Author: Lisa Provence

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Rugby Avenue gets the green light

The four-way stop was a flop at Rugby Avenue and Rose Hill Drive, and the traffic signals have been unbagged. Photo by Skyclad Aerial

A test to make the intersection of Rugby Avenue and Rose Hill Drive safer by installing four-way stop signs concluded this week with plastic bags coming off the old stoplights and the removal of the stop signs.

When the signs went up at the end of March, neighborhood website Nextdoor was abuzz with reports of motorists sailing through the intersection, oblivious to the stop signs. Flexible upright barriers were installed to block off right-turn lanes, leading to backups of traffic coming off the U.S. 250 Bypass.

After a community meeting May 29, city traffic engineers had the test results and resident input they needed: The stop signs were a no-go.

Around 75 people showed up for the meeting, “which was wonderful,” says Tim Motsch, city transportation project manager. “They gave us information and also highlighted that this was a sore topic.”

Putting the current, 30-plus-year-old lights back into operation is a temporary step, he says. “They can’t be modified to be [Americans with Disabilities Act] activated.” An intersection overhaul with new lights, ADA-compliant curbs, ramps, and crosswalks will cost approximately $530,000, and Motsch says funding from VDOT has been identified. “It’s going to be next year before construction begins.”

Not everyone hated the stop signs. “There are people who said, ‘I like it. I can cross now,’” says Motsch. But public comment favored a pedestrian-activated signal or a smart light, with little support for the stop signs as a permanent solution.

At the community meeting, resident Zac Billmeier said, “The city was making recommendations in line with what people in the neighborhood wanted.” And he notes that tests don’t always work as anticipated.

As for the other Rugby Avenue hazard—the head-on-collision fear-inducing intersection to get on the bypass and into the YMCA—a city traffic engineer did not immediately respond to an inquiry about that.

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Life plus 419 years: Judge goes with jury recommendation in Fields case

Susan Bro gets a hug from Katrina Turner outside the courthouse before the sentencing of the man who killed Bro's daughter. Eze Amos

After a four-hour hearing July 15 in the cramped room temporarily housing Charlottesville Circuit Court, a judge handed down the same sentence recommended by the jury that found James Alex Fields, Jr. guilty of murder and maiming last December: life plus 419 years in prison.

Self-proclaimed Hitler fanboy Fields was convicted of killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens when he drove down Fourth Street into a crowd of counterprotesters August 12, 2017.

Around 50 people, mostly victims and reporters, crammed into the tiny courtroom, where the air conditioning had to be turned off in order to hear. Some of the people he’d injured directly addressed Fields, whose fash haircut had grown out since December and who sported a scruffy beard.

James Fields faces his accusers in court. Sketch by Hawes Spencer

“Hello, scum,” said Star Peterson, the first of seven victims to testify. Judge Rick Moore asked her to address him rather than Fields, whom she called a “terrible waste of flesh” and said that while he was in prison, she’d be fighting the racism and hate for which Fields stood.

Marcus Martin, immortalized flying over Fields’ car in Daily Progress photographer Ryan Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, said that on the way to court, he’d seen a car like the Dodge Challenger Fields drove. “It all came back.”

Martin said he still suffers from rage and anger. He can’t ride in the passenger side of a car.  “Fucking coward,” he said to Fields. Martin was there when his friend Heyer died. “I try to understand. There’s no understanding,” he said. 

“I want you to look at me,” he said to Fields. “You don’t deserve to be on earth.” Martin said he’d talked to Fields’ mother. “To put your hands on your mother. You ain’t shit.”

Marcus Martin finally got to confront James Fields in court today. staff photo

April Muniz testified that while she wasn’t struck by Fields, “I must live with what he did that day, with what I saw that day.” In the two years since the attack, she said she’d experienced the moment of impact over and over, and the “sound of metal crushing bone.” She was unable to work and her career trajectory “was forever altered by your actions,” she said to Fields.

Muniz said she now has a fear of joy, because before Fields slammed into the crowd on Fourth Street, the group was happy that the Unite the Right rally had dissipated. In “that split second, there was a transition of joy to pain,” from which she’s still recovering. She continues to have PTSD. “I will not ever have closure,” she said. “Shame on you, James Fields.”

Wren Steele said she was thrown on the hood of one of the parked cars on Fourth “so fast I did not feel my legs break, my hand break.” She said she’ll always have pins in her legs, but in the past two years, her “biggest emotional trauma is that [Fields] was not charged as a terrorist.”

Nina-Alice Antony prosecuted the case, and said, “Today is the culmination of a case the likes of which most of us hope to never see again in our lifetimes and in the lifetimes after that. All of us have been marked by this.”

She urged Moore to impose the sentence the jury recommended. “That event shook our community and I think it shook our nation to the core.” And she said Fields’ mental health issues should not be a factor in sentencing because many people suffer from such issues. “Mental health does not cause you to do what Mr. Fields did August 12.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony, who led the prosecution, with Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania. staff photo

Defense attorney Denise Lunsford said it’s not the role of the court to give victims closure, and that her client should be sentenced as if his crime had occurred “on any other day of the week.” She also asked the judge to consider that Fields has already been sentenced to two life sentences in federal court.

Judge Moore presided over the two-week trial, and this was his first opportunity to weigh in on Fields’ actions. He noted the shock, terror, pain, fear, anger, weeping, PTSD, and trauma he’d heard about from the victims. “That is a starting point for the court.”

A video of Fields driving down Fourth Street, sitting in the middle of the mall, and backing up, only to accelerate forward into the crowd was admitted as evidence in the trial. “This is one of the most chilling and disturbing videos I’ve ever seen in my life,” said the judge.

And he also addressed what has been a thread in white supremacist narratives of the event. “I want to say for the record, he was not being threatened or attacked. No one was around his vehicle.” Fields could have backed up and left, said Moore. 

In Moore’s 39-year legal career, he said, “I’ve never been in a case where so many were so seriously injured by one person.”

Witnesses who had gone with Fields to Dachau in high school testified that he said, “This is where the magic happened.” Moore, too, went to Dachau as a teenager, and found it “one of the most shocking, sobering places.”  He repeated what appears on a memorial there: “Never again.”

Moore said he found clear evidence of murder and that he believed in respecting a jury’s verdict. He gave Fields a life sentence for the murder of Heyer, 70 years for each of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, 20 years for each of three counts of malicious wounding, and nine years for felony hit and run. And he added a $480,000 fine. 

Afterward, Heyer’s mother Susan Bro said she felt relieved by the sentence. “I want it very clear the United States and Virginia are not tolerating this.”

She said she did not see any remorse from Fields. “I’m not sure with his mental illness he’s capable of remorse.” But she noted that she also kept “a game face” in court and he may have been doing the same.

Several survivors spoke outside the courthouse. “We did not stop racism today,” said Peterson. She said Charlottesiville has some “deep soul searching to do” about its racist past and current racial inequity. “It’s time to get to work.”

And activist Matthew Christensen noted that the Virginia Victims Fund has paid very little to August 12 victims, and urged people to call for the state to pay up.

 

Correction July 16: The $480,000 fine was misstated in the original story.

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Muzzled: Free speech wall creator shuts down

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression owns the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall. Discussions with the city are going on to determine the wall’s fate. staff photo

During its heyday, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression was known for calling out censorship with its Muzzle awards and for launching the Downtown Mall’s Free Speech Wall in 2006, where luminaries like John Grisham and Dahlia Lithwick turned out to chalk the first messages on the monument.

Over the past couple of years, the center seemed to have disappeared from the free speech landscape, and on July 1, UVA law school quietly buried news of the center’s death in a release for the relaunch of a First Amendment Clinic, funded in part from assets from the TJ Center.

Former Daily Progress owner Tom Worrell founded the center in 1989 with a reported $3.5 million gift and bestowed its unwieldy moniker. Worrell, who was on UVA’s Board of Visitors, offered the job of leading the new free speech institute to outgoing UVA president and constitutional law expert Bob O’Neil—who later said changing the name was nonnegotiable.

During O’Neil’s 21-year leadership, the center was involved in high-profile free speech cases. After televangelist Jerry Falwell sued Hustler publisher Larry Flynt—and lost—over a parody that contended Falwell had sex with his mother, O’Neil said he got the two men together and they became friends. The center also prepped Margie Phelps, a member of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, which protested the funerals of soldiers with signs bearing messages like “God hates fags,” before her appearance in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Muzzles came out every April 13, on Jefferson’s birthday, and highlighted a free speech hall of shame. Locals occasionally made the list, either as victims of censorship, like Aaron Tobey, who was arrested by TSA in Richmond for displaying the Fourth Amendment on his chest as he went through airport security, or perpetrators, like Albemarle High for seizing and destroying all copies of the school’s student newspaper in 2010. (Physical education teachers didn’t like an op-ed that suggested student athletes be able to opt out of P.E.)

Board chair Bruce Sanford says the center had been winding down for the past year and a half. When Worrell founded it in 1989, “its chief mission was First Amendment advocacy in court,” says Sanford, although finding those cases and defending them was more difficult than anticipated.

Robert O’Neil, who died last fall, led the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression for 21 years. photo Michael Bailey

O’Neil taught a First Amendment clinic at UVA, as did Wheeler. “The First Amendment clinics are doing a lot of good work,” and both Columbia and Yale have them, says Sanford. “We’re very pleased to refocus our assets”—over $1 million—to fund the UVA clinic.

Attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will teach a new generation of potential First Amendment lawyers, says Sanford. “It’s perfect for the original mission.”

As for why the center seemed to fizzle out, Sanford notes that the Muzzle recipients the past two years weren’t as compelling as in the past. And when O’Neil retired, “We didn’t have a leading constitutional scholar,” says Sanford. O’Neil died last fall at age 83.

Attorney Josh Wheeler succeeded O’Neil in 2011 and has been in private practice for the past two years. He did not respond to calls from C-VILLE.

The center’s shutdown leaves unresolved the fate of the Free Speech Wall, which has become the go-to site for protesters over its 13 years as a mall landmark.

When the city agreed to install the TJ Center-owned wall, it also agreed to not censor its content—although that did happen when a sexually explicit image was chalked on the wall in 2011. However, passersby are free to erase as they please, and the wall is cleaned twice a week to give citizens a blank slate.

“The cost of the upkeep is not great,” says Sanford, and the center is having discussions with the city about continuing the maintenance.

Longtime wall critic Kevin Cox says it’s an ineffectual monument to free speech, and it does not accomplish much as an educational tool. “It doesn’t really teach people what the First Amendment is” and how it applies to government, he says. Its location in front of City Hall creates the impression the government owns it.

He says the wall was a prescient “kind of a monument to Twitter” because it only accommodates short messages. Any lessons about free speech are “shallow,” he says. “It’s fun to write, ‘fuck City Council,’ but that’s about as far as it goes.”

Of the center’s closing, Cox says, “It seemed to be pretty superfluous. All they did was give their Muzzles.”

In fact, the TJ Center also filed a lot of briefs in First Amendment cases, according to Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead. He calls O’Neil and Wheeler a “dynamic duo,” and says they would defend anyone’s free speech rights. “There’s never enough people doing First Amendment issues,” he says. “I hate to see them go.”

C-VILLE was unable to reach Worrell for his response to the shuttering of the free speech org he founded 30 years ago. He was active in the beginning, says Sanford, but moved to Florida and shifted his focus to other projects. Says Sanford, “He didn’t really stay engaged.”

Update: The original headline was “Muzzled: Free speech center shuts down.”

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Going it alone: Charlottesville Tomorrow dumps Progress, broadens mission

Giles Morris, Charlottesville Tomorrow executive director, says coverage of government meetings has changed since August 2017. The online publication wants to move toward more in-depth coverage of community issues. Eze Amos

When Charlottesville Tomorrow began in 2005, it was one of the first nonprofit, local news orgs in the country. Its mission was so narrow—land use, community design, transportation—that another local weekly called it a “growth watchdog.”

The online publication broadened its name recognition and reach when it began sharing content with the Daily Progress in 2009, a liaison that lasted 10 years, until executive director Giles Morris announced June 24 that its partnership with the Progress was over, and CTom was broadening its mission: “Charlottesville Tomorrow delivers in-depth reporting and analysis that improves local decision-making. We seek to expand civic engagement to foster a vibrant, inclusive, and interdependent community.”

It wasn’t just one thing that caused the break up with the Progress, says Morris, a former editor of C-VILLE Weekly. The once-heralded collaboration had survived multiple editors, publishers, and owners of the newspaper, most recently BH Media, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, whose CEO Warren Buffett famously declared for-profit print newspapers “toast.”

Lately, “the Progress was only running about half our stuff,” says Morris. “I don’t think it was working as well.” And he’s not worried about losing the print outlet. “We’ve always been digital.”

In the year or so since Morris became executive director, he’s doubled the news staff to four, and hired former DP associate city editor Elliott Robinson to be editor. He wants to run longer, more in-depth pieces. In the past, says Morris, “we just wrote meetings reports.” The daily news cycle doesn’t allow time for a reporter to call nine sources, he says. “As a nonprofit, we can be very intentional.”

“It was their call,” says DP editor Aaron Richardson. “I wish them every success.”

UVA associate professor Christopher Ali, who specializes in local media, says he was surprised by the move. “This was one of the most innovative partnerships in digital news.”

Working with the Progress guaranteed visibility for Charlottesville Tomorrow, he says. “I’d be interested in seeing their strategy for visibility.”

Ali is “more worried about the Daily Progress than I am Charlottesville Tomorrow. It is really difficult to be a small market paper.”

He suggests with the loss of CTom content, the Progress “double down on local coverage” and don’t substitute AP stories. “That’s the one thing local newspapers can offer.”

Charlottesville Tomorrow was founded by hedge fund manager Michael Bills and Southern Environmental Law Center founder Rick Middleton at a time that growth in Albemarle County was a big concern for rural landscape lovers. Its wealthy board included Renee Grisham, wife of mega-author John, and the nonprofit was supported by donors like Ted Weschler, a top stock picker for Buffett and an investor in C-VILLE Weekly’s parent company.

The change in mission came slowly over the past year since Morris was hired. “The language in our original mission didn’t sound like where we want to be.”

Land use and public education have been “pillars of our coverage,” he says. “We’re not going to abandon that. If the community wants public health or housing coverage, we’re going to raise the money to do it well.”

“I consider it more of an evolution than a change in mission,” says Bills. “We’re still trying to fill the local news coverage the community needs to make decisions.”

Much like listener-supported public radio, Charlottesville Tomorrow will continue to need donors. It reported revenues of $460,000 in 2017, and in the $400,000 ballpark the two years prior, according to its IRS 990s.

Morris wants people to sign up for emails, which will include fundraising pitches. “We want more readers. We want more readers to be donors,” he says. And CTom will continue to apply for grants, such as the ones it receives from the Knight Foundation.

The events of August 12, 2017, also factored into the changes Charlottesville Tomorrow is making, with more people covering local government meetings, says Morris, and more awareness of racial inequity.

Morris says he wasn’t pointing fingers specifically at the Progress when he wrote, “Today, Charlottesville is a place where we’re all questioning and challenging the inherited models that have reinforced harmful power dynamics.”

But he does acknowledge the role community newspapers had in supporting segregation while covering up “the corrosive injustice of racism in the South.”

When he came to Charlottesville in 2011, he says he was “unprepared to cover race and equality in this place.” While at C-VILLE, Morris had to deal with a protest in 2013 after the paper published a racist comment in a section called “The Rant.”

Says Morris, “In journalism, we share a responsibility.”

Morris and Robinson will be conducting a series of listening sessions in the coming months to learn how locals want Charlottesville Tomorrow’s guiding values of “equity, truth and community” put into place.

City spokesman Brian Wheeler was CTom’s first executive director. “As someone who was involved in the birth of the organization, I am excited to see its current leadership continuing to innovate, to launch a next generation news website, and to serve the community’s critical information needs.”

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Where’s McFadden? Emotional plea from family of missing teen

LaTasha Dennis, center, Sage Smith's mother, says she can't get closure until she finds her chlld, missing for over six years. She's with her husband, James Dennis, and Sage's sister, Eanna Langston, at a June 27 press conference. staff photo

The family of Dashad, aka Sage, Smith made a moving, at times tearful request for help in finding the man last seen with the teen missing since 2012, while urging the community to not get hung up on pronouns or the name by which Smith is identified.

 At a June 27 press conference, Charlottesville police renewed efforts to find Erik McFadden, 28, the last person to see Smith six-and-a-half years ago on November 20, 2012, on the 500 block of West Main Street.

Smith, who was known to many as Sage, was expected for Thanksgiving two days later, and when she didn’t show up, the family called police. The case was initially treated as a missing person. In November 2016, police reclassified it as a homicide.

Erik McFadden. photo Charlottesville police

Police briefly made contact with McFadden, but he failed to show up for a scheduled interview, said Captain Jim Mooney. McFadden has not been seen since, allegedly even by family members. Yesterday Mooney filed a missing person report on behalf of McFadden’s mother, who said she didn’t realize her son had disappeared until 2014, and assumed his father would have reported him missing.

Mooney listed a handful of cities along the East Coast where McFadden may have traveled or lived, including Baltimore and Joppa, Maryland, Lake City and Columbia, South Carolina, Rochester, New York, and Atlanta, although he could be at unknown locations on the West Coast as well.

Smith’s sister, Eanna Langston, was 14 when her sibling disappeared. Now 20, she mourns the milestones he’s missed (the family used male pronouns to refer to Smith). “Our hearts are hurting, our hearts are heavy with pain,” she said, at times in tears. “At 19 he was taken from us without any explanation, and he hasn’t been given any justice.”

Detective Regine Wright, who is leading the investigation, addressed the use of pronouns and names for Smith, about which both police and local media have been castigated. 

photos Charlottesville police

Smith’s family members told her that Sage “loved being a woman,” said Wright. “I also understand Sage was comfortable being a man.” According to the family, Smith also was comfortable being called his given name, Dashad, or Sage, said Wright. Smith’s grandmother, Lolita “Cookie” Smith, who died May 3, told Wright that whether dressed like a man or a woman, Sage “just wanted to look fly.”

CPD will refer to Smith as Sage and avoid using pronouns, said the detective, although at times the department will have to refer to Smith as Dashad in the search for his body. According to family members, Smith was still exploring gender identity at the time of the teen’s disappearance, said Wright, and she asked for patience “because we’re human and we make mistakes.”

Sage’s mother, LaTasha Dennis, urged people to not get bogged down about pronouns in the search for her missing child. “I’m in a situation where I can’t grieve,” she said. “I just need closure.”

She added, “Stay focused on my son.”

A $20,000 reward is offered for information leading to an arrest in the case, and anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Wright at 434-970-3381, or call the anonymous CrimeStoppers tip line at 434-977-4000.  

 

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No free lunch: Paid parking comes to Belmont

New signage sprang up in two private Belmont lots directing parkers to pay using a mobile app or risk getting towed. Staff photo

When the ParkMobile signs went up June 15, the paid parking designation caught Belmonters by surprise. Parking can be a challenge in the neighborhood, and customers at two new restaurants, Belle Coffee & Wine and No Limits Smokehouse, had been using the adjacent lots for free. Now, they’ll have to pay.

Belle Coffee & Wine is in the building that formerly housed La Taza, which was purchased by real estate investor Murry Pitts’ MELCP LLC September 24 for $3.65 million. The sale included property across the street that used to house Belmont BBQ, and both sites have lots that now warn parkers to pay with the mobile app or risk getting towed.

No Limits Smokehouse occupies the former Belmont BBQ space, and its owner, who declined to provide his name, says, “People are pissed.” He says he’s watched people pull into the lot beside his restaurant, look at the signs, and leave.

He was aware the landlord was going to put in paid parking when he signed the lease two months ago, he says, but he didn’t realize it would happen this soon.

Thirty percent of No Limits’ business is takeout, he says, and Friday and Saturday nights have been “super busy.”

Across the street, Belle Coffee & Wine has been open fewer than two months, and some customers have been “very upset,” says manager Bailey Laing. “We do get a lot of people asking about it.”

Not everyone is bothered by the paid parking. A woman sitting outside Belle says it was her second time there and paying to park didn’t keep her from coming.

“I never mind paying for parking,” says her friend “It’s not as big a deal as people make it.”

Restaurateur Andy McClure owns Belle, along with the Virginian and Citizen Burger, and he sees the paid parking as a plus. “I think it’s good for all of Belmont. There’s nowhere to park.”

People pay to park on the Corner and downtown, he points out. The Belmont lots are private, and now anyone can park there. “People weren’t allowed to park there before,” he says. “I think everyone wants more parking.”

Resident Kimber Hawkey was “astounded” to see the newly installed parking signs, and she does not believe the paid lots will ease the neighborhood’s parking crunch.

‘Why would it help?” she asks. “Why would someone choose to pay when they can go down the street and take a free space in front of someone’s house? That makes no sense.”

Matt Shields, who has lived in Belmont for 20 years, was having a brisket sandwich at No Limits. He says he stopped for coffee at Belle’s last week. “I didn’t pay because I thought it was crazy. I was only going to be in there a minute.”

He acknowledges that parking in Belmont can get “bonkers,” and can see the paid parking hurting both new restaurants, particularly for customers making a quick stop who have to pause and download an app or risk getting towed.

Pitts, who also bought the former Gleason feed store property at 126 Garrett Street for $5 million in 2016, did not respond to messages left with his registered agent in Staunton.

However, Ben Wilson with Nest Realty, which manages the properties, says Pitts “is trying to expand the parking rather than have it exclusive to the properties he owns. He wants to create an opportunity to anyone who wants to park.”

Correction June 28: Pitts does not own the Gleason condo building as stated in the original story.

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Threat of ICE raids creates fear in local immigrant communities

Maria Chavalan Sut, a Guatemalan refugee, has been given sanctuary in the Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church while she fights to stay in the United States. Photo by Eze Amos

Although President Trump walked back his order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct mass roundups of migrant families in major U.S. cities over the weekend, the delay did nothing to forestall the anxiety already created in the local immigrant community. 

The raids were postponed to allow talks between the White House and Democrats in Congress after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump.

Priscilla Mendenhall with Charlottesville-area Immigrant Resource and Advocacy Coalition is skeptical about the delay.

“It’s designed to further terrorize children and families and whole communities,” she says. “It’s deliberately manipulative. It’s cruel. I think it’s very intentional.” 

She believes the mass roundups are tied to Trump’s reelection campaign. “This kind of action on his administration’s part furthers a narrative about immigrants that’s dehumanizing, criminalizing, and one that’s recurring in American history.” 

CIRAC and other immigrant advocacy groups are calling upon local law enforcement to not cooperate with ICE.

The Trump administration is targeting  “vulnerable Virginia residents that might’ve fallen through the cracks in their court case for reasons beyond their control,” says Luis Oyola with Legal Aid Justice Center. “We are calling on localities to refuse to assist ICE in their operations.”

Charlottesville Sheriff James Brown says his office has no intention of participating in ICE raids because it’s a federal operation, and the people targeted don’t have state or local offenses.

Oyola offers this advice to Virginia residents: “You do not have to open the door for ICE and you should demand to see a judge’s signature on a criminal warrant.”

Charlottesville’s most high-profile asylum-seeker is Maria Chavalan-Sut, who has taken sanctuary at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church since October while she fights her deportation order through the court.

Before the raids were postponed, the church’s Pastor Isaac Collins urged ICE agents in the state who “are spending Sunday tearing families apart” to quit their jobs. “Walk away from this evil work, repent of these actions, make reparations to the migrant community, and I will help you find new work,” says Collins.

He also calls upon “every church in Virginia to offer sanctuary to undocumented migrants.”

Lana Heath de Martinez, a faith leader and organizer with the national sanctuary movement, notes that the majority of people targeted are indigenous to North America. “It is actually reminiscent of the Trail of Tears and other efforts to forcibly remove Native American folks and First Nations people.” she says. “This is a continuation of our disgraceful history and should be recognized as such.”

Mendenhall pledges resistance and support for migrant residents. “This community really shows what a small place can do when we come together.” 

ICE spokeswoman Carissa Cutrell did not respond to phone calls from C-VILLE.

Updated 11:30am June 24

Updated 3:46pm with Sheriff James Brown’s response.

Original story

President Trump’s order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct mass roundups of migrant families in major U.S. cities, reportedly on Sunday, has created anxiety in the local immigrant community. Activists say raids have already occurred in Washington, D.C.

“Definitely in D.C. and we’ve heard raids are happening in northern Virginia,” says Priscilla Mendenhall with Charlottesville-area Immigrant Resource and Advocacy Coalition. “Whether or not we have raids, the fear they’re invoking here is real.”

CIRAC and other immigrant advocacy groups are calling upon local law enforcement to not cooperate with ICE.

The Trump administration is targeting  “vulnerable Virginia residents that might’ve fallen through the cracks in their court case for reasons beyond their control,” says Luis Oyola with Legal Aid Justice Center. “We are calling on localities to refuse to assist ICE in their operations.”

According to Oyola, Charlottesville Sheriff James Brown says his office has no intention of participating in ICE raids. C-VILLE Weekly was unable to immediately reach Brown.

Oyola offers this advice to Virginia residents: “You do not have to open the door for ICE and you should demand to see a judge’s signature on a criminal warrant.”

Charlottesville’s most high-profile asylum-seeker is Maria Chavalan-Sut, who has taken sanctuary at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church since October while she fights her deportation order through the court.

The church’s Pastor Isaac Collins urges ICE agents in the state who “are spending Sunday tearing families apart” to quit their jobs. “Walk away from this evil work, repent of these actions, make reparations to the migrant community, and I will help you find new work,” says Collins.

He also calls upon “every church in Virginia to offer sanctuary to undocumented migrants.”

Lana Heath de Martinez, a faith leader and organizer with the national sanctuary movement, notes that the majority of people targeted are indigenous to North America. “It is actually reminiscent of the Trail of Tears and other efforts to forcibly remove Native American folks and First Nations people.” she says. “This is a continuation of our disgraceful history and should be recognized as such.”

ICE spokeswoman Carissa Cutrell did not immediately respond to phone calls from C-VILLE.

Correction: Lana Heath de Martinez was misidentified in the original story, as was Priscilla Mendenhall.

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Gaston’s history: Idealism spurred civil rights activist

UVA history professor emeritus Paul Gaston both taught and made Southern history. Laura Branton

When Paul Gaston came to the University of Virginia in 1957, it was overwhelmingly white and male, and segregation was the order of the day. And that’s why the young history professor and early civil rights activist chose it for his life’s work.

He brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Old Cabell Hall in 1963, just weeks before King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail. That same year, Gaston became UVA’s only professor to get punched and arrested during a sit-in at the staunchly segregated Buddy’s restaurant on Emmet Street.

Professor emeritus Paul Gaston died June 14 at age 91.

Daughter Chinta Gaston remembers her brother Blaise teasing her that “Daddy is in jail.”

She also recalls, “My dad was kicked out of Fry’s Spring [Beach Club] after Buddy’s.” A number of people threatened to leave the club in protest of his ouster, she says, “but Father decided it was wrong to belong to a segregated place. My recollection is we didn’t go back.”

As a white boy growing up in Jim Crow Alabama, Gaston might have seemed an unlikely leader of the civil rights charge. But he was raised in the utopian community of Fairhope, founded by his grandfather, an experience he wrote about in a 2009 memoir.  “I grew up in a community where equal rights and justice were grounding moral principles,” he once told this reporter.

Gaston’s Deep South roots also struck civil rights legend Eugene Williams, who was head of the local NAACP in the 1950s and met Gaston and his wife Mary at a meeting, where they became regulars. Williams says he was “very impressed” when he heard Gaston was at the Buddy’s sit-in.

“I am speaking of a white man, Paul Gaston, born in Alabama, professor at the University of Virginia, and a sure face at civil rights meetings,” says Williams, who also remembers Gaston’s charm during those days of segregation. “And at the end of meetings he would mingle with the attendees.”

Paul Gaston in 2009 at the site of the former Buddy’s, where he was punched and arrested at a sit-in. File photo Hawes Spencer

The ‘60s were cathartic for Gaston. “Life in the 1960s was the most rewarding era I’ve known,” he said in 2005. “I found a community of students who wanted to shake things up. We marched together, we had sit-ins, we had boycotts. I was their leader—I was 30.”

Gaston was offered jobs up north, but chose to stay at UVA, says his youngest son Gareth. “He wanted to teach white Southerners.” Gareth admires the way his father “combined scholarship and activism.”

Gaston taught the South’s history, and wrote The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking in 1970. The book was republished in 2002 and his former student, Robert J. Norrell, wrote in the introduction that it had “stood the test of time as a historical interpretation.”

He helped establish the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies in 1981. And he is credited with wooing civil rights leader Julian Bond to UVA’s faculty.

In the 1980s, he went to South Africa, met Desmond Tutu, and taught a class at the University of Cape Town, says Gareth.

University of Richmond president emeritus Ed Ayers, former UVA dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, recalls that Gaston was a “legend” when Ayers arrived at UVA in 1980.

“I think Paul will be remembered for both writing and making Southern history,” he says.

Chinta notes her father’s optimism and idealism in his belief that he could dispel racism by talking truth. “He was not successful,” she says. Yet he continued to believe “there was a new dawn that would make these poor benighted white people understand.”

He had a great faith in people, says Chinta. He was “endlessly interested in his children and he was nonjudgmental.”

Mary Gaston died in 2013. Gaston is survived by his three children and two granddaughters. A memorial is planned for the fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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‘Progressive energy:’ Hudson, Payne wins signal generational shift

Millennials Sally Hudson and Michael Payne were the big winners in the June 11 primary. photos Amy and Jackson Smith, Eze Amos

In the end, the 57th District race pitting a millennial and a baby boomer for the open House of Delegates seat wasn’t even close. Thirty-year-old Sally Hudson crushed two-term City Councilor Kathy Galvin with 66 percent of the vote in the June 11 primary.

The same dynamic played out in the Democratic primary for City Council, where there are three open seats. Michael Payne, 26, led the pack of five candidates. In November, he’ll supplant outgoing councilor Wes Bellamy, 28 when elected, for the title of youngest person to sit on council.

“I think it’s a big turning point for our small community,” says former councilor Dede Smith, who is a Hudson and Payne supporter. “We’re coming into a new era with our leadership.”

For former mayor Dave Norris, Hudson’s margin of victory “indicates local voters are ready for a new direction.”

Hudson says, “It was striking we won every precinct in the district.” She’s unopposed in the November general election, and she says she’ll spend time helping other Dems get elected because “the Republicans in Richmond are so unsupportive of what we want to get done.” The GOP holds the House by a slim, two-seat majority.

In the City Council race, many had predicted well-known lawyer and top fundraiser Lloyd Snook, 66, would bring in the most votes. He came in second behind Payne.

“The order surprised me,” says Smith. And Sena Magill’s taking third place was also a surprise for Smith. “I thought Brian Pinkston was emerging.”

Former city councilor Bob Fenwick, 73, trailed in last place.

“I think it’s a generational shift,” says Smith. “Being a candidate in the fairly recent past, most voters were baby boomers or older. It was shocking. I think we’re beginning to see a wake up to this maturing [millennial] generation that voting matters.”

For Payne, co-founder of Indivisible Charlottesville, leading the pack is a sign “the community wants to see bold, progressive change on affordable housing, racial equity, and climate change.”

“One of the qualities Michael and I share is a sense of the fierce urgency of now,” says Hudson.

Primary winners Payne, Snook, and Magill will face independents Bellamy Brown and Paul Long on the November 5 ballot, and while the odds are in their favor in Dem-heavy Charlottesville, in 2017 Mayor Nikuyah Walker became the first independent to get on council since 1948.

Statewide, UVA Center for Politics’ Kyle Kondik saw “some progressive energy,” but that didn’t always prevail, notably in the 35th District race in which incumbent Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw eked by his challenger.

“If Democrats win the House and Senate, it will be the most liberal state government in Virginia ever,” says Kondik. Hudson, he says, is to the left of outgoing House Minority Leader David Toscano. If Dems take the General Assembly and get a chance to govern, he says that could result in policy change—the same message Hudson was hammering.

The other trend in local Democratic primary races is that women prevailed. Chief Deputy Chan Bryant defeated RMC regional director Patrick Estes with 63 percent of the vote to secure the party’s nomination for Albemarle sheriff. She’ll face independent Ronnie Roberts, Lousia police chief, in November.

And in the Rivanna District, Bea LaPisto Kirtley edged out Jerrod Smith with 54 percent of the vote. She does not have a challenger for the Albemarle Board of Supervisors in the general election in November.

The other General Assembly primary that includes part of Albemarle is the 17th District, where former Charlottesville School Board member Amy Laufer’s 79 percent of the vote obliterated Ben Hixon. Laufer will face incumbent state Senator Bryce Reeve, who easily fended off challenger Rich Breeden with 82 percent of the vote in that district’s Republican primary.

Correction June 17: Jerrod Smith was misidentified in the original story.

 

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Free Union fray: Appeals board upholds rural business

Albemarle County affirmed that Carter Hilliard’s company in rural Free Union is an agricultural services business. Staff photo

Close to 100 of the landed gentry filled Lane Auditorium for an Albemarle Board of Zoning Appeals hearing, a crowd size rarely seen during the usual Board of Supervisors meetings there.

Well-heeled rural residents lined up for and against a Free Union Road business, lobbing accusations of “Californian,” “cronyism,” and “sleight of hand” in a June 4 hearing to determine whether Hilliard Estate and Land Management is a landscape company—forbidden commercial activity in the rural area—or one that provides agricultural services, which is allowed.

Former Tupperware CEO Rick Goings lives at Eagle Hill Farm, an estate once owned by Scripps heiress Betty Scripps. Across the street is a 217-acre parcel owned by Mary Scott and John “J.B.” Birdsall, who serves on the boards of Piedmont Environmental Council and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello.

The Birdsalls leased the property to Carter Hilliard and company. Goings, his wife Susan, and a dozen neighbors contend the bulk of Hilliard’s business is landscaping, and they complain they weren’t notified Albemarle had allowed commercial activity. The land also is in a conservation easement.

The county determined that Hilliard’s business provides agricultural services, such as fencing, vineyard trellising, planting, and burning, a by-right use, and confirmed that in a July 26, 2018, letter. By-right activity does not require neighbor notification. And the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which holds the conservation easement, confirms that ag services are allowed under the easement.

Hilliard says his company acts as a farm manager for large and midsize farms, providing the equipment that wouldn’t be cost-effective for them to buy. He got a permit to build a 4,500-square-foot storage barn in November, and in January, the complaints began.

Then-zoning administrator Amelia McCulley, now deputy director of community development, investigated, and in a February 14 letter, said she stood by her original determination that Hilliard’s business was not in violation of county ordinances.

But the Goings appealed that decision, and at the June 4 meeting, both sides had lawyered up. Eleven of the 16 speakers were there in support of Hilliard, including Stuart and Ali King of King Family Vineyards. Buddy-from-college Stuart said he’d borrowed equipment from Hilliard to use at the vineyards on “many occasions.”

Andrew Baldwin, who owns Piedmont Place in Crozet and who built million-dollar condo project 550 Water, said he was founder of eco-development Bundoran Farm, where Hilliard does maintenance. Baldwin called the appeal “ridiculous.”

Susan Goings said she and her husband had been accused of being “Californians” for complaining about Hilliard. She told the board she cared about open-space protection, and had contributed $20,000 to the Birdsall and Hilliards’ lawsuit against Foxfield to prevent the sale of the 179-acre racetrack.

The county’s July 2018 letter of determination said Hilliard could perform landscaping services as an incidental use. Goings reported multiple lawn mowers and weed trimmers, which she said she didn’t see at her grandfather’s farm.

And she referred to high-end catalog Scout, where last year HELM advertised landscaping services, while this year “all the landscaping equipment is gone.” She also said the company had changed its website so that the landscaping services that were prominent a year ago are absent, and the focus is estate management.

“They’re trying to use some fancy language to call it something else, but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it is a duck,” she said.

McCulley said in the Goings appeal of her decision, the burden was on them to prove their “irrelevant or unsubstantiated claims.”

Assistant county attorney Rich DeLoria reiterated that McCulley’s original go-ahead allowed some landscaping, and that the Goings had 30 days to appeal—and missed that deadline.

David Thomas, the lawyer for the Goings, suggested McCulley had been misled by Hilliard, and the county took his word about the nature of his business without demanding financial information about the sources of his revenue. He also alleged that when the county did an inspection, Hilliard was notified in advance.

Not true, said McCulley, who also said it was “very rare” to ask for financial information.

“If Mr. Hilliard wanted to hide, he’d never have gone to the zoning administrator in the first place,” said DeLoria. “The appellant is calling him and the zoning administrator liars.”

New Board of Zoning Appeals member Marcia Joseph described the situation as a “he said, she said.” But she came back to McCulley’s original letter, which allowed landscaping as a secondary use.

Former Albemarle sheriff Ed Robb, also on the BZA, said, “We look at the facts,” in particular, that the Goings had 30 days to appeal the 2018 determination, and hadn’t.

“This is a messy business,” said appeals board member David Bowerman, who once served on the Board of Supervisors. He voted to support McCulley’s determination, as did the rest of the board.

The 4-0 vote was followed by applause.

After, Hilliard said he appreciated the board’s decision “as I went through the proper channels to do business in Albemarle County.”

“I was shocked,” says Susan Goings. “We’re very concerned about the precedent, not just for Free Union, but for Albemarle County. It seems like a cronyism system.”

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“They’re trying to use some fancy language to call it something else, but If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.” Susan Goings