Virginia’s long-running effort to build a regulated cannabis marketplace has hit a new turning point this legislative session. Since adult possession became legal in 2021, lawmakers and stakeholders have spent years negotiating a retail framework to replace the...
After asking a school-district leader in Richmond Public Schools if there was a way to address the habit of white families sending their children to county and private schools, I was told the best way to change the pattern was to make public schools “better.” It was also suggested that I reframe the question to include affluent families of color...
We both bring a nuanced perspective to education. Taikein is a native of Prince Edward County. Growing up three blocks from the historic R.R. Moton High School, he learned the impacts that flawed policy and selfish adults have on students. His passion is to guarantee that all families have the opportunity to design an education that piques the...
My involvement with public education represents a lifetime of experience. I was seven when my mom ran for the Arlington school board. I attended the Arlington public schools. Then my dad enlisted as an attorney in the Norfolk 17 case to defeat Massive Resistance. A decade later, I arrived in Richmond the month that the Richmond Public...
I grew up in the old Harlem, New York. Where the hot summers would bring the kids outside to run through the fire hydrants that we turned into sprinklers, stoops and railings became the porches that we didn’t have, and the corner store was our very own Walmart of snacks. 125th street, home of the famous Apollo Theater, was the place to get...
In April of 2018, Richmond received a rude wake-up call. We were called out on the front page of the New York Times for chronically tolerating the second-highest eviction rate in the country, over 4 times the national average. Even today, in 2021, thirty percent of renters in the City of Richmond get an eviction notice on their door every year....
I’m attending a conference in Washington, D.C and it’s finally lunch break. I’ve been inside one room all morning and this break is my first opportunity to grab a bite to eat and hopefully, sit near a window with some sun. Conference attendees are milling about, and as most breaks during conferences go, conversation with other attendees is a high...
A racially equitable Richmond is a city that makes my dad feel comfortable and welcome. I grew up as the only child of my single-mother, Lydia Mercado. I had a complicated relationship with my biological father, Dimiter Gorchev, who was 23 years older than my mother. Dimiter struggled to connect with me, his Puerto Rican daughter who grew up in...
As a Black woman who grew up in New York and has now lived in Virginia for 18 years, I’ve seen racial differences written into every landscape of my life for as long as I can remember. I began to notice these differences when I was around 8 years old. As I rode through my working-class Black and Latino community in Hempstead, NY into Garden City...
An Afghan family who left their home country years ago and resettled in Virginia attempt to help family members still stuck in Kabul, and grapple with the unavoidable question: With the US military gone, what happens to those attempting to leave Afghanistan now? Bahar serves paratha and tea in her Richmond, Va. home, as she recalls the first time...
