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To be or not to be, that is the new Shockoe Bottom memorial’s question
Twining unseen within the loamy soil of Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom are the stories of the enslaved who unwillingly traversed this low-lying land that once distinguished itself by the sheer volume of Black bodies it saw sold into slavery. Here, across 10 acres that rooted Richmond as the nation’s second-largest flesh market of the American slave […]
Bills to curb human trafficking in Virginia are good. Collective community action is even better.
The young woman who came to the Avalon Center in Williamsburg a few years ago needed help. She’d left her home country and traveled to Virginia at the behest of a man who said he loved her and wanted to create a life with her. Instead, she found herself physically and emotionally trapped in his […]
Crossover roundup: What’s alive and what’s on shaky ground in Virginia’s General Assembly
At the halfway point of Virginia’s 2024 General Assembly session, Democrats have used their majority power on both sides of the Capitol to pass bills to raise the minimum wage, ban newly made assault weapons, protect abortion access and allow recreational weed dispensaries. All of those priorities are expected to win final passage in the […]
United Daughters of the Confederacy’s tax breaks are on the chopping block. It’s about time.
In a move prompted by a persistent Virginia Beach teenager, the Virginia Senate this week advanced a bill to remove the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) from the list of nonprofit and charitable organizations exempt from real estate, deed recordation and personal property taxes in Virginia state code. Fantastic. As Lost Cause devotees and […]
Virginia legislators should be learning all they can about AI
When you let your phone unlock itself by scanning your face, ask Alexa or Siri for directions, shop online, apply for a job or check your account in a banking app, your experience is underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI), technology that makes machines mimic human attributes like thinking, learning and suggesting. As AI continues infiltrating […]
New postpartum depression pill can help Virginia moms but isn’t a magic fix
One in eight American moms experience postpartum depression (PPD), a potentially debilitating condition marked by feelings of despondency, lethargy, emptiness and disinterest after giving birth. Some women also report memory problems and trouble bonding with their babies. In Virginia, over 11% of mothers surveyed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 […]
Diversity must be more than skin deep in Virginia’s 2024 legislature
If you grew up in Virginia and attended schools here, like me, you’d likely agree with a fact that I picked up on before my elementary days were done: our state’s political and social origin stories always had white men as protagonists. From John Smith and the colonists who carved out the first permanent English […]
Biased lending is a major barrier to Black homeownership in Virginia, still
Homeownership is a key factor in building wealth and achieving the American dream but it has never been accessible to all Americans. Recent reports of racial disparities in mortgage loan lending at Navy Federal Credit Union – the largest credit union in America, based in Virginia – demonstrate the persistent challenges people of color face […]
2023 in review: Commentary at the Virginia Mercury
Next week marks my one-year anniversary as deputy and commentary editor at The Virginia Mercury. I eagerly joined a slate of talented columnists — Roger Chesley, Wyatt Gordon, Bob Lewis and Ivy Main in addressing the issues most central and relevant to our fellow Virginians. All of 2023, what readers cared about, we wrote about. […]
Make it last forever: How Richmonders’ recollections build public knowledge
Richmond’s Main Library is home to the city’s branch of the Memory Lab, a series of spaces that have sprung up across the country as a way to give physical materials of personal and public significance new life as digital, accessible records. Since 2019, the lab has been contributing to the library’s repository of central […]
As Texans fight for life-saving abortions, don’t take our reproductive rights for granted, Virginia
In perhaps the most visceral recent example of how far-reaching and punitive abortion restrictions have become across the country since the fall of Roe v. Wade, 31-year-old Kate Cox is only able to terminate her nonviable, 20-week pregnancy because a Texas judge on Thursday handed down a temporary protective order allowing her to pursue the […]
Studies, class-action suit link hair relaxers to cancer; Black women in Virginia are at risk
When I saw reports about a National Institutes of Health study that found women who used chemical hair straighteners known as relaxers were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer than those who didn’t, a sulfur-scented flashback zapped me back to my first experience getting my hair relaxed. I was 10 or 11, […]