In June, State Senator Jennifer McClellan announced her candidacy for governor of Virginia. McClellan is a 14-year veteran of the Virginia legislature who grew up in Petersburg. In this year’s session, she was a sponsor of significant clean energy and abortion access bills, as well as Virginia’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. If elected […]
Last month, I was lucky to be able to head for the hills with two old friends—we spent a long weekend hiking and camping on the Appalachian Trail in southwest Virginia. We’re all amateur campers. From the top of a mountain, we marveled at a far-off hailstorm, only for it to sweep over us and […]
On July 5, Dominion Energy abruptly canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, an $8 billion project that would have carried natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina. Environmental activists of all persuasions spent six years fighting the project before finally prevailing over the gigantic power corporation. As the victory set in, C-VILLE caught […]
The main character in the story on page 10 of this week’s paper doesn’t have a name. He doesn’t have a face. Shortly after a video of the brutal arrest of Christopher Gonzalez was posted on Instagram July 8, the Charlottesville Police Department released 17 minutes of body camera footage of the incident. Since arriving […]
“If you can stay off the Downtown Mall and I don’t see you again, then I won’t take you,” said the Charlottesville police officer. “That’s not going to happen,” said Christopher Gonzalez, who had been lying on his back on the mall outside CVS. It was 5:30pm on Wednesday, July 8. The sun was shining. […]
Charlottesville’s old woolen mill, peering over the Rivanna River on the town’s eastern edge, had been gathering dust for years. Now, the rubble has been cleared, and it’s time to drink beer. In 2018, app development company WillowTree began a $25 million overhaul of the building. WillowTree’s employees will move into their 85,000-square-foot offices […]
A month ago, George Floyd was murdered by the police. Since then, Damani Harrison has led a group of artists “coming together to speak truth to power” in the multimedia “One for George” project—our cover story this week. Also in this week’s issue: The Charlottesville police department has been harming Black and brown people for […]
Arrest warrants were issued for six people accused of spray painting the street outside the Charlottesville Police Department over the last two weeks. Police say the demonstrators “vandalized the streets and the sidewalks with cruel, threatening, and hate-filled language.” The first four charges, announced in a June 25 press release, concerned paint on the sidewalk […]
Two and a half years after the events that sparked its creation, the official Charlottesville Police Civilian Review Board held its first meeting on Monday. National events have led to increased scrutiny of police departments, and so the inaugural meeting of this body dedicated to police oversight was highly anticipated (to the extent that any […]
“Coronavirus Could Be the End of Alt-Weeklies,” declared a Mother Jones headline in March. Around the country, venerable snark-slinging rags have dropped employees or shut down entirely, crippled by cratering ad revenue. C-VILLE, unfortunately, has not escaped the crash. Our staff is a lot smaller than it was just a few weeks ago. (The […]