Good morning, RVA: 2,740 • 43; Black History Month; and a bunch of legislative updates

Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, and today we see the sun! It might take until later this afternoon, but we’re gonna see that thing and feel good about it. Expect highs in the mid 40s, the snow to melt, and the opportunity to enjoy a really great cup of coffee/tea/beverage of your choice.

Water cooler

Yesterday afternoon, police officers were called to the 1500 block of Mechanicsville Turnpike and found Jaquon Mitchell, a man in this 30s, shot to death. According to the RPD’s homicide list, this is the second murder of 2021.

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,740 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 43 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 395 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 155, Henrico: 160, and Richmond: 80). Since this pandemic began, 683 people have died in the Richmond region. That’s three straight days with new reported cases in the 2,000s, and the seven-day average of the same metric fell below 4,000 for the first time since January 1st. We’ve got a similar decreasing trend in hospitalizations: We haven’t seen the seven-day average of new hospitalizations under 100 since the last day of 2020. Additionally, the seven-day average of deaths, which, remember, does lag behind the rest of the metrics, appears to have at least plateaued. These all seem like good signs of progress? Decreasing cases + increasing vaccinations = the world I want to live in right now. I am still a little nervous that Data Reporting Issues will return to dash any hopes that my spreadsheet has generated, but I’m going to allow myself to feel optimistic this morning!

Michael Paul Williams at the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes about Black History Month and what it means to look back at 2020 through the lens of history. To quote a bit: “To call February’s Black History Month a ‘celebration’ always felt a bit off, but never more so than this year. Trumpism, resurgent white nationalism, insurrection and the disparate toll of COVID-19 on people of color highlight the folly of treating Black history like a footnote. You can’t understand this moment until you accept that America’s treatment of its Black citizens represents a profound failure of democracy. America’s shallow pool of knowledge of this story has just enough depth to drown us.”

The City’s Economic Development Authority has approved a $120,000 grant to local restaurant delivery company ChopChop—think GrubHub, but local. From the press release: “The grant will allow ChopChop to create the Richmond Rate Reduction Program. The Richmond Rate Reduction Program reduces delivery fees charged to local restaurants from 20% to 7% for a three-month period.” A 13% reduction in fees charged to restaurants seems like maybe a noticeable amount? I have no idea! I do know, however, that this $120,000 runs out after three months, so we’ll see if ChopChop will keep their new, lower rates moving forward (which is definitely their “long-term objective”). Also, neither here nor there, this administration loves restaurants. I love restaurants, too, and I desperately miss them, but they love them, like, a lot a lot.

Wyatt Gordon, writing for Style Weekly looks at how Feed More and Richmond Public Schools have worked (and continue to work!) to address hunger in our city. I love this quote from Doug Pick, Feed More’s chief executive, "This pandemic has made really clear the haves and have nots of our country…We are a really well-run logistics business with a big heart, but hunger is not the problem—it’s poverty.”

General Assembly update! Keep in mind that bills die horrible deaths at many, many points along the path to becoming a law. Try not to get too stoked or upset about any of these things, because who knows when they could radically change or flameout entirely. First, for the Virginia Mercury, Ned Oliver covers the progress on marijuana legalization. Check out this exchange between Sen. Jennifer McClellan and Sen. Creigh Deeds: “Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, noted lawmakers have already decriminalized marijuana, which reduced the penalty for possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor punishable by jail time to a $25 civil infraction…‘At least where I live, law enforcement don’t feel incentivized to write the tickets and they’re not writing the tickets,’ Deeds said. McClellan responded, ‘With all due respect, I think that might be different in other parts of the state.’” 🔥! Also in the Mercury, Kate Masters reports that a bill “that would require local school divisions to offer in-person classes passed the Senate Tuesday.” Fascinating stuff, as it mostly aligns with what President Biden has said recently but certainly doesn’t fit with the Governor’s whole idea of giving school districts local control over their reopening decisions. Finally, Frank Green at the RTD says a bill abolishing the death penalty in Virginia escaped committee and lands in front of the full Senate today. I can’t handle some of the quotes from legislators in this article as they debate which crimes a person should be killed for committing. Related, and always interesting, the Wason Center at CNU has done some polling around these issues and summarizes their findings with: “Virginia voters favor pot legalization, paid sick leave; most would repeal death penalty, minimum sentencing; health care, schools favored most for budget increases.”

America has a new head of transportation: Secretary Mayor Pete! Yesterday, the Senate voted 86–13 to confirm Pete Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation. Buttigieg is, of course, the first openly gay cabinet member. Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee who voted against confirmation, set the vision for what Secretary Mayor Pete could do in his new role: “use the department for social, racial, and environmental justice causes.” I hope he does! Transportation impacts all of those things—and it can build and support those causes, or it can literally break communities apart.

This morning’s longread

The Biden Blitz

What even has ol' Biden been up to over the last couple of weeks? It’s been (blessedly) hard to keep up since the President now spends most of his time presidenting instead of retweeting racists. Anyway, the Weekly Sift (one of my favorite blogs), runs through the big list of Biden’s recent executive orders and what they all mean/do.

To his credit, though, Biden has grasped the need to demonstrate quickly that his election matters. The people voted, so things will change. What he can do quickly is issue executive orders — 22 in his first week, as opposed to Trump’s four and Obama’s five. ABC News has listed 33. This is a tricky business, because a government that runs by executive order is not a democracy, even if the executive was elected. So it’s important that Biden’s orders have three qualities: They need to be popular, so that he is seen to be speaking for the American people rather than dictating to them. (Maybe a few could be unpopular, but the broad sweep of his orders needs to garner public support.) They also need to effective, because orders that sound like something but turn out to be nothing will just erode trust in democracy even more.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.