Good morning, RVA! It's 41 °F now, but we could see highs in the 70s today. Sounds great, and, I know its only Thursday, but I’m ready for the weekend.
Water cooler
Whitney Evans at VPM says earlier this week, courts heard 52 eviction cases filed by the RRHA against residents of Creighton Court, which Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch notes is 13% of the number of active leaseholders in the public housing neighborhood. The judge ruled that 35 of those evictions could move forward. This is an incredibly complex situation that I totally don’t have a handle on, but, here are some of the pieces: 1) Richmond has the highest eviction rate in the country and we’ve set up an eviction diversion program that the guy who literally wrote the book on eviction called “a model for the nation,” 2) Robinson writes that “Attorneys working with the city’s new eviction diversion program sat in on the hearing but did not assist the Creighton residents; RRHA had not previously agreed to participate in the pilot program.”, 3) RRHA and the City are in the middle of multi-year process to demolish and redevelop Creighton Court, and 4) RRHA’s new CEO made the decision to stop leasing vacant apartments in Creighton earlier this year. And that’s just four things! There are probably a hundred more of which I am just totally unaware. I don’t know enough to say if RRHA is acting in good faith here, but I can see how easy it would be for folks to connect the desire to demolish and redevelop Creighton with the decision to stop leasing and begin evictions. And that feels awful. Here’s a short statement from RRHA’s CEO Damon Duncan, in which he says “there is no correlation between unlawful detainers and the redevelopment of Creighton Court” and that (if I’m reading it right) the 35 families who could be evicted will be allowed to participate in the eviction diversion program. As with almost everything, better communications from RRHA would certainly help.
The NoBro folks have posted a 2-page PDF that’s “a correction of the record of the Navy Hill Development Advisory Commission meeting” from this past Saturday. If reading through it seems like a chore, the RTD’s Mark Robinson breaks down some of the interesting bits on Twitter. The tone of this document is kind of intense, flirts with defensive, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. It does, however, highlight a few of the things the Commission got wrong and you should at least give it a skim. What it doesn’t do is address what I think is the Big Risk: The first half dozen years of the project—when we’ve diverted growing revenues from Downtown into the TIF and the development has yet to generate any of its own revenues. The Commission’s chair had the same concern on Saturday. Unrelated to the Big Risk, I like what @Ruth_Morr said over on Twitter about the NoBro folks’ claim that their particular master plan is needed to build anything at all in that part of Downtown: “I disagree that DOWNTOWN is not/will not grow revenues w/o a master plan but I’m all for a community-centered plan! Trouble here is we skipped the step where we ask people what they want.”
Something to keep an eye on: Justin Mattingly at the RTD says Superintendent Kamras will propose changes to the School District’s open enrollment system 💸. This is yet another incredibly complex issue, and I will wait to hear more details from the Superintendent. I will say—rightly or wrongly—that I’m skeptical of something supported by the Fan and Museum District folks who are so against pairing elementary schools together as a way to address racial segregation. Honestly, it’s probably a both-and type of situation.
Just a quick follow up on those semi-guerrilla bus stop seating cubes from Art on Wheels: The Public Art Commission will consider approving them (or maybe endorsing them?) at the Commission’s meeting today. The information packet linked from the agenda (PDF) has some interesting tidbits, including proposed locations for the seating and that GRTC will require Art on Wheels to bolt the cubes to the ground and “provide by endorsement, liability insurance listing GRTC Transit System and City of Richmond as additional insured in the following amount: $1,000,000.” That’s a lot of work to put together a couple of boxes for folks to sit on—boxes that wouldn’t even be necessary if the City had the funding for appropriate bus stop amenities.
Tomorrow from 6:30–8:00 PM at the ICA, STAY RVA will host a conversation about the intersection of race and education featuring Dr. Courtney Mykytyn (co-founder of Intergrated Schools and that Integrated Schools podcast everyone’s listening to), Taikein Cooper, and Dr. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley. This is a legit heavy group of folks, and you should definitely make it your beeswax to be there. Suggested ticket price is $25, which you can get over on the Eventbrite.
Y’all. Tonight is Councilmember Parker Agelasto’s last 5th District meeting as a member of City Council. Stop by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (240 S. Laurel Street) at 6:30 PM to pour one out for him as we get ready for the Special Election in a couple of weeks. Just kidding, no pouring of anythign at this meeting, just a rep from NoBro on hand to discuss that project.
This morning's patron longread
Jitterbugging With Jim Crow
Submitted by Patron Casey. I wish I would have taken a second and thought about this history and origin of swing for that handful of embarrassing years in the 90s.
The Lindy Hop scene today is mostly white. The swing “revival” that occurred here — and everywhere — in the late 1990s and early 2000s brought swing back to the mainstream, but it did so in a way that was so decontextualized from its historic past that it was easy even for dancers to never learn about the historic roots of the dance. Many people still assume today that swing dance is a white-people thing. How could they not when Benny Goodman, not Fletcher Henderson, is considered the “King of Swing?” The history that the contemporary swing dance community liked to tell is one of racial harmony and integration, but that was not true at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, where the dance began, and it was certainly not true in the American South. Jim Crow laws and segregation meant blacks and whites could not legally mix in social spaces, either on the dance floor or on the stage. Racial violence made it dangerous for black swing bands to tour and perform in the South. And many of Georgia’s greatest swing-era musicians left the South, with thousands of others, during the Great Migration.
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