Good morning, RVA! It's 63 °F, and today looks like the warmest, nicest day of the week. Expect a pleasant afternoon with highs in the mid 70s. Tomorrow, though, the rain moves in, temperatures start dropping, and by Friday I'm wearing overalls.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,134↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 19↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 109↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 29, Henrico: 45, and Richmond: 35). Since this pandemic began, 415 people have died in the Richmond region. We are one week away from the 2020 election—a date that's seemed both infinitely far away and right around the corner for four years. It's ultra important that you vote, but there is a pandemic on. I think by now, y'all know the basics for safe coronavoting—masks, distance, hand washing, and giving yourself plenty of time to deal with lines and delays—but do you know what to do if you end up in isolation or quarantined between now and Election Day? Lucky for you (well, not so lucky as you either have COVID-19 or were exposed to someone who does), the Virginia Department of Health has some helpful information on casting an emergency absentee ballot (PDF). The dates are important here, so don't screw it up: You must request to vote emergency absentee before 2:00 PM on the day preceding the election and the completed form must be turned in by 5:00 PM. You can find some more information on the Department of Elections website, too. Don't let a virus keep you from exercising your right to vote!
On Monday, police in Philadelphia shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man who was experiencing a mental health crisis. Since then, protestors have filled the streets of Philly, and the Philadelphia Inquirer has an intense set of photos from the last couple of days. This is horrible, well-worn territory that we seem unable or unwilling to stop repeating. Last night, a couple dozen Richmonders marched in solidarity with the folks in Philly and in remembrance of Marcus David-Peters, who, while experiencing a mental health crisis, was shot and killed by Richmond Police. I can't really tell from the news or the Twitter this morning if folks were arrested, but here's at least one video of Police man-marching down a street in the Fan and rushing after someone. I'm still waiting for, maybe stupidly, a dramatic shift in tone from the RPD—a shift both in their language and their physical response to what appear to be generally peaceful protests. This shift could be implemented by the Chief of Police or, of course, by the Chief's boss, the Mayor.
Yesterday, Attorney General Mark Herring made some progress in the ongoing legal battle to take down the state-owned Robert E. Lee monument. From his Twitter: "We WON the Lee statue case after a judge found that it was raised against a backdrop of white supremacy and that it is against public policy to keep it up. The ruling is stayed pending appeal, but this is a HUGE win and we're on the path to bringing down this relic." Governor Northam released a short statement, too, saying "The Lee monument was built to celebrate the Confederacy and uphold white supremacy. This victory moves Virginia forward in removing this relic of the past—one that was erected for all the wrong reasons." Sounds like the people that want to keep this particular monument to white supremacy up have 30 days to appeal, which I'm sure they will. I just don't see a world in which the man-and-horse portion of the Lee monument sticks around, but it may be well into 2021 before the State sweeps away any remaining legal issues preventing its removal. In the meantime, Richmond City should kickstart a public planning process to figure out how best to move forward with the now very-sacred space. I shouldn't be the one to decide, but removing the stone plinth at this point, which I think is the State's current plan, doesn't seem appropriate.
In the RTD, Jessica Nocera has a stressful story about Chesterfield County Public Schools's reopening process. Yesterday, the District's health panel decided—in a split decision—to send the final, older cohort of students back to in-person instruction on November 9th. From the article (and from having read a bunch of PDFs), it sounds like the County's panel is using the newish CDC School Metrics and maybe the associated Virginia Department of Health's guidance (PDF) on those metrics to make their decisions. As with most things in our country's / state's / city's response to the pandemic, these documents are mostly just that: Guidance, not requirements. Disease is complicated, turns out. I definitely do not envy the panel who must make these very important, very public decisions.
Candidate questionnaires are important—not just to inform voters (which, there's a good chance you've already voted) but to keep candidates accountable after they win their elections and start in on the business of running our town. Richmond Mayorathon has posted most of the responses to their policy-heavy questions so you can hear from candidates on things like bikes, buses, combined sewer overflow, police, and all kinds of other topics you most likely care about. Print these bad boys to PDF, file them away, and let's check back in 2022 on promises kept and promises broken.
The RTD's Mark Robinson has a ton of mayoral fundraising details for you to wade through. Most interesting to me: Alexsis Rodgers has outraised Kim Gray.
Style Weekly has released their annual Top 40 Under 40 list—a list of 40 rad people doing rad things all under the age of 40. You'll recognize some of these names! That makes sense, though, because of all the rad stuff these folks get into.
This morning's patron longread
Parenting Is a Job. During the Pandemic, It’s Impossible.
Submitted by Patron Jeff. Parenting is a lot of work under normal circumstances, and right now, under the most bizarre of circumstances, it can feel hopelessly overwhelming. If you work with folks responsible in some way for a tiny human, give them a little extra grace.
The most impossible of situations falls to single parents, most of whom are single moms. A quarter of US families are single-parent households (and four out of five of those households are headed by single mothers). A single mom must somehow manage to parent all day and all night, while also working and being the sole provider of income. In the cases where schools and daycare centers are closed, single parents are not able to work. Without a job, they are left with little to no unemployment benefits to feed and shelter their children, and with no other parent in the house to take over while they apply for jobs or run basic errands to get groceries. During the pandemic, the lack of social supports for single parents is heightened, because social-distancing measures make it nearly impossible to get outside help. There is, as one economist bluntly put it, “no escape.”
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.