Janette Martin – C-VILLE Weekly

Tackling hate crimes: Attorney general, local leaders discuss new bills

Attorney General Mark Herring has spent the past few years studying the issue of hate crimes and white supremacist violence across the commonwealth and advocating for new legislation to combat it. On December 5—coincidentally during the state’s murder trial against the neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017—Herring hosted a roundtable discussion on both topics in Charlottesville.

Approximately 20 local leaders representing a bevy of faith communities, cultural groups, government, and law enforcement gathered in the basement of the First Baptist Church to participate.

Herring, who sat at the head of the table in front of a Christmas tree with big red bows, kicked off his discussion with a few statistics.

“It is past time to acknowledge that hate crimes are on the rise,” he said, noting that Virginia State Police have recorded a 64 percent increase in hate crimes since 2013. There were more than 200 committed in the state last year.

Leaders at every level should condemn the hate and bigotry that “we all sense in our own communities,” he said.

And “the state needs to pair those words with actions,” he added, as he introduced multiple bills already on the agenda for next year’s General Assembly session. Last year, he pushed two similar bills, including one that would punish white supremacists as domestic terrorists, but the Republican-led Committee for Courts of Justice declined to hear it.

One of the new bills would give localities the ability to ban firearms at permitted events, such as the 2017 Unite the Right rally in which paramilitary groups lined the streets of Charlottesville with semi-automatic rifles swung over their shoulders.

But that legislation, if passed, still won’t satisfy some local leaders.

“It’s not the permitted event. It’s the every day,” said Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney, who wants to be able to prohibit guns at any time or place within the city, regardless of whether a permitted event is taking place.

She noted that at the Key Recreation Center, for instance, the city doesn’t allow its employees to carry guns, but any guest is more than welcome to come in packing heat. Brackney then called Virginia a “very strong Second Amendment state.”

“I believe people’s minds are changing,” countered Herring. He promised the chief, “We’ll keep working on it.”

At this roundtable, and at three he previously held across the state, he asked participants to give examples of hate crimes that they or other folks in their communities have experienced.

“This year, we have just been flooded,” said Janette Martin, president of the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP. She gave an example of a woman who keeps calling the police on her black neighbor for seemingly no reason. “It’s obvious what her motive is,” she added.

Rachel Schmelkin, the rabbi educator at Congregation Beth Israel, said their congregation has faced several anti-Semitic incidents over the past few years. She described an alert the synagogue received on August 12, 2017, in which white supremacists had sent out a message that said, “Let’s go toward those Jewish monsters at 3pm.”

Just a few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass—when Nazis in Germany orchestrated a massive attack against Jews on November 9, 1938—Schmelkin said someone drew swastikas on a shop near the synagogue. At 8:30pm, she and her husband went to CBI to “check every inch of the building” to make sure they hadn’t gotten the same treatment.

“We have to bear the burden of that,” she said, and added that Deacon Don Gathers also walks around the synagogue late some Saturday nights just to check on it.

After the October mass shooting of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Schmelkin said she wanted to debrief with the high school students who attend CBI.

“They were all really quiet,” she told Herring. “A number of them said they were relieved because they expected it would have happened here. I think that’s indicative of how unsettled our children have felt since August 12.”

Schmelkin said they now have security outside the synagogue, “almost 24/7.”

At the local mosque, Islamic Center of Central Virginia outreach secretary Noor Khalidi said law enforcement is also present for major events, such as Friday night prayer sessions.

They haven’t received any threats. “We’re sort of holding our breath, though,” she said.

After meditating on that comment for a moment, Herring said, “No one in our commonwealth or our country should feel that way.”

What’s on the table

When Attorney General Mark Herring stopped by Charlottesville last week to talk about local hate crimes and white supremacist violence, he also wanted to offer details on five upcoming bills that address those topics. This is what they hope to accomplish.

Update Virginia’s definition of “hate crime” to include crimes committed on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability
Allow the attorney general to prosecute hate crimes through a network of multi-jurisdictional grand juries, instead of at the local level
Prohibit paramilitary activity
Give law enforcement better tools to identify and intervene in the actions of violent white supremacist and hate groups, making it harder for the groups to operate
Close the loophole that allows people convicted of hate crimes the right to possess a gun

Still relevant? New NAACP president faces charged civil rights landscape

There were times in its century-long history that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was considered a militant organization. Today, not so much. Just last week, the national organization’s board ousted its president and called for a “systemwide refresh.”

Janette Martin took the helm of the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP in January at the same time President Donald Trump took office, and her organization, like so many others, is struggling to cope in a new era of American politics that’s energized by activist groups like Black Lives Matter.

Has the NAACP been supplanted by such groups?

“No,” says Martin. “We’ve been around for 108 years, with over 2,200 chapters. We’re very careful.”

Perhaps that’s why Martin didn’t respond to white nationalists putting the city on the national stage over the Robert E. Lee statue until four days later, when she compared them to the KKK.

“When you read about how they came in the night,” says Martin, “this group—I’m not saying they’re the Klan—but I think they wanted to intimidate.” With the torches, the only thing missing was “the white sheets,” she said at a press conference.

Martin, a teacher for 30 years, is a lifetime member of the NAACP, and admits she’s more of a “behind-the-scenes person.” She said she’d been asked several times by former president Rick Turner, who was often controversial and confrontational, to take the job and had declined—until she was thrust into the position with his resignation late last year shortly after he won a heated re-election.

Moving to Charlottesville as a young woman, she was a member of First Baptist Church, where the Reverend Benjamin Bunn founded the local chapter in 1947. “People were really into the NAACP,” she recalls. “They pulled us in.” And she’s risen through the ranks, starting with passing out programs at banquets, to serving as secretary and then vice president.

She touts the venerable organization’s conferences, education programs and structure, with its 19 standing committees to deal with issues. She’d like to have six active committees here, such as education, to get people engaged rather than waiting until a crisis to act, and she needs chairs for the health, political action and membership committees, according to the chapter’s website.

Since the election, she says the local chapter has 100 new members and attendance at meetings is up. But to get anything done, the NAACP needs commitment and “people power,” she says.

The NAACP “is still relevant,” she says—and continues to battle some of the same issues. “They fought for voting rights, and now we’re right back to it.”

Says Martin, “We’d like to be the face of civil rights in the community.”

Correction: Martin moved to Charlottesville as a young woman and did not grow up here, as originally reported.