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Is anyone at all surprised to see that the IFC soup kitchen/shelter will not be moving back into the space that they had to leave "temporarily" so the Town could remodel it? You shouldn't be if you read OrangePolitics. I can understand them needing more and better space for their residential programs, but I can't see the free meals they provide being nearly as helpful if they are served a mile away from the center of town. Poor people don't just hang out downtown because there are students to ask for money, it's also near where they work for poverty-level wages (ie: the University).

It also comes as no surprise that downtown merchants will be glad to have the shelter permanently out of their hair. I wonder if the move will have much impact on the panhandling that some people seem to think is the biggest problem we have downtown. (Besides maybe parking, of course!) Only time will tell.

Many criminals have fed the negative stereotypes of homeless people by hanging around the shelter and by giving its address when they're arrested. However:

OK, I'll admit I haven't been paying much attention on this issue - so what's the big deal with the West House? Now I read in the Chapel Hill News that State Senator Ellie Kinnaird is wading into this battle. She may not be the heaviest hitter in Raleigh, but she's the best Senator in the State, if you ask me. So this made my ears perk up.

Kinnaird and other supporters of the preservation effort hope to persuade the university to leave the house where it is and turn it into a sort of welcome center for visitors to the university -- or, failing that, to move it intact to another site on campus...

West House is a small structure built in 1935 by a textile magnate as a residence for his sons while they attended UNC. When it was built, it marked the far western edge of campus -- hence its name -- and now it stands just south of Hanes Art Center, where a new music building, a key component in the university's planned Arts Common, is due to be built.
- Chapel Hill News, 8/8/04

Guest Post by George Entenman

I've been thinking a lot about how residents of Orange County can contribute to the efforts of the state and national Democratic Parties, in particular to the Kerry/Edwards and Bowles campaigns.

Should we contribute and work for state and national organizations, or can we work locally?

As far as I can tell, the national Democratic Party is pretty badly organized. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the stories I read in 2002 about how well we are organized were planted by Republicans to lull us into complacency (even though it's hard to believe that our liberal media would go along with that).

I was at local Democratic headquarters on election day in 2002 (I'd been laid off and had the time). I was asked to start phoning people late in the afternoon to encourage them to vote. That was when I rediscovered just how bad the lists are that the state party supplies the local party.