Tag: Virginia Organizing

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Coronavirus News

Reaching out: With much on the line, voter registration groups push through the pandemic

Tara Mincer works with Spread the Vote/Project ID, which helps underserved populations obtain all forms of identification, including voter registration. PC: Eze Amos

By Carol Diggs

In each of Virginia’s last five national elections, voter registration around the state has surged anywhere from 6 to 10 percent. This year, coronavirus has made voter registration (like so many things) just a little harder.

Registering online, available throughout the pandemic shutdown, requires a Virginia driver’s license or DMV-issued ID—things that were hard to get when DMV offices were closed for two months. Even now, the earliest available appointment for driver’s licenses and IDs at the Charlottesville DMV is the end of October, despite voter registration closing on October 13. The other options are to register by mail, or in person at the registrar’s office; local registrars have stayed open for the most part, but hours at the Charlottesville office have been cut back through the end of August. 

Overall, early indicators suggest that the area will feel some election-year registration bumps. Applications have been increasing since March, says Melissa Morton, the City of Charlottesville’s director of elections and general registrar. Nelson County Director of Elections Jacqueline Britt says her office has handled more than 1,500 requests for new registrations or address changes in the last five months. In Greene County, according to registrar Jennifer Lewis-Fowler, voter registrations are actually outpacing the same period in 2016.

Still, the pandemic has hampered efforts by both local governments and nonprofits to expand registration among young people and the underserved.

Visits to high schools and nursing homes, and registration drives at libraries and city events, have been curtailed. Charlottesville’s Morton cites one of many examples: “Our office and the Albemarle County registrar’s office usually partner to do a drive at UVA, but we haven’t heard from the university—although some fraternities and sororities have expressed interest.”

The League of Women Voters, a major player in voter education, usually has volunteers setting up registration tables at neighborhood association events, swimming pools, farmers’ markets, grocery stores, and shopping malls—all difficult if not impossible in this contactless environment.

Sue Lewis, voter services chair of the League’s Charlottesville Area chapter, says her group is working on ways to promote registering early, especially for those who plan to vote by mail. But she admits that in the midst of COVID-19, with no public events, large gatherings, or even people strolling on the Downtown Mall, “how to reach people is a real conundrum.”

Spread the Vote/Project ID focuses on helping underserved populations obtain all forms of identification, including voter registration. Tara Mincer, co-lead for the Charlottesville chapter, says her group holds weekly drives in the parking lot of Loaves & Fishes, and works closely with both the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail and Piedmont House to help former inmates and homeless voters. But it’s challenging. “Our volunteers can’t even safely offer to drive people to the registrar’s office or the DMV,” Mincer says.

Virginia Organizing, a nonprofit focused on helping underserved populations make their voices heard, has tried to find creative ways to work within social distancing.  Amanda Dameron, the organization’s representative for central Virginia, runs a weekly Zoom training (open to all, it’s been averaging five-10 people a session) for people who want to assist in local or neighborhood voter registration. Dameron says the pandemic has forced her group to concentrate on disseminating information rather than in-person outreach. “We’re asking our volunteers to tap their personal networks, use their social media and phones, to spread the word and make sure that everyone has a plan for how to register and how to vote.”

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Voting in Virginia: the basics

With recent changes in election laws, the pandemic, and the U.S. Postal Service upheaval, there’s a lot of misinformation circulating. Here’s what you need to know:

How can I register, or check my registration? The easiest way to register, update your address, or transfer your registration from another state is online, via the Citizen Portal. You will need either a valid Virginia driver’s license or a Virginia DMV-issued ID.  If you don’t have either, you can fill out an application
form (available online, by mail, or in post offices and many state agencies) and submit it by mail, or in person at your local registrar’s office. Registration applications must be received by the registrar’s office or postmarked by 5pm on October 13.

How can I request a vote by mail ballot? Once you are registered, you have until October 23 to request a vote by mail ballot (online or by mail, email, or fax).

When is the deadline to submit a vote by mail ballot? Your ballot must be postmarked by November 3 and received by the registrar’s office by noon on November 6—so mail early! Alternatively, you can deliver your ballot (in person or curbside) at your local registrar’s office by 7pm on November 3. Be prepared to show identification, and note that the registrar’s office cannot accept a ballot from a third party.

What about voting early? You can vote in-person absentee at your local registrar’s office from September 19 through October 31. You don’t
need to provide a reason.

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News

‘Big deal’: Nearly 5,000 locals eligible for coverage with Medicaid expansion

House Minority Leader David Toscano says not only will 400,000 Virginians get coverage with Medicaid expansion, but teachers will get raises and other budget items will be funded with the influx of federal dollars. Ellie Williams

Mary Linn Bergstrom was in Boston over Memorial Day when she got a really bad, eyes-swollen-shut case of poison ivy. “I had to wait to go to the doctor until I had enough money in the bank,” says the 38-year-old Nia instructor.

Bergstrom is one of almost 5,000 people in Charlottesville and Albemarle who will qualify for Medicaid under the biennial budget Governor Ralph Northam signed June 7 that expanded health insurance coverage for nearly 400,000 Virginians who make too little to qualify under the Affordable Care Act or too much—or are too healthy—to qualify for Medicaid.

Her doctor’s visit and medication cost almost $400. “I think it’s pretty common to not have that amount of cash on hand,” she says.

And being in Massachusetts, which passed an individual health care mandate in 2006, people found it hard to believe she didn’t have insurance. “Everyone was arguing with me that of course you have health insurance, you must have forgotten your card,” she says.

Bergstrom makes around $7,000 or $8,000 a year, depending on how many classes she teaches. “My last wellness checkup was 11 or 12 years ago,” she says, and the last time she checked, health insurance would cost her around $500 a month. She lives in a household of three working adults who pay all their bills. “Health insurance is the only bill we cannot afford, or even imagine affording,” she says.

To House Minority Leader David Toscano, Medicaid expansion is a “really big deal” and one he’s worked on for the past five years.

Former Governor Terry McAuliffe made it a lynchpin of his administration, but he left office with no success in the face of a recalcitrant Republican-controlled General Assembly.

That all changed with the 2017 elections that swept 15 Democrats into the House of Delegates. “I began to see the possibilities after the election last fall,” says Toscano. Native son Northam won by nine points—“the widest margin of any statewide candidate. There’s always a number of reasons why, but of all of them I think the election was the biggest.”

Toscano represents all of Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle, and 3,400 people in his 57th District could be eligible for coverage, according to the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. And Toscano says as many as 10,000 could be eligible in the region, a “not inconsequential” number.

Virginia’s Medicaid program is one of the most restrictive in the country, with disabled individuals making more than $9,700 a year ineligible, as were poor, able-bodied, childless adults. The expansion allows people making 138 percent of the federal poverty level—$16,643—to be covered, with the federal government picking up 90 percent of the cost.

The expansion has a work requirement, which Tory Brown, spokesperson for Progress Virginia, says will lessen the gains in coverage and require an expensive bureaucracy to manage. “The work requirement was a bit of face saving for Republicans,” she says. “It’s not really that people are too lazy to work.” For people who have to work to get care but need care to be able to work, she calls it a “catch 22.”

Lena Seville, who ran for City Council in 2015 and has no health insurance, is worried that the work requirement could affect her eligibility for Medicaid coverage. “I’m in the middle of starting my own business,” she says, and whether she can get health insurance will depend on how the work requirements are written.

She says she’d hate to have to give up her volunteer work and new business to search for jobs, “which I already do and it’s hard to get a good fit.” Says Seville, “I was excited, but now I’m cautious. I may not have health insurance when it’s done.”

Virginia Organizing board member Emma Hale points out that a lot of people work full-time and don’t have health insurance. “We have a lot of places that don’t pay a living wage—the university is one of the worst offenders.”

People without insurance often delay treatment, she says, and Medicaid expansion could “prevent people from dying.”

Pam Sutton-Wallace, CEO of UVA Medical Center, doesn’t expect “measurably significant” changes from Medicaid expansion because nearly 30 percent of the hospital’s patients already are either on Medicaid, self pay or are indigent. “What we’re likely to see are more self-pay patients using Medicaid,” she says.

Her concern is whether the newly eligible will have access to primary care. “Some doctors aren’t accepting new patients,” she says. That, and whether emergency rooms will see a drop in the number of patients who wait until the last minute to seek care are “areas ripe for study.”

“I want to take preventive action so I don’t run into problems later on,” says Bergstrom. “We would gladly add in the cost of health care for me if it was a number remotely in reach, but we cannot spend nearly 80 percent of my income on one budget line item.”

Who benefits

The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis estimated the number of people who would be eligible for health insurance coverage under Medicaid expansion by legislative district and locality. Here are the numbers for the districts of the four delegates who represent Charlottesville and Albemarle, and how they voted.

25th District

2,000 eligible in Western Albemarle, Augusta and Rockingham counties

Delegate Steve Landes voted no on expansion

57th District

3,400 eligible in Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle

Delegate David Toscano voted yes

58th District

3,100 eligible in parts of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene and Rockingham counties

Delegate Rob Bell voted no

59th District

3,300 eligible in southern Albemarle, parts of Appomattox, Buckingham, Campbell and Nelson counties

Delegate Matt Fariss voted no

Correction June 14: Emma Hale’s name was misspelled in the original version.

Categories
Arts

Ann Randolph brings humor and truth to Charlottesville

Ann Randolph performs her show, Inappropriate in All the Right Ways, at Virginia Organizing’s benefit for racial and social justice at the Paramount on December 9. Publicity photo

Writer and performer Ann Randolph has lived an amazing life. In college, rather than paying to live in a dorm, she lived in the schizophrenic unit of a state mental hospital in exchange for writing plays with patients. She worked the graveyard shift at a homeless shelter for minimum wage for 10 years. And she once lived on a boat in Alaska for a year with 14 men from Louisiana with whom, at first, she appeared to have nothing in common.

A writer from a young age, Randolph joined The Groundlings, an improv and sketch comedy theater in Los Angeles, after college. “I was very interested in creating outrageous characters,” she says, but her personal style evolved into “combining comedy and the human condition.” Drawing from her own life, she began writing and performing solo shows. “Whatever I’m struggling with I create a show around it,” she says, adding, “I find writing is very healing, very powerful.”

She wrote Squeeze Box about her time working at the homeless shelter and performed it in “a crappy theater” she rented in L.A. “That’s when Mel Brooks kind of discovered me,” she says. “He and his wife [Anne Bancroft] showed up.” One of the characters Randolph played was a prostitute addicted to crack, a character inspired by someone she met at the homeless shelter. “Anne Bancroft loved that character,” she says. “She wanted to make [the show] into a movie and play her on Broadway.” Brooks and Bancroft whisked Randolph away to New York City where they produced Squeeze Box off Broadway in 2004. “It was a big shift for me,” says Randolph, who went on to tour with the show.

Bancroft passed away in 2005 before they were able to adapt Squeeze Box into a film. Then Randolph’s own father and mother died. “So,” Randolph says matter-of-factly, “the next show was a comedy about death.” Titled Loveland, she performed it at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in 2014. A theater critic for the Washington Post called it “inappropriate in all the right ways,” which struck Randolph as the perfect title for her next show.

“I’ve been told I’ve been inappropriate my whole life so I just love that title,” she says. “I believe that there’s room for appropriateness and inappropriateness, and it can be done in an illuminating and hilarious way.” Most important to her is what is true. “If we can’t speak our truth we can’t be authentic in our lives,” she says.

Virginia Organizing has invited Randolph to perform Inappropriate in All the Right Ways as the headliner for its Night of Comedy and Storytelling for Racial and Social Justice, an event that will include Susan Bro (mother of Heather Heyer), former 5th District Representative Tom Perriello and local hip-hop group Sons of Ichibei.

Randolph’s show is a “story about resiliency” that chronicles her life “as a creator,” she says. At one point in the production, she invites willing audience members to share their stories. “How incredibly cathartic it can be to speak something you’ve been holding on to for a long time,” Randolph says.

The show also raises the question “Can we see ourselves in another?” and illustrates the camaraderie Randolph found in people different from herself. “You may start out thinking you’re different,” she says, “and in the end you’ll see where you’re united rather than divided. It comes from listening to people’s stories and dropping judgment and preconceived ideas.”

What’s one thing she believes helps people listen? Humor. “Sometimes when we hear someone’s strong point of view in a preaching voice we tune out. But if there’s humor there we’re more receptive and open,” she says.

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News

Bipartisan issue: Survey says majority of Virginians oppose pipelines

Nelson County mountains. Photo: Jack Looney

Though Dominion Virginia Power announced last week the hiring of a contractor to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, efforts to halt its construction, and that of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, have not ceased.

A new survey released September 21 by two anti-pipeline groups, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Virginia Organizing, shows that 55 percent of Virginians do not back Governor Terry McAuliffe’s support of the two pipelines, despite his belief they will create jobs, lower bills and help the environment.

The Cromer Group, a public opinion research group, interviewed 732 of the state’s registered voters for the survey.

The environmental groups note that 60 percent of female Republicans and 52 percent of female Democrats say McAuliffe has missed the mark.

Caroline Bray, a 20-year-old third-year student at UVA and the president of the university’s Climate Action Society, falls on the far left of that spectrum, she says. But she’s not sure it matters in this case.

Caroline pipeline-BL
Caroline Bray, a 20-year-old third-year student at UVA and the president of the university’s Climate Action Society, says the fight against the pipeline isn’t a partisan issue. Courtesy Caroline Bray

“One thing I’ve learned from traveling through the counties that the pipelines are supposed to cut across is that pipelines are not a partisan issue,” she says, adding that those bearing the brunt of the proposed pipelines live in rural, historically conservative areas. “They fight against them as hard as, if not more than, many liberals.”

A typical conservative pipeline opposer, she says, takes the stance that the proposed pipelines would infringe on their property rights, while liberals worry more about environmental concerns.

And one of those most recent concerns is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s newly released Mountain Valley Pipeline environmental impact statement, which determines that any negative ecological effects associated with it are “limited.”

“Having crossed through the countryside that the Mountain Valley Pipeline is supposed to traverse,” Bray says, “I find it shocking.”

This spring, she hit the road with the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition to travel the MVP’s proposed path from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Blacksburg, stopping along the way to speak with people who would be impacted by its presence.

“This land is unprecedented for a 42-inch pipeline,” she says. Much of the area’s mountainous topography has a karst landscape that is conducive to sinkholes and erosion, and West Virginia’s Monroe County has more than 100 natural water springs, she says. “If the rocks below these springs are shifted by the pipeline, the source of drinking water for an entire community and wildlife down the watershed could be permanently threatened.”

She also mentions a Monroe family she met that has lived on their property for more than eight generations, since before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

“Their land is sacred to them, and altering it with this pipeline is unjust in every way,” Bray says.

Also making headlines in the realm of Virginia pipelines has been McAuliffe’s insistence that governance over those entities is strictly a federal issue and the state has no authority.

“He seems both confused and forgetful,” says the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition’s Rick Webb, who notes that McAuliffe has said the state will grant the natural gas pipelines their water permits, which are required, under the Clean Water Act if the companies backing them meet the statutory requirements.

On McAuliffe’s September 22 visit to Charlottesville, he was greeted outside Democratic campaign headquarters on the Downtown Mall by a group of sign-waving pipeline protesters who demanded he take action.

He told a Newsplex reporter that he has no say in the matter, but he supports the group’s right to protest.

“This is democracy, this is what America is all about,” he said. “You’ve got 10, 15 folks protesting, but remember, I’m the governor of 8.5 million people.”

In other news, the results of a study commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates released September 12 say the anticipated natural gas supply will meet the maximum demand from next year until 2030 without building a new pipeline.

“It’s an issue of competitive advantage rather than public need,” Webb says. “It’s mostly about Dominion seeking to displace Williams Transco as the major natural gas supply for the Southeast, while passing the cost of doing so along to its captive ratepayers.”

Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby says the report is full of flawed assumptions and misleading data.

“It’s an anti-pipeline report paid for by anti-pipeline groups, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone what it says,” he says. “The fact is, demand for natural gas in Virginia and North Carolina is growing significantly.”

Demand will grow by 165 percent over the next 20 years, he says, because coal is being replaced with cleaner-burning natural gas. And not only are new industries increasingly relying on natural gas, but the population itself is growing.

“There is no way existing pipelines or gas storage can meet that huge growth in demand,” Ruby says. “Existing pipelines in the region are constrained and operating at full capacity. Even planned expansions of those pipelines are fully subscribed.”

In Hampton Roads, he says pipelines are so constrained that the natural gas service is “curtailed” for large industrial customers during high-demand periods in the winter. In North Carolina, he adds, one pipeline serves the entire state, and because it’s located in the western half, entire communities in eastern North Carolina have limited to no access to the supply.

“The region’s existing pipelines cannot address these challenges,” says Ruby. “New infrastructure is required. That’s why we’re proposing to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.”

Categories
News

It’s a madhouse

Michael Mann, a former UVA professor known for climate research that drew a lawsuit from former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, will be in town to speak about his book September 15. Courtesy photo

Michael Mann, a former UVA professor and climate scientist whose work resulted in a lawsuit from former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, will speak about his book, The Madhouse Effect, at 7pm September 15 at City Council Chambers.

“Through satire, The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that man-made activity has changed our climate,” Mann says.

In April 2010, when Mann was an assistant professor at the university, Cuccinelli sued UVA in an attempt to discredit Mann’s research. A judge dismissed Cuccinelli’s suit, and when the AG appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, the court ruled in the university’s favor. The Washington Post described the litigation as “a climate change witch hunt.”

Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles, who illustrated the book, will accompany Mann at the event sponsored by the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter and Virginia Organizing.

Calling themselves “commonsense crusaders,” Mann says their book “enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books—and may even convert a few of the faithful to the right side of science.”