Youth Climate Strike – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: New Hogwaller project, march on, cyberstalking arrest, and more

Hogwaller reset

After City Council’s rejection of his zoning and permit requests earlier this year, Justin Shimp, developer of the embattled Hogwaller Farms project in Belmont, is back with fresh plans for a newly acquired parcel partially overlapping the site of his previous proposal.

The name of the new project—Rootstock Farm Apartments—should be better received by neighbors who said they found “Hogwaller” offensive. It will include two apartment buildings with a combined 28 units and, as with the Hogwaller Farms proposal, includes plans for agricultural space and eventually a farm store.

The Hogwaller project faced a myriad of obstacles throughout its lifespan. Shimp’s plans required rezoning from both Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and many residents in the neighborhood were concerned about building in the floodplain the property lies in. In March, City Council rejected Shimp’s requests in a 3-2 decision.

Shimp recently expressed his frustration with the Hogwaller project’s detractors.

“Our experience there last time was that the people who lived on that street wanted the project approved, and a couple of people from North Downtown didn’t like it—for whatever reason,” he says.

However, the Rootstock project shouldn’t have to face the same roadblocks. According to Shimp, construction on the property would be by-right and would not require rezoning or a City Council vote—except to approve a proposed new street on the property.

Quote of the week

“These limits on witnesses’ ability to view Virginia’s executions severely curtail the public’s ability to understand how those executions are administered…or [are] otherwise botched.” —The attorneys representing four news organizations suing the Virginia Department of Corrections for prohibiting public viewing of executions

In brief

Marches galore

Hundreds of activists descended on the Downtown Mall last weekend for two separate marches. On Friday, as part of the global Youth Climate Strike, students (and their grown-up allies) gathered at the Free Speech Wall and called for systemic changes to address the climate crisis. On Sunday, as part of the international Interfaith March for Peace and Justice, protesters marched to the site of the Heather Heyer memorial on Fourth Street in a plea for renewed efforts to ensure peace and justice around the world.

Election meddling

Daniel McMahon of Brandon, Florida, was arrested earlier this month on four federal charges for interfering in a Charlottesville City Council election by cyberstalking candidate Don Gathers. The indictment alleges that McMahon, 31, was “motivated by racial animus” and used his online platforms to harass and intimidate the candidate by threatening physical injury. He faces up to seven years in prison.

An apple a day

The Thomas Jefferson Health District has received a $50,000 grant from the state to open a health clinic in the Yancey School Community Center in 2020. The clinic will staff a part-time community health worker, and provide family planning and sexual health services on a monthly basis. The building is already well-frequented, and includes tenants like PVCC and JABA.

Drawing blood

A first-year UVA student has started a nonprofit, Homoglobin, to advocate for changes in the policies that ban sexually active gay and bisexual men from donating blood. The FDA has rolled back restrictions on allowing gay and bisexual men to donate blood in recent years, and all donated blood is screened for potentially dangerous pathogens.

Climate changer: Youth activists are fighting for their own future

Flashback to March 15, when the Downtown Mall teemed with 200 miniature activists rallying as part of the national Youth Climate Strike. Among them was 11-year-old Gudrun Campbell, who fearlessly gripped a microphone attached by a curly black cord to the bullhorn held by her dad.

Drawing the mic half an inch from her mouth, she declared, “For years, our government has known about climate change, and for years, they have done nothing.”

Her voice hung over the near-silent crowd of peers and parents.

“We will not sit here and watch them do nothing. We will not sit here and watch them trade our futures, and the futures of millions of people, millions of children, for profits of billions of dollars. We can’t.”

And then the sixth-grader, her blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail, read a list of demands for grown up government leaders: approve the Green New Deal and transition entirely to renewable energy by 2030, declare a national emergency on climate change, mandate comprehensive education on global warming in schools, commit to reforestation, and change the agriculture industry to focus on plant-based instead of carbon-based farming.

The Walker Upper Elementary student, who also plays cello in the school orchestra and studies Brazilian jiu-jitsu, says her interest in environmental activism was ignited earlier this year, when her language arts teacher showed the class a video of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg’s headline-making speech in Davos, Switzerland.

Campbell says she went home and read more about Thunberg and the climate, which led her to “school strikes” and Alexandria Villaseñor, a 13-year-old climate activist who’s been skipping school every Friday to protest in front of the United Nations. Then Campbell and a classmate coordinated the local strike, which she called “necessary.”

“I organized it because there isn’t any time to quietly contemplate the pros and cons of fighting to save our planet, only time to act,” she says.

And while she has certainly proven that she can talk the talk, she’s also walking the walk.

Last summer, Campbell was one of many protesting the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast natural gas pipelines, which opponents say would destroy landscapes, contaminate drinking water, disproportionately affect minorities, and create dirty energy that won’t be needed because of the country’s transition to renewables.

“Stopping them means putting pressure on Dominion Energy and the state to halt the construction of the pipelines and the Union Hill compressor station,” she says, referencing one of three ACP compressors proposed in a small, predominantly black neighborhood in Buckingham County, which was partially founded by emancipated slaves, and where Dominion would like to build in the immediate vicinity of unmarked slave burials.

On the last weekend in March, Campbell joined Villaseñor and other young climate activists in a strike outside the U.N.’s headquarters in New York City.

“Meeting these people gives me hope that more youth will join us in standing against the climate crisis and creating lasting and meaningful change,” she says.

And because opponents often criticize environmental advocates for the carbon footprint of their activism, Gudrun is quick to clap back.

“Back off haters, I took the train.”