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Opinion Paves Way to Rename ‘Racist’ Jefferson Davis Highway

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Attempting to disassociate from the former Confederate president’s legacy of racism and slavery, Arlington County is taking steps to rename their portion of Jefferson Davis Highway. And Attorney General Herring says they have the legal right to do so.

The portion of Jefferson Davis Highway that runs through Arlington County could be renamed as early as this summer thanks to the discovery of a loophole in state law and a legal opinion from the Virginia attorney general.

Attorney General Mark Herring said the name change does not need approval from the General Assembly. Instead, the Commonwealth Transportation Board has authority to rename the section of Jefferson Davis Highway if Arlington County makes such a request, the opinion said.

Herring’s opinion was requested by Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria. Levine opposes having a road named after Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America.

“In Arlington County, one of the most diverse and progressive localities in the nation, we are saddled with a primary highway that honors a racist traitor and slave owner who led the fight to take up arms against our nation in order to preserve the brutal system of slavery,” Levine said in a newsletter to constituents.

“In that brutal Civil War, more Americans died than in all of our other wars combined. We still live with the terrible legacy of that ruthless and once-legal system of terror that represents America’s greatest shame.”

Before Herring issued his opinion, the general understanding was that local governments lacked authority to change names that the General Assembly had placed on certain roads.

Several years ago, the attorney general’s office issued an advisory opinion saying city governments had the power to rename state highways but county governments didn’t. Last year, legislators killed a bill to authorize local governments to rename highways in their jurisdictions.

On Jan. 1, the section of Jefferson Davis Highway through the city of Alexandria was renamed Richmond Highway to match the name the road has always carried in Fairfax County.

To change the highway’s name in Arlington County, Levine took things into his own hands. He found a loophole in a footnote to transportation legislation that the General Assembly passed in 2012.

That legislation deleted a line in state law prohibiting the Commonwealth Transportation Board from changing the names of “highways, bridges or interchanges as have been or hereafter be named by the General Assembly.”

According to the opinion Herring released Thursday, lawmakers’ actions in 2012 showed “clear legislative intent to empower the CTB to rename transportation facilities that were originally named by the General Assembly.”

“Accordingly, it is my opinion that the Commonwealth Transportation Board may change the name of those portions of Jefferson Davis Highway located in Arlington County, provided that its Board of Supervisors adopts a resolution requesting the renaming,” the opinion said.

The designation of Jefferson Davis Highway began almost a century ago. In 1922, the United Daughters of the Confederacy asked that a Southern transcontinental highway be named to honor Davis, who was a senator from the state of Mississippi before becoming the first and only president of the Confederacy.

The Virginia General Assembly’s response was to name Highway 1 as the Jefferson Davis Highway, stretching from Washington, D.C., to the North Carolina line. Today, Jefferson Davis Highway also can go by other names, such as U.S. Route 1 and Route 18.

Some people want to keep the name as Jefferson Davis Highway. More than 600 people signed an online petition saying renaming the road would be “a slap in the face to U.S. soldiers as a whole and should not be permitted to happen.” However, more than 4,300 signed a petition supporting the name change.

Levine said Arlington County supervisors could ask for the name change this month — and then the request would go to the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

“If all goes well, Arlington street signs could be changed as early as this summer,” he said.

Levine said times have changed since the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to honor Davis and preserve his legacy.

“It’s 2019. It is not 1865, nor 1922, nor even 1953,” Levine said. “We live in a post-Charlottesville time. And the vast majority of Northern Virginia no longer wants to honor the Confederacy or the racist legacy of Jefferson Davis.”

By Alexandra Zernik, Capital News Service.

Charlottesville Leads the Way on Reforming Cash Bail System

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When someone is charged with a crime, prosecutors and judges want to make sure the defendant shows up for court. So they usually require the person to put up cash bail — money the defendants forfeit if they skip town.

But now, many officials — from local prosecutors to the state attorney general — are rethinking that practice. They say that cash bail penalizes low-income defendants and that GPS monitoring and other technology are just as effective as a monetary incentive to return to court.

“Virginia’s current system of cash bail too often determines who has money, not who is dangerous, and we can’t have a justice system that determines fairness and freedom based on wealth and means,” Attorney General Mark Herring said in calling on state lawmakers to address the issue.

Legislation to reform the bail system failed in this year’s General Assembly. But commonwealth’s attorneys in a handful of localities are plowing ahead on their own, recommending that nonviolent defendants be released on an unsecured bond or personal recognizance — basically, by giving their word that they will show up for court.

Charlottesville is a textbook example of this new approach. Authorities there say it is working.

In most circumstances, Charlottesville officials haven’t used cash bonds since 2000. Prosecutors instead prefer to release defendants back into the community without having them pay money.

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania. Photo via CNS

Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania said cash bonds don’t enhance public safety and don’t treat low-income offenders fairly.

“We haven’t seen a negative impact related to community safety by using a system where we don’t rely on cash or secure bonds,” Platania said. “If they’re not going to go out and hurt anyone or be a danger to the community, it doesn’t make sense for them to pay money to be released.”

Charlottesville officials use risk assessment tools to determine whether pretrial defendants will be a threat to the community or likely to miss their trial date. If a defendant doesn’t fall into either of those categories, prosecutors typically recommend the judge release the person on unsecured bond or personal recognizance.

Defendants released on unsecured bond have to pay the bond only if they fail to appear for trial. Personal recognizance means defendants are released on the basis of a promise that they will return to court.

In cases where defendants are accused of violent or serious crimes, prosecutors ask that they remain behind bars until they’re slated to appear in court.

“If we feel someone is a threat to themselves or the community, we ask that the person be held until their trial,” Platania said.

In most Virginia localities, judges and prosecutors routinely recommend cash bonds. Defendants who can’t pay go to jail.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit advocacy groups, 47 percent of people in Virginia jails in 2015 were awaiting trial and had not been convicted of a crime. That was true of 65 percent of people held in jails nationwide in 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Charlottesville began reforming cash bond practices under Dave Chapman, who served as commonwealth’s attorney from 1993 until 2017.

According to Chapman, Charlottesville’s criminal justice system transitioned from cash bail when the Virginia Pretrial Services Act was enacted in 1995.

“It’s just one of many things we’ve done in Charlottesville to try and eliminate the way in which poverty affects the case of a person who is indigent,” Chapman said. “If a locality has access to pretrial supervision services through a community corrections agency and doesn’t make use of it fully, they’re missing the boat.”

As of January 2018, there were 33 pretrial agencies serving 75 percent of Virginia’s localities, according to the Virginia State Crime Commission. Thirty-four localities in the state didn’t have access to a pretrial agency.

Chapman said that he supported recent efforts to reform cash bonds.

“The reality is, we’ve been doing this for years in Charlottesville,” Chapman said. “I would urge localities that are just getting into the field to come to Charlottesville and take a look at what OAR does and how they do it because it’s a model that can be replicated.”

OAR-Jefferson Area Community Corrections is a nonprofit based in Charlottesville that provides cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, including pretrial supervision and risk assessment screenings.

Executive Director Ross Carew said the organization conducts interviews, investigations and criminal background and reference checks after a defendant is arrested. The group uses a tool called the Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument to make an initial bail release decision and to determine the supervision level for defendants placed on pretrial supervision.

“We look at all the different factors that could make somebody a risk to not show up to court, or to get in trouble during that period of pretrial,” Carew said. “All of that information is used to inform the court so they can make a risk-based release decision.”

Carew said holding a defendant in jail is more expensive than placing the person on pretrial supervision where the average length of supervision is 116 days. It costs about $94 per day to hold someone in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail and about $3 a day to keep someone on pretrial services, officials say.

The discussion around cash bond reform has gained momentum in Virginia in the past year.

Last April, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Herring announced that his office would no longer seek cash bonds for defendants awaiting trial.

In November, Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos said she would no longer seek cash bail for people accused of most low-level misdemeanors. Scott Miles, who was elected commonwealth’s attorney in Chesterfield County that month, said he would not seek cash bail for pretrial defendants.

After Mark Herring, the state attorney general, called on lawmakers to reform the cash bond system, Democrats introduced two bills in the General Assembly seeking to start that process.

SB 1687, filed by Sen. Jennifer McClellan of Richmond, and HB 2121, sponsored by Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy of Prince William County, would have required Virginia’s Department of Criminal Justice Services to collect data about the use of bail in all Virginia localities. Both bills were killed in committee.

Elizabeth Murtagh, Charlottesville’s public defender, said pretrial services are a far better option for her clients than being held in jail on bond. Murtagh’s clients typically fall below the state poverty line.

“Getting locked up is one of the most disruptive things to a family that I can think of. If you’re helping to provide for your family, that’s a problem if you get locked up,” Murtagh said. “It has a huge ripple effect.”

By Daniel Berti, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Public Domain/CC 1.0

Most Virginians Don’t Want Officials to Resign, Poll Finds

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Some want Northam, Fairfax, and Herring to resign. Some want them to stay in office. And almost half of Virginians polled just weren’t sure.

Virginians have low approval ratings of Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, but most people say no one should resign or be impeached, according to a recent poll by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. It found that of the state’s three top officials, Attorney General Mark Herring is the best-positioned to remain in office.

Over the past month, the three leaders, all Democrats, have been under scrutiny after several scandals, and some politicians and groups have called for their resignations.

  • Two women have accused Fairfax of sexual assault — allegations he has denied.
  • Northam has been in hot water after the discovery of a photograph in his medical school yearbook showing a man in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb. Northam initially apologized for the photograph and then denied he was in the picture. He later admitted to putting “a little bit of” shoe polish on his face to imitate Michael Jackson in a 1984 dance competition.
  • After calling for Northam’s resignation, Attorney General Mark Herring apologized for wearing blackface when he was 19 years old to imitate a rapper.

With that backdrop, U.Va.’s Center for Politics asked a representative sample of Virginia adults about their opinions of Northam, Fairfax and Herring.

The poll found that of the three leaders, more people believe Fairfax should quit. Thirty-five percent believe Fairfax should resign, and 28 percent favored impeachment.

Only 17 percent of Virginians approve of the governor’s job performance. However, only 31 percent of respondents say he should resign, and 21 percent believe he should be impeached.

According to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, there was a strong racial divide over whether Fairfax should resign. Thirty-nine percent of white respondents said they favored his resignation, compared with only 8 percent of black respondents.

Of the three officials, Herring had the fewest number of people suggesting he resign (19 percent) or be impeached (14 percent).

The poll involved interviewing 636 adults from Feb. 15-19. It had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

By Emily Holter, Capital News Service. Images via CNS

Virginia Joins 15 Other States to Sue Trump Over Wall Funding

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At issue is the president’s declaration of a “state of emergency” in order to acquire funding for his Mexican border wall without gaining Congress’s approval.

Virginia has joined a coalition of 15 other states to challenge President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency and to block the diversion of congressional funding to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

“Concocting a fake emergency to build a needless wall goes against the Constitution and the values America was built on,” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said in a statement.

“President Trump’s ill-advised plan could divert critical funds from actual national security priorities, including military construction projects at bases and facilities throughout Virginia. We must stand up to this administration when it violates the law and attacks our values.”

According Herring’s statement, the complaint was filed to block Trump’s “fabricated” national emergency declaration and the “unconstitutional” diversion of appropriated federal funding to pay for the construction of the border wall.

On Friday, Trump said he would declare a national emergency in order to bypass Congress to fund the construction of a wall along the southern border.

The White House released a statement stating that the president has “clear authority” to declare a national emergency and that Trump is taking “necessary steps” to “ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at our Southern Border.”

“We fight wars that are 6,000 miles away, wars that we should have never been in in many cases, but we don’t control our own border,” Trump said in his speech Friday at the White House. “So we are going to confront the national-security crisis on our southern border. And we are going to do it one way or the other.”

The administration estimated that the national emergency declaration will make over $8 billion in taxpayer funds available to build the border wall.

Other states participating in the lawsuit includes Hawaii, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and California.

The states contend that Trump’s emergency declaration is only a means to justify using federal funding to pay for his border wall.

“The states allege that the Trump Administration’s action exceeds the power of the executive office, violates the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes, and would illegally and unconstitutionally divert federal funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes,” Herring’s statement said.

“The suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to block the emergency declaration, the construction of the wall, and any illegal diversion of congressionally-appropriated funds.”

According to the attorney general’s statement, Virginia could potentially lose over $130 million in military construction funding — money that is currently allocated for projects at Dam Neck, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Belvoir, Humphreys Engineer Center, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, and the Pentagon.

Trump said that he expected his contentious national emergency declaration to prompt lawsuits. He remains confident, however, that his decision will be upheld by the Supreme Court, similar to the way his 2017 travel ban was upheld by the court in a 5-4 decision.

“We will have a national emergency and we will then be sued,” Trump said. “Hopefully we will get a fair shake and win in the Supreme Court just like the ban.”

By Jayla Marie McNeill, Capital News Service. Photo via CNS

Richmond Activists Declare Death of Democratic Party, Hold Funeral Procession

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“We have had it with the old Democratic Party. We’re here for a new vision,” declared activist Rebecca Keel during last week’s public funeral vigil, held in front of the Capitol building.

Late last week, at the foot of Virginia’s Capitol building just before dusk, approximately 50 people gathered around a coffin.

Members of the group held their phones or notebooks, brimming with prepared speeches. Local activist Rebecca Keel shook a tambourine to keep time as the group marched and sang. Organizers and community members passed around a microphone. They spoke in the direction of the crowd, but their voices projected further, towards the rolling greens and fat, white columns of the Capitol.

They were there to mourn what they view as the death of the Democratic Party.

“We have had it with the old Democratic Party. We have had it with you,” said Keel to the coffin on the ground. “We are here for a new vision. We are here to see that phoenix rise from the ashes, and for the people to truly be the democracy.”

Largely a response to the recent news of Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring’s blackface scandals, an issue that has been marinating in the news cycle for the past week and garnering national attention, the vigil was about more than these single reprehensible acts by two of Virginia’s leading politicians.

“We know that racism is alive and well, not only in the city, in the state, but across the nation. And we see it across the world,” said Arthur Burton, founder of Kinfolk, a community outreach organization focused on Richmond’s public housing sector.

A plethora of speakers spoke about the Democratic Party’s hand in past atrocities, from being the cornerstone of slavery in the south to the displacement and murder of indigenous peoples, acts often disregarded by left-leaning people because of the policy changeover and party realignment that took place in the mid-20th century.

But the purpose of the vigil, according to the message of the speakers, was to recognize that these values have not been left behind. Keel spoke, for example, about the Northam Administration’s support of the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines.

“Environmental degradation is a tool of the Right,” Keel said. “[It] is a tool to push out poor working class people, people of color, black folks, indigenous folks, and we will have that no more from our Democratic leadership.”

Although the event was mourning a failure by politicians whom some in attendance had passionately supported and campaigned for, the group was also looking to the future, questioning what a new progressive political party might look like and how to get there.

“We actually have to build together,” Brooke Taylor said, Richmond Youth Coordinator at Side by Side, a nonprofit supporting LGBTQ youth.

“Come to these strategy meetings, come to these kickbacks where people are talking real politics. Get involved with each other. And most importantly, have hope for the future.”

According to Keel, the vigil was organized in tandem with the full-throttle news cycle, coming together in only 36 hours. The event was also honoring Lillie Estes, a local activist and community strategist who died earlier this month. Keel said Estes had been an invaluable mentor to people in Virginia and throughout the East Coast.

“We’ve been all coming together and so moved,” Keel said. “Moved to do and continue this work.”

As the evening grew darker, electric candles were passed around. The sky became a deep blue, and the tops of the towering Bank Street buildings became less pronounced. The brightest thing in view became the Capitol, its face lit stark white against the night.

After a heartfelt eulogy from Burton, audience and organizers alike formed a silent procession and marched with the coffin on their shoulders. Snaking up a manicured lawn, backdropped by TV Reporters who’d waited just for this moment, the vigil ended in a quiet spot next to the now-looming Capitol building.

One by one, members from the procession came forward to place their candles by the casket. As instructed by Keel, they each whispered or thought an intention of what they wanted from a new Democratic Party.

“We’re just tired of being tired, so we are really calling on our Democratic leaders to step up and take up a people’s platform,” Keel said, just before referencing the quickly-approaching 2019 General Assembly elections.

“We’re going to vote in who we need to vote in.”

Photos by Benjamin West

“Pumpkins Not Pipelines”: Activists Stage Halloween Parade Outside the Governor’s Office

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Richmond residents from Broad Street to North 9th were witness to a parade of costumed protesters Wednesday, warning of “a place where the air is so polluted it causes headaches, nosebleeds and illness. A place where your water is the color of toxic mud.”

“On this Halloween day, you may think we are giving the details of a horror story,” said Stacy Lovelace of the Virginia Pipeline Resisters, speaking through a megaphone. “But sadly this is, and will be, the reality for those along the path of the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines.”

The activists marshaled outside the Governor’s Office at the Virginia State Capitol, as they have every week since early February, in protest of the Northam administration’s continued approval of the Mountain Valley (MVP) and Atlantic Coast Pipelines (ACP).

Following a brief demonstration and recognition of the lives lost from hate crimes at a Kroger in Kentucky and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the group marched several blocks west to the Office of the Attorney General, chanting all the way. Their protest was joined by unexpected “guests”: life-sized props of Governor Ralph Northam and Secretary of Natural Resources Matthew Strickler, hands stuffed with cash, with cardboard rods sticking out from their noses.

“They dressed as Pinocchio, which is fitting, because they’ve been telling lots of fibs lately,” Lovelace remarked. For her own costume, she wore posters with quotes from multiple studies about the pipelines’ potential to negatively impact the region.

Dominion Energy was recently permitted to begin its 300-mile construction of the ACP, which will stretch across the Commonwealth and includes a compression station. The placement of that station in Buckingham County’s historic and majority-black Union Hill community has made it a particular focus of criticism for those opposed to the projects. 

Activists in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina have taken a variety of measures to stem the pipeline’s progress across their states, from tree sit-ins to chaining themselves to equipment and more. Authorities have responded with arrests and the monitoring of activist groups by anti-terrorism agencies. 

These actions to stop construction have continued even as members of Northam’s own administration show their opposition to the pipelines. The Governor’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice called for a halt to permit approval days before the APC was given the green light, while Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax has continued to lend an open ear to the concerns of the community, along with other public officials who have challenged the developments surrounding this issue. 

Speaking outside the the entrance to the Office of the Attorney General, Lovelace made an appeal to Attorney General Mark Herring, including a letter addressed to him personally, asking him to invoke the power granted to him by Section 401 of the Clean Water Act against the pipelines.

“While we are grateful to your resistance to Trump’s deregulation and other abhorrent policies,” Lovelace said, “we must ask: why are you ignoring these pipeline projects, supported by Trump, here in Virginia? We ask that you immediately take action against these projects, which are true terrors and real life monsters, and stand with the impacted Virginians.”

Along with their weekly protest, the Pipeline Resisters plan to stand with the Union Hill community during the public hearing on the ACP compressor station on November 8 and 9, alongside groups that include Water is Life and Friends of Buckingham. 

“We will be in solidarity with them and helping them with what happens that day,” said Jessica Sims, who leads the Pipeline Resisters with Lovelace.

Photos by George Copeland