Rebranding hate

If the #cvillestandsforlove looks familiar, like the “Virginia Is For Lovers” logo, for instance, that’s because Susan Payne, wearing her chair-of-the-Virginia-Tourism-Corporation-board hat, created the hashtag using the state’s 50-year-old iconic logo. “It’s the same family,” says Payne. “And it’s all free. No city money is being used.”

According to Payne, Governor Terry McAuliffe instructed his cabinet to do what it could to help the city after the August 11-12 hate fest made Charlottesville a one-word recognizable moniker around the world, much as Ferguson is.

That’s why a LOVE installation is on the Downtown Mall, and Payne hopes the initiative will spark a grassroots effort to change the perception of Charlottesville and get people back to the mall. “I’m concerned when bartenders aren’t making tips, people aren’t shopping downtown and business owners have to get loans to make payroll,” says Payne.

For others, the rebranding effort is way too soon. “It certainly felt tone deaf,” says City Councilor Kristin Szakos on Facebook. But she points out that the city just allocated money to affordable housing, improved transit and programming to eradicate poverty.

UVA regifts KKK donation to hate fest victims

President Teresa Sullivan pays forward a $1,000 pledge the Klan made to the university in 1921, worth around $12,400 in today’s dollars, to the Charlottesville Patient Support Fund to help with medical expenses of those injured in the August violence.

The monuments were first covered August 23. Photo by Eze Amos

Statue stripping

The tarp on the statue of General Stonewall Jackson has been removed and replaced five times, Courteney Stuart at Newsplex reports, and that was before a band that included Jason Kessler disrobed the statue September 18. More amazingly, the tarp was replaced within 30 minutes, according to NBC29’s Henry Graff.

State Dems want Wheeler to resign

State board of elections member Clara Belle Wheeler told Republican women at a country club lunch that “massive, well-organized, well-orchestrated voter fraud…happens every day,” and that it’s a tactic of the Democratic party, the Winchester Star reports. Wheeler says she was misquoted, but has not asked for a correction, according to the Roanoke Times. Star reporter Onofrio Castiglia says he stands by his story.

Quote of the Week: We are boycotting all Charlottesville businesses, and that includes C-VILLE Weekly.—Response from Boycott Charlottesville’s Facebook page (which has 1,800 followers) when we tried to learn more about its endeavors

Thing you can do while DIP

Open carry a gun. Brian Lambert was arrested for being drunk in public September 12 at the shrouding of the Jefferson statue. Doing so while open carrying: perfectly legal.

Rape victim testifies

A judge certified charges against Ruckersville’s Matthew Buckland, accused of raping his then girlfriend in March 2016, to the grand jury after the victim quietly testified September 14 that he pushed her down, pinned her with her arms above her head, choked and had nonconsensual sex with her. He is also accused of raping a Mary Baldwin University student, and is scheduled to appear in court again October 16.

And in Buckingham

A woman found dead in the road there September 14 led to the arrest of the man whose farm-use plated Jeep she’d been riding in and who was standing over her in the road when state police arrived. Neal E. Fore, 29, of Cumberland was charged with DUI, driving without a license and improper use of farm tags.

Spate of murder arrests

Walter Antonio Argueta Amaya, 20, is charged with second-degree murder in the July 4 slaying of Marvin Joel Rivera-Guevara in Woolen Mills on East Market Street. Huissuan Stinnie, 18, is wanted in the September 11 homicide of Shawn Evan Davis on South First Street.

Scary statistics

Larry Sabato. Photo: UVA University Communications

In the aftermath of the summer’s deadly white supremacist rally, the UVA Center for Politics measured racial sentiments from more than 5,000 respondents nationally. “Let’s remember, there are nearly 250 million adults in the United States, so even small percentages likely represent the beliefs of many millions of Americans,” says Larry Sabato, the center’s director. Read it and weep.

39 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat agree that white people are under attack in America, while 55 percent say racial minorities are under attack
31 percent strongly or somewhat agree that the country needs to protect and preserve its white European heritage
57 percent say Confederate monuments should remain in public spaces
54 percent of African-American respondents say all monuments should be removed
67 percent of white respondents say they should remain in place
16 percent agreed that marriage should only be allowed between people of the same race
8 percent expressed support for white nationalism
6 percent said they strongly or somewhat support the alt-right
4 percent expressed support for neo-Nazism

Corrected September 25 at 9am to show that the UVA Center for Politics conducted a national poll. It was originally reported as a local poll.

UVA Center for Politics

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