Durham Celebrating Their Communist-Lite Mayor Pro-Tem

DURHAM – There is different perspective of the Urban/Rural divide that is less economic and more political. Despite the voters across the Old North State electing Republicans super-majorities to the General Assembly, there exists the urban centers that serve as enclaves to the crazy Left.

Durham is a case in point, and their local news paper is celebrating an anti-police, proud Progressive currently serving as Mayor Pro Tempore:

Activist-turned-elected official Jillian Johnson has taken on a new leadership role.

Sixteen years ago, Johnson was a Duke University undergraduate student in a class taught by Steve Schewel, a professor in Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Now he’s the mayor and she’s the mayor pro tempore.

[…]

Her community activism began while she was still a student, with efforts like the grassroots organizing group Durham CAN (Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods) and the Durham Living Wage Project.

“I think activist has a lot of different meanings. Positive, as positive change in the community. Pejorative, as spinning wheels and not getting anything done,” Johnson said. “For me, it’s the easiest word to describe community organizing.”

Durham politicians frequently describe the city and themselves as progressive rather than liberal.”

That is not surprising. Durham has long been a bastion of Leftist nonsense. Is it any wonder why that city has such problems with violent protesters tearing down statues because of their hurt feelings when their leadership is made up of people with similar beliefs?

Not mentioned about Johnson’s activism is her relationships with Black Lives Matter and a bevy other militant Leftists groups. 

Moreover, she has described police and soldiers as the most dangerous people with guns, and started a Progressive panic when she floated rumors of a mythical Klu Klux Klan rally in Durham

“I think progressive is tricky because the word has such a positive connotation – everyone wants to be progressive. I think of progressive as having a political orientation to the left of the Democratic Party, and goes beyond liberal or neoliberal economic agenda,” she said.

“People don’t like to be called liberals. I think of the mainstream Democratic Party as liberals,” she said. As an example, Johnson said that Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, is liberal, but a progressive health-care policy would be something like single-payer.

“My partner and I named our dog Bernie Sanders,” she said. They call their dog Sandy.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

First of all, ‘Progressive’ hardly has a universally positive connotation. Those of us with a head on our shoulders, instead of in the clouds, regard the Orwellian term for what it truly is – a communist-lite label that represents a distinctly anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Individual, and immoral philosophy with violence at its root.

To Johnson’s credit, she is honest about exactly how far to the Left these young Progressives fall. Today’s Democratic Party – the party of Obama and Clinton, the ironically-named Affordable Care Act and Cap-and-Trade – is too far to the right for Johnson.

She is a socialist that is rooting for the disaster that is single payer healthcare and named her dog Bernie Sanders, for crying out loud! You could feel bad for Durham’s residents with representatives like this, but then again they probably deserve each other.

So what kind of policy priorities is this Commie Combatant pushing? Destroying the Bourgeoisie of course!

“Gentrification is another concern, like on Fayetteville Street, the corridor east of downtown to N.C. Central University, she said. “There need to be a way to invest in development without displacing residents, and we’re trying to figure out how to do that,” she said. “The best way is to control the land.” She doesn’t think the city should sell any land it already owns unless it’s part of buying a larger property that serves the community best.

“I don’t want downtown to become an area for the super rich,” she said. “I want us to put as much energy and investment into stabilizing neighborhoods as we did revitalization and redevelopment of downtown.””

Gentrification, neo-liberalism, community activism – these are all concepts Johnson undoubtedly was fed during her time at the oh-so-laudable Duke University.

It taught her that successful people are evil, and the only solutions to the sin of different outcomes for different people is to control everything and everyone via government force.

She would have done well to study some real life economics while in college. Then she may actually understand that the city ‘controlling the land’ and blocking sales in favor of community gardens and other Progressive Utopian initiatives will lead to rising land prices that displace the very people she thinks she is advocating for. Ask nearby Chapel Hill what restricting land development has done for their property prices.

If these are the ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’, then God help us all.