County boots Trump chicken
Albemarle County said the state of emergency declared for the August 11-12 weekend was still in effect after Indivisible Charlottesville brought an inflatable chicken with a Trump-like coif to its August 28 Flip the 5th demonstration in front of the County Office Building. Police declared the lawn off limits and parking restricted. No word on when the supes plan to lift the emergency orders used against protesters.
Pro bono council defense
National law firm Jones Day will represent city councilors Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, Mike Signer, and former councilor Kristin Szakos after Judge Rick Moore ruled they did not have immunity for their votes to remove two Confederate statues. Jones Day has assigned 15 attorneys to represent the councilors pro bono, according to a release from plaintiff Buddy Weber.
Rent-a-cop
Confederate monument-loving Virginia Flaggers posted an appeal for donations to hire off-duty cops from a private security firm to patrol Market Street and Court Square parks to keep an eye on the Lee and Jackson statues over the Labor Day weekend after protesters in Chapel Hill toppled Silent Sam.
Golf cart sentence
Ivy resident Tyler Sewell, 52, pleaded guilty to one count of felony death by motor vehicle August 27 for the August 3, 2017, golf cart accident on Bald Head Island that killed his friend Peter Parrish six days later. Sewell was given a 51- to 74-month suspended sentence and placed on supervised probation, according to Brunswick County, North Carolina, Assistant District Attorney Jason Minnicozzi.
Labor Day issue
Albemarle’s Chris Greene Lake was closed on the September 3 holiday because of an “unforeseen staffing shortage,” the county announced after C-VILLE tweeted the closing.
UVA settles
Former assistant vice provost Betsy Ackerman’s gender and pay discrimination lawsuit against the university was dismissed August 24 and UVA declined to disclose the settlement, according to the Cav Daily.
Quote of the week
“There is no way to describe this, except to call it what it is—a legislative impasse.”—House Democratic Leader David Toscano on the futile August 30 General Assembly special session to redraw 11 district lines a federal court has deemed unconstitutional.
5th District mudslinging
A month after 5th District congressional candidate Leslie Cockburn accused opponent Denver Riggleman of being a “devotee of Bigfoot erotica,” the Republican Party of Virginia has fired back at her with an image much more sensitive to the folks in the district it’s vying to represent.
A mailer sent out last week superimposed an image of Cockburn above one of the angry white men who marched with lit torches across the University of Virginia on August 11, 2017, chanting “Jews will not replace us” along the way.
The mailer accuses Cockburn of spreading anti-Semitic propaganda in her 1991 book Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship, and says it has been “praised by white supremacist groups.”
Her supporters, including many clergy members and Rabbi Daniel Alexander of Congregation Beth Israel, quickly rushed to combat the claims against Cockburn.
“It is deeply dismaying to see Virginia’s Republican party follow the debased example of the current occupant of the White House by engaging in ad hominem attacks and appeals to fear,” Alexander said in an August 26 statement posted to Democratic news site Blue Virginia. “Leslie Cockburn stands against all of that and that is why I enthusiastically stand with her.”
On Twitter, Cockburn called the attack “disgusting and ludicrous,” and says, “I am deeply grateful to members of the clergy who stand with me against the abhorrent use of the Unite the Right Rally to fling mud. Virginia Democrats are not fooled by dirty tricks.”
However, Democrats used similar images in last year’s gubernatorial race, affixing Republican candidate Ed Gillespie’s photo to those of the torch-carrying mob.
And Cockburn’s campaign continues to call former Jason Kessler associate Isaac Smith, who attended a Riggleman event, a white supremacist, despite Smith’s disavowal of Kessler and the alt-right.
Chris Long defends Nike campaign
Charlottesville native and now Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long weighs in on the campaign Nike launched over the weekend, which stars football free agent Colin Kaepernick.
If you don’t watch football—or read the news—Kaepernick has been in the spotlight since 2016 for kneeling during the national anthem on NFL sidelines for games in which he played for the San Francisco 49ers. He took a knee to protest police brutality, and now some people who criticized Kaepernick are protesting the mega sportswear brand.
“Nike is a huge business,” said Long on Twitter on September 3. “They’ve calculated risk. They may even have reason to believe this will make the brand more popular which means the guy burning his white Air Monarchs is in the minority. Bitter pill to swallow, I’m sure. Good luck with the protest. Bet they anticipated it.”