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Monday, September 26, 2016

What do non-protesters across Charlotte think?

Charlotte, North Carolina (CNN)For days, the loudest voices emerging from Charlotte have been the hundreds of protesters filling downtown every night.
But locals across Charlotte have a wide array of opinions about Keith Lamont Scott's death. Here's what they have to say about the protests and what should happen next:

Derrick Jacobs: 'This is not a black/white thing. This is a blue/black thing.'

Derrick Jacobs, a barber at the Mar'Cutz barber shop, says he'd rather speak out on social media than join the protests at night because "I don't think it's safe."
Jacobs, a 43-year-old barber, has lived in Charlotte his entire life.
He said the fact that the officer who shot Scott and the police chief are both black doesn't negate the racial profiling faced by African-Americans in Charlotte -- or the whole country.
"This is not a black/white thing. This is a blue/black thing," Jacobs said. "We're afraid of the badge."
Jacobs said he wants more training for police officers. He said it's appalling that the state requires more hours of training to become a licensed barber than a police officer.
It takes 1,528 hours to become a licensed barber; Charlotte-Mecklenburg police require about 900 hours of training. (The state's minimum police training requirement is 620 hours.)
"We have to go through more training to hold a pair of clippers than to hold a gun?' he said.
With the recent controversial shootings of black men by police, Jacobs says he has to lecture his four sons, ages 10 to 23, to not argue with police.
"We can figure out the particulars of who's right and who's wrong later," he tells his sons. "At the end of the day, we need you to come home alive."

Andrew Deese: 'They always want to make it a race thing'

Charlotte on edge
Charlotte on edge 04:07
Andrew Deese, a 24-year-old bartender, has lived in Charlotte his entire life.
Deese, who is white, said people are jumping to conclusions that the shooting was racially motivated.
"I'm not racist, but they always want to make it a race thing," he said. "It was a black officer. It's not a race thing."
Deese said the protests have had a negative impact on workers like himself. "A lot of businesses have to close early," he said.
His bar has had to shut down at 11:30 p.m. to adhere to the city's curfew.

Chris Blowers: The situation is 'blown out of the water'

Chris Blowers, at a sports pub in Charlotte, said he thinks the "Black Lives Matter" movement is misguided.
Blowers, a 53-year-old who works in the communications field, has lived in Charlotte for 20 years.
He said the situation in Charlotte is "blown out of the water."
"It's going to cause economic damage, but it's going to be forgotten soon," he said.
Case in point: Blowers said he doesn't recall the 2013 controversial police shooting death of Jonathan Ferrell, which also led to protests in Charlotte.
He said he believes many Black Lives Matter protesters are "worried about a few possible racists," which he said is "ridiculous."
Instead, Blowers said, he thinks Black Lives Matter movement would be better focused on overall deaths resulting from black-on-black crime.

Maurice Jones: 'From a white standpoint, you're intimidating'

Maurice Jones, right, says his heart starts pounding when he gets pulled over.
Jones, a 50-year-old truck driver, has lived in Charlotte his entire life.
He said he's often perceived as a criminal for no reason.
"From a white standpoint, you're intimidating," he said.
He said officers sometimes ask "irrelevant" questions when he gets pulled over, such as what he does for a living.
And sometimes, when in an elevator with a white woman, "the white lady will put her purse on the other shoulder."
Jones said he wants inherent racial profiling to stop. But how?
"That's the question of the day," he said.

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Pope 'shares pain' of Nice attack victims, families

Pope 'shares pain' of Nice attack victims, families
Pope 'shares pain' of Nice attack victims, families

(CNN)Pope Francis told survivors and the relatives of those killed and injured in the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice, France, that he shared their pain as he met with them Saturday in Rome.
More than 80 people died when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel plowed a 20-ton truck into crowds on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in Nice during a fireworks celebration on France's key national holiday.
    Ten children were among the victims of the ISIS-inspired attack. More than 200 people were injured.
    "I wish to share in your pain, a pain that is even greater when I think of the children, or indeed entire families, whose life was taken from them suddenly and so dramatically," Francis said.
    "I assure each one of you of my compassion, my closeness and my prayer."
    The Pope also prayed for all those who were injured July 14, including ones who were "appallingly maimed, in flesh and spirit," and some who were still in the hospital and unable to make the journey to Rome.
    Francis called on political and religious leaders to foster dialogue, saying that where there is a temptation "to respond to hatred with hatred or violence with violence," a change of heart is needed.
    "It is possible to respond to assaults by the devil only with the works of God, which are forgiveness, love and respect for our neighbor, even if he or she is different," he said.
    France has been under a state of emergency since the Paris terror attacks in November, and authorities have struggled to monitor thousands of domestic radicals on their radar.
    Less than two weeks ago, French authorities thwarted what they said was an ISIS plot to attack the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

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    Obama on Trump: 'Even most 8-year-olds' know slavery was a bad time for black people

    Obama on trump
    image obama on trump
    (CNN)President Barack Obama sharply criticized Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for saying earlier this week that the black community is in the worst shape it's "ever been in before."
    "I think even most 8-year-olds will tell you that whole slavery thing wasn't very good for black people," Obama told ABC News in an interview that aired Friday on "Good Morning America." "Jim Crow wasn't very good for black people. What we have to do is use our history to propel us to make even more progress in the future."
    Obama's comments reflected the wide gulf between the President and Trump that came into greater focus this week as race again became a top issue in the 2016 campaign following fatal police shootings of African-American men in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Speaking before a mostly white audience Tuesday in Kenansville, North Carolina, Trump spoke of the need to "rebuild our inner cities."
    "Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they've ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever," Trump said.
    The speech was part of a high-profile push by the Trump campaign to plug gaps in poll numbers with minority voters, and also to win over white voters turned off by divisive rhetoric from Trump that critics have repeatedly labeled as racist.
    Still, the effort has stumbled. By proposing the expansion of the controversial "stop-and-frisk" program as a way to improve urban policing -- and by engaging in a public re-litigation of the baseless "birther" controversy that critics labeled racist -- Trump spent much of the last week doing damage control with the same voters he'd hoped to attract.
    All the while, Obama has positioned himself as one of Trump's most vocal critics -- and rival Hillary Clinton's biggest cheerleader.
    Speaking to reporters gathered in the Oval Office last Friday, Obama sarcastically dismissed Trump's "birther" capitulation. "I was pretty confident about where I was born, I think most people were as well," he said. "My hope would be the presidential election reflects more serious issues than that."
    And the president made a more earnest effort to rebut Trump when he spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus gala on Saturday, and said that he would consider it a "personal insult" to his legacy if black voters didn't turn out for Clinton.
    "If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter, that it doesn't matter who we elect -- read up on your history. It matters. We've got to get people to vote," Obama said. "I will consider it a personal insult -- an insult to my legacy -- if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote."
    At the event, Obama also criticized Trump for using hyperbolic language when discussing African-Americans, and suggested that Trump visit the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture for perspective.
    "You may have heard Hillary's opponent in this election say that there's never been a worse time to be a black person. I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery or Jim Crow," he said. "But we've got a museum for him to visit, so he can tune in. We will educate him."
    Obama speaks at the museum's opening Friday.

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    Forget Gangnam style: K-pop could make Changdong Seoul's next big thing

    Gangnam style
    (CNN)Forget Gangnam style. There's a new area of Seoul that, if the South Korean government gets its way, is about to become synonymous with K-pop.
    Once a rundown district, Changdong is being transformed into a mecca to K-pop -- the manufactured music genre that has taken Asia by storm.
      Sales of Korean music, and related TV shows, films, animations, games and other publishing, earned the country nearly $5 billion in 2015, according to a Korean Trade Investment Promotion Agency report.
      Now the Seoul government is leveraging the "hallyu wave" -- as this cultural phenomenon has been dubbed -- to revive Changdong.

      "From the Korean perspective, the hallyu-Korean wave, the K-pop wave, it's not just music, it's not just dramas," Cuz Potter, an associate professor in urban planning at the Korea University Graduate School of International Studies, in Seoul, tells CNN.
      "It's the whole soft power of Korean goods."

      Seoul gentrification

      Changdong district, a relatively small residential commuter area, lies on the northern outskirts of Seoul. Home to a few hundred thousand people, it's an area that's growing but which has little cultural facilities or industry.
      City planners hope that K-pop can do for Changdong what the Beatles did for Liverpool in the UK -- indeed, what PSY has done for Gangnam, in Seoul -- attracting both locals and tourists into the area, who could bring jobs and spending power with them.
      New K-pop dance craze lures foreigners to South Korea
      New K-pop dance craze lures foreigners to South Korea 01:53
      Concert halls, a music school, recording studios, art galleries, a K-pop museum and policies to encourage "pop musicians to move into the area" are all part of the plan, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
      A 20,000-seat multi-cultural entertainment arena is slated for completion by 2021, with a range of other supporting facilities to follow.
      "Since the 1980s, the population in Changdong has increased rapidly. There was almost no cultural center so (it was) decided to have the arena set up first ... and turn it into a youth and art complex," Kim Dong Cheol, leader of the Seoul Metropolitan Government arena team, tells CNN.
      Work has already begun on the project, while Platform Changdong 61 -- a smaller cultural center built out of brightly-colored shipping containers, which features a concert hall, a recording studio, art galleries, cafes and retail stores -- opened in April.
      Platform Changdong 61 is the first K-pop cultural development to be built in Changdong.

      The K-pop effect

      Potter says this type of urban development is common in Seoul -- a sprawling, modern metropolis, with a population of 10 million people in the city center, and 30 million regionally.
      Many other parts of the city have been regenerated by turning them into a cultural hub, although none have yet used K-pop as the foundation.
      South Korea uses pop music as a weapon
      South Korea uses pop music as a weapon 01:51
      "This idea that the government would step in and create a major hub is something that's a familiar strategy for the Korean and the Seoul government," says Potter.
      "Gangnam itself was created in a similar kind of way in the 70s. They decided they were going to develop it intensively in order to get middle class and upwards people to move in that direction and forcibly moved all sorts of cultural institutions, in particular schools and universities, to support this strategy."
      It eventually become the Beverly Hills of Seoul, inspiring PSY to write his worldwide smash "Gangnam Style".

      K-pop pull

      It may seem gimmicky, and even a risk, to chance the revival of an entire area on the strength of K-pop, but the towering economic power of this industry gives city planners confidence.
      Aside from hallyu's export earnings, officials have carefully harnessed the recognition and respect popular culture has generated for South Korea to drive other industries, such as sales of industrial goods, including semi-conductors, and consumer goods, like electronics and cars.
      "One of the other statistics that the Korean government has been working off is that for every $1 spent on the cultural industry you get $5 worth of sales of Korean cars or white goods or things like that," Keith Howard, a Korean music and culture professor from the University of London, tells CNN.
      And although the main overseas hallyu markets are in China, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, K-pop has gained traction in the West in the past decade, thanks to government policies geared to foreign expansion. The US was the third largest market for overseas K-pop concerts from January 2013 to March 2016, according to Billboard magazine.
      "It's a strategic thing ... there was a shift towards soft culture and it was led by (former president) Kim Dae-jung," says Howard.
      "It was a very deliberate policy to make Korea cool, to brand Korea through its popular culture and the South Korean government did promote that culture abroad and it continues to do so."

      Changdong style

      From an urban redevelopment perspective, Potter and Howard both say the Changdong project "probably" has good economic sense behind it, if solely for the pulling power it will have with tourists.
      Potter notes that the district is ideally located, at the end of a subway line that connects to the tourist shopping area of Myeong-dong. Plus, Howard says, more people visit Korea for popular culture than they do to see historic sites.
      It could be K-pop's biggest challenge yet.

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      Kanye West apologizes to Beck, Bruno Mars

      (CNN)Kanye West is on an apology spree.
      In a series of tweets, West reached out to singers Beck and Bruno Mars to express remorse over his well-documented disses.
      Kanye West apologizes
      image Kanye West apologizes

      West turned heads -- and not in a good way -- when he briefly went on stage after Beck won a Grammy for Album of the Year. In an interview after the show this month, West asked Beck "to respect artistry" and give the award to Beyonce.
      Though West did not grab Beck's microphone like he's done in the past, his brief stunt was similar to a 2009 incident when he stormed the stage during the VMAs and declared Beyonce should have won an award instead of Taylor Swift.
      West and Swift appeared to put it behind them, hugging it out at this month's Grammys.

      Bruno props

      Bruno Mars got more than an apology Thursday.
      "I used to hate on him but I really respect what he does as an artist," West tweeted.
      West then asked him to sing a hook on a song that he co-produced.
      There was no immediate response from Bruno Mars or Beck.

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