Bill Murray is part of the star-studded cast in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, which will screen at Morven on the opening night of the Virginia Film Festival. Publicity image.
The Virginia Film Festival announced a full return to in-person movie viewing for its 34th annual fest, which will be held October 27-31.
Jody Kielbasa, UVA’s vice provost for the arts and director of the festival, says the VAFF will offer more than 85 films and host an extensive lineup of live discussions. Special guests include actress Martha Plimpton, appearing in conjunction with a screening of her new film Mass. Playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris will accept the VAFF’s 2021 American Perspectives Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinema. (Harris made headlines earlier this week when his Slave Play, nominated for 12 Tonys , including Best Play, did not win a single award.) During the festival, he will be awarded for co-writing the dark comedy Zola, and his extensive work with HBO. On the local front, former Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy will discuss the Hulu limited series “Dopesick,” based on her book about the opioid crisis in central Appalachia, and produced by Michael Keaton.
Kielbasa says that inclusivity has always been essential to the mission of the festival, and program manager Chandler Ferrebee confirms that at least 50 percent of the VAFF films are directed by women or people of color. Ferrebee points to Flee, an animated documentary produced by Riz Ahmed, and Jane Campion’s western, The Power of the Dog, starring Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch, as two must-see movies. (Another Cumberbatch film, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, will also be screened during the festival.)
New this year are COVID protocols that combine standard practice with community policies: guests will be tested, masks are required for everyone at indoor venues, and proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test will be needed to attend The Paramount Theater events. In addition, the Paramount will feature open captions for screenings and ASL interpreters during stage conversations.
A returning favorite are the drive-in movies at Morven, which include the opening night feature The French Dispatch from Wes Anderson, plus a Halloween night showing of the cult classic, The Addams Family.
The full program will be posted online at 10am September 30, and tickets will be available beginning at noon on Tuesday, October 5, through virginiafilmfestival.org, by calling (434)924-3376, or in person at the UVA Arts box office.
The Fralin Museum’s visual history of skyscrapers includes Joseph Pennell’s etching “The Woolworth through the Arch.” Image courtesy of the Fralin Museum of Art.
Skyscrapers, in our modern imagination, are glitzy glass needles. It wasn’t always that way. The nation’s first towers were ornate and detailed. Intrinsically American, the designs embodied the qualities we like to associate with our national image: We’re can-do, bold, strong, technologically advanced, and audacious.
The Fralin Museum’s new show, “Skyscraper Gothic,” explores the history of these early skyscrapers. The curators, Lisa Reilly from UVA and Kevin Murphy from Vanderbilt, have brought together a wonderfully comprehensive assortment of prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, toys, models, illustrations and decorative arts to showcase the prevalence of both the Gothic style and the skyscraper motif in contemporaneous culture.
In the early 20th century, Gothic style was seen as enduring, with the authority of time and religion backing it up. The architects most certainly saw a connection between the lofty towers of the office buildings they were designing and the soaring quality of medieval cathedrals. They also must have felt a strong connection to the medieval builders who, like them, were engaged in engineering innovations, building their structures as high as possible, minimizing load on walls with flying buttresses and, in the case of the late Gothic, reducing masonry to the barest minimum to allow for large expanses of stained glass.
At the same time, early skyscrapers were shaped by less idealistic forces, like municipal regulations: One of the signature features of the original skyscrapers is the step-like setback profile. Those setbacks were incorporated to conform to a 1916 New York City zoning ordinance requiring light and air to reach the sidewalks. This distinctive design element was absorbed into skyscraper iconography and widely replicated.
Several works in the show highlight the vital role of the construction workers who put the buildings together. The structures on which they toiled captured the public’s imagination, and so did the workers themselves. The metalworkers’ feats of strength and derring-do—balanced on girders hundreds of feet up—were the stuff of legend, embodying the distinct male energy and bravado of the skyscrapers themselves.
Louis Lozowick’s “Above the City” and Harry Sternberg’s “Riveter” both position their subjects on girders at dizzying heights. In the latter, a red girder juts dramatically out toward the viewer, enhancing the tension and force within the composition. You can feel the effort the figure is expending with his machine. It’s a theatrical image, rendered in highly-keyed yellow, scarlet, and blue. The man’s face is obscured by the riveter, and he is positioned in a monumentalized fashion against the city—an everyman worker and symbol of masculine power.
Charles Turzak’s “The Driller” captures the subject’s strength and determination. Jangled buildings in the background and a cartoonish halo of wobbly lines surrounding the figure convey the teeth-jarring vibration of the drill with droll humor.
The selection of prints, drawings, paintings, and photographs provide just the right backdrop, orienting us in the environment of these early 20th century cities. In several, artists use steam to convey the furious activity of the industry that built and sustained these great metropolises. Examples include Thomas Hart Benton’s “Construction,” Henry Reuterdahl’s “Commerce and Seapower,” Sears Gallagher’s “Manhattan Skyline,” and Samuel L. Margolies’ “Babylon.”
The first modern art movement in America, Precisionism, which celebrated man-made objects and technologies, is well represented in the exhibition as well. You can see the cool hard-edged detachment characteristic of the Precisionist School in Clare Leighton’s “Breadline, New York,” Louis Lozowick’s “Above the City,” Zama Vanessa Helder’s “34th Street Skyline,” Jon Whitcomb’s “Urban Landscape” Howard Norton Cook’s “Chrysler Building,” and Leo Rabkin’s “Untitled (Spirit of Progress, Skyscrapers and liners).”
With their velvety blacks and subtle light effects, Samuel Gottscho’s “Radiator Tower (at Night)” and Russ Marshall’s “Penobscot Noir” are gorgeous, lush photographic images that evoke a moody, brooding city. Don Walker’s “Downtown Detroit Enveloped in Fog” uses atmosphere conditions for dramatic effect, too.
Other photographs provide more visual information about the buildings and their settings. Samuel Kravitt’s “Aerial View of the Empire State Building” and Ilse Bing’s “View of Lower Manhattan” give us a sense of what New York looked like and the scale of the skyscrapers in relation to their surroundings.
The everyday objects on display reveal how skyscrapers functioned as icons. The buildings’ influence seeped into nearly every corner of American culture. Among the treasures on display are a flapper’s beaded purse with skyscraper motif, a number of children’s toys, from board games to building blocks, and a dazzling chrome weight and height scale and maple bookshelf that both ape the skyscraper form.
A great deal of thought has been put into the exhibition design. Handsome banners of the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, and the Woolworth Building hang above the stairs in the foyer to greet visitors. The banners work with the steel gray color used on the walls to set the tone for the rooms. The pedestal for “Chrysler Building Souvenir Building” is cut to resemble the building’s shape, and vintage postcards of famous skyscrapers are positioned on an outline of the United States, helping visitors visualize where the buildings are located. Even the elevator doors and interior are sheathed in an intricate Art Deco motif, which also makes an appearance on one gallery wall. All this produces an ambience that replicates, with great élan, the cool elegance of the iconic structures themselves.
The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative 209 Monticello Rd. “Dispatches From The Outpost” features Jennifer Almanza’s Old World collections and contemporary pieces, including glass, carved wood, shells, metal, and scavenged items, which showcase evidence of the existence of rare cryptozoological and alien lifeforms. Opens October 1.
The Center at Belvedere 540 Belvedere Blvd. “A New Rhythm” highlights work from 14 artists, including Sara Gondwe, Julia Kindred, Randy Baskerville, and more. Opens October 7.
Joan Dreiser at The Center at Belvedere.
Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “Pandemonium: Postcards from the Edge” invited artists from all over the world to paint, draw, or mark up postcards to illustrate what we’ve all been through since the start of the pandemic. Opens October 1.
Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd. “A Colorful Mountain Life,” acrylic and oil paintings by Lori Leist. Meet the artist at 1pm on October 9.
Crozet Arts and Crafts Festival Crozet Park. Now in its 41st year, the festival welcomes over 120 artists, whose work includes jewelry, leather, art, photography, ceramics, sculpture, glass, and more. October 9-10.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Music for the Eyes,” works by felt maker Janice Stegall Seibert. Opens October 1.
The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Skyscraper Gothic” investigates the role of European Gothic architecture in 20th-century America through art.
Gallery at Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “The Route,” by Prolyfyck Run Crew member Mike Ryan, features representations of the crew’s mantras, the lines run, and the energy encountered. Opens October 1. Artist talk on October 28.
The Garage 100 E. Jefferson St. Photographer Matt Eich and poet and musician Doug Van Gundy present “Come As You Are,” a projection/poetry reading about their time together in Webster County, West Virginia. Opens October 1.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “Robert Reed’s Charlottesville” features works exploring the city through the eyes of the late Robert Reed. Through December 31.
Robert Reed at Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Boomalli Prints and Paper” showcases art by the Aboriginal Australian art cooperative Boomalli, and “Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu” is a sampling of works from Papunya Tula artists. Outdoors, “Breathe With Me: A Wandering Sculpture Trail” is on display through October 17, and features pieces by students of sculptor Bill Bennett.
Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. Recent works from the collaborative team The Printmakers Left. Through October 10.
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Maker’s Show.” On the first floor, “Life Drawing,” and on the second floor, “ABSTRACTS.” Through November 21.
New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Situated Knowledge,” a new exhibition of sculpture by Marisa Williamson, Sandy Williams IV, and Patrick Costello, three artists who’ve spent formative years in Charlottesville. Opens October 1.
Northside Library 705 Rio Rd. In the lobby, Natalie Kohler’s paintings, which were done using sustainably harvested pigments. In the Quiet Room, landscape paintings by Nita Phillips.
PVCC Gallery 501 College Dr. In the North Gallery, “smoke or shadow,” animations by Jonah Tobias. In the South Gallery, the Annual Faculty Exhibition.
Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. Kristen Peyton’s painting series, “Ordinary Time.”
Kristen Peyton at Quirk Gallery.
The Ruffin Gallery 179 Culbreth Rd. “Wild Whimsey,” hand-cut and ornately layered installations by Emily Moores.
Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “how strange it is to be anything at all,” by Josh Dorman. In the Dové Gallery, Caitlin McCormack and Dance Doyle’s “Dirty Mirror.” Through November 19.
Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “A Whisper in the Night,” paper-cut and woven works by Sri Kodakalla.
Unitarian-Universalist Church 717 Rugby Rd. “Fancy and Carefree,” paintings by Sara Gondwe, on view digitally.
Sara Gondwe at Unitarian-Universalist Church.
Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Is This The Place?” features works by Liz Zhang and Natalie Romero. Through October 30.
WTJU 2244 Ivy Rd. “We Hope This Art Finds You Well,” a community arts time capsule that features work made during the pandemic by several artists, including Eze Amos, John D’earth, Sri Kodakalla, and Harli Saxon. Open Friday and Saturday by appointment, through mid-November.
True blood: After a year of outdoor and virtual productions, Blackfriars Playhouse roars back to life with Macbeth at the center of its fall season. Shakespeare’s renowned drama dives into the dark underbelly of politics, war, and ambition, plus a coven of meddling witches whose incantations have caused centuries of thespians to consider the play cursed — so much so that they won’t utter the title, and refer to it as “the Scottish play.”
Through 11/26, $33-37, 7:30pm. American Shakespeare Center, 10 S. Market St. americanshakespearecenter.com.
Young climate activists held a strike at the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall last week. Staff photo.
Call to action
Two years ago, Charlottesville City Council committed to cutting the city’s greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Yet to many local climate activists, the city has done very little so far to meet these goals.
To push the city government to take immediate, concrete action against climate change, teen activist Gudrun Campbell led a youth climate strike at the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall last week. Joined by around two dozen students of all ages, Campbell, a freshman at Charlottesville High School, called on the city to invest in its transit system and reduce reliance on single-occupancy vehicles, specifically by increasing bus service, building more covered bus stop shelters, electrifying its bus fleet, and increasing housing density.
“The bus system is not reliable. It only comes once an hour, and it’s not green,” said Campbell. “In Charlottesville, there’s a real focus on getting individual people to take action on climate change…but we really need to have a focus on transit and making sure our solutions to the climate crisis are equitable.”
Campbell, who founded Charlottesville Youth Climate Strike in 2019, also demanded that city schools fund green infrastructure, like solar panels, and work toward carbon neutrality, especially as plans to renovate Buford Middle and Walker Upper Elementary schools move forward.
“The schools are going through really extensive renovations, but so far in those conversations we haven’t really seen anything about making the project green,” said Campbell. “It really is a big opportunity to take steps towards fighting climate change in our city.”
Carrying a variety of colorful, homemade signs, the young protesters took turns leading chants calling for clean energy and green transit, while parents and community members joined in. Campbell passed around a petition for participants to sign to show their support for the strike’s demands.
“We really want to show the City Council that we’re listening, we’re watching, and we need them to act now,” said Campbell.
School reconfiguration moves ahead
Image courtesy of City of Charlottesville.
On Thursday, the Charlottesville School Board formally voted to request that the city set aside $75 million for a public school reconfiguration project that will see fifth graders stay at elementary schools and sixth graders head to Buford. The vote is a major step forward for a project that’s been in the works for a decade.
The majority of the reconfiguration’s price tag would go toward renovating Buford. Local architecture firm VMDO has been tasked with leading the project, and has released a variety of preliminary renderings of what the new Buford could look like. City Council will discuss the next steps at Monday’s meeting.
“I know what this can do for our students, and faculty, and the entire community here. It will be transformative to the landscape of the arts.”
—UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa, after the school announced a $50 million donation for a new performing arts center
In brief
Fraternity brothers indicted
Eleven VCU fraternity brothers have been indicted in connection with the death of Adam Oakes, a 19-year-old VCU student who died from alcohol poisoning after a fraternity initiation ritual in February. All 11 have been charged with misdemeanor hazing and three have been charged with counts of giving alcohol to a minor. Oakes’ death sparked a campus-wide review of Greek life at VCU, and resulted in the expulsion of Delta Chi from campus. His family members say they’d like to see the Virginia General Assembly consider legislation to make hazing a felony.
All aboard
Photo courtesy of Ralph Northam.
Virginia’s train revolution is chugging down the tracks. Over the weekend, Governor Ralph Northam and a handful of other officials boarded the new early-morning Richmond-to-D.C. Amtrak, which leaves the state capitol at 5:35am and arrives in Washington at 8:22am. Work is currently underway on a $3.7 billion plan to improve the train system throughout the state, including in central Virginia, though local service expansion is still a long way off.
Confederate statues up for grabs
Charlottesville is listening to offers from anyone who wants to acquire its statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the city announced last week. The statues are currently “disassembled” and tucked away on city property. The deadline for acquisition proposals is October 15. City Council will then vote on whether any of the offers will be accepted.
“It’s great and a little crazy,” says Charlottesville writer Jocelyn
Nicole Johnson about the acclaim she’s getting for
her first book. Photo: Eze Amos.
Charlottesville writer Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s first book is getting a lot of buzz. She’s earned accolades from acclaimed authors, like Colson Whitehead, who called My Monticello “a badass debut by any measure—nimble, knowing, and electrifying.” It’s a Kirkus Prize finalist, and a Netflix adaptation is already in the works.
“It’s great and a little crazy,” says Johnson, whose book of five short stories and a novella comes out October 5.
Although Johnson taught art in local schools during the 20 years she’s lived in Charlottesville and says teaching “is a love of mine,” this is not her first time putting pen to paper. “I’ve been writing for a really long time,” she says. “I’ve been down this road before” trying to get a work published.
Locals will recognize many details in her stories. In the title novella, “My Monticello,” residents of First Street, which is around the corner from where Johnson lives, flee violent white supremacists by riding a JAUNT bus to Monticello. “That story absolutely was influenced by August 12,” says Johnson.
The JAUNT bus is driven by Da’Naisha Love, a UVA student who is a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
“It’s a time of unraveling,” says Johnson. “The grid has gone down. There’s unspecified environmental trouble.”
And armed white men cruise through the city in trucks, carrying burning torches and shouting “ours!” The scene recalls the summer of 2017, when the Ku Klux Klan came to Charlottesville and the deadly Unite the Right rally followed. “It was disturbing and really troubling,” says Johnson.
Locals will recognize many details in Johnson’s stories, including Monticello, where First Street residents flee to escape violent white supremacists. Photo: Jack Looney.
After that summer, the city and the nation began discussing the history of race and racism in Charlottesville. During the 20th century, the city erected statues of Confederate generals, closed schools to avoid integration, and razed Vinegar Hill in the name of urban renewal. The period after the summer of 2017 “was a time of reflection for me,” Johnson says.
The story “Control Negro,” published in The Best American Short Stories of 2018, contains an incident in which a black UVA student is handcuffed and bloodied on the Corner. It was “definitely a reaction” to Martese Johnson’s arrest by ABC officers in 2015, says Johnson. She calls it a “Frankenstein story about who gets to claim America, who gets to be safe here.” Seeing a UVA student “bullied” by ABC agents made her think, “That could be my kid or someone I knew.”
Johnson sees connections between white supremacy and the environment. “I believe the identities we bring and how we treat others is absolutely connected to how we treat the environment,” she says. “I’m worried about all of it, honestly.”
Her stories “think broadly about the idea of home,” she says. “Who gets to claim America economically, who gets to afford to be safe, and what’s going to be left to claim if we don’t take care of the Earth.”
One of those stories, “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse,” is written in the form of a list: “Check your credit score with that app on your phone when you bolt awake in the middle of the night. Scroll to see how swiftly the Amazon burns. Scroll to see how many hundreds of species have been lost or consumed within the last twenty-four hours.”
“I have crazy to-do lists,” chuckles Johnson. “I have to make side lists and then I put post-its on that.” It seemed natural to her to make a list when buying a house. “And your anxieties creep into that list and then your desires creep in.”
UVA English professor Lisa Woolfork is teaching My Monticello in a graduate class on contemporary African American literature this semester. “Jocelyn’s writing is dynamic yet precise, affirming as much as it disrupts,” says Woolfork. “I especially appreciate the local context that she shapes with such a deep imaginative complexity. And even as her work has a strong local connection, there are ways that her stories illustrate meaningful, if difficult, truths that resonate far beyond Charlottesville.”
Esquire named My Monticello to its best books of fall 2021, and calls Johnson “an electric new literary voice” and “an emerging master of the short story form.” (Esquire also adds another Charlottes-villian’s work to that list: Lincoln Michel’s The Body Scout.) My Monticello made Time magazine and Chicago Tribune lists, and it’s still early in the best-books season.
The day before Johnson spoke with C-VILLE, she was nominated for the Kirkus Prize, where she finds herself in competition with Colson Whitehead’s new book, Harlem Shuffle. And LeVar Burton and Aja Naomi King will narrate the audiobook of My Monticello.
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s My Monticello has been named one of Esquire magazine’s best books of fall 2021.
“Let’s just say it’s exceeding my expectations,” says Johnson.
Her current agent—her third—”really loves short stories,” which Johnson says is rare in the publishing world, where the novel “is considered the gold standard.” Johnson decided to make her collection of stories about Virginia, and “got a ton of interest.” She ended up with a two-book deal with Henry Holt/Macmillan, which “made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Says Johnson, “It’s been this really long, long journey. I turned 50 this year. I think it’s kind of funny I’m going to be this debutante.”
But she seems to have known all along she’d be a writer. A photo of her as a child on a card is captioned, “This is the author. She was 7 when she made this.”
Laughs Johnson, “I especially like that I wrote it in the third person.”
Her book tour will be mostly virtual, with local events at The Haven and Monticello, the latter of which of course figures prominently in the novella. Perhaps Monticello will carry her book—disruptive, challenging, and unusual as it is—in its gift shop?
Says Johnson, “That’s my goal.”
New Dominion Bookshop and WriterHouse will host an in-person launch of My Monticello October 8 at 7pm at The Haven.
Denver Riggleman was among the panelists at UVA’s Democracy Biennial event over the weekend. Courtesy of Denver Riggleman.
By Kristin O’Donoghue
Tired of government regulations standing in the way of his wife’s whiskey distillery, Denver Riggleman decided to enter “the belly of the beast” and run for public office.
Riggleman hoped to help understand the rule-making processes and regulations that affect small businesses. “We need people who understand how that dance happens,” he said at UVA’s Democracy Biennial conference over the weekend.
Riggleman was one of a dozen panel participants at the opening event of UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs’ two-day conference. UVA has invested a lot in the study of democracy: The school hosts The Miller Center of Public Affairs, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the Center for Politics, the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, the Democracy Initiative in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, and, most recently, the $50 million Karsh Institute for Democracy.
Friday’s panel was entitled Democracy and Capitalism. The event featured five CEOs, two UVA professors, two former presidential cabinet members, the mayor of Champaign, Illinois, the leader of a Chicago-based Muslim charity, and Riggleman.
University Provost Liz McGill introduced the roundtable event, proclaiming that the University of Virginia is “uniquely positioned” to be a leader in combating disinformation and repairing our fractured democracy.
Panelists were asked to share their thoughts on whether democracy in practice could live up to its rhetorical aspirations.
Tom Perez, Barack Obama’s secretary of labor and the chair of the Democratic National Committee, pushed against the idea that government and business interests were at odds with one another.
“When we move away from the false choice dynamic, we can really improve our democracy,” Perez said. “As long as we live in a world of false choices, it’ll be harder to solve civil rights challenges, income inequality, and climate challenges.”
Robert Bruner, moderator and dean emeritus of the Darden School of Business, said that government should begin at the “ground level,” adding that “success begins with an understanding of the customer. Democracy is messy and capitalism can be turbulent, but each delivers profound benefits to society.”
Riggleman said that after working in Congress, he gained “a new appreciation for how government and markets can work together.”
“I’m also always going to err on the side of the companies and what they have to endure,” the former Republican legislator continued.
Carolyn Miles, former president and CEO of Save the Children and current special advisor and executive fellow at Darden, said she sees hope in Darden students who demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental, social, and governance initiatives.
Darden professor R. Edward Freeman said that it’s possible to create a system that allows businesses to be both sustainable and successful, but that the country’s policymakers have to “see the need to do it.”
UVA students lambaste Lawn poster regulations
“I think without freedom of speech and open inquiry, you just can’t have a functioning university,” says Emma Camp, a UVA student who lives on the Lawn.
The doors of UVA’s Lawn rooms have become the latest stage for campus free-speech debates. Last year, a student hung a floor-to-ceiling “Fuck UVA” sign on her Lawn room door. That prompted the university to pass new regulations limiting the size of what students are allowed to display on the hallowed Lawn. This week, Camp hung a poster criticizing the poster regulations, and the school’s facilities management team took it down.
The new rules require all signage to be affixed to two message boards on the Lawn doors. Some of the boards are less than 8.5 inches wide, making it impossible to hang a regular sheet of paper.
Noah Strike hung an advertisement for a Planned Parenthood volunteer opportunity on his door last week. Soon after, facilities management asked him to either remove the poster or trim it to fit his 7-inch message board. Strike cut the edge off the paper and hung it back up.
“It was very confrontational,” he says. “We got a knock on the door and they told us we had to take stuff down, and they refused to leave until we did.”
Camp knew she was breaking the rules when she affixed a large sign with the full text of the First Amendment on her door on September 17. But she felt it was important to point out the hypocrisy of the new policy. “When students use freedom of expression in a way they don’t like, the reaction is to limit speech,” she says. “And to me that’s deeply hypocritical.”—Amelia Delphos
Two distinct factions have emerged in the heated discussion around Charlottesville’s zoning laws. Some city residents say the latest proposed land use map goes too far, and that the construction of apartment buildings and shops would have deleterious effects on what are currently single-family neighborhoods. Others say the map doesn’t do enough to open up exclusive neighborhoods for new development.
New data compiled by Planning Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg offers a clear illustration of who’s advocating for what at this point in the process.
Letters asking the Planning Commission not to allow more dense housing in single-family neighborhoods almost all came from the owners of Charlottesville’s most expensive homes. Meanwhile, a campaign asking the map to allow for “a range of housing types accessible across income levels” came from homeowners who own homes of more representative value, including a large proportion of renters.
The latest draft of the land use map was released on August 30, ahead of a Planning Commission meeting on August 31. Between September 5 and September 14, Stolzenberg’s data shows that the Planning Commission received 150 emails from people who wanted the land use planning process to slow down, because they oppose what they see as “blanket up-zoning.”
More than 100 of those people submitted a form letter. “I support the stated objective of providing affordable housing,” the form letter reads, “but do not believe that the extensive changes these documents would make to our neighborhoods would have a significant impact on affordability.”
The emailers say that allowing for increased housing density in certain areas “would destroy much in our city that makes it a unique and special place to live,” and are concerned that the adoption of the plan would lead to “wholesale changes to the content and character of neighborhoods throughout the city.”
Using Charlottesville’s public Geographic Information System, which catalogs the names of property owners in the city and lists the assessed value of every property, Stolzenberg was able to match each emailer with the value of the home they own.
The median value of a home in Charlottesville is $330,000. The median value of the homes owned by anti-upzoning email writers is $730,000.
The vast majority of these anti-upzoning emails—80 percent—came from people who own homes in the top 20 percent of value in the city—homes valued above half a million dollars.
And 20 percent of the anti-upzoning emails came from people who own homes valued at $1.1 million or more.
Fifty-seven percent of Charlottesville residents are renters, but the 150 anti-upzoning emailers included 144 homeowners. Sixty-nine of those 150 emailers live in the tony Barracks/Rugby neighborhood, and another 20 live in North Downtown.
On the other side, Stolzenberg also received 151 emails between September 5 and September 10 advocating for even greater density than the most recent version of the land use map would allow.
More than 100 of those emailers submitted a form letter written by a group called Livable Cville. The Livable Cville writers ask that the planning commission allow 3.5-story buildings, four-unit dwellings, townhouses, and rowhouses through almost all of the city. “This will help ensure it is spatially and financially feasible for affordable multi-family homes to be built,” the letter reads.
The city should also “allow small commercial uses, such as corner stores, throughout the city,” the letter argues. “If we want walkable, bikeable, vibrant, human-scale neighborhoods, that will require retail services in every neighborhood.”
Stolzenberg used the same method to create a general profile for the Livable Cville emailers. Just 88 were confirmed homeowners; Stolzenberg says that “most of the others are likely renters—many explicitly said so, while the others don’t appear in city property records.”
The large proportion of renters who wrote to support the Livable Cville email already means the campaign is more economically representative of the city than the group who sent anti-upzoning emails.
Among the homeowners who participated in the Livable Cville campaign, the median home value is $370,000—not too far from the median home value in the city. Half of the homeowners who wrote to support increased density own homes in the bottom 40 percent of value in the city.
The stark differences between the economic status of the two cohorts is “startling,” Stolzenberg wrote to his fellow planning commissioners on September 12. “It is our job as policymakers to make policy on behalf of all citizens, and therefore it is important to know who we are hearing from, and how they represent or do not represent the citizenry at large…That is what I’ve endeavored to provide with this analysis.”
Correction 9/29: An earlier version of this story misstated the percentage of renters in Charlottesville, and misspelled Rory Stolzenberg’s name.
In his most recent book, Spanish poet Fernando Valverde turns his eye to the United States. Valverde’s America “deconstructs the legacy of empire,” as he explores the country he’s called home since 2014. The former foreign correspondent for El País, now a visiting professor at UVA, unflinchingly tackles legacies of greed and violence, and how they intertwine with American “dysfunctions and ideals.” Join him as he reads his poems in Spanish, while UVA professor Samuel Amago reads English translations.
Friday 10/1, Free, 7pm. New Dominion Bookshop, 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. ndbookshop.com.
Sarandon Elliott, chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at UVA, wants university police to stay out of the Multicultural Student Center and other spaces intended for marginalized students. Photo: John Robinson.
This summer, UVA fourth-year Sarandon Elliott received a call from an unknown number. When she listened to the voicemail later that day, Elliott was shocked to learn who had called her: the University Police Department.
“I just had a few questions in reference to the [Young Democratic Socialists of America] and was hoping you might be able to answer them for me,” said the officer in the voicemail, identifying himself as Lieutenant Michael Blakey. “Please give me a call back.”
Since then, Elliott, co-chair of YDSA’s National Coordinating Committee, claims that UPD has tried to contact and question her several times, even after she told them she does not feel comfortable speaking with police. UPD employees have also come into the Multicultural Student Center and Latinx Student Center, and asked to set up meetings with her and other student organizers, she says.
Earlier this month, Elliott detailed her experiences in an open letter to UVA President Jim Ryan, UPD Chief Tim Longo, and the university community, demanding that the department stop “entering and occupying” spaces that are set aside for Black and brown students. UVA’s Multicultural Student Center “aim[s] to facilitate a student-centered, collaborative space that supports underrepresented and marginalized communities, while cultivating the holistic empowerment of all students,” according to its website.
“I am not publishing this to the university because I am scared—I am writing this because I am furious,” wrote Elliott. “I am Black, working-class, Queer, and a Socialist. Do you know how many people have lost their lives to police violence because they identify with one or more of these identities?”
According to Elliott, UPD’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Manager Cortney Hawkins and Community Engagement Specialist Dani Lawson—who are both Black women—have sought out a meeting with her, both at a student activity fair and by coming to the MSC in person. Students say other officers, including Longo, have also visited the MSC and LSC in plain clothes.
Lawson and Hawkins declined to speak with C-VILLE, but sent a statement defending their attempts to meet with student organizers.
“University Police regularly engage with students…in order to hear their points of view on public safety issues and discuss the UPD’s efforts to maintain a safe and welcoming community on Grounds,” they wrote. “Those conversations are an essential part of developing and maintaining trust between [UPD] and the community.”
“While many individuals hold different points of view, we respect everyone’s apprehensions and willingness to work with UPD,” the officers concluded.
Lawson told The Cavalier Daily that she and Hawkins did not ask to speak specifically with Elliott, and that they talked to every student group at the fair. Elliott says she never got a direct response to her letter.
The disagreement once again reveals the depth of the rift between UVA’s minority students and the institution’s administration.
In 2006, the school arrested 17 activists after they conducted a sit-in in the president’s office to advocate for a living wage for school employees. In 2017, three student activists were also arrested for holding up a banner that read “200 years of white supremacy” at a UVA event. More recently, an article in The Intercept sparked a new round of scrutiny of Longo. While he ran the city’s police force, Longo conducted a DNA program in which his officers stopped Black men on the street at random and swabbed their cheeks to see if their DNA matched that of a serial rapist who was on the lam.
Now, student activists want nothing to do with the police, says Elliott, no ifs, ands, or buts. “[UPD] is masking it as a good faith attempt to build bridges with student organizers and find out what students want,” she says. “But myself and several other organizers have been pretty clear we have [an] abolitionist mindset.”
YDSA member Ceci Cain says she was in the Multicultural Student Center when Hawkins and Lawson came in one day, and that she spoke with them for an hour. The UPD employees asked Cain to set up a meeting with student leaders—including Elliott—and inquired about her issues with UPD and Longo. “It was mostly [Hawkins] talking,” says Cain. “She definitely gaslit me and defended Tim Longo throughout it.”
“At its core, it is a surveillance tactic to have community engagement strategies, for them to be close with students, and know who is doing what organizing,” Cain says. “[UPD] is scared of what students like Sarandon represent, which is real student power, and students with leftist philosophies getting organized.”
If the current models of policing are unsalvageable, what does safety and security look like to these students?
Moving forward, Elliott and Cain hope that UPD will stop coming into the MSC, LSC, and other spaces intended for marginalized students. The organizers also want the university to take YDSA and other organizations’ demands to defund UPD and fire Longo seriously. And they call on more students to take action and get involved in organizations, like YDSA, that work toward abolishing UPD.
In her letter, Elliott addressed the officers directly. “The day you decided to be a part of an industry rooted in white supremacy and criminalization of the multiracial working class,” she wrote, “was the day you decided your presence in those spaces were not only not welcomed but made everyone around you uncomfortable and unsafe.”
