Month: September 2020

Categories
Arts Culture

PICK: Bicycle Thieves

Wheeling and dealing: It’s a time of economic desperation in post-World War II Rome as Antonio Ricci sets out on his bicycle to begin a job that will offer some financial relief for his family of four.  But when his back is turned, the bicycle is stolen—and Ricci’s hopes along with it. Fortunately, he does not give up easily. Listed as one of Turner Classic Movie’s top 15 most influential films, Bicycle Thieves has also been acclaimed by movie directors from around the world. The film is included in the Paramount’s 10-part art house series.

Wednesday 9/30. $8-50, 3 and 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333. theparamount.net.

Categories
Arts Culture

PICK: The Festy

Publicity Photo

The fest of us: The Festy made its name by pairing killer music with killer views, and this time around the organizers have reinvented it in a beautiful setting where strict COVID safety measures can be taken. The musical experience is spread out through socially distanced small-group seating and a series of show dates, with a variety of headlining acts including Sierra Hull (above) & Justin Moses and Keller Williams, and a promise of more musicians to come.

Through 10/24. $100-300 group tickets, 7pm. Chisholm Vineyards at Adventure Farm, 1135 Clan Chisholm Ln., Earlysville. 971-8796. festy2020.com

Categories
Arts Culture

PICK: John and Chris Kelly

Publicity Photo

Plays together: The Front Porch continues its Save the Music series with an all-in-the-family edition featuring John and Chris Kelly. The father-son team appeared together on John’s recent release In Between, a collection of rock and folk songs that reflect on social justice issues as well as the importance of family bonds. Chris’ six-member, alt-rock band 14 Stories formed in 2017, and broke through on local high school stages before gigging at the Southern and the Pavilion. Proceeds will benefit the Heather Heyer Foundation.

Sunday 10/4. Zoom required. 8pm. facebook.com/frontporchcville.

Categories
Arts Culture

The politics of pie: Cuisine from the American Revolution

An 1831 Staffordshire plate decorated with a Thomas Cole landscape made Nancy Siegel wonder what had been served on it, and after poring over 18th- and 19th-century cookbooks, letters, and recipes, she discovered that female “culinary activists” used cuisine as a way to combat injustice.

Some study history through hieroglyphics or bone fragments. Nancy Siegel looks at what we ate, and the political statements food made about the fledgling American nation during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Every school child learns about the Boston Tea Party and the dumping of highly taxed tea into Boston Harbor. Not so well known is that the American revolutionaries’ response was to concoct blends from fruits and herbs and dub them Liberty Tea.

“I tell the history of the American Revolution by what we ate or what we celebrated in our dining rooms or living rooms,” says Siegel, a professor of art history and culinary history at Towson University.

Culinary history is a relatively new field that has “really expanded and exploded” in the past 10 years, thanks to the farm-to-table movement and the desire to grow heirloom varieties, says Siegel. “Academia is finally catching up.”

She became aware of how food could become politicized when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. After France refused to join the American military action, some Americans refused to order French fries, calling them freedom fries instead. “I thought this was the craziest thing I’d ever heard,” says Siegel.

But it also made her wonder what had been served in the English Staffordshire dishes, decorated with the landscapes of painter Thomas Cole, which she’d been researching for a book on Cole’s Hudson River School art movement. Siegel became convinced there were female landscape painters active in the movement, and as she pored over diaries and archival repositories, she found 18th- and 19th-century cookbooks, letters, and “hundreds and hundreds of recipes,” she says.

She calls the women of that era “culinary activists” who used cuisine as a way to “combat injustice and taxation” from England, first by boycotting and then by celebrating.

By calling a plain cake an Independence Cake, “it’s imbued with larger meaning during this tumultuous period,” she says.

“These were women who were not out to make history—but they cooked history,” says Siegel.

The recipe for Election Cake—a yeast-risen fruit cake—already existed in Connecticut before the Revolutionary War. But as Election Cake, it celebrated the new democracy, she says. So did Washington Pie, Federal Cake, and Democratic Tea Cakes.

Food has been political in other eras, notes Siegel. Abolitionists in the 19th century refused to use sugar cane, which was produced from enslaved labor, and sweetened with sugar beets instead.

Reading political treatises can be cumbersome, says Siegel, but “everyone eats. It’s the great equalizer. It demonstrates the support that comes out of the kitchen.”

Siegel will discuss A Taste of Democracy: Federal Cake, Liberty Tea, and Culinary Activism in the Early Republic at 7pm on October 3 at Stratford Hall in an event sponsored by Virginia Humanities. Register online at virginiahumanities.org.

Categories
Culture Living

One season at a time: Caromont Farm keeps looking toward the future

Gail Hobbs Page took a few creative turns to keep Caromont Farm’s cheese biz afloat as COVID-19 concerns caused the gates to close in spring. The farm has reopened for socially distant visits and cheese pickups. Photo by Sarah Cramer Shields

Running a goat farm and making cheese is always a balancing act, even in the best of times. This year, Caromont Farm found that act especially tricky.

From early March through May, thousands of people flock to the pastoral locale in southern Albemarle County to cozy up to baby goats. The sessions have been crucial to the working farm’s business model, providing support during a time of year that is typically slow.

Right as snuggle season was beginning, stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 caused Caromont Farm to close its gates and cancel goat cuddling. “The bottom fell out. We were in crisis mode,” says the farm’s owner and cheesemaker Gail Hobbs Page. “It was a financial strain, but we were able to keep our wits about us and keep the farm going as we figured out what we were going to do next.”

Some unexpected downtime gave way to inventive ideas, like Caromont’s new Farmstead cheese share. “It’s something we have wanted to do for a long time, but COVID made it happen,” Hobbs Page says. Each month, subscribers receive a selection of three cheeses and locally sourced fixings to make a deluxe cheese board. A share might include homemade mustard, locally made pickles, smoked trout, and artisan crackers. A subscription extends a supportive hand to Caromont Farm and other local farmers and food suppliers, like Little Hat Creek Farm and Good Phyte Foods. “The food going into these shares is from the people who make it,” she says. “You start having a really personal relationship, and that’s better than store-bought.”

The farm has also started selling directly to customers through in-person, minimal-contact pickup on Fridays and Saturdays, plus providing opportunities to order via the Local Food Hub and Charlottesville City Market. Hobbs Page is grateful not only for the opportunity to sell through local markets but to buy from them as well. “They got us through a very scary time when you didn’t know where you were going to get pork or chicken. The grocery stores were out,” she says. “If things ever go back to normal, let’s not forget that. We don’t need 18-wheelers to get our food. You can have it within hours of it being made. I think that’s a hopeful thing.”

In addition, Caromont Farm’s gates are open again. “It took some time,” Hobbs Page says, “but we’ve tried to rethink the idea, keeping us safe, keeping the animals safe, and keeping the community safe.” Reservations are available for socially distant visits in which visitors can walk the grounds, bring a picnic, and spend time with friendly, not-so-baby goats.   

While the year has been full of pivots on the business side, the seasonal nature of farming remains. As Hobbs Page says, “The goats don’t know it’s COVID.” Kidding season begins each February, which is described as one of the happiest times on the farm—but also one of the busiest. With the arrival of baby goats, the very small Caromont staff has its hands full during 12 weeks of bottle feedings.

From March through November, there are twice-daily milking sessions for the approximately 80 adult female goats. Keeping the goats healthy is a top priority. “Your milk is only as good as the health of your animals, and your cheese is only as good as your milk,” says Hobbs Page. The goats begin producing milk around age 2, and they are part of the lactation program for seven or eight cycles before entering retirement. “I get a tremendous amount of joy with my ‘Caromont Gals,’” she says. “I’m milking the granddaughters of some of my original herd. That is satisfying.”

Caromont Farm has been making cheese since 2007, but the process continues to evolve. “In the cheese world, you’re only as good as your last make,” says Hobbs Page.

Each year, Caromont produces about 20,000 pounds of cheese, including chevre, feta, caciotta, and bleu cheese that are made based on the different characteristics of each breed’s milk.

The farm’s multiple breeds of dairy goats include Saanen, Nubian, Alpine, and LaMancha. Saanens produce a lot of milk, sometimes yielding up to two gallons per day from one goat, but the fat content is low. Nubians, on the other hand, provide very little milk, but it’s high in fat. “Fat, protein, and calcium are the trinity of cheesemakers,” Hobbs Page says. “I’m trying to design milk that is abundant but also rich in components to give our cheeses a lot of flavor.”

As breeding season begins, Caromont Farm prepares for its next cycle, keeping a watchful eye on the future. “The most important thing is to stay ahead of your next season, thinking about the next babies and the next cheese,” she says. “It keeps you moving forward.” The farm hopes to be able to host modified snuggle sessions by March of 2021. By then, cheese that is in the works now will be ready to sell. “Farmers have to be optimistic,” says Hobbs Page, “always thinking the next season will be better.”

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News

Know your rights: Housing activists work to prevent evictions

Charlottesville Democratic Socialists of America volunteers and supporters assisted around a dozen tenants who were facing eviction at the Albemarle County Courthouse last Thursday. PC: Staff Photo

For months, a state eviction moratorium prevented tenants from being forced out of their homes for not paying rent. But at the beginning of this month, the Virginia Supreme Court declined to extend the ban before it expired September 7, pointing to a new Centers for Disease Control order prohibiting evictions until the end of the year.

However, the CDC moratorium is “opt-in,” explains Emma Goehler, chair of the Charlottesville Democratic Socialists of America’s Housing Justice Committee. “You have to know about it, meet certain criteria, and fill out a declaration form in order to be eligible for it,” which must be presented to your landlord.

Last Thursday, Goehler and other DSA volunteers assisted around a dozen tenants in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse, where more than 30 unlawful detainer and eviction cases were on the docket.

“It should be a comprehensive moratorium, but in practice it’s been less people knowing about it. There really hasn’t been much effort to disperse information from the federal government,” says Goehler. “So that’s where we’ve been stepping in.”

According to the CDC, the moratorium only applies to tenants who expect to earn no more than $99,000 in annual income—or no more than $198,000 if filing a joint tax return—this year, and who are unable to pay their rent due to loss of household income (or extraordinary out-of-pocket medical expenses). Tenants must also swear that they’re making their “best efforts” to obtain government assistance, and pay as much of their rent as possible, under penalty of perjury.

Those who are not protected by the CDC moratorium may still get a 60-day extension if they show up to court with written evidence that they have lost income due to the pandemic.

But since the state moratorium was lifted on September 8, five eviction judgments have been made against tenants in Charlottesville, and 19 have been made in Albemarle County, most likely because the tenants did not know about the moratorium, or they did not attend their hearings.

Because tenants will still face eviction if they do not pay off their rent debt before the moratorium ends, DSA is working to connect them with various assistance resources, like the Emergency Rent and Mortgage Relief Program hotline.

In the meantime, DSA hopes the Virginia General Assembly will pass more comprehensive legislation canceling all rent debt and removing eviction filings from tenants’ housing records.

“The fact that you’ve had an eviction filing…[makes] it harder for you to find housing in the future,” says Goehler.

According to the Legal Aid Justice Center, the current language surrounding evictions in the proposed budgets in the state House and Senate needs a lot of improvement.

“[It] doesn’t stop landlords from evicting people in the midst of a global health pandemic for minor lease violations, such as having a guest stay too long. Even the protections it provides for tenants who aren’t able to pay their rent aren’t strong enough,” says Communications Director Jeff Jones.

“However, there are still several steps left in the budget process,” he says. “We look forward to continuing to work with legislators to ensure that all tenants can remain safely in their homes until the present health emergency ends.”

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News

Helping hand: International Neighbors supports refugee families during the pandemic

Kari Miller and International Neighbors have been working to ease the transition for resettled refugees since 2015. PC: Zack Wajsgras

By Laura Drummond

Kari Miller was a second-grade teacher in Charlottesville when, one day, she saw a student fall on the playground and break his arm. After the injury, it soon became apparent that the child, a refugee, had incomplete paperwork, meaning a guardian could not be contacted to give the school the green light to administer pain medication. Miller sat with the child as he suffered for hours until family members could be reached and secure transportation to pick him up.

The experience inspired Miller to found International Neighbors, an organization dedicated to providing support to area refugee families, who, she says, are an under-resourced community whose members “are forced to suffer because they don’t have a network. It is so unfair—refugees have already endured so much.”

And as the pandemic has unfolded, the challenges of being a stranger in a foreign land have only become more pronounced.

Fewer than 1 percent of refugees are resettled worldwide, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Of those, about 250 refugees and Special Immigrant Visa holders make it to Charlottesville each year. By the time they arrive, they have experienced tragic circumstances, undergone rigorous vetting through the United States Refugee Resettlement Program, and traveled to a place unfamiliar in its language and landscape, customs and culture. They almost immediately find themselves in debt, owing the U.S. State Department and a resettlement agency the cost of their resettlement, an average of more than $1,000 per person, reports The New York Times.

In 2015, Miller, now executive director of International Neighbors, connected her injured student’s family with a local family to help navigate their new community. That gesture started the neighbor-to-neighbor support system that has become the foundation of IN. Five years later, “We currently have 58 family matches and a long list of people who want to be connected to a family,” Miller says.

The organization has expanded as other needs have come to light. With about 100 volunteers, IN now offers support to more than 300 refugee families—whether that means arranging doctor appointments or teaching them to sew with refurbished sewing machines. “We try to help our neighbors strive to thrive in five years,” Miller says.

As the pandemic has persisted, International Neighbors has escalated its efforts. “Refugees are 60 percent more likely to work in sectors of the economy impacted most by COVID-19,” reports the International Rescue Committee, citing research from the Center for Global Development and Refugees International.

“Financial restraints are always first and foremost,” Miller says, but “these are folks working hourly jobs who lost their livelihood. They are very concerned about being able to pay rent.” In response, IN created the Neighbor Needs Emergency Fund in March, which has so far raised more than $80,000 to assist with urgent financial necessities like eviction prevention and medical-related expenses.

Other needs are less obvious. “Every day I learn something more about how confusing it is to live in our community as a refugee,” Miller says. A simple task like laundry, for example, is a hardship for refugees. Lack of transportation means dependency on coin-operated machines where they live, spending an average of $8 per load and sharing facilities with as many as 200 tenants. And as if there wasn’t enough going on, there’s also a national coin shortage, which has exacerbated the difficulties of doing laundry.

In early August, International Neighbors introduced the Change for Change quarter drive, distributing collection cans to small businesses around Charlottesville, with donations going directly to refugee families in the IN network. Splendora’s Gelato was the first to collect donations. “The people who do the work for that program really do address needs outside of what I would have ever thought about,” says Splendora’s owner PK Ross.

Upon receiving $32 in quarters, which covers about four loads of laundry, a Rwandan refugee says, “This is a big help. I won’t have to walk a mile to get change, or begin washing and not have enough coins to finish.”

“The little things are a big deal for our neighbors. Life is hard in so many ways. Just making one little thing easier makes a big difference,” says IN Communications Director Jennifer MacAdam-Miller.

Another recent effort to make things easier is the Groceries on the Go program. Food insecurity is a persistent hardship for refugees that has worsened during the pandemic. Relying on public transportation and in-person shopping means facing greater risks of COVID-19 exposure.

So IN volunteers have been shopping for refugee families on the side. When community members do their grocery shopping, they can add culturally appropriate foods and other essentials to their orders and drop them off to refugee families. Genevieve Lyons, IN volunteer and program coordinator, says, “Grocery shopping for yourself can feel like such a daunting task. These are hard times for everybody, but these people are affected a lot more. Every time I’m going out and taking that risk, I should be helping somebody else.”

In addition to financial assistance, efforts to combat social isolation are of crucial importance during this time. While many people are now connecting virtually, most refugee families don’t have computers or internet access. IN received a number of laptop donations, but there is still a barrier of technological illiteracy. “You almost can’t participate in the world right now, and it’s very isolating,” MacAdam-Miller says.

As public school classes have moved online, the divide has worsened. To make education more equitable for refugee students, International Neighbors recently established Virtual Learning Centers to assist English language learning students with online learning. With help from donors, volunteers, and a grant from the National Parents Union, IN offers supervision and support to 18 K-4 students across three “learning pods.” The students are refugees who most recently arrived in the U.S. and those most in need of support online.

Volunteer Kristin Thomas Sancken, who has been influential in getting the Virtual Learning Centers up and running, says, “I don’t think people have any idea of how desperate the situation of online learning is for newly arrived refugees. The first day, none of the kids knew that computers had to be plugged into power. None of them knew how to connect to WiFi. Then, they were expected to log onto classes at very precise times, or else they are marked as absent.”

IN hopes to expand its services to more families and intends to keep the program running until public schools return to in-person instruction, but resources are limited. At the moment, IN is in need of volunteers to help at the Virtual Learning Centers, as well as people who can offer technical support to refugee families in their homes. In September, IN established the Access and Equity Fund, which is accepting donations to cover the cost of instruction, school supplies, child-sized face masks, forehead thermometers, craft and playground supplies, and passenger van transportation.   

Miller says, “If you feel like you can’t do anything, it’s not true. Because all these folks want is a lifeline. And they deserve that. They truly are the most amazing, resilient folks in Charlottesville.”

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News

Phoning it in: Have tracker apps helped Virginia and UVA slow the spread of the virus?

Virginia’s COVIDWISE app uses Bluetooth to anonymously track the spread of the virus.

By Geremia Di Maro

As the community searches for answers to the COVID pandemic, both the Commonwealth of Virginia and UVA have rolled out apps designed to suppress the spread of the virus. While state officials are excited about the state app’s ability to track the disease, UVA’s app—which cost a similar amount to develop—merely encourages users to evaluate their own symptoms.

Almost two months after launching, the Virginia Department of Health’s COVIDWISE app—the nation’s first COVID-19 exposure-notification app for iPhone and Android devices—is slated to reach an important milestone of 600,000 downloads in the commonwealth, as thousands of Virginians continue to download the app each day. Currently, about 13.2 percent of the state’s population has the app on their phones.

COVIDWISE is among a growing list of similar exposure-notification apps in the U.S. The app trades randomly generated IDs between cell phones via Bluetooth connection, without draining battery or accessing location data. Then the app compares the IDs the phone has received to a statewide database of IDs associated with positive COVID-19 test results. If an app user tests positive. and inputs that test in the app, any other app user who has been near the positive case will then be notified.

“There is no GPS or other location data at all, it doesn’t matter where geographically you were,” says Andrew Larimer, an engineer with Spring ML, who helped develop COVIDWISE and is also assisting in the development of a similar app in North Carolina. “The only thing that matters, from the app’s perspective, is whether you were nearby someone else who has gone on to test positive for COVID 19…This framework was designed to take people’s privacy concerns very seriously, and avoid any kind of location tracking.”

As of September 28, 225 positive cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed via COVIDWISE. 

“We don’t collect location data, we don’t collect any sort of personal identifying information,” says Jeff Stover, the executive advisor to the Virginia Department of Health commissioner. “The issue is for any given state, because it’s an anonymous process, it’s very difficult to link back to anything and show any kind of correlation …We understand that this creates data limitations for some people who would like to do more, but we’re serious about protecting patient privacy and just privacy in general.” 

However, Stover cited a recently published study by Oxford University examining the potential for exposure-notification apps to reduce the rate of infection and the subsequent number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in a given area, based on an analysis of app usage and case statistics in Washington state. According to the study’s findings, “a well-staffed manual contact tracing workforce combined with 15 percent uptake of an exposure notification system could reduce infections [from COVID-19] by 15 percent and deaths by 11percent.” 

Stover says that, with more Virginians downloading COVIDWISE each day, the state  expects to reach that 15 percent threshold in the next few weeks. He also emphasizes that there are still few concrete examples and metrics to hold COVIDWISE up to, since Virginia was the first U.S. state to employ exposure-notification technology in earnest. 

“Obviously, the more downloads there are, the greater the impact,” Stover says. “But because we were the first state out of the gate, it’s very difficult—it’s as if we’re running a race by ourselves, and we can’t really tell if we’re running fast or slow, or somewhere in between. So there’s no one to compare ourselves to.” 

Although not nearly as complex or as involved as the COVIDWISE app, UVA has also rolled out its own app—Hoos Health Check—for students, faculty, and staff to use to combat the spread of COVID-19 on Grounds and in Charlottesville. 

Designed through a partnership between the university and Charlottesville app developer WillowTree, Hoos Health Check is meant to work alongside and with COVIDWISE. UVA’s app does not share or collect data like an exposure-notification app, but encourages users to also download COVIDWISE, according to university spokesperson Brian Coy. However, Hoos Health Check does require users to sign in to the app via their university-affiliated account. 

Hoos Health Check cost $300,000 to develop, and Coy notes that this figure includes additional features embedded within the app, but did not specify what they were. By comparison, COVIDWISE cost $229,000 in CARES Act funds to develop and has a maintenance budget of $29,000.

“The primary purpose of Hoos Health Check is to prompt users to evaluate their own health and symptoms every day before coming to Grounds,” says Coy, “as a means of helping them make the decision to stay home and away from other members of the community in the event they are feeling ill (and thus, potentially infected with COVID-19).” 

The app reminds users daily to complete the symptom check, although it is only required if a student or employee plans to be physically present on Grounds on a given day. If a user reports no symptoms (cough, shortness of breath, fever, muscle pain, loss of smell or taste, etc.), he is presented with a set of guidelines for preventing the spread of COVID-19, including wearing a mask in the presence of others, maintaining social distancing, and encouraging others to also follow public health guidelines. 

If a user indicates that he’s feeling sick, the app “prompts him to contact student health or his health-care provider for additional screening,” Coy says. It doesn’t enter the symptoms in any database or automatically communicate with any public health authorities. 

Coy says more than 27,000 downloads of Hoos Health Check have taken place since its launch in early August, adding that the app sees greater than 80 percent daily usage across the university community.

COVIDWISE is free to download on Apple’s app store or the Android store. 

 

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News

Dorm disparity: As COVID throttles residence halls, UVA focuses testing on athletes

According UVA’s COVID-19 tracker, 2,391 tests were administered from September 20-26, with 158 positive results. Roughly half of all tests were given to student-athletes.

By Amelia Delphos

On Tuesday, UVA released a six-minute video in which President Jim Ryan once again attempted to lay down the law, unveiling a new set of COVID rules following upticks in cases in university housing. These new restrictions ban gatherings of more than five people, require wearing a mask at all times unless students are in their room, eating or drinking, and avoiding travel to and from Charlottesville for the next two weeks. 

The new restrictions come after the rate of infection has spiked in freshman residence halls. Fourteen percent of those tested in Hancock dorm were positive for the disease, and Balz-Dobie, Kellogg, and Echols dorms have all been put on lockdown for mandatory testing at some point, though those lockdowns have now lifted.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the UVA football team hosted Duke. Scott Stadium contained the socially distanced family and friends of players and coaching staff, as well as the two teams and their respective entourages, in accordance with Governor Ralph Northam’s Phase III requirement of 1,000 people or less at sports venues.

The team was able to win its fourth consecutive home opener for one reason: vigorous testing. Those familiar with game-day traditions know that the most influential player gets to “break the rock” in the locker room after the final whistle blows. On Saturday, Kelli Pugh, the team’s associate director of sports medicine, broke the rock. According to Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall, Pugh has been instrumental in keeping the team COVID-free since players returned in July.

The school administered 1,168 tests to athletes between September 21 and 27, finding 22 positives, the athletic department announced this week. Athletes have been tested almost 5,000 times since July. UVA’s COVID dashboard says that from September 20 to 26, 2,391 tests were administered to UVA faculty, staff, students, and contract employees. Thrice-weekly testing for athletes is required by the Atlantic Coast Conference.

According to one third-year resident advisor, an upperclassman who lives in first-year housing to support the younger students, first-years were told they could come to college to make new friends and build connections, but now have to navigate strict restrictions in order to do so. RAs have watched their first-years struggle as the school’s stated goals and actual actions have contradicted each other.

“I really empathize with them trying to build the social connections that they need just to be mentally healthy, while also being physically healthy,” says the RA.

The constant testing of athletes has frustrated a fourth-year RA who is living in a dorm with an outbreak. “Those tests for the athletes are not just being taken out of UVA, but they’re being taken out of the Charlottesville community,” he says. 

In his COVID-infested dorm, the residents are only being tested once a week, whereas the athletes are tested three times a week. “Dorms are also a hot spot,” he says. 

Many students were quick to point out the hypocrisy of a gathering of 1,000 people when student gatherings of greater than five were banned just days before.

“It creates a sense that the university is willing to play loose with safety,” the third-year RA says, “if it’s something that benefits [UVA] financially or gives it good PR.”

 

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News

In brief: “Crying Nazi” faces prison time, neo-Nazi stickers spotted downtown, and more

PC: Eze Amos

Locked up

The “Crying Nazi” faces up to 22 years in prison. You have to make a lot of bad decisions in life for the local newspaper to write that sentence about you—and that’s exactly what Chris Cantwell has done.

The New Hampshire far-right radio host came to Charlottesville for the 2017 Unite the Right rally, where he was filmed by Vice chanting “Jews will not replace us” as he marched down the UVA Lawn with a tiki-torch wielding mob. Later that night, he pepper sprayed protesters at the base of the Jefferson statue, which eventually earned him two misdemeanor assault and battery charges and a five-year ban from the state of Virginia.

Soon after the rally, Cantwell uploaded a video of himself tearily proclaiming his innocence, earning him the above-mentioned nickname.

This time around, he’s been found guilty of extortion and interstate threats. In 2019, Cantwell sent online messages in which he threatened to rape another neo-Nazi’s wife if that neo-Nazi didn’t reveal the identity of a third neo-Nazi who had remained anonymous at the time.

In an interview with C-VILLE in 2017—conducted from his cell at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail—Cantwell offered a comment that looks positively prophetic in hindsight. “I’m a shock jock. I offend people professionally,” he said. “If we’re going to talk about all the nasty things I said on the internet, we’re going to be here for a while.”

Justice for Breonna

After several months of investigation, a grand jury indicted former Louisville police detective Brett Hankison last Wednesday for endangering the neighbors of Breonna Taylor during a botched no-knock raid—but did not charge the two officers who shot and killed the 26-year-old Black emergency-room technician in her own home.

Just hours after the announcement, more than 100 Charlottesville residents gathered on the Belmont Bridge in solidarity with Louisville, demanding justice for Taylor through the defunding and abolishing of police.

The crowd toted homemade signs and joined in chants led by organizer Ang Conn, as passing cars honked in support. A few protesters blocked the bridge with cars and cones, allowing everyone to move off the sidewalk and into the road for more chants and speeches from Black attendees.

Protesters marched down Market Street to the front of the Charlottesville Police Department, which had its doors locked and appeared to be empty, with no cops in sight.

“Say her name—Breonna Taylor,” chanted the crowd. “No justice, no peace—abolish the police.”

_________________

Quote of the week

“We have to do something. It’s not creating more data we already know. It’s not providing more funding to the police department. It’s not waiting to see how it plays out in court. …It’s rare for police to be held accountable.”

—community organizer Ang Conn calling for justice for Breonna Taylor during a protest held by Defund Cville Police

__________________

In brief

Fascist threat

In recent weeks, anti-racist activists have spotted dozens of stickers promoting the white supremacist, neo-Nazi group Patriot Front on or near the Downtown Mall and the Corner, as well as near the Lee and Jackson statues, reports Showing Up for Racial Justice. The activists urge anyone who sees a sticker to document its location, use a sharp object to remove it, and tell others where they saw it. If, however, you see someone putting up a sticker, the group advises against approaching the person if you are alone—instead, discreetly take a photo and alert others of the incident.

PC: Charlottesville Showing Up for Racial Justice

Jumped the gun

In case it wasn’t already clear what kind of operation Republican congressional candidate Bob Good was running, last weekend the Liberty University administrator held a “God, Guns, and a Good time” rally in Fluvanna County. Fliers for the event advertised a raffle with an AR-15 as the top prize. Good’s campaign now denies any affiliation with the raffle, reports NBC29, as holding a raffle to benefit a political campaign violates Virginia gambling and election laws.

Board bothers

The Charlottesville Police Civilian Review Board continues to meet obstacles in its years-long quest to provide oversight for local policing. Last week, just three months after the first meeting, board member Stuart Evans resigned. In his resignation letter, Evans declared the body was “fundamentally flawed,” and that the city’s refusal to give the board any real power led to his resignation. “I refuse to help the City clean up its image by peddling fictions of progress,” he wrote.