Tiki torch-carrying Unite the Righters marched through UVA Grounds August 11, 2017, and surrounded a small group of counterdemonstraters at the base of the Thomas Jefferson statue. (Photo: Zach D. Roberts/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press)
What kind of message does failing to prosecute white supremacists send?
By Anne Coughlin
To mark the anniversary of the Unite the Right rally, commentators took stock of the successful prosecutions of white supremacists who committed violence and spread hatred in Charlottesville. Such prosecutions are a measure of law enforcement’s commitment to punishing violent offenders, offering closure to the community, deterring copycat crimes, and uprooting racist ideology.
At the sentencing of James Fields for the murder of Heather Heyer and the maiming of numerous peaceful protesters, Thomas Cullen, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said that such prosecutions “send a message that our government condemns this type of activity and will do all within our power to hold folks accountable.”
Likewise, when three members of a militant white-supremacist group known as the Rise Above Movement were sentenced in Charlottesville federal court for violence they committed here and elsewhere, Colonel Gary Settle, the Virginia State Police superintendent, declared that the sentences “stand as evidence that Virginia has zero tolerance for such criminal activity.”
What message then does a prosecutor send by failing to prosecute crimes committed by white supremacists?
While federal and Charlottesville prosecutors have successfully brought multiple cases against the white supremacists who committed crimes in their jurisdictions during that hate-filled weekend two years ago, Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci has not.
As the world knows, on August 11, 2017, hundreds of white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia. They carried burning torches and shouted intimidating phrases such as “Blood and soil,” “You will not replace us,” and “Jews will not replace us.”
When they arrived in front of the Rotunda, the torch mob approached a small group of students and other community members who were standing near a statue of Thomas Jefferson. This small group linked arms and chanted, “Black lives matter.” The white supremacists surrounded the group and pinned them at the base of the statue, continuing to scream racist and anti-Semitic slurs. Some hurled their torches into the air. Others wielded their torches as weapons and attacked.
Under Virginia law, it is a felony to burn an object in a public place when that person has the intent to intimidate others and does so in a manner that places others in reasonable fear of bodily injury. UVA’s Lawn and Rotunda are public places, and they are located in Albemarle County.
This means that Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Tracci has the authority and the responsibility to decide whether Virginia law was broken that night. His ongoing failure to prosecute these cases severely damages the community’s willingness to trust law enforcement generally, and his office specifically.
As a partial excuse for his inaction, Tracci has pointed out that then-Charlottesville commonwealth’s attorney Dave Chapman did not bring charges in connection with two torch-burning rallies that took place in the city that year. However, Chapman explained in a legal memo his decision not to prosecute the less-threatening incidents in the city, in part by contrasting them with the torch-bearing mob at the Rotunda.
Unlike the city cases, Chapman described the events of August 11 as a case where a prosecution might be “on firm ground” because they involve “specific circumstances that would cause people who are then and there present to have a legitimate and immediate fear of death or bodily harm.”
The events of August 11 were traumatic for many reasons, and the fears of those present were legitimate. As the media has reported, the anti-racist protesters were terrified by the mob, and some were physically injured in the melee.
That trauma was exacerbated by the fact that police did nothing that night to protect people from the torch-bearing mob. As a result, the community’s confidence in law enforcement has been badly shaken. When members of the Rise Above Movement were arrested, FBI Special Agent Adam Lee alluded to this loss of trust when he said that he hoped the arrests would remind “communities like Charlottesville to remember who the good guys are.” Tracci should take immediate steps to show that Albemarle County has zero tolerance for white supremacist violence and intimidation. He should file felony charges under the “burning objects” statute. If he does not, voters should keep Tracci’s record and its message in mind when they head to the polls in November.
Anne M. Coughlin is the Lewis F. Powell, Jr., professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law.
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Amend Virginia’s burning object statute
By Robert Tracci
Enacted in 2002, Virginia’s burning object statute establishes a felony offense for “[a]ny person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, burns an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury.”
On May 13, 2017, white supremacists with tiki torches chanting “you will not replace us” and “blood and soil” conducted a rally at Charlottesville’s Market Street (formerly Lee) Park. On August 11, 2017, tiki torch-carrying white supremacists chanting similar racist slogans marched on UVA Grounds. And on October 7, 2017—two months after August 2017—white supremacists carrying tiki torches and chanting racist slogans yet again returned to Market Street Park.
In a memorandum to then-city manager Maurice Jones, Charlottesville’s prior commonwealth’s attorney declined prosecution under the burning objects statute, stating: “There is a threshold problem with the statute. The statute refers to ‘burn an object.’ The question could arise—and would in criminal law—as to whether carrying a burning torch falls within the definitional scope of burning an object. That alone could prevent a prosecution.”While this memorandum distinguished the May and October torch-lit rallies from the August 11, 2017, rally on UVA Grounds, the “threshold problem” conforming a tiki torch to the burning objects statute presents in all three rallies.
Recognizing these legal deficits in Virginia’s burning objects statute, pages 174-175 of the Heaphy Report urged the General Assembly to: “consider broadening the intent standard for the criminal prohibition on the use of open flames to threaten or intimidate. This [burning objects] statute should be altered to track the language of statutes that proscribe the use of swastikas and burning crosses and include the use of fire with the intent to intimidate.”
In October 2018—14 months after August 2017—UVA issued additional no-trespass orders for actions on August 11, 2017. Notably, UVA declined to issue no-trespass orders to all torch marchers. The standard for issuing a no-trespass order is considerably lower than that necessary to sustain a criminal conviction.
Earlier this year, Delegate David Toscano introduced HB2010 to codify the burning objects recommendation contained in the Heaphy Report, but it did not receive a hearing. I supported—and still support—its favorable consideration.
Working with law enforcement partners and available witnesses, this office has sought lawful accountability for violations of Virginia law occurring on UVA Grounds on August 11, 2017, by prosecuting malicious bodily injury, illegal use of tear gas, and assault and battery charges. The office has reviewed recordings, video evidence, livestreams capturing contemporaneous observations of those present, emergency communications traffic, and other available information.
While the Heaphy Report deemed UVA’s preparation and response to August 11 “woefully inadequate,” the subsequent investigation by the UVA Police Department and others has been thorough and professional. And I continue to encourage all victims of August 2017 to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.
Following the events of August 2017, UVA’s Board of Visitors took prompt and commendable action to better protect the university community, including adopting prohibitions on open flames on UVA Grounds without a permit. It is time for the General Assembly to complement these efforts by amending Virginia’s burning objects statute.
In our system of justice, a prosecutor must faithfully apply the law and uphold ethical standards in all cases. These obligations inhere in a prosecutor’s oath and are spelled out in the Rules of Professional Responsibility. Compromising these principles would affront our values in a manner those who brought hate to our community in 2017 never could.
Robert Tracci is the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney.
Former Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas is named in several lawsuits stemming from the events of August 12, 2017.
Eze Amos
Who’s suing whom
In advance of the two-year statute of limitations, a flurry of lawsuits have been filed stemming from the events of August 12, 2017, adding to several that are ongoing. Having a hard time keeping up with who’s a defendant and who’s a plaintiff?Here’s a primer:
Sines v. Kessler
Ten victims of the Unite the Right rally, including Seth Wispelwey, Tyler Magill and Marcus Martin, filed suit against 24 UTR organizers, including Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, James Fields, Elliott Kline, Chris Cantwell, Matthew Heimbach, David Parrott, and Andrew Anglin. It’s the oldest lawsuit filed, filed October 11, 2017.
In addition to filing another federal lawsuit against the city, Jason Kessler is also a defendant in other suits filed by Unite the Right victims. Eze Amos
Kessler v. City of Charlottesville
Kessler and David Parrott are suing City Manager Tarron Richardson, former police chief Al Thomas, Virginia State Police Lieutenant Becky Crannis-Curl, and former city manager Maurice Jones, claiming their First Amendment rights were violated. kessler v. charlottesville
Tanesha Hudson v. City of Charlottesville
The community activist claims Maurice Jones, Al Thomas, Detective James Mooney, Sergeant Ronnie Stayments, and Sergeant Lee Gibson violated her First, Fifth, and 14th amendment rights and seeks $400,000. Filed pro se, which means she’s representing herself, in Charlottesville Circuit Court.
DeAndre Harris v. Jason Kessler et. al.
The 35 defendants include Richard Spencer, six attackers, Elliott Kline, David Parrott, and John Doe 1 and 2 (aka Sunglasses and Redbeard). Harris, who was severely beaten in the Market Street Parking Garage, is allegingconspiracy to discriminate and attack on the basis of race. DeAndre Harris v. Kessler, Spencer et.al
Greg Conte v. Commonwealth of Virginia
Richard Spencer pal Conte and UTR attendee Warren Balogh named the VSP, former governor Terry McAuliffe, VSP Lieutenant Becky Crannis-Curl, Al Thomas, Mike Signer, Wes Bellamy, Emily Gorcenski, Seth Wispelwey, and Dwayne Dixon among the 16 defendants, and alleged First and 14th amendment violations. Also filed pro se. conte, balogh v. VA
Bill Burke v. James Fields et. al.
Bill Burke waits for the jury’s verdict at the James Fields trial. staff photo
The 19 named defendants include Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach, David Duke, Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, plus John Doe and Jane Doe 1-1,000. Burke traveled from Ohio to protest the white supremacists who came to Charlottesville. He was injured when Fields drove into a crowd, and Heather Heyer died beside him. Claims RICO violations and conspiracy, and seeks $3 million on each count. burke v. fields
Karen Cullen and Amanda Bates v. Commonwealth of Virginia
The widows of Virginia State Police’s Berke Bates and Jay Cullen, who died in a helicopter crash August 12, both filed wrongful death lawsuits seeking $50 million each.
Quote of the week
“The temperature at the floor when they entered was 500 degrees.”—Charlottesville Fire Chief Andrew Baxter describes the August 18 Pet Paradise fire
In brief
$4-million sale
Hawes Spencer, former editor of C-VILLE and the Hook, sold the Downtown Mall building that houses Bizou for $4 million to Bizou owner Vincent Derquenne and developer Oliver Kuttner, who purchased the property as Walters Building LLC. Spencer bought the building, which housed the Hook offices, for $2.5 million in 2006.
Elliott Harding. publicity photo
Slimed by Kessler
Independent 25th District candidate Elliott Harding’s brief association with Jason Kessler came to light last week when Kessler posted messages from Harding, who reviewed Kessler’s petition to recall Wes Bellamy in 2017. Harding, a former chair of the Albemarle County Republican Committee, says he quickly saw what Kessler was about and has worked to prevent him from gaining a platform. “We’ve been at it ever since.”
Another statue suit
Norfolk, fighting to remove its own Confederate statue, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that Virginia’s law preventing a locality from removing a war memorial is unconstitutional and forces the city to perpetuate a message it no longer stands behind, violating its First and 14th amendment rights, the Virginian-Pilot reports. City councilors are also plaintiffs in the suit.
‘Hitler’s best friends’
Two weeks after city councilors were accused of aligning themselves with the Nazi dictator for rejecting a proposal to bring D.C. rapper Wale to Charlottesville, Kathy Galvin, Mike Signer, Heather Hill, and Wes Bellamy issued a joint statement condemning the “abusive environment” created by some attendees of council meetings. Bellamy also apologized for not initially defending his colleagues, saying “I genuinely don’t believe any of you are racist.”
Fatal infection
German shepherd Gunner died after a day of swimming in the Rivanna River, NBC29 reports. He contracted a bacterial disease called leptospirosis, which is transmitted in wet places where animals have urinated and can be deadly to humans as well.
More bad pet news
A fire broke out in Pet Paradise around 6:30pm August 18. Seventy-five animals were rescued from the Concord Avenue facility, but Pet Paradise is asking for help in locating two cats and a dog that were missing after the fire.
Beauregard splits
Interim Deputy City Manager Leslie Beauregard is leaving after 16 years working in city government and will take a position as assistant city manager in Staunton October 7, the DP reports. Beauregard was best known for her budget work. She was put in an interim position under new City Manager Tarron Richardson’s reorganization of city hall.
First Baptist Church was the scene for August 12 reflection and moving forward—as it was two years ago.
Amy Jackson
Forward together
It was a full house at First Baptist Church on West Main Street on August 12, as a diverse crowd gathered for an interfaith service. “It fills my heart to see the pews filled like this,” said deacon Don Gathers. “We’ve come together not because of what happened, but in spite of it.”
A promised appearance by several presidential candidates fell through, after Cory Booker returned to New Jersey to deal with a water crisis, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had asked to speak at the service but been denied, canceled at the last minute.
The service, which echoed similar gatherings held at the church after the violence in 2017 and on the first anniversary last year, was full of music, prayers, and reflection. It also featured testimony from August 12, 2017, survivors and faith leaders.
Activist Tanesha Hudson, a Charlottesville native, said activists of color had sometimes been left behind, and urged everyone to put action behind their conversations. “The world is watching Charlottesville, so how we recover is going to lay down the blueprint for how the world recovers.”
Marisa Blair and Courtney Commander, who were with their friend Heather Heyer when she died, said the anniversary had been harder than expected, but Blair said she wanted to talk about love. “Be kind. Be gentle. You don’t know what anyone else is facing.”
Presbyterian leader Jill Duffield spoke about living in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white supremacist gunman murdered nine people at the Emanuel AME church, but said it had taken the events in Charlottesville to make her understand the prevalence of white supremacist violence.
And Rabbi Tom Gutherz, of Congregation Beth Israel, addressed the long history of anti-Semitism, calling it “the glue that holds white supremacy together.” The son of a Holocaust survivor, he acknowledged that Jewish people in America have also been privileged. “I may have been surprised,” he said of the violence in Charlottesville, “but African Americans have always known it.”
He exhorted the audience to “be a resister, and not a bystander,” and said, “I believe that we will find a way forward together.”
Clockwise from top left: Don Gathers, Sarah Kelley and Michael Cheuk, Tanesha Hudson, Tom Gutherz, Marissa Blair and Courtney Commander, and Jill Duffield were among those who spoke at First Baptist Church August 12. Amy Jackson
Quote of the week
“You literally have to love the hell out of people.”—Marissa Blair, survivor of the August 12, 2017, car attack
In brief
Kessler refiles
Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler took to the federal courts—again—on the second anniversary of the deadly rally in Charlottesville to sue the city and its officials for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights in August 2017. Kessler and co-plaintiff David Parrott claim police allowed a heckler’s veto to suppress their exercise of free speech by not stopping the fights that led to an unlawful assembly.
Hudson sues, too
Another civil suit was filed August 12, this one by local activist Tanesha Hudson. The lawsuit claims Hudson was denied her First, Fifth, and 14th Amendment rights when she joined Jehovah’s Witnesses counterprotesting at the Unite the Right rally. She’s seeking $400,000 in damages.
Fourth Street petition
City resident Aileen Bartels wants the mall crossing at Fourth Street closed and is circulating a petition to do so, a move unpopular with many downtown businesses, NBC29 reports. Bartels, whose petition had 325 signatures at press time, contends the crossing is a “serious safety hazard” for pedestrians on the mall, and notes the notoriety of the place where James Fields drove his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.
Another challenger
A UVA doctor will run against Denver Riggleman for the 5th District congressional seat. Cameron Webb, who practices and teaches at UVA, lives in Albemarle. He says he’s going to focus on improving access to affordable health care. He joins R.D. Huffstetler and Fauquier lawyer Kim Daugherty in seeking the Dem nomination.
Screwdriver killing
A jury found Gerald Francis Jackson, 61, guilty August 7 of voluntary manslaughter in the slaying of his neighbor, Richard Wayne Edwards, 55, in his Cherry Street apartment. A jury recommended a sentence of 10 years in prison.
Claudrena Harold, Tanesha Hudson, and Zyahna Bryant discuss how white supremacy was in Charlottesville long before August 12 at a UVA panel moderated by UVA vice-provost Louis Nelson.
staff photo
Why Charlottesville was targeted by a white supremacist rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, has led to several theories. That was the starting point for a panel sponsored by the UVA library August 12, two years after the Unite the Right rally.
“Beyond the statues: The invisibility of black Charlottesville” began in the Harrison/Small auditorium with a moment of silence—then a discussion on whether Charlottesville became a target for white supremacists because of the absence of a counternarrative of truth telling on white supremacy and black activism.
It was a premise moderator Louis Nelson, a UVA vice-provost, admitted he didn’t necessarily buy. But he also questioned the “prevailing mythology” that white supremacy came from outside, and Charlottesville really wasn’t like that..
Charlottesville native and soon-to-be UVA first-year Zyahna Bryant challenged the out-of-towners narrative of August 12 and reminded that the man who organized the Unite the Right rally was a graduate of UVA. “Really, people just came out of their houses and came out from their basements into the street and started displaying their ideology,” she said.
In Charlottesville, black people have always had stories about building community, she said. “They just haven’t had those same platforms as white people.”
Activist Tanesha Hudson said, “When narratives are controlled by masses that have the power and the resources, you’re never going to get the truth. You can’t tell our truths if we’re not in the room.”
She’s making a documentary on black Charlottesville, “mainly because the story hadn’t really been told from a black perspective.”
Negative stories about black people perpetuate a system of racism, she said. “You never see the people rising up against white supremacy.” For instance, the story of Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion, was one she did not learn in Charlottesville schools, she said.
“One thing I loved about separate but equal,” said Hudson, were the black newspapers like the Reflector and the Tribune, which did provide news about what was going on in the black community.
Bryant pointed out how African Americans like Toni Morrison have contributed to American culture. “She was writing to and for black women,” said Bryant. “We created our own culture. I’m fascinated with how we can be so oppressed and so great at the same time. It fills me up.”
Claudrena Harold is a UVA history professor who co-edited Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity with Nelson and has made films on the history of black student activism at UVA. “I wanted to capture the beauty and texture of everyday life,” and how black students in the ‘60s and ‘70s created a culture, she said. “I wanted to visually tell that.”
Nelson asked the panelists about the most pressing systems and structures that need to be addressed.
A living wage and union representation, said Harold. “When people talk about the university as a plantation, they’re not talking about its architectural design.”
Hudson listed health care and justice, while Bryant said public education. She described how her guidance counselor tried to steer her away from applying to UVA and she realized she was the only one of 30 black students at Charlottesville High who applied.
“UVA is not actually accessible to black students in Charlottesville,” said Bryant. “Most of their parents have worked for the university.”
Bryant also warned about “the dangers of free speech,” which shut down city schools for two days when a teenager made a threat on social media. In school during conversations about history, she said, “Young white boys feel emboldened to be like, ‘I don’t like black people,’ and feel the classroom is a safe space to say that, and then we wonder who’s doing the mass shootings in school. Do we not see any level of connectedness there?”
The "Inside Out: Charlottesville" mural features photos of 120 local activists, along the wall of the Violet Crown on Second St. Photo: Eze Amos
It’s been two years since the “Summer of Hate,” and Charlottesville, to the larger world, is still shorthand for white supremacist violence. As we approach the second anniversary of August 11 and 12, 2017, we reached out to a wide range of community leaders and residents to talk about what, if anything, has changed since that fateful weekend, and how we can move forward.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What do you think of how Charlottesville, as a city, has responded in the aftermath of A12? What’s changed? What hasn’t?
It’s hard to say what’s changed in Charlottesville. Once heralded as America’s most ideal city, we’ve been outed as a place that is just as flawed as any other town. Having been forced to enter a conversation that has no easy solution, it feels like a collective healing from August 11 and 12 and its aftermath is going to take much longer than any of us want to believe. It’s a humbling and sober thought. That’s not to say there isn’t reason to hope—there certainly is—but I think that the pace of change—real, lasting change—is glacial. I think there’s a way to press on for a better future while extending grace to ourselves and each other.
—Sam Bush, music minister at Christ Episcopal Church and co-founder of The Garage art space
Charlene Green. Photo: Devon Ericksen
I think the way we tried to respond last year, from a law enforcement perspective, I think it was one of safety, we were definitely trying to assure the residents that no one was going to get hurt in the same way.
I think this year, the planning of Unity Days has definitely given community members a whole new opportunity to figure out how to be engaged about this, how to acknowledge the anniversary, and I think so far it has been a pretty successful effort.
It’s about constantly educating folks about what Charlottesville is all about, because we’re not a one-story town.
–Charlene Green, manager of the Charlottesville Office of Human Rights
I still think it’s a plantation, not a city. I feel that we should be going further with having transparency in the community to be able to work together.
The city hasn’t done anything besides make themselves look good, writing books, getting all these different recognitions for themselves, but nothing for the community.
[A lot of] the activists that were hurt…and that have been the true fighters for Charlottesville, are gone. And then you have some of us who are still left here, but I’m willing to leave, because I’m tired. Because this hasn’t just been going on for me since 2017, this has been going on for me for 13 years now. So I’m tired, because it’s like the more you’re fighting, it’s like it’s not changing.
–Rosia Parker, community activist and Police Civilian Review Board member
Rev. Seth Wispelwey and other clergy marched to oppose the KKK in July 2017. Photo: Eze Amos
It’s difficult to answer, because what people make of that weekend, whether they experienced it directly or not, is up to them, and relies so much on the stories we told about ourselves beforehand.
As a co-creator of Congregate, in our weeks of training, we always emphasized that it was about using the weekend of August 11th and 12th as a pivot point to the long, deep, hard, life-giving work we all can be a part of in dismantling white supremacy. So some people took up that call, and have continued to run with it, learning and growing along the way, and others covered their ears, and wanted to believe that this had nothing to do with Charlottesville or our collective responsibility to one another. And then still others were somewhere in the middle, believing that their ongoing efforts were sufficient, that the status quo was naturally going to lead to some sort of evolutionary progress. We’re a very self-satisfied progressive city.
I think it’s no secret that governing authorities, from City Council to the police force, in the summer of 2017 made choices that left our community vulnerable and exposed and suffering from violence. What hasn’t changed is there still has been little to no accountability for that, and so while people have undertaken their own healing processes, I still believe, even two years on, there’s a tremendous trust deficit between members of the community who saw the violent threat for what it was, and our ostensible leadership, who by and large prescribed ignoring it and left people to be beaten, and then prosecuted some people who defended themselves.
And again we saw that on the first-year anniversary, the over-militarized response. Treating the community and activists as the enemy has been the wrong direction so far. And I don’t think it would take much to repair that trust deficit. “I’m sorry” is free. But that’s going to take some work, and I haven’t seen changes there from city leadership.”
–Reverend Seth Wispelwey, former minister at Restoration Village Arts and co-founder of Congregate Charlottesville
I think in the aftermath of A12, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in civic engagement. More and more people are paying close attention to City Council and getting involved with local community groups. People are trying to understand where we’re at as a community, and how we can create real, lasting change.
The conversation around race and equity has completely changed and there’s an unprecedented level of awareness about local economic and racial inequalities. But we haven’t yet created the level of institutional change needed to fundamentally shift the balance of political and economic power within Charlottesville. We’ve planted the seeds of change, but we have a lot of work left to do when it comes to changing outcomes.
–Michael Payne, housing activist and City Council candidate
Everything and nothing. We’re still very much a city divided. There have been some efforts made…but I don’t think there’s been any real substantive change. We elected Nikuyah, but I’d like to think that that would have happened whether August the 12th ever did or not.
The city’s done a great job with the Unity Days events and that’s a huge start. But we’ve still got such a long way to go.
–Don Gathers, community activist and former Chair of The Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces
Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
“I was still new to Charlottesville when A11/12 happened; I had only been here about eight months, so I don’t have a great deal of perspective on Charlottesville before that time. The changes that I have seen, though, I would characterize as a greater urgency around the conversations that Charlottesville and the country as a whole must engage in—conversations around systemic and institutionalized racism, equity, and the historical inequalities that continue to resonate locally and nationally.
One of the things that worries me in the community is that I continue to hear people say things along the lines of, “they (meaning the white nationalists) weren’t from here…” True, some did come from other places, but I think it is dangerous not to acknowledge fully that this is our problem, too.”
—Matthew McLendon, Ph.D., director of The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA
In terms of where we are this year—with no active threat of more violence and a plan for less police presence, I do want to emphasize that there is increased possibility for the beginning of a healing journey, both at the individual and the community level. It was very hard to begin that process that year, as so many people felt unsafe around the anniversary, so that feels to me very different this year.
Mental health-wise, reflecting on the changes over the past few years, there are many more therapists and other people in our community who are prepared to respond to traumatic experiences and to facilitate healing—in particular the establishment of the Central Virginia Clinicians of Color Network.
Obviously, trauma is historical and something we’re still grappling with. On the positive side, our community is looking very explicitly at health disparity and in particular racial inequity around health outcomes for the first time. Everyone’s coming together in our community health needs assessment to say our number one priority is to address inequity in health outcomes. So I think that is a positive change. Has that disparity changed yet? No. So we have a lot of work to do, but awareness is the first step.”
—Elizabeth Irvin, executive director of The Women’s Initiative
Susan Bro. Photo: Eze Amos
I think Charlottesville is working to bring awareness to the citizens and change its image. There have been intensified efforts to shed light on the truth of the past. That’s a good beginning. But the racial divides in housing and education seem to still be just as bad as before. None of us at the Heather Heyer Foundation actually live in town or even Albemarle County. So we are on the outside, looking in.
—Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer and president of the Heather Heyer Foundation
It is always a challenge in the aftermath of a traumatic event, like A12, to move from the initial reactive state to a long-term adaptive state. The city, local businesses, organizations, and citizens responded to the events with a great deal of energy and attention. When we realized that many of us had turned a blind eye to the racism in our community, our leaders took on new initiatives and made demands for change with gusto. But the real trick is what happens in the next 5-10 years.
—Bree Luck, producing artistic director, Live Arts
What do you think the city needs to do to move forward?
One huge step would be to visibly and viably take ownership for that weekend and what happened, and the role that they actually played in it. It’s still very much a point of contention that the folks who directly lost their jobs were two men of color.
The council, whatever it may look like on the first of the year, they’ve got a huge task on their hands. The new buzzword of course is civility, and I think that we’ve got to become comfortable in the incivility for a while, because this was so very painful and hurtful for so many people. Now I’m not saying that 10 years down the road folks still should be shutting down meetings because of it. I don’t see the necessity of that. But if something triggers a person…I think we have to allow space for that, and understand it.
They’ve got to figure out how to bring about some level of trust between the city and the community and the police department. Because that’s what’s sorely lacking right now. And figuring out how to do that, that’s the E=MC squared equation.What it looks like and then how to make it happen. That’s something that’s vital to the renaissance, if you will, of Charlottesville, and getting us to a point where we’re not recognized as just a hashtag.
—Don Gathers
We certainly have issues in this community that we’re working on, but there’s also a lot of great things that are happening. The Chamber of Commerce is in a great position to help with that.
It’s not surprising that the business community [and tourism have] taken some hits from the events that happened in the last couple years. Nobody wants to minimize some of the tough conversations and hard work that’s going on here to build equity, but you can work on those things and also highlight the things that are going really well-—companies that are launching and doing world-class work here, opportunities that are opening up for new careers, that’s the piece that the business community thinks needs to be out there more.
It would be helpful if there was cooperation between elected officials and the business community and others, trying to get toward some shared goals.
—Elizabeth Cromwell, President & CEO, Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce
We have to commit ourselves to the work of making Charlottesville a more equitable city, not just in word but in deed. And we have to hold space to celebrate and document who we are as community and what we’ve accomplished. Fundamentally, we care about this community because we love the people in it. We can’t be afraid of acknowledging that.
—Michael Payne
I was fortunate to hear Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, speak earlier this year, and I was moved by his insistence on the need for “proximity.” He stressed that we must be close to, and by extension listen to, those who are not like us.
The Fralin Museum of Art joined the larger national conversation on social justice by participating in the “For Freedoms” project with “Signs of Change: Charlottesville.” Working with our community partners, most importantly Charlene Green from the Office of Human Rights, we convened a series of workshops to bring people together to first learn about the histories of marginalized people in Charlottesville and then talk about ways we could help to stop history from repeating itself. There must be continued opportunities for proximity, education, and dialogue.
—Matthew McLendon
What the City of Charlottesville I believe needs to do in its various official capacities is apologize and take ownership for the exposure and violence that came. At its root, it was a failure to take the inherent violence of white supremacy seriously: these were terrorist groups who threatened violence, the city was adequately warned, and we know for a fact that the police were more interested in what “antifa” was going to do, or [suggested] that we should just ignore them. No one can tell me that if this had been an ISIS free speech rally that it wouldn’t have been shut down immediately. So it starts with that.
Honest and sincere apologies are not weakness, they’re a sign of strength, and I think what Charlottesville is fighting to do and what the city could help do is stop continuing to gaslight people and say yeah, we were wrong, we will take the threat of white supremacy seriously, and I think the temperature would cool across the board.
—Rev. Seth Wispelwey
Rosia Parker outside the courtroom after the James Fields verdict, in December. Photo: Eze Amos
One, you gotta listen to the community. Don’t just listen at the community, listen to the community. [Be] willing to be transparent, willing to create ideas together, that will make a thriving community.
—Rosia Parker
As a city, I think we have an obligation to help provide opportunities for folks to be engaged and for people to see that we’re trying very hard to walk the talk. At the Office of Human Rights, if we say that equity and social justice are important for residents, then we need to show it.
—Charlene Green
Photo: UVA
Moments of adversity and heartbreak sometimes give us an opportunity for collaboration and progress. Since August 2017, UVA and the local community have been working together in unprecedented ways. The UVA-Community Working Group that came together last fall identified the most pressing issues that we can begin to work on together—jobs and wages, affordable housing, public health care, and youth education—and efforts are under way now to address those issues through UVA-community partnerships grounded in equity and mutual respect.
So many of us love Charlottesville. I think the best way we can express that love, and the best way we can move forward after August 2017, is by working together to make our community stronger, more united, and more resilient than it’s ever been before
—Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia
We need to continue our efforts to rebuild the bonds that unite all of us, with the understanding that a community dedicated to issues of social justice and racial equality is a place that we can be proud to call home, and a place that more people will want to come visit.
—Adam Healey, former interim director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau
Addressing racism at the structural and institutional level remains the highest priority. In particular being able to give the mike to people of color, black people in particular, who have historically not had a voice, would be at the top of that list. From a mental health perspective that’s important because healing can’t occur without first acknowledging the trauma of people who’ve experienced this, and I think we still have a lot of work to do. Some of these events of Unity Days are beginning to give voice to that, and I think there’s a lot more room to do more.
—Elizabeth Irvin
My heart goes out to the city officials since they’re the ones who are publicly shouldering what is actually each of ours to carry. I hope that they will continue to serve humbly, to keeping listening and asking questions. I’ve found that bringing small groups of people from different backgrounds together can be an effective way to get people to speak honestly and calmly in a way that inspires others to listen.
—Sam Bush
Someone besides me to say what we need to do to move forward. People like me who have been in leadership positions for many years ought to create the space for other people living and leading quietly in our community to say what needs to happen.
—Erika Viccellio, executive director of The Fountain Fund
Don Gathers and others at the official unveiling of the Inside Out: Charlottesville mural. Photo: Eze Amos
What do individual people need to do to move the community forward?
If you see a need, don’t wring your hands and hope someone does something about it. Step up to see what you can do to move things forward. And then actually do it. Don’t play armchair quarterback. Put feet to your intentions and get involved. If you don’t step up and out, who will?#StepUpStepOut.
—Susan Bro
I’m not sure the public speaking platforms of our age are as effective as we think they are. Many of us are speaking to people who already agree with us which, in turn, merely helps us feel better about ourselves while vilifying those who disagree with us. As a result, we seem quick to anger and slow to listen. The alternative, I think, is much more difficult but more effective. I think we’d each be better off by getting to know someone who couldn’t be more different from us and then befriending them. Easier said than done, of course.
—Sam Bush
There’s no magic pill here that’ll fix this. We’ve got to begin to have those tough and difficult and hard conversations. And we’ve got to stop talking about race and start talking about racism. We can’t just talk about white supremacy, we’ve got to actually have the difficult conversations about white privilege and white advantage. And once we embrace those conversations…then we can move forward and start talking about unification.
I’m not sure there’s a mediator or moderator in the world that could handle that, because in so many instances we’re still talking at each other instead of to each other. We’re still talking about each other instead of trying to handle and solve the problem as it presents itself. How it’s handled, what it looks like, I’m still trying to envision it, but I know that it’s got to happen in order for us to move that needle.
—Don Gathers
Lisa Woolfork and members of the Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County, who fought for a ban on Confederate imagery in county schools. Photo: Eze Amos
People can support community members who are already doing the work to build a better Charlottesville. City councilors need to respect and support Mayor Walker’s leadership. Voters need to vote for strong racial justice supporters. School administrators need to respond with deep policy changes to address concerns about racial equity raised by students and families. We need to stop protecting Confederates and their white supremacist legacy. We can create a brighter future if we do the difficult, sometimes uncomfortable, yet necessary work of liberation, learning and unlearning.
—Lisa Woolfork, UVA professor and community activist
Listen! We are each, as individuals, responsible for change. I am clear that as a white male, I need to listen to people of color and other marginalized communities with lived experiences different from mine. By listening we can understand what we need to do to be active allies. My fear for our whole society is that far too many people want to speak and too few have the self-discipline or awareness to listen.
—Matthew McLendon
Choose to live in community. In an age of climate change, neoliberalism, and tech-mediated communication, we are encouraged to remain fearful and isolated. To paraphrase bell hooks’ essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom”, the road to healing our wounded body politic is through a commitment to collective liberation that moves beyond resistance to transformation. We all have a positive role to play in healing and transforming our community. Yes, that means you too!
–Michael Payne
As individuals we just need to get involved, and stay aware. Because we can’t depend on one agency or one entity to handle it all; we need to all step up as a community, and in whatever way you feel the most comfortable. Hopefully you’re able to push yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s when we stay in our little circles of comfort that we tend to perpetuate stereotypes and assumptions about people in different groups. So to push ourselves to get involved and be challenged, and to challenge each other, I think are some of the things we can do.
–Charlene Green
Photo: Nick Strocchia
First and foremost is that self-reflection and working around issues of race and privilege. And within that, being willing to take care of ourselves and recognize what we need to do around our stress and anxiety so we can continue to have uncomfortable conversations and meaningful dialogue, but also continue to challenge ourselves moving forward.
Relative to the traumatic aspect of the anniversary itself, people who were more directly impacted still may be experiencing a lot of traumatic stress, so I just encourage those people in particular to reach out for support.
—Elizabeth Irvin
My own perspective shift came from new and growing relationships in Charlottesville, thanks to a lot of grace and space afforded to me by people who have been working on anti-racist advocacy for a long time here.
The truth is we all have space and grace to grow forward, and so what individuals can continue to do, and I’m talking about cis-hetero white individuals particularly, is not just listen to voices and perspectives that are threatened and crushed by white supremacy, but start to foreground their asks and desires. It will be costly for a lot of the privilege we carry, but it’s a cost that liberates, and is really life-giving in the end.
We can’t all be responsible for all the things all the time, or we’ll burn out, so get plugged in and focus where you feel most called and led. There’s a multitude of opportunities, but life’s too short and racism is too strong in this country to not try a bit harder to show up in embodied solidarity, somewhere.
—Seth Wispelwey
For those of us who weren’t born and raised here I think we need to be committed to better understanding the community we live in. It is only recently that I started regularly attending events and tours at the African American Heritage Center. I have a new, and essential, emerging understanding of the community I’ve been “serving” all these years.
—Erika Viccellio
One thing that we can do as individuals is to extirpate the systemic racism that plagues our culture. At Live Arts…we have begun to explore the systemic barriers to [theater] participation, including obvious issues like cost and content representation—and not-so-apparent barriers like architecture, language, food, and transportation. With the help of community partners this year, Live Arts offered more “pay what you can” tickets and scholarships than ever before. Also, we are diversifying representation on our stages by making more stories written and directed by and about persons of color and women.
Education is the key to effecting change. At Live Arts, we discussed micro-aggressions, unconscious bias, and workplace discrimination each month in board and staff meetings. This summer, we invited volunteer directors to join a diversity, equity, and inclusion workshop so that our creative teams have the tools to create a safe space to work and play.
We are far from perfect. But the aim is not to create a utopian society where we all say and do the right thing. Instead, the goal is to have an equitable culture of belonging, prosperity, community, and creative exploration.
In almost six years of living in Charlottesville, I’ve had two noteworthy encounters with the police.
The first time was several years ago, when I left my wallet on the curb in Woolen Mills (don’t ask). A CPD officer not only noticed it and picked it up, he found my email address online and then delivered the wallet to my front door that night. He saved me a trip to the station and both of us the hassle of paperwork, and waved away my effusive thanks.
The second time was August 12, 2017, when I watched a gang of white supremacists attack a woman standing near me on the sidewalk in front of the Methodist church, and ran to the nearest cop for help. It was 9 in the morning, and the church’s parking lot was supposed to be a safe space.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” I asked, panicked. “I’m not getting involved in that,”the female officer told me, shaking her head. “There’s guys down there,” she added, indicating the heavily-outfitted Virginia State Police massed at the end of the block. “They’ll handle it.”
They didn’t. When the young men in the white T-shirts pulled away, the woman was on the ground with blood pouring from her head. The attackers bounded off through the parking lot, practically skipping, exultant and gleeful. Nobody stopped them.
“I can see where the department or law enforcement may not have lived up to the expectations of the community,” Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney tells us about August 12.
She didn’t work here then, and she’s not to blame for what happened. But she is responsible for repairing the trust that the department lost that day. One of the most basic places to start is the Police Civilian Review Board, but Brackney says she doesn’t understand the need for the board, and her relationship with it has been contentious.
Bridging the gap between my two stories, between two very different images of the police, may be an impossible task, and the verbal abuse Brackney has suffered as the public face of the department would be hard for anyone to deal with. But until the police show real accountability for their failures and a real willingness to listen to those who have been hurt, that public anger isn’t likely to go away.
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.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen addresses the media after James Fields was sentenced to life in prison. (Photo: Eze Amos)
James Alex Fields Jr. sat before the judge, his thick, black hair grown just long enough to touch the collar of his black-and-white striped jumpsuit. The 22-year-old wore glasses, and spent most of Friday morning and early afternoon staring at the wall in front of him as the victims who were harmed when he plowed into a group of counterprotesters in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, spoke about the trauma they endured and advocated for him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Chief U.S. Western District of Virginia Judge Michael Urbanski heard the statements of 23 victims, testimony from two FBI special agents and the prosecution’s evidence that examined Fields’ history as an admitted neo-Nazi before handing down 29 life sentences in the final ruling of the federal case.
“This sentencing sends a message that terrorism and hatred-inspired violence have no place in our community,” FBI Special Agent in Charge David Archey said at a press conference following the sentencing.
Fields’ legal counsel asked Urbanski last week to consider a sentence of “less than life” due to his age, troubled childhood, and history of mental illness. However, Urbanski determined the crime wasn’t an impulse decision and the punishment was “sufficient but not greater than necessary.”
“I would like to apologize for my actions on August 12 and for the hurt and loss I have caused,” Fields said in a flat tone to the judge before receiving the sentence. “I would like to apologize for taking it to trial in state and for the wounds reopened by doing so. I apologize to my mother for putting her through this. Every day I think about how this could have gone different and how I regret my actions. I’m sorry.”
Victims of the attack testified, some for the first time. Many of those who came forward and spoke fought back tears as they detailed the events that happened that day and how they’ve attempted to recover physically, mentally and emotionally since.
Mark Heyer, the father of murdered 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer, stepped forward and addressed Fields directly after a prepared statement was read for him.
“I want to publicly say that I forgive you,” Heyer said as he wiped tears from his eyes. He said that he hoped Fields would find faith and lead a better life moving forward.
Those in attendance saw footage of the attack both from a Virginia State Police helicopter and videos obtained from bystanders’ phones and cameras. The prosecutors showed photos taken the day after the attack of Fields’ bedroom, which was outfitted with a Nazi Iron Cross flag and a framed photo of Adolf Hitler beside his bed. They also presented social media posts from the months leading up to the protest that depicted minorities and members of the Jewish community. One of those posts was a meme of a car hitting a crowd of protesters with the caption, “You have the right to protest but I’m late for work.”
A recorded prison phone call between Fields and his mother four months after the rally was also played for the courtroom. In an expletive-filled rant, Fields referred to Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, as “the enemy” and “a communist.” On his way to the August protest from Ohio, Fields texted his mother a picture of Hitler accompanied by a message that read, “We are not the ones who have to be careful.”
Finally, testimony from Fields’ former classmates showed that his history of outspoken racist views dated back to his high school years, including a trip to a German concentration camp in which Fields remarked, “This is where the magic happened,” and “It’s almost like you can still hear them screaming.”
“It’s my hope that from a law enforcement standpoint, members of this particular community can reflect that there are some good guys out there in the FBI, in the Virginia State Police and in the Charlottesville Police Department who care about these cases, who worked tirelessly to bring this guy to justice and are committed to doing the right thing,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said at the press conference. Police were widely criticized for their handling of the Unite the Right rally.
Fields will also be responsible for $100 fines for each of the 29 counts and must pay restitution to the victims, an amount that’ll be determined over the next 90 days. Urbanski recommended that Fields’ life sentence run concurrent to the state’s decision, which will be handed down at Charlottesville Circuit Court on July 15. Jurors at that trial recommended life in prison plus 419 years.
Former mayor Maurice Cox, on a recent visit to Charlottesville Photo: Eze Amos
Former Charlottesville mayor Maurice Cox, now Detroit’s director of planning and development, talks about managing growth, recovering from a crisis, and the power of telling the right story.
There was a time when Maurice Cox couldn’t escape being recognized in Charlottesville. In August 2012, almost a decade after he served as mayor, he sat with a reporter at a restaurant on the Downtown Mall, on the eve of his departure to New Orleans to become dean of community engagement at Tulane University School of Architecture.
“The Honorable Maurice Cox!” a passerby yelled, and Cox responded with a wave and a smile. “Once a mayor, always a mayor here,” he said. “I’m going to miss that.”
More recently, the man who served as Charlottesville’s mayor from 2002 to 2004 again joined a reporter for lunch on the mall. No one called out to him, and Cox enjoyed a bacon cheeseburger in quiet anonymity. But if brilliant city planners commanded the cultural pull of movie stars, the paparazzi would have been swarming.
Now the director of planning and development in Detroit, Cox was in town for final reviews of students’ work at the UVA School of Architecture, where he was an assistant professor from 1993 to 2012. Cox, who received his degree in architecture from New York’s Cooper Union in 1983, has also been design director at the National Endowment for the Arts, spent six years teaching architecture in Florence, Italy, as part of Syracuse University’s Italian program, and, while in New Orleans, was director of Tulane City Center. Architect Magazine has noted that Cox “is considered to be a phenomenon within urban planning circles: smart, passionate, and inspiring.”
Given all of this, and Cox’s record as a public official in Charlottesville, we were eager to get his take on how our city has evolved—and dealt with adversity—since he left.
He knows dire situations. He arrived in New Orleans while the city was still reeling, albeit years later, from Hurricane Katrina. And he answered the call in Detroit in the wake of its historic population decline and declaration of bankruptcy.
Cox also faced a major crisis when he was in office in Charlottesville. In fact, if he and a group of fellow activists hadn’t stepped up, the city may have become a town in Albemarle County as part of a “reversion” movement. But Cox not only prevailed in the face of that existential threat, he laid the groundwork for Charlottesville to develop a dense urban core, become navigable on foot and by bicycle (his trademark form of transportation to this day), and combat sprawl and displacement of city residents.
The latter is still a challenge, and some of his projects (like his quest for a trolley along Main Street) never came through. But to the extent that Charlottesville exudes a sense of “urbanity” (his word) it can be traced back to Cox.
A skilled multitasker, the pin-thin former mayor, dressed in a slim gray suit and bright green shirt on a sunny day in May, managed to share his views of Charlottesville while also polishing off that fist-sized cheeseburger.
C-VILLE Weekly: Among the issues you faced as city councilor and mayor was reversion—the idea that Charlottesville would revert back to being part of Albemarle County. Why do you consider that a crisis moment?
Maurice Cox: It was ultimately an excuse to sprawl. We recognized that moment and saw an opportunity to think about how we grow in our own footprint.
The city needed to replenish its tax base. Housing, middle-class housing, was just nonexistent. So, reversion was a way of annexing effectively all of the commercial property that is the sprawl of Route 29. But it wasn’t going to address the sprawl, per se, or create urbanity—to have Charlottesville grow up.
We started looking at our commercial corridors and zoning ordinances, and we said, You know what? Let’s throw the sucker out if it’s not going to produce the kind of city we want, and look strategically at where we can absorb density.
The density you speak of is arriving on West Main Street now. Is that what you envisioned?
At the time, the goal was to give West Main Street enough density to support transit and a vibrant public realm. So, yes, the emerging density is consistent with what we had envisioned. But the goal was also to promote a density sensitive to its immediate context. Any misgivings I have today pertain to the scale of the development and the architecture of many of the new buildings.
In his time on council, Cox pushed for more density on West Main (pictured at left in 2011). Now, much of that development has materialized, but Cox has misgivings over the scale and architecture of some of the new buildings. Photos: Steve Trumbull (left); Skyclad Aerial (right).
For example?
The architecture developing towards the university hospital end of West Main appears to be of good quality and scaled for pedestrian use. The new construction beginning to intermingle with the existing buildings between the Amtrak station and Ridge McIntire Road also looks extremely promising—in large part because there was enough historical context for the architects to respond to. That end seems to be producing what I call “gentle density,” which is sensitive to its context and pedestrian in scale.
On the other hand, The Standard and The Flats are completely generic, architecturally dated, and insensitive to the scale of the neighborhoods to the north and south, Fifeville and Westhaven. The monolithic nature of The Standard effectively—and intentionally, I believe—creates a wall denying residents of Westhaven pedestrian access to West Main, and should never have been allowed to happen. The Flats student housing, which was supposed to transition down to the single-family neighborhood of Fifeville, according to the zoning, does the opposite, growing taller towards the neighborhood.
This happened because special density variances were granted, and I’m sure the council that approved the exception wishes today that they had followed their own rules. Just proves that it’s possible to get the density right and the form and the scale completely wrong.
The most obvious recent crisis the city has faced was brought on by the Unite the Right rally and its fallout. What is your opinion of how the city has handled that?
It was an enormous opportunity. But the statues are still standing, which suggests that we haven’t dealt with the crisis.
But it’s part of a larger issue that Charlottesville has dealt with for many, many years. Monticello, anyone?
It’s fascinating, because during the ’90s, the first thing Monticello had to address was the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. At first, they didn’t embrace this, but the evidence was so compelling that they had to acknowledge it. And it’s become a part of the incremental recasting of Monticello as a plantation, as opposed to a presidential retreat.
It is incremental, as you say.
On my way here, I walked past the memorial being built about UVA and its relationship to slavery. That’s another incremental step—the university coming to grips with that legacy. But the bigger issue right now is the city itself. And I think that until the city constructs another narrative, it is going to be known for that day in August.
In Detroit, the popular press wrote the narrative for 50 years. And it’s only through the force of a collective will that a new narrative is starting to emerge. I can take some ownership of that, but it does require a kind of collective courage. Individual courage, no, because you don’t do these things alone.
I presume that the narrative for Detroit is that the comeback is real. But people have heard that story before. Why is it different now?
When I arrived [in 2015], the city had just gone through bankruptcy. Without having gotten rid of that debt, I don’t think we would be able to attract the investment that’s being attracted now. We have an administration that can actually perform the duties expected of government, like getting lights to come on at night, picking up trash, demolishing burnt-down houses, getting emergency vehicles to arrive. That’s been the precursor to my being able to engage residents in a conversation about the future, because the present was being tended to.
We’ve had hundreds of meetings with residents. We’re listening, and we’re talking about the character of their neighborhoods, and what the future should look like. It’s a very empowering experience, for anyone who was normally preoccupied with the basics, to have enough mental space to talk about the future, and have some hope.
So what else could Charlottesville do?
You think about what other generations did, how they used civil disobedience. They got arrested for things they believed in. This notion that the courts, the Virginia courts, would cart our city council off to jail if they defied the order that the monuments could not be removed—I’d be curious to test that. I think it would be a national story. It’d be an international story.
There are other cities that removed the statues, and they did not face the legal impediments that Charlottesville has faced. But you don’t deal with these issues by soft-pedaling. That’s where civil disobedience comes in. I’m afraid that ultimately that’s what it’s going to take. Every day [the statues] sit there on the plaza is a reminder of unfinished business.
Let’s return to the issue of development in Charlottesville. Is what you’re seeing now a fulfillment of your ideas? Where do you think we stand?
We clearly made the argument that there are places that could and should absorb higher density that would create a kind of context for a pedestrian-oriented development with character. And so, the density is landing in the right places, but the character is questionable.
There’s also the challenge of unintended consequences. When you create the density that could potentially support transit and walkability, you make something of value that can create displacement, which has happened. The question is, how do you offset the fact that you created something of value? The answer is generally in the realm of affordable housing.
In Detroit, the city has made a commitment to 20 percent affordable housing in any development that receives public resources, and a commitment to retain 10,000 units of federally regulated housing. That includes Section 8 housing like Friendship Court in Charlottesville. Affordable housing has to be grafted onto the market-rate housing.
You invest in the public realm, and you protect the existing inventory of affordable housing so that people don’t get displaced. You do one without the other, then you’re going to get displacement, and that seems to be the challenge that Charlottesville faces. Put in the density and investment in the public realm, but also don’t forget to put in the policies and mechanisms for robust pushback in the area of affordability.
What we’re talking about for Detroit is a growth strategy. It stems from the basic notions that everyone who stuck it out with the city through thick and thin deserves to benefit from the opportunity that growth presents, and that the city should follow public policy that assures it’ll happen.
We were talking earlier about sprawl. Have you noticed the development along Route 29, out Fifth Street Extended, along Route 20?
Yeah, there’s a lot of it.
What does that signal? For most people those places are not affordable.
It’s all feeding off of the success of the urban core and the proximity to a thriving urban center. It’s a symptom of the city’s success that the county sprawl may be a little more tidy, but the quality is really, really low. Maybe in 50 years we’ll look back and [the new developments] will have provided the massive amounts of affordable housing that we need—that’s what it’s going to become, because quality has not been a factor in its development.
There is also the issue of public transportation. What are your observations about that in Charlottesville?
It’s still a fundamentally car-dependent region that’s not pushing hard enough on the alternative transit options. This is where the governmental structure inhibits the kind of regional cooperation that you need for transit. There’ve been fits and starts, but mostly fits and stalls.
That’s not unlike other areas that have a divide between the city and county. We always said, ‘Well, let’s try to jumpstart a pedestrian-oriented, transit-oriented core.’ And that’s where a streetcar down Main Street was a very viable scenario. It would have been an important demonstration that we can weave other modes of transportation into this small city.
Maurice Cox in 2006. Photo: Jen Farielo
Is it really any different in Detroit?
There’s a similar reluctance to embrace alternative modes of transportation in Detroit, the Motor City. But we’re pushing hard by making protected bike lanes a part of all the street improvements. Detroit is wonderfully flat and the streets are wonderfully wide, and you can get a lot of different modes of transportation in them. Detroit laid more protected bike lanes, which are the ones up against the curb with a buffer, than any city in America last year.
What else is Detroit doing to support alternative transportation?
We’ve identified 30 different areas where we can make Main Streets, slow the traffic down, integrate more modes of transportation, and create a public ground. We call them micro-districts. What we’re going for is not unlike the ambiance here on the mall, where you can shop and recreate within a 20-minute walk of your house.
Charlottesville is a great example to consider, because the mall is only eight blocks long. This is about as far as you are probably willing to walk for a couple of restaurants and your favorite coffee. And so, most of the micro-districts we are conceiving of in Detroit are no more than six, eight blocks long. But can you create that kind of mixed-use, retail Main Street in every single one of the neighborhoods? We think you can in some, and that’s more or less what’s happening.
It also involves increasing density, but it’s much more gentle density than even what we’re seeing here. Most of the buildings are three or four stories, maximum six, and we’re conferring with the public to set the tone and address the question of quality. We’re not just letting the market do what it wants to do, which is to be kind of status quo and mediocre. We want excellence. We’re pushing publicly commissioned work to an extreme, and then asking the private sector, can you top it?
Given the sheer size of Detroit— 139 square miles, as opposed to Charlottesville’s 10.4 square miles —is there an acknowledgment that some parts, and perhaps even some very large parts, are going
to have to be fallow?
Or that some parts are going to have to wait, which is what interests me about Detroit. It’s a laboratory for slow, sustainable urban growth. We’re experimenting with what it’s like to create an urban environment where you can walk and bike, but at the same time, we recognize that the same set of tools won’t work in neighborhoods that have lost significant populations.
We are now getting to those neighborhoods where you have to have a different maintenance strategy for vacant land. It might be a reforestation effort. It might be intersecting reforestation with commercial nurseries, tree nurseries. We are testing that idea. It might be hundreds of flowering meadows, and we have a place where we’re testing that idea, too. We acknowledge that you’re going to have to shift to a landscape-based strategy in areas that feel more rural, so it would be a mistake to try to force them to be urban.
You get that cross-section of neighborhood types in Detroit to explore. It’s a wicked problem. Every day we attempt to address it. I see why no other city in America that went through extreme population decline has succeeded. But we do have an appetite for experimentation. We acknowledge that one size doesn’t fit all. And so, the exact opposite of uniformity is what’s going on in Detroit.
Speaking of empty space, was City Yards an issue when you were mayor? How would you deal with it, with the benefit of hindsight?
I think with City Yards and a few other places near downtown, you could afford to do some unconventional experimentation. I don’t think it’s about high-density development. It’s probably about landscape as a framework. Yeah, I think it’s too valuable to stay fallow, but it’s too big and difficult to use a conventional set of tools. And there’s no shortage of fantastic landscape thinkers right here in Charlottesville. A very intentional bridge has to be made between city government and the academy, and it can be figured out.
Of the problems that you saw and addressed when you were here, which ones still exist, and how should they be handled?
These things can’t be approached in the abstract. Racism exists. Where does it exist? Does it exist in our housing policy? Does it exist in the economic opportunity given to entrepreneurs? It has to be grafted onto something real. So getting together for a kumbaya conversation about racism, while it may temporarily make you feel good, produces very little lasting impact. When you say we’re going to address the displacement of people by changing our housing policy, that’s tangible. When you say we’re going to build a cultural center to make sure that the history and the legacy of urban renewal is forever understood, like the Jefferson Center, that’s a tangible example of addressing an issue.
Even an effort to have minority businesses on the mall would be a good start. In Detroit, we have a program that matches entrepreneurs to real estate opportunities—and everything from business planning to getting the bricks and mortar—to open up a shop. Sixty-five percent of the people who receive grants are women, 70 percent are people of color. That’s a direct answer to, will economic opportunity on these Main Streets that we’re creating look and feel like the communities they exist in?
Where does your experience in architecture come in?
The power of design is its ability to convene people around a project, not an abstraction, and that is one of the reasons why design is so engaging even for the laypeople. At the end of it, there’s something standing there that’s a built environment, that’s a natural environment as a result of your hours and hours and hours of meeting. I think those are tangible ways to address issues of equity and inclusion. That’s been a mainstay. At least it’s been a mainstay in my career to use the imperative to build, to shape, as a way to have a larger conversation about what kind of community we want, who belongs in it, and how do we all get access to it.
In Detroit, we do it by culturally tagging infrastructure that is unifying the city. The Joe Louis Greenway, which unites dozens of neighborhoods, was purposefully named so that for the next hundred years people will think of this iconic sports figure as someone who unites the city. Or we do a park, and we bring a renowned African American artist, Hubert Massey, to work in the infrastructure of art, in this case a 160 foot-long mosaic tile wall that turns into a community build with kids and adults. It’s also in a park named after Ella Fitzgerald, another cultural icon. And so, these are ways to bring in a creative impulse that tells people…that this belongs to them.
So, you’re still commuting by bicycle in Detroit, as you did here?
I am. I live a commutable distance from work. I’ve always insisted on biking, and hiking and walking, ever since Charlottesville. I can see the city with all of my senses, and it helps you pay attention to detail and to the feel and the character of a place. It’s my way of doing some research even in the most banal act of going from home to work.
Do you think Detroit will ultimately be a success story?
Well, in some ways it already is. Let’s not forget that it’s also the largest African American city in America. So when a black city builds more protected bike lanes than a city like Portland, that in and of itself is newsworthy, and what does that mean? I’m always mindful that it’s not like we’re just doing this in any city. We’re doing this in the blackest city in America. Majority African-American cities have long been equated with dysfunctionality, corruption, and poverty. We have a chance to defy that stereotype and write a different narrative about a progressive, exploratory, inclusive, African American-majority city.
We are mindful that it’s a narrative that is very, very powerful. And that’s what I mean by Charlottesville has to find a way to snatch back its public narrative. Detroit did it with an onslaught of positive, affirming, forward-looking, progressive stories.
All of a sudden people feel like we’ve cured something. But we still have poverty. We still struggle with vacant land and home abandonment. But the counter-narrative is so compelling that people are not writing exclusively about Detroit’s decay and decline. I’ve seen that happen in a matter of four or five years, so I know that Charlottesville can do that.
It’s not going to happen just by the passage of time. People are not just going to forget, and I think that’s the issue: What willful actions can your public leaders and civic leaders take to snatch back the narrative of Charlottesville?
Highway blues: losing the battle for McIntire Park
When Maurice Cox was elected to the City Council in 2000, debate over the proposed road then known as the Meadowcreek Parkway had ground on for decades. The road, eventually christened the John W. Warner Parkway, is now a reality, but it looks the way it does (“a beautiful parkway rather than a highway,” as Cox puts it) in large part because of efforts by Cox and other local activists.
After decades of debate, the John W. Warner Parkway, which connects East Rio Road to McIntire Road at the U.S. 250 Bypass, finally opened in January 2015. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
The parkway, first proposed in the 1960s, aimed to connect East Rio Road with McIntire Road, easing traffic on Rio and Park Street, and providing more direct entry into the city of Charlottesville from suburban northern Albemarle County neighborhoods.
“I was convinced then and still believe today that the Meadowcreek Parkway was Charlottesville’s greatest gift to Albemarle County,” Cox says. “Charlottesville sacrificed the city’s largest park, McIntire Park, in order to relieve traffic pressures from the county’s out-of-control growth along 29 North.”
Plans were coalescing by the time Cox was elected, but opponents, who challenged the then-prevalent idea that building more roads would ease traffic on existing ones, had laid out a set of demands for keeping it circumscribed. Among other concerns, they sought to ban truck traffic, limit speeds, and reduce the number of travel lanes from four to two.
“We never had the votes to kill the darn thing,” says Cox, “so instead I spent eight years of my political career trying to ‘defang’ a four-lane divided highway, aimed straight through the heart of downtown.”
Cox fought successfully for design restrictions that kept its interchange with the U.S. 250 Bypass relatively compact and its footprint narrow, so future leaders wouldn’t easily be able to widen it.
“Being a designer, I figured if you couldn’t kill it then perhaps I could use the power of design to resize the threat and remake it into one of the best two-lane parkways Virginia has built in a generation.”
But he adds, “we shouldn’t forget that we lost out on a great opportunity to gift to the next generations a world-class McIntire Park.”
Reporter Natalie Jacobsen sued Virginia State Police about August 12, 2017, public safety plans, and a judge ruled police must release them within 30 days.
staff photo
More than a year and a half after a freelance reporter requested the Virginia State Police and the Office of Public Safety turn over its Unite the Right public safety plans, a judge ruled today that it’s time for the state to cough them up—although with some confusion about redaction and release.
Natalie Jacobsen worked with Jackson Landers, both of whom have written for C-VILLE, on the documentary Charlottesville: Our Streets about the August 12, 2017, Unite the Right rally during which dozens were injured and Heather Heyer was killed. Police were widely criticized for standing by while white supremacists and counterprotesters clashed in the streets.
Jacobsen filed a request for the safety plans under the Freedom of Information Act in 2017, and when the state refused to produce any documents, she sued, aided by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which represents journalists around the world.
In Charlottesville Circuit Court last April, Judge Richard Moore ordered that the state turn over a redacted version of the safety plans. That same day, he issued a stay to the order so the commonwealth could appeal it.
In November, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled against the state because its appeal was filed several days before Moore had issued a final order.
During the May 22 hearing, Deputy Attorney General Victoria Pearson maintained the state should not have to release the safety plans because FOIA exempts tactical plans and because some information was already released in the reports from the governor’s task force and Charlottesville’s Heaphy report.
Virginia State Police did not turn over its plans to either investigative group, said Pearson, although Heaphy did receive some information about state plans that she suggested wasn’t accurate.
“I don’t know what harm comes from not releasing the report,” said Pearson. “It would be our position the entire report is exempt. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle once it’s out.”
Moore said the crux of the case was to balance public safety—and public access. He agreed to lift the stay and ordered the release of redacted reports.
Then he brought up an issue of how the plan would be redacted, either by blacking out the material the state police consider exempt, or by deleting the information and providing Jacobsen only what was not redacted.
Typically when reporters receive material that’s been partially redacted, information is blacked out. That was the case when Attorney General William Barr released the Mueller report.
Moore said he agreed Jacobsen should have a redacted copy, but asked that she not release it.
“I strongly object.” said her attorney, Caitlin Vogus.
“Okay then, I won’t give it to her,” said Moore. “I don’t want it released prematurely. I don’t want her saying they blacked out 20 pages.”
“Ms. Jacobsen is not interested in anything she cannot release publicly,” replied Vogus.
Moore ordered the plans released—without restriction—within 30 days.
Jacobsen said she wants to see a document with blacked-out information so she can tell how much has been removed.
“It’s a right for the public to see this information, because this was a public event,” she said after the hearing. “The Unite the Right rally actually resulted in the death of a civilian and two officers and that is pertinent and the public has a right to view it.“
She called it a “dangerous precedent” for police to think they don’t have to release information because it’s already been released by a leak or another firm, especially when the state says there may be discrepancies in the Heaphy report.
“We need to see what those discrepancies are,” said Jacobsen.
The decision, she said, “is a big win for freedom of information. It’s a right for the public to see it and I hope they will comply with the 30-day ruling and that we see it.”
