Good morning, RVA: 734↘️ • 4↘️; intimidation tactics; and childcare in school buildings

Good morning, RVA! It’s 67 °F, and today looks like a stunner. Expect highs in the mid 80s, lots of sunshine, and maybe even no downpours. Enjoy!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 734↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 4↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 134↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 2, Henrico: 82, and Richmond: 50). Since this pandemic began, 309 people have died in the Richmond region. First, an apology: Yesterday, I linked to UNC’s pretty extensive coronavirus dashboard and made the bad assumption that just because VCU doesn’t have one that the University of Richmond doesn’t have one either. That is clearly not the case, and it was lazy to not even look! Speaking of UNC, though, yesterday the University decided to switch all undergraduate classes to remote learningdespite already calling students back to campus. In just the past week, UNC reported 135 positive cases which shot their percent positivity up from 2.8% to 13.6% and sent 177 students in to isolation and 349 in to quarantine (here’s a good explainer on the difference between isolation and quarantine, btw). It’s terrifying how we’re just waiting to learn how this plays out on our region’s campuses. Will better public health policies and increased vigilance keep the coronavirus from burning through college students and spilling out into the surrounding communities? We’ll start to find out next week.

The night before the General Assembly special session, Portsmouth police charged State Senator Louise Lucas with “felony injury to a monument.” From Sara Gregory and Margaret Matray in the Virginian-Pilot: “Portsmouth police announced criminal charges Monday against a bevy of public officials and activists — including state Sen. Louise Lucas, leaders of the NAACP, the city’s top public defender and a School Board member — stemming from a June protest and vandalism at the city’s Confederate monument that left a man seriously injured and much of the statue toppled.” Lucas is a Black woman, the first Black woman to serve as the President pro tempore, and will preside over the special session as the Senate considers bills to reform police across the state. Graham Moomaw from the Virginia Mercury pointed out some additional context on Twitter: Back in June, Senator Lucas called for the firing of the Portsmouth police chief. And here’s the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus’s statement. I have no idea what is going on here, but it’s almost impossible not to read this charge as retaliatory and an intimidation tactic from the Portsmouth Police Department. Like, what do police departments think we’re trying to reform, here?

Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury has a nice piece listing out all of the police reform bills that democrats in the General Assembly want to pass during this special session and which ones they have agreement on between the House and the Senate. It’s easy to read through this list of reforms (especially stuff like getting rid of qualified immunity) and see why police departments across the state might not be too stoked on their legislators this week.

It’s not just police reform bills in front of the GA, though, and Housing Opportunities Made Equal’s email this week points out the housing-related issues up for discussion.

Alright, Richmond’s School Board met last night, and I am very thankful to @BossRVAfor live tweeting the hourslong meeting. The vague agenda item that I hinted at yesterday turned out to be a request from the City to use school buildings as locations for emergency child care. I think that this is a good idea. It may seem counter to the whole “we just closed school buildings because it’s not safe” thing, but isolated pods of kids tucked away in various corners of an enormous building is not the same thing as a school full of teachers and staff and students. With public school fully virtual for the foreseeable future, some folks will need childcare. I wish that weren’t true and that the federal government had decided to use its vast resources to keep folks safe and at home. That’s not the world we live in, and a lot of families are headed back to work and can’t just leave their kids at home all day in front of the Chromebook. This is an opportunity to provide childcare for those that need it in a professional, safe way using huge, modern, and otherwise empty facilities. Seems smart to me, and I’m into it. School Board will hold a meeting on August 31st, with public comment, to discuss further. If you’ve got thoughts and feelings on the matter, you can let your School Board rep know.

There is a lot of dense, multi-family housing on Chamberlayne Avenue and developers have been buying and selling property along the corridor for years. Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says a New Jersey developer just bought 500 units for $27.5 million. If I had a magic housing wand, or, like, enough political will, I would do everything in my power to make/keep a huge portion of these units affordable—and build more!

Richmond City’s new website has launched with a new look and a much-improved, ultra short domain: rva.gov. I haven’t had the time to poke around too much yet, so I don’t have any strong thoughts. While it’s not as clean, straightforward, or helpful as, say, Oakland’s website, it does seem like an improvement over the 90s-era website we were limping along with for the last forever.

Here is a strong contender for the best subject line of any email I’ve ever received: “Richmond City Council invites all parties interested in acquiring a Civil War Monument to submit letters of intent by Sept. 8, 2020.” Are you an interested party? Are you willing to provide your own monument transportation? Email [email protected] in the next month or so!

Hanna Eason writing for NBC12 says there’s a seal in the James River? …???

This morning’s patron longread

Can Killing Cookies Save Journalism?

Submitted by Patron Casey. Internet advertising is so broken! It’s nice to see some folks reconsidering how the current model works.

In 2019, Ster ran an experiment with 10 different advertisers, including American Express, to compare the performance of ads shown to users who opted in or out of being tracked. On the most important metric, conversions—the share of people who ended up taking the action the advertiser cared about, whether it was adding an item to their cart or signing up for a subscription or credit card—contextual ads did as well or better than microtargeted ones. “When do people want to buy a Snickers?” said van Bentheim, recalling a conversation he had with someone who worked at an ad agency. “It’s not because someone is in a specific age or in a specific region or has a high income; it’s because they are hungry and they are looking at food at that moment.”

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