Ongoing

Chatham SPARK Applications

INTRODUCING CHATHAM SPARK! Are you ready to start or grow a business in Chatham County? You could be eligible for a $5,000 grant! Chatham SPARK is an entrepreneur-development program. It is an eight-class program that introduces new and existing business owners to concepts and tools for business success. Participants will learn best practices from professionals in the accounting, legal, finance, and marketing fields as well as state and local resource partners. For more information or to apply, visit: www.chathamsbc.com/spark. Hurry! Registration ends on Monday, January 31st Dates: March 1, 2022 – May 3, 2022 Day and Time: Tuesdays, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm Location: Central Carolina Community College - Siler City Campus, 400 Progress Boulevard Hurry! Registration ends on Monday, January 31st

GUN COUNTRY Panel Discussion, featuring Andrew McKevitt, Paige Masten, and Andrew Willinger at Flyleaf Books

Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill

Come hear a panel discussion on how the United States became the gun capital of the world in the twentieth century, and the repercussions experienced in our Chapel Hill community. Just as World War II transformed the United States into a global military and economic superpower, so too did it forge the gun country America is today. After 1945, war-ravaged European nations possessed large surpluses of mass-produced weapons, and American entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to buy used munitions for pennies on the dollar and resell them stateside. A booming consumer market made cheap guns accessible to millions of Americans, and rates of gun ownership and violence began to climb. Andrew C. McKevitt tells the history of this gun boom through the dynamics of consumer capitalism and Cold War ideology, the combination of which resulted in a vast number of Americans arming themselves to the teeth and centering their political identity on their guns. When gun control legislation emerged in the 1960s, many Americans, accustomed to the unregulated postwar bounty of cheap guns and fearful of Soviet invasion, domestic subversion, and urban uprisings, fiercely challenged it. Meanwhile, gun control groups were diverted from their abolitionist roots toward a conciliatory, fundraising-focused strategy that struggled to limit the stockpiling of firearms. Gun Country recasts the story of guns in postwar America as one of Cold War and racial anxieties, unfettered capitalism, and exceptional violence that continues to haunt us to this day. Andrew C. McKevitt is John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University. He is the author of the recently released book, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America. Paige Masten, a lifelong North Carolinian and UNC alum, is the deputy opinion editor for The Charlotte Observer. She covers stories that impact people in Charlotte […]