🚮 Good morning, RVA: 416↘️ • 23↗️; Stonewall comes down; and moving forward on policy change

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and today does look a little bit cooler than the last couple of days. You probably don’t need to worry about sporadic downpours, either. Honestly, sounds like bike-riding weather to me.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 416↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 23↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 33↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 17, Henrico: 12, and Richmond: 4). Since this pandemic began, 228 people have died in the Richmond region.

Wow! What a historic day in Richmond: Yesterday, the Mayor ordered the immediate removal of Confederate monuments, beginning with the Stonewall Jackson monument at the intersection of Arthur Ashe Boulevard and Monument Avenue. Honestly, honestly, honestly, I never thought I would see day, but, here we are, and it looks like crews will continue to take down racist monuments until either they’re all gone or a court stops them.

Everything started at City Council’s special meeting (video here) when the Mayor introduced RES. 2020-R049 authorizing him to “immediately remove, temporarily, certain statues, including numerous Confederate statues, to protect the health and safety of persons and property in the City of Richmond and to store them pending the result of a hearing.” The resolution relies on the fact that 1) Richmond is still under a State of Emergency, which the Governor just extended Monday at the Mayor’s request, 2) that during a State of Emergency, the Mayor is the Director of Emergency Management and can use that authority in atypical ways, and 3) as of July 1st the City now has authority over its monuments. The plan was to have Council approve the resolution and then get moving removing monuments to White supremacy.

I haven’t listened to the meeting audio yet, but, for various procedural and City Attorney reasons, Council would not or could not vote on the resolution or even signal their consent to it with a series of winks and nods. Mark Robinson from the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a play-by-play on Twitter that’s worth reading, including this fascinating quote from the City Attorney, “Honestly, our office hasn’t had anything to do with this.” Keeping that quote in mind, one detail that’s either very, very interesting or a total clerical mistake: RES. 2020-R049 does not say “Approved as to form and legality by the City Attorney” at the top of the resolution. I have lots of conspiratorial thoughts about that whole situation, but those will have to wait!

Faced with procedural hurdles they were unable to overcome, Council planned on holding another meeting today to vote on the Mayor’s resolution, and, obviously, that meeting is no longer necessary. So, without approval from Council and against the advice of the City Attorney, the Mayor just went and did it anyway. Here’s his video explaining the reasoning behind his decision, the framework that makes it possible, and a bit of his vision for what comes next. And he really meant immediately, too. Like, at that very moment, cranes pulled up to the Stonewall Jackson monument and over the course of the next several hours, through a torrential downpour, took down that monument. Again, something I’d never thought I’d see. David Streever at VPM has a recap of the moment; Roberto Roldan, also from VPM, has a great video of the actual, actual moment; a member of First Baptist Church of Richmond, that sits at that intersection, tells the story behind the church’s bell which they rang during the removal; and the Valentine posted this before-and-after picture of the monument spanning 99 years.

So what’s next? I imagine crews will move down Monument Avenue and handle Stuart or clean up what’s left of Davis. Of course, Maury remains further west and A.P. Hill’s remains lie literally buried under the Northside. There’s a lot of work to be done to rid our City’s neighborhoods of all the stones and statues venerating white supremacy—about $1.8 million of work says the Mayor. City Council has done their part and introduced ORD. 2020–154 which kicks off the dumb and required state process for getting rid of the monuments, a process that still must be followed. And, I imagine, some white folks are frantically calling their lawyers to get a judge to stop the cranes from following the Mayor’s orders. It’s not going to matter though. Maybe a judge agrees and stops the removal of any more Confederate monuments. Maybe a judge even requires the City to put back up the Jackson monument. It doesn’t matter, we’ll work through the dumb and required process, win any law suits, and the 100-year-old symbols of white supremacy will come down. It’s only a matter of time now!

There’s a lot of work left to do, even in taking down the symbols of racism and inequity, but especially in dismantling the systems that perpetuate racism and inequity. Yesterday, City Council took some legislative steps toward those goals and introduced several bills along those lines: RES. 2020-R048 which “bans the use of certain non-leathal weapons to control unlawful assemblies”, RES. 2020-R047 which asks for more details on the police department’s budget, RES. 2020-R046 which asks for regular reports on any civil asset forfeitures, RES. 2020-R045 which looks to set up a work group focused on creating a Marcus Alert, and ORD. 2020–155 which establishes “a task force on the Establishment of a Civilian Review Board.”

Meanwhile, down at the John Marshall Courthouse some folks gathered to protest courts moving forward with evictions during a pandemic. At some point, for some reason, sheriff’s deputies sprayed protestors with pepper spray, a few folks were arrested, and protestors broke some of the Courthouse’s windows. You can read more and watch some videos from the RTD’s C. Suarez Rojas. I definitely do not know enough about how eviction works to talk intelligently about what happened yesterday. But here are a bunch of things that I do know: Folks should not be evicted from their homes during a pandemic, protestors should not be pepper sprayed, the Sherrif’s Department is not the same as the Virginia State Police or the Richmond Police Department, the body language of the Sherrif’s Deputies as they tried to keep protestors out of the courthouse was so very different from the LIGHT ‘EM UP! vibe I get from the riot cops we’ve seen in our neighborhoods lately, the Courts have the power to halt evictions and the Supreme Court of Virginia has let the moratorium on evictions lapse, I have not seen either the Governor or the Mayor ask Richmond’s courts to extend that moratorium locally, both the City and the State have set up rent relief programs totaling $56 million, and Richmond has a shameful nation-leading eviction problem. That’s a lot of different thoughts pulling me in a lot of different ways.

Another huge bummer to Past Ross: Minor League baseball has cancelled their 2020 season, which means no Flying Squirrels baseball in Richmond. Present-day Ross, though, is like, yeah, duh, I’m not trying to share the air with hundreds of randos, no way. The Squirrels say they “will continue to be part of the community, while having funn & making memories in new, creative ways.” I believe them.

P.S. Chill vibes at Marcus-David Peters Circle, née the Lee Circle, continue. Hanna Eason from the Commonwealth Times has some pictures and videos from last night and VPM’s Ben Paviour has pictures of even more guerrilla signage going up in the area.

This morning’s patron longread

The Power of Empty Pedestals

Submitted by Patron Casey. Now we actually have a massive, empty pedestal to consider.

Empty pedestals are powerful symbols. In Prague during the Cold War, an empty pedestal that once supported a statue to Czechoslavak president Tomas Masaryk reminded people living under Soviet rule that they would one day emerge from the oppressiveness of an authoritarian regime. Empty pedestals can serve a similar function in Richmond, and around the country. History won’t be erased after Lee’s statue joins the recently toppled statues of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis and the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus. For centuries, these structures supported white supremacy and obscured historical truths. Empty pedestals represent opportunities for us to grapple with history’s light and darkness. They are invitations to empathize with the perspectives of people previously marginalized from the interpretation of the past. As Edward Ayers, the Tucker-Boatwright Professor of Humanities at the University of Richmond told me, “What matters now is what we all do with what remains. We don’t have a blank slate or a clean sheet of paper on which to draw our plans, but history never does.”

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This morning’s Instagram