a long and useful life in the heart of old Raleigh-but not without a fight.

Rumblings of its impending destruction created quite a stir among citizens. The Bridge was registered as a National Landmark and its dilemma led to the birth of the Boylan Heights Neighborhood Association, who filed a lawsuit against the federal government to preserve the bridge. However, after much controversy, the side favoring replacement won out because the old bridge was judged unsafe and unusable for the needs of contemporary Raleigh. So the current overpass Boylan Bridge, built of concrete and steel, replaced the relic of iron and wood. The materials of the former bridge itself were sold for scrap. After the construction of the new bridge, a once insulated neighborhood became a main thoroughfare connecting other regions of the city.

Coon's exhibition is an investigation of the Boylan Avenue Bridge that takes both history and metaphor into account. The complexity and significance of the structure as both a real object and a symbolic force is explored using archival documents, photos, texts and plans of the Bridge. A gallery talk will be held on March 4 at 4 p.m.

For more information about "A Storied Span: the Boylan Bridge," call 919-754-8452 or visit www.rebusworks.net.

Opening Doors and Hearts: The Healing Place for Women

Dennis Parnell is a man possessed-not by a demon addiction, though he is quick to admit that 20 years ago he himself was addicted and homeless. But long-since free of that albatross, he is possessed by a burning desire to help Wake County's addicted and homeless population to recover lost lives and become productive citizens.

To this end, on Jan. 15, Parnell led dedicated workers and supporters in opening The Healing Place of Wake County Women's Center. On this same day, the group also celebrated the 5th birthday of The Healing Place for Men where some 260,000 Wake County residents have received shelter and help. Parnell is Executive Director of both facilities.

The new center, located at 3304 Glen Laurel Road in Raleigh, will house 88 homeless and addicted women, providing them shelter, food, clothing and a proven program of guidance. Based on self-help, motivation and peer bonding, the program, for less than $25 a day per resident, will enable more than 70 percent of those who participate to return to the outside world as responsible, self-supporting citizens. A competent staff, volunteer doctors, dentists, teachers from Wake Tech and other local professionals, are in place to take care of residents needs and address root causes of addiction. Results will help not only the women treated and their families, but all Wake County citizens as well, by saving taxpayer dollars and relieving drug- and alcohol-infested streets.

By the time they go through the "Sobering Up Center," "Off the Street Phases" and "Recovery Phase," the residents will have attended many classes, received counseling, worked in facility maintenance jobs, and remained sober for six months. They will then enter the "Silver Chip Transitional Program," the final phase, where many serve as teachers and mentors. They will receive help in gaining employment and setting up independent lives and their children can come in and live near their mothers. The women will soon be ready to take their places in the mainstream of life.

The stark white building that houses The Healing Place for Women was once a cable manufacturing plant. But Parnell has completely redesigned the interior to accommodate the step-by-step program offered by The Healing Place; donors have supplied furnishings and equipment and the building is ready-swept, painted and polished. As with the lives of the residents, it's what's inside that counts.

-Frances Smith

Best Buddies for Man's Best Friend

Best Buddies Companion Rescue & Adoption, an animal rescue society to foster and place homeless companion animals in the Triangle area, was formed in 2005 by a group of friends with a shared love of animals. They have recently incorporated and expanded their efforts to help animals in need not only in this area but also at the site of Hurricane Katrina.

When the hurricane struck the Gulf area in August, the devastation to property and human lives was overwhelming. During the weeks that followed, the effects of this disaster on the animal community of the region came to light as well. Thousands of animals were abandoned during the storm by owners who were unable to bring them to shelters. Many were simply lost in the winds and rains. While efforts are underway to reunite with their owners as many of these pets as possible, many of them will be left without homes. Despite the hardships they have endured, these animals are happy and vivacious. They will welcome new homes.

Best Buddies is working with rescue teams in the area and the New Orleans metropolitan region to bring these displaced animals to foster homes and provide temporary care until homes can be found. The cost of veterinary care and maintenance during the fostering process is significant as is the financial need of the teams that continue to provide rescue services in the Katrina region.

If you'd like to help the displaced Hurricane animals, visit the Best Buddies website at www.bbcra.org to learn about opportunities for fostering an animal or to make a donation to support the rescue efforts

both in the Triangle and in the path of Katrina.

1979 KLAN-CWP CLASH REVISITED IN GREENSBORO

The clash between the Communist Workers Party and the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro in 1979 punctuated the end of an era of domestic political violence that began in the turbulent mid-1960s. News organizations and documentary filmmakers have ignored this aspect of contemporary history, stranding young people with no information about the Weathermen terror gang and its affiliated splinter groups in the US; the Baeder-Meinhof group and Red Army Fraction in West Germany; the Red Brigade in Italy; and similar gangs in France and Japan. After some years of political activism, the Communist Workers Party, following the lead of the more infamous domestic terror gangs, became violent in order to fan the flames of revolution.

In the aftermath of the Greensboro incident, five CWP members were dead. The ensuing trial found that the CWP purposefully set up the confrontation as a group suicide in order to martyr themselves to the cause of world socialism. Recently, activist groups in Greensboro established a Truth and Reconciliation tribunal (copied from the South Africa model to address apartheid after the return of Nelson Mandela) to re-visit the event to demonstrate that racism and prejudice caused the death of the CWP martyrs. In April, after months of hearings, a report will be issued. Freelancer Maximilian Longley visited Greensboro and offers a preview of the process for Metro readers.

-Bernie Reeves

The Shadow of the Past

The year: 1979. Gas lines were long, inflation was rampant, Saddam Hussein became President of Iraq, Iranian revolutionaries kidnapped American diplomats, John Wayne died, and the first rap records were sold.

On November 3, 1979, the Communist Workers Party held a 'Death to the Klan' rally in Morningside Heights, a Greensboro housing project. In a taunting letter, the CWP had invited the Klan to show up. Several Klansmen did , accompanied by a few American Nazis. Five of the anti-Klan demonstrators were shot to death in the ensuing confrontation, and several were wounded.

Several Klansmen and Nazis were charged with committing murder and civil-rights violations in the November 3 shootings, but the defendants were acquitted in state and federal criminal trials.

The CWP survivors had better luck in a civil suit against their assailants. In 1985, a federal jury found some Klansmen and Nazis liable for damages, as well as assessing damages against two Greensboro police officials found to have provided inadequate protection to the anti-Klan demonstrators. However, the civil jury rejected the CWP survivors' claim that the shootings stemmed from a government-police conspiracy.

A quarter-century after the shootings, a private group, the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission is studying the events of November 3, 1979, and the aftermath. The Commission, set up at the initiative of survivors of the shootings, has been making headlines and aspires not only to heal the wounds of November 3 but to issue a report on what happened and why.

A Short Course in the History of the Communist Workers Party

Some information about the Communist Workers Party is available in memoirs and reminiscences of CWP members, as well as in academic studies of radical movements. Much of this dramatic information was not mentioned at the Commission's public hearings.

The CWP evolved from two predecessor organizations founded by Jerry Tung, a Maoist veteran of the 1960s living in New York's Chinatown. Tung has claimed that his father, a Chinese student in Raleigh, was murdered by North Carolina Klansmen in 1950. This claim was cited by at least one academic historian as a possible explanation of the subsequent Greensboro confrontation. However, a State Bureau of Investigation report-available in the state archives-says nothing about the Klan, and finds that Tung's father committed suicide.

Tung founded a Maoist revolutionary organization, the Asian Study Group, in 1973. Under Tung's leadership, the Asian Study Group became more multicultural and evolved into the Workers Viewpoint Organization, recruiting members of all races from throughout the country. Two weeks before the Greensboro shootings, the Workers Viewpoint Organization became the Communist Workers Party.

In a May Day 1978 speech, Tung said: "Sole reliance on the legal forms without preparation for the illegal, violent forms will lead to serious setbacks." And the book A Basic Understanding of the Communist Party of China-a Maoist text published during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and studied avidly by CWP members-said that, if necessary, a good Communist should courageously risk being "removed from his positions, expelled from the Party, put into prison, shot or divorced."

Former CWP activist and November 3 widow Signe Waller would later write in her memoirs Love and Revolution, 2002 about the CWP's attitude by mid-1979: The group "was consciously trying to upgrade its level of militancy, to become more adept at combining legal and illegal tactics."

The CWP frequently fought those whom it regarded as agents and supporters of the ruling class, such as the Klan, capitalists, and the police. The CWP also faced off against other revolutionaries. In Greensboro, in addition to clashing with predictable targets, such as the Klan and the Cone Mills textile company, the CWP had violent confrontations with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a rival claimant to the status of the true proletarian vanguard.

In Chinatown, New York City, CWP members and supporters regularly fought with supporters of I Wor Kuen, a rival radical group. Defectors from one of the CWP's Chinatown front groups also experienced the CWP's wrath. On May 27, 1979, members of the CWP and its front group invaded the defectors' headquarters. Wielding lead pipes, hammers and iron bars, the CWP invaders injured three dissidents and smashed up their offices. On June 2, CWP-affiliated picketers demonstrated outside the headquarters of the China Daily News, eventually breaking down the door.

At the CWP convention in New York, two weeks before the Greensboro shootings, Tung told his revolutionary followers that he expected the CWP to seize power violently by 1984. Tung said that over the next three years, particularly in the next year, party members would have to make "sacrifices like you have never sacrificed before."

Soon after the Greensboro shootings, the CWP held an armed funeral march in Greensboro for the five slain activists. Tung came down from his New York headquarters to give a funeral oration for "our first party martyrs." Tung proclaimed to the assembled mourners: "A bloodbath in the class struggle for the seizure of state power is inevitable. Active preparation in all forms of struggle, including military defensive armed struggle now is the only way to minimize our casualties in the upcoming bloodbath."

The CWP sought to "serve notice" on politicians it considered responsible for the Greensboro shootings. CWP members attacked police and set off firecrackers during the 1980 Democratic convention in New York.

The CWP's "first party martyrs" were also its last. Despite his militant funeral speech and the "serve notice" campaign, Tung gradually led the CWP away from confrontational ideology and tactics. By the end of the 1980s, the would-be vanguard party had withered away altogether. In 2002, Tung told student researcher Karen Tani that the Greensboro shootings had been a big factor in leading him to abandon Communist militancy. Labeling oneself socialist or communist, Tung told Tani, "was like a dead-end street."

Staff and members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been trying unsuccessfully to contact Jerry Tung.

Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on Communism (and speaker at the Raleigh International Spy Conference, founded by Metro editor and publisher Bernie Reeves) studied the CWP for the city of Greensboro after the shootings. The CWP's behavior "doesn't justify the shooting," Klehr told Metro, but the CWP "tried to provoke a confrontation with these people."

Commission not Distracted by "Ideologies and Personalities"

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission has greatly downplayed the role played by the CWP's radical ideology in the November 3 shootings. Although the Commission hasn't yet released its final report, scheduled to be issued by April 2006, there have been several indications of the direction of the Commission's thinking.

A booklet by Carol Steger of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, included in a media packet provided to reporters, claims that "ideologies and personalities" are a distraction from the basic issue: that "racial and economic injustices" in Greensboro were the underlying causes of the November 3 events. The Commission's Mandate speaks of "facilitating  changes" in the "institutions" that were "complicit" in those events. Commissioner Angela Lawrence said during public hearings that "institutionalized racism" was a contributing factor in the shootings and their aftermath.

A similar focus could be seen in the testimony of most of the witnesses at the Commission's public hearings. The hearings, held in three parts from July through October 2005, were protected against potential disruption by officers of the Greensboro Police Department, who used metal detectors to search all audience members for weapons.

Greensboro residents, academics, and activists appeared at the hearings to describe racial discrimination, low wages for workers and other social ills in Greensboro and throughout the nation. The witnesses often identified these problems as the root causes of the 1979 shootings, and for the allegedly unjust acquittals of the Klan/Nazi perpetrators. The legacy of November 3, many witnesses suggested, is an obstacle to resolving Greensboro's social problems today.

Some witnesses presented a different perspective. Policemen, defense lawyers, the trial judge from one of the trials, and even a Klansman testified in justification of their actions, earning skeptical questioning from the commissioners.

It was a Conspiracy!

Testifying at the hearings, survivors of November 3 and their former lawyer Lewis Pitts revived the same broad conspiracy theory that a federal jury rejected in 1985. According to this theory, officials in various police and government agencies conspired to have the Klansmen and Nazis attack the CWP, and then to have the assailants acquitted in the courts. The motive alleged for the conspiracy: defending the economic and racial status quo against the radical challenge presented by the CWP.

The Rev. Nelson Johnson, a key CWP leader in 1979, who today runs the Beloved Community Center, which helped found the current Truth and Reconciliation process, testified at length at the Commission hearings. Johnson told Metro that discussion of the CWP's communist ideology is "avoiding the issue." Johnson compares the November 3 shootings to the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, because both events allegedly involved an attack on social-justice organizers. Johnson accuses a "rogue group" in the Greensboro Police Department of knowingly "facilitating" the attack.

Commission members have been hesitant to embrace conspiracy theories about the shootings. Several Commissioners spoke to reporters about "multiple truths," allowing for different people to have equally valid interpretations of the November 3 events.

The Commission's Research director, Emily Harwell, spoke of multiple truths when she talked to Metro, but she also said that some claims about the November 3 shootings are "completely false." Harwell did not specify which false claims she was referring to, but many witnesses at the hearings challenged the idea that November 3 was merely a clash between two extremist groups (the CWP and the Klansmen/ Nazis). Such moral equivalence, witnesses believe, obscures the important social-justice issues raised by the CWP.

Some Criticism of CWP Voiced at Hearings

Commissioner Pat Clark told Metro that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wouldn't give the CWP a "free ride." Indeed, while the full background of the CWP didn't come out at the public hearings, some witnesses criticized the provocative behavior and rhetoric of CWP members in Greensboro. Commissioners challenged the CWP's advocacy of violence. They also criticized the CWP's disruption of a Klan meeting in the nearby town of China Grove a few months before the November 3 tragedy.

The fullest criticism of the CWP during the hearings came from Elizabeth Wheaton, author of a thorough account of the shootings and their aftermath, Codename Greenkil. Wheaton's book and her testimony pointed out problematic aspects of the CWP's behavior. Shortly before the "Death to the Klan" rally, an internal CWP memo said that "a confrontation with the Klan would be best if we could get it." At a press conference shortly before the rally, CWP leaders offered this view of the Klan: "They must be physically beaten back, eradicated, exterminated, wiped off the face of the earth." On November 3, CWP members beat on the cars in the Klan/Nazi caravan with large sticks before the shooting broke out. Many of the CWP members brought guns to the rally.

Wheaton told Metro  "I consider myself on the Left." When she started researching the Greensboro shootings in the 1980s, Wheaton said she was "all too ready to believe" that the Greensboro police and federal government would be capable of using the Klan and Nazis to attack leftist groups.

Wheaton said that researching her book and attending two of the three court trials "opened up a whole new aspect of things." Wheaton "began to really question" the conspiracy theories. The members of the CWP were "much more radical," more violent in their rhetoric, than Wheaton had expected.

Wheaton's testimony about the CWP earned her a skeptical question from Commissioner Cynthia Brown: "So, I am hearing a lot of responsibility that you are saying lays [sic] at the feet of CWP members but I am just curious if there are other players that you see having played a critical role in what happened on November Third?" Wheaton clarified that she also blamed the Klan and Nazis, as well as police incompetence.

-Maximilian Longley