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Spaces To Breathe

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Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Think back to the last time you were outside under the shade of a tree enjoying the breeze, the chirping birds, and the fresh air. Did your shoulders drop? Did some tension leave your body? Did you feel refreshed?

If you were like me, and many in the Richmond region, you spent a good amount of time in public parks during last year’s pandemic. During the 2020 calendar year, Richmond Parks saw an all-time record, proving that our parks are a treasure for the public good. They’re free places to experience nature, relax, recharge, meditate, exercise and enjoy the company of friends and neighbors. They’re places to just be, spaces to breathe. In an equitable city, green spaces should be accessible to everyone. 

A special report from the Trust for Public Land, “Parks and the Pandemic”, highlights just how important access to walkable greenspace is for quality of life.  Ready access to parks and greenspaces leads to better academic performance, improved cognition, better concentration, reduction in stress hormones, sound sleep, and faster recovery from injury to name just a few health benefits. Sadly, yet predictably, this report also discusses how inequitably urban greenspaces are geographically distributed based on race, with less acres of walkable park land available to Black and Latino residents in comparison to white residents across the country.  

The story is no different in Richmond, and this is linked to our racist history. During the 1970’s when Richmond annexed a large post-war residential suburban section of Chesterfield County, they weren’t doing so to acquire existing public amenities like parks. Instead, annexation was used to increase the number of white residents in Richmond to maintain a white majority City Council. This unconstitutional strategy resulted in a moratorium on annexation still with Virginia today. White flight took hold, and industrial facilities shut down in these newly annexed areas. Residents with means moved further into surrounding counties. A decreasing city tax base led to less resources for public services, from schools to infrastructure to parks. This lack of public amenity persists to this day and remains most concentrated in our census tracts inhabited by majority Black and Latino populations, especially neighbors in the Southside. Currently, our 8th and 9th council districts, which are majority Black and Latino, have the most residents who cannot access a park within a 10-minute walk from their home; over 25,000 people lack this public amenity. That needs to change. 

Ryan Rinn

A racially equitable Richmond looks like every resident having the mental and physical health benefits of green space easily walkable from where they live. Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong showed how equitably distributed urban greenspaces promoted greater resiliency to Covid-19 for all races. Green spaces assist in faster recovery from all types of trauma, too. From centuries of not being able to breathe, and the collective trauma faced by our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community at the hands (or knees) of institutions, spaces to breathe are a necessity. Lower rates of diabetes, asthma, hypertension, anxiety and depression all correlate with access to green space. 

Achieving a racially equitable Richmond requires us to make parks accessible to all, especially Richmond’s Black and Brown communities, by focusing funding on the historically marginalized, engaging in community centered processes, protecting land in perpetuity and enacting policies that protect against green gentrification.

Racial equity requires focus and dollars in historically marginalized places first. Budgets are moral documents, and data helps us pinpoint where the most need exists. The ‘Climate Equity Index’ from our Office of Sustainability overlays more than thirty census tract level data points, and includes historic and current contextual data about institutional racism. We have the ability to see disaggregated data displayed geographically, and act intentionally. We must.  

This data was the driving force in the first major park expansion initiative to take place in the City of Richmond since annexation, and it pointed us to the city’s 8th and 9th council districts. These districts are majority Black and Latino, have higher rates of poverty, less tree canopy, higher summer temperatures, and have seen less intentional investment in public amenity over time since the 1970’s. This same data can be used to purchase and protect land for the public benefit and help reach the goal of an equitable Richmond, where every resident can walk to a green space.

Racial equity requires community-led park onboarding and transparency of process. Community-led and trusted organizations founded and run by Black and Brown people have built their reputations and success on following through for their neighborhoods. They often do this without equal access to funding and minimal administrative support systems. These organizations should be leaders in the process of building community trust and should be paid to do so. Collaborative grant applications in partnership with the City can help secure these funds, and budgets reflective of the necessity of this work should include line items for engagement.

I’ve had the great experience of working alongside and learning from our partners at Virginia Community Voice, Southside ReLeaf, and Groundwork RVA as we think about what new green spaces can be for South Richmond. Authentic engagement means building trust, establishing norms, and listening fully to one another. Direct communication, organizing, and developing a shared language of community aspiration for these spaces increases the likelihood of community buy-in, and the formation of a shared vision. City staff can be open and honest about budgets, operational realities and bureaucratic processes, and work alongside residents to develop community maintenance agreements, park names, specific amenities, and dedicated partner groups. Leaning into equity-based engagement in onboarding parks creates more dynamic and culturally relevant spaces.

Racial equity requires protecting urban land now for perpetuity. As explicitly stated in the purpose of Richmond 300, “Richmond is 62.5 square miles and is not allowed to annex land.” Acquisition of land for green spaces will get more difficult as our population continues to grow. We must act now to buy, receive and/or protect open green spaces for the public good. Tools like economic development scorecards and community benefit agreements should be leveraged to incorporate green space as a priority for our neighborhoods when new development is proposed. Partnerships with land trusts can be expanded and conservation easements can be utilized to make sure new green spaces can be protected in perpetuity.

Racial equity requires the acknowledgement of, and policy protections from displacement through ‘Green Gentrification.’ Green gentrification refers to the urban phenomenon of increasing rents, and subsequent financial, cultural, and physical displacement of lower-income and non-white people following the creation or restoration of an environmental amenity, such as a new park. Tools mentioned above, like community benefit agreements, are one potential mechanism neighborhoods and the City of Richmond can use to protect existing residents so their quality of life improves in place, with the addition of a new green space. When plans for development proximate to new green spaces come through public commissions, committees and City Council, questions of affordability and community benefit should be the standard. Other mechanisms like the reduction or freezing of property taxes, rent stabilization vouchers, and incentives for low and middle income housing could also offer protection for existing residents.

A racially equitable Richmond looks like Black and Brown-led onboarding of new parks in neighborhoods and communities where no greenspaces exist within walking distance. Community-led creation of public open space is the inverse of annexation, an anti-racist land use strategy that empowers residents to build and enjoy places for the people. These spaces are culturally relevant because culture was relevant in their creation. This Richmond has a better quality of life for everyone who lives here today, and spaces for everyone to breathe. 

On a recent community walk through a soon to be new greenspace in Southside, I felt joy in the conversation and in the silence. Deep breaths with a view and a breeze, shoulders dropping and imaginations running wild. Exploration, laughter, curiosity, questions and possibility. There’s a wholeness and a calm to the amenity of greenspace, and everyone deserves access to it. 

Ryan Rinn is a 21 year resident of Richmond and works for the City.  His career has spanned from community organizing to urban planning to his current role with Parks & Recreation.  He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University and lives with his husband Jason in the Byrd Park neighborhood.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

Op-Ed: The Trouble With Reva’s Receipts

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In the face of allegations of impropriety from both the mayor’s office and her 2020 election opponent, David Dominique writes that Councilmember Reva Trammell may be taking desperate measures to save her political career.

Last week, Richmond City Councilmember Reva Trammell’s campaign allegedly weaponized information extracted from one of my Instagram posts. While I continue to call for transparency in campaign financing, I disavow Councilmember Trammell’s deceptive attack on her opponent, Amy Wentz.

As a sitting Councilmember who has herself allegedly engaged in ethical improprieties in 2020, Ms. Trammell is sitting inside the most fragile of glass houses; she might avoid throwing stones.

During this election cycle alone, Ms. Trammell has accepted multiple eyebrow-raising donations, in addition to allegedly distributing cash-equivalent gift cards to political supporters and surrogates, in what her opponent considers thinly-veiled bribes.

According to Wentz, Trammell justifies these unregulated, unsupervised distributions of gift cards by labelling them “constituent services.” While Wentz points out that distribution of resources is not inherently suspicious, the issues raised by these activities are many.

A review of Virginia Public Access Project records showed that Trammell has not reported these gift cards as cash or in-kind donations, nor has she reported their distribution. If the cards are political gifts, the law requires Ms. Trammell disclose the donors and ultimate recipients. If they are public distributions being made by an elected official, how are they funded, who else in city hall is privy to the details, what accounting is being done, and what oversight has occurred? If the cards are private gifts, why are they being sent with a note on Richmond City Council letterhead, a municipal resource intended for communication of official government business?

In images obtained by the author, Trammell’s selective gift-giving explicitly invoked her position on Council, and seemed to imply her wish for professional collaboration with the recipient. In a note printed on Richmond City Council letterhead, and sent with a gift card, Trammell wrote “I look forward to working with you in the future…,” an implicit acknowledgment of her political position and activities. 

Photo via David Dominique

Trammell appears to be using civic resources — City Council letterhead as well as printing services — to distribute a personal gift that primarily serves her relationship interests and has no connection to government business. According to Wentz, there is no process for constituents in the 8th District to apply for such gifts, and many constituents are not aware of them. How is Trammell deciding which constituents receive these gifts? Equally important, who is funding the gift cards? 

Though Wentz does not have access to records, through conversations with those privy to the practice, Wentz estimates that Trammell may be distributing $10,000 to $16,000 in gift cards per year to approximately six hundred constituents who serve as Trammell’s political “surrogates.” 

For Ms. Trammell, leveraging the power of her elected office to serve her political interests may be a pattern. 

Earlier this year, Mayor Stoney’s Press Secretary, James Nolan, called Ms. Trammell’s advocacy in support of at least one group of her political donors “wholly inappropriate.” 

In a story widely reported in local media, on February 24, 2020 Ms. Trammell used her City Council seat to call for the FBI to investigate multiple departments in City Hall on behalf of one of her top donors, Coalson Enterprises. In comments presented to Council, Trammell alleged that Coalson was receiving unfair treatment in its application for a permit in the 8th District. However, according to Wentz and a neighbor whose property abuts the Coalson project in question, Coalson’s issues were self-inflicted by their failure to obtain proper permitting and the damage they caused to the neighbor’s property. 

Photo via David Dominique

More troublingly, Coalson’s issues with the city were solved during a period when Ms.Trammell applied significant legal and political pressure to city departments on Coalson’s behalf, while Ms. Trammell simultaneously received thousands of dollars in donations from both Coalson Enterprises and an individual Coalson family member.

In 2019 and 2020, the Coalsons only donated to one politician, Reva Trammell, and became her top donors by a significant margin, making at least six donations totalling $13,000, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. For reference, Trammell’s next-largest donor has been the Homebuilders Association of Richmond, a well-funded construction industry bundler that has donated Trammell less than half the funds donated by the Coalsons.

According to Wentz, Trammell’s privileged handling of Coalson’s affairs has not resulted in a positive relationship between the developer and the community. In one 8th District meeting, owner Jackie Coalson allegedly threatened to turn the unpermitted property into a landfill if the community did not help him in his quest to obtain permits. Mr. Coalson also allegedly mentioned that he would be creating a park and naming it for Ms. Trammell, a not-so-subtle reciprocation for Ms. Trammell’s efforts in her role on Council, efforts which came amid Coalson’s significant donations to her campaign.

Reva Trammell’s hypocrisy in criticizing Amy Wentz’s fundraising is self-evident. Ms. Trammell’s behavior on City Council is cause for censure by that body, and perhaps cause for an investigation into whether she has improperly leveraged her Council position to make serious legal threats on behalf of her top donor. Similarly, her distribution of gift cards, funded by unknown sources, requires serious inquiry. 

This Tuesday, voters in the 8th District will have the opportunity to decide whether Reva Trammell’s priority is serving her constituents, or serving the interests of developers and other big donors who have funded her political career. 

Richmond deserves fairness and transparency in its politics. 

Richmond deserves a new council. 

Reva Trammell and Coalson Enterprises did not respond to requests for comment for this editorial.

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

Top Photo via Reva Trammell/Facebook

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.

Turning The Tide For Southside

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BLK RVA founder Amy Wentz hopes to challenge Reva Trammell’s multi-decade hold on Richmond’s 8th District and bring a new energy to Southside Richmond.

Richmond City Councilwoman Reva Trammell has been in office for a very long time — having presided over Richmond’s 8th district since 1998. Though it appears the residents of the 8th district love Councilwoman Trammell, not much has changed over her 22 years of representing the city’s geographically largest voting district — and arguably its most neglected.

When Councilwoman Trammell first took office in 1998, the district in Richmond’s Southside had no grocery stores. Today the number of grocery stores in the district remains the same, with the exception of a few small storefronts along Route 1 and Broad Rock Boulevard. 

Being a food desert is just one of the many problems that needs to be addressed in the district, and Amy Wentz, who is running to unseat Trammell, intends to bring those problems to light so that the 8th district can get on pace with the rest of the city.

Wentz was born and raised in Richmond’s Southside. After graduating from Huguenot High School on Forest Hill Avenue, she joined the military, spending two years in Afghanistan before returning to Richmond. Wentz has lived in the 8th district for the past 11 years. She first became involved with local government after attending a meeting and seeing that complacency had set in with her representative, who wasn’t even taking questions from residents. The lack of communication between City Hall and the 8th district, and the obvious lack of attention given to the Southside of Richmond in general, is what prompted Wentz to run for city council.

“Being from Southside and seeing the neglect and seeing the way that our area has gone down over the years has been an eyesore. It has been hard and painful to watch,” Wentz said. “And although I’ve been able to do a lot of community work and community service to help in certain areas, I really felt like it was time for me to transition my community service into public service.”

Wentz is the creator of BLK RVA and co-founded Virginia Black Restaurant Experience, two tourism platforms that highlight Black culture in the Richmond area. Through those organizations, she’s worked to make clear to the outside world that Richmond is about more than the Civil War.

“For a long time we’ve had this Capital of the Confederacy cloud over us, where we feel like we have to highlight the Confederate history as a means towards tourism here in the city,” Wentz said. “We want to tell the whole story of Richmond’s history, and make sure that tourists know that there is Black culture that is thriving here. We want to highlight and uplift that.”

Richmond’s Public Schools are known for their lack of quality, and having gone to school in the Southside, Wentz knows how quality of public schools is connected to wealth inequality.

“Unfortunately, all the schools in the 8th district are what we call Title 1 schools, and that means the majority of students come from families that are experiencing poverty,” Wentz said. “That in itself is a tough pill to swallow.” In addition to improving the schools the 8th district’s kids attend, Wentz wants to improve access to adult education programs for the Southside’s residents. Right now, all of the programs the city offers are located North of the James River.

As the representative for the 8th district, Wentz wants to restore the line of communication between the residents and the local government.

“The communication strategy in the 8th district as it stands now is nonexistent,” Wentz said. “We’re the only district that does not receive newsletters or any sort of communication from our district representatives.” Wentz believes the lack of communication and inability for the residents of the 8th district to provide feedback or ask questions is directly responsible for the complacency and lack of accountability that has plagued the district’s representatives in City Hall.

The 8th district still faces many of the challenges they’ve been dealing with for decades. The district leads the city in evictions and health disparity. It’s at the bottom of the municipal infrastructure budget as well as access to GRTC, despite being the city’s largest district. According to Wentz, Councilwoman Trammell is good at providing “band-aid” fixes for some of the problems her constituents are facing, such as giving gift cards and rides around the city. But she feels that it will take institutional change to reverse all the damage that has been done to the 8th district over the years. 

“I want to usher in policy that could really affect our quality of life, so that we’re not leaning on those things as much as we have been in the past,” Wentz said. “We’re operating with a sense of integrity on our campaign, doing things the right way, and so it gets tough to try to compete with the types of practices that have been in place for 18 years.”

All photos via Amy Wentz/Facebook

Two Black LGBTQ Candidates Seek Richmond City Council Seats

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We sat down with City Council candidates Tavarris Spinks and Joseph S.H. Rogers to talk about their ties to Richmond, plans for their respective districts, and how they want to switch up Richmond’s representative voice.

Tavarris Spinks, 2nd District 

Tavarris Spinks, a noted participant and activist in Richmond politics, is a fifth-generation Richmonder and VCU alumnus with strong connections to the 2nd District community. He’s running to fill Councilwoman Kim Gray’s seat. 

Spinks’ childhood in a lower-income community in Richmond has informed his experience as an activist, and so has his journey to become a first-generation college graduate and a prominent member of Richmond’s political scene over the past 17 years.

“You know, I grew up in subsidized housing, like Section 8 subsidized housing,” Spinks said. “For the first several years of my life, I remember having a relatively happy childhood. My parents worked very hard to make sure that I didn’t want for anything, but they also had help from family because so much of my family lives here.”

His grandmother still lives in his old neighborhood, Spinks said, and is able to stay in her home despite rising housing costs due to subsidies for people over 65. But that experience isn’t universal, Spinks said.

“The 2nd District, in Jackson Ward, historic Jackson Ward, used to be a thriving African American enclave. But now, folks are being pushed out by political and economic forces,” he said. “Keeping those neighborhoods together, allowing people, especially black folks, to stay in their homes, is super important.”

His worldview shifted, Spinks said, when he first exited the world of his childhood during a field trip in eighth grade and saw the parts of Richmond that had wealth and well-maintained infrastructure. 

“Once you get older, you start to see the wider world. You know, it took me a while to realize, ‘Oh, we are actually quite poor compared to [other families],’” Spinks said. “We went to the VMFA and that was my first time going. And, you know, riding through Monument Avenue, and then seeing that this is still the same city.”

Attending VCU and living in the Fan gave Spinks a chance to observe the disparities in neighborhoods of Richmond in his everyday life. 

“Running in the 2nd district — this is my home. You know, it’s a great part of town,” he said. “I want to see it get better, and I want to see all of Richmond get better. City Council doesn’t just vote on issues that affect one district.”

Spinks is passionate about developing and maintaining the infrastructure of the city, specifically the accessibility of sidewalks and walkways around construction sites. He lived in the Fan for 12 years, and said he now knows “what it’s like to live in a part of town that has more access to transit services, better roads.” He sees how these issues specifically affect people in the 2nd District. But he said that even more wealthy parts of the city like the Fan and Scott’s Addition still need help with sidewalks. 

Spinks’ advocacy for accessible sidewalks stems from his familiarity with activists in the disability community, he said. He’s observed “folks who are using mobility devices, like wheelchairs, or walkers in the street, facing vehicle traffic.” His sensitivity to this issue comes from his experience thinking about the groups most impacted by the city’s decisions. 

“When I think about a policy I meet, the first thing I think about is, ‘Who tends to be vulnerable? And who can lose in this type of policy?’” Spinks said. “And going from there, I then think, ‘Okay, what are the solutions to the problem that we’re trying to solve?’” 

Photo via Tavarris Spinks/Facebook

This sensitivity extends to the issues he’s observed and lived as a Black and gay man, he said. “Just to be clear, I’m not saying that you need to be gay to understand gay issues or represent gay constituents,” Spinks said. “But, it helps.” 

Living with those two identities is “a lot, frankly, and it’s a lot to navigate,” he said.

Spinks said that while he loves his district’s open-mindedness, he’s also aware that “just 30 minutes” from where he now lives and is running for office, just “trying to exist … I’d have a very different story to tell” about living as a Black man and a member of the LGBTQ community.

“[That’s] one of the reasons why I am politically active, because of knowing how much of my liberty and freedom immediately has an effect in legislation at all levels,” Spinks said. “It made me certainly aware of ‘Who’s in power, how that power is being used, and who is it being used for? And who is it being used against?’”

That issue of which groups have power over minorities has even followed Spinks into his political work, he said. While out canvassing, he was stopped by police officers and asked what he was doing, with the suspicion that he was “up to something.”

“And I was ‘up to’ trying to get people to vote,” Spinks said. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had encounters with police, or interactions with police, that I think were unnecessary.”

Spinks is advocating for a “reimagining” of public safety and law enforcement, he said, and supports reforms that focus on the scope and budget of law enforcement. He said he believes  in returning to “core policing functions” and confronting “systemic dysfunction and racial bias within the department.” Spinks is also calling for the implementation of a citizen review board with subpoena power to oversee the Richmond Police Department. 

Often, Spinks said, law enforcement training doesn’t give officers the tools they need to handle many of the situations they’re asked to. 

“Let’s say we already lived in a place without police,” Spinks said. “And let’s imagine what it would look like for police to exist, and what their roles and functions would be, and their relationship with the people that they’re policing.”

Spinks is also reimagining what the City government’s transparency should look like, he said. He wants to “keep the government accountable and responsive to people.” Citizens shouldn’t have to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to learn about the inner workings of Richmond, Spinks said. Instead, he wants every file to be freely accessible on websites. 

“People need to know why something’s not working, where the money’s going,” he said. “You need to do that, because it’s trust. So much of the City government has lost the trust of the people.”

Spinks has seen much change during his lifetime in Richmond — but he calls it growth, for the most part.

“I want to be a part of helping to guide that growth, and making sure that folks don’t get left behind,” Spinks said. “We should build a better city for everyone.”

Photo via Joseph S.H. Rogers/Facebook

Joseph S.H. Rogers, 7th District

Running for the city council seat in a district against a 12-year incumbent inherently involves “running on a platform of change,” said Joseph S. H. Rogers. While he’s a new candidate for the 7th district, which has been represented for the past 12 years by Cynthia Newbille, Rogers has old ties to Richmond.

As a historian and museum educator, Rogers tends to frame most things with historical context. One example is his family’s connection to Richmond — which is brief, but significant — through Rogers’ ancestor, James Apostle Fields, in the 19th century. “The routes that my family take through the city of Richmond is very interesting,” Rogers said.

Fields was an enslaved man that made his way to freedom from Hanover to Richmond in 1863, where he stayed with his brother John. After almost being captured into slavery again, Fields made his way to Roanoke, Virginia. That’s where Rogers was born, and where his family has been based since the 1860s. 

“I think that we have a tendency in the modern age to believe that everything is new,” Rogers said. “And that we are coming up with radical solutions, innovative and radical solutions to problems, when a lot of those solutions have already been applied. They’ve happened in the past, they have examples that we can refer to from the past. But also in some of those places where those solutions have not yet existed, it’s good to have a historical lens.”

Rogers moved to Richmond in 2014, and he’s been politically active in the city since he became a resident. He said he’s been an advocate for a Marcus Alert and a civilian review board, and part of a lobbying effort on City Hall with the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality since 2017 to “make those changes be taken seriously, as well,” he said. “And I realized that we’ve been, more or less, right. We’ve been right this entire time.”

His decision to run for city council in the 7th district stems from Rogers’ observations of “rallying calls” being made for political action after George Floyd’s death, he said. But his decision wasn’t “just about George Floyd.”

“Here in the City of Richmond, it was about statues, monuments, and Marcus-David Peters,” Rogers said. “And as I listened to everything that was happening, I realized that there was a lot of anger there. But there was a lot of love that was underlying these messages. There’s also just that need for people to feel heard, and for action to be taken. And I recognize that in myself — I had been at the forefront of those issues.”

Rogers’ desire to be part of that movement came from his struggle to bring issues of reform up to the City Council. He said the lack of response led him to think “maybe we need a different City Council.”

“[Or a] councilperson who will listen to the people, before the city is actually on fire,” Rogers said. 

Rogers said he wants to try to be “that voice that works with the people in the city who are voicing these concerns, before they get to a boiling point.”

In addition to calling for the removal of Confederate statues, one reform that Rogers’ is calling for is the defunding of the Richmond Police Department. His campaign is advocating for a citizen review board, and for the City to invest in building up services that will address the tasks that police are asked to do outside of solving crime “that’s stretched them thin,” like wellness checks or responding to mental health crises. Rogers wants to “divest from the policing model, invest in the community first model.”

“Defunding the police is not even talking about a decrease of civil servants,” Rogers said. “Just different civil servants involved in these areas.”

Rogers’ perspective as a historian is once again informing his ideas for policy. His understanding of the history of crime in the 1980s and ’90s, and the police response to that, has shaped his understanding of the current issues with police departments in the U.S.

“We were told that the way to address crime was to punish criminals,” Rogers said. “Ultimately, that led to increases in funding in police departments across the country. And it led to the demonizing of the ‘criminal,’ ultimately seeing them as other. The problem is that primarily the people who they were claiming are criminals were Black people. And so disproportionately Black people were affected by these policies.”

Being a Black man and a member of the Black community, Rogers said he recognises “that these are things that we need to uplift. These are people that we need to uplift.”

Being a member of Richmond’s LGBTQ community has also led him to recognize issues he plans to pursue while on City Council. 

“I identify as bisexual. That is part of my identity. So in the same way that I bring my being a Black man, also being a bisexual Black man is a part of that conversation as well,” Rogers said. “I also want to acknowledge [that] how I plan on helping the LGBTQ community isn’t just by being bi on the council.”

He said he has plans of “putting forward policy that addresses a wide state of things” that affect the LGBTQ community, such as the high rate of homelessness for the trans community. Richmond’s high rate of homelessness in the trans community and in the larger population is “no different” than other cities, Rogers said. 

Looking at Richmond’s past, Rogers said that the problem he’s seen isn’t that the city has changed, but that “we’ve seen the ways in which it hasn’t changed, and hasn’t done better.”

“It doesn’t look like change from the outside, perhaps because we live in this big world where everything else in the nation is changing so rapidly,” Rogers said. “But then, Richmond is still struggling in those same ways that we thought we were gonna be able to move away from.”

Top Photo via Tavarris Spinks/Facebook & Joseph S.H. Rogers/Facebook

In Richmond Mayor’s Race, Math Matters

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Richmond’s mayoral election is more like nine mini-elections, making the path to victory complicated for both incumbent Mayor Levar Stoney and his four challengers. Rich Meagher breaks it down for us.

As Richmond’s mayoral race heats up, it’s worth remembering that this is more than just an election. For incumbent Levar Stoney and his four challengers – Kim Gray, Justin Griffin, Tracey McLean, and Alexsis Rodgers – it’s also a math problem.

What many people don’t realize is that there is not one single mayoral election. Thanks to the city’s arcane election rules, there are actually nine mini-elections, one in each City Council district. To become Mayor, a candidate needs to get a plurality of votes (more than anyone else, not necessarily a majority) in five of the nine districts. If this does not happen, the top two candidates citywide move to a December runoff, where one of them should be able to win the five districts they need.

What’s with the weird election setup? Well, like everything in the former capital of the Confederacy, it’s all about race. 

Richmond has for a long time been a “majority-minority” city, where Blacks outnumber whites. But poverty rates and educational levels work to skew the electorate towards whites. When the current city government structure was set up two decades ago, some were concerned that a citywide election would be dominated by Richmond’s white power structure.

Map of Richmond, with 1970 annexation territory in dark green. By DIT_Richmond, Via Church Hill People’s News.

This was not an idle concern. Richmond actually did not hold elections for much of the 1970s because the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) shut them down. The 1970 annexation of majority-white south side districts from Chesterfield County was rightly interpreted by the DOJ as an attempt to dilute the power of Black voters and maintain white control of the city. The Supreme Court eventually allowed the annexation, but only so long as the city government was divided into districts that protected minority representation.

So when former Governor Doug Wilder and former Mayor Tom Bliley rewrote the city’s charter, they added the “5-of-9” rule to protect Black voters’ voice in determining who leads the city. 

But this rule has many unintended consequences for the 2020 election. Here’s a few:

  • Like the Electoral College nationally, the “5 of 9” rule eliminates the need to win the citywide popular vote. In 2016, Levar Stoney narrowly edged out Jack Berry in overall votes, winning 36 percent to Berry’s 34 percent. But it is entirely possible for a candidate to put together narrow wins in five districts, but lose big in the others, coming in second citywide to another candidate. The popular vote only really matters in determining which two candidates go to a runoff; but even in that runoff, the second place candidate citywide could still take 5 of 9 and become Mayor.
  • The 5 of 9 math creates all kinds of implications for campaign strategy. Rather than trying to win the race outright, the goal for many candidates might be to win a district or two and force a runoff. For example, I would probably handicap Alexsis Rodgers as currently running in third place to Stoney and Gray. But Rodgers could focus her efforts on stealing a district or two, denying the other two a victory; and then use her progressive base to squeak into second place – and the runoff.
  • A runoff election could reset the race entirely. Runoffs are notoriously low-turnout affairs, as voters exhausted by campaigns demonstrate waning interest into the winter. Dedicated core constituencies might matter much more than fundraising or incumbency. Mayor Stoney, who probably has the best shot at winning the November election outright, would surely like to avoid a runoff where his campaign’s advantages are considerably weakened.
  • Multiple candidates complicate the race as well. What if local attorney Justin Griffin and Council member Kim Gray end up competing for votes in the city’s more conservative West End, denying either a shot at the runoff? Griffin and Tracey McLean are probably running considerably behind the other three candidates, but they can still play spoiler by winning a district or at least denying a district to another candidate.
  • Runoffs not only add to election fatigue, but are expensive. (In 2016 the city’s registrar suggested that a runoff might cost the city $160,000.) There’s been a lot of buzz statewide about the possibility of implementing Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which allows citizens to indicate their preferences among multiple candidates on a single ballot. In an RCV system, if no one wins a plurality, people’s second choices are used to automatically determine a winner without the need for a costly second election. Expect to hear more about RCV in Richmond, especially if we do go end up with a runoff this year.

Behind all of these permutations is, ironically, the question of legitimacy. The current system was put in place to counter a rigged history that favored white interests at the expense of minority rights. But in order to ensure a fully participatory system, we may end up with a leader who lacks a popular mandate. A mayor who does not command a majority – or, as I suggest above, might have been elected without even a plurality – could have trouble getting the city to support their policies.

Mayor Levar Stoney

Levar Stoney, who came out of a give-way race in 2016 with barely a third of the vote, certainly has been criticized; but the legitimacy concern has not dogged him as much as it might have seemed after his election. Still, his lack of a mandate might finally be catching up to him. If Stoney loses this election, it is likely because his advantages of incumbency, fundraising, and powerful friends in city and state government still could not generate enough support in the electorate. If he does lose, maybe his real problem was that he never had that many supporters to begin with.

Top Photo by STEPHEN POORE on Unsplash