EOT 383 - Durham City Council Race w/ Nate Baker

Eye on the Triangle is joined by Nate Baker, a candidate for Durham City Council. We discuss his campaign, his vision for the city, and the challenges and limitations of local governments.  Later, Nick discusses the reopening of Shaw University's on-campus mosque and a new report on the state of Wake County's tree canopy.

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Host

Nick Pinto

Public Affairs Director (fall 2023)

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Nick Pinto 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to WKNC is public affairs program Eye on the Triangle Eye on the Triangle is your source for local news reviews and interviews. My name is Nick Pinto and I'm and today I'm joined by Nate Baker, a candidate for Durham City Council. He's joining me at the station today to discuss Durham, his campaign and his vision for the city. Thank you for being here, Nate. Thank you.

Nate Baker 1:05
Thank you for having me, Nick.

Nick Pinto 1:06
Say we can just jump right in. So just to start off, would you mind telling us a bit about your background and your political experience up to now if any?

Nate Baker 1:13
Yeah, sure. Um, so again, Nate Baker, I'm a candidate for the Durham City Council at large race this year. I was born and raised in Durham, I went through the Durham public school system K through 12. So really have deep roots in Durham, and I'm an urban planner I have over a decade of experience. Helping cities and counties across North Carolina develop long range community plans, develop urban policy, develop the regulations. I've worked in Wake County, for example, Carrie worked in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Greenville, many other places across the state, as well as places in Virginia, South Carolina and elsewhere. And I've also served on the Durham Planning Commission. I'm the senior most member of the 14 member Durham Planning Commission, which is one of the largest Planning Commission's I think in in the state and the Durham Planning Commission, I have worked to fight against gentrification and fight against displacement, as well as a lot of the sprawl car centric sprawl that we've been seeing, particularly in Southeast Durham, but really on all of the edges of our city. And then we've also gotten some good things done so working with neighborhoods like the Bragg town community, working with the wall town community to push back against inequitable development and try and use a different framework for more equitable types of development. So for example, there was several years ago, a proposal for 650 housing units in the Bragg town neighborhood, the neighborhood organized to push back and I worked with them to do that effectively.

Nick Pinto 13:08
Awesome, and you already kind of got this but before the pandemic Durham County had one of the highest rates of evictions of any county in North Carolina. But as you mentioned, the ability to have city governments to implement rent control and eviction moratoriums is heavily restricted in North Carolina. So how would you directly try to reduce evictions on city council? And how would you support for example, tenants union?

Nate Baker 13:30
That's a great question. And we did talk a little bit about this. So I won't repeat everything. But you're absolutely right, that the tenant attendant union is absolutely necessary. We can't get enough things done in local government if we don't have the people pushing us constantly. And people who are well informed in a sophisticated apparatus outside of local government that's operating to push for working class people. We need a tenant Union, we need something like Kansas City tenants union, Los Angeles, tenant union and several others that have shown that have flexed around the country and shown that collectively, they can push politicians to advance better policy. Look, the real estate industry is incredibly powerful in ways that are difficult for us to even see on a daily basis. They operate on many different fronts, whether it's lobbying, whether it's donations, whether it's simply building connections. We don't have something strong on the other side on the working class side, not just on the capitalist side, but on the working class side, to push for the kinds of changes regulatory policy changes that we need. So you know, we have the triangle tenant union, which is just just started sort of a spin off of the triangle dsa. We need something at the triangle level that's really important at the Metropolitan level, because that's where it really where real estate operates. But we also need more tailored solutions at each of the municipal levels. So we once had adiposity tended united, they generate a lot of energy. They did a lot of good organizing, but they ended up sort of disbanding. We need to build something back like that. And you all need something like that and rally as well.

Nick Pinto 15:14
Great. And just kind of moving more directly to your campaign itself. turnout for municipal primary elections is normally under 15%. in Durham. So how can city county City Council become more accountable to Durham residents outside of just election years?

Nate Baker 15:28
Yeah, and that's a that's a great question. And, of course, this is an election where we only vote residents of Durham and voters who don't only vote for city council members only vote for people who are running for city council. So they're not going in and voting for the President. And then they look at the bottom on the back sheet backside of the sheet, and are trying to figure out who these folks are. So there's some good and some bad of that. Voter turnout is pretty low. But also you have people who are perhaps a little bit more involved in local government and a little bit more informed. Voter turnout of less than 15% is pretty dismal. You know, one of the one of the problems is sort of this feedback loop where during the campaign, folks who are running for office are going out and looking at who is voting, they're going to the neighborhoods with high voter turnout, because you're trying to get those votes. And the reality is these are fairly small budget races. So you don't have a giant electoral apparatus that is going and trying to generate, make sure that non voters are voting, that is something that we would that we desperately need in in Durham, but that's just not necessarily happening. So we have extremely low voter voter turnout, among particular demographics, among particular geographies in our city. And this is this feedback loop. That's, that's, that's a big problem. I think one of the opportunities is with our wards right now, Durham's Ward system is that the that the politician just has to live in the ward and it's not elected by people who live in the ward that is also at large. So when you're looking at every single seat on city council that is voted on at large, every single election, you have the same politicians that are going out to the high voter turnout areas. And we continue with this positive feedback loop of missing and not providing the direction that that some of these communities that have low voter turnout would would like to see.

Nick Pinto 17:38
Yes, that's actually my follow up question about how does like the fact that turnout is especially low in working class, and especially the majority of black neighborhoods, how does that affect like your campaign or canvass strategy at all?

Nate Baker 17:49
Yeah, in particularly low in Latino communities, especially so we are trying to engage with low voter turnout areas. The reality is, we do need to engage with the via high voter turnout areas if we if we want to win. So we're doing that we actually develop have developed a plan for going out and knocking knocking doors in in some of those areas. And our team put together some metrics to figure out where those will be. We have also decided that we want to go and knock on doors in areas with very low voter turnout, which is not, which is not necessarily the best winning strategy, but it's one that we feel is right. And it's one that we that we care about, because this is a campaign that is is based in the working class, we want to build that coalition between tenants, workers and neighbors. And it's important to us. And we we also believe that if we work hard enough, if we knock on enough doors, it can be a winning strategy as well, and maybe one that's more sustainable into the future.

Nick Pinto 18:52
Great. And so moving on to kind of student issues in Durham. So some listeners might be students or alumni of universities in Durham, and many students struggle to cope with the increase in cost of living in the city, boss. So there's concerns about especially Duke students, kind of being the cause of gentrification and surrounding areas around the university. So how do you kind of balance those those considerations?

Nate Baker 19:13
Yeah, I think there needs to be significant work with the universities, both Duke University in North Carolina Central, you know, we need to have a collaborative approach to those things. But one thing that our campaign in particular is is pushing his for direct payments from Duke University to the city of Durham. This is something that New Haven accomplished with with Yale and they're receiving, I believe, something between 10 and $20 million a year. The University of course, doesn't doesn't pay property taxes. It's one of the largest employers in our city. And we believe that that it's it's fair that they do provide these payments and of course, we would, we would be able to use that money as needed, but it can be used towards housing or other other types of InfraStop extra services. And then of course, Duke University, you know, it's doing its own planning. And I think the city should have a little bit of say in some coordination and the kinds of planning that's happening on Duke University and on North Carolina Central, make sure that residents are, you know, students are are housed either on campus or that there's appropriate allocation off campus for students.

Nick Pinto 20:23
Great. And I'm sure you saw the news at the Duke graduate students union just won the unionization election. So how can city government kind of support local union unions, especially like grad student unions?

Nate Baker 20:35
Yeah, labor is such an important issue or a right to work state. We don't have any power over minimum wage at the local level either. But but we do we do need to push for for labor power, we do need to support we need to use the bully pulpit of of city council to push for stronger labor practices to push for unions. And I think that there are some good models out there that can empower labor in other ways as well. So thinking about the Preston model and Cleveland model, I'm using institutions across the city, whether it's Duke, North Carolina, central germ tech, the cities itself, the county, in order to advance more owner ownership of the means of production by labor, so worker ownership models, I think that we can build a system across our city that that emphasizes that. And also thinking about how the city contracts who we're going to contract with. So there are some very direct and indirect ways that the city council can empower labor,

Nick Pinto 21:45
you would say that those changes, basically had to come to the state and federal level in terms of like, more kind of broad ranging protections and support for unions.

Nate Baker 21:53
Yeah, it's it's another one of those things where how do you advance a progressive or leftist policy approach in a city in the state of North Carolina under a neoliberal paradigm? We can either we can, we cannot solve the problem. But we can definitely do more than we're currently doing. We can always do more.

Nick Pinto 22:14
Great. And can you tell us about kind of what endorsements you've received and which endorsements you've sought out?

Nate Baker 22:19
Yeah, so I've worked pretty closely with a lot of different communities across Durham and so have have deep roots in the community and have a lot of support among community members, we have received some major endorsements. So there are important political action committees in Durham. Two of the larger political action committees are the people's Alliance and the DERM committee on the affairs of black people. We received the endorsement of the Durham committee on the first black people. We also received the endorsement of the sunrise movement DERM chapter. And then we recently received the endorsement of the triangle, North Carolina triangle democratic socialists of America.

Nick Pinto 23:03
And why would you say that like for each of those groups, why did they endorse you and not other candidates?

Nate Baker 23:09
The Durham committee on the fears of black people is, is a very diverse group, I would say. And, you know, I think what happened with the term committee was simply engaging with them speaking with them. And a lot of the work that we've been doing over the past five years has been in historically black neighborhoods. So Bragg town, is consists of multiple neighborhoods, several of which are historically black, and wall town as well. We've done work in Haitai and fit fit place, and also just the work fighting back against gentrification displacement. I think that that all of that work sort of positioned us in a place where we were in consideration by the Darren committee who ended up giving us that endorsement. The sunrise movement is a group that we've worked closely with, we actually have our own proposal for a green new deal for Durham. I want to go bigger than that, I want us to develop a triangle wide climate action plan that coordinates with all of the municipalities and counties across the triangle, I want Durham to lead on that. And I want us to hold summits, high profile summits where we bring together all of our local governments to look at who is achieving metrics, how we can do better and how we can collaborate to make sure that we're putting ourselves on a path to carbon neutrality. And then finally, democratic socialists. You know, our campaign is is inherently on the left. We are pushing for the right to the city to empower work the working class people of our city across the across racial lines. And so, you know, we want to work closely with Democratic socialists especially if we are able to win to advance policies that improve the lives of working class people that are grounded by by working class people and empower working class people and push back against the corporate interests that have had so much control in our city for far too long.

Nick Pinto 25:15
Great. And it leads into my next question, which is about this more specifically about your relationship with the triangle DSA. So, I just read a bit from DSHS platform. This is platform states, quote, We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non oppressive relationships. And so would you describe yourself as a socialist and how does like your conception of socialism align with that of DSA?

Nate Baker 25:46
I would, and sometimes, sometimes, looking at the local level and looking within the state, North Carolina within the United States, it can, it can feel so far away that kind of future where people really truly are empowered, really do have dignified work, really do have stable housing and right housing and a right to health care. It can feel so far away, it can feel like sometimes we're comparing whether you and I, which one of which one of us is more likely to hit our heads head on the moon. But there is but there are things that we can do at the local level. And I think one of these opportunities really is about real estate capital, and our ability to leverage that kind of that kind of work and that kind of development in order to advance the interests of the working class. So yes, I would describe myself as as a socialist. And I think, at the local level, what it comes down to is simply people over profit.

Nick Pinto 26:40
Great. And one part of that selection from the platform, that district that really stuck out to me was the bit about economic planning. So this is maybe kind of far off kind of abstract the topic. But would you ultimately support the replacement of capitalism in markets with a system of economic planning? Or is that not part of your conception of socialism?

Nate Baker 27:02
I would consider that part of part of socialism, for example, you know, I think I think labor should have ownership over the means of the means of production. I want to future city one day, where we own the means of producing our own city don't don't just have the the ability to shape it through the DNA through the zoning regulations that we have, but that we actually have the power to build the city that we that we want the city that we want to imagine. And I think that's an important part of it. I also think that we do need to use the levers that we have now. I do think that we can be strategic. And I think this is why it's not just socialists that are supporting us. It's really folks across the political spectrum, because it really is about empowering human beings and people and putting them first over in corporate interests.

Nick Pinto 27:54
Great. And another part of the DSA platform calls for reparations for black and indigenous people. Would you support reparations? Legislation locally? Yeah, yeah. And this is maybe a more fun question. If you could just if there was no legal limits, we'll say, if you use like one wishlist policy that you could implement on city council, what would that be?

Nate Baker 28:16
Given the limitations that we have?

Nick Pinto 28:18
like for like, for example, if there's no restrictions on on rent control, or eviction moratoriums, or building public housing, whatever,

Nate Baker 28:25
um, wow, that is a fun one. So, it the largest landowner in the country of Austria is the city of Vienna. And I would love for the people of Durham to own the majority of the housing that is in Durham.

Nick Pinto 28:44
And, yeah, just to circle back about one more point about DSA. So you mentioned that you were kind of looking for like a relationship like an ongoing relationship with DSA after your election. Can you just like tell our audience what maybe that would look like?

Nate Baker 28:56
Yeah, I think that's a that's a two way road. And it's the same thing with all of the large groups of of Durham with the Durham committee on the affairs of black people. With the the sunrise movement is continuing to to engage as as we move forward. One thing I want to do is former kitchen cabinet that includes a diverse array of people from across our city who I'm regularly meeting with and talking to and so, the DSA would would certainly have a representative on on the kitchen cabinet. I think it's a two way road. You know, the DSA organizes around a lot of working class issues. Similarly, a lot of the work that I have done and built deep roots in Durham, I want DSA to be a part of that work. So I want to build those kinds of connections. And I've already spoken with them and they have shown and demonstrated that they are also interested in engaging in ways that they haven't before. So I think that this is an opportunity to do some movement building and to do some fun and great things in Durham to advance some good policy but also build movement. momentum around broader higher level issues.

Nick Pinto 30:03
Great. And so on that note, I guess, if people are interested, how can they kind of get involved in your campaign?

Nate Baker 30:09
Yeah, so people can go to my website, Nate for durham.com. We have volunteer opportunities. We're going to be doing a lot of canvassing here in the next couple of months, people can contribute. And importantly, people who live in Durham can talk to their friends into their family, and make sure that they get registered to vote, you need an identification this year, photo ID and, and that you get to the polls and vote in the primary and then vote in the general election.

Nick Pinto 30:39
Awesome. All right, you just heard Eye on the Triangle. In our interview with Nate Baker. We discussed their own politics, his endorsements, his plan for the city, and also how we can all get involved if we're so interested. So thank you, Nate, for coming on the show.

Nate Baker 30:56
Thank you so much, Nick.

Nick Pinto 31:11
Next up on this week's episode of Eye on the Triangle is a quick triangle news roundup, including updates on Shaw University's mosque and some information on ongoing deforestation in Wake County. And so yeah, to start us off, shall University announced last month that Masjid kinky lead mosque on campus will be reopened to the public after an extended pause during the pandemic. And just for some background information. The on campus mosque was built in 1983 with a over $1 million donation from the late King Collete of Saudi Arabia, making it one of the earliest places of worship for rollies Muslim community. And the campus Chapel was also closed due to the pandemic, but it was reopened for public services in 2022. And so members of the shock community including Muslim students and the governing board of the mosque, considered the reopening of the chapel, but they continue to close the closure of the mosque to be an act of discrimination on the part of the university administration. And this controversy, coincides with Shaw University's rezoning request to Raleigh city council that would permit the redevelopment of much of the university's nearly 30 acre campus. And while university leaders have stressed that leasing portions of Shaw's properties to private developers, would provide much needed revenue for the university. Some alumni and members of the Muslim community expressed concerns about the impact of redevelopment on the mosque, and other historically significant buildings on campus such as St. Hall. In June, Raleigh City Council decided in a split five three vote to approve the rezoning request, with stipulations added mandating that, among other things. One of the first three buildings built in this redevelopment be student housing, and the requirement that shock continued to meet with community members throughout the planning process at least quarterly. In addition, beginning August 1, the mosque and Shaw University entered into a binding quote Memorandum of Understanding unquote, which ensures that the mosque can remain open and remain in operation until at least 2026. And there are plans for future negotiations between the university and the mosque to agree to a permanent or least longer term solution to this ongoing dispute. Moving on, our second story is about shrinking forest cover in Wake County. Reporting earlier this month by Lisa Sorg of NC Newsline indicates the Wake County has lost over 11,000 acres of trees just since 2010. And almost unbelievably, that's the equivalent of 2700 Walmart stores. I mean, that's a statistic that just completely blows my mind. And Wake County released a landcover analysis entry canopy assessment recently, which contains a lot of very interesting data on the state and health of Wake County street cover and land use. And so I've picked out just a couple of interesting tidbits to share with you all. And so for one over 50% of the county's land area is covered in tree canopy, while only 15% is covered in impervious services, which includes buildings, roads, and that sort of thing basically built up areas. Additionally, two thirds of trees and weight county are deciduous, while about 1/3 Are coniferous, which, I mean, basically just means pine trees right in a Wake County, which I'm sure isn't too surprising for our listeners. And importantly, overall Wake County has lost 3% of its tree cover since 2010. And it's worth noting that underserved and marginalized communities especially now breads around. For example, Newbern Avenue, have significantly less tree covered than the rest of Wake County to begin with. And it's important to note that the 3% overall decline and tree cover is bad in itself. But also that decline has not been uniform across Wake County. Specifically, areas north and northeast of downtown Raleigh have seen some of the most dramatic declines in tree cover, with declines of 10% or more in some areas immediately north of downtown, sort of in the St. Augustine university area. And additionally, environmentally sensitive areas such as around Lake Johnson, on the far western side of Wake County, have seen very dramatic declines in tree cover of over 15% In some cases, depending on the particular particular area around Lake Johnson. But you know, on a more positive note, a lot of this report is focused on identifying areas where planting trees could have the greatest impact and benefit marginalized communities the most. And so the the assessment identified areas around NC State's campus and in southeast Raleigh as high priorities for tree planting, and optimistically, maybe this assessment will help local governments preserve remaining tree cover and use their limited financial resources more effectively, and making sure every neighborhood has access to green spaces and shade. Because as noted earlier, in some neighborhoods in Wake County, that's a serious issue of a lack of tree cover and a lack of shade for bus stops, especially in areas which are already suffering from lack of investment and from a history of of neglect by local governments.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Eye on the Triangle, the public affairs program of WKNC Ada point one FM HD one rally to listen to past episodes of Eye on the Triangle, or replay this one, please visit wknc.org forward slash podcasts. The music for this episode is titled Noah Stark by Krakatoa and it was made available through a Creative Commons license. You can check wknc.org forward slash schedule to catch the next episode of Eye on the Triangle live. Until then, this has been Nick Pinto with WKNC 8.1

Transcribed by https://otter.ai