Two separate protests unfolded in downtown Richmond Saturday afternoon, as local activist groups responded to reports of U.S. military action in Caracas and the detention of Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro and his wife. One gathering took place at Maggie Walker...
The eighth installment in a monthly series in which a hometown Richmonder who has spent over a decade abroad explores the many different neighborhoods accessible by GRTC bus lines to discover the ways transit connects us all. Union Hill: One could hardly find a better metaphor for Union Hill’s relationship to and position within Richmond than its...
For Ghazala Hashmi, the first Muslim to serve in Virginia's state Senate, her victory in this month's election is a fortuitous opportunity to make progress for Virginia's more vulnerable communities. “It was back in 2017 that I had a moment of personal crisis,” said Ghazala Hashmi, who defeated incumbent Republican Glen Sturtevant in the race for...
As income inequality grows, a number of candidates for president have proposed taxes on wealthy Americans. Now VA Congressman Don Beyer and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen are using legislation to pursue that goal. The richest 1 percent of Americans control more wealth than the entire middle class combined, according to the Brookings...
Richmond has the third-slowest mail delivery rate of any United States metro area. But if you live here, you already know that. Rachel Westfall, who lives in Richmond’s Jackson Ward neighborhood, says her mail service has always been hit or miss. But since April, there have been a lot more misses. “My personal property tax check apparently never...
Virginia state Senator-elect Ghazala Hashmi will be the first Muslim to serve in Virginia's legislature, and a lot of racists on social media just can't stop crying about it. Days after Virginia’s legislative elections, racist comments continued to flood news stories about Ghazala Hashmi becoming the first Muslim American to serve in the state...
Nearly 100,000 Virginia children live in high-poverty neighborhoods; that figure includes 15 percent of Virginia's African American children, but only 2 percent of the commonwealth's white children. African American children are more than seven times as likely as white children in Virginia to live in “concentrated poverty” — neighborhoods where...
In the run-up to today's election, political candidates are trying all sorts of novel ways to reach young voters -- including, yes, ads on Snapchat. A candidate for sheriff in a rural Virginia county is trying to reach younger voters by advertising on a social media platform popular with their age group — Snapchat. William Stowell is an...
The Virginia Beer Wholesalers Association, which distributes many of Richmond's favorite craft brews, is also the seventh-largest political donor in the state this year; a slight majority of its donations go to Republicans. On a chilly fall night in the Scott’s Addition neighborhood of Richmond, just ahead of the statewide Virginia election,...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau insists that individual states, not the federal government, should regulate payday loans. But here in Virginia, payday loans are very weakly regulated, with no upper limit on interest rates. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not budged on its June decision cutting additional protections. “There...
