• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

Fed Up with Public Housing Conditions, Residents & Advocates Confront City Council

David Streever | February 27, 2018

Topics: arthur burton, City Council, heating crisis, leaders of the new south, lillie estes, Montigue Magruder, omari al-qaddafi, Public Housing, RRHA, sha'randa taylor

Sha’Randa Taylor delivered an impassioned plea before City Council Monday night. Displaying a clear container containing what she said was her fetus, recently miscarried due to the stress of her living situation in Richmond public housing, she called on Council for justice.

We first met Taylor while reporting on the heating crisis this winter at her unit in Creighton Court. The young mother and nurse was living in an unheated apartment with clear evidence of a mice infestation despite the sealed Tupperware containers she stores food in. “I was housed like an animal,” Taylor said, recounting her experience before Council,

Among her complaints were financial ones. She had with her a stack of receipts she said “total $10,000 in possessions I can’t get to anymore,” as they remained in a unit she no longer has access to. She also maintained that her rent was overcharged at $92 a month, $42 more than her income allowed the Authority to charge, and said she’s overpaid by more than $800 in total.

Police ask Taylor to leave

Taylor said she lost her job and her unborn baby over stress, and as her 3-minute comment period ran out, she raised her voice, asking, “I am here, I am talking, do you hear me?” In a tense moment, police moved in around her before City Council President Chris Hilbert asked them to stand down.

Like other residents without heat, Taylor said she was eventually offered a hotel room during the heating crisis, but it wasn’t a good solution for her and her three children she said, noting the lack of a stove. “I get food stamps. How do those help me if I don’t have a stove? I don’t eat fast food,” she said.

As Taylor finished her story and stepped away, a woman from the audience yelled, “Help her. Who’s going to help her?”

Council Vice President Cynthia Newbille tasked Orlando Artze, the interim CEO of Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, to provide that help.

Taylor was joined at the meeting by a broad coalition of groups and individuals advocating for people living in public housing. The Coalition For Better Housing held a press conference in front of the Marshall Street entrance to City Hall, with many long-time leaders in social justice and civil rights.

The press conference before City Council

Among them were Lillie Estes and Arthur Burton, both long-time advocates for civil rights and justice in Richmond, Green party House of Delegates candidate Montigue Magruder, and Leaders of the New South founder, Omari al-Qadaffi, who brought the dire situation in city housing courts to public attention this past winter.

The group cited the resignation of T.K. Somanath as a success and delivered a set of demands intended to make RRHA accountable and transparent going forward. Before the meeting, on Marshall Street, Magruder was cynical speaking on our city government “They just passed a meals tax they say is for the kids, but those same kids go back to these dilapidated homes” he said.

Burton chimed in, sharing similar frustrations to Magruder’s. “These are government homes and government schools. It’s a double dose of government oppression,” he said.

Estes said it was a case of “intentional blight,” a theme which Burton expanded on, pointing back 13 years when he said, “The truth is, the city started this with Dove Court. It was intentional blight to justify destroying public housing.”

“If you create this narrative, that communities are isolated and blighted and ridden by drugs and crime, and you don’t provide services because you privatized the streets, then you make that narrative come true,” Burton continued, claiming that the lack of maintenance was intentional.

He said that even when the city tries to help, they have to package the help to appeal to a broad audience, giving the coliseum project as an example. “We advocated for a new transfer station, to replace one that everyone acknowledges is alienating and dehumanizing. And what does the city do? They tie it to a $160 million new coliseum,” he said. “We see this over and over again.”

The problem, the advocates say, is that it all comes down to accountability. Burton said the authority system, in particular, exists to give political cover for unpopular decisions, allowing mayors to point to councils, councils to mayors, and both to point back at authorities, over which they have limited direct control.

“It’s the same thing from Jim Crow, you have these authorities set up to eliminate accountability,” Burton said, pointing back to the highways that were built over the homes of Black Richmonders in the 1950s.

After the conference, the group headed inside, where Estes delivered their demands to Council with an extension on her three-minute speaking time. After sharing statistics on poverty in Richmond, she asked for audits or reviews of existing audits of the RRHA, inclusion of community leaders on the RRHA Board, an evaluation of the contentious tenant council system and specific positions at the Authority, and support for “Know Your Rights” trainings that educate residents about their rights in public housing.

In a split from the coalition, she asked that every sitting board member of the RRHA be removed and replaced. Reached after the meeting, she said that she loves some of the people on the board, and she’d be happy to see them rejoin, but she “feels we need a clean slate, a new beginning.”

Only Taylor and Estes were signed up for citizen comment, but al-Qaddafi used the regular agenda section of the meeting later to make his own comments. He said he’d like to support an agenda item honoring a former public servant for his good work, but that those were different, better, times for Richmond government, saying, “we are not living in those times.”

“There is a humanitarian and a civil rights issue in the housing authority right now. This is not just about heat any more than the problem at schools are just about facilities. This is about systemic problems,” he said, before demanding better results from City Council. “I can’t speak for RVA. They may be drowning their meals tax sorrows right now somewhere west of the Boulevard, but residents of Richmond will no longer accept cries of, ‘We didn’t know.’”

Photos by David Streever. We updated this story to add a link to a PDF of the demands. We also made a minor correction to one quote.

Green Party Candidate For 69th District Earns Endorsement from Democratic Socialists of America

Ryan Persaud | October 3, 2017

Topics: 69th District, Democratic Socialists of America, Green Party, Montigue Magruder

On September 20, the Richmond chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) released a statement endorsing Montigue Magruder’s campaign. Magruder is a Green Party candidate for Delegate in the 69th District of Virginia, which encompasses portions of Chesterfield County and Richmond City. He hopes to replace Betsy Carr, a Democrat who has been the incumbent since 2010.

“He is an explicitly socialist candidate, and he doesn’t try to hide that,” Alex Sparrow, member of the Richmond DSA chapter and communications strategist on the Magruder campaign, said. “There are a lot of issues on the platform that are things that socialists should support, [such as] the minimum wage raise, universal healthcare, environmental issues like opposition to the pipelines, [and] expanding democracy, especially in Virginia where you have voter suppression and felon disenfranchisement.”

Magruder decided to run as a Green Party candidate, despite his campaign having some similarities to that of Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, who ran as a Democrat in the last presidential primary,

“It costs fifteen hundred dollars to run as a Democrat to get on the ballot,” Magruder said. “Knowing how the Democratic Party here in Richmond likes to protect the establishment incumbents, I know I wouldn’t have a fair chance at winning, because the deck would already be stacked against me from the jump.”

Magruder said that the popularity of Sanders’ campaign and rise of progressive groups such as the DSA increases his chances of winning the election.

“There are a lot of people in the district that were Berniecrats; they do not support Hillary Clinton,” Magruder said. “I have a better chance of winning that has been enhanced by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, that openly endorse me, support my campaign, and recognize that their salvation is bound with mine.”

Magruder got into politics in 2010, when the GRTC Transit System proposed a set of fare increases. Magruder attended a city council meeting and spoke out against the changes, and since then, he has been involved in grassroots organizations such as the Richmond Transit Riders Union, Virginia Organizing, and the Residents of Public Housing in Richmond Against Mass Evictions. Magruder ran for city council last year, but many of the people he spoke to felt that the issues he wanted to address needed to be done so through the General Assembly, which is one reason why he decided to run for state office.

Magruder’s platform demonstrates his alignment with the DSA’s goals on quite a few points, including gerrymandering, the abandonment of the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines, and criminal justice reform.

“There are a lot of people that I’ve talked to that would love to vote for me, but because they’re convicted felons, they are not able to vote,” Magruder said. “One of the priorities I have is to initiate a constitutional amendment to have the lifetime felon disenfranchisement rule stricken out of the constitution.”

Magruder’s platform also includes the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $26.80 an hour. While many have criticized the idea of raising minimum wage up to even $15 an hour, Magruder said that the increase would simply reflect what the minimum wage should be right now.

“If the minimum wage had kept up with the cost of living and working productivity since 1968, the living wage would be $26.80 an hour right now,” Magruder said. “My proposal is literally putting the minimum wage in line with where it’s supposed to be today. A lot of the policy positions I have are basically setting things right.”

Magruder said that once people research the issues featured on his platform, such as minimum wage, they become more accepting of them.

“That’s why I made my platform so comprehensive as it is, so it engages people’s desire to go out there and critically examine the ideas,” Magruder said. “That tends to change minds.”

Edwuan Whitehead, Magruder’s campaign manager, identifies as a Democrat but supports Magruder’s progressive policies. He also expresses disappointment with Carr’s work as the current incumbent.

“She’s always either run unopposed, or she’s run against a person that kind of has the same status as herself,” Whitehead said. “With Montigue, he understands the struggles that’s gone on within the district himself. He’s lived those struggles and it’s easier for people to relate to him.”

Despite the growing popularity of groups like the DSA, and the increased approval of their policies, Magruder’s campaign has seen a major lack of press coverage. Magruder cites the companies that mainstream press outlets are beholden to as one of reasons for the lack of news coverage.

“When you look at the entities that have their hands in the pockets of some of these media outlets – like the Richmond-Times Dispatch, Channel 6, Channel 8, and Channel 12 – when you see the kinds of corporations that advertise on those outlets, you quickly see how there would be a media blackout of this race,” Magruder said. “This is actually the only race in the Richmond-Metro that features both a Green Party and a Libertarian candidate on the ballot, and the last thing that the establishment wants is people being informed of their choices.”

Whitehead believes that the campaign can be successful without mainstream press coverage.

“It doesn’t have to be a media campaign to win the campaign,” Whitehead said. “We don’t have the money like that, to be able to spend on press coverage and time and things of that nature. I feel like us reaching out to the people that we have definitely has paid bigger dividends for that.”

With or without press coverage, Magruder hopes to win the campaign in order to properly represent the 69th district, as well as to make the Democratic party work harder to earn voters’ trust, Magruder said.

“If my victory, or even Jake Crocker’s victory, if either one of us were to win our races, we would break the Democrat stronghold, and that would actually force the Democrats to go out there throughout the 69th district and earn people’s votes once again,” Magruder said.

As for post-election hopes, in the event that Magruder gets elected and is required to work with a majority Republican General Assembly, Whitehead said that many of the issues Magruder is focusing on should not come down to bipartisanship.

“Things like education, healthcare, the rights of our young men and women and of the LGBTQIA community, and things like that should not be a party loyalty type of decision,” Whitehead said. “It should just be the basis of human morality at that point.”

The election is set to take place on November 7th, with deadlines for absentee ballots set for the last day of October.

 

Virginia Politics Sponsored by F.W. Sullivans

 

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]