The word “civility” has become a bad word among some Charlottesvillians. Now a proposed tourism ad campaign touting “C’villeization” as a play on the C’ville nickname is also drawing fire. Chapel Hill-based ad company Clean presented mock-ups of its “Welcome to C’villeization” rebranding campaign at a December 20 tourism board meeting. The ads feature images […]
Faced with a recent decline in enrollment, the city’s first co-operative preschool, which has operated for more than 50 years, is struggling to stay on its feet. Molly Michie Cooperative Preschool was founded in 1967 as the city’s first integrated preschool, with an emphasis on learning through play. Being a co-op means parents are deeply […]
Driver’s license suspensions under siege A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction December 21 and ordered Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Richard Holcomb to reinstate the driver’s licenses of three plaintiffs who automatically lost their licenses when they were unable to pay court costs and fines. The judge said they are likely to prevail in […]
By Jonathan Haynes Despite the controversy over the University of Virginia’s revisions to its right-to-assemble policies, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has awarded the university its highest free speech rating. FIRE, a group that defends the constitutional rights of students and faculty in higher ed, ranked UVA as a “green-light” university, along with […]
At a time when more people are pedaling, our area will kick off the new year with one fewer bike shop. Customers were told that longtime fixture Performance Bicycle in Seminole Square will close by the end of January, following the bankruptcy of Philadelphia-based parent company Advanced Sports Enterprises. “It’s sad to see it close, […]
By Lisa Provence and Samantha Baars Most of the biggest stories we followed this year were fallout from 2017: both the direct effects of the Unite the Right rally, with its continuing arrests and trials, and the continued furor over monuments, free speech, and present-day inequities as our city grapples with its full history. Martial […]
When you buy a house or a car, you know how much it’s going to cost. That’s not necessarily the case when you go see a doctor, especially if you don’t have insurance, a local woman discovered on recent visits to a UVA clinic. Sara Ensey is a self-pay patient, and when she went to […]
Perriello’s Sierra Leone rescue A desperate mother needed to get her 5-year-old daughter out of Sierra Leone in 2003, and asked a stranger at the airport to take her child to her grandmother in the U.S. Fifteen years later, Zee Sesay learned that the man who brought her daughter to safety was former congressman Tom […]
Early this month, a caravan of more than a dozen local lawyers, clergy, and other advocates set out to assist migrants seeking asylum at the Tijuana border, where the mayor has declared a humanitarian crisis, and where thousands of camping refugees wake up every morning hoping they’ll get their turn to present their cases to […]
When Maria Chavalan-Sut talks about her life, she smiles. She laughs. Sometimes she cries. The Guatemalan refugee came to America in 2015 and passed a credible fear interview at the border, meaning ICE believed that she would face persecution or torture if she was sent back to her country. But her attorney says that, like […]
The 17-year-old boy who escaped his private security guards at the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport on November 30 was “scared,” “cold,” and “hungry” by the time he reached several homes six miles from CHO, according to one of those residents. An Earlysville woman who spoke with him in Spanish, and who talked to C-VILLE on the […]
When Hurricane Camille dumped 10 inches of rain on Charlottesville in August 1969, folks were spotted rowing their boats up and down Nassau Street. Now, developer Justin Shimp has proposed to build an urban farm and residential complex on the same floodplain. The project, called Hogwaller Farm, is in compliance with the city’s safety and […]
Got a complaint? The city has an app for that. MyCville. Ever heard of it? We hadn’t, either, until the city encouraged residents to digitally report their delinquent neighbors who hadn’t shoveled sidewalks following the recent dumping of about a foot of snow on Charlottesville. There’s nothing like a (mostly) unexpected snowstorm to put the […]
As if we didn’t have actual problems to worry about, national news has been filled with stories of porch pirates stealing gift-laden packages. But for those worried that their Amazon deliveries will be snatched by the end of the work day, rest assured: So far this holiday season in Albemarle County, only two missing packages […]
BY Lisa Provence and Samantha Baars Last Friday evening, almost 16 months after white supremacists invaded our town, many of the same counterprotesters who were there on August 12, 2017, were once again gathered on Fourth Street. It was the spot where James Alex Fields, Jr., a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi from Maumee, Ohio, had rammed his […]
Awkward moments: Fields trial edition When we crammed more than two weeks of trial proceedings into a 4,000-word story, some of the finer details didn’t make the cut. So we’d like to take this opportunity to share a few of the not-so-fun facts of the James Alex Fields, Jr. trial, in which he was found […]
In the wake of recent U.N. and U.S. government reports on the catastrophic environmental damage already attributable to climate change, the City of Charlottesville has been challenged to divest from investments in the fossil fuels industry. Local activist Michael Payne proposed several steps the city could take to address climate change, including divestment from holdings […]
Attorney General Mark Herring has spent the past few years studying the issue of hate crimes and white supremacist violence across the commonwealth and advocating for new legislation to combat it. On December 5—coincidentally during the state’s murder trial against the neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017—Herring hosted a […]
Many thought James Fields’ mental health would be used as a defense during his murder trial– but surprisingly, it never came up. Instead, jurors learned about his troubled state of mind during the December 10 sentencing hearing, after he’d been found guilty of murdering Heather Heyer and injuring many others at the Unite the Right […]
A jury deliberated seven hours December 7 before reaching a verdict in the first-degree murder trial of self-proclaimed neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. for the death of Heather Heyer: guilty. Fields also faced five charges of aggravated malicious wounding, three of malicious wounding and one count of felony hit and run. The jury of seven […]
It’s in the jury’s hands now. The prosecution and defense have given their closing arguments on the ninth day of James Alex Fields Jr.’s first-degree murder trial. The man charged with killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others when he rammed his car into a crowd at an August 12, 2017, white supremacist rally also […]
After a couple of years of contention over Albemarle County’s threat to move its courts from downtown Charlottesville, elected officials in the two jurisdictions have finally decided to jointly locate their lower courts in a downtown building both localities purchased together in 2005. “We have reached agreement on the expansion and renovation of the Albemarle […]
Before the summer of 2017, a Google image search of the word “Charlottesville” might have turned up some photos of our picturesque purple mountains, or the stately columns of Monticello and the University of Virginia. These days, as demonstrated in the recent Charlottesville documentary, it turns up images of flag-waving neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Now, […]