monumental justice – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: Bright lights, progressive progress, zero patients

Blinded by the light

Everyone’s afraid of the dark. But night is fundamental to the delicate balance of life on Earth—so says UVA astronomer and artificial light expert Ricky Patterson, who gave an illuminating presentation on the dangers of light pollution at a Sierra Club event at the downtown library this week.

More people, more cars, and bigger cities means there’s more light in the sky, and all that artificial light hurts the planet’s wildlife. Trees bloom before the spring and die before they should. Fireflies don’t flash in the bright evenings, so they can’t find each other to mate. Baby sea turtles, who have evolved over millions of years to crawl out of the beach sand and toward the glimmering reflections of stars on the ocean, now hatch and totter off toward the glowing lights of Florida’s nightclubs. Humans in urban areas can’t fall asleep properly with too much light around.

Charlottesville’s bright future threatens to contaminate the fragile wilderness areas in the darkness on the edge of town. Shenandoah National Park “becomes less and less night-friendly as we grow,” Patterson said.

Patterson urged attendees to highlight the issue at upcoming planning commission and City Council meetings. Sean Tubbs, of the Piedmont Environmental Council, says the event was inspired in part by C-VILLE’s reporting last year on light pollution in Belmont. Charlottesville’s lighting ordinance was written in the late ’90s, before the popularization of LEDs, and Patterson says it’s “really ineffective in the current world.”

Progressive progress

Our newly-blue state legislature has had a busy week: On Monday, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which could mean the amendment gets added to the U.S. Constitution. The day after gun-rights activists rallied in Richmond, Democrats moved forward with their “red flag” law, which allows authorities to take away firearms from citizens deemed a threat to themselves or others. (GOP state Senator Amanda Chase called those in support of the bill “traitors.”) In party-line votes,

the Senate also voted to ban LGBTQ conversion therapy directed at those under 18 and codify rights for transgender students. Additional bills advanced that would eliminate Lee-Jackson Day as an official state holiday and make Election Day one instead.

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Quote of the Week

“You associate Kobe with so many great memories of watching NBA Finals. Whenever an iconic hero like that passes, it makes everybody sort of step back and realize how precious life is, your own mortality.”

—UVA men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett, reflecting on the death of Kobe Bryant

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In brief

False alarm

Two patients in central Virginia were thought to be carrying the deadly coronavirus that has led to the shutdown of a major Chinese city—but tests came back negative, per the Virginia Department of Health. The virus, which manifests as a respiratory illness, hasn’t been confirmed in Virginia yet, but it does spread from person to person. Wash your hands, everybody.

A chalk mural on the free speech wall asks for statue removal.

Monumental art

As two bills proposing local control over Confederate monuments make their way through the General Assembly, activist group Take ’Em Down Cville made its feelings clear with a 10-panel chalk mural on the Free Speech Wall. Created by local artist Ramona Martinez, the mural, which was unveiled on Sunday, features a broken tiki-torch and a plea for a more inclusive future, including tips for what you can do. Martinez also drew Queen Charlotte and York the Explorer, who she believes should be honored instead.

Floor it

Rev your engines: The State Senate voted this week to increase the threshold for a reckless driving offense from 80 to 85 miles per hour. Until now, doing 81 in a 70 has been a Class 1 misdemeanor, on par with domestic violence and punishable by up to a year in jail. (Don’t burn rubber on your way home from work today, though. The bill won’t become law until summer, pending Governor Northam’s approval.)

Closing the book

On February 1, Margaret O’Bryant, the first—and only—librarian and head of reference resources at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society will be officially retiring. For more than 30 years, she has helped thousands of people research Virginia history and genealogy.

Statues of limitations: Monumental Justice supporters rally in Richmond

Two busloads of activists from Charlottesville, plus several dozen from Richmond and Norfolk, brought their campaign for local control over Confederate monuments to Richmond this week, rallying in front of the state Capitol Wednesday.

Six legislators were scheduled to speak, but the first day of the session interfered, and only Delegate Sally Hudson managed to dash out of the House to talk to members of the statewide Monumental Justice coalition.

The issue of Confederate monuments has roiled Charlottesville for years, culminating in 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally, ostensibly to protest City Council’s vote to remove generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from downtown parks. In 2012, then councilor Kristin Szakos, who helped organize Wednesday’s rally, was widely castigated for daring to suggest the monuments should go.

Last year, around a dozen Charlottesvillians showed up for a 7:30am subcommittee meeting, where then-delegate David Toscano’s bill for local control was killed in a 6-2 vote, with one Democrat joining the Republican majority.

This year, organizers see a change in the wind, with a Democratic majority in both houses of the General Assembly, and Governor Ralph Northam saying he’d sign a bill into law.

The city of Norfolk filed a federal lawsuit against the state in August, alleging the law that prohibits removal of war memorials throttles the city’s free expression. And two days before the rally, Richmond’s City Council passed a resolution asking legislators to let the city determine the destiny of its Confederate statues.

Rally organizer Lisa Draine, whose daughter was injured August 12, 2017, when a neo-Nazi ploughed into a crowd of counterprotesters on Fourth Street, is with the local affiliate, Take ‘Em Down Cville. “We’re mobilizing earlier with more force,” she says, and with more legislators committed. She cautions, “it’s not a slam dunk,” and Draine plans to return to Richmond to lobby legislators.

That was Hudson’s advice to the ralliers—to tell their stories to the 140 legislators in the General Assembly. “You have to be here again and tell my colleagues why you need monumental justice now.”

She’s carrying a bill co-sponsored by Norfolk Delegate Jay Jones, who received a standing ovation in February when he described the effects of racism in the wake of Virginia’s blackface scandals. In the Senate, Senator Creigh Deeds is co-sponsoring a bill with Senator Mamie Locke, chair of the Democratic caucus.

UVA professor Jalane Schmidt acknowledges learning from showing up last year on the day of the subcommittee vote, when she believes the decision had already been made. “The energy feels different,” she says. “It’s more organized this year statewide.” That broader response, she says, shows local control of statues “is not just a boutique issue of the city of Charlottesville.”

Said Schmidt, “Today we’re here to call for a new dominion.”

In keeping with that theme, the two buses from Charlottesville swung by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to see artist Kehinde Wiley’s recently installed statue. “Rumors of War” repositions a contemporary African American in classic equestrian statuary, and it sits facing a facility of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the organization responsible for many of the Confederate monuments that dot the Southern landscape. With paper cups of bubby beverages, the activists toasted the new monument.