Thanks for the invitation of fresh debate on Senate Bill 575. I stand with the comments of Jackie Overton, chair of the UNC Employee Forum. Only wishful thinking can construe the bill to be equitable or fair.

Slavery analogies should be used carefully, but I stand by the comparison of housekeeper Mary Farrar because I think it illuminates patterns of thought. State employees are literally not slaves. However, they have in common the fact that immense wealth has been created from their skilled, diligent labor, in such a way that denies them the full rights of American citizenship.

We have no voice or vote. Anyone who wonders how the slave system survived so long would do well to ponder SB575. For all its horrors, even this vile institution was debated and codified in detail, too. SB575 also rests on fiat and inertia. People shy away from considering its basic justification because there is none. Similarly, people once despised the abolitionists, not in defense of slavery in principle, but precisely beccause they were upset that the abolitionists were right.

Nowhere else in our society do we strip citizens of essential rights to livelihood. Nowhere else would we withold one group’s rights for the convienence of another group. So long as we pretend that “the University is committed to giving employees a voice and a seat at the table in the process of accomplishing this system,” we cannot address the real questions this grotesque blunder – SB575 – represents.

This legislation, coupled with budget cuts in double digits, puts state employees in a weak position. So the General Administration is not inclined to do us any favors by entering into negotiations and the last time I checked, the most central defining aspect of slavery is that it’s involuntary.

I hope this discussion prompts needed systemic change.

George James

The writer is a UNC housekeeper and delegate to the Employee Forum.

Don’t move church

Chapel Hill and Carrboro are home to a vibrant Episcopal congregation: the Church of the Advocate. My hometown, Germanton, is home to a beautiful, architecturally significant church: St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.

For over a century, St. Philip’s has visually identified our community. Congregations from area parishes looked after the building, and until recently, regular services were held twice a year.

Residents of Germanton’s main street had no reason to ever envision their main street without St. Philip’s.

In late 2011, the shocking, previously unthinkable news broke: St. Philip’s would be moved 90 miles to Chapel Hill.

Can you imagine if plans were made to move the Chapel of the Cross off Franklin Street without the local citizens hearing a peep about it until plans were well under way?

Germanton’s residents always cared about the building so they mobilized as soon as they learned they were facing an irreversible wrong. We have formed a nonprofit, Friends of St. Philip’s, to help the Diocese care for the building or take ownership of it locally. The Friends enjoys the support of Preserve Historic Forsyth and the Stokes County Historical Society. We have well over 250 signatures on a petition urging the Bishop of North Carolina to reconsider this move.

To say that Germanton did not care about St. Philip’s until recently is uninformed at best and a disingenuous, tall-tale at worst.

Germanton has always cared about St. Philip’s, and I hope the Church of the Advocate will leave St. Philip’s at home.

Sarah Woodard David

Raleigh

A distressing move

The Episcopal Diocese of Raleigh has made a decision to move St. Philips Church from its historical home in Germanton, N.C. We the people of the small village of Germanton are distraught over this beautiful church being moved from its home.

This church was built in 1890 and has been a landmark in our small town for over 100 years. It has been named as a historical landmark, and that would be lost if it is moved half way across the state.

Not to speak of the damage to the building when taken apart and moved.

I have lived in Germanton for over 50 years and each time I come home the first thing I see in Germanton is St. Philips welcoming me home again. I just cannot believe how we would all feel if it is no longer there.

I believe that if the Diocese and the people of the Episcopal Church of The Advocate, where it is to move, know how much we care they just could not find in their hearts to take it away from its holy place, or be able to enjoy knowing they have made so many people sad.

Please help us to keep St. Phillips home in Germanton.

Judy Simpson

Germanton

Northside not left out

I am sorry UNC junior Zaina Alsous (CHN, April 8, http://bit.ly/HCrTWu) is unaware that the Northside neighborhood, located near recently approved Shortbread Lofts, is NOT “consistently left out of the (development) conversation.”

I share Alsous’s enthusiasm for more, updated off-campus student housing, since it seems to be in great demand and the UNC student population is increasing. There has been, as with all abuttor neighborhoods, an ongoing “deliberate plan to reach out to Northside community members and pursue growth compatible with their concerns.” There are always several neighborhood meetings with town staff and a developer representative before a project even goes to Town Council. I attended an hours-long meeting at St. Joseph CME Church on Rosemary Street plus several Town Council meetings where Northside residents spoke for about an hour about Greenbridge and also about parking on lawns, noise and trash from student partying, and the plans for a new school in Northside area.

Students, you are necessarily busy with studying, classes, writing papers, so please do not indulge in automatic affirmations of any and every politically correct position you hear. The beginning of real knowledge is knowing what you do not know.

Lynne Kane

Chapel Hill

Eco-terrorism?

Imagine the following scenario.

A group of terrorists gains control over parts of North Carolina and plans to pump enormous gallons of water into drilled holes. The water is filled with toxins which will poison the water from being safely consumed or used for agricultural purposes. The citizenry would be upholding the North Carolina Constitution by mobilizing, apprehending and driving out these dangerous threats to our survival and that of future generations.

ARTICLE XIV Sec. 5. Conservation of natural resources:

It shall be the policy of this State to conserve and protect its lands and waters for the benefit of all its citizenry, and to this end it shall be a proper function of the State of North Carolina and its political subdivisions to acquire and preserve park, recreational, and scenic areas, to control and limit the pollution of our air and water, to control excessive noise, and in every other appropriate way to preserve as a part of the common heritage of this State its forests, wetlands, estuaries, beaches, historical sites, openlands and places of beauty.

Fred Shectman

Pittsboro