Good morning, RVA! It's 75 °F, and highs again are, like, way, way high. Expect highs in the 90s and plenty of humidity to go along with it. There's a chance of rain throughout the day, so keep an eye out.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 439 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 18 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 88 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 53, Henrico: 16, and Richmond: 19). Since this pandemic began, 199 people have died in the Richmond region. This is the fewest number of new cases reported in a single day since way back in April and caps off three days of significant decline. However! I missed this story by the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Mel Leonor a couple of days ago that said VDH has "a running backlog of 13,000 COVID-19 test results that have not been reported to the public" and the agency will also "add a different set of 13,000 backlogged tests to the public dashboard...which could appear to skew the data." Officials also said that the backlog contains mostly negative test results, so any skew would push the percent positivity down (just increasing the denominator). I guess this answers some of the questions I had earlier this week about the apparent regression in number of tests being reported across the Commonwealth. As we seriously move into Phase 2, keep an eye on the data—we don't want Virginia's coronavirus graphs to start looking like Arizona's or Texas's (over 2,000 new cases per day). Wear your masks! Keep your distance!
Last night, the Jefferson Davis statue on Monument Avenue came a-tumbling down, and I don't know what to say about it other than that it feels weird not to have a ton to say. Random Twitter accounts report that, rather than the large peaceful crowds we've seen over the last couple of weeks, Davis was torn off his pedestal by a "small sedan" which then, I guess, sped off into the night. Here's a video of the statue heading to its new resting place in a parking lot somewhere on a flatbed truck as a small crowd celebrates. Yesterday, when we were all focused on the Christopher Columbus statue, the Mayor tweeted his concerns about protestors removing monuments on their own, outside of an established process, saying "The atrocities inflicted upon indigenous people by Christopher Columbus are unconscionable. That’s why the city began observing Indigenous Peoples’ Day, not Columbus Day, in 2019. But the decision & action to remove a monument should be made in collaboration w/ the community. Working with Richmond’s History and Culture Commission, we are establishing a process by which Richmonders can advocate for change to the figures we place on public pedestals across our city in a legal and peaceful way." First, "but they have a day" isn't the best way to start out this particular response. Second, I didn't see any similar concerns when people brought down the Wickham statue in Monroe Park. Third, I'd love to know more about what the History and Culture Commission has been up to since Council passed the enabling legislation back in November of 2018 (ORD. 2018-269). Surely they've been working on the process for removing monuments at least since the General Assembly granted localities the authority to do so earlier this year? And surely that process will focus on equity and inoculate itself against loud, racist NIMBYs who constantly overwhelm a significant percentage of our public discussions? Regardless, I agree with @jeffrock, who said "[City of Richmond,] I know you want to fill out forms in triplicate, but you're out of time. You can't wait to vote on this. Take these monuments down safely before someone gets hurt." He's right, and, in fact, someone was injured in Portsmouth yesterday as folks got to work taking down one of their Confederate monuments. I think you could make the argument that in this current moment, the Confederate monuments are a public safety hazard and the smaller ones that can be removed should be removed as soon as possible. We can store them in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style warehouse until the History and Culture Commissions figures out whatever process they want, but, until then, box 'em up before people get hurt.
Ali Rockett and C. Suarez Rojas at the RTD look at how the region can move forward with meaningful police reform. In Richmond, folks are dialed in to two policies that I've written about before (and organizers have been working toward for years): the Marcus Alert and a community review board. The former seems like something that that the Mayor or Council can implement fairly quickly. The latter will need both extensive community engagement and changes to state law. Let's do both of those things, but let's not stop there. There's a real opportunity for Richmond to dramatically rethink its public safety systems and reallocate our budget accordingly. Councilmember Lynch puts it well (Facebook): "'Defunding the Police' does not mean abolishing the police department. Instead it means supporting a change in the way we spend resources to deal with the deep and longstanding disparities that exist in our public safety and criminal justice institutions." That, of course, will also require extensive community engagement, and we should kick that process off as soon as possible—probably beginning with Councilmember Jones's suggested deep dive into the RPD's budget.
The Richmond 300 virtual summits continue, and tonight's (6:00 PM, sign up on the Eventbrite) focuses on a place rather than topic: Greater Scott's Addition! Check out that specific section of the Richmond 300 draft plan here beforehand (PDF) so you can ask smart questions and impress your neighbors. Also, the presentations and videos from the previous summits are making their way onto the Richmond 300 website for those of us that missed the last couple of events.
Assuming nothing shocking/incredible/horrible happens in the next 24 hours, I'm taking a much needed day off tomorrow. It's been a wild couple of weeks and my brain feels a little congealed and a little scrambled—like an egg aspic. I do want to say thank you to everyone that's joined the Good Morning, RVA patreon over the last three months. So much has happened since March 13th, and I've tried my best to put together a fair and coherent narrative of what's going on in Richmond. I'm incredibly grateful for y'all supporting that work with your hard-earned money—during a pandemic even!
This morning's longread
When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery
What a weird, quirky story about the time the makers of SimCity created a whole division to make "business simulations."
Maxis didn’t want to make professional simulation games. But for two brief, strange years, they did. From 1992 to 1994, a division called Maxis Business Simulations was responsible for making serious professional simulations that looked and played like Maxis games. After Maxis cut the division loose, the company continued to operate independently, taking the simulation game genre in their own direction. Their games found their way into in corporate training rooms and even went as far as the White House. Almost nothing they developed was ever released to the public. But their software raises questions about the role we want games to play in society.
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