Mayor Rawn holds community meeting ahead of encampment sweep
The event took place from 4 to 6 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, a day before a scheduled sweep of a University of Arkansas property used by dozens of unhoused people in Fayetteville.
During the meeting, attendees shared ideas and expressed concerns about the city's housing challenges. Two individuals were asked to leave after tensions rose.
'My takeaway is there are a lot of people in our community who are hurting, they feel forgotten,' Rawn told KNWA/FOX24. '… That's not how I want anyone in our city to feel.'
More than 30 people attended, including both unhoused and housed residents, along with members of local advocacy groups.
'There is no magic bullet to this,' Rawn said. 'If there were, then people who have been on our council and who have been elected officials much longer than I have, who are also are advocates for this cause, would have solved it.'
Fayetteville's new student housing adds 800+ beds for UA
Though the city does not oversee the University of Arkansas property where the encampment sweep is planned, Rawn acknowledged the need for collaboration and support.
'I absolutely believe there are actions we can take, that we have taken and that we continue to take…' Rawn said. 'I'm excited to move forward I think there some really good suggestions that came out of this group this evening.'
The city has also offered to send Fayetteville Police Department social workers to assist during the sweep, according to a news release.
A letter sent to people living on University of Arkansas property near 19th Street states the university will clear and clean the area on Monday, June 9. Residents were told to remove all personal belongings and necessities or risk having them discarded.
Thomas Crane, 54, said he has been living 'off and on' in the 19th Street encampment area for around eight years.
'A lot of people aren't ready for it, a lot of people have nowhere to go,' Crane told KNWA/FOX24.
Police calls to 19th Street encampment increase more than sevenfold in 2025
Police data from University of Arkansas and Fayetteville authorities show a sharp rise in incidents around the 19th Street unhoused encampment.
Since Feb. 2024, Fayetteville Police have responded nearly 60 times to the area, with most calls in the past six months. University police reported an even steeper increase, calls for service jumped from 86 to 642 in a recent three-month period, alongside spikes in criminal charges.
A recent attempted murder case also originated from the camp. A few residents of the camp area told a KNWA/FOX24 reporter they felt unsafe, especially at night.
of Fayetteville's housing crisis.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Texas Democrats dig in as Abbott promises fines, extradition and arrests
CHICAGO — About two-dozen Texas Democrats huddled around a monitor inside a hotel auditorium just west of Chicago Monday to watch as their Republican colleagues gaveled back into session and threatened 'consequences' for their mass departure. Minutes later, as they stared at their phones, Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the ordering of their arrest. The atmosphere, according to a person in the room, remained tense while the bell rang to call the session to order but turned more defiant and boisterous during the speakers' remarks and press conference. More than a thousand miles away in Austin, Texas, the Democrats who didn't flee the state hunkered down for the final 15 days of a special legislative session set to end Aug. 19. They gathered to address, in part, a mid-decade redistricting proposal pushed by President Donald Trump. The splitscreen capped a 24-hour frenzy that began when dozens of Texas Democrats fled the state to protest the remapped congressional lines designed to keep Republicans in power during next year's crucial midterms. And it underscored the high stakes of the standoff: A president clamoring to cling to partisan control at every level — helped by a high-profile red state governor — facing a coup from the opposing party. And despite an uncertain endgame and the possibility of Abbott simply calling for another special session, Democrats here are planning extended stays and making arrangements for children and relatives to visit them, according to one person close to the lawmakers who was granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive matter. Democrats, who broke quorum by leaving the Lone Star State, now face an uncertain path. Past quorum breaks, like their 2021 effort to block passage of an elections bill, have been minimally successful. Without the necessary number of legislators needed to conduct business, the Republican-controlled state House can't vote on the plan that could cement its party's power in Congress next year. 'See my bags here,' state Rep. Rafael Anchia said late Sunday evening as he headed to the bus bound for the Q Center, a hotel and conference center. 'I'm prepared to be here for as long as it takes to make sure that we stop the redistricting this session, and we're going to feel our way through additional special sessions, if they're called by the governor.' A White House official told POLITICO Trump's team is taking 'a pretty hands-off approach' to the brewing battle, deferring to Texas Republicans. 'We made our case and now we're counting on them to get it done,' added the person, who was granted anonymity to freely discuss a matter being privately negotiated. State Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus, captured her group's predicament in an interview. 'We really do not have a choice,' she said. 'What is our alternative? Rolling down and rolling over for Trump's economy to continue to destroy America?' The risks are big for Texas Democrats — from $500-a-day fines, to extradition, to the more unlikely scenario of Abbott replacing them with hand-picked legislators, to facing civil arrest for violating the Legislature's rules. They do not, however, face any civil or criminal charges and can only be forced back into the Capitol to take votes. It's unclear who would foot the bill for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines members are collectively racking up by abstaining from the legislative session. There are also political risks. Texas Democrats are not just missing votes related to redistricting, but also on legislation that would provide relief following last month's devastating floods. 'No one is fooling around this time in Texas,' said Dave Carney, an adviser to Abbott. 'In the past, it was like, they came back. Everything was forgiven. It was like kumbaya. That's not happening. There's no appetite to say, 'Okay, never mind. We're going to let you do this anytime you fucking want.' Abbott also threatened to arrest Texas Democrats in 2021 when they used the same walkout tactics. If Abbott chooses to call multiple special sessions to pass the redrawn map that would net five GOP-friendly seats, lawmakers could run into time constraints: New lines must be adopted by early December in order to take effect for the 2026 midterm cycle. The Legislature could collide with filing deadlines for the midterms. Under state law, candidates can declare their intent to seek office from Nov. 8 through Dec. 8, but the state legislature has the authority to extend the deadline. Each side lacks good options to resolve the stalemate. Earlier in the day, appearing on the MAGA influencer Benny Johnson's show, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton acknowledged the struggles ahead for Abbott and his fellow Republicans, saying his 'first move would have been to chain them to their desk and not let them out of the door,' before adding, 'I think the governor is going to be forced into calling several special sessions." In an interview on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" Monday, Abbott said the lawmakers 'have forfeited their seats in the state legislature because they are not doing the job they were elected to do.' And across blue state capitols from Austin to Springfield Monday afternoon, planes flying "Mess With Texas" banners arced through the skies, capturing the newly weaponized redistricting arms race playing out at fever pitch. As more than two dozen Texas Democrats huddled in Chicago, some of their colleagues met in the New York State Capitol with Gov. Kathy Hochul. Flanked by six Texas lawmakers, the governor openly embraced a full-fledged gerrymandering of congressional districts in New York to favor fellow Democrats, a further escalation of the national drama. There, Texas Rep. Jolanda Jones questioned Abbott's legal rationale. 'I'm a lawyer. Part of my practice is criminal defense work. There is no felony in the penal code for what he says,' Jones said. 'So respectfully, he's making up shit. He's trying to get sound bites, and he has no legal mechanism, and if he did, subpoenas in Texas don't work in New York, so he's going to come get us how?' Others traveled to Boston for a National Conference of State Legislatures meeting, among them: state lawmakers Sarah Eckhardt, Royce West, Armando Walle and Ana Hernandez. They plan to fly to Illinois on Wednesday. Leaving a private lunch with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in Boston, Walle said Democrats are fundraising on their behalf. Back in Texas, Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he would entertain a motion for civil arrests of those who fled the state. The House then voted to send the sergeant at arms to bring the departed members back to Texas. Lawmakers voted to arrest their absent colleagues — a vote that only applies to Democrats within state lines. While Burrows can sign civil warrants compelling state troopers to arrest legislators and bring them to the Capitol, they will not face civil or criminal charges for leaving. The House is set to reconvene Tuesday at 1 p.m. "The people of Texas are watching, and so is the nation," Burrows said to Democrats from the House floor. "And if you choose to continue down this road, you should know there will be consequences." Bill Mahoney and Kelly Garrity contributed to this report.
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Scranton mayoral races picks up two independent candidates
Scranton's mayoral election picked up two independent candidates who each hope to oust Democratic incumbent Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti in the Nov. 4 general election. Republican Patricia 'Trish' Beynon previously secured the GOP nomination to challenge Cognetti, who won the Democratic nomination in the May 20 primary. Now, as expected, Eugene 'Gene' Barrett, a former longtime executive director of the Scranton Sewer Authority and a former city councilman, met Friday's deadline to file paperwork to run for mayor as a independent. Earlier this year, Barrett had announced plans to run in the Democratic primary for mayor but then didn't and decided instead to run as an independent. On Friday, the Cognetti campaign communications director, Wendy Wilson, issued a statement that called into question Barrett's record as sewer authority director and as a councilman. As a councilman, Barrett voted in late 1991 in favor of having the city designated as financially distressed under state Act 47. The state approved the designation in early 1992. The city would not shed the distressed label until 2022, when Cognetti was mayor. Barrett also for years served as executive director of the Scranton Sewer Authority and was in that role when former Mayor Bill Courtright pushed for the authority to sell the sewer system to Pennsylvania American Water. That resulted in the landmark $195 million sewer sale completed in December 2016, which was a major step in the city's financial recovery but the loss of a valuable asset. 'Gene Barrett represents the ghosts of Scranton's dark past; Mayor Paige Cognetti is the city's bright future,' Wilson's statement said. 'Scranton has come a long way since Gene Barrett has been in office. Mayor Paige is driven by the tenets of good government and ensuring that elected officials prioritize their constituents over their own special interests. She has rightfully done a great job of earning the trust of voters.' Reached Monday for comment, Barrett issued to The Times-Tribune his resume listing extensive public, private and military service. 'I have spent over 40 years in public and private service dedicated to Scranton,' along with seven years of active duty in the Army, Barrett said in an email. 'Now they have real competition (for mayor) or they would not have responded so negatively to my entering the race.' The other independent candidate for Scranton mayor who met Friday's deadline to file the required paperwork was Rik Little. Listing his address as homeless, Little filed Thursday for mayor as the AAAMission from God party candidate. Scranton City Council Meanwhile, in the race for three open seats on Scranton City Council, current council President Gerald Smurl — who initially ran in the Democratic primary but withdrew in March amid issues with certain signatures on his nomination petitions — filed to run as an independent. Smurl's entry into the council race as an independent makes him the sixth candidate in a contest that has three, four-year council terms up for grabs. The other five council candidates are Virgil Argenta, Patrick Flynn, Sean McAndrew, Marc Pane and incumbent Councilman Tom Schuster. Flynn, McAndrew and Schuster won the Democratic primary, while Pane won the GOP primary. Argenta lost in the Democratic primary but got enough Republican write-in votes to win a GOP nomination. McAndrew also secured a Republican nomination through GOP write-in votes. The three council seats available are those of Schuster, Smurl and Bill King, who is not seeking reelection. The three winners of the general election would join on council the other two members not up for reelection this year: Jessica Rothchild and Mark McAndrew. Elsewhere in Lackawanna County According to the Lackawanna County Department of Elections, other candidates who filed to run as independents for various municipal offices include: Valley View School Board, Region 1: Julie Budd-Kulenich. Throop Borough Council: John Richardson. Spring Brook Twp. Supervisor: Ken Genovese. South Abington Twp. Supervisor: Dean Faraday. Friday is the deadline for challenges to independent candidates' filing of their papers to run. Staff Writer Jeff Horvath contributed to this report Scranton Mayor-Elect Paige Gebhardt Cognetti at Scranton City Hall in Scranton on Nov. 7, 'Trish' Beynon, Republican candidate for Scranton mayor in 2025 primary and general elections. (PHOTO PROVIDED / COURTESY OF PATRICIA BEYNON)Eugene 'Gene' Barrett of Scranton, candidate photo for Scranton mayoral election in the 2025 Democratic primary. (PHOTO SUBMITTED / COURTESY OF EUGENE BARRETT)A campaign poster of Rik Little, who met the Aug. 1, 2025 deadline to file as an independent for mayor of Scranton in the Nov. 4 general election. Photo taken on July 10, 2025 in the 500 block of Cedar Avenue in South Scranton. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO) Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Biden showed ‘general failure' to do job while Harris and his party ‘ran away' says Michigan Democrat vying to be first Muslim senator
Why did Kamala Harris lose the 'Blue Wall,' and every other swing state in 2024? For the three leading candidates vying to win the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, providing an answer could determine their political futures. At least one already has: Abdul El-Sayed argued on Monday that his party ran away from its voters — not towards them. Polling within the margin of error against Rep. Haley Stevens, El-Sayed, 40, is very well positioned to pull off the historic feat of becoming the first-ever Muslim member of the United States Senate. A poll conducted by the NSRC, the GOP's Senate campaign arm, put him two points behind Stevens, a Democratic congresswoman and reportedly the Democratic party establishment's favorite to win the seat. Mallory McMorrow, a state senator, trailed both but was nearing striking distance. 'Democrats still haven't learned this lesson,' El-Sayed insisted on Monday. 'It's frustrating because these people made a calculated decision about who they needed and who they didn't. And it turns out that that decision was way off.' El-Sayed spoke to The Independent two days before he was set to visit a Yemeni coffeeshop in Dearborn Heights for a meet-and-greet with voters, an area of Michigan that saw one of the sharpest drop offs among Democratic-leaning voters last year. Across the state, El-Sayed is running the exact opposite kind of campaign as an increasingly frail Joe Biden ran in 2024. In some ways, his strategy contrasts with Harris,' too, in ways which clearly didn't sit well with the former Detroit health commisioner. On a recent interview with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker (HasanAbi), the two discussed the Israel-Hamas war and starvation crisis in Gaza, which El-Sayed labels a genocide. But in the hourlong conversation — the likes of which Harris avoided to some dismay from Democrats — the two also bro'd out, chatting about fitness as well as the YouTube and Twitter 'shorts' seemingly consuming social media and transforming it into slop. 'I watched this campaign actively run away from certain groups of voters because they did not want to take questions that would expose the inconsistency of their values,' said El-Sayed. 'Whether that was Joe Rogan's audience, whether that was Hasan's audience, there are just groups of people that Democrats have said, 'you know what? We're going to give up on you, because we don't think we need you to win an election. 'That's not how you do politics,' he continued. 'Your job is not about just trying to architect a winning coalition. Your job is about trying to identify the issues that all people need, and then being able to be clear, specific and direct about how you solve them in an effort to win an election, because your agenda would deliver for the most people in the ways that they need.' He pinned much of the blame for the party's stiffness in 2024, exemplified in both Biden and Harris' campaigns, on a steady stream of donor money the two-time Bernie Sanders-backed candidate argued was poisoning the party. Democratic policies were being winnowed down through a narrow lens of what would be palatable to both the party's base and their corporate-backed financiers, El-Sayed argued. The devastation in Gaza and the Democratic Party's complicity in not pressuring Israel over it under Biden highlighted a gulf between those two groups he argued was growing for years. The man who could very well be the Democratic Party's champion in a crucial Senate race spared no criticism for those Democratic elites he argued were responsible for the mess within which the DNC was now mired. "Joe Biden's handling of Gaza was indicative of a general failure to be able to do the job,' El-Sayed told The Independent. "I wasn't in those rooms,' said El-Sayed. 'What I can tell you is what I watched, and what I think the American public watched, [which] is an American president who was struggling to give a coherent statement, to get through a debate, [and] ... to manage a extremely complicated situation in Gaza.' 'I also know that there was this effort to silence those voices who were willing to state what was obvious before our eyes,' he added. A disrupting voice in the party, El-Sayed is pledging to shake up the geriatric halls of the Senate as well should he become his party's nominee. He's hoping that a phenomenon which manifested to propel Zohran Mamdani to victory in the New York City mayoral primary election can be duplicated in the Rust Belt. 'There was an inversion of the demographics of the electorate in that primary, young people came out in droves,' said El-Sayed. 'And here in Michigan, we've got young people who have been sick and tired of the system for a very long time, and our job is to go and talk about the challenges that they're facing in their lives,' he continued, offering an example of the complaints he's heard: ''I don't know that I'm going to be able to get a job, even though I've done everything you told me to do. I did it all. I'm stuck with $60,000 in debt, and AI is about to take the job I was supposed to have. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to buy a home. I'm worried about the fact that I'm watching a smokestack corrupt our climate. I'm watching as oil pipelines are flowing through our Great Lakes, and I'm asking what's going to be left for me.' As senator, El-Sayed says he'd back leveraging Democratic votes on legislation to fund the government: the kind of shutdown politics Chuck Schumer refused to play earlier in 2025. He also supports ending the filibuster, according to a staffer. El-Sayed also would not commit to supporting Schumer for another term as leader of the caucus, telling The Independent he wanted to look at his options as 2027 came into view. First he'll have to win the 2026 primary as well as a general election against Mike Rogers, the Republican Trump-supporting congressman on a path to be crowned the GOP nominee. With a unified Republican Party backing Rogers, El-Sayed is well aware that his Muslim background and stance on Gaza could be weaponized by Republicans in an attempt to overshadow a Zohran Mamdani-like focus on affordability and Michiganders' financial stability. Republicans see Michigan as a path to expanding a majority and giving Donald Trump the breathing room he needs to further his legislative agenda in 2027. The loss of Michigan would be a massive blow for a battle-weary DSCC, and a pro-Israel site has already attacked El-Sayed over his sitdown with Hasan Piker. El-Sayed argued that the momentum was on his side, and that Democrats needed to be ready to brawl. 'I think we need to stop being afraid,' he said. 'I just think we need to punch back harder, right? They want to come after us on this issue, punch back harder. 'I don't back down, I don't pull my punches, and I am more than happy to go at this issue or any other issue with lying MAGA types,' El-Sayed continued. ' I think we can win the American public, but we gotta stop being afraid of our own shadow.'
