Good morning, RVA! It's 74 °F, and today we've got more of the same. Expect highs in the mid 90s, sunshine, and humidity—all the things that make Richmond summers great. Stay cool, stay hydrated, and stay masked up.
Water cooler
Some personal news: At the end of this month, I will resign my position as Executive Director of RVA Rapid Transit (that's my day job). I've had the absolute best time over the last four years working for an organization whose vision—a region packed with frequent and far-reaching public transportation—aligns so closely with my own. However, trite as it sounds, the last three months of pandemic and protests have helped bring into focus what's important to me and what I do best.
First, it's clear to me that the advocacy for better public transportation in our region must be led by the people most impacted by our region's past—and ongoing—racist planning decisions. That's obviously not my lived experience, and it's appropriate and necessary for me to step aside and make space for someone else.
Second, it's also clear to me that Good Morning, RVA is the best use of my time, talents, voice, and platform. Over the last three coronamonths (or is it four at this point??) I've done some of the best writing of my life and have felt incredibly fulfilled keeping Richmonders informed about what's going on in their city during a time of crisis. But it's not just the recent crisis-writing. I've absolutely loved the last couple years of helping folks work through the (failed) property tax increase, NoBro, a bunch of zoning-and-rezonings, and, of course, the non-stop work for better and safer streets. It's deeply affirming to regularly hear from readers that what I write about each day has helped them become better citizens of the city.
So, after four years, I want to dedicate more than just my (very) early mornings to GMRVA. Moving forward, I'll now have the capacity to put more time and energy into Good Morning, RVA, and, eventually, I hope to grow it into a sustainable way to support me and my family. How will that impact you, the reader? Starting with the very next sentence you can expect me to regularly ask for your financial support. If you value my work, sign up for the GMRVA patreon and kick five or ten bucks my way each month. Your support, now very literally, helps make Good Morning, RVA possible. Other than that, I hope to invest more time in longer-form projects like the HB 1541 and the two-stage budget review explainers. I plan on crushing 2020 election coverage (now that we have a mostly-final list of candidates) and am noodling on ways to help folks get more meaningfully involved in our City's legislative process. This project has changed a lot over the last five years (ack! look at this, the very first Good Morning, RVA email, sent way back on March 3rd, 2014), and I'm sure it will continue to evolve, but now with the attention I know it deserves.
I'm incredibly excited to do this thing that I love in a more meaningful, more intentional way, and I hope you're excited about that, too.
Alright, on with the news!
P.S. And, because I know I'll get emails about it, I'm not looking for any sort of advertising or sponsorship. I've learned my lesson about ad-supported news and news-adjacent projects, and I'm not interested. Good Morning, RVA will be reader supported for the next foreseeable forever. You should, like, go become a supporter. Just go ahead and do it.
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 639↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 4↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 75↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 43, Henrico: 18, and Richmond: 14). Since this pandemic began, 240 people have died in the Richmond region. The New York Times has some upsetting dataviz around the disparate impact COVID-19 has on people of color. From the article: "Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, according to the new data...and Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, the data shows." The new data are only available after the NYT sued the CDC for it.
Whoa: The Virginia Mercury's Sarah Vogelsong says, "In a sharp pivot away from natural gas, Dominion Energy announced Sunday that it is canceling the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline and selling 'substantially all' of its natural gas transmission and storage assets to a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate." That's an enormous win for environmental advocates and regular folk who didn't want an massive natural gas pipeline running through their town. Robert Zullo, also at the Mercury, steps through some of the project's history and how much he's learned reporting on it over the last four years.
City Council's Organizational Development committee meets today at 5:00 PM and will talk through some interesting topics. New RPD Chief Gerald Smith will formally introduce himself to Council, and the Interim City Attorney will give a monument update—fascinated by the latter since the Mayor just went and did it despite the Interim City Attorney's advice. They'll also discuss how Council and the Mayor's administration can move forward on the Civilian Review Board, Marcus Alert, the Mayor's Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, and the community engagement strategy around all of those things. Should be a good one, and you can tune in here (just look for the "In Progress" link once the meeting begins). The Planning Commission will also meet today, and I've got my eye on the "Omnibus Zoning Ordinance Amendment Update and Residential Zoning District Amendments" presentation. The side deck's not yet on legistar, but you can catch that meeting at 1:30 PM if you'd like.
It seems bananas when you say it out loud, but an actual part of the Richmond 300 draft is decking over the part of I-95 between Gilpin Court and Jackson Ward and building stuff right on top of the dang highway—the same dang highway, you'll remember, that cut through Jackson Ward in the 50s and destroyed parts of a vibrant, thriving Black neighborhood. Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has some details on what that would look like, how it would reconnect the neighborhoods, and what kind of redevelopment it could spur in and around the area.
Richmond Public Libraries reopen today, which I am ambivalent about. On the one hand, the library serves an absolutely critical role in folks' lives, but on the washed-for-20-seconds other hand, anything reopening stresses me out. You can read the new procedures and health-related guidelines over on their website. Also, they are now accepting book returns either inside or in the drop boxes, which is great news for me. We've got a stack of books that we checked out on, like, Pandemic Day 0, and they've filled me with an increasing amount of guilt as the weeks have worn on. This is part of the City's official move into Phase Three, and you can read about how that changes City services here.
Free Blockbuster Richmond is Little Free Library but for videos. You've probably seen the blue and yellow boxes on Instagram, and they're exactly what you think they are: Free lending libraries focused on TV and movies (and candy!). I'm not sure what folks do with a VHS of Stargate, but, still, a cool idea. Rodrigo Arriaza at Richmond Magazine has some more details including a couple quotes from the founder who, ominously, wished to remain anonymous!
This morning's longread
You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument
This is a powerful, hard-to-read piece by Caroline Randall Williams. Content warning: rape and sexual assault.
According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help. It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.
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