From the Editors

NOW IS THE TIME

Now is the time to support your community newspaper. As you know, Asheville Global Report consistently provides our community with news that is underreported by the corporate media. We focus on international news, human rights, labor organizing, and the environment. We offer opinion and analysis from a genuine people-first perspective, and we don’t hesitate to criticize the mainstream media for their distortions and omissions. Here we offer a bit of news about the paper itself.

AGR is making great strides. In January of this year, we marked two years of publishing. We continue to be the most comprehensive local source of international news, regularly providing more news on critical issues than the local corporate daily. We recently increased our circulation to 2,000 copies per week, with 500 copies distributed in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. Asheville Global Report is serving as the model for a new newspaper there called the Triangle Free Press. We provide readers across the country and around the world with news via our website — we offer the complete contents of AGR to the public for free at www.agrnews.org. We continue to be the only locally-published source of news in Spanish, an important resource for our growing Latin American community. In short, AGR is what a newspaper should be: a resource for active citizens, a thorn in the side of the powerful, and a project that is shaped and supported by the whole community of readers.

Now here’s another piece of news for you: we can’t continue publishing without your support. AGR is published by a nonprofit organization with an all-volunteer staff. We don’t have access to big money advertisers and super-rich funders like the corporate media do. Instead, we rely on our readers. If you read AGR, now is the time to pitch in to help us continue to publish. Our staff of about 15 volunteers contribute about 150 hours per week producing the newspaper. We think AGR is an essential resource, and we are committed to making it available free-of-charge. But that means that our readers with resources need to step up and contribute their share.

AGR’s total annual budget is $20,000, with the majority coming from individual readers. We produce some income from the advertising that we provide to independent businesses and organizations, and we are grateful to the Dandelion Fund and the Fund for Wild Nature for the grants they have awarded us. Nevertheless, we rely most heavily on donations from individual readers like you. Twice a year, in the spring and fall, we embark on a fundraising campaign. This spring, we need to raise $5,000. This money will be raised one reader at a time. We need your donation, whether it is $100, $50, or $25. Even as little as $5 is helpful. Asheville Global Report is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, so your donation is tax-deductible. Your support is needed right away, so please clip the form below out of the newspaper and send it in with your check or money order today. We appreciate your support.

Robert Brown
Brendan Conley
Eamon Martin
Kendra Sarvadi

Racial profiling in Weaverville

Editors, Asheville Global Report,

The neigbors of Weaverville are complaining about the police. According to drivers, the police are constantly giving tickets, sometimes for no reason, especially to Latinos who cannot defend themselves in the English language. They feel bad because the police can come out at any time. It’s a constant threat.

A person of conscience said, “sincerely, we didn’t do anything bad. We had all our papers in order, we were going the required speed, and we didn’t know why we were getting a ticket. But we do not agree with this. We would like to fight for our rights.” But the question is how by chance a judge would listen to Hispanics over the police. Possibly there could be justice with a good argument, but we would need time and money.

What can we do?

M. Luisa Argueta
Weaverville