Vi, girl . . .
When you look at other Black women mayors across the country, like Keisha Lance Bottoms and Lori Lightfoot, don’t you feel proud? Like Black women lead.
Then, you remember you live in Charlotte and Vi Lyles is your mayor. Real tears.
Lyles was super invisible at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. She hasn’t kept her campaign promises and sat back while Charlotte Mecklenburg Police gassed protesters during a peaceful march in Uptown.
(Why is she not on the ballot so I could vote against her? Next year, y’all/)
But earlier this month,Lyles and members of Charlotte City Council made total asses of themselves when they visited a local bar.
This is what the Charlotte Observer reported,
The initial reservation was for 6 p.m., then it started getting pushed back, DeLoach said. The council members, along with Mayor Vi Lyles, City Manager Marcus Jones, and other city employees showed up at 7:45 p.m., she said.
Also in attendance on Monday night was Queen City Nerve publisher Justin LaFrancois. LaFrancois is a regular at Hattie’s, and he said he couldn’t wait to visit the bar after its reopening. “It’s one of my second homes,” he told CharlotteFive on Tuesday.
LaFrancois said he has never seen a group of City Council members visit the bar before. And their behavior surprised him, he said. He watched them repeatedly being asked by staff to wear masks.
When Lyles first arrived, she was asked to put on a mask. After looking for it in her purse, she had to return to her car to get her mask, LaFrancois and DeLoach both said in separate interviews.
Lyles and City Council member Tariq Bokhari had to be reminded to wear masks and follow other COVID-19 precautions inside the establishment multiple times, DeLoach and LaFrancois each said. LaFrancois told CharlotteFive that he witnessed both of them not wearing masks while they were walking around the premises.
DeLoach said while staff had to tell council members to put on their masks “often,” they did comply when prompted.
Both LaFrancois and DeLoach said Bokhari made multiple comments that were disrespectful. . .
As Lyles was leaving Hattie’s, LaFrancois said Lyles leaned in — closer than 6 feet — to say goodbye to him. He described Lyles and Bokhari’s actions as nonchalant, but not surprising.
“They weren’t as affected by this pandemic as everybody else was, including the small business owner whose establishment they were at that they felt that they were being supportive of, so I didn’t expect them to take it as such a big deal,” LaFrancois said.
Then today, according to a shared Facebook post, Lyles went on WFAE's Charlotte Talks and said the whole incident was a joke. At this point, Mayor Lyles, you are the joke.
City leaders do NOT get to threaten business owners with the police and laugh about it. That's not how local government is supposed to work. And if you think that's funny, girl, you got to go.
You, my dear, are the Donald Trump of mayors. You didn't live up to what you ran on. And now this is how you run a city that's recovering from a shutdown?
I never thought I'd type these words, but I miss Pat McCrory.
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