For some, it came as a shock when City Councilor Wes Bellamy announced yesterday that he would not run for re-election, especially considering his public remarks the week before that made it sound otherwise. At his March 20 Virginia Festival of the Book event with former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, where the two politicians […]
For some, it came as a shock when City Councilor Wes Bellamy announced yesterday that he would not run for re-election, especially considering his public remarks the week before that made it sound otherwise. At his March 20 Virginia Festival of the Book event with former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, where the two politicians […]
I had lived in Charlottesville for 10 years almost to the day before I saw the inside of City Council chambers. I’d paid my gas bill in person once or twice. I think I bought a trash sticker in 2012. But I’d never even been upstairs at City Hall before. If you’d asked me at […]
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 […]
Phoebe Stevens is a pacifist. She says that’s why she wrapped her arms around Jason Kessler at his August 13, 2017, press conference as a crowd of angry protesters closed in on him. But after she knocked him down in the chaos, he accused her of assault and battery—a charge she was convicted of in […]
Tyler Watkins Davis entered an Alford plea February 8, and though it’s technically a guilty plea, it means the man from Middleburg, Florida, is not admitting guilt, but acknowledging that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him of malicious wounding in the brutal parking garage assault of DeAndre Harris. Defense attorney Matthew Engle said his […]
By Jonathan Haynes City Councilor Wes Bellamy sat down for a revelatory interview at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center January 10 to promote his new book, Monumental: It Was Never About a Statue. The title alludes to the former vice-mayor’s push to remove Confederate monuments from Charlottesville parks, and the racist backlash it […]
He wore a construction helmet that said “commie killer” as he joined in on a brutal beating in a downtown parking garage, striking the already downed DeAndre Harris with a stick until it broke as Harris struggled to pick himself up off the ground. And though two out-of-town men already found guilty of malicious wounding […]
Attorney General Mark Herring has spent the past few years studying the issue of hate crimes and white supremacist violence across the commonwealth and advocating for new legislation to combat it. On December 5—coincidentally during the state’s murder trial against the neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017—Herring hosted a […]
Many thought James Fields’ mental health would be used as a defense during his murder trial– but surprisingly, it never came up. Instead, jurors learned about his troubled state of mind during the December 10 sentencing hearing, after he’d been found guilty of murdering Heather Heyer and injuring many others at the Unite the Right […]
It’s in the jury’s hands now. The prosecution and defense have given their closing arguments on the ninth day of James Alex Fields Jr.’s first-degree murder trial. The man charged with killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others when he rammed his car into a crowd at an August 12, 2017, white supremacist rally also […]