Governor Ralph Northam was in Charlottesville today to announce a budget amendment that would end the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court fines and costs. The amendment would also reinstate driving privileges for 627,000 Virginians whose licenses are suspended. At Legal Aid Justice Center, which has filed suit against the commissioner of […]
Former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu and Charlottesville City Councilor Wes Bellamy have a lot in common. They’re both Southerners who, as elected officials, have gotten death threats for daring to say it’s time for Confederate monuments to go. And they’ve both written books on the topic, which brought them to the same Jefferson School […]
Affordable housing is a priority for Charlottesville, and to pay for that in its $188 million budget, the city proposes raising the meals tax, an idea restaurant owners traditionally hate. The 1 percent increase on the current 5 percent meals tax adds 10 cents to a $10 meal and would raise $2.4 million, according to […]
The former UVA Echols Scholar convicted for the 1985 murders of his girlfriend’s parents has gotten another prominent supporter. Former Canadian minister of justice Irwin Cotler, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and who was an attorney for political prisoners Nelson Mandela and Natan Sharansky, was in town March 5 and says […]
Rob Vaughan, founder of Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, died March 6 at age 74, after a rapid progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to his obituary. He leaves behind the largest, best-funded, and what a colleague calls “the gold standard” of humanities organizations in the country. When then-UVA president Edgar Shannon tapped Vaughan, an English […]
Before August 12, 2017, many people thought of America’s Confederate statues as harmless pieces of history—if they thought of them at all. Then the hate groups came to Charlottesville, ostensibly to protest the monuments’ removal. The violent clashes that led to the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of dozens, and the sight of […]
During his decades-long career as a National Geographic photographer, Bill Allard traveled the world and documented everything from India’s Untouchables and residents of the Marais in Paris to Montana cowboys and Easter week traditions in Peru. But for all of Allard’s adventures, there’s something the octogenarian, who’s also an accomplished musician, still longs to do: […]
The National Socialist Movement, a defendant in a post-Unite the Right lawsuit, made a bizarre shift when its former leader signed over the organization to black civil rights activist James Hart Stern, who then filed a motion admitting liability for the neo-Nazi group. The complaint, Sines v. Kessler, alleges that the 25 white supremacist defendants […]
The local broadcast landscape underwent a major shift Monday when Gray Television announced it was buying legacy station NBC29 for $12 million—and unloading the stations it started here as the Newsplex 15 years ago. Gray, the third largest broadcast group in the country, has had its eye on NBC29 “forever,” says Gray VP Kevin Latek. […]
Douglas Turner Day IV, former Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society executive director and noted Piedmont blues-style musician, died January 26 from pancreatic cancer. He was 63. An avid social media-ist, he wrote on Facebook January 22, “Well, it’s official. Hospice later this week. I’ll be posting a fundraiser for my album.” Day graduated from UVA, and […]