Good morning, RVA: 471↗️ • 9↗️; an abundance of tear gas; and an Airbnb ordinances

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday. Expect heat, humidity, and a (smaller) chance of rain this evening. It’s vampire time in Richmond: Get your physical activity in before or after the sun comes up / goes down.

Water cooler

Richmond Police report that Willie L. Johnston, 81, was shot to death on the 1400 block of Stoney Run Road early yesterday morning. According to RPD data, 21 people have been murdered in 2020.

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 471↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 9↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 56➡️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 20, Henrico: 13, and Richmond: 23). Since this pandemic began, 213 people have died in the Richmond region. I’m still noodling on including sparklines in this email, because all of today’s emoji trend arrows (remember: they represent the change in seven-day average as compared to yesterday) have flipped directions but the actual changes in seven-day averages are pretty small. For example, in this graph you can see the number of new reported cases has remained basically flat over the last bunch of days.

Police once again filled our city’s streets with tear gas last night.

The Governor’s decision to close the Lee Circle overnight provides the context for last night’s protests and the police’s now-routine decision to use chemical weapons on Richmonders. First, the Governor’s decision is fairly far-reaching, prohibiting climbing on the statue, limiting occupancy in the circle to 500 people, and preventing folks from adding additional context to the statue—whether that be signs, flags, posters, or more paint. The circle will close at sunset and open at sunrise. I mostly understand the need—or at least the desire—to close the park at night and prohibit benign-but-illegal behavior. But preventing folks from continuing to evolve that space as they grieve, celebrate, heal, and memorialize? Really bad call by the Governor, who himself understand the symbolic power of the circle and held a rally there just a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, I wrote a bunch of words about how the community-driven placemaking at Lee Circle is a model we should learn from and follow. The State should buzz off and mind their own business.

So, with Lee Circle off the table as a rallying ground for protests, some folks ended up behind City Hall on Marshall Street—the same spot where the Mayor apologized in front of a crowd of hundreds for the Richmond Police Department’s decisions to gas peaceful protestors at the Lee Monument. It looks like this group of protestors blocked the streets, set up a couple tents, and hunkered down for the night. I don’t know what kicked it off, but at 12:42 AM RPD declared the crowd “an unlawful assembly due to conditions of activity such as sit-ins, sit-downs, blocking traffic, blocking entrances or exits of buildings that impact public safety or infrastructure.” That’s real rich coming from the the folks who still have huge concrete barriers setup on Grace Street blocking traffic and the entrance to the literal headquarters of public safety, but, whatever.

At some point, for some reason, the police decided folks needed to go and just absolutely inundated the area with tear gas. This video of cops treating the place I go to watch public meetings like a war zone is exhausting. Watching cops shoot a tear gas canister at a person just feet from a bus stop I use all the time is exhausting. Listen, I’m not out in the streets each night and am tucked safely in bed while people scream and run and cough just a couple of miles from my house, but each morning I wake up thoroughly exhausted and confused. It’s like my brain can’t or won’t associate these videos that look like a found-footage disaster movie with the places I frequent all the time. That’s City Hall! I’m literally there all of the time! That’s the GRTC Temporary Transfer Plaza! I just rode through 9th Street with my son the other day! What the heck is going on?

Yesterday, at City Council’s informal meeting (which I ended up live tweeting) Councilmember Jones asked Mayor Stoney if he would ban the use of chemical weapons by the Richmond Police Department. The Mayor equivocated a bit and repeated what he’s said before, something along the lines of he sees the use of tear gas as an absolute last resort. I just cannot reconcile what the Mayor said in that meeting yesterday to the behavior of the police last night. I absolutely refuse to believe that there was no other options to disperse last night’s crowd—they’d set up a movie screen and camp chairs for Pete’s sake! Who was in charge last night, the Mayor and the RPD or the Governor and the Virginia State Police? If the former, I want to know how he can possibly think last night’s response was justified. If the latter, I would love to hear someone ask a bunch of questions about police use of chemical weapons (and the closing of the Lee Circle) at today’s regularly-scheduled coronavirus briefing.

As the police give us nightly examples of the desperate need for public safety reform, City Council and the Mayor’s administration have started to take steps toward policy change. Yesterday, the Mayor presented his Local Roadmap for Public Safety Reform (PDF) at Council’s informal meeting. It’s mostly stuff we’ve heard him commit to before: updating the RPD’s existing policies on chokeholds and Duty to Intervene, creating a Civilian Review Board, the Marcus Alert, and creating the Richmond Task Force on Reimagining Public Safety. One new piece of information: The City Attorney said that a CRB created by Council could in fact have subpoena power. This is counter to what I’d heard previously, and, if true, would make setting up a CRB with actual teeth a lot easier. Later on, at Council’s formal meeting, a representative from the Richmond Transparency and Accountability Project underscored the importance of doing real, legit community engagement before creating a review board. Keep this in mind as the various councils, tasksforces, and groups start meeting to put together public safety reform policies.

Actually, the City Attorney featured pretty heavily in City Council’s discussion, which I wish would happen more. About Confederate monuments, he basically said that taking down any of the statues before July 1st and without following the State’s procedures would result in either the City, the Mayor, or City employees being exposed to possibly civil or criminal lawsuits. The Mayor said he’d take one for the team, but was unwilling to put employees in that position. Also, keep in mind that the monuments can’t just come down immediately on July 1st. The State’s legislation, HB 1537, requires localities to hold a public hearing before removing, relocating, contextualizing, or covering any monument, and they’ve got to publish notice of that hearing 30 days in advance. Plus, after Council votes to get rid of our monuments they must “first, for a period of 30 days, offer the monument or memorial for relocation and placement to any museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield.” So if the City were to put a public hearing date on the calendar today and get notice published in the paper tomorrow, we’re looking at August 23rd as the soonest possible takedown date. That’s almost nine weeks from now. I’m not saying that the nightly protests are about the Confederate monuments—they’re not, they’re about police violence. But, because Richmond, the Confederate monuments have become and will continue to be a focal point and symbol for folks' anger. I…don’t think we can handle nine more weeks with the monuments up, and someone needs to find a big brain attorney or talk to the Attorney General or the Governor or something. The situation in Richmond is real tenuous and only growing more so each night.

Whew, OK. As part of their regular, non-pandemic, non-protest work, City Council adopted ORD. 2019–343, the Short Term Rental aka Airbnb ordinance with no amendments. This means you’ve got to live in any property you want to put on Airbnb for most of the year. I think that was the right call, and it’s great to see City Council actually writing and passing laws! Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says Council also surplused the Public Safety Building and will begin the process of renaming the Lee Bridge.

The last couple of Richmond 300 virtual summits take place this week. Tonight, tune in for the Diverse Economy summit at 6:00 PM. Make sure you read the related portion of the draft plan (PDF) and sign up over on the Eventbrite.

This morning’s longread

SAH Statement on The Removal of Monuments to the Confederacy from Public Spaces

The Society of Architectural Historians seems like a very staid group, and yet, apparently, has “never before advocated for the direct removal of any historic resource, let alone listed monuments.”

In contrast, Confederate monuments do not serve as catalysts for a cleansing public conversation, but rather express white supremacy and dominance, causing discomfort and distress to African-American citizens who utilize the public spaces these monuments occupy. Our inaction gives these monuments power. By leaving them in place, we allow the dead hand of the past to direct some Americans away from that which belongs to all of us. History has proven that progress is possible, but also that the persistent racial schism in our society will not be conquered without radical, sustained action. The removal of Confederate monuments is a necessary and important step in this process, and one that cannot wait any longer.

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