Author: Brielle Entzminger

For nearly two decades, Virginia’s 5th District has been deep red—a Democrat has not won here since 2008. After last year’s redistricting process, the district is considered competitive, but remains Republican-leaning, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Democrat Josh Throneburg, an ordained minister and small business owner, believes he has what it takes to finally flip the district to blue, and make hardcore conservative incumbent Bob Good a one-term representative.

In 2019, Throneburg—along with his wife, Minhee, and their two daughters, Agnes, 7, and Lucy, 13—moved to Charlottesville from Massachusetts so Lucy, who has dyslexia, could attend a school that better fit her learning needs. Since last year, he and Minhee have owned Nooks & Crannies, an eco-friendly cleaning business.

Throneburg’s fear for his daughters’ futures pushed him to run for Congress.

“I think the trajectory of a lot of things in our country is unsettling—whether that’s our democracy, our climate, racism, and sexism,” says Throneburg. “As the father of two young girls, and both of them are young women of color, you want to make sure that they’re going to have a future that is happy and healthy … I don’t have confidence right now that their future looks that way.”

Throneburg touts his ability to bring people together and work on everyone’s behalf. He believes his years in ministry will help him “have compassion in all kinds of circumstances” in Congress.

“In the church, there’s lots of different people who come from a lot of different backgrounds. …  You don’t care about their politics or anything like that. You just try to serve them as well as you can,” he says. “My opponent has made it very clear that he’s not interested in working with Democrats.” 

As someone who grew up on a farm and as a Republican, Throneburg, who is from a small town in Illinois, has worked throughout his campaign to reach out to and discuss bipartisan issues with voters who may have never considered supporting a Democrat. 

“I’m hoping that there are enough independent and Republican voters who are tired of the toxicity in our political culture … and are looking for someone who will get stuff done,” he adds. “Mr. Good has brought no projects, no money back into the district, and has passed no bills.”

Addressing the climate crisis is among Throneburg’s top priorities. The federal government needs to not only significantly invest in renewable energy sources but also incentivize people to use fossil fuel alternatives, he says. He also wants to improve public transportation, create a progressive corporate tax on carbon emissions, and bring more green jobs to the 5th District and the entire state.

Additionally, Throneburg would prioritize bringing down inflation and getting broadband into every home in the district during his first few months in office.

Throughout his term, Throneburg says he would tackle a variety of pressing issues, most notably the affordable housing crisis and gun violence. He believes Congress should create more programs giving first-time homebuyers access to capital, and restrict large corporations from buying up the majority of the housing stock—“that prices local buyers out, and for renters it really increases the amount they have to pay,” he says. Particularly in the 5th District’s rural areas, he also vows to secure housing and business grants, and upgrade critical infrastructure.

To prevent shootings, “we should have common sense gun safety—that includes simple things like locking up your firearm and ammunition, universal background checks, [and] red flag laws,” says Throneburg. He also supports funding community-based violence intervention and prevention programs.

In the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, Throneburg hopes to address the racial wealth gap, mass incarceration, disproportionate sentencing and use of force, and other racial justice issues. He wants to increase investments in minority communities, by, among other things, offering low or no-interest loans to entrepreneurs of color, as well as federally legalize marijuana.

“We have so many police officers in this country, and many of them do a wonderful job, but there have also been issues,” says Throneburg. We need to “[make] sure that our police departments are adequately funded and trained … to give them the resources they need to more equally dispose of that justice.”

In response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Throneburg supports codifying abortion rights into federal law. And to address the lack of affordable health care across the country, “I’m someone who would support a universal health-care solution,” he says.

To help solve the student debt crisis, Throneburg wants to make community college free for everyone, and expand eligibility for Pell Grants and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, among other reforms. He also promises to push for pay raises for K-12 teachers and funding for school infrastructure upgrades.

As LGBTQ+ rights are attacked in Virginia under Governor Glenn Youngkin, Throneburg says he would work to pass the Equality Act, which would expand federal civil rights laws to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in employment, housing, credit, jury service, public places, and federally funded programs.

Good and Throneburg will square off for the first time in a forum at Hampden-Sydney College on Wednesday, October 26, at 7pm, after Good denied or ignored multiple debate requests from his Democratic challenger. 

“I think Mr. Good was trying to make this as late and unseen as possible,” says Throneburg. “But certainly late is better than never.”

Read part two of C-VILLE’s election coverage here.

Since Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration announced its proposed transgender student policy on September 16, thousands of students, parents of transgender children, and LGBTQ+ activists and supporters across the state have protested against it.

The threat of increased suicides among transgender youth pushed Sigma Omicron Rho, the University of Virginia’s only queer and gender-inclusive fraternity, to take immediate action.

“When we saw these policies, [Sigma Omicron Rho] sat down as an organization and asked ourselves if we would have lived through this policy—and a lot of us weren’t sure. Because a lot of us come out of homes that it would not have been safe for us to be out in those homes,” says third-year student Oliver Lesher, who is transgender. “A lot of us had to wait until college to even begin our transitions.”

“To us, this was a life or death issue,” he adds.

On September 20, Sigma Omicron Rho partnered with three other queer organizations at UVA—the Queer Student Union, Lambda Law Alliance, and oSTEM—to form the Virginia Collegiate Queer Collective, combining their resources, efforts, and numbers to fight the governor’s policy and other anti-queer legislation in the state. Since then, two queer organizations at the University of Richmond have also joined the collective. The group is currently in negotiations with around seven queer organizations at other universities across the state, including George Mason, Christopher Newport, and Virginia State.

UVA has more queer organizations than many other Virginia schools, so “we wanted to use that privileged position to foster a sense of leadership and community,” explains Lesher, VCQC’s outreach director.  

Youngkin’s controversial policy would force transgender students to participate in school programing and use facilities based on the sex they were assigned at birth. School staff would also be prohibited from referring to transgender students by their preferred name and pronouns unless a parent submits legal documentation of their gender identity, and requests in writing that their child’s name and gender be changed on official school records. Even with parental permission, staff would not be required to use a student’s name and pronouns if it goes against their beliefs.

“With these policies, no trans kid will be able to safely live their truth, [or] come out to their families when they’re ready to,” says Lesher. “The idea that these kids now won’t have a safe space at home and at school, it’s devastating.”

Over the past month, the collective has hosted two public comment workshops at UVA for law school and undergraduate students, educating them on the importance of public comments, and providing frameworks for them to use to write their own comment. The group plans to host another workshop at the medical school. 

“Once I think the model policies inevitably get adapted, then we’re also going to start shifting our focus to empowering people to make public comments at school board meetings when model policies are up for adoption at that level,” says Spencer Haydary, VCQC’s legal/policy director and a UVA law student.

Members are currently meeting with LGBTQ+ centers across Virginia—with a focus on those in rural areas that do not receive as much support as those in bigger cities—and planning fundraisers to help provide centers with critical resources, in collaboration with the ACLU, Equality Virginia, Side by Side, and other LGBTQ+ state organizations.

“All of the rights that we have as cisgender gay people are because of the work of Black and brown trans people,” says Haydary. “Governor Youngkin and the Republican party have made it very, very clear that they are going after us one by one as a community—and so we need to stop it here.”

The policy’s 30-day public comment period will end on October 26, after which the state superintendent will decide whether or not to approve the policy.

After more than two years of internal disputes and legislative setbacks, Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Oversight Board has finally delivered an evaluation of its first case.

The board was scheduled to hold its initial hearing in July—but on the day of the hearing, complainant Jeff Fogel, a local attorney, and the Charlottesville Police Department agreed to an alternative dispute resolution, due to Fogel’s claim that two board members were biased against him. After city attorney Lisa Robertson expressed concern over the board’s lack of operating procedures and a facilitator for an ADR, the board and two parties then decided in August to allow PCOB Executive Director Hansel Aguilar to conduct a neutral evaluation of the case.

On September 28, Aguilar issued his evaluation, which determined the CPD did not “thoroughly, completely, and accurately” investigate Fogel’s complaint. “There were elements or investigative tasks missing from the Department’s investigation,” as well as “instances where the objectivity and impartiality of the Department’s investigation could reasonably be called into question,” reads the 63-page report.

Fogel filed his complaint against the CPD in July 2020, after a Charlottesville police officer—identified as Officer Houchens in Aguilar’s report—arrested 36-year-old Christopher Gonzalez, who was lying down on the Downtown Mall. Gonzalez admitted to drinking alcohol, and said he was homeless. Houchens threatened to arrest him for public intoxication unless he left the mall, which Gonzalez refused to do. Houchens tried to handcuff him, but Gonzalez pulled away. Houchens then pinned Gonzalez to the ground, and put him in a headlock for nearly a minute, according to a now-deleted Instagram video. Gonzalez was later charged with assault of a police officer, public intoxication, and obstruction of justice, and was held without bail for almost three weeks at the local jail. Though Gonzalez’s charges were later dismissed, in September 2020 the CPD exonerated Fogel’s allegations of excessive force, and concluded that the allegations of bias-based policing were unfounded.

In Aguilar’s report, he emphasized that his job was not to “reinvestigate” Fogel’s claim, but rather to determine whether the CPD “thoroughly, completely, accurately, objectively, and impartially” investigated whether Houchens assaulted, kicked, and applied a chokehold on Gonzalez, as well as the appropriateness of Houchens’ threat to arrest Gonzalez, his arrest of Gonzalez, and his charging of Gonzalez with assaulting a police officer. During Aguilar’s investigation, he reviewed the unredacted 100-page internal affairs report, third-party videos of the incident, on-the-scene body-worn camera videos, BWC videos of prior encounters officers had with Gonzalez, emergency communication recordings, and calls to witnesses and Fogel. 

During the department’s criminal investigation into Houchens’ use of force and Gonzalez’s resistance to arrest, investigators only interviewed Houchens, and did not refer the case to the commonwealth’s attorney, claiming that no criminal violation took place. “It is unclear how that conclusion was reached,” wrote Aguilar.

In regard to CPD’s administrative investigation into the use of force and arrest, Aguilar argued the department could have better evaluated the “tactical, strategic, and training implications” of the incident, questioning why Houchens did not wait for backup to help de-escalate the situation. He also criticized the department for not interviewing Gonzalez—investigators only made one phone call to his attorney. “Had C.G. been willing to provide a narrative of the event in question, this may have answered key questions regarding his level of intoxication, his resistance to the officer’s actions, and his ‘assault’ on the CPD officer,” wrote Aguilar.

The CPD should have evaluated the appropriateness of Houchens’ threat to arrest Gonzalez “through the lens” of its public intoxication policy—which directs officers to arrest intoxicated people when they “may cause harm” to themselves or others—instead of just its biased-based policing policy, said Aguilar. Investigators also should have better questioned Houchens to determine if his actions were biased.

“I like to give them the opportunity to go sober up or go somewhere,” explained Houchens during an interview with a CPD investigator. “I know that these people don’t have anywhere to go, really anywhere to be. But since I am the mall officer, I get complaints all the time about intoxicated people on the mall. … Once we start getting calls from citizens about it, that’s kind of when it starts to become a problem, but I still will try to get them at least out of the public’s view.”

“Who are ‘these people’ that the officer is referring to?” asked Aguilar. “Was C.G. ‘causing a problem’ other than community members calling in about him? Under what departmental guidance, practice, or procedure is Officer L.H. operating under when he states the need to ‘try to get them at least out of the public’s view’? Is Officer L.H. suggesting that being intoxicated in public is acceptable just if it is not on the downtown mall?”

“It is unclear … how the officer determined C.G. was intoxicated to a degree that the officer believed C.G. could ‘cause harm to himself/herself or others,’” continued Aguilar. 

However, Aguilar agreed with the CPD that “there is sufficient support that the officer had established probable cause to affect the arrest of C.G. in violation of the state’s public intoxication law,” which states that “if any person is intoxicated in public … he is guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor.” He also agreed there was “probable cause to support” Gonzalez being charged for assaulting a police officer. 

“When informed that he was being placed under arrest C.G. stated, ‘let’s do this.’ A reasonable officer … could interpret the underlying behavioral cues of C.G. to be pre-assault indicators,” explained Aguilar. “During the probable cause hearing before the magistrate, C.G. clarified to the magistrate, ‘I was whooping his ass, he wasn’t whooping my ass.’ This admission of guilt [makes] the charge of assault on a police officer an accurate charge.”

Concluding his report, Aguilar provided the CPD with nine recommendations to help increase transparency and accountability. Most notably, he urged the department to consider: “revising the public intoxication general order [to] further guide officers;” “retraining officers [about] the purpose of the public intoxication statute and the options officers have;” “retraining the subject officer on the importance of utilizing backup officers to de-escalate;” and “revisiting how much information is made available to complainants of misconduct.”

Aguilar also suggested that City Council examine the disproportionate impact public intoxication policies have on vulnerable communities; that PCOB take steps to improve its efficiency and credibility; and that the city manager provide the board with more resources.

Fogel says he was impressed by the “thoroughness” of Aguilar’s report, and believes the director raised strong questions and made helpful recommendations. But he remains frustrated with the CPD for not providing him with more evidence—he cannot adequately evaluate Aguilar’s report since he has only seen Houchens’ BWC footage and one video of the arrest taken by a witness.

“There were something like nine videos that were used, and I was only aware of the one that I asked for that they refused to give me. And as [Aguilar] points out in his report, there’s no explanation for why they wouldn’t give me that video,” says Fogel. “Can you have a fair hearing with secret evidence? … In my view the answer is clearly no.”

The CPD has until October 24 to respond to Aguilar’s report. Fogel will then have 10 days to respond to the department. 

Charlottesville Circuit Court ruled that a lawsuit to stop the city’s infamous Robert E. Lee statue from being melted down will go to trial in February.

On October 10, Judge Paul M. Peatross heard motions for the case filed against the City of Charlottesville by two organizations that unsuccessfully bid on the statue, the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation. The plaintiffs—represented by the same attorneys as the Monument Fund, which sued the city for trying to remove the Lee and Jackson statues in 2017—claim the city violated state code, the Virginia Public Procurement Act, and the Freedom of Information Act in December when it donated the Lee statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which plans to melt down the monument and use the bronze to create a new public artwork. (The Jefferson School was initially named as a second defendant but was later removed, and is now a party to the suit.)

“There weren’t really any surprises,” said lawyer Christopher Tate, representing the Jefferson School, following the hearing. “We again remain very confident in our legal position and think we’ll prevail in trial.”

“I feel pretty confident about what happened in the courtroom today,” added Jefferson School Executive Director Andrea Douglas, “and think that we are making significant strides towards the appropriate and proper outcome.”

In April, Peatross sustained the plaintiffs’ claim that the city does not have the authority to melt down the Lee statue due to a state code section forbidding localities from destroying war memorials. Last year, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the law did not apply to statues erected before 1997, but the code has since been amended to apply to all war memorials regardless of when they were erected. He also sustained two of the plaintiffs’ other claims: that the city violated FOIA during a December meeting regarding the awarding of the statue, and that the bidding process fell under the Virginia Procurement Act, allowing the plaintiffs to seek legal relief.

Shortly before Monday’s proceedings, several dozen supporters of the Jefferson School’s project, titled Swords Into Plowshares, gathered in front of the courthouse. Eight speakers—including student activist Zaneyah Bryant, former City Councilor Kristin Szakos, state Delegate Sally Hudson, and Deanna McDonald of Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVA—praised the project’s aspirations, and called for the lawsuit to be dropped.

“This is about our willingness to step forward … to create a space that is meaningful for the lives that we live today, not meaningful for the lives of the past but [recognizing] that our past is our future,” said Douglas. “We can’t dissociate ourselves from that but can move forward and do better.”

During the hearing, the plaintiffs pushed for the Jefferson School to reveal the Lee statue’s location to the public, claiming the public “deserved to know” that information. Tate cited safety concerns over publicizing the location, worried it could incite further violence from statue supporters. One lawyer representing the plaintiffs accused counterprotesters of inciting violence at the white supremacist Unite the Right rally, sparking cries of protest among hearing attendees.  

The two parties later agreed to a protective order allowing only an expert and lawyers from each side to know the statue’s location and inspect its condition. Though the statue—currently in storage at an undisclosed location—has not been melted down yet, it’s been broken up into multiple pieces, Douglas told The Daily Progress in July.

The city and Jefferson School requested the court permit the claim regarding the state code be reviewed by a state appellate court, citing concerns over subject-matter jurisdiction, but Peatross denied the appeal. Peatross also denied the plaintiffs’ partial summary judgment motion, which asked the judge to issue a ruling on their procurement act claim without waiting to go to trial.

However, Peatross granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a bill of particulars, requiring the Jefferson School to explain its claim alleging that the plaintiffs have “unclean hands”—meaning the plaintiffs did something unethical in relation to the lawsuit—in further detail.

Throughout the hearing, the city and Jefferson School argued the state procurement act did not apply to the statue bidding process, since the city already had taken down the statue and was not requesting removal services. They also asserted that the plaintiffs’ FOIA claims were not relevant to the case, and did not entitle them to legal relief.

If they win the case, the plaintiffs want the Jefferson School to return the statue to the city, and for the bidding process to be redone—with the school barred from participating. 

A trial is scheduled for February 1.

Since interim Charlottesville City Manager Michael Rogers and D.C.-based law firm Venable LLP presented a proposed collective bargaining ordinance last month, the Amalgamated Transit Union, Charlottesville Area Transit employees, and other union supporters have pushed back against numerous restrictions, including initially limiting bargaining to police, firefighters, and bus drivers—and keeping certain items, like health and welfare benefits, off the bargaining table.

During the September 6 City Council meeting, multiple community members urged the city to give all city employees the right to unionize at the same time, and allow them to bargain over benefits and disciplinary procedures, among other major ordinance revisions. However, several called for police to be excluded entirely from bargaining, citing the mass resistance to reforms and accountability shown by police unions across the country. 

Longtime CAT driver Matthew Ray encouraged the city to use final binding arbitration—during which a neutral arbitrator makes a decision that must be honored—to resolve certain grievances and negotiation impasses, as well as allow CAT supervisors to have representation. “If you don’t have a neutral, third-party arbitrator, it’s not really a union to me,” he said during public comment.

Though the proposed ordinance permits the city and a collective bargaining unit to hire a neutral fact-finder to resolve a dispute, the city manager or council can reject the fact-finder’s recommendations. Across the city, supervisors; seasonal, temporary, confidential, probationary, and management employees; and volunteers would not be allowed to unionize. And units would not be able to bargain over health and welfare benefits, core personnel rules and decisions, and budget matters.

Daniel Summers, who has driven for CAT for over a decade, also pushed the city to speed up the ordinance’s timeline—to give the city and units time to engage in mediation and fact-finding, Venable has recommended any collective bargaining agreement go into effect on July 1, 2024, meaning employees not included in the initial three units would have to wait until 2026 to unionize.

“The way things are going right now [at CAT], things are falling apart at the seams,” claimed Summers. “You’ll have people who won’t want to work for the transit system, if they don’t see the collective bargaining taking place.”

Local resident Greg Weaver voiced concerns about Rogers’ employer, The Robert Bobb Group, and its anti-union track record—as emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb clashed with local unions when he outsourced hundreds of jobs to private contractors and closed dozens of schools in 2011.

Allowing police to unionize could put a stop to the city’s criminal justice reforms, like the Police Civilian Oversight Board, explained Weaver. Nationwide, police unions have prevented officers from being held accountable for misconduct, and worked to overturn reforms through collective bargaining. “The police have already shown that they are quite well organized, and that they have the power to get a police chief fired,” added longtime housing activist Brandon Collins.

Following public comment on the ordinance, Councilor Brian Pinkston voiced his support of police officers, but was hesitant to include them in the initial bargaining units. “That’s not a hill I’m going to die on [if] we decide to go forward with the police being a part of the first three, but it’s my sense that the community would prefer for the police to be later, if at all,” he said.

Councilors Michael Payne and Sena Magill pushed for the ordinance to allow bargaining over all benefits and disciplinary procedures. Payne also supported permitting non-binding arbitration for non-fiscal matters, and creating a third bargaining unit for general employees—not just police. “If there is a concern about staff capacity, we could phase it in, and limit it to transit and fire department who have come forward with pledge cards, and first-come-first-serve phase in anyone else who comes forward to us,” he said.

Mayor Lloyd Snook questioned whether binding arbitration over non-fiscal matters, like disciplinary procedures, would compromise the city manager’s authority to hire and fire, and pushed back against calls to ban police from unionizing, claiming that Charlottesville does not have “a history of serious police violence.”

“I don’t think that we have two classes of employees: police officers and everyone else,” said Snook. “That’s in essence what this argument becomes, to say because police officers have done bad things in the past, mostly in other places, we’re going to treat them differently.”

“Do you think those are things [about binding arbitration] that cannot be addressed while still matching what other localities in Virginia have done?” asked Payne. “And on the police point, what would you make of the argument that there’s a qualitative difference with the police because they have a monopoly on the use of the violence, and there’s no other employee that could have the legal authority to kill you?”

“The fact that a police officer carries a gun to me doesn’t change anything else about the employment relation. It doesn’t mean we give them certain rights, or deny them certain rights,” replied Snook.

Rogers and Venable will consider the community and council’s comments, and return to the councilors with an amended ordinance to vote on during their October 3 meeting.