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Marine Corps & State Department Veteran Dan Ward Ready to Take On Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th District

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“Putin and Russia are at war with the western free world,” said Dan Ward, congressional primary candidate for Richmond’s 7th District, who didn’t mince words when discussing the challenges the US faces abroad. “Putin’s biggest fear is losing power, like all despots.” 

Ward is not your usual Democratic contender in Richmond, let alone Virginia.  A former Colonel in the Marine Corps, Ward was a fighter pilot who flew combat missions over Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo, before joining the State Department to work on cooperative defense programs in Syria and Ukraine. 

The primary for the Democratic Party nominee in Virginia’s 7th District is unique this year, least of all because of the foreign policy credentials of the two main challengers. Ward’s main opponent in the primary is former CIA agent, Abagail Spanburger. Nonetheless, the contest to unseat incumbent Republican Dave Brat is one of the races to watch nationally in this year’s mid-term elections.

He is a yes man for this administration, period,” Ward quickly pointed out, when speaking about Brat. “He is more focused on working for Wall Street, corporations, and PACs then he is in doing anything for the state.

While all politics is inherently local, the time spent overseas by both candidates cannot go unnoticed, more so as US foreign policy remains in constant flux under President Trump. The challenges the US faces abroad are vast and run the global spectrum including Russia, North Korea, Iran, rising nationalism and nativism, chemical weapons usage in Syria, and a resurgent China. For a variety of reasons, this is what makes the Democratic Primary race in the 7th District so interesting. 

Given these complexities, RVA Mag wanted to catch up with Ward and talk about some of these foreign policy challenges and how he assesses the strategic chessboard. When asked if he sees himself as a foreign policy candidate, he answered with a quick and confident, “for sure”. 

Dan Ward

Yet where does one begin in measuring the successes and failures of the great game between nations? It didn’t take long to find out where this should be. “It all starts with Russia,” Ward answered.  

“Putin’s biggest fear is losing power,” said Ward. “How do they maintain power? By destabilizing everything around him, and all of a sudden it [Russia] looks fairly secure.” This is something The German Marshall Fund of the United States was quick to appraise in August last year when they put out an assessment saying, “Russia is seeking to gain relative strength on the world stage by weakening other states through cheap, asymmetric tools.” 

Facebook and various social media platforms were obviously part of the asymmetric toolbox. Another assessment by the same think-tank also stated that since 2004, Russia has meddled in the politics of at least 27 other countries. 

However, one cannot talk about Russia without talking about Syria and the connections between the two. Working for then Secretary of State John Kerry on cooperative defense initiatives for Syria gave Ward an insider’s perspective on the seven-year civil war. He offered both praise and criticism for President Obama’s handling of the conflict. “My biggest criticism of President Obama was his intense desire to focus everything domestically.” 

Ward went on to articulate the dilemma every foreign policy professional faces when trying to balance the needs of domestic and international policy. “The world continues to move…and Syria was the place that we could not allow to explode because of its location and demographic makeup.”  

Despite the current conditions surrounding the conflict, the US was heavily invested in providing non-lethal support during the early stages of the revolution. “From the State Department side, I was part of a logistics support program,” said Ward, when talking about his diplomatic role in providing supplies to groups like the Free Syrian Army. 

Dan Ward with Secretary of State, John Kerry

When asked about the outcome of those programs, Ward said prosaically, “Then the red-line incident happened;” referring to the now infamous “red-line” speech on chemical weapons that Obama failed to enforce after a sarin gas attack left 1,400 dead in 2013. “We walked into the office the next day and started to pack our stuff up, we [the administration] lost our credibility.”  

Credibility was a topic not far from the current discussion on foreign policy. Trump’s handling of US foreign relations has been suspect from the start, more so as policy is conducted via Twitter. When asked how the US mitigates these complex challenges, Ward started by saying the US needed a president who was up for the challenge. “If we had a president that we knew was on the up and up, we would be working with our partners to come up with a response.”  

On the campaign trail, Ward says that he talks about the “assault” on the rule of law from bad-actors like Russia and how the lack of effective policy has affected the US standing globally. “The damage that he [Trump] is doing to our foreign policy is a long-term [issue], even if he is not there long term.” Of the possible solutions to current foreign policy challenges that Ward “110 percent” supports is the transfer of authority for the use of military force back to Congress –  a policy currently being championed by Sen. Tim Kaine. 

“It is time for Congress to be the political branch of government they are supposed to be,” said Ward, adding that legislators have abdicated their responsibility and the executive branch has filled that role.

Regardless of what is happening abroad, the contest for Virginia’s 7th District will ultimately come down to two very different visions of what Virginia’s role should be nationally. “Republicans cannot win an election on issues, they have to have a single issue to campaign on,” said Ward in closing. “I don’t think Republicans have the moral courage to stand-up to this President. It takes moral courage to stand-up and say, ‘no’ when you know you are going to lose your seat.” 

Virginia Republican Forum Equates Gun Debate Led by Parkland Student Survivors to the Holocaust  

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On Passover weekend, one of the most observed holy days for Jewish people celebrating the biblical end of slavery in Egypt, a Virginia Beach (VB) Republican forum made a Facebook post equating the gun control debate led by survivors of the Parkland school shooting to the holocaust – a genocide that claimed an estimated 6 million Jewish lives during WW2.

The post made on Saturday was accompanied by a picture from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum showing thousands of shoes from the victims of the gas chambers and read, “To all the kids that walked out of school to protest guns. These are the shoes of Jews that gave up there [sic] firearms to Hitler. They where [sic] led into gas chambers, murdered and buried in mass graves.” The post finished with, “Pick up a history book and study the US Constitution, and you’ll realize what happens when you give up freedoms and why we have them. Share if you agree.”

As of Sunday the post had been shared over 800 times by pro-gun advocates and has drawn widespread condemnation from the Jewish community and their allies in the Hampton Roads area, reflected in the comments section of the post.

One commentator, Amanda Mileur, summed up the post by saying, “This is revolting. To compare people who want gun control so that kids WON’T be murdered in schools to Nazis is bad enough.” She went on to comment, “But to blame Holocaust victims for their own deaths? To say they died because they allowed the government to take their guns? That is reprehensible, not to mention an inaccurate representation of gun laws under the Nazi regime. You should be ashamed. And so should every single person who supports this post.”

Another commentator, Oonagh Danaan condemned the appropriation of the Jewish experience during the holocaust to perpetuate “your scare tactics” and closed by observing that the Nazis gained power because of similar “propagandist tripes [sic]”. 

Equating stricter gun control laws to the Jewish experience during the holocaust is hardly a new strategy for Republican supporters of the Second Amendment. During the last presidential election, then-candidate Ben Carson also made a similar claim. In his book A More Perfect Union, he opined, “Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating deceitful propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.” And according to Politico, he also reiterated this point on the campaign trail multiple times. Donald Young, a Republican Congressman from Alaska, made this point in February when he said, “How many Jews were put in the ovens because they were unarmed?” Young is also a member of the NRA board.

None of these claims actually hold up to basic historical scrutiny. They remain more about the ideological need for pro-gun advocates to justify their intractable positions as opposed to an accurate assessment of the conditions that led to the holocaust in Nazi Germany.

Despite the misleading claims, the majority of Jews who died in the holocaust were not German citizens, but citizens of the countries the Nazis invaded and occupied. The most basic historical understanding of WW2 would point to the fact that if the armies of those countries could not protect their own citizenry their Jewish minority stood little chance of escaping Nazi terrors – armed or not. None of which takes into account that Jewish partisans, including those who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto, fought fiercely against Nazi aggression throughout the war years (using guns) and this still did not end the industrial genocide of European Jewry.

Poster Commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

RVA Mag reached out to the Republican Party in VB about this post and received this statement from Tina Mapes, the chairwoman of the party, “The VB Republicans page is not an official page of the committee and does not reflect the views of the official party in Virginia Beach. I frequently post reminders of that and did so as recently as last week. I do not condone such inflammatory posts nor do we make endorsements of candidates prior to primaries/official nominating proceedings.”

After this inquiry, they informed RV Mag that they updated their Facebook page to reflect this statement.

While the Virginia Beach Republicans FB page is not the official page of the Republican Party in VB, the messaging tactic of some elements of the conservative base have fully adopted this messaging narrative. So much so that the Anti-Defamation League as far back as in 2013 had this to say about the comparison in a press release, “Concerned over the proliferation of remarks comparing gun control legislation in the United States to policies upheld by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called on critics of gun control legislation to stop using references to Hitler and the Nazis, saying they are ‘historically inaccurate and offensive,’ especially to Holocaust survivors and their families.” In the press release, they cited multiple examples of conservative Republicans using this rationale including writers from the Drudge Report, Fox News, and Judge Andrew Napolitano.

Joash Schulman, a Jewish lawyer and businessman in VB who reached out to RVA Mag echoed the ADL’s concerns. Speaking about the Virginia Beach Republican’s post-Schulman said, “Not only is the post incredibly offensive and inaccurate, it’s just one example of how dangerous and deceptive the messaging tactics have become from the fringes of the Republican Party.” He finished by expressing indignation that a political party would use an image depicting the holocaust to “advance a completely irrelevant political agenda” and that it was troubling that the Republican Party is willing to give political top cover to those who would spread “falsehoods and half-truths”.

*As of Sunday evening the FB page from Virginia Beach Republicans has been taken down. 

Opinion: Tuckahoe School Walkout, Anger with a Purpose

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Wednesday morning I woke up angry. Yes, angry that I had to wake up at 6:30 am, that I had to edit my Model UN position paper, do my Spanish homework, and prepare for my algebra test. But mostly I was angry because I had to do a walkout. Any form of protest is wonderful, especially a school walkout, but the fact that this one is necessary is infuriating.

I was angry that no legislature in America had passed serious gun reform laws, even in Florida, where the Parkland shooting survivors started walkouts and the nationwide march for our lives movement. The NRA, which started out as a perfectly fine organization for hunters and gun owners, has become an organization that corrupts the government and promotes fear in our country. If I have not made it clear already, I walked out of class in the #NEVERAGAIN movement.

We are doing this not to take your guns, but to promote common sense.

The rights to self-defense shall not be infringed, but gun regulation alone doesn’t come close to infringing. Regulation is not taking your guns, it is making sure guns stay away from the people who shouldn’t have them. Regardless of party, most Americans agree that some people shouldn’t own guns, such as undocumented immigrants, people suffering from serious mental health problems, domestic abusers or people with felony convictions, and anyone with the means, motive, and opportunity for a mass shooting, or any shooting for that matter.

For the past few weeks, in both Student Council and IB Summit, Tuckahoe Middle School Principal Ann Greene led student discussions around the walkout and gun discussion while making it clear that the administration could neither endorse nor oppose a protest. Her goal was to maintain a safe environment. The end result was a school-authorized, but student-led walkout. My parents signed the online form a week or so before giving me permission to participate.

It was a poor decision of the school board to issue passes for this protest, as it was meant to be student-led and against school rules. This would have shown the legislature that middle school children were willing to suffer the consequences for standing up for gun reform–something that grown men in Congress have proven unwilling to do.

Today though, in Spanish class, we had a substitute who didn’t understand exactly what was happening with the walkout, so after some confusion, I figured out that I would get a wristband in block six when we were to leave class.

When the clock struck 10, I walked out with a handful of students from my class. We were among the first. Staff directed us to the football field as others came out in clumps, wearing the same wristbands, all headed the same way, until the section of the field we were in was full.

I snatched a few pictures and a video before an administrator announced over a megaphone that pictures and phones were forbidden. I took some more anyway. I asked some students for their thoughts on the event and gun regulation, and they wrote them down in my little notebook. Some students didn’t want to use their name, and I’ve redacted the last names of the rest in the interest of privacy as all are minors.

“I’m glad I took place in my first protest and I was glad to see how many people joined us,” an anonymous student wrote.

“It is nice to see Democrats and Republicans unite out here,” Charlie C. wrote, referring to a few conservative classmates who joined us.

“Sure, use [guns] for self-defense, but don’t let mentally disturbed people have them,” another anonymous student shared.

“I don’t think everyone knew what a silent march meant,” Emmett B. said about our chatty classmates.

“Instead of banning guns, [we should] prevent certain people from gaining them because if you have a mentally unstable person and give them a rifle, they will shoot 20 people. How is giving them a pistol going to change that?” Joseph M. said.

“I think people should have been more respectful because I heard a lot of people talking while we were commemorating people who were killed,” Gus D. wrote, echoing Emmett’s sentiments.

“I think it was disrespectful to the people who were trotting around aimlessly, but okay for the people talking about how gun regulation could have prevented this tragedy,” said another anonymous student, trying to draw a distinction between classmates who were passionate about the issue and others who were just having normal banter.

“I think that most people left because they wanted to miss class. This was a serious tragedy and I don’t that it’s fair to ditch so that you can miss class,” said another anonymous student.

“We should have walked out the whole day,” said a final anonymous student.

After that, I went up to Officer Medina, the resource officer assigned to our school. He wore either a taser or a pistol by his side but seemed nice. Medina, taking a positive view, said the protest, “shows that regardless of the tragedy we experience in life, we will always remain united.”

In the end, I’m still angry, but now, I’m angry with a purpose. We can change this. If we sulk around all day because of congressional disregard of the tens of thousands of people dying yearly, what will change? Now, we are walking out, marching, protesting, using our voice, and fighting tooth and bone for action. The current student-led resistance is more than my classmates and I could have ever hoped for, and more than an inactive Congress could have ever feared.

 

Richmond Students Participating in National Student Walkout Over Gun Violence

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A school is supposed to be a safe place for learning and growing, but they’ve become places where children’s lives are threatened by routine gun violence. Solutions to this problem have been offered from every corner of the country, but progress still seems stalled by politics and money. Many gun control advocates point to the 1996 Dickie amendment, banning the Center for Disease Control from studying gun violence as a primary factor.

Twenty-two years later high school students are giving up their seats and walking out during school. Student activists, along with Women’s March Youth EMPOWER, are promoting a national school walkout scheduled to occur at 10 a.m. on March 14 for exactly 17 minutes in honor of the 17 victims in Parkland, Florida.

Local students plan to join in the protest, both in the surrounding counties and in Richmond city. The Women’s March Youth Empower group is one local partner helping to promote the event, stating a goal on their website to “protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods.”

School shootings are now the norm. Counting every discharge of a firearm on school grounds, the group Everytown for Gun Safety reports over 290 school shootings since the Sandy Hook elementary shooting. Congress still refuses to address or change gun control, but after 17 students and staff were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on Valentine’s Day, students nationwide have taken control of the conversation to demand change.

Students and administrators are now facing tough decisions on how to approach the walk-out. If school leaders support the walk-outs they may be held liable if something happens to a student; if they don’t, they may face political and personal consequences from the growing movement.

Sen. Tim Kaine is one ally. In an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he maintained that students shouldn’t be punished for the walk-out, describing the students as “taking their civics education seriously.”

In Henrico, the school board meeting on Thursday was packed with students speaking about gun violence. A junior from Freeman High School described the chilling reality they face, saying, “When code blue drills are called over the loudspeakers, we no longer have the innate understanding that it’s a drill. We hear the word code blue and we slide under our desks.”

A senior spoke about the impact on the teachers, saying, “This woman, who I would never describe as fearful or meek, told me that for the first time, she was unable to take students [outside] for an activity because she was afraid of what would happen.”

The fear this teacher feels for the lives of her students has negatively impacted her ability to provide the best education she can.

At one point, the Henrico Superintendent momentarily stopped the speakers to address their fears that they’d face suspension for participating in the walkout.

“Rumors spread pretty quickly and sometimes they’re not true,” he said. “We have had no conversations about suspensions for anything that might occur on the 14th or the 24th. While I appreciate your concern about being suspended I think you have gotten some information that is not accurate.”

Gun control was on the minds of Commonwealth voters throughout 2017. According to Gena Reeder, an organizer with the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County Gun Violence Prevention Group, it topped the list of concerns that voters had during the gubernatorial election.

“Exit polls showed that Gun Violence Prevention was a top three motivator for voters at the ballot box, and the new landscape of our House of Delegates is the result of that,” Reeder said.

Reeder is a member of Moms Demand Action, an advocacy group that formed after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and left 20 children and six innocent adults dead. She has lobbied across Virginia for common sense gun legislation in the General Assembly.

She also pointed to support from the National Parent Teacher Association for the walk-out, saying, “The National PTA and the VA PTA are supporters of the school walk-out on March 14 as well as the March For Our Lives on the 24th here in Richmond. Their support is critical because the PTA is the backbone of our schools.”

The National PTA released a statement in support of the walkout along with proposed safety measures and policy recommendations to prevent future school shootings. The policy recommendations are in line with those offered by gun control advocates, including an assault-rifle ban, universal background checks, and lifting any ban on research studying gun violence by repealing the Dickie Amendment.

While productive conversations have taken place between students and administrators, it is still unclear what will happen to students if they participate in the walkout. The Virginia ACLU has pointed out that all schools across the county have to be treated equally, so it should not be up to each individual principal. Instead, the school board and superintendent should make a county-wide decision.

The ACLU has offered to help students that find themselves in trouble over the walk-out. According to ACLU VA Executive Director Claire Guthrie Gustañaga, “Students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

A local group has been working hard to convince school officials to be supportive of the walk-out. Henrico-based Together We Will is currently pushing the School Board to allow district-wide walk-outs without punishment. Melissa T. McKenney, an organizer for the group, worked to build more support for the campaign on social media, writing, “Please support our students and teachers by emailing school principals, Dr. Kinlaw, and the school board.”

McKenney spoke with RVA Mag to say she is working to ensure that the students don’t lose the will to stand up for what they believe. “I’m concerned that disciplining students for participating sends the message that civic engagement and critical thinking are not only discouraged, but punishable offenses.”

In Richmond, new superintendent Jason Kamras has yet to make a public statement on the walk-out, but supported gun control in a tweet that read, “Arming teachers is an awful idea. The only answer: gun control.”

We reached out to his office on Tuesday and a spokesperson said they are working on a plan and were not ready to comment.

Arming teachers was an idea floated by President Trump on Twitter, where he wrote, “highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!”

Teachers have not offered wide support for the President’s suggestion. One high school teacher from Henrico who remained anonymous for professionals reasons told RVA Mag that she supports the walkout.

“I love the idea of the walkout. I think it will be a powerful movement. My students have my full support if they participate,” she said, adding, “They have been really affected by the school shootings and I’ve really worked to incorporate current events into our lessons so they’re seeing what’s going on in the world. It’s really encouraging that so many of them want to see change.”

Henrico County Public Schools spokesman Andy Jenks told RVA Mag that they are still working to provide guidance for schools. He said they want to be supportive of students and their families while also being mindful of safety concerns around students.

While Republicans and Democrats continue to squabble over talking points and accusations of pandering to donors or special interest groups, children attending public schools across the country are pleading for their lives and forcing politicians to reckon with truths that are deeply disturbing and uncomfortable.

Despite partisan accusations of being “paid crisis actors” and suffering a horrific, traumatizing event, Emma Gonzalez, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, and many others continue to advocate for gun control. The reality of school shootings has given them, along with every other kid in America, a personal background on an issue that remains ideological or partisan for many people in positions of power.

Seeking Refuge: An RVA Mag Documentary Series on Syrian Refugees

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Syria is the great humanitarian disaster of our generation. According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report for 2017, almost 500,000 civilians have been killed with another 100,000 detained or disappeared since the start of the civil conflict in 2011. The majority of the conflict has taken place in dense urban environments, which has led to an unparalleled refugee and migration crisis.

The UN has estimated that close to eight million people have fled their homes, making this the single greatest migration of people since World War 2. To put in greater perspective, the pre-war population was estimated to only be 22 million. Some of this population is internally displaced, living in Syria, but unable to return home, while four million have fled to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and even war-torn Iraq. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, has said, “This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation. It is a population that needs the support of the world but is instead living in dire conditions and sinking deeper into poverty.”

As the refugee and immigration debate rages on, RVA Mag, in partnership with the non-profit media company, AP Math Labs, traveled around Virginia and Maryland talking with Syrian refugees about their experience of civil war, displacement, and eventual resettlement in the US. What started as an exploratory conversation with refugee families, ended up becoming a three-part documentary series. The stories we heard were in drastic juxtaposition to the misleading information coming out of the White House. Therefore, when making these three documentary videos, we asked ourselves one simple question:  Can you imagine a scenario that starts with the physical and emotional stress of living in war – surrounded by near-constant death and destruction – and then having to make a decision to put your family in greater danger to seek sanctuary elsewhere?

This decision means traveling on roads controlled by a hostile regime that thinks nothing of killing their own people from the air and ground, facing terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS), and being exposed to the vast network of unregulated militias, criminal syndicates, and foreign proxy groups funded by regional powers like Saudia Arabia and Iran, all for a chance to rely on the charity of foreign countries who sequester refugees in overcrowded camps that can maintain only the most basic standards of cleanliness and livability.

What we rapidly came to understand is that the emotional and physical stress experienced by these families is impossible to understand unless you have shared this experience. This is the story we set out to capture.

What we learned in this process was that for those who escaped the violence, there is little consolation living as a refugee. Research has shown that the 600,000 refugees in Jordan live on as little as three dollars a day.  And as their ordeal continued, the negative consequences of being displaced persisted, such as forced marriages, child labor, and exploitation only increases. Almost half of all Syrian refugees are children under the age of 18, with the UN claiming 2.5 million are displaced – some have not been to school in years.

Since returning home is not an option, applying for refugee status is the only real hope for families seeking to rebuild their lives. Yet coming to the US as a refugee is a long and arduous process. Contrary to what anti-refugee politicians and pundits would tell you, the process is defined by countless screenings, security clearances, and evaluations. The International Rescue Committee, an international humanitarian aid organization has detailed an 11-step process for refugees, which takes anywhere from 18 months to three years for families to be cleared for resettlement. This includes in-person interviews, medical assessments, and cultural orientation – a family does not just show up at the airport and get let into the US.

Refugee Process. Graphic by IRC

The reason RVA Mag decided to make this series was to highlight the suffering of those who have experienced the worst depravities of war and conflict – to demystify the politics, and allow the human story to be told. To understand the situation of Syrian refugees from any other capacity is a travesty. And as the debate over immigration and refugee policy continues it is important that our readers have the opportunity to see and hear directly from the people who have the most at stake – the families who might be forced to return to the conditions they fled. Not to mention that spreading fear against families seeking sanctuary is anathema to the American experience and is a recent phenomenon that does not bear scrutiny. Even the conservative Cato Institute, in a research paper titled Terrorism and Immigration: A Risk Analysis, found that the chances of  “an American being murdered in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year.”

Starting tomorrow, RVA Mag will release one video a week every Tuesday for the next three weeks at 10:00 am. You will be able to find them on our Facebook page and in the Watch section of rvamag.com. The conflict in Syria, much like the conflict over our immigration policy, continues to rage on. What is lost in all of this is the people, families, and communities whose lives have been destroyed.

San Francisco to Dismiss Decades of Marijuana Charges, Virginia Can’t Get Decrim Bill Out of Committee

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How is marijuana still an issue in 2018? Oh wait, because Virginia. Unlike, San Francisco and other localities all through the US who are decriminalizing marijuana, Virginia just killed a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in committee. Earlier this week, nine Republicans who sit on the Senate Courts of Justice Committee voted against the measure in a vote that was cast along partisan lines. The bill, sponsored by Senator Adam Ebbin (D-30th District), would have revised the punishment for possession from a criminal misdemeanor to a civil penalty.

Let’s not steal San Francisco’s thunder, however. Their recent announcement is not just a pioneering moment in the fight to end the prohibition of marijuana, but is a landmark announcement for criminal justice reform. According to the Los Angeles Times, “San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanors and felonies dating to 1975.” Under this policy close to 5,000 convictions will be reviewed with a view towards more lenient resentencing, with an additional 3,000 misdemeanors prior to legalization being “dismissed and sealed.” San Francisco’s District Attorney, George Gascon, has been quoted as saying that federal drug policy is draconian and “going backwards,” while the Golden City is “once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country’s disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular.”

California voted to legalize marijuana in November 2016, after the Proposition 64 referendum which passed with 57 percent of the vote – legalization went into effect as of January this year.

So where does this leave Virginia? Governor Northam, then Candidate Northam, was quite vocal on the campaign trail about the discrepancy of marijuana sentencing in the Commonwealth. In an interview with Transmission, Northam said, “There are far too many people who end up in our courts, jails, and penitentiaries.” He went on to say, “There is also an inequality out there, African Americans are 2.8 times more likely to be put in jail for marijuana.”

Previously, Republicans have also taken a positive stance on decriminalization. This past November, Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment said, “I think it’s absolutely crazy that we continue to lock people up for possession of a modest amount of marijuana.” Norment, finished by saying, “We are tough on crime. It’s a question of what crimes we want to be tough on.”

Norment reversed his position this past week, citing that the bill would likely never make it out of committee.

Nonetheless, Virginia’s State Crime Commission released a report last October finding that current marijuana laws disproportionately target black communities – and that research into decriminalization in the Commonwealth is outdated – focusing mainly on medicinal research such as that done by the Joint Commission on Health Care. Which is another part of the long-standing issue surrounding decriminalization legislation. Yet according to Jenn Michelle Pedini, the Executive Director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in Virginia, eight out of ten Virginians support “fines not crimes” for possession of marijuana by adults. “It’s time for our state legislature and Commonwealth’s Attorneys to reflect the will of those they were elected to represent, and not simply their own profit structures,” stated Pedini when asked by RVA Mag what the difference between Virginia and California really was when assessing decriminalization.

Virginia will continue to exist in a purgatorial no man’s land with regards to decriminalization. As a result, the trend of arresting and incarcerating first-time marijuana users will likely continue for the time being. Indeed, the State Crime Commission found that 133,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in the last decade alone, making Virginia one of the leading states for marijuana arrests.

“The good news is we have the Crime Commission Study to serve as the rational basis of support for decriminalization legislation,” said Pedini. Still, Virginia is a long way from enacting anything that resembles what San Francisco or California is doing, something Pedini was keen to point out. “District Attorneys in California are moving to expunge and reduce marijuana charges as far back as 1975, now that California has chosen to regulate sales to adults, while here in Virginia, Commonwealth’s Attorneys are fighting tooth and nail against any measure of penalty reduction for possession.”

 

Virginia Politics Sponsored by F.W. Sullivans