Tag: brandon collins

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News

Housing hero: Community mourns loss of Richard Shackelford

Richard Shackelford—known as “Shack” to his friends—was a driving force behind the redevelopment of Crescent Halls. PC: Eze Amos

Beloved public housing advocate Richard Shackelford passed away in his Crescent Halls apartment on the morning of May 21, after a heart attack. He was 66 years old.

Shackelford—known as “Shack” to his friends—grew up in Charlottesville, on the corner of Fifth and Harris streets. For many years, he worked as a gym instructor for Charlottesville City Schools, and was heavily involved in his church, Mount Zion First African Baptist Church.

In 2014, he moved to Crescent Halls, a public housing complex for the eldery and disabled, with his wife, Sandy, after they lost their house. 

For years, Crescent Halls residents protested against the 105-unit building’s poor maintenance, including broken air conditioners, sweltering heat, sewage flooding, broken-down elevators, and cockroaches. Plans to renovate the complex, as well as other public housing facilities, were made as early as 2010, but action had been notoriously slow.

Wanting to join the fight for change, Shackelford enrolled in the Public Housing Association of Residents’ six-month internship program, which trained him to be an advocate. After completing the internship in 2016, he went on to serve as vice president and president of the Crescent Halls Tenant Association, as well as vice chair of PHAR’s board of directors and a member of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority redevelopment committee.

While Shackelford advocated for public housing residents across the city, he was an especially strong champion for the redevelopment of Crescent Halls, says CRHA redevelopment coordinator (and former mayor) Dave Norris. Last January, CRHA finally approved a partnership with Riverbend Development and PHAR, along with two other developers, to completely renovate the more than 40-year-old building. Construction is set to begin this fall. 

“He thought it was very unfair that people who had spent…and worked their whole lives in Charlottesville, in many cases, were having to live in such unfortunate conditions,” says Norris. “His advocacy for his neighbors was largely responsible for the fact that the city…and others have ultimately agreed to put about $19 million into renovating that building from top to bottom.”

Shackelford made sure his voice was not the only one heard, Norris points out. He helped to include more Crescent Halls residents in conversations about the building’s renovations, as well as other public housing issues.

“He really believed passionately that even if you were extremely low-income, you still deserved a voice and…a seat at the table,” says Norris.

Both inside and outside of meetings, Shackelford was friendly and encouraging, but “when he had something to say, he would be very firm about it,” says PHAR Lead Organizer Brandon Collins. “He’d been in Charlottesville his whole life and had a real perspective on things. He called [the city] out for not doing enough for poor folks, not giving people enough of a chance, [and] not using resources the right way to help people with homeownership…He was just really dumbfounded by the lack of help that poor people get.”

“He brought his personal experiences and family knowledge to the table with policy makers,” adds Legal Aid Justice Center Outreach Director Emily Dreyfus, who serves on PHAR’s advisory council. “He made a real difference in helping people understand some of the intentional wrongs that were inflicted on black people in Charlottesville over the decades.”

When not advocating for housing rights at meetings and community events, Shackelford could be seen helping his neighbors. He would often carry groceries for people and give out extra canned goods, says resident Alice Washington, who is now president of the tenant association.

“Not only did he love to cook—he could cook! He was always sharing food with people,” she says.

Shackelford ultimately touched many lives, and left a lasting legacy on our town. “He was a committed guy. He put in the work,” says Collins. 

“All in all he was just a good person,” adds Washington. “We are going to miss him a lot.”

Updated 5/29

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Coronavirus News

In brief: Deadly disparities, graduation guesses, and more

Deadly disparities

While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people of all backgrounds across the globe, statistics show that it has had a disproportionate impact on black Americans. Data is limited, because only about 35 percent of U.S. cases specify a patient’s race, according to the CDC. But its numbers show that black people comprise nearly 34 percent of those infected with COVID-19, though they make up only 13 percent of the population. And African Americans make up nearly 30 percent of U.S. deaths from the virus, according to the latest Associated Press analysis.

Charlottesville is certainly not immune to this issue. In the Thomas Jefferson Health District, as of April 17, about 32 percent of people infected with coronavirus (and 25 percent of those who’ve died) are black, while black people make up only 13.9 percent of the district’s population.

Black communities in other parts of the state have been hit even harder by COVID-19. In Richmond, all eight people who’ve died from the virus were black. And while 48 percent of the city’s population is African American, black people make up about 62 percent of local cases.

Medical professionals, activists, and political leaders around the country have attributed these disparities to pre-existing inequities within our health care and economic systems. Blacks are more likely than whites to be uninsured and receive lower-quality health care, as well as have underlying conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease—all often caused or worsened by poverty. And due to unequal education, housing segregation, and other systemic inequalities, a significant portion of black Americans live in densely packed areas and do not have jobs that allow them to work from home, making social distancing more difficult.

To provide more black Virginians with adequate health care access, the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP has sent a letter to Governor Ralph Northam asking him to use his “executive discretion” to speed up the Medicaid eligibility process using data available immediately from the Department of Taxation, along with other resources. Because there is currently a backlog of applications, those trying to be approved for Medicaid may have to wait as long as 45 days—which, for some people, “may be a death sentence.”

______________________

Quote of the Week

“There was a housing crisis two months ago, and this entire community spent a number of years moving towards addressing that…And now we have an even bigger crisis.”

—Brandon Collins, Public Housing Association of Residents, addressing City Council on Monday

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In Brief

Gradual grads

UVA announced two tentative dates for graduation, after the original ceremony was canceled due to coronavirus. The class of 2020 will walk the Lawn on October 9-11, or, failing that, May 28-30, the weekend after the class of 2021 graduates. The university will still hold a digital ceremony to confer degrees this May, although it’s unclear if Zoom will have installed a virtual cap-flinging feature by then.

Sales are not on the menu

Seventy-eight percent of Virginia’s restaurant employees have been laid off since February, according to a new study from the National Restaurant Association. In the first week of April, the state’s restaurant sales declined 77 percent, compared to the same time period last year. That downturn has already forced longtime Charlottesville staple the Downtown Grille to permanently close its doors, while other beloved spots like Rapture, Tavola, and Oakheart Social have closed temporarily.      

Capital loss

Death penalty critic Jerry Givens died last Monday in Henrico County at age 67. His son, Terence Travers, did not reveal Givens’ cause of death, but said that he had pneumonia and had tested positive for COVID-19. Givens, who spoke with C-VILLE in February for a story about the fight against the death penalty in Virginia, served as the state’s chief executioner for 17 years, before becoming an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.

Out of the House

Legislators in the state capital won’t be able to meet in their regular chambers for this month’s short veto session. Instead, Democratic leadership reports that the Senate will gather in a convention center, with members seated at desks 10 feet apart from each other, and the House will convene in a huge tent on the lawn near the capital.

Updated 4/22: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Rapture had closed permanently; according to the restaurant’s Facebook page, it is closed “indefinitely.” 

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News

Four more down: Kessler-related hearings reach a verdict

When Jason Kessler leaves a courtroom, he's often greeted the same way. Staff photo

When Jason Kessler leaves a courthouse in Charlottesville, he’s usually greeted the same way, and that’s by an angry mob.

A group of dozens of anti-racists followed him in a large circle around Market Street until he receded to the police department next to the general district court. He exited only when a maroon truck showed up to pick him up.

All the while, African-American counterprotesters, who reminded him that February is Black History Month, shouted a slogan that’s quite familiar to him. One that he’s even used once or twice—“You will not replace us! You will not replace us! You will not replace us!”

Kessler was in court February 2 for five different hearings in which he claimed to be the victim.

Throughout the morning, known anti-racist activist Veronica Fitzhugh, Phoebe Stevens, Jeff Winder, Brandon Collins and Kenneth Robert Litzenberger were defended as they stood in front of the judge and across from the organizer of the summer’s deadly Unite the Right rally.

Fitzhugh was first, and while Judge Robert Downer dismissed an assault charge that stemmed from an apparent May 20 altercation with Kessler on the Downtown Mall, she was found guilty of disorderly conduct for being a member of the mob that surrounded the white nationalist and his friends that night. In video evidence, Fitzhugh, wearing a pink wig, can be seen shouting “Nazi, go home,” in close proximity to Kessler’s earlobe.

“You have to take this kind of abuse with a grain of salt,” Kessler said when defense attorney Jeff Fogel asked why he was smiling during the video.

Special prosecutor Michael Caudill, who was appointed to the case, said “Kessler exhibited decorum.”

Downer said Fitzhugh’s actions met the objective standard of disorderly conduct and found the woman—who wore a hot pink dress with the work “antifa” scrawled across the back—guilty. She was fined $250, with $200 suspended.

Outside the courthouse, her attorney said, “All she was doing was telling him the truth—that he was a Nazi.”

After her hearing, four people appeared whom Kessler has accused of assaulting him at his August 13 press conference in front of City Hall, where he was unable to be heard over the angry crowd that eventually swarmed him and tackled him to the ground.

Stevens was the tackler, but says that wasn’t her intention.

“We love you, Jason,” were her last words before she took him to the ground, according to her own testimony and that of a freelance photographer at the event.

Stevens, a French teacher in the public school system who also teaches rock climbing and yoga, says she practices peaceful intervention. On August 12, she could be found using her body to shield counterprotesters being beaten on the ground and white supremacists alike. And on August 13, she was hoping to do the same for Kessler.

“I remember thinking he looked kind of like a rabbit darting back and forth,” she said. “It was as if he was about to get hit by a train. It was getting worse and worse.”

So she said she embraced him, not intending to knock him down.

“If only he could understand that as an individual, he is loved—it’s this thing that he stands for that is not,” she said.

Regardless of the prosecutor calling her a “nice lady” and the judge saying he didn’t doubt a minute of her testimony, she was found guilty and sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

Winder, a longtime activist who was protesting the war in Iraq with Code Pink when he was arrested for trespassing in 2007 in then congressman Virgil Goode’s office, was also among the mix charged for assaulting the organizer of the Unite the Right rally on August 13.

NBC29 reporter Henry Graff testified that he saw someone who appeared to be Winder strike Kessler when reviewing footage of the press conference gone awry.

While defense attorney James Abrenio argued that Winder couldn’t be identified beyond a reasonable doubt, Downer disagreed and sentenced him to 30 days in jail, with all of them suspended on the condition that he has good behavior for a year.

Brandon Collins, a City Council frequenter who works for Public Housing Association of Residents, entered an Alford plea, meaning he didn’t admit guilt, but recognized that there was enough evidence to convict him of assaulting Kessler. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail with all of them suspended.

And lastly, Kenneth Robert Litzenberger, who allegedly spat on Kessler during the scuffle, had his case continued until next February.

The white nationalist wasn’t given a chance to address the media after the hearing, as anti-racists wedged themselves between him and members of the press.

They shouted, “No platform for Nazis!”

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News

August 12 water bottle-thrower pleads guilty

Troy Dunigan, who pleaded guilty to throwing a water bottle into a crowd at the Unite the Right rally, says he doesn't like Nazis. Staff photo

Another crop of alt-righters and counterprotesters arrested for acts related to the infamous Unite the Right rally were heard in Charlottesville General District Court today.

Chattanooga, Tennessee, resident Troy Dunigan says he drove seven hours to plead guilty to a disorderly conduct charge for throwing an empty bottle at a group of white nationalists.

“I saw the Nazis marching through and got frustrated with them and threw an empty water bottle,” says Dunigan. “I’m proud of it, honestly, because Nazis are evil and they shouldn’t be allowed to march through the streets.”

Dunigan, who was given a 30-day suspended jail sentence and a $200 fine, says he watched as angry white men chased a group of African-American people down West Market Street with no police intervention—but he was arrested for a crime less savage.

“There was so much violence that day and I threw an empty plastic water bottle,” he says. “Why me?”

David Parrot, a Paoli, Indiana, man charged with failure to disperse in a riot, was not present, but was found guilty of the class three misdemeanor and fined $250. A police officer testified that Parrot was in front of the General Robert E. Lee statue in Emancipation Park after the state had declared the neo-Nazi gathering an unlawful assembly, and when the cop asked him to leave, he said, “We will not be replaced.”

James O’Brien, charged with carrying a concealed handgun, told Judge Robert Downer he is still working to hire an attorney. His hearing was continued to November 20.

Also scheduled to appear was Steven Balcaitis, a York, South Carolina, resident charged with assault at McIntire Park after the rally. He pleaded guilty September 18 and received a 180-day suspended sentence.

The judge also spoke with lawyers representing Brandon Collins and Jeffrey Winder, two men accused of assaulting Jason Kessler at a press conference he attempted to hold August 13. They are scheduled to appear November 17.

Updated September 25 with the Steven Balcaitis guilty plea.

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News

In brief: The city’s biggest hurricane hits, bold protest signs and more

Hurricane Camille’s casualty count appeared on the front page of the Daily Progress in the summer of 1969. File photo

Charlottesville’s inland location has helped it dodge the likes of Hurricane Harvey and Irma, but it’s gotten slammed in the past.

Hurricane Isabel

September 19-20, 2003

By the time it hit Virginia, Isabel was a Category 1 storm. Nonetheless, it was a killer, taking 32 lives in the state directly or indirectly, according to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and two in Albemarle when a car ran off the road during heavy rainfall and crashed into a tree. According to the Cav Daily, two others in vehicles were injured by falling trees, one person was hurt when a tree crashed into a house and a police officer was struck by a branch. The ground was already saturated from previous rain, and trees toppled like bowling pins, including a 250-year-old white oak near Brooks Hall on UVA Grounds. At the height of the power outages, 50,000 local Dominion customers were without power, and some were in the dark for nearly two weeks.

Hurricane Camille

August 19-20, 1969

For its sheer one-two punch—killing 174 when it made landfall as a Category 5 storm on the Mississippi coast, and then two days later as a tropical depression, drowning Nelson County, where 125 people perished—Camille remains the deadliest force of nature to hit central Virginia. Whole families were lost when Camille dumped what’s conservatively estimated as more than 27 inches in eight hours, and even today, you can see the bare spots on the mountains around Lovingston where pounding rain tore off the top soil. Still missing: 33 people.

Hurricane Agnes

June 21, 1972

Agnes, too, was a tropical depression when it hit Scottsville, flooding the town with water that rose 34 feet. That, following Camille’s 30 feet of water, prompted town fathers to seek federal funding for a levee. While no one died in Scottsville, 16 Virginians lost their lives to Agnes, according to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

Derecho

June 29, 2012

Until high-powered winds roared into Albemarle from the west, we’d never heard the term derecho, which means “straight” in Spanish. The blast killed six people, two of them in Albemarle County—John Porter, 64, when he stepped onto his porch in Ivy, and Catherine Ford, 52, when she got out of her car on Scottsville Road. Nearly 40,000 people lost power, some for a week, and Crozet canceled its Fourth of July celebration because of damage to Claudius Crozet Park.

Microbursts

June 2010

We say microburst, but UVA climatologist Jerry Stenger says it’s more accurately called a “downburst.” Whatever you call them, a spate hit Charlottesville in 2010, and the worst on June 24 left 45,000 without power. Trees came down all over town with the city fire department responding to 31 calls of crunched houses, and another 15 to 20 county homes were in the path of falling trees.

Camille’s casualty count appeared on the front page of the Daily Progress in the summer of 1969.

 

Jackson voted out

City Council unanimously agreed September 5 to send the statue of General Stonewall Jackson packing, along with his Confederate buddy General Robert E. Lee—pending litigation permitting.

Needs improvement

The UVA group charged with reviewing the events of August 11-12, including a white nationalist torch-carrying march through Grounds, found the university could have sought better intel on Unite the Right plans, enforced its open-flame policy and notified the university community when neo-Nazis flooded the premises, among other recommendations.

Mason Pickett. Staff photo

Quote of the Week: Wes is a jackass. —City Council gadfly Mason Pickett takes a sign to the corner of Preston Avenue and McIntire Road.

 

Press conference casualties

Jason Kessler filed assault charges against longtime activist Jeff Winder, 49, and PHAR organizer Brandon Collins, 44, who were among the angry mob that chased the Unite the Right organizer into the arms of police protection August 13, the day after his hate fest invasion resulted in the death of Heather Heyer and injured dozens more.

Western NC transplant

Jeffrey Richardson. Courtesy photo

The Board of Supervisors appointed Cleveland County, North Carolina, county manager Jeffrey Richardson as the new county executive, effective in November. Richardson has 27 years of local government experience, a master’s degree from UNC and a new $217,000 annual paycheck, according to the Daily Progress.

Hometown solace

The Dave Matthews Band, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande and more will perform a free September 24 show in the wake of the deadly August 12 rally. The ticket lottery is over, but a small number will be available at the UVA box office September 15.

Check this out

From left to right: Aimee Atteberry, Bob Kahn, Carolyn Rainey, Antonio Rice, Major James Shiels, Karen Rogers, Erik Greenbaum, and Pat Burnette. Staff photo

C-VILLE Weekly Publisher Aimee Atteberry, the vice chair of the Salvation Army advisory board, presented the nonprofit and beneficiary of this year’s Best of C-VILLE party with a check for $8,017.58 September 12.

Cost of inquiries

Former U.S. attorney/Hunton & Williams partner Tim Heaphy, who is preparing a review of the city’s planning and response to multiple recent alt-right and KKK rallies, will charge $545 an hour with a $100,000 max payment, which he says is a discount. UVA has hired its own outside source with a $250,000 price tag to review its procedures.

Artistic merit

Before its board pulled the plug on Piedmont Council for the Arts, it released a study last month about the economic prosperity
nonprofit arts and cultural orgs rained down upon the greater Charlottesville community in 2016.

$121.8million: Economic impact

2,100: Full-time equivalent jobs

$9.5 million: Government revenue

$36.11 per event: Amount a typical arts attendee spent, beyond the cost of admission

84%: Nonlocal attendees who say they visited to attend an arts or cultural event

 

Categories
News

Winning the lottery: City Council’s new commenting policy draws controversy

Mayor Mike Signer. Staff photo

A new policy proposed by City Council for those who wish to comment at regular meetings aims to make the process more inviting, but it has some doubting the new rule’s integrity.

Currently, a sign-up sheet is made available an hour before the start of each meeting and those hoping to speak must wait in line to snag one of 12 open slots on a first-come, first-served basis.

The new procedure would require prospective commenters to call, e-mail or meet in-person with Clerk of Council Paige Rice to request a spot on the list, and a digital selector would randomly choose 12 winners, whose names would be posted by noon Monday.

But some locals who routinely sign up to speak at City Council meetings believe the new lottery process is council’s way of pushing them out.

“It’s really hard to quantify the many ways that I think it’s a bad idea,” says frequent speaker Brandon Collins, who calls the new lottery process a “deliberate attempt to limit public comment.”

He says this City Council, under the new leadership of Mayor Mike Signer, already seems “sort of perturbed by things they’ve heard during public comment.” Council isn’t favorable to anyone who criticizes them, according to Collins.

One problem with the lottery process, he says, is that some people who sign up to speak have time-sensitive concerns that need to be addressed immediately.

The clerk already receives several inquiries a month from people who want to reserve a spot to speak, says Signer. Both Rice and City Manager Maurice Jones think at least twice as many people would be interested in speaking if they could put their names on the list ahead of time, he says.

Signer says the new commenting policy will increase access at council meetings and make it easier for the disabled, elderly and people with uncertain schedules to sign up. He also says it’s important to put this policy in context with the other proposed changes council members came up with at a recent work session to make meetings more orderly and efficient.

According to Signer, the public currently expects councilors to respond to each commenter. The new procedure would defer these general responses to the city manager, who would address remarks at the next meeting, while still allowing councilors to address individual comments. For their own comments, councilors will also have the same time limit for speaking that the public has, which is three minutes, and they’ll have five minutes to speak when introducing a motion or ordinance.

Another change will limit most items on the agenda to only 20 minutes of discussion.

“Last week, we spent over an hour talking about whether two trees could be moved,” says Signer. As for public comment, he says anyone can still speak at the end of the meetings, and with the newly imposed time constraints, it won’t take nearly as long to reach that portion of a meeting.

But Louis Schultz, another frequent speaker, believes the policy change aims to “dilute the voices of people who [sign up to speak] regularly.”

He thinks those who want to speak at meetings should make a commitment to arrive early enough to sign up. “I leave work earlier than I usually would,” Schultz says. “I lose money when I go to City Council meetings.”

The rule changes City Council is proposing are about “controlling what you can say as a citizen,” Schultz says. He particularly dislikes that responses to public comments will be deferred to the city manager because he wants to hear from City Council.

Local attorney Jeff Fogel says that while he’s suspicious of the new commenting policy, it “might not be a terrible idea.” His deepest concern is with the proposed increase in the mayor’s powers.

“He wants to muzzle his own councilors to no more than three minutes,” Fogel says. Questioning Signer’s motives for wanting the authority to turn off the cameras and audio during the taping of the meetings, which are always broadcast on local television, in the case of a disturbance or disorderly conduct, or his desire for the power to evict people from meetings and bar them from coming back, Fogel says Signer is “reminiscent of an authoritarian figure.”

The mayor is already authorized to oust trouble makers from meetings and bar them from coming back for a reasonable period of time.

A Charlottesville Tomorrow poll shows that 69 percent of those responding are against the new commenting policy.

However, Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy stands behind council’s attempts to increase community engagement.

“Change is hard. Some will like it, some won’t,” he writes in a Facebook post. “But what I fear most is that if we don’t try something new, we will continue to have the same broken system.” Bellamy ends his post by saying, “I heard over and over how we wanted things to be different, progressive, fresh and new…well now is our chance.”

The new policies were proposed at the February 16 City Council meeting, after C-VILLE went to press, and if approved, go into effect March 7 for a trial period of six months.

“I want to be crystal clear the point of this is to open this up to more people, make the process more accessible and to connect us with the broader section of Charlottesville’s populace,” Signer says.

Updated February 16 at 2:15pm to clarify that the mayor already has the power to evict and bar people from meetings.