“Speed is of the essence”
This week, eight former members of Charlottesville’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces released a letter urging the city to immediately shroud the downtown statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and to take steps to ensure that the monuments are permanently removed from public view.
In 2016, the commission, made up of academics, researchers, and activists, recommended that the city remove or re-contextualize its Confederate monuments. Now, both the state legislature and the state Supreme Court have given Charlottesville’s City Council the green light to get rid of the statues.
“The statues embody ideologies of white supremacy and are rallying points for those who embrace violence and hatred. They have no legitimate place in any public sphere,” reads the letter. “The murder of Heather Heyer and the injuries inflicted on scores of others will forever be associated with them.”
The former commissioners also emphasize that moving the statues to a less prominent location would be an insufficient measure because it might allow them to retain their sinister symbolic meaning.
“The last few years have shown that few, if any, museums or other institutions that are capable of properly re-contextualizing the nation’s Confederate statues and memorials are willing to accept them,” the letter reads. “Council must ensure that the statues are never again displayed in public.”
At Monday night’s council meeting, half a dozen speakers echoed the points laid out in the letter. “Speed is of the essence,” said former city councilor Kristin Szakos. “This community has waited for four years to remove these statues, and has seen the harm that they continue to bring to our community with their message of white supremacy.”
The city plans to follow the process for statue removal outlined in the 2020 law passed by the Virginia legislature. Under that law, City Council has total discretion on what to do with the statues, though it is required to solicit public feedback before making any decisions. Council is expected to hold a public hearing on the statue removal process in early June.
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Quote of the week
“They need to be melted down and transformed, as our culture needs to transform.”
—local resident Lena Seville, urging City Council to permanently destroy the Lee and Jackson statues
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More name games
Charlottesville City Schools have begun the process of evaluating the names of all their facilities, in hopes of removing Confederates, eugenicists, and other scoundrels from the faces of public school buildings. First up in the audit are Clark Elementary, named for General George Rogers Clark, and Venable Elementary, named for Confederate officer Charles S. Venable. The schools held a public hearing this week.
No longer acting
After a week of interviewing potential city attorneys, City Manager Chip Boyles recommended City Council permanently hire Acting City Attorney Lisa Robertson during Monday’s meeting. Robertson defended Charlottesville in the yearslong court battle over the infamous Lee and Jackson statues, ending with the city’s victory at the Virginia Supreme Court last month. How’s that for a job interview!
A Joy-ful day
May 3 is now Joy Johnson Day in the City of Charlottesville. Johnson, a longtime public housing resident and advocate for her neighbors, won the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Cushing Niles Dolbeare Lifetime Service Award in April. In the city’s official proclamation, it thanked Johnson for “her unwavering perseverance to housing justice over the past twenty years.”
GOP face off
Virginia Republicans will choose their nominee for governor at a nominating convention this weekend. Candidates include businessmen Glenn Youngkin and Pete Snyder, former Speaker of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox, and wild-card state senator Amanda Chase. Check back here next week for a full rundown of the convention results.
