(Not) reaching out
After firing former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney last year, the City of Charlottesville has finally begun looking for her replacement. In July, it paid D.C. executive search firm POLIHIRE […]
Work it
After her husband, Damien Banks, founded the Banks Collage Basketball Association, a men’s summer basketball league, in Charlottesville in 2010, Shawna Banks was inspired to create an all-women hip-hop team […]
Peer support
After having multiple traumatic experiences with the local mental health care system, activist Myra Anderson founded Brave Souls on Fire in 2015, creating a supportive and affirming space for Black […]
Take a whack
While ax throwing has grown increasingly popular in recent years, it has long been part of the world of lumbersports. In April, Devils Backbone brought lumbersports back to the Charlottesville […]
Intergenerational ties
In 2011, the Jefferson Area Board for Aging—a nonprofit serving older adults, disabled individuals, and caregivers in the Charlottesville area—was inspired to create its own preschool, after a Montessori school […]
Gardens galore
In honor of her late husband Ray “Junior” Arroyo, who loved to garden, local resident Terri Arroyo teamed up with her daughters to open Plant Studio last fall. The Downtown […]
Union woes
In 2020, the Virginia General Assembly overturned the state’s decades-long ban on collective bargaining in the public sector, allowing municipal employees to unionize. Since then, some Charlottesville employees have urged […]
Looking back
During the now-infamous tiki torch rally at the University of Virginia, hundreds of white supremacists marched across Grounds on the evening of August 11, 2017. Shouting racist and anti-Semitic chants […]
‘He is very sorrowful’
Less than two weeks before the fifth anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally, the City of Charlottesville announced it would not be terminating an employee who participated in […]
‘They were waiting for July to come’
Shortly after the pandemic hit, Mable Christian’s daughter’s work hours were drastically cut. Christian, who has lived with her daughter at Mallside Forest Apartments—a low-income housing complex in Albemarle County—since […]