When Joy Johnson moved into Westhaven, the City expected public housing residents to follow the rules, not help make them. With little else besides willpower and her own commanding voice, she has given residents unprecedented influence in the notoriously raucous world of Charlottesville housing politics. As an activist, Johnson has relished her role in the mix, but as a mother, she is ambivalent about the challenges her family has faced as a result.
When Joy Johnson moved into Westhaven, the City expected public housing residents to follow the rules, not help make them. With little else besides willpower and her own commanding voice, she has given residents unprecedented influence in the notoriously raucous world of Charlottesville housing politics. As an activist, Johnson has relished her role in the mix, but as a mother, she is ambivalent about the challenges her family has faced as a result.
Local police are being questioned for their use of force in several incidents. An investigation by Virginia State Police will look into a Charlottesville police shoot-out October 20 that left fugitive Elvis Gene Shifflett wounded and hospitalized. Less than a week later, two cousins who were shot by police in separate incidents in 2004 filed suit against the Albemarle and Charlottesville police departments.
Police think they’ve found the real rapist in the year-old case of a UVA law student. John Henry Agee pleaded guilty October 24 to sexually assaulting the woman and acknowledged the court could also convict him of rape. But a man who was wrongly accused of the crime is still suing the victim for misidentifying […]
Virginia has a long love affair with capital punishment. The first recorded execution in the colonies was in 1608 when Capt. George Kendall was put to death in Jamestown for being a Spanish spy. Four years later, the governor issued the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which imposed death for even minor offenses such as killing chickens, trading with Indians andâwait for itâstealing grapes.
The case of a fired UVA employee seeking $1 million for wrongful termination inched its way up the legal ladder last week. On October 24, U.S. District Court judge Norman K. Moon ruled that while some of her secondary claims wouldn’t hold up, on the constitutional claims Dena Bowers just may have a point.Bowers is […]
Charlottesville Police Officer Ron Webster is retiring after an almost 40-year career that\’s taken him from patrolling the Corner to a foot beat on Main Street\’s “new” Downtown Mall. And, in his time on the forensic unit, he\’s seen technology go from old-fashioned suspect sleuthing to fingerprinting and DNA matching.
“This is not my comfort zone, I don\’t enjoy being here,” said contractor Don Hicklin of Nielson Construction Company when it was his turn to speak. And a quick glance around the room full of tense faces at the October 26 Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) meeting suggested that he was not alone in those sentiments.
The Advance Mills bridge in northern Albemarle County reopened October 24 after being closed almost a week for inspections\-he latest example of the gentle precautions needed to protect an aging bridge.
Water Street was, literally, flowing with water on October 26, when a water main near the City Center for Contemporary Arts broke, creating a bubbling gurgle at its intersection with Second Street SE, just off the Downtown Mall. Was this small gusher a result of incessant utility work that\’s been going on in that corridor?
Hold on to your seats—apparently, America is in a library-related crisis. “File Not Found,” a September 2006 Atlantic Monthly article, elaborates on the “digital preservation problem,” an issue that spans from the Library of Congress all the way to the UVA Library System. Basically, since we stopped storing information on stone tablets and papyrus scrolls, […]