The complaint in front of City Council February 4 was pretty extraordinary: “Chief [RaShall] Brackney came out of nowhere and literally attacked me that night.” That it came from a member of the police Civilian Review Board was all the more astounding. At a February 5 protest in front of the Charlottesville police station, Showing […]
Ultimately, no one was surprised that a House of Delegates subcommittee, made up of eight white men, killed a bill that would let Virginia localities decide what to do with Confederate monuments–not even the bill’s sponsor, Delegate David Toscano. “They knew when we walked in what they would do with that bill,” said Toscano following […]
It wasn’t your typical launch party. Supporters of local activists Don Gathers and Michael Payne gathered at Kardinal Hall January 8 for the official tossing of the hats into this year’s City Council races. But Gathers made a different kind of announcement: A doctor’s visit three hours earlier had convinced him to postpone his campaign […]
Knock, knock. Who’s [not] there? Sears. Sweethaus. Performance Bicycle. And Brown’s Cleaners, just to name a few recent local closings that left community members shocked, and in at least one case, without their clothes. The closing of Sears at Fashion Square Mall heralds the demise of one of [...]
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 [...]
Photography by Eze Amos Sunlight had just begun to illuminate the candy-colored stained glass windows of First Baptist Church as people filed through the door and slid into the wooden pews. “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine,” the crowd sang louder as it grew larger. When the [...]
A month ago, around 100 locals set off on two buses to Montgomery, Alabama, carrying soil from the site where John Henry James was lynched in 1898 in Albemarle County. On August 5, nearly 200 people gathered at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to hear the pilgrims’ report [...]
Show us the money Getting on City Council can cost a lot more than what the part-time job pays, even after a raise in 2018 boosted the salary to $18,000 annually. So far, no one’s touched Mayor Mike Signer’s all-time high of $51K to get elected, but major cash has been raised this year in […]
Barely 30 minutes into its August 21 meeting, City Council was in chaos. Three demonstrators were reportedly arrested, city officials left the chamber and the meeting’s video and audio feeds were cut off as protesters stood on the dais holding a banner that read, “Blood on your hands.” The [...]
A forthcoming addition to the Downtown Mall will commemorate Vinegar Hill, the historically African-American neighborhood that saw displacement of 158 families when city residents voted to develop the land in the 1960s. Officially called Vinegar Hill Park, this chunk of real estate between the [...]
In a 6-3 vote, Blue Ribbon Commission members recommended that the city keep its General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues in their current Lee Park and Court Square locations, though the committee’s chairman Don Gathers voted otherwise. “We as a commission and as a city missed an [...]