What is it good for?
Protesters answer: War is good for civil action
March 20, 2003, was another date, like September 11, 2001, destined for infamy. So believe those who took to Charlottesville streets on March 20, despite the downpour, as bombs rained down on Baghdad.
Drenched, they marched from Downtown to UVA and back to approving honks and the occasional middle finger. All walks. All ages. One unified message: “1-2-3-4…We don’t want your racist war 5-6-7-8… Stop the bombing stop the hate.”
No silent vigil here. “The lesson of the Holocaust was the complicity of the Germans in their silence,” says Susan Oberman of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice (CCPJ). “Each of us has a responsibility not to be silent when our government is committing atrocities.”
“Walk out and protest,” shouted the flyers, pasted up late Wednesday night. Several hundred Citywide answered the call. There might have been more. Charlottesville public school students were told they’d be suspended if they walked out. But neither administrations nor rain could deter all.
“I don’t want to be home alone, depressed about what our country is doing,” said CCPJ’s Sarah Lanzman. “I prefer to be with other people. I don’t feel as powerless.”
But war is underway. And one march isn’t likely to end it. “God has not called me to be successful,” said one protestor, quoting Mother Theresa. “He has called me to be faithful.”
The faithful, evidently, have some new converts. Outside UVA’s Cabell Hall, a few hundred students converged under umbrellas in a rally organized by the UVA Anti-war Coalition.
Back Downtown, rumors of civil disobedience manifested in a “direct action” as protesters blocked the intersection of Water and Ridge streets. Their human chain broke when a minivan indifferently drove through it.
Andrew Holden, of Citizens Against Global Exploitation, defended such civil disobedience. “If it means blockades, I’ll do it,” he said. “We take action against repression of any kind.”
But, he added, “All our actions are non-violent. We never hurt anybody.”
Case in point: Ten protesters, among them two professors and five Quakers, “sat-in” Thursday at Representative Virgil Goode’s Downtown office and refused to leave.
Goode spoke with the protesters by phone. “He told me the United States’ national sovereignty shouldn’t be constrained by the U.N.,” said UVA Professor Herbert Tucker. “Does Iraq have national sovereignty? Goode said that they did. Aren’t we infringing on their national sovereignty now? Yes, said Goode, but that’s war.”
Before being led off in handcuffs, Michele Mattioli offered a constructive plea. “I taught pre-school for 17 years,” she said. “I just want to say to George Bush, ‘We don’t hit. We use our words.’“—Brian Wimer
Sculpture stays hidden at UVA
Race is at issue in a public art controversy
Although it’s been out in the open for years now and even Monticello talks about it, Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings still has the power to frighten some people at UVA. A large public sculpture by New York artist Dennis Oppenheim was acquired by the UVA Art Museum more than two years ago, yet it remains in storage—partly because it’s been linked to that master-slave relationship. Ironically, Oppenheim himself probably didn’t intend the Jefferson/Hemings connection.
“Marriage Tree” was part of “Hindsight/Fore-site,” a 2000 show curated by local gallery owner Lyn Bolen Rushton that addressed “our Jeffersonian heritage.” Oppenheim was already working on sculptures using life-size wedding cake figurines when show organizers approached him. Because the 20 or so brides and grooms in the steel-and-fiberglass piece are multiracial, says museum director Jill Hartz, “a link was made between trying to reinterpret the piece to reflect Jefferson and Sally Hemings and multicultural society today. I don’t think Dennis minded, but it was never his intention.”
At show’s end, the museum bought the piece based on Hartz’s belief that it would be placed at the Kluge Children’s Center (it’s too big to fit inside the art museum). Around the same time, a new Public Art Committee was forming at the University. Hartz says she alerted the committee (which isn’t supposed to have jurisdiction over museum collections) only “as a courtesy,” but encountered resistance.
“Because it was associated with that exhibition,” Hartz says, “people were unwilling to consider it having a separate existence or meanings outside of that.”
According to committee chair Don Innes, it was the Kluge Center that officially balked at siting the sculpture at its facility on Route 250W due to “staff concerns that controversy would detract from the center’s mission.” Hartz, who says she was “blindsided” by the move, has been seeking a site for the sculpture, which is valued at $100,000, ever since.
Lately, “Marriage Tree” has become a cause célèbre among UVA art faculty and students. Bogdan Achimescu’s digital arts students are doing digital simulations of the piece in 19 different sites around Grounds.
Others find it ironic that inter-racial coupling seems to be a bigger deal for UVA than it ever was for Oppenheim. Students in Howard Singerman and Bill Wylie’s public art class are researching the issue. Maggie Guggenheimer, a member of the group, says, “We were really surprised to learn that Oppenheim’s intentions for the piece were really quite different from the way the piece was received in Charlottesville.”
Tellingly, Oppenheim (who Hartz calls a “major sculptor”) has repainted the piece in neutral shades. “It’s as though he wants to take the question of race out of it entirely,” says Singerman.
But, says Hartz, “Once a work is put in the public domain, you can’t control its interpretation, nor should you want to.”
—Erika Howsare
Backyard blues
Buckingham Circle worries: ‘Hoos or hotels?
It was another case of “not in my backyard” at the March 19 Board of County Supervisors meeting. Make that “not in my backyard, UVA student-body scum.”
Fifteen residents of the Buckingham Circle neighborhood gathered to demand the Board deny rezoning of more than 12 acres on Fontaine Avenue. If applicant Wes Bradley’s request passes, the property, now zoned as Highway Commercial, could be rezoned as R-15 Residential. Translated, that means it could become condominiums for college kids. The request, which earned a 2-2 vote from the Planning Commission, received even less support from the Supes.
Colorado resident Larry Burnett, Bradley’s representative, requested a deferral from the Board—heavy snowfall back home had held up the arrival of his paperwork. Hardly sympathetic, the Supes moved to hold the public hearing anyway.
“I believe what I’m proposing is not a detriment, but a benefit,” said Burnett, denying the accusation that the 112-unit building would house ’Hoos only. He also delivered a veiled threat: If you don’t approve the condos, I can always put a hotel on the property instead (If he felt an urge to stick out his tongue and wag his hands behind his ears, he resisted it).
Regina Carlson, a 16-year resident of Buckingham Circle, was the first to express serious anxiety.
“These units will appeal only to the student condominium market,” she said. “I’m so concerned about the loud music, the parties, the reckless driving on Fontaine Avenue.”
“We’re stewards of our land,” said another 16-year resident, “not student housing.”
One ninth-grade student gave the Supes a lesson on the wildlife near his house, followed by, “…now there will be beer cans all over the woods where college kids have been drinking.”
Other audience members had a different question for the Board: What ever happened to the neighborhood model?
“Here you’re provided with an opportunity to promote good growth,” said 15-year resident Ruth Goldeen. “Do it.”
Supervisor Dennis Rooker explained that the Board doesn’t have the power to redesign buildings, only to approve or reject them.
Although Supervisor Sally Thomas moved to defer a motion until Burnett weighs his options, residents concluded a transient hotel would be better than semi-permanent students.
“With a hotel,” said one resident, “they’ll be gone by morning.”—Kathryn E. Goodson
What’s a name worth?
In a 3-2 vote, council puts the price at $2,280
History is big business around here, which perhaps explains why the City recently paid top dollar to get its name on the Historical Society’s marquee.
Last week, City Council approved a deal with the Albemarle County Historical Society, changing that organization’s name to include “Charlottesville.” In exchange, Council will cut the rent the Society pays for the McIntire Building at 200 Second St. N.E. by 95 percent to $120 per year from $2,400.
The City has long wanted the Historical Society, founded in 1940, to include Charlottesville in its title. Typically, such groups are named for counties, says ACHS president Garrett Smith. Virginia’s unusual political system divides cities and surrounding counties into separate legal and political jurisdictions.
“I don’t think the people who established the society were aware of the legal technicalities,” says Smith.
One of City Councilor Blake Caravati’s last acts as Mayor in 2002 was sealing the name-change deal with the Historical Society. He says the “economic synergy” of the change is well worth $2,280 in lost annual rent, but some Councilors were not convinced.
“It’s a budget issue,” says Councilor Rob Schilling. “It’s a bad deal, and I think we’re sending the wrong message to citizens that we’re not looking out for their dollars.”
Councilor Kevin Lynch agreed. In an unusual alliance, he and Schilling voted against the deal, which passed 3-2 anyway.
At Downtown’s “fair market” rent of $15.86 per square foot, the McIntire Building could yield about $69,000 a year for Charlottesville, according to the City Manager’s office.
But when Paul McIntire donated the land and the building to the City in 1919, it was on the condition that the building would always be used for a library. When the Historical Society library moved in 10 years ago, the City contributed about $50,000 toward a $375,000 renovation project for the building.
Historical library Society librarian Margaret O’Bryant says many of the 2,500 people who visited the library last year were interested in family history and City architecture records. She supports the name change, but says Charlottesville shouldn’t worry about getting its share of the limelight. The local Chamber of Commerce and realtors’ association, for example, she points out, each include “Charlottesville,” but not “Albemarle” in their names.
“The City came out of Albemarle, but Charlottesville will always be a recognizable name,” says O’Bryant. “Albemarle is the name that needs to be protected.”––John Borgmeyer
Savings and groan
Bank investors gripe about kiting scheme
Last week, the most noteworthy business story in town involved a $2.4 million check-kiting scheme perpetrated by John C. Reid, former CEO of Ivy Industries, against locally owned Albemarle First Bank. “It was just like somebody coming through the front door with a gun,” bank CEO Thomas Boyd Jr. told C-VILLE.
In a panic sell-off by stockholders on March 13, the day the scheme was revealed, the bank’s stock plummeted to a low of $6.84 from $9.78 per share before closing at $7.10—a 27 percent drop in value. In contrast to skittish investors, depositors seemed to remain confident. Industry analysts and bank management expressed belief that the bank would recover.
“Check kiting isn’t that rare,” says Joe Maloney, a bank and thrift editor at SNL Financial, a Charlottesville firm that tracks the activities of financial institutions. “It happens with some regularity in the banking industry. It’s typical that when check-kiting schemes are released to the public there’s a panic sell-off at least for a short time.”
Check kiting occurs when checks are drawn against accounts at two or more banks that do not contain sufficient funds to cover the check. The Ivy Industries scheme involved accounts at Albemarle First and SunTrust Bank. Albemarle First has filed a $10 million lawsuit in Albemarle County Court against Ivy Industries and four of its officers.
For the small bank, which has assets of about $96 million, the fraud could be a relatively large nuisance, however. “It is kind of a problem,” Maloney says, “because this company is pretty young as far as banks go, and it hasn’t historically made a lot of money.”
Albemarle First Bank was founded in 1998 and went public two years later, with an initial offering price of $10 per share, according to SEC filings. The stock reached a high of $10.85 per share on July 11, 2002, meaning that initial stockholders have yet to see a significant return on their investment. The bank has posted a quarterly profit only two times since its IPO, most recently in the fourth quarter of 2002.
But investors won’t be expecting profitable news to come out of the current quarter. “It’s going to generate a first-quarter loss [this year] of $1.94 a share,” says Steve Marascia, a stock analyst at Anderson and Strudwick, citing information from Albemarle First management. He notes that the $2.4 million kiting loss drops shareholder equity to $7.6 million from about $10 million.
Not that the kiting should raise doubts about Albemarle First’s viability, according to some. “The bank should continue to function, and it doesn’t bring solvency into question,” Marascia says.
Indeed, Boyd said he expects his company “will be a good corporate citizen for a long time to come.”
Bank patron Clem Samford said on a recent trip to the Route 29N branch from Ruckersville that the news spurred no anxiety in him. “As a customer, no. If I were a stockholder, yes,” he said.
By March 20 shareholders seemed to be coming around as Albemarle First’s stock rebounded slightly, closing at $8.08 per share.
And Boyd was looking toward the future. “We’re very upbeat,” he said. “Nobody was killed, but it was the same kind of thing.
“We’re out looking for new business.”
—Aaron Carico