Across Virginia
Governor Northam has released guidelines for youth sports under Phase 2 of his re-opening executive orders. They vary by sport, but administration officials say all rely on common sense. Northam’s Chief of Staff Clark Mercer said at Tuesday’s briefing the basic principle is incidental contact is to be expected, but intentional contact should not. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
Governor Northam says he expects Virginia public schools to resume in-person classes when the next academic year begins, but it will be a phased-in reopening; some instruction will be in-person, but some will remain remote. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
Here is a portion of the governor’s Tuesday announcement:
Schools will have to provide six-foot distancing between desks and, in all likelihood, stagger schedules. Northam says daily screenings will be needed for students and staff, and older students will be encouraged, but not required, to wear face masks whenever possible. Each school system will have to submit a plan to the Department of Education before the phased-in reopenings are possible in that city or county.
It comes after Northam issued an executive order March 23rd that closed all public schools over COVID-19 concerns. The governor says all health metrics look positive, numbers that include the number of new cases, testing capacity and hospital beds available statewide.
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NEWS RELEASE: RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today announced a phased approach that allows Virginia schools to slowly resume in-person classes for summer school and the coming academic year. The K-12 phased reopening plan was developed by the Office of the Secretary of Education, Virginia Department of Health, and the Virginia Department of Education and is informed by guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- Phase One: special education programs and child care for working families
- Phase Two: Phase One plus preschool through third grade students, English learners, and summer camps in school buildings
- Phase Three: all students may receive in-person instruction as can be accommodated with strict social distancing measures in place, which may require alternative schedules that blend in-person and remote learning for students
- Beyond Phase Three: divisions will resume “new-normal” operations under future guidance
- Daily health screenings of students and staff
- Providing remote learning exceptions and teleworking for students and staff who are at a higher risk of severe illness
- The use of cloth face coverings by staff when at least six feet physical distancing cannot be maintained
- Encouraging the use of face coverings in students, as developmentally appropriate, in settings where physical distancing cannot be maintained
Gov. Ralph Northam
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Governor Ralph Northam is expected to announce plans Thursday to remove one of the country’s most iconic monuments to the Confederacy, a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee along Richmond’s prominent Monument Avenue, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
The move would be an extraordinary victory for civil rights activists, whose calls for the removal of that monument and others in this former capital of the Confederacy have been resisted for years.
“That is a symbol for so many people, black and otherwise, of a time gone by of hate and oppression and being made to feel less than,” said Del. Jay Jones, a black lawmaker from Norfolk. He said he was “overcome” by emotion when he learned the statue was to come down.
The Democratic governor will direct the statue to be moved off its massive pedestal and put into storage while his administration seeks input on a new location, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak before the governor’s announcement.
Northam’s decision comes amid turmoil across the nation and around the world over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes, even after he stopped moving.
Floyd’s death has sparked outrage over issues of racism and police brutality and prompted a new wave of Confederate memorial removals in which even some of their longtime defenders have relented.
The Lee statue is one of five Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue, a prestigious residential street and National Historic Landmark district. Monuments along the avenue have been rallying points during protests in recent days over Floyd’s death, and they have been tagged with graffiti, including messages that say “end police brutality” and “stop white supremacy.”
It was not immediately clear when the Lee statue would be removed.
Other tragedies in recent years have prompted similar nationwide soul searching over Confederate monuments, which some people regard as inappropriate tributes to the South’s slave-holding past. Others compare monument removals to erasing history.
Confederate memorials began coming down after a white supremacist killed nine black people at a Bible study in a church in South Carolina in 2015 and then again after a violent rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017.
Also on Wednesday, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced plans to seek the removal of the other Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue, which include statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Gens. Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. Those statues sit on city land, unlike the Lee statue, which is on state property.
Stoney said he would introduce an ordinance July 1 to have the statues removed. That’s when a new law goes into effect, which was signed earlier this year by Northam, that undoes an existing state law protecting Confederate monuments and instead lets local governments decide their fate.
“I appreciate the recommendations of the Monument Avenue Commission – those were the appropriate recommendations at the time,” Stoney said in a statement, referencing a panel he established that studied what should be done with the monuments and recommended the removal of the Davis tribute. “But times have changed, and removing these statues will allow the healing process to begin for so many Black Richmonders and Virginians. Richmond is no longer the Capital of the Confederacy – it is filled with diversity and love for all – and we need to demonstrate that.”
Bill Gallasch, president of the Monument Avenue Preservation Society, said he worried the statues’ removal would change the “soul” of the street, hurt tourism in historic Richmond and stir up violence between far-right and far-left groups.
The monument-removal plans also drew criticism from the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And Republican state Sen. Amanda Chase, who is also running for governor, started a petition on her campaign website to save the statues.
“The radical left will not be satisfied until all white people are purged from our history books,” Chase’s website said.
But Joseph Rogers, a descendant of enslaved people and an organizer with the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, said he felt like the voices of black people are finally being heard. Rogers spoke from the vicinity of the Lee Monument, where another rally was taking place late Wednesday afternoon and where he described one wave of cheering after another.
“I am proud to be black, proud to be Southern, proud to be here right now,” he said.
Gov. Ralph Northam
Governor Northam says he hears the cries of protesters across Virginia, and he promises steps to deal with their calls, especially with a review of many state laws. The governor says the oppression never went away when slavery ended, and the anger displayed across the country in recent days demonstrates the result of its continued existence. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
Governor Northam says most of Virginia will move to Phase Two of COVID-19 reopening on Friday. Restaurants are permitted to have indoor seating at 50% of capacity. Fitness centers may conduct indoor activities and workouts at 30% capacity. Facilities like zoos, museums and outdoor concert venues are permitted to re-open. Gatherings of up to 50 people will now be permitted. The easing restrictions cover almost all of Virginia, with the exceptions of Washington DC suburbs, Richmond, and Accomack County on the Eastern Shore.
Photo: Senator Bill Stanley Facebook
Virginia Republicans say Governor Northam has shown a double standard in how he dealt with a 2nd Amendment Rally last winter and the recent night of violence and destruction in Richmond. State Senator Bill Stanley is among those Republicans. He recalls the governor setting up protective fencing around the capital for what was a peaceful gun rights rally and declaring a state of emergency in advance of it — and comparing that to the many Richmond businesses have been looted or heavily damaged in recent nights. More from WFIR’s Evan Jones:
NEWS RELEASE: RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today declared a state of emergency and authorized assistance to localities in response to escalating violence across the Commonwealth. The Governor granted a request from Mayor Levar Stoney to extend a curfew in the City of Richmond.
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
NEWS RELEASE: RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today issued the following statement about protests in the City of Richmond.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — The rampage at a Virginia Beach city government building was the latest in a string of high-profile mass shootings nationwide, between the high school killings in Parkland, Florida, and the Walmart massacre in El Paso, Texas.
As the tragedy nears its one-year anniversary Sunday, some victims’ family members feel it has effectively been forgotten after the national spotlight moved on to other mass killings, and more recently has been all but eclipsed by the coronavirus pandemic.
That leaves less pressure on authorities to provide definitive answers about why their loved ones died, they say, with the shooter’s motive officially still a mystery a year after he shot dead 12 people at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center before being killed by police.
City engineer DeWayne Craddock, 40, opened fire May 31, 2019, in offices where he had worked for more than nine years. Eleven co-workers and a contractor who was getting a permit died, four others were seriously wounded and a police officer received a bullet in his tactical vest but escaped serious injury.
The shooter had submitted his resignation the same day citing “personal reasons,” but city police investigators and an independent security firm that conducted an investigation know little about what drove him to go on his rampage, despite conducting hundreds of interviews and poring over thousands of documents.
The “answer to ‘why’ may be something we will never know,” city officials wrote in an April update on the probe.
Nixon and other family members of victims believe they have an inkling, however: What they call a toxic workplace environment and poor management by supervisors.
“I know what led to this,” said Nixon, who’s been among the most outspoken of the relatives. “It wasn’t random.”
It’s a notion echoed by Debbie Borato, sister of victim Missy Langer.
Langer had been harassed and bullied in the building, she said, and there was an office culture “that pushed that man over the edge.” Borato also said workplace security was lax.
City officials and Hillard Heintze, a Chicago-based security firm that conducted the probe, say claims of a toxic culture were not supported by the investigation.
Virginia Beach Vice Mayor James Wood said he “can’t begin to understand the grief” of the victims’ families, but investigators found nothing pointing to that.
“In any organization, not every single manager and employee does everything 100 percent the right way, all the time,” Wood said. “But if there was a systematic issue, if there was a problem, we would know about it.”
The investigation also found no prior warning signs that might have enabled the city to prevent the shooting.
Relatives told investigators Craddock had become isolated and described him as acting paranoid. He had gone through a divorce and was having trouble at work, saying in unwritten emails that he had been unfairly disciplined.
But the security firm could not explain how such “stressors” might have translated into violence, and investigators said last month there was still “no evidence to support what the suspect’s motive was.”
Police say they plan to release more information but not the full investigative file once it’s complete. That has angered Nixon and others, who say they will be looking to the findings of a state commission being formed to examine the shooting.
If the Virginia Beach rampage has gotten a bit lost in the popular consciousness, it’s perhaps in part because it occurred in a year that set a record for mass shootings, defined as involving four deaths or more: There were 33 of them in the country in 2019, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
Among the five mass shootings with over 10 dead in 2018 and 2019, most became part of larger narratives involving national and emotional issues. Two happened at schools in Florida and Texas, continuing a string of attacks on children, while shootings at an El Paso Walmart and a Pittsburgh synagogue were motivated by racism and anti-Semitism, respectively.
Office shooting sprees, experts say, while horrifying, typically do not resonate with Americans in the same way as more indiscriminate shootings at places such as movie theaters or concerts.
“Public interest and focus have a lot to do with whether people can see themselves as a victim, whether it could have happened to them,” said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor of criminology, law and public policy. “If it happens in a workplace, people think, ‘That’s not like my workplace.’”
The sense that the shooting has faded to the background has only been heightened by the coranavirus pandemic. Concerns about large gatherings prompted city officials to plan a virtual ceremony Sunday instead of an in-person commemoration.
Borato said that even if the eyes of the nation are elsewhere, in Virginia Beach people remember.
“It was just another horrible shooting situation to the rest of the country,” Borato said. “So they have no interest in wondering why. Well, we do. Because those are our families. That was my sister.”
(Kaitlin McKeown/The Daily Press via AP)
More of the commonwealth’s oceanside beaches are likely to re-open soon, based in large part on what happened over the holiday weekend in Virginia Beach. Governor Northam says while Virginia Beach was busy, most people were adhering to his social distancing directive,and he he didn’t see anything that would lead him to consider reclosing the beach. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more: