Author: jayson-whitehead

After almost five years as PACEM’s first executive director, Dave Norris is moving on. When his tenure ends in June, the mayor will leave the winter homeless shelter in solid shape, financially solvent and firmly entrenched in the community, and in quite a different spot from where he was when he started in September 2004, only two months before PACEM itself first opened.

Dave Norris is resigning from his position as executive director at PACEM as he runs for a second term on City Council.

Back then, Norris was basically all there was as far as help. “I did pretty much everything,” he says. When not at the rotating shelter, Norris was driving his wayward guests over to wherever they were spending the night, or doing case work for them.

Skip forward four and a half years, and Norris has established PACEM as the primary homeless provider in town. In that span, he is also approaching the end of his first term on City Council. Just recently, he announced his intention to run for a second term, explaining that he feels he has more to do before he is through with local office.

With PACEM, Norris can leave with a sense of accomplishment—“My goal was to get it off the ground,” he says—but his departure hardly means there’s nothing left to do. While PACEM has provided “tens of thousands” with overnight shelter, many of them are back out on Charlottesville’s streets every March. “It’s very hard at the end of every winter to tell people their time is up,” he says.

This year, PACEM was able to stay open longer than it ever has, thanks to a donor who allowed it to move its closing date from March 13 to the 27th. As a result, approximately 80 percent of their previous guests, as they’re called, will be staying through the additional two weeks, but space constraints forced PACEM to oust 15 men and at least a few women, who were told a few days before the original cut-off that their tenure was over.

“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” says Sean Hawkins while standing in a downstairs corner of the main library on Market Street. Outside, as he talks to a reporter, the air feels heavy as if it’s under a sheet of ice. Tomorrow will be worse as a cold front moves in, and that is when Hawkins will start sleeping outside. Luckily, he was able to obtain a tent and a sleeping bag at the last second from the Hope Community Center.

Since its demise as a homeless shelter late last spring, Hope has been relatively quiet, but has recently begun operating as a day shelter for up to 25 or 30 homeless, who shower there or just stay indoors. It is one of their few options until the First Street Church on Market Street is up and running (an open house and groundbreaking will occur on March 26). When it opens (by Thanksgiving it is hoped), the bottom floor will be a grander version of what Hope is doing, operating as a day shelter and resource center for the poor and homeless.

When construction starts, a rigorous search for an executive director will begin. While the church hopes the position will be filled by someone within the local community, Norris says he is not interested. “I’m ready for a different arena.”

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Less than 17 months after being sentenced for sex-related crimes with four of his students, former Charlottesville High School choir director Jonathan Spivey has been freed from jail. Considering the controversy at the start of his imprisonment in the fall of 2007, Spivey’s release on March 10 was surprisingly quiet, and especially in contrast to the shock and outrage that met his arrest and indictment in the fall of 2006 for multiple charges involving sexual contact with male students

After serving less than 17 months since he was sentenced for sex-related crimes with four of his students, former Charlottesville High School choir director Jonathan Spivey is out—though you can find him on the Internet.

During his 15 years at CHS, Spivey had grown the choral program and under his care its choir had won numerous awards. Moreover, in his duration as a city resident, he had become a familiar face in the community. Married with three sons, he was also music director at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church, and became an ordained pastor there in 1995.

Not insignificant, Alvin Edwards, City School Board chair and former mayor, was (and remains) the church’s pastor. When his choir director was sentenced to only 21 months, Edwards suddenly became the focus of ire—primarily expressed online—with many accusing him of protecting Spivey.

To these charges, Edwards bristled when called for his response in the fall of 2007. Why had he appeared at Spivey’s sentencing? Wasn’t he worried about any perceived impropriety, given his role with the city schools? “I’m his pastor,” he replied caustically, and to any other queries I threw his way.

Then later that October, I was invited to an impromptu meeting at Blue Ridge Commons, the public housing area in the Prospect-Orangedale area. Inside its substation, an older female resident, joined by a community counselor and a city police sergeant, expressed rage at the length of Spivey’s sentence—“the time didn’t meet the crime”—and maintained that he had far more victims than had been reported, including someone she claimed to be closely related to.

“The community has known this was going on all along,” she stated, insisting on anonymity. “We have to blame ourselves, we knew.” Even with this concession, she held her greatest fury for Edwards and demanded that he be held responsible somehow. Closely tied together, in her mind Spivey and Edwards were inseparable community pillars, but only one was going to prison.

Edwards did not return calls last week for comment.

The woman’s plea was emotional and seemed sincere, but any attempts to follow up with her in the ensuing weeks failed. On the heels of that came a similarly frustrating call for justice, but from an altogether different source.

On January 17, 2008, Michael Pudhorodsky, the president of a group called Generation Y, sent an e-mail to Charlottesville media in anticipation of that night’s School Board meeting. “A member of Generation Y will be at every public meeting,” the release stated, “calling for Dr. [Alvin] Edwards’ resignation until he decides to do so.”

“We feel that he chose Mr. Spivey over the students and over the victims and that is an affront to the victims in the case,” explained Pudhorodsky later. Yet, the 27-year-old Charlottesville native failed to attend that night’s meeting or any other—and for good reason. He himself was being pursued by police for failing to appear in Albemarle County Court on credit card theft charges. Needless to say, when he was arrested and then sentenced last May, his credibility had eroded.

In the intervening time, much of the controversy over Spivey and Edwards has died down. The latter continues to serve on the school board but in January took a sabbatical from his duties—both there and at church—through the first week of April. Pudhorodsky was released from incarceration in the fall but was arrested for violating his probation on March 4. He is currently being held in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Six days later, Spivey was released from the Buckingham Correctional Center. On probation for five years, he will have to register as a sex offender and is barred from unsupervised contact with minor children, unless their custodian or guardian gives permission. Any additional terms of his probation were withheld.

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Last March, somewhere around 2,000 churchgoers amassed in University Hall to show their support for the social justice advocacy group IMPACT and its twofold agenda of seeking more affordable housing for the area’s low-income residents and free dental care for the uninsured. While the former issue received mixed commitment from the city and county, tooth care received unanimous backing from the medical community, with the Charlottesville Free Clinic pledging to hire a dentist by March 2009 to treat the approximately 1,000 local citizens on waiting lists.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Local leaders put in uncomfortable spotlight Joint housing task force finally meets Faith group strives for real action

Eight months later, the Free Clinic’s Erika Viccellio stood in front of a portion of those same parishioners—around 650—at IMPACT’s Annual Assembly Agenda on October 27 to give them a progress report on her agency’s remarkable efforts. Way ahead of schedule, the Clinic has already hired a dentist and two dental assistants.

“We’ve treated 20 patients just this month,” she said (to cheers), compared to only 40 all of last year. While the program is still getting started, it will become fully operational early next year.

Area congregations came together under one roof last week to choose the topic for IMPACT’s third annual push on local government.

“For nearly 10 years, we’ve been trying to make some headway,” says Viccellio. Then last November, the Free Clinic’s board voted to hire a full-time dentist in lieu of simply relying on volunteer help to take on those waiting for tooth care.

That same month, IMPACT decided to focus on health care as an issue to tackle, and months of research led to free dental care being chosen as the aspect to pursue. Their vocal backing provided an overwhelming push. “They really helped bring the community’s attention to this dire need,” Viccellio says.

Now it is all happening again, with the more than 600 churchgoers picking the area of education this go-around in an extremely tight vote on the night of October 27. While 234 members of the audience carried the day, 204 cast votes for IMPACT to address jobs and wages instead, including 48 votes alone from the Church of the Incarnation.

“I personally am disappointed,” says Incarnation’s Susan Pleiss, who is also an IMPACT board member. In a congregational caucus right before the vote, Incarnation’s 70 present members deliberated whether to cast all their votes for jobs or split it. “It was an interesting dilemma for our congregation,” she says. After some deliberation, a third of their support went towards education.

Over the next few months, research groups will narrow down a specific facet to focus on, as they did last year with the larger topic of health care. Concurrently, IMPACT will help the Free Clinic try to find donors to raise the $300,000 that the first year of the dental program will cost.

“We are counting on the community to recognize the desperation of the need,” says Viccellio. With a normal operating budget of $700,000, she says the dental care costs are “daunting.” And while IMPACT normally does not offer fiscal support to their causes, the Free Clinic’s director hopes they can make an exception this time. “I’m hopeful the congregations will make an investment,” Viccellio says.

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Five days after the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur began the Festival of Sukkot, an week-long commemoration of the biblical 40-year period during which the children of Israel wandered in the desert, living in temporary shelters, after their exodus from Egypt. To celebrate their escape, in Leviticus 23:42, it is written, “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths.”

A few thousand years later, three UVA students knelt on a patch of grass in the Brown College courtyard (within a short distance of Alderman Library) and hammered at the base of their booth, or “sukkah.” Behind them a handful of students wrestled with a tent, a modern day sukkah, that was being erected not to honor the Almighty’s command but the area’s homeless.

UVA students spent seven nights in the Brown College courtyard to "help those who aren’t necessarily sleeping outside for religious reasons," says Zev Lebowitz.

“We wanted to help those who aren’t necessarily sleeping outside for religious reasons,” said Zev Lebowitz, president of UVA’s Jewish Social Justice Council (JSJC), as he drilled into a two-by-four. For the third straight year, the JSJC—in partnership with Hillel—is raising money for agencies that serve the homeless by arranging for sponsors to pay for the students’ nights outside.

The last two years, more than $7,000 went first to PACEM and then the now defunct COMPASS. This year it will go to Charlottesville Health Access, a new group that operates under the umbrella of PACEM and is an outgrowth of that winter homeless shelter.

“We’re helping people get into the system,” said Mark Pittman, a second year med student at UVA, standing beside a picnic table where his white doctor’s jacket was lying. Flyers distributed stated that medical expenses are the No. 2 cause of homelessness in our area. Even more daunting for the homeless is the sheer process—the paperwork, the jargon—of seeking medical care. Between UVA and the free clinic there is plenty of inexpensive, even free care, for the homeless if they can just wade through the system.

That is where Charlottesville Health Access will come into play. “We are a natural link,” said Pittman. He is one of the students who will help the homeless navigate the medical world.

As Pittman talked, Lebowitz walked up with a tin of chicken tenders in hand courtesy of Raising Cane’s. The 20 students milling about quickly descended on the free fare as he announced the night’s agenda. Some students would go with him to paint the Beta Bridge for the homeless while others would remain behind and write on posterboard. A few minutes later, Lebowitz sauntered off with a small coterie of kids as the remaining group started to plaster stickers on the white placards and think up proper slogans that both Jews and Gentiles could appreciate.

“How about ‘Jesus was homeless’?” one suggested.

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During the last decade, Charlottesville went through a much-publicized makeover, as wealthier residents filtered into town to buy tony residences and partake in the array of upscale establishments that cropped up to serve their refined tastes. As the area swelled with wealth, another group of people tagged along in even larger proportions.

Read more: What one woman had to go through to get to the U.S

Many of them could not even speak English—only their native Spanish—but they could pick the grapes that eventually become Virginia wine or clean out the stables of the horses that prance around the pastures of Albemarle County. Their hands have likely plucked the vegetables that end up on the side of the beef tenderloin at one of the many pricey restaurants Downtown or slapped mortar in between the bricks of the buildings we work and live in.

Commonly referred to as “Mexicans,” they are refugees from the various countries south of the American border, having fled their birthplaces to escape rampant crime, for instance, or most likely extreme poverty. Like the more visible émigrés to our area, they have come to enjoy the life Charlottesville has to offer, even if it is quite a different one than that shared by the crowds that walk the Downtown Mall every Friday and Saturday night.

“Our number one goal is getting services to people who need them who happen to be Spanish speakers,” says Peter Loach, deputy director of Operations for the Piedmont Housing Alliance.

To further complicate the precarious position of being a new resident in a new country, at least a third of the Latinos that came here had no documents endorsing their presence. They are the so-called illegal immigrants that commentators and politicians—including Congressman Virgil Goode—have held out for their ire. 

As a result, most of our Latinos—whether they have documents or not—live an almost underground existence, maintaining an out-of-sight, out-of-mind presence. Unless you sneak a peek into the kitchen of your favorite restaurant, or take a drive through an area trailer park, you might not even know they are here.

An Abundance of help

About the only people to take notice of them is a group of Charlottesvillians who have taken it upon themselves to welcome their new neighbors and try to ease their transition into American life. “Our number one goal is getting services to people who need them who happen to be Spanish speakers,” says Peter Loach, deputy director of Operations for the Piedmont Housing Alliance and the chairman of a group called Creciendo Juntos (“Growing Together”). That group was formed about three years ago to bring together different area nonprofits and government agencies to chew over some of the challenges in dealing with our growing Hispanic population. “Our second objective is to help the agencies already providing services, make sure they’re doing as good a job as they can, and help them do a better job.”

While it started with only 10 or 15 participants, CJ now counts around 70 groups as active members. One of their newest is Sam Ley. “I majored in Spanish in college, and I studied in Spain for a semester,” she says. “I’m not as good as a native speaker, but I get the point across.” 

Ley was straight out of college in Connecticut a little more than a year ago when she signed up with AmeriCorps for a year’s service and got placed in Charlottesville with Abundant Life Ministries, a group formed in 1995 to serve the economically disadvantaged Fifeville and Prospect Avenue areas. The two neighborhoods are historically African American, but as Abundant Life discovered, they are also home to an increasing Latino population. To properly minister in places like Blue Ridge Commons, Spanish was becoming requisite.

“So that’s how I’m here,” says Ley. “I applied, and they’ve been wanting somebody for a while who speaks Spanish who can connect with the families they already work with.” As Abundant Life figured it, Ley could be of service with simple things like setting up English instruction for their Spanish-speaking adults. Instead, “it’s turned into something bigger,” she says. As Ley found out, we have a community of Latino residents who have immediate language needs and no idea where to turn.

Legal Aid’s Tim Freilich thinks he smells rats: “Across Virginia, we’ve seen candidates seize on the issue of immigration to further their career,” he says.

“It would be great if I could set up English tutors for them, but it’s not a top priority if they have to go to court but don’t understand [the legal documents],” she says. “I tried to translate for them, but I told them, ‘I’m sorry, but I barely understand this in English, and I speak English.’ It’s confusing.”

Other requests have been easier, like attacking the stack of documents on the coffee table or kitchen counter. “The kids will bring home piles of papers, and the parents may not necessarily be able to read any of it,” Ley says. “Speaking with these families, you get the idea that they want to be more involved in their children’s education, but they don’t know how. Being that bridge is a lot of what I do.”

One afternoon I followed her over from Abundant Life’s home behind the corner of 10th and Cherry to a nearby public housing site to visit Marlena, one such Spanish-speaking parent and one of Ley’s regular beneficiaries. In her mid-30s, Marlena has lived in America for 10 years, seven of them in her current apartment. Despite a decade spent here, the Salvadoran speaks little to no English, and so the most recent form her 9-year-old son brought home is confounding. It turns out that it’s only a consent form for a field trip to pick strawberries—nothing to worry about.

“The language is the hardest part of moving here,” says Ley, translating for Marlena, who has just let loose with a long explanation that she has boiled down to nine words of English. As she continues to explain through Ley, though, the language barrier was only one of the challenges of making her way to Charlottesville. [See sidebar.]

The Green light

As is easy to imagine, the events of 9/11 and the paranoia it inspired have made it much harder for a foreign-born aspirant to become an American citizen. It’s not something Marlena—even as a former undocumented who these days has a Social Security number and a work permit—even considers. Even so, Martha Trujillo managed the impossible, getting what she likens to one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets after nine years in Charlottesville and eight years on the waiting list. Earlier this year, the native of Mexico received her Green Card. Almost a decade ago, she and her husband came here on travel visas and then graduated to work permits that allowed Martha, a former bank employee, to work at places like TJMaxx. Better than nothing, but not exactly the American Dream, so the Trujillos took a gamble after years of waiting for their residency. They decided to let their work permits expire, saving the $1,100 renewal fee as they waited to have their permanent status approved. They endured a distressing legal limbo as they held their collective breath. 

“Times were terrible,” she says in near-perfect English. As more than a year passed, Trujillo was reconsidering her decision and about to fork over money for a work permit again when she got a letter in the mail that began, “Welcome to the United States.” She was finally an American citizen. “I was jumping and screaming and crying,” she says laughing. “It just took forever.”

Getting her permanent residency had immediate and profound benefits. Without it, Trujillo had refrained from traveling back home—you never know what might go wrong—and so had not seen any of her family in almost a decade.

“My father-in-law and other members of my family have died, and there’s nothing you can do,” says Trujillo. With her Green Card, she could go home again. “My mom just had surgery last Friday, and I went to see her. It was just amazing to see my family after nine years, and just hug my mom, a person that I’ve loved all my life, and see her again, and the rest of my family members, and they all wanted to spend more time with me. You have no idea how happy I am.”   

The miracle of citizenship has also allowed her to find a job as the Information and Referral Specialist for the local branch of the United Way. As a result, she performs tasks like the regular presentations she gives local police enforcement so that they know what to do when they pull over a Spanish-speaking driver. One option is that they can call her.

Another role she plays is similar to Ley’s, simply being a Latino contact for members of the community with no clue where else to go to for help. “When you have a crisis you sometimes don’t know what to do,” she says. “So I try to guide them to the correct way, and teach them too so they can survive and live better, that’s the purpose of what I do.” At the end of the day, Trujillo has become just another local American citizen trying to help Spanish-speaking residents navigate through foreign waters.

The Party line

So far, most of the scant attention paid to area immigrants has been from what you might call good-doers, who want to help them in their precarious situation. But another group of people, from the opposite side of the political spectrum, are giving greater notice. Among them: Christian Schoenewald, chair of the Albemarle County Republican Party. “I have no problem if a whole bunch of Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians—whatever—want to come here if they’re willing to do it legally,” Schoenewald says. “Hey, welcome to the country, more power to you. But if your first act in wanting to come to our country is to break a law to do it, you’re probably willing to break others.”

We are sitting in the office of the Albemarle GOP in a small building next to the Outback Steakhouse, and I have come here to talk to Schoenewald about a recent forum he held where the chair of Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors was invited to speak. “We were interested in hearing about what [they] had done to deal with the illegal alien presence there,” Schoenewald says.

What Prince William did and continues to do an hour-and-a-half north of here is to adopt and enforce some of the strictest anti-illegal immigrant policies in the state, maybe the country. Over the last year or so, their Board of Supervisors has passed repeated legislation requiring the police and other agencies to vigorously check the legal status of their Latino population. The result—unintended or not—has been an overall exodus of their Hispanic residents, documented or not, who resented and feared the targeting and profiling of their race. “No Republican that I know is anti-immigrant,” Schoenewald says. “Now just about every Republican that I know is opposed to illegal aliens being in the United States, and there’s a sharp difference between illegal aliens and immigrants.”

“I was jumping and screaming and crying,” Martha Trujillo says laughing, about becoming an American citizen. “It just took forever.”

His invective echoes that of an admitted role model, our Fifth District Congressman Virgil Goode. For more than a decade, the native of Rocky Mount has made the issue of illegal immigration one of the cornerstones of his time in office, lately going on a tear about “anchor babies.” He’s run the gamut, from supporting measures like the proposed fence along the Mexican-American border and more stringent enforcement of immigration laws to repeatedly introducing English as the official language legislation. This year, he is cosponsoring two such bills, including H. J. Res 19 that proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

“In countries where there is a lack of common unifying language, there is more discord and often efforts to split up the country,” Goode writes on his website, in typically overstated fashion. “I am fearful that we will have efforts in the country in a few years to split up part of the United States. There are some from Mexico who are already saying that the Mexican War was wrong and that the United States should be split in the Southwest.”

“I pretty much agree with Virgil across the line,” Schoenewald says. In 2004, Goode endorsed him for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in an unsuccessful bid. “Saying you agree with someone 100 percent of the time is probably humanly impossible, but I think I agree with him as much as anybody can agree with anybody.”

Some, like Legal Aid’s Tim Freilich, would call this politically expedient. “Across Virginia, we’ve seen candidates seize on the issue of immigration to further their career,” he says.

“We’ll go into the old cliché here, ‘Well, I have many friends that are black,’” the local GOP chair says, gently laughing. “I have many friends that are immigrants to the United States, some of them are still in the process of trying to get their citizenship here in Charlottesville.”

In some way, Schoenewald feels he is representing the immigrant who has decided to play by all the rules, even if that means waiting a decade for a little piece of paper that says you’re an American citizen.

“If you really want to be here why won’t you do it legally?” he says, presumably rhetorically. “Why do you have to do it in such a way that you basically spit on our country the moment you step into it?”

To his thinking, Schoenewald is also protecting a way of life, the American way. “I actually think that they do a disservice to the economy,” he says, quick to clarify that he is talking about undocumented workers. “The fiction out there that illegals do work that Americans don’t want to do is crap. There are plenty of Americans that will do those jobs.”

I don’t know about that. Last year, I briefly worked in the back of a local restaurant for another story. As I discovered that night, all the kitchen help were from below the American border, mostly from Central America, and all were undocumented. Even the head chef had fake papers, I later learned.

“We find that those who are newly in this country from south of our border are not only eager for the jobs, but they work hard, are dependable, and are not insulted by the type of work it is,” says Rachel Willis, a former chef at L’Avventura and Continental Divide, among others. “And for the most part they are really fabulous employees.” According to Willis, “less and less young people want to work that hard,” and especially for the wages—$10-12 an hour—and the type of work, long hours for a grueling job. “We were finding it harder and harder to fill those positions.” It was either raise the prices or turn to the pool of Latino workers.

Longtime immigration antagonist, Congressman Virgil Goode lately has taken to decrying what he calls the "anchor baby" situation. He claims, perhaps misleadingly, that undocumented workers scheme to give birth to their children in the United States, so as to secure their own status.

“I think it’s clear in this area that the immigrant workforce, whether documented or undocumented, plays a major role in allowing us to enjoy the incredibly high quality of life we have in this area,” Freilich notes.

Restaurants are just one type of low-wage labor filled by Latinos. “As we travel around Virginia we see entire industries dependant on immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented,” the attorney adds. Around here, 70 percent of the agricultural workers are Hispanic, and so are many of the people who clean hotels. The area construction industry has also becoming increasingly reliant on Latinos.

Whether they are all legal is another matter. “We know that more than 50 percent of agricultural workers in Virginia are undocumented,” Freilich says. That figure is lower, around 30 percent, for most other business sectors that employ a Latino workforce in this area—a fact at least some of the employers are aware of. “There are plenty of people who work off the books and plenty of people who are legal,” says Willis. “Then there’s that gray area where people have false papers. It’s like don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The Fair Labor Standards Act—which Freilich spends his workweek enforcing—applies to all workers, documented and undocumented. “We’ve won more than $2 million in settlements against hundreds, literally hundreds, of Virginia employers who have hired and cheated their workers out of pay,” he says. Locally, Freilich says a common type of case might involve a national home builder who hires a subcontractor who then hires another subcontractor who employs a group of Latinos and then doesn’t pay them. The layers of responsibility indemnify the larger company and make it difficult to hold anyone accountable. “Businesses certainly enjoy having a large easily exploitable workforce of immigrant workers that has allowed the current situation to exist.”

Both sides of the immigration debate, even Goode and his current challenger, Democrat Tom Perriello, seem to agree that the employer is the villain, or at least one of them. “I think what may be the best solution is to make it unattractive to hire illegal aliens,” says Schoenewald. “You’ve got two culpable parties in the whole process right now. You’ve got the person who has come here illegally and you have the company that’s hired someone illegally. So you’ve got two groups to blame in this case.”

“Deporting 10 or 15 million people is an impossible task,” he says, referring to the estimated number of illegal aliens in the nation. “You can’t practically do that. What you can do is go after these employers who are hiring illegal people and you can make it very difficult for them if they continue that hiring practice. That means that the jobs that the illegals are taking will dry up and a lot of those people will end up self-deporting. They’ll take themselves back home and out of the system. If there are no jobs for them here to take they have no reason to come here, maybe they’ll go south.”

The other side of this debate, the block of individuals and groups working to stem the tide of someone like Schoenewald, are horrified by his words. People like Freilich and Loach (not to mention countless others like Linda Hemby of Albemarle Social Services or Eddie Summers of the Charlottesville Immigration Law Center*) have spent the past few years, some even decades, trying to make Charlottesville hospitable for those from south of our border who have come here to share some of our wealth.

“I think that the immigrants who have chosen this state as a place to live and work have come seeking the same high quality of life and opportunity that has drawn people from other lands to this state for the last 400 years,” Freilich says.

Christian Schoenewald, chair of the Albemarle County Republican Party, says that undocumented workers are doing “a disservice to the economy.”

“We’re not at crisis mode here yet, but I think it’s something that’s still on the horizon for Albemarle-Charlottesville,” says his foe Schoenewald, before uttering the few words they both can agree on. “That makes it the perfect time to start talking about the issue, because if we can get in front of it and start to do something proactive rather than becoming reactive, we can stop it from becoming a serious issue and make it not become a problem.”

*CORRECTION (October 21, 2008): Due to a reporting error, he original story stated that Eddie Summers was affiliated with the Immigration Law Clinic. He is an immigration attorney in private practice with Charlottesville Immigration Law Center.

My dad started to write his first of many books about America’s loss of direction when I began my formal education. It was 1975 and we were living in Los Angeles, where he had recently attended some kind of Christian seminary. My mom was working as a legal secretary and I had no idea why my unemployed dad was picking me up at noon from kindergarten—apparently, he would write in the morning—but almost every day we went out to the park and played sports: football, basketball and baseball.
   
When his first book, The Separation Illusion, subsequently came out, I cared little about the serious subject matter, nor did I pay any heed to subsequent releases, only one called The Second American Revolution, that sold over 100,000 copies and became a bible of sorts for what we now call the Religious Right (I read that one on a plane flight to Hawaii, and liked the Christian comics that started each chapter the best).
 

A Whitehead Christmas: Father and son, John and Jayson, strike a pose at their home in Los Angeles in 1975.

To be honest, I have no intimate knowledge of most of his books, or his many mini-books on subjects like abortion or the Constitution. Yet, I’ve been reading the draft of his latest, The Change Manifesto, mainly because of his thesis that hope is on the tip of America’s numb, bandaged tongue.

In the author’s intro, the old man writes that he is “strangely buoyed” by “fleeting glimpses of America’s once intrepid spirit among ragtag groups of dissenters scattered across the country. …More and more Americans seem to be waking from a self-imposed sleep.”
 
So I traveled over to his office on Hydraulic Road, where I found him to be cautiously optimistic. There is hope for America, he seems to be saying, but the twilight of freedom may also be receding.

C-VILLE: In the intro to your new book you write, “Americans have largely abdicated our responsibilities and allowed our fears to rule us, helped along in no small measure by the events of 9/11.” Haven’t the government intrusions since 9/11 energized a huge block of America? Is there a positive to be found in that?

John Whitehead: When people find the police at their front door, all of a sudden they want to do something about it. That’s the problem, though. Most people wait until it’s hitting them in the face. It’s like the economy or anything else. You can see it coming down the road, and it’s obvious most of the time that something’s happening.

The big fear I have is that a lot of people are just going to continue to sleep. I don’t think we need to be reactive, but proactive. I think there are a lot of things Americans can do, but we don’t want to wait until it’s too late.

You also bemoan “the loss of community” that has resulted in a “bystander effect.” How exactly can people become involved in their community again?

People can get involved in their community just by working in the local homeless shelter, serving soup at the Salvation Army —private organizations like churches should be emphasizing that instead of the building of the next cathedral.

You can help your neighbor. I often wonder why people travel to foreign countries to do so-called missionary work when the problem is next door. So there are a lot of things people can do, but they’re quite obvious. 

Isn’t there something inevitable about a loss of community in the face of ever- increasing technology?

The thing about technology is that it creates its own environment, an environment that is hostile to human beings and human relationships. You see it with the use of cell phones today. People are continually plastered to them, earphones always on their heads, and that destroys community.

In my opinion, it’s going to be very, very difficult to have community. Technology desensitizes you to other people. Videogames are a good example. Videogames show people getting body parts blown away, and little kids are playing those. To be honest, to a child growing up under their influence, a videogame is going to be more interesting than a tree or nature. The only thing a parent can do is restrict what their kids watch and actually exercise control.

Community is going to be in danger until we realize that there’s something more important than technology. Do I think that’s going to come about very soon? No.

It seems like, as in a lot of your previous writing, you would have also called for a return to biblical principles. In this book, you are directing Americans back to the U.S. Constitution instead. Was that intentional? Does it reflect a philosophical shift?

It didn’t fit. This book’s about civil liberties. What we need now is just a basic understanding of our history and of our rights. Without that, you can have all your religious principles, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It does you no good to know the Ten Commandments if the police can blow down your door—like I illustrate in one of my chapters—arrest you and smash your head against the floor. So what we really need is an understanding of our history, our rights, and where we came from as a country.
 
The key principle in this book is just speaking truth to power. If you go back to the great religious figures—Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus—they all did one thing essentially, speak truth to power, all power. What we need today is a delimiting of power. If people go back and look at our history and rights, they’ll see that’s what the Founding Fathers talked about. James Madison said it best: “We ought to mistrust all those in power.”
 
The Founding Fathers understood what it was about. You don’t trust the government, you don’t trust McCain, Bush, or Obama. You trust your basic human rights, and at the first experiment with liberties—Madison said—at the first experiment, object. We don’t do that anymore. We’re too busy watching “American Idol”…a show I never watch, by the way.

You were instrumental in the early formation of the religious right, which ended up supporting someone like Bush and the worst violations of our Constitution we’ve ever seen. Do you feel responsible for any of that at all? Does it make you separate yourself from that movement?

No, I don’t disclaim anything. It’s like John Lennon said when he was criticized one time for some of his songs. He said, “Hey, I was just reporting to you what was happening at the time with me,” and that’s all I do. It’s like when I meet people now that I knew 10 years ago and they’ve changed, I always say to them, “Hey, you’ve actually evolved.” As human beings, you change your ideas over time. If you don’t, I think you need to go see a psychiatrist or need to go take a long walk in the woods. Intelligent people change over time, and I happen to be a fairly intelligent person.

Yeah, the Christian right ushered George Bush into the power of the presidency. The Christian right is an authoritarian movement that everybody should stand against, as we would stand against any authoritarian movement, like Al Qaeda. Fundamentalism in general we should be nervous about—it just has doctrines and tries to enforce them. We see that same fundamentalism in government today with the Bush administration, and it’s something I think is going to continue.

In the intro, you mention that the book started out as an autopsy of America but that during the process of writing it, you became hopeful.

There’s something about the American spirit, that it’s either inbred genetically or historically—and a lot of it comes from Europe—the idea that there comes a time when you have to stand up and fight. I think that gives me a lot of hope. A lot of the young people coming out of law school today that I talk to want to do public service, and they see a lot of problems with what we see happening in the government.

There is a lot of hope out there, but the problem is that we’re human beings, we’re very limited. The government is run by human beings, and the government is going to do evil and bad things because it is run by human beings. The government’s going to fail us—there’s no hope in government.

The point of the book is that hope is in individual actions by people who know the history of the country and exercise their freedoms to go out and carry a sign of protest. It’s courageous acts, but it’s going to be isolated acts by 10 people at a time. There are a lot of people doing things, but here’s the problem—the corporate media doesn’t report these cases. That’s why they’re in the book—they don’t fit into the entertainment mode of what they want to say.

With most of the examples of action you give, people end up suffering to an extent. They are investigated, arrested and prosecuted. The corollary is that if you’re going to be involved, you have to expect some kind of persecution.

Yes, you are going to suffer. Martin Luther King went to jail. All the great reformers suffered, and your average citizen who speaks truth to power is going to find the same thing. So you’re going to have to make a decision. What’s more important, a life of materialism or a life of freedom? They don’t go hand in hand.

You better get ready to take criticism, and you better get ready to be arrested because most people are not going to be on your bandwagon if you take a stand for truth. This goes back to the hope thing—there are a lot of fine people out there screaming and yelling. As I show in chapter eight—which I call the “hope chapter”—you can get some media sometimes, and people are going to show up and think you’re silly. But if you change government policy, then I say, let’s be silly.

“Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I’d stop and have myself a brew.”
—From “A Boy Named Sue”

I’ve been to Gatlinburg, Tennessee—one of the two main entrances to the 814-square-mile Great Smoky Mountains National Park—two times. The first was with a roommate (and a few friends) from Liberty University whose family had a time share in the tiny resort town.

Destination: Gatlinburg, Tennessee Location: Just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park Distance from Charlottesville: 369 miles Great Smoky Mountains National Park: nps.gov/grsm/ Ober Gatlinburg: obergatlinburg.com Dollywood: dollywood.com

That was almost 20 years ago and I have only vague memories of my time there. I do remember going to arcades, playing cliffside mini-golf, and making repeat trips through the labyrinth of small shops that appeal to the white trash in everybody, from shot glasses and baseball cards—I got one with Roger Clemens and Dwight Gooden standing together—to pricey paintings of wild stallions galloping and hand-sewn leather vests.
 
I also recall riding the ski lift up a nearby mountain to a ski resort called Ober Gatlinburg with a girl named Mindy. I’ve always been afraid of heights but sucked it up, albeit briefly, to try and impress this girl, making the long loop up—where they take your picture as you’re suspended in the air—and down a steep mountainside, my legs dangling 20′ above the hard ground.

While I felt proud of myself once I got back to the bottom, I don’t think she was and I don’t remember her spending too much more time with me on that trip. Young, Christian and frustrated, I could not even go drown my lonely sorrows in the row of bars that line Gatlinburg’s small strip. Instead, I had only a putter, a windmill and a colored golf ball to treat my solace. Those were trying times.

Some 15 years later, I had a chance at redemption. Living in south Tennessee at the time, I needed a place to meet a girl I had been periodically seeing in Charlottesville. “Let’s rendezvous in Gatlinburg,” I suggested. What better than a redneck paradise, like Paris without the art or wine, for a romantic getaway? Instead of those finer things, there was cheap beer and a Jesus museum.

I met Bex (one of her many pseudonyms) late the night before and we woke with anticipation. We left our lodgings on I-40 (10 miles north of Knoxville, on exit 407) and headed east for the 10-mile trek into Gatlinburg. On the way we had to drive through Pigeon Forge, a couple miles of strip mall with go-cart tracks, water parks, and mini-golf courses galore; shops and chain restaurants; and the home of Dollywood (Dolly Parton’s amusement park—I’ve never been…sigh). There are also small theaters for impersonators of people like Barbara Mandrell and Reba McIntire. At least I think they’re impersonators.

Making our way to the mountain resort I also remember passing a gigantic knife store, a Wal-Mart of weaponry, but didn’t stop and within minutes we were coasting down Gatlinburg’s main thoroughfare, a cozy drive that takes you by much of what the tiny town has to offer: hotel, shops, cheap recreation, bars, and, oddly enough, a large aquarium I’ve never bothered going to.

We parked behind the aquarium and headed to one of the many bars. A couple beers and it was time to visit Christus Gardens, a museum dedicated to Jesus. Opened in 1960, the gallery featured a six-ton carving of Jesus’ face in its lobby that greeted us. Past that serene face we encountered dozens of wax replicas of bearded biblical figures and a room of murals painted by someone with little appreciation for contemporary art.

For a former Liberty student, the place was a treat, an unintentionally tacky but earnest tribute to Jesus of Nazareth. For more than 40 years, Christus Gardens had welcomed believers and nonbelievers alike, inspiring derision in some, awe in others. I was filled with both. (Unfortunately for future visitors, the Gardens were closed for good this January. I wonder where six-ton Jesus is now.)

Next up was the ski lift directly behind the museum that had once inspired terror but now was met with delight. Perhaps it was the beer or the company, but the ride up was nonplussing and fulfilling, the bright sun illuminating the burg below. At the mountaintop, the lift paused so that an installed camera could take our photo. I smiled—a rarity—as the camera shuttered.

Back below, we made the few-block trip to the main strip again and picked a small bar across from the aquarium where we could hear country music drifting out. An awning with a straw top gave the impression that we would be entering Kenny Chesney territory but after we sat and started to sip beer from a plastic cup a weathered old man with a goatee, straw hat, and guitar sang “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,” my favorite Kenny Rogers song.

My companion was seated to my left and beamed behind fake Ray-Bans. Another beer and I felt like her, like the stone-faced Jesus nearby, satisfied and entirely comfortable in my surroundings. I didn’t want to leave.

In about a week, area children will start drifting into city and county schools as their summer ends and educational instruction resumes. A long summer of continually rising costs of fuel and food means the pockets of their parents are lighter and consequently so are theirs. Fortunately, the price of their school meals will not increase—both the city and county have decided to keep the same rates as last year.

“We did budget for an increase in food prices in our planning process, and although costs did exceed our estimates, we are able to accommodate the increases without an across the board increase in prices,” says county school spokesperson Maury Brown.

So for the next year, breakfast will remain $1.25 in county elementary schools, lunch at $1.85. Middle school lunch is slightly higher at $2.10. In city schools, K-6 breakfast is $1, lunch is $1.75.

Those are for students who pay full price. In both school divisions, students under the poverty line can get free breakfast and lunch at most schools as part of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Accordingly, students with low income can get significantly reduced price meals: breakfast is only 30 cents, lunch 10 cents more, across all grades in the city and county.

Patricia Freeman, the city schools’ nutrition coordinator, says the city schools will have the same menu as last year, despite cost concerns.

Last school year, the Albemarle County School District had 12,651 students in 26 schools, with 21 percent of those students eligible for free or reduced price lunches. “We do anticipate that the number of students receiving free/reduced price meals will increase this year as a result of the economy,” Brown says. Of the city’s 3,875 students, more than 53 percent were eligible. While the federal government helps foot that bill, what the schools are then allocated for assistance depends on how many kids actually take advantage of the program.

“All the schools’ food services are suffering,” says Patricia Freeman, the city schools’ nutrition coordinator. Of city schools’ $40 million budget, only $600,000 is allotted for food, the same as the previous year. The county allocates $1.5 million of its $151 million budget to school food.

To reduce costs in the face of static budgeting, Charlottesville schools “piggyback” with the county on contract bidding for food suppliers, says Freeman. City schools have also increased their use of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Commodities program, which allows the schools to receive bulk items like beef, chicken and cheese free-of-charge, although they are responsible for any shipping, storing or processing costs. “We’re going for the same menu we had last year,” she says.
 
The county school’s also make use of the USDA’s program. “There have been some changes to the commodities program this year,” says Brown. For example, the schools are now able to use commodities funds to purchase local, fresh produce, rather than being restricted to buying canned fruits and vegetables, making their menu healthier while mitigating expense.

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