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A Vehicle For Difficult Conversations

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In response to the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing protests, artist Arthur Brill launched the Ashland Peace Project — which is not just a work of art, but a series of conversations intended to meet people where they’re at.

Last summer, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis spurred protests over police brutality and racial inequality in every corner of the country. Even the little town of Ashland, VA, with just less than 8,000 residents, was affected. 

As people nationwide grappled with the question, “What can I do?,” Ashland artist Arthur Brill found his answer in what he knows best: art. 

Almost a year later, on March 27, Arthur Brill officially unveiled the Ashland Peace Project sculpture at South Taylor Street Park in Ashland – a 40-inch tall wooden peace sign painted in two skin-tone and covered with messages from residents. Mounted atop its base, the sculpture stands about seven feet from the ground to its highest point. It is one part of Brill’s project; he has also committed to host 35 one-hour long workshops with guest panelists to discuss challenging issues about peace and unity in America through June 2021. 

“I think that’s what this peace project can do; it creates the vehicle for people to have what can be difficult conversations,” said Scott Garka, president of CultureWorks, an organization that promotes arts and culture in the Richmond and Tri-Cities region. “But I think great things can come out of it in terms of enriching the community in a new way, and helping us find a path forward.”

As Black Lives Matter demonstrations reached the small town in May 2020, Brill got curious. He decided to ask some questions online: Why are the people of Ashland taking part in the protests? Is it to support the national movement or to protest against the local police department? The following week, Brill was invited to another protest in front of town hall in support of George Floyd. This time, the artist wanted to take the conversations he had online into the real world. He decided to set up a table where he could invite people to join discussions about issues with the Ashland police.

“So as a focal point for that, I wanted to have something – a piece of art,” he said. That’s when the peace sign came into action.

The hand sign itself seems to have been made specifically for this project – but it wasn’t. The 40 inches tall sculpture had been sitting in Brill’s studio, Behind the Curtain, since 2014, after it had been gifted from a friend. Yet, almost overnight, Brill turned it into a symbol of hope and unity for the town and beyond. 

Only 24 hours before the protest, Brill decided to paint the hand into two different skin colors. The artist stayed up all night painting. The next morning, he started writing messages on it. A couple of hours later, the sign was at Ashland town hall and residents started adding their own messages to the piece; without knowing it, the Ashland Peace Project was born. 

Since then, Brill has brought the hand to several rallies and protests, including some to change the names of Hanover County’s Lee-Davis High School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School – which were both successfully changed in October 2020. 

The peace sign is covered in messages: “May all the beings in the world be happy and free.” “Make it real, no more empty promises!” “Pray for the future of our children!” On the back of the hand, a long list of names of Black people killed by the police is painted, under the heading, “Say their names.” 

“When I start reading the messages that are actually on the sculpture or when I start writing names from that list on there … something kind of transcendental happens, and I really feel the weight of the entire thing,” Brill said. “In the end, like I said, all I can do is what I can do – and this is what I can do. There’s a lot of cards on the table, and if it helps a little bit rather than hurts… then, that’s a good thing.”

Brill knew that for his project to have a meaningful impact on the community, he needed the support of the town. 

In July 2020, Ashland’s town council voted to fund a new arts and culture incentive program to support local art businesses. Brill and two other winning artists were awarded $4,000 for the Ashland Peace Project. The program was built to be a three-way win, explained Joshua Farrar, Ashland town manager. Its goal is to support local artists, as well as meeting the town’s strategic goals, and being beneficial to the community. 

This is how the Ashland Peace Project went from a symbolic statue to a series of 35 one-hour-long workshops hosted by Brill and panelists.

“It was really easy for me to justify that that would be a win for the community, regardless of how the conversations went,” Farrar said. “Having that conversation is a value in and of itself. So that’s where I saw the value, was making sure that Ashland wasn’t just being the sleepy little bucolic town – that we were having those hard conversations.”

The sculpture originally started with just the hand. But the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 prompted Brill to expand the statue to allow more space to write on. After the insurrection, Brill added a column as a base for the sign to emulate one of the columns in front of the Capitol. 

The sculpture has an original crack that seems to split the piece in two. Again, Brill decided to use the original features of the sculpture to highlight his message and painted the crack in a bright red. After adding the base to the statue, the artist decided to continue that crack all the way down through the column to represent the foundational issues of this country. The crack becomes smaller as it goes up and finally disappears as the fingers pointing upward in a peace sign begin. 

“His sculpture started with the hand. But people wanted to keep adding to it, they wanted more places to write, so he had to find a way to make it bigger. And that’s powerful to me,” Garka said. “The theme of unity is tremendous. It takes a lot of work to make unity happen. But if … more and more people in the town are getting behind that idea – as evidently they are because they want to put their words on there – then that gives me some hope that we can, one day, find that.” 

For the next couple of months, Brill will keep hosting workshops and will keep bringing the sculpture to local events to continue to fill the sign with messages. This weekend, you can find the statue in Carytown for Chalk Up The Town. The event runs from Friday, May 14 to Sunday, May 16; the Ashland Peace Project statue will visit on Saturday the 15th.

In the future, Brill said, he hopes to take his sculpture across the state, and then later to the many other Ashlands in America. 

While there are already many signs on the statue, one particularly grabbed Brill’s attention. At one of the rallies to change the names of the schools, a young girl came up to the artist and asked him to write something on there. 

“What would you want me to write?” he said he asked her. “And she said, ‘Don’t be mean to Black people.’”

All photos via Ashland Peace Project

The Great Gatsby

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Activist, rapper, mustache-haver — Goad Gatsby is a lot of things. At the end of the day, he just wants to make the world a better, more chill place — and maybe inspire others while he’s at it.

When Kristopher Goad’s friends wanted to get him signed up for Facebook in the mid-2000s, none of them knew his full name. He was known only by his last name within the group, so they signed him up using the name Goad Gatsby.

“And then everybody just decided that my name was Goad Gatsby at that point,” said Goad.

Since then, he has become well-known within Richmond not only as a hip-hop performer with a highly recognizable “disco mustache,” but also as a longtime adversary of the Virginia Flaggers and their public displays of the Confederate battle flag on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. More recently, he’s also gotten some attention as a documenter of the protests in Richmond this summer and the police’s response.

In 2015, Goad was featured in a documentary series by The Atlantic called Battle Flag, about people’s opinions of the modern use of the Confederate flag.

At that point, Goad had been blasting hip hop music next to the Flaggers while they stood in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on weekends for about a year, and was the subject of a considerable amount of vitriol from the group.

“They thought I was a carpetbagger until they found out that I really was just a scalawag,” said Goad.

The Flaggers began to lose momentum in 2015, when they stopped announcing their appearance schedule publicly after two members were arrested on kidnapping charges. Carlos Lesters and Megan Everett of Florida kidnapped Everett’s two-year-old daughter in 2014 in order to prevent the child’s father from vaccinating her or enrolling her in public school.

These days, the Flaggers make it out to Arthur Ashe every once in a while, much less often than their onetime near-weekly basis. But there’s a whole new right-wing movement in Richmond now. Based on his knowledge of who the Flaggers were and who is affilliated with the Trump Train vehicular caravan that rolled through the city in October, Goad doesn’t believe there’s much overlap between the two groups.

Beginning when protests began in the streets of Richmond in late May over the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing issue of police violence, Goad was on the front lines. He did his best to document the response from the police and the city government, as he saw it, on social media. This brought him a whole new wave of attention, for better and for worse.

Goad was arrested several times during the summer, including once in September when he was charged with obstructing the free passage of others. At the time of the arrest, the police alleged the incident he was being charged for happened two weeks earlier during a demonstration in front of the Richmond jail, in which 11 people were arrested. Goad says he wasn’t even there at the jail on that day.

When he was arrested, he was taken to the Third Precinct Police Station, where they took his phone while he was attempting to get in contact with his lawyer. Goad never saw a warrant for his arrest; instead, a city attorney informed his lawyer that the warrant was sealed. He never got his phone back.

Since then, he has kept a lower profile, and the protests have declined. However, he is still keeping tabs on right-wing activity in the city. When he considers the ongoing unrest that occurred across Richmond throughout the summer, it’s his impression that the city created a self-perpetuating cycle of violence by retaliating against protesters instead of addressing the problems that inspired the protests. This, in turn, created more problems and further fueled the unrest.

Photo via Goad Gatsby/Twitter

One issue he sees as important to the way everything played out is the fact that police were brought in from precincts across the city, as well as other localities, as reinforcements during protests. Many of those that operated in this capacity had prior reputations for aggressive behavior.

“People were telling me about some of these officers’ past interactions, and it seemed like they were getting some of the worst officers to deal with protesters,” Goad said. “Instead of getting police that are experts in de-escalation, they were getting experts in doing no-knock raids in the projects.”

Goad believes the police have a particular inclination to go after journalists and people who film protests. That’s because the more specific information gets out, the harder it is for police and city officials to justify their actions.

“If somebody is saying ‘The police are bad because they’re doing something I don’t like,’ that’s something they can just brush off. But if somebody’s being like ‘The police fired less-lethal rounds at people before there was any type of confrontation, here is some footage to go along with that,’ then the police go ‘Oh no, this isn’t good. They’re building a case against us in the court of public opinion,’” said Goad. “I wish I could build a case against Richmond police in City Hall, or the court of law, but unfortunately I don’t have that ability.”

For now, he’s sticking with the internet, where he continues to fight misinformation and lack of knowledge. He believes that making people aware of what’s really going on is the best way to convince them to take action.

“A lot of people are either willing to help but don’t know what to do, or they’ve never seen the type of information that would make them act,” said Goad.

Top Photo via Goad Gatsby/Twitter

The Year Is 2020 And Shagwuf Is Still Singing

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After their March record release show was pre-empted by COVID, Charlottesville’s Shagwuf were left hanging. New EP Trendy Weapon, and the longform video they made to go with it, demonstrate their continued strength.

2020 has been a rough year for everyone, and Virginia’s own Shagwuf are no exception. COVID pulled the rug out from under everyone, but it got to them early, as the record release show for their highly anticipated third album, Dog Days Of Disco, had been scheduled for March 12 — the very day that the quarantine hit.

Shagwuf bassist Sally Rose described the chaotic hours before the show was scheduled to take place. “Emails and texts were flying back and forth with the promoter,” she said. “A lot of people were urging us to go on with the show. We had about two years worth of writing, savings, touring and heart poured into that album. We wanted to honor it, we wanted to celebrate, we wanted to play what felt like the last hoorah.”

“We had just received the vinyl copies we pressed for this album,” guitarist Pete Stallings chimes in. “I was sooo excited to let people hear it.”

In such early days, no one really knew what the risk of holding a live music event would be. “There was so much uncertainty in those early days of March,” said Rose. “Everybody was trying to grasp the severity of the crisis. It was grim and very real in larger cities, but still felt far away from our little hometown.”

Ultimately, the band knew they had to pull the plug. “In the big picture, we knew the virus was way bigger than us. So we called it off just hours before the show.” Rose feels good about the decision in hindsight. “Looking back at it now, there’s no doubt we made the right call. It should’ve been an easier decision, we just didn’t know the gravity of it all.”

Once their album release show had been called off, along with all live performances for the foreseeable future, Shagwuf had to figure out what to do with themselves. Luckily, they still had their music. And by the time summer rolled around, they had enough material for an entirely new project.

Stallings sets the scene for the psychic environment in which the new material was composed. “The songs were written at the end of May, beginning of June. There were protests in every major city. COVID was kicking America’s ass. Our supposed leader was making everything worse,” he said. “But I didn’t want an angry record. I wanted a musical hug.”

The result is a four-song EP entitled Trendy Weapon, a great addition to Shagwuf’s deep catalog of energetic, inspiring grunge-blues-rock. In addition to three songs featuring Stallings and Rose incorporating the vocal interplay that Shagwuf fans know and love, it features the first Shagwuf song composed and featuring lead vocals by drummer Pablo Daniel Oliveri. “Arma De Moda” — its name translates into English as “trendy weapon,” making it a title track of sorts — manages to maintain Shagwuf’s tough, noisy crescendos while exemplifying a Latin-flavored feel that incorporates Oliveri’s musical heritage into the Shagwuf sound and, by doing so, expands that sound into previously-unexplored territory.

“It’s hard to believe this is actually the first song he has ever written and sang lead on in Shagwüf,” Rose said. “It’s so big sounding. I think all of us were blown away with how it turned out. It’s a challenging song with a lot of moving parts. It came out with a fever of Argentinian passion and pure, unassailable rock’n’roll. It was just what we wanted.”

Rather than spotlight any one song on their new EP with a video, Shagwuf chose to go a slightly different route, working with longtime visual collaborator Rich Tarbell to come up with a four-song film entitled “The Year Was 2020” — named after a lyric that shows up on multiple Trendy Weapon tracks. RVA Mag is lucky enough to present that video to you here for the first time below. But first, let’s talk about it.

Tarbell’s idea for the video was to focus on Crocodile Girl, a character played by Charlottesville performance artist Opal Lechmanski. Not wanting the shoot to become a super-spreader event, Tarbell took a variety of precautions over the course of its creation. “The challenge was producing a video while keeping everyone COVID-safe,” Tarbell said, “so most of it is just me on a single camera – no crew, mostly outdoors, and everyone as masked up and socially distant as possible.”

The resulting video is a travelogue down the streets of Charlottesville and Staunton that successfully encapsulates all the difficulties and harships this year has presented to us all, while also encouraging resistance, resilience, and a positive outlook. It begins with “Roaring 20s,” which immediately grabs a listener’s attention as Rose, sitting on a porch couch as Stallings strums next to her, sings, “She sold all of the records she’d collected just to get ahead of the rent. The year was 2020 and the sound was all your money being spent.”

Throughout “Roaring 20s,” Crocodile Girl attempts to interest passerby and people sitting on their porches in records from her collection, eventually setting up a lemonade stand on a corner with a crate of records (crate courtesy of long-gone Richmond record store Peaches — how many of us have kept our collections in Peaches crates over the years?).

As the music transitions to the song “Red,” a kid on a skateboard rolls up and starts flipping through Crocodile Girl’s records (she’s got some pretty good stuff — Husker Du, David Bowie, Tom Waits, The Isley Brothers) before settling on the first Pretenders album (an absolute classic, don’t even get me started). Of course, since he’s wearing a skirt, he doesn’t have his wallet with him, so he ultimately barters his skateboard and teaches Crocodile Girl to skate. It’s a heartwarming moment, even as it showcases the realities of COVID in 2020 in a variety of ways (skateboard kid, played by Lance Brenner, is wearing a mask, and at one point, Crocodile Girl watches footage of police violence at a protest on her phone).

Those realities segue nicely into Pablo’s star turn on “Arma De Moda.” This video mostly focuses on Shagwuf’s drummer as he walks the Charlottesville streets, standing beside colorful murals and, at one point, holding up a sign that reads “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido” (those of you who’ve spent time protesting this year shouldn’t need me to tell you this means “The people united will never be defeated”). Interspersed throughout are shots of Crocodile Girl, now home by herself, watching more footage of violence at protests on her television, and having the sort of emotional reaction to the clips we can all probably see a bit of ourselves in. We also see some great footage of Shagwuf performing and Sally Rose dancing energetically to the music — a much-needed reminder of happier times.

The video and the EP both end with “Flood Song,” a beautifully elegaic song about the flood that hit Staunton this year, washing away not only a whole bunch of downtown businesses, including recording studios and restaurants, but also taking out Shagwuf’s van and multiple amps of theirs. The video switches between shots of Crocodile Girl walking down the main streets of Staunton, past the iconic Wright’s Dairy-Rite and other restaurants, and actual footage of Shagwuf’s van being destroyed by flood waters. The beauty this trio is able to wring out of a song about devastation on a personal level acts as a metaphor for the spirit we’ll all need to make it out the other side of this devastating era with our souls intact. Draw a bit of strength from Shagwuf’s “The Year Is 2020,” and stop by Bandcamp to get your own copy of Trendy Weapon with which to make it through the last few lame-duck weeks of the toughest year in living memory.

All photos by Rich Tarbell

AARNxBRWN: The Prodigal Son

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Recording artist and producer AARNxBRWN dropped a new video and has a new album on the way. His musical journey over the summer coincided with a quest to find himself and justice for his people through protests and activism.

Before this summer, rapper/producer Aaron Brown, known to the music world as AARNxBRWN, didn’t consider himself an activist. But when protests started around the murder of George Floyd and people began taking to the streets to demand justice, Brown joined in. He wound up with a megaphone in his hand and a new way of thinking about his music.

Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

Since releasing his debut album, GHost, in 2019, Brown has built a reputation for his melodic production and expressive sound, as well as his dynamic lyricism. But his participation in the protests, where he marched alongside thousands of Richmonders for several weeks, made him want to record something as a means of expression. He produced the beat for his single, “Value,” and wrote the first verse after the first week or two, and returned to finish the track around a month in. 

“I finally felt like I had enough information and enough experience and enough of a story to finish,” Brown said. 

LOSINGMYEGO, a self-described “one woman multidisciplinary creative studio” and Brown’s friend, shot footage of the protests night after night using her phone and a Moment lens, unbeknownst to Brown. When he finished “Value,” she asked to make a video for the song. 

“When I finished the song she was like, ‘I need it, give me the song,” Brown said. “She put together this crazy video with all these shots I didn’t even know she had.” 

The end result is a powerful representation of the summer’s struggles. The black and white shots cut quickly from scene to scene, lingering in striking moments of visual symbolism — a fist raised in air filled with tear gas, a burning flag, masked protesters perched on the sides of the monument at Marcus-David Peters Circle. Between biting, emotional verses, Brown reminds his listeners, “know your worth / know your value.”

For Brown, knowing your worth means knowing who you are and what you deserve. He isn’t content to settle only for what bureaucracy and systems of injustice deem feasible. 

“A lot of the older folks and people were like, this is how you do it I guess, one small step at a time, and we just need to keep trucking along,” Brown said. “I think my mentality was like, I’m really tired of just piecing together equalities for us.”

Brown knows he’s new to the work of activism. His experiences in the protests and working with justice causes now have changed the way he thinks about his music, but for him, it still comes down to his talent for putting what he experiences into words and beats. It’s just that now, his subject matter is slightly different. 

“This is the first time in my life where I stepped out into the thick of something that was national, international attention,” Brown said. “A lot of my music is influenced, because I’ve been in new spaces and I’ve learned so much about my own culture and my own standing in America … It’s made my music more impactful, I think. It’s truer to me.”

Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

Taking risks has become a central theme of Brown’s upcoming album, Save Me I’m Drowning, which drops November 6. He talks about a kind of inspired urgency — a willingness to jump in the water and ignore others’ fears. 

“Now it’s like there’s a fire under my ass,” Brown said. “There’s a single off of the album … the whole concept is almost like a prodigal son story, the idea of going away and ‘jumping into water’… Taking that risk, whatever it is — whether it’s a social risk or a life risk or whatever that thing is — and people being scared of you taking that risk.”

In order to learn, the prodigal son had to leave, Brown explained. Even if it meant making mistakes, he could only gain and grow by venturing out before returning home. 

“He had to go away to get enough wisdom to understand that everything he needed was home,” Brown said. “At some point of time he had to take that jump.”

Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

For Brown, the future is all about risking dangerous waters to emerge as the person he needs to be — a prodigal son seeking justice for all. 

You can pre-order Brown’s upcoming album, Save Me I’m Drowning, at Bandcamp, where you can also hear a two-track preview of the album.

Top Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

The Crisis of Eviction and Gentrification: An Interview With Allan-Charles Chipman

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For Richmond City Council candidate Allan-Charles Chipman, preserving local communitites by keeping longtime Richmonders in their homes is at the heart of the issues facing the city in 2020.

Allan-Charles Chipman is a candidate running for city council in the 6th district of Richmond against longtime incumbent Ellen Robertson, who has represented the 6th district for 16 years. The 33-year-old Chipman has a background as a community organizer and Christian faith leader, and is currently working for Initiatives of Change. If he is elected this November, it will be his first time serving in a political position. RVA Mag sat down with Chipman (over Zoom, of course) to find out some more about him, his campaign, and his opinions on the issues facing Richmond today. 

RVA: How has your faith shaped your political views and your life in general?

ACC: My parents were pastors and community organizers. They were part of an organization that helped transition people out of homelessness. My parents started a school within their church that was dedicated to helping kids in the neighborhood get up to a third-grade reading level, and then send them off to public school. 

I was about six years old when I was in these rooms, and I just saw how my faith calls me to help my community. Even today I work as a community advocate, really helping to expand past the societal biases that impact how people show up in their communities — like racism, dehumanization. Really, how my faith informs me is that we are not to leave behind our neighbors when they face injustice. Just as we want them fighting for us, we want to make sure we are fighting for justice, the humanity and dignity that each person’s life holds. We want to have the skillset to be able to expand the work of justice.

RVA: So you’re running primarily on an anti-gentrification platform. Can you tell us about that?

ACC: The city is really starting to recognize how unstable and unsustainable the level of growth in housing values has been. You can’t be both the arsonist and the firefighter. You can’t incentivize the type of development that has caused this burden to households. The point of entry — the price at which you can purchase a house — has risen 52 percent in the past couple of years. It’s not enough that we just talk about affordable housing, because we can’t have affordable housing being built on the displacement of long-term black neighborhoods. We can’t have this new doctrine of discovery, where people who have been indigenous to this place for a while are being displaced by this new vision of what things should be. 

I’ve met people on the campaign trail who are afraid they’re gentrifiers. If people want to come into our neighborhood, that’s not a problem. I believe we can have development without displacement. But it has to be intentional. There are innovative ways that we can do that. I want to make sure we’re focused on not just making sure the next person moves in, we have to make sure we have community stabilization funds. If you look at Atlanta, Georgia, they’ve actually created something called ‘community stabilization funds’ that actually help long-term residents stay in. 

We also have to realize that it’s not just seniors who are struggling. I was talking to a young woman who said she’s not sure how long she can stay in her house because of how fast housing values are escalating. We also have to make sure we’re not clearing out our low-income public housing. The RRHA’s plan is to demolish all six of the Big Six [public housing courts in the city] in 2021. 

RVA: Are they actually trying to get rid of the Big Six, or just phase them out?

ACC: If you read the plan, it’s quite blatant that they’re trying to demolish them and move to a project-based voucher. They would send residents out into the private market with a voucher that doesn’t protect against discrimination. We have to be clear that we can have plans to redevelop and give people a better opportunity to live in an environment that better reflects their dignity, but we have to make sure we have a plan for where people are going. We have 300 people on a waitlist just to get housing. It’s a very concerning time in the city, and we’re already number two in the nation for the highest number of evictions. 

RVA: Do you think gentrification and evictions are Richmond’s biggest problems right now?

ACC: Absolutely. We cannot build the affordable ‘RVA’ on the backs of Black Richmond. It’s not enough we have to be a city of the future, we have to be a city where people can exist in the future. If we know that what’s attracting some businesses to the city is our affordability, we can’t continue this gentrification. 

This is also about being able to build generational wealth. If people lose that home, they lose the ability to pass it on to a nephew, or a family member, who might be able to use it. I was talking to an entrepreneur who said the only way he was able to start a business is because his uncle let him use his home as collateral. But if that home is no longer in the family, they no longer have access to that. We’re talking about an attack on generational wealth, an attack on housing stability. We have to have a relief fund for those who are pushed out. We don’t want people to feel guilty for coming to our city, we don’t want to make people feel that their presence means the eventual absence of others who have been here. We need to have homestead exemptions, and community stabilization funds. 

RVA: How does VCU figure into the gentrification of Richmond?

ACC: There have been a lot of concerns among VCU students especially, wanting to know what the expansion of VCU has meant to the city of Richmond. We have to make sure that VCU is paying their fair share of taxes. PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) is a way our city can arrange a form of payment based on how much of their land is occupied, and it’s a way they can bring more money into the city funds. 

RVA: How do you feel about the Richmond police department, especially after the protests this summer?

ACC: One of the most dangerous institutions in the world is one that doesn’t have to answer to anyone. We have seen that the police department doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Just a couple months ago the mayor made Jody Blackwell, who killed an unarmed black Air Force veteran, the police chief. We saw the police driving over protesters with no consequences. When people know that there is no accountability — this is what happens when leaders don’t stand up against the police. 

We need an independent community oversight board, independent of police, to be able to police the police. We support the Marcus Alert, fully funded and led by community care units. We want to know that ethnic and racial makeup of the people who police stop, to make sure we know about racial profiling and can stop it. We also know that in Richmond City Justice Center, there is an outbreak of COVID-19. We stand with RVA26, which has been showing the horrors going on in the jail. We have to reallocate responsibilities to our community organizations, who have been having the impact that we’d like to see. I have no problem with reallocating resources to them. If police can do what they want — bend the rules, call anything that questions them an “unlawful assembly” and be able to tear gas — and we do not have leadership that challenges them, the leadership are complicit in the expansion of the corruption of the police. 

RVA: What are your thoughts on the issues that face LGBTQ Virginians, especially those who are Black?

ACC: I think it’s important that we are applying a racial equity lens in everything, to make sure that the issues that face our Black LGBTQ siblings are coming to light. I’m glad that the Virginia Values Act was passed, and one of the ideas I want to bring is something called the Equity Assessment Index, which is a rubric that applies to policies that come out of City Council or City Hall, to make sure that our policies are not having a negative impact on historically marginalized communities. 

There is a great level of housing discrimination that happens against LGBTQ people, and our Black and brown brothers and sisters. We have to make sure we are supporting our orgs, such as Side By Side, that deal with how many of our youth who are sent out into the streets, are disowned by their families. I want to use vacant city housing stock to bring them up and really give them a future. I want to tell them that they have a champion in me, that I’m listening. That’s why I want to start ‘Everyday Solidarity Task Forces’ that meet monthly for people to talk about what’s happening in their communities. As we try to implement the Virginia Values Act, I want to hear about places where it’s not being implemented. I want to make sure that the act is a reality in their healthcare, in their workplace. 

RVA: I know that the one thing on everyone’s mind right now is the coronavirus. Is there something the city should be doing to better fight the virus?

ACC: There needs to be an eviction moratorium. We don’t have a vaccine, so the best thing we can do is shelter at home, wear a mask, and socially distance. But if you don’t have a home to shelter in, that becomes very hard to do. We need to make sure people are staying in their homes. We’re in more of a gig economy. A person may lose one job and then not qualify for a total loss of income, so they’re still drowning. We need to make sure we’re also helping people who aren’t working a 9-to-5 job.

We also need hazard pay for our public workers, and we need to make sure that they have the sick leave that they need. We have to provide safe, socially-distanced ways to help restaurants stay open — maybe having a zone for street dining. But we have to be careful, because we don’t want to go back to the more restrictive phase that crippled the economy. I think we’ve been doing well with the availability of testing. But we need to make sure we are not displacing our residents from their communities. We need to use city housing stock to make sure we’re housing as many residents as possible, really ramping up the city’s stock for emergency shelters and other ways to house people during this time. We have to do as much as we can to keep people housed, keep them safe. 

All photos via Allan-Charles Chipman/Facebook. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Op-Ed: Busted At The Circle

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An anonymous protester tells the story of how they got arrested at Marcus-David Peters Circle, and reveals the essentially random and arbitrary nature of police enforcement throughout Richmond’s summer of protest.

It never hurts to show up with a case of beer, so I stopped at Lombardy Kroger on my way to the Circle and picked up some Blue Moons and a box of popsicles — both in response to the festive mood dancing through the air. That morning, the mayor had announced the resignation of our ten-day-old police chief, and while many understood the dense sociopolitical tactics implied with the decision, most celebrated the occasion as well. A Friday night at the top of summer will always carry with it feelings of excitement and reward.

I pulled my bike up to the normal spot at Marcus-David Peters Circle and recognized a few familiar faces in the soft afterglow of dusk’s light. The sun was just setting, leaving only about 30 minutes until full darkness and the cover that comes with it. At that moment, the sky shimmered with raspberry-lemonade tones and watermelon-marshmallow clouds. Around the turn of the Circle, a free concert was underway, made possible with just a microphone, a generator, and a few amps. We doodled with spray-paint or attempted freestyle tricks on our fixed-gear bikes as we sipped beers and mused on the day.

We were all rocking on the obvious cookout vibe, but we were tentative as well; we weren’t completely relaxed. We’ve seen things at the Circle turn from lax to chaos before, in only a second and for no reason at all, and we know it can happen again. When you’re facing an enemy that has full control over the definitions of combat and legality, it’s OK to feel nervous.

For the moment though, it’s good vibes and sunshine. And while our conversations dance around the protests, the police, police brutality, human rights, the mistakes of the generations before us, and our determination to fix those mistakes, mostly we just talk about Richmond. It’s hard to explain Richmond to someone who hasn’t stayed here for any amount of time. Richmond is like an oasis that’s also a black hole. Richmond is the place you’re trying to get out of, and also the place you can’t wait to be back in. Richmond is the place you think you deserve. Richmond is where a lot of us feel most at home, but it’s a home that needs sweeping renovations. 

As we expounded on the failures and accomplishments of the capital city, more and more of our friends arrived, skidding to stops at the periphery of our claimed area and increasing our settlement size. It’s easy to dominate a space when everyone arrives with a bicycle, and in our group it’s pretty much a necessity to show up with some wheels. Besides a general interest in protesting the state, bicycles have been the strongest common factor throughout the ragtag group of friends that I’ve been meeting with near-daily since the brutal murder of George Floyd at the end of May. 

Some of these friends, like Zach (our stoic, de facto captain of the group who seems to know everyone in town) and Twist (our resident artist and Big Wheel extraordinaire), I’ve known for a while and originally met because we were biking in the same parts of town. But others, like Maria (badass girl with a Wide Bars/Big Heart combo) or Rory (no fixie yet, just a road bike, but well-loved for his reputation of generosity and hilarious braggadociousness), I’ve only spent real time with since the protests began. All in all, there’s about 12 of us that have formed a little posse of itinerant protesters. Every summer brings with it something new, but something about the revolution marching down the streets had this summer feeling particularly seismic. And something about all that “newness” in the air made me feel like a kid again. 

Soon, a few men in assault rifles and military vests approached us, seeming threatened by their own lack of acceptance and camaraderie, reflected against our group of laughing friends.  

“Is this your tent? This tent’s gotta go!” one man began, unwilling to exchange pleasantries. 

“It’s not our tent but we don’t think it should go,” a few people responded. “That tent is covering a free community library.”

“Well, when the cops get here this is going to make them upset, and they’re going to come in here and destroy it anyway,” the man said. “So I’m just saying y’all should take it down before I come back with a few other guys with rifles and take it down myself…. because we don’t want the cops to come!”

Photo by Eric Everington

“You can do whatever you want, man, but we’re not going to take down some tent that isn’t ours just because you think the cops might come,” said our friend Marco, who’s always good for a giant smile and a fat joint. “And also, that whole theory doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.” He punctuated this last part with a tip of his head and a swig of his beer.

The man grumbled to himself and walked away, returning ten minutes later with his aforementioned rifled goons, as well as a lady that doesn’t really seem to fit in with them. 

“This lady owns the library so we’re getting her to take it down,” the man said, directing his speech towards our group for no apparent reason other than to start a conflict. He was clearly oblivious to how antithetical his aggressive, commandeering attitude was to the entire idea of the community space that is Marcus-David Peters Circle… or maybe he was just an asshole. Regardless, he was a blatant intimidator, and unless we’re talking about Number 3 (RIP), there’s just no room for that inside the Circle. 

We ignored whatever the guy was trying to serve to us and kicked back, but soon he was back again with an even larger group, now forcefully encouraging everyone to exit the interior of the Circle, under the assurance that “the cops can’t touch us if we aren’t in the Circle.” It’s hard to say no to a group of men with large guns in their hands, so the group was largely succeeding in their attempts to push people out of the area. Our group, though still not completely understanding or agreeing with the logic of the move, followed suit, packing up our blankets, beers, and popsicles. 

Not five minutes after the entire populace of the Circle had been cleared out of the area surrounded by graffiti-covered barriers, officers in riot gear began to arrive, just as the man earlier had “predicted.” Predicted! *Hmpf*! Predicted, or called down? Because I reckon it’s a hell of a lot easier to predict the future when you’ve got a direct line to the chain of command. I also reckon that the only person who would come up and complain about the tent covering up a free library would be someone who knew that the cops were coming that night, whether they had a reason to or not. 

Photo by Darrell Booker

And, of course, there was no reason that any amount of police officers, let alone 50+ outfitted in full riot gear, should have appeared that night. No reason for a city to sic a militarized pack of baton-wielding goons on its own people. No reason why the citizens of Richmond could not have just been left to be: listening to music, drinking beers, talking with friends. These were the crimes we committed before being attacked that night. 

As police announced to the crowd that the surrounding area had been declared an “unlawful assembly,” tempers began to flare — on both sides. Rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades sliced through the air, as chants and screams rose from the civilians. Suddenly, the space felt like a war zone, a battle with what seemed like completely lopsided enemies. On one side stood line after line of grown men adorned in battle armor, helmets, and shields. Some held assault rifles or guns meant for firing rubber bullets and smoke canisters; all wore heavy, polished, steel-toed boots. On the other side stood men, women, children, and pets equipped with nothing more than their wallets, sunglasses, tank tops, and shorts. Some held bottles of water for extinguishing smoke, others had gloves on for tossing tear gas canisters away; all wore a sense of fear, anger, confusion, and determination on their face.

These Richmonders, who had done nothing more than to enjoy the public space of their city, would not be deterred so easily. A feeling spread through the crowd: we would not be punished unjustly tonight. If we were going to have to face the consequences of merely existing in the street, then we weren’t going down without a fight.   

The ranks of G.I. Joe pretenders slowly increased their perimeter, pushing citizens further and further from the reclaimed art space at the epicenter of the Circle. Soon, we stood in the middle of Park Avenue, a block from Monument Avenue, and still we were being told to “back up” and “get out of the street,” by both Richmond Police and Virginia State Police. It seemed the boars with badges would not be content until they had claimed the whole neighborhood as their own Draconian hang-space. 

When my friend Mo shined his flashlight toward a group of suspicious looking officers, he was swarmed upon by a particularly dorky looking VSP officer.

“Whoah! Hey! You got lights for this bicycle here?” the officer asked, taking strides closer and closer to us, hand on his hip. 

“Two, actually!” was Mo’s response, as we all flipped our bikes around to put some space between the officers and ourselves. “You’re not gunna get us on some shit like that!” He shouted over his shoulder as we pedaled up the street towards a safer space. “Ya dumbass cop!”

With some distance between the commotion and us, we regrouped. Mo, Maria, Zach, Ryan, Rory, and I squadded up at a park only a block away. 

“Shit’s wild.”

“What even started this?”

“Oh, they’re definitely mad about the chief resigning.”

“I saw someone get hit right in the face with a rubber bullet.”

“Fuck!”

“I saw a couple kids with paint guns shooting at the cops, I think that’s what started it all.”

“I mean, the cops started it all when they showed up…”

“AGREED!”

Photo by Nils Westergard

Looking behind him, Rory said, “This car coming up is an unmarked cop car; anyone want to see where it’s going?”

“Let’s do it,” I said. 

And we took off, the two of us darting after this beefy-looking tinted black SUV, keeping close but keeping our distance. 

After a few blocks Rory turned to me and said, “They aren’t going anywhere interesting. Let’s head back.” We reversed course back towards the way we came. 

Coming back up towards the intersection where we left the rest of our friends, I can’t say that anything felt particularly off, though it did seem a little quiet; not a simple quiet but a stifled one. 

As Rory and I made our way through the shadow left in the space between two light posts, we heard, “GRAB HIM!” and a hidden mass sprang from the darkness. I watched as Rory’s bike found the space between the charging homunculus and a row of cards and skirted through it successfully, just as the same cop changed direction to tackle me off my bike (FUCK!). The goon leaped into the air as gracefully as an anemic hippopotamus, and tackled me off my bike with the ease of a drunken uncle at Thanksgiving.

“All right, big guy, you got me! You can chill out,” I said to the panting officer, who was shoving my arms into positions not familiar to them, restraining my non-resisting body with the help of three or four buddies. “I appreciate all the attention, but it’s really not necessary.” 

“It’s for both of our safeties,” the stormtrooper said to me without looking at my face, instead holding his nose high with eyes darting around the perimeter like some cracked-out hound-dog. 

“Oh yeah, I bet,” I said, laughing a little. “Hey man, you having any fun?”

The officer just grunted.

“Aw, c’mon man, what’s your name?”

“Officer Harris.” Still no eye contact.

“Hey, officer Harris, you having any fun out here? It’s ok to have fun; I’m having some fun. Are you having fun?” 

Officer Harris shifted his weight from one foot to the other, rolled his tongue across his upper teeth, and said out of the side of his mouth, “Yeah, I’m having a little fun… but you guys are making it hard for us out here.”

“GROSSSSSSS!” I say laughing from the pit of my stomach, “Oh, Officer Harris, we’ve got real problems. I can’t believe you just said that.” And I continued to laugh as this confused cop looked down on me, still zip-tied at his feet. I was beyond affable at this point, due to the insane amount of adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream, and while the fear of this cop and his gang of buddies crossed my mind, I figured if I was in for a penny, I was in for a pound. Being arrested for protesting the police force already put me in a vulnerable position, and I figured the policeman’s image of me couldn’t be altered much in the short time we were interacting with each other. But I wanted to say one more thing before Officer Harris cast me aside as some wanton rioter.

Photo by Erin O’Brien.

“I hope you don’t think I’m just some white punk, some revolutionary with no cause. I’m fighting for what I believe in, protesting with love in my heart. And I sleep well every night, Officer Harris. Do you?”

“I try,” Officer Harris said with a giant sigh as he put me in a cage in the back of a van. 

“Now, watch your head.”

This piece was submitted anonymously by a protester who was arrested this summer. All names have been changed. Though the protester’s case has since been dismissed, and they are no longer being prosecuted by the City of Richmond, they chose to remain anonymous to avoid further prosecution.

Note: Op-Eds are contributions from guest writers and do not reflect RVA Magazine editorial policy.

Top Photo by Domico Phillips