UVA English professor Amber McBride’s We Are All So Good At Smiling is a young adult novel in verse that examines the lasting impacts of trauma while also celebrating the power of friendship and family. Supplied photo.
Inspired by her own experiences with clinical depression and childhood grief, National Book Award finalist Amber McBride published We Are All So Good at Smiling, her second young adult novel in verse, earlier this year.
Though heavy at times in its examination of the lasting impacts of trauma—and complete with content warnings for readers who might not be in a place to handle that heaviness—it’s a book that ultimately celebrates the power of friendship and family, as well as the beauty that is possible through community and healing.
The novel’s protagonist, Whimsy, and her friend Faerry are each magical in their own way, grappling with childhood traumas as well as societal stigmas around mental health, heightened by their experiences of white supremacy and racism as Black teens in contemporary America. The authenticity of their experience is vivid; McBride’s verse shifts nimbly between fantastical, fairy tale-inspired imagery, and rigorous realism, probing experiences of trauma, false narratives of self, and the work of trying to erase the past, which itself can feel like an attempt at magic.
In addition to her novels, McBride teaches English at the University of Virginia, and has two books of poetry—an adult poetry collection as well as a young adult poetry anthology that she is co-editing—due to arrive on shelves next year. The author is also completing a new middle-grade novel in verse that will be out later this year. The prolific writer and imaginative storyteller credits her students with helping inspire her work. “Something about writing for young people always makes me braver, and my students at UVA also really inspired me because they were so open about talking about their feelings during the height of the pandemic,” she says.
McBride reflects candidly on her own process. “During the height of COVID, I witnessed so many people struggling with their mental health, which really was the catalyst for me starting We Are All So Good at Smiling,” she says. “I don’t know that I knew I was ready to write the book—at the time I was in the middle of what turned out to be a three-year depressive episode—but it felt like the thing I needed to do. Perhaps I needed to travel through my own haunted garden along with Whimsy and Faerry.”
Readers of McBride’s acclaimed debut, Me(Moth), will recognize many of the themes explored in We Are All So Good at Smiling. “Hoodoo and magic always show up in my books because it is fundamentally a part of my lived experience,” says McBride. “I am also interested in truth and what that means to different people. Is something true because that is how you remember it? Do we remember aspects of history or reality incorrectly because we can’t handle the truth and what conditions are necessary for us to face the truth? In my books the conditions necessary usually include a … need to feel safe before they can face their truths. I think that is often the case in life.”
Indeed, Hoodoo and magic are strong influences in how Whimsy understands and creates a (tenuous) feeling of safety, drawing on lessons learned from her grandmother and the conjuring skills she shares with her parents. Not to be confused with a religion, McBride describes Hoodoo as “an African American folk magic system that was created when Africans were stolen from their homes, enslaved in America, and told that they could no longer practice their own beliefs. The practice blends herbalism, offerings, and ancestral elevation to bring about good luck and healing.” As seen with Whimsy, Hoodoo is often shared across generations, passed down through families. This is also how McBride began her practice, though she has also continued to build on those foundations, incorporating “tea leaves, tarot, and plants to form connections with [her] ancestors and nature.”
Drawing inspiration from this work, each chapter in We Are All So Good at Smiling is accompanied by a reading of tea leaves or information about one of the many plants used in Hoodoo practices. “I really wanted to use more herbs and plants in this book because they are such useful allies and protectors,” reflects McBride. “Each plant signals what is coming in the chapter [and] the same for the tea leaves—it all foreshadows.”
Fairy tales also play an integral role in shaping the story, influencing the imagery employed throughout, and supplying characters who play important roles in the Garden of Sorrow that Whimsy conjures as a way of working through her depression and grief. “When it came to writing about depression, I knew folklore and fairy tales had to be included because they all represent a universal truth at the core,” McBride says.
“I also wanted to show that no one, not even Baba Yaga or Anansi the spider, is immune to depression. It is not something to be embarrassed about,” says McBride. “Mental health [is] a topic that I am extremely passionate about because of my own experiences, but also because of the continued lack of access to resources for those who need help. We don’t have time for taboo and stigma, we need to start talking more openly about depression and I hope this book facilitates some of these conversations.”
Adam Driver comes down to Earth in the science fiction action thriller 65. Image courtesy of Sony.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 65 is a lean, tight science fiction adventure—an exceedingly simple survival story. Don’t expect anything new or revolutionary. But at its own pulp level, it’s an engrossing—and at times, touching—film.
Spaceship pilot Mills (Adam Driver) leaves on a two-year exploratory mission that comes with a massive raise to pay for his daughter Navine’s (Chloe Coleman) grave and unspecified illness. Mid-voyage, asteroids unexpectedly pelt his ship and he’s forced to crash-land on an unknown planet that is actually Earth during the Cretaceous period. This location isn’t saved for some hackneyed climactic revelation—the opening title card reveals in full: “65 Million Years Ago Prehistoric Earth Had a Visitor.”
All of Mills’ passengers die in the landing, save one: Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), a young girl around his daughter’s age. Neither one speaks the other’s language, and together, they must weave their way to a functional escape pod through a primordial forest teeming with agile prehistoric predators.
Despite 65’s simplicity, it’s surprisingly enjoyable. It deserves an award for running only 93 minutes when most current movies self-indulgently ramble on interminably. Where the film really shines is in its humanistic respect for themes that really matter: courage, family, loyalty, ingenuity, and selflessness. With so much recent fare bludgeoning the audience with wearying nihilism, a straightforward tale of essentially sympathetic, intelligent characters seems almost novel. 65 may be pulp, but it’s far more engaging than what passes for art these days.
However, 65 only distinguishes itself intermittently. Its space opera setting diminishes some of the gripping quality that Beck and Woods brought to the scripts of A Quiet Place and its first sequel. Those films are echoed here on certain levels—an adult shepherding a child through a potentially deadly maze of monsters—and it exceeds viewer expectations. But the Quiet Place films were also consistently more potent, partly because, in their fantastic setting, they were still closer to the mundane world.
A major plot point that somewhat undercuts 65’s storyline is Mills’ initial negligence that kills nearly all his passengers. Not enough is made of that pivotal fact, and it tarnishes his character’s likability. 65 also has some notable plot contrivances that can be overlooked, but other major plot points (containing spoilers) become almost silly.
On a technical level, 65 delivers throughout. The dinosaur effects, both practical and CG, are convincing and, occasionally, startlingly effective. As is often the case nowadays, the other visual effects, costumes, and production design are all praiseworthy, while the storyline is the thinnest ingredient. It was shot in Oregon, Louisiana, and Ireland in well-chosen, gorgeous, primeval-looking locations. Driver and Greenblatt’s performances are fine.
65 may not be exceptional, but despite its flaws, it’s decent enough to recommend. It’s also fairly family-friendly. Sam Raimi produced it, but it cleaves closer to his superhero movies and doesn’t venture into Evil Dead territory. The bottom line: If you don’t approach 65 with high expectations, you might be pleasantly surprised that it’s a precarious journey worth taking.
Alternative country artist Eliza Mary Doyle’s latest studio album, Pretty Strange, is a 10-song summation of her illustrious 20-year career. Recorded live at Sidekick Studios in Nashville, the album opens with driving banjo, catchy melodies, and pedal steel licks. The single “Them Boys” is a high-energy, banjo-heavy tune written after Doyle’s car broke down while she was visiting Music City in 2015, causing a spontaneous extended stay. The Saskatchewan multi-instrumentalist also works as a professional session musician and toured with folk-bluegrass ensemble The Dead South for two years.
Move and groove at Ellington’s Evening of Music and Poetry, a celebration of the arts through spoken word poetry, R&B, and soul music. Grammy-nominated vocalist and producer Stokley headlines a stacked line-up of performers, including singer-songwriter and poet Saul Williams and turntablist DJ Spark, with openers Jade Novah and Nathaniel Star. Known for his past work with Prince and Janet Jackson, Stokely’s sophomore solo release, Sankofa, features a bouncy duet with H.E.R. and two songs with Snoop Dogg.
Saturday 4/8. Free, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. dei.virginia.edu
Try to keep up at The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon, a rollicking production that attempts to tell all 206 Brothers Grimm fairy tales in one act. Two narrators put a comedic spin on classic and lesser-known stories, including Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Faithful Johannes. These fractured fairy tales keep the original endings intact while mixing things up with a modern twist. The PVCC Drama Club production, helmed by directors Gaby Felipe and Emily Thomas Clarke, is full of family-friendly, madcap fun and audience interaction.
Friday 4/7 & Saturday 4/8. $5, 7:30pm. Main Stage Theatre, PVCC’s V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. pvcc.edu
A late-February 82-degree day followed by a stretch of mornings in the frosty 30s? Yep, we’re talking about winter 2023 in central Virginia. After a mild several months (except for that low of 6 degrees in December), it seems like any weather event or temperature is possible. Does this mean we’ll have a scorching summer? Sadly, there is no good way to predict that, says Robert Davis of UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences. The only sure thing is weather variations, twice a year.
Weather variations
Both spring and fall transition times are when you would expect big changes, Davis says.
The Northern Hemisphere is warming up in spring, but arctic air blasts from the north hit our area and often late winter and early spring nights are very cold. “So we are getting into the season where you can have cold front passages that are strong. There will be several cold days before it warms up again.” Morning frosts can be continual.
Davis says it’s difficult to comment on whether we are seeing greater variability than in the past. “You can’t look at any particular event and say, ‘That is unusual,’” he explains.
Michael McConkey, owner of Edible Landscaping in Afton, agrees that central Virginia weather is up and down, but is sanguine about the struggle involved. “Peach and plum trees here have always been subject to late frost and changes in the weather, mostly because they evolved as arid Persian plants,” he says. Some trees from Japan and China, however, do well here because of climate similarities. Examples are persimmons and jujube, which is a popular fruit in China, brown on the outside and white on the inside, with a sweet apple taste.
“Everyone growing fruits is aware of weather patterns, and they have changed dramatically” for fruit growers, says McConkey.
Ken Bezilla of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange agrees, and says the variations are hardest on fruit growers. Plum trees, often first to flower among trees here, can amount to “the annual sacrifice to the frost gods,” he says.
In general, as the entire planet warms, we would expect less variability overall, Davis says. That may seem counterintuitive. In many parts of the U.S., as the country warms up, the transitional temperature swings are not as great.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps monthly records of high and low temperature for counties in each state. Notably, Albemarle County was at its warmest ever for the period January to February 2023. According to NOAA, our two-month average was 45.0 degrees Fahrenheit—our warmest-to-date record for those months together, and 9.8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 1901 to 2000 mean of 35.2 degrees Fahrenheit for those months together.
Pam Dawling, a farmer at Twin Oaks Community in Louisa, has been tracking several first appearances of the spring season over a 20-year period. Her data on phenology, the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, is interesting. Many plants over the past 15 years have made a first appearance in three different months, often March, April, and May. Late frost for the year ranges from April 8 to as late as May 11, with an average date of April 29, Dawling’s records show.
Climatologist and biometeorologist Davis reminds, “I would be very reticent to make anything out of the variations other than this has been a strange winter, and these are the kinds of changes we would often see in the spring.”
Michael McConkey, owner of Edible Landscaping, thinks growers are well-equipped to handle sudden shifts in weather. Photo by Eze Amos.
Climate change in the region
NASA defines weather as the conditions of the atmosphere over a short period of time, while climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.
How has our climate changed over time? There are explanations thanks to scientists, farmers, and others who keep track.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency says overall that our state has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century (from a 2017 report). Carbon dioxide levels and other gases that keep heat close to the ground account for higher temperatures, the EPA notes. “Evaporation increases and the atmosphere warms, which increases humidity, average rainfall, and the frequency of heavy rainstorms in many places—but contributes to drought in others.”
The EPA reports that our state can expect more energy usage, because electricity consumption is on track to increase over time because of additional air conditioning. “Seventy years from now, temperatures are likely to rise above 95 degrees Fahrenheit approximately 20 to 40 days per year in the southeastern half of Virginia, compared with about 10 days per year today,” the EPA says.
Another indicator of climate change in our region is that our region’s U.S. Department of Agriculture hardening zone officially changed. SESE’s Bezilla says we have moved from winters of zone 6b (-5 to 0 degrees Fahrenheit/-20.6 to -17.8 degrees Celsius) to zone 7a (0 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit/-17.8 to -15 degrees Celsius) as temperatures rose over time.
Lettuce is now a year-round crop in this area. “Recently I revised our lettuce schedules, partly to take account of hotter weather arriving earlier in the year, and also to even out the harvest,” writes blogger Dawling, author of Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres.
In another blog post, the Twin Oaks community farmer recorded observations for the future: “I live and farm in the southeast,” Dawling wrote. “Sea level rises and heavy downpours in our region are already obvious. Dangerously high temperatures, higher humidity, new pests and diseases are moving in. … The growing season is ten days longer than it was in the 1960s.”
For the 48-month period from September 2018 to August 2022, Albemarle County was at its warmest, with a value of 47.0 degrees Fahrenheit compared with a value for the mean of 43.5 degrees Fahrenheit for the same 1901 to 2000 period, per the NOAA charts. (This tied for warmest with the same period ending in 2020.)
Trees in Charlottesville bloomed early during winter’s patches of warm weather. Photo by Stephen Barling.
Effects on agriculture and animals
Local growers work hard to protect their fragile plants. For example, Crown Orchard has installed wind turbines at its farms, and Barboursville Vineyard has put in wind machinery to keep cooler air from settling onto its future produce.
Sometimes the fight can seem futile, however.
Susan Smith Ordel, a longtime local gardener, says, “I have noticed just being outside all of the time, the nights in August would cool off. You felt watering was doing some good. Now the plants don’t get a break” from evaporation.
Adaptation is a solution. Crown Orchards is taking advantage of more sun with solar panel arrays near Carter Mountain Orchard, on the rooftop of Chiles Peach Orchard in Crozet, and at the production facility in Covesville, the company’s website notes.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange creates huge trial tracts each year to see what grows best, and which plants and seeds do best in particular in Virginia and surrounding states. SESE’s trial fields, based in Mineral, are the launching pad for the 28 new varieties the exchange added to its 2023 listings. Among the new winners are Okinawa Pink okra (from Japan), Greek pepperoncini peppers, Gulag Stars kale (from Russia), and Florida conch southern pea. (The SESE website has a category that central Virginia gardeners might do well to peruse: “Especially well-suited to the Southeast.”)
Spinach is a crop that has become too tender for our hot summers. Bezilla says some spinach varieties make for good planting over the winter.
McConkey says native trees like mulberries and pawpaws do well. Still, many shoppers love their peach, pear, and plum trees, which can be marginal here.
Ordel planted five camellias in her yard that she wouldn’t have touched 10 or 15 years ago, she says. “Usually you think of camellias as being in the deep South, in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, but now we’re starting to be able to see them bloom and thrive here.”
She does mourn a favorite plant that just can’t hack our climate. “Now it is clear we can’t plant hydrangea macrophylla any more” (also called French hydrangea). “The hydrangeas have to have cool nights, and I still have clients asking me for the beautiful blue blooms. We’ve had later frosts, and if the buds don’t get nipped in the spring, the early hot weather either deforms the blooms or keeps them from being realized.”
Winemaker, vineyard, and tasting room owner Michael Shaps can speak to the vagaries of wine production, both with his grapes here at Michael Shaps Wineworks and in Meursault, France, in the Burgundy region. Fortunately, Virginia’s changes are not as dramatic as those he has witnessed in France.
“What I have really noticed in Virginia is the intensity of storms we have seen over the past few years,” Shaps says. The amount of rain and the intensity of storms has been much more severe than in the past 30 years in general, he says. A big fear is hail damage, which has happened at times, but he says is “not significant” for his Virginia vines. The pattern of weather lately has been Gulf of Mexico moisture from the south, rather than storms flowing across the country from the west, he says.
Deforestation, which removes trees that modulate how fast storms move over an area, can also increase storm intensity, Bezilla explains.
On top of that, farmers and growers need to worry about earlier appearances of pests. For example, Dawling’s phenology chart tracks when the harlequin bugs first come out to sip the sap from kale, cabbage, and collards, which has been as early as March 13 for the years 2006 to 2020.
Any year that is warmer earlier may result in extra generations of insects, Bezilla says. This can be detrimental when pests multiply, but also helpful if there are additional pollinating bees.
Ken Bezilla of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange says that spinach can’t take the heat, and some varieties actually plant well in winter. Photo by Irena Hollowell / Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Human hardship
There is proof that weather changes also affect human health. Davis and Kyle Enfield, M.D., who works in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at the UVA School of Medicine, examined 19 years of daily admissions at UVA’s hospital for respiratory reasons. For the first time ever, a measurement called the Acclimatization Thermal Strain Index was applied to human disease. ATSI measures strain on the lung system.
Davis and Enfield learned that there is a definite relationship between seasonal strain stemming from warm, humid air changing to cold, dry air and hospital admissions, on a seasonal scale and on a weekly time scale. Their work, published in 2017 in the International Journal of Biometeorology, showed the adjustment from cold air to warm air didn’t affect health as clearly as during the fall season.
The EPA 2017 report notes that warmer temperatures can also increase the formation of ground-level ozone, a major component of smog. Because ozone can aggravate lung diseases such as asthma, and increases the risk of premature death from heart or lung disease, the EPA and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality have been working to reduce ozone concentrations, which will become more difficult with warming trends.
In 2022, Ordel had her first bout of heat exhaustion because she cannot stay hydrated no matter how much water she drinks. “Even starting early, now I have found that past 2pm it’s just too brutally hot.”
Respiratory difficulties and heat emergencies aside, living with weather changes can cause higher expenses, as air conditioning in longer summers and heating in longer springs extends energy needs.
Ordel’s family depends on a wood stove in their Keswick home. “It was like clockwork for decades that we would start all-day wood in mid-October and go until tax day,” she says. “Now we start full-time fires in the full month of November and go until mid-May, and that’s consistently true now for about five years. It is clear to me there is climate change.”
The camellia flower has migrated up from the Deep South, says gardener Susan Smith Ordel. File photo.
The Piedmont Community Land Trust worked with Stanley Martin and Albemarle County to add an additional 21 homes into the land trust portfolio, with 15 at Spring Hill and six at Avon Park. Supplied photo.
The cost of housing continues to rise, but there is a large desire in the community for steps to be taken to preserve housing for those with lower incomes. That is translating into several large capital expenses throughout the area.
This week, Charlottesville City Council held the first reading of a plan to award the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority $5 million for half the cost to purchase 86 affordable units across the city.
“It is a very strong likelihood that this portfolio will exit affordability if sold on the open market due to the current property values and increased land speculation around the rezoning plan,” said Deputy City Manager Sam Sanders in the staff report.
The units range from a $700-a-month efficiency on West Street to a three-bedroom apartment on Ridge Street that goes for $1,325. To give a sense of scale, the Department of Housing and Urban Development identifies the 2022 fair-market value rent for a studio at $1,024 a month and a three bedroom at $1,562.
The exact details are not yet known, such as where the $5 million will come from and what form it will take. A loan? A grant? But many of the properties will be within areas with more development potential under the future zoning.
The new funding would be on top of the $3 million in the next fiscal year for public housing redevelopment, with more projected in the future. The five-year capital plan also anticipates over $13 million for various subsidized units the Piedmont Housing Alliance is building at Friendship Court and two projects on Park Street.
Albemarle County has invested $3.2 million in Habitat for Humanity’s redevelopment of Southwood Mobile Home Park, and also helped secure $2.25 million in federal funds for site work in the first phase.
Government funding is not the only way to keep homes affordable to people. There’s also the land trust model, where one entity purchases the underlying property and a household purchases the improved structure.
The Piedmont Community Land Trust has worked on several projects in the community and had a portfolio of 30 properties at the end of 2022, according to its annual report.
“The community land trust model is the only permanently affordable homeownership model in the region, and we are able to sustain the affordability of our homes by retaining ownership of the land and our re-sale formula, which includes an appreciation share with our homeowners,” said PCLT Executive Director Shekinah Mitchell.
In late January, the entity purchased a newly constructed three-bedroom house in Avon Park for $243,750. On the same day, an individual paid the land trust $225,000 to become the resident.
The townhouse has a 2023 assessment of $370,500. The Albemarle County Assessor’s office does not consider this a valid sale, so it won’t have an effect on next year’s reassessment.
The land trust has five duplexes on Prospect Avenue that will come on the market this spring and summer.
The land trust model can also benefit from government funding for seed money. The entity received $240,000 from Charlottesville to purchase four lots on Nassau Street for new construction. One of the single-family attached houses has now sold twice with price points of $215,000 in February 2020 and $236,500 in March 2022. The latter transaction was 2.67 percent below the 2022 assessment. The 2023 assessment, however, climbed to $319,000.
Former president Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in late March, which has boosted his popularity among Republican primary voters. He now leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in polls by 30 percent. Photo by Gage Skidmore / CC Flickr.
At the tail end of March, Donald J. Trump became the first U.S. president to be indicted for an alleged criminal offense.
The historic news dropped late on a Thursday afternoon. But over at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, J. Miles Coleman was thinking, “Okay, they couldn’t have waited until Monday?”
Trump’s indictment, both in its dramatic leadup and after its bombshell delivery by the vote of a grand jury, has exploded American politics. It torpedoed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ gains on Trump in primary polls, and made a martyr of the former president that has boosted his popularity among Republican voters. “I think this whole episode shows that [Trump] is very well in his prime,” says Coleman, “at least in terms of driving a media narrative.”
The indictment is the latest development in a years-long investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into hush money allegedly paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with the former president in 2006. To squash a potential tabloid story about this, Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen sent money to Daniels in 2016, which landed Cohen in prison for three years. Cohen said Trump directed him to write the check, and Trump’s reimbursement for his lawyer’s “legal fees” is what prosecutors believe amounts to a falsification of business records—a misdemeanor in New York.
Despite the scandalous nature of this case, Trump has rode this wave of renewed national attention to reclaim the political spotlight. Coleman points to a recent Quinnipiac poll that found that, while the majority of Americans believe criminal charges should bar Trump from running in 2024, 75 percent of Republicans believe that Trump’s charges shouldn’t disqualify him from a shot at a second term. A late-March Fox News poll also showed Trump leading DeSantis by 30 percent among Republican primary voters, up from 15 percent in February.
It’s clear that the spectacle of Trump’s indictment has been a boon for the former president, but that leaves his challengers in a tough spot.
“Those other competitors have to walk this real fine line where if they’re too critical of Trump, they’re gonna have those big names in Trump world say, ‘He’s rooting against us just like the Democrats are.’ Where if you hug Trump too tightly, then it’s like, ‘Well, if he’s so great, why would we want you instead?’” says Coleman. “It’s almost like the Republican candidates haven’t really learned much since 2016.”
Coleman doesn’t consider the New York case to be as serious as Trump’s other case in Georgia—which alleges the former president participated in election interference in 2020. But if Trump shrugs off his charges in Manhattan, that could further secure support for his ’24 run.
“Let’s say we go through with this [case] … and he ends up being acquitted,” he says. “It’s kind of like after his first and second impeachments, where at every rally he’d talk about how he was right and how he was vindicated. That’s something I could see him running with if he’s cleared of this.”
University of Virginia students Aleyna Buyukaksakal and Deniz Olgun lobbied Congress for earthquake relief for Turkey. Photo by Eze Amos.
On February 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, followed by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake the same day—and more than 10,000 aftershocks in the weeks that followed. The devastating quakes killed more than 50,000 people, and left millions homeless.
After helping the University of Virginia’s Turkish Student Association fundraise several thousand dollars for emergency relief, Turkish American students Aleyna Buyukaksakal and Deniz Olgun wanted to do more for the millions of victims. Thinking of the numerous ways the United States could help Turkey recover—both in the short and long term—from the disaster, the classmates decided to lobby Congress for aid.
In the weeks following the earthquakes, the students reached out to several UVA administrators and professors about lobbying, including Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato. Sabato connected the students with the center’s staff, which assisted them in crafting a proposal to present to members of Congress. Meanwhile, Olgun called all of Virginia’s congressional offices, requesting meetings with representatives and senators. Staffers from the offices of Representatives Abigail Spanberger, Morgan Griffith, and Jennifer Wexton, and Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, agreed to meet with the students in Washington, D.C. (None of the Congress members could meet with them personally.)
“There was a congressional staffer [at the center] who was able to give us insight on what we should put into our proposal,” explains Buyukaksakal, a second-year English and neuroscience major. “Deniz and I both did a lot of research.”
On February 28, March 1, and March 2, Buyukaksakal and Olgun met with the staffers, discussing both the humanitarian and fiscal needs in Turkey. In addition to pushing for stronger search and rescue measures, additional rehousing funding, and other humanitarian aid, the pair stressed the need for long-term financial relief. As of March, the U.S. has provided $185 million in aid to Turkey and Syria—however, rebuilding and restoring Turkey’s impacted areas will cost an estimated $80 billion.
“The economic impact of this is so big,” explains Olgun, a second-year neuroscience and computer science major. “All of these people are out of work. … And it’s very expensive to not only put up new buildings [but also] inspect all of the ones that are still standing, to ensure people can return safely.”
“[We proposed giving], in three- to four-year slow-diffuse payments, money to restore buildings, cultural sites, schools, hospitals,” adds Buyukaksakal. “Things that would need rebuilding in the future but aren’t necessarily a part of the emergency funding.”
Sending relief over the years can also help Turkey—one of the most seismically active countries—implement preventative measures, such as building more disaster management centers. The country currently has only 23 centers, each housing up to 270,000 people.
The legislative correspondents and assistants largely reacted positively to the proposal, especially the calls for long-term relief, according to the students. “We did get a couple of comments about congressmen wanting to advocate for this cause,” says Buyukaksakal. However, “we were told mostly that a lot of things couldn’t necessarily be brought up in conversation until [President Biden released his 2024 federal budget] on March 9.”
Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget includes a request for $70.5 billion in discretionary funding for USAID, state department, and other international programs, and for $100 million in Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance funding, which has been used to assist earthquake victims—but the budget does not specifically mention relief for Turkey and Syria.
When asked about Congress’ plans for additional earthquake relief, Legislative Assistant Jooeun Kim said one of Wexton’s “priorities for FY23 [state, foreign operations, and related programs] appropriations is supporting the funding level of $4.7 billion for USAID’s International Disaster Account.”
In a statement to C-VILLE, Kaine expressed general support for assisting earthquake victims. “My heart is heavy for the countless families that have been impacted … and I’m grateful for the Turkish American students at [UVA] who reached out to my team to discuss this important topic,” he said. “The perspectives they shared … underscore why it’s critically important that the United States provides robust emergency aid to Turkey during this difficult time.”
Staffers from Spanberger, Griffith, and Warner’s offices did not respond for comment before press time.
The death and devastation inflicted by the earthquakes hit close to home for both students. While their family members in Turkey were not directly affected by the disaster, many friends of Olgun’s family were displaced. Buyukaksakal also knows many Turkish American people in her hometown whose families’ homes were destroyed.
“It’s just a feeling of a grand devastation in a country that we both really love that’s made this a really important cause,” says Buyukaksakal.
The students plan to continuously follow up with the staffers they met with, and hope Congress will take steps to provide additional earthquake relief soon.
“If we are able to just move the scales a little bit, even if it’s hard to … say we’re responsible for X amount of funding,” says Olgun, “that is a nice way to have an impact.”
