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(03/24/21 2:49am)
From the state level to the municipal level and even the University-level, police departments in Virginia are budget-draining, malicious organizations. Rather than protecting the public, they primarily exist to drain resources from the community while enforcing racist control of spaces. At every level that police exist, it’s important to fight to have police budgets concretely diminished, while diverting resources to important public goods that actually keep people safe.
Student organization U.Va. Beyond Policing and community organization Defund Cville Police recently held a rally in response to the murder of 18-year old Xavier Hill by Virginia State Troopers. It was just the latest in an ever-growing list of police murdering Black men. Over the past year, there have been a number of incidents in the Charlottesville area involving various police agencies. Earlier this year, Charlottesville Police racially profiled and attacked a Black man. This was preceded by an instance of police harassment back in November on the Corner by both University and Charlottesville Police. Yet another incident occurred last October involving the harassment of local members of the Unitarian Universalist Church and there was even an attack on a homeless man by police last July.
As they continue to attack community members, the common position is that, despite missteps, police are necessary to protect us — this isn’t the case though. When Nazis came to Charlottesville, the police famously failed to “protect citizens from harm, injury, and death.” At a broad level, there’s no correlation between more police and less crime. If large police budgets aren’t actually keeping us safe, then it’s time to divert a considerable amount of it to other public services.
Beyond instituting racialized violence, the police are just massive resource drains on our communities. Money that could be better spent on housing, education, public transportation or community safety is instead funnelled to the ballooning police budgets. The Virginia State Police has a total budget of $395 million, $160 million of which is for highway patrol. The University Police Department’s budget is $7.53 million. However, because budgets are often left up to municipalities, the largest comparative drain on resources is often at the city level. For example, whereas the state and University spend too much on police, they spend relatively little compared to the bigger budgets. Conversely, in Charlottesville, the city police department budget for 2021 is nearly $18 million dollars, accounting for almost 10% of the total city budget. As such, cutting the CPD budget by 20, 30 or even 50 percent is an important goal.
It’s responsible budgeting to question the use of bloated police budgets. Even challenging the assumption that the University and State need to spend millions on police is important. Current conversations about budgeting in Charlottesville prove that the first thing to be cut should be the police. The pandemic has left the City in a precarious financial position. The threat of budget shortfall means that plans for capital improvement are faced with serious challenges. For example, the current plan puts significant money into housing, education and transportation — real public goods that improve our city. However, more revenue is likely needed and an obvious way to reallocate resources is by cutting millions from the Charlottesville Police Department. Using this money for improved housing, education and transportation are things that will actually help our city, thus making it safer and a better place to live. The most recent budget for Charlottesville proposes raising the police budget by $1 million dollars to $19 million. The possibilities for how to better use this money are numerous, not least of all improving public defense.
Likewise, UPD is not here to keep students safe. As has been pushed by Student Council, Beyond Policing and other groups, reallocating the money we throw away at police to Counseling & Psychological Services — or even to pay custodial workers a living wage — is a better use of money. It represents a focus on priorities that support students' mental health over the need for a campus police department.
Police don’t keep us safe, they leech off public funding so that they can hold on to their power to intimidate and harass community members. At every level of government, they are an impediment to public safety. But they also hamper the better possibilities we all need from our government. Struggling over the budget of police departments reveal priorities of local governments especially. By fighting for defunding the police, we can simultaneously fight to refund public transportation, housing, education and our communities.
(09/17/20 7:07pm)
As students file back into dorms, classes begin in-person and checks finally clear, University administration has made attempts to reassure everyone that they have their best interests in mind. Message after message of insisting “The safety of every member of our community remains our highest priority,” ring hollow as campuses like UNC, Northwestern and JMU have abandoned their plans for in-person instruction within days of moving in. Moreover, the logic, and language of the University administration has begun resembling the horrific COVID response that the Trump Administration has engaged in. Though the University is a liberal institution, Virginia a Democratic trifecta and Charlottesville a supposed progressive enclave, the University administration is itself a mirror of the Trump White House.
(06/01/20 10:13pm)
A potential return to Grounds this fall poses many challenging hurdles. Thus, in keeping with the University's longstanding tradition of student involvement and self-governance, several students have stepped forward and offered to facilitate the extra work needed to return. Last month, The Cavalier Daily featured a newly-formed group, the Student COVID Coalition, whose mission statement promises, “to volunteer our combined time if and when needed, for the sole purpose of controlling the current COVID-19 pandemic at the University of Virginia.” They intend to accomplish this task by “centrally coordinat[ing] the increased labor needed to operate University of Virginia in the COVID-19 pandemic.”
(06/01/20 9:23pm)
As summer begins and the struggles of a half-online semester fade, attention is now turning to how the fall semester will play out. University leaders announced last week that classes are expected to start on time in August with students and faculty back on Grounds. In an interview on Face the Nation last month, President Jim Ryan said the University will need to enact social distancing protocols in classrooms and dining halls to ensure safety, calling it “a complicated task [as] college campuses are a difficult and challenging place for contagious viruses.” Although a final decision will be made mid-June following a recommendation from the Fall 2020 Committee, the current plan is vague, leaving deep concerns unaddressed about the safety of students and workers. These concerns must be considered in the University’s final decision.
(04/09/20 7:52pm)
Judging by acceptance rates, U.Va. is becoming an increasingly premier university in our world. Two years ago 26.5 percent of students were accepted, last year 23.8 percent of people were accepted and this year 20.5 percent of students were accepted. Given this trend, perhaps within the next two or three years the acceptance rate could even go below 20 percent. If University President Jim Ryan and the Board of Visitors are lucky during their time with the University, they could even drive it to roughly 15 percent, putting the University in the company of such prestigious schools as Georgetown University and Middlebury College. However, there is an argument for keeping an acceptance rate above 20 percent — and I believe it should exceed this rate greatly, such that it reflects the virtue of public colleges and universities.
(03/06/20 5:40pm)
As the legislative session of the General Assembly comes to a close, housing — one of the most universal issues for Virginians — has been largely overlooked. One bill introduced by Delegate Ibraheem S. Samirah, D-86, would have allowed for increased zoning density to allow more than single-family housing. The logic behind this is that in high levels of single-family zoning, cities like Richmond, Charlottesville and Crystal City could have more units built, lowering costs through the process of market equilibrium. It is supply and demand, more units of housing means more competition between landowners and more options for tenants leading to lower rent. Supply isn’t the central problem of housing though. The lack of affordable housing in Virginia as well as around the country is not one of a mistaken market outcome, but of a central conflict between corporate power and working-class people. While zoning changes can provide a benefit at the margins, they do not address this power imbalance. To do this, we need to organize a tenant movement, fight for social housing and establish just cause eviction laws and rent control— measures that challenge the power of real estate.
(02/05/20 4:15pm)
For students, one of the main functions of the University is almost certainly to ensure that they can receive the effective credentials to get a job post-college. Ritually the University hosts a jobs and internships fair in the fall and spring, as well as numerous recruitment events throughout both semesters. These fairs attract recruiters from all swaths of the public and private sectors — companies seeking to bolster their ranks with pupils of the University. Yet, many corporations that vie for students are the same corporations aiding some of the most abhorrent human rights abuses by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Therefore, the University should bar any company that has worked with ICE and CBP from recruiting students on Grounds.
(01/24/20 2:18am)
The Iowa caucus is just two weeks away, and a recent poll delivered good news for the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Des Moines register poll showed Sanders leading by 20 percent. Winning Iowa is crucial for the chances of each candidate winning the majority of delegates in the primary. This is finally a bit of good news in a world torn by right-wing coups, environmental collapse and economic inequality. Right now Sanders has an estimated 22 percent chance of winning a majority of delegates in the Democratic Primary, which would jump to 61 percent if he wins Iowa. All those whose priority is defeating President Trump in 2020 should hope that Sanders wins Iowa, as he’s the only candidate able to defeat Trump in the general election and has no clear weakness in contrast to Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttegieg.
(01/02/20 1:34am)
It has been over three years since the efforts to take down the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville began. Perhaps no recap can do justice to what’s happened since. There was a city council vote to remove the statue and which was subsequently blocked by a Virginia judge. The white-supremacist rally in August 2017, which was organized in response to the effort to take the statue down, forever made the racism deeply embedded in American society unignorable. Now the struggle to alter the landscape of Confederate statues is reaching a climax as a statewide campaign known as Monumental Justice seeks to pass legislation allowing localities to remove them.
(11/08/19 5:05pm)
The 2017 elections in Virginia saw a blue “wave” which included Democrats winning all three statewode offices and a 15 seat swing in the House of Delegates. Even though that election ended just shy of giving Democrats control of the House of Delegates, it portended the potential that one day Virginia could be a totally blue state, from state legislature to governor. That day has finally come. This year, Democrats won a majority in both the House of Delegates and the State Senate for the first time in 20 years. This victory has set the stage to make significant positive changes to the lives of working-class people in Virginia — however, the election will only mean something if Democrats use this opportunity to fight for working-class people.
(11/05/19 4:19am)
Staff members from The Daily Progress, a local Charlottesville newspaper, announced their intentions to unionize as the Blue Ridge Guild a few weeks ago. Following an election Wednesday, the union was confirmed 12-1, making the Blue Ridge Guild a unit of the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild organized by the Communications Workers of America. In Virginia, the worst state in the country for workers, unionizing is a rare occurrence, but it is also notable for being at a newspaper. This effort comes as their corporate owner, Warren Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway, has reported $21 billion in profit earlier this year, while also shrinking the newspapers it owns. The unionization of The Daily Progress is a welcomed response to what has been an attack on local and national newsrooms, print and digital, across the country. But it is also only the beginning of what needs to be a larger fight to preserve the free press in America.
(10/01/19 3:01am)
Virginia proudly boasts the claim of number one in the country for business. When talking to my former state representative, Democrat Dave Marsden, during the June primary election I brought up my concern about right-to-work-for-less laws, or anti-union laws in Virginia. He reassured me that he wanted to help workers but also make sure Virginia was good for businesses. In reality though, “good for business” means good for bosses, and in Virginia it means workers suffer. An Oxfam report found Virginia to be the worst state in the country for workers. This is appalling and also highlights the desperate need for the revival of labor unions in Virginia and the country.
(09/05/19 1:40am)
Within “A Great and Good University: The 2030 Plan,” the document that outlines the goals drafted by University President Jim Ryan and the Board of Supervisors for the next 10 years, there’s a distinct feeling that everything is looking up. Ryan’s plan is intended to “strengthen our foundation...cultivate the most vibrant community in higher education... enable discoveries that enrich and improve lives...and make U.Va. synonymous with service.” These outlined goals give the impression that the University is not only aiming to improve the lives of students, faculty and staff, but the entire Charlottesville community and beyond. The plan, however, is riddled with contradictions, showing itself to be a corporate facade that will inevitably fail to deliver on its outlined goals.
(08/15/19 7:11pm)
Since the moment that President Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a large number of Americans have been primarily concerned with removing him from office. In 2020, we have the chance to evict Trump from the White House, but in order to ensure long lasting change in American society, we need a candidate that can begin reversing the last 40 years of neoliberalism, not just the damaging effects of Trump’s presidency. Despite a field of 24 candidates, there is only one presidential candidate prepared to do that — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
(04/30/19 1:13am)
In the days before the University formally revealed its $120 million School of Data Science, Jim Ryan promised an announcement that would transform the way the University could serve the “commonwealth, nation and world.” While I don’t intend to relitigate the particular wastefulness of this donation, something covered in a separate article, there was a notable absence in who would be impacted — Charlottesville. In fact, the consequences of the donor’s presence in Charlottesville is glossed over in this particular news. However, drawing from a recent article, and other actions, the presence of billionaire hedge-fund manager Jaffray Woodriff in Charlottesville should worry the community immensely.
(04/02/19 3:39am)
Recently the Cavalier Daily published a column titled “Reject Populism” which argued that the brand of politics allegedly espoused by President Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are damaging to American people and politics. However, it’s wrong to equivocate people like Trump, who by all measures aims to create outward racial tension as a means of maintaining power with left-wing class-struggle messages like Bernie Sanders. Right-wing populists like Trump seek to maintain power through division and fear, while left-wing populism seeks to mobilize the majority of people in response to the economic elites. Additionally, the attempt to discredit social justice fights by linking both Sanders and Trump to populism are shallow efforts to maintain the status quo.
(03/06/19 2:36am)
Any given day on Grounds brings the chance of encountering the seemingly ubiquitous Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University. The assumption of a military recruitment program at universities is something that stands out as a brazen incorporation of the American military’s tentacles seeping into all aspects of life, yet it makes at least surface level sense. Considering that the cost of college makes it difficult for working-class and now even middle-class students to get a degree without accumulating massive amounts of debt, naval, army and airforce scholarships exist for students who want their college paid for with the quid pro quo of military service following graduation. In an economy that guarantees almost nothing, military service helps guarantee healthcare, housing loans and with ROTC, college for those willing to take part in an objectively destructive institution.
(02/07/19 5:00am)
University President Jim Ryan got a lot of good press from his inauguration speech.The main takeaway was that the University would be tuition-free for students with household incomes below $80,000, and tuition- and room and board-free for students from a household income of $30,000 or less. The Washington Post presented the news as “UVA president vows free tuition for those making under $80k.” The Cavalier Daily’s headline reads “In-state students from families earning less than $80K will be able to attend U.Va. tuition-free, Ryan announces.” Following the speech, more and more articles lauded the move as a beacon of a progressive, equality-seeking rookie president cutting his teeth as a trailblazer. The announcement of tuition-free college for some and expanded aid for others is ultimately good news because it relieves some of the financial burden for students. However, those praising Ryan shouldn’t conflate him as champion of the students and community member interest groups seeking a more equitable institution.
(01/25/19 2:54am)
Having defeated Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the House Democrats in June, Bronx-native and democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched into the national limelight as a de facto agenda setter of the Democratic Party. Among her first political crusades is demanding a necessary response to impending climate disaster. A recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report suggested we have about 12 years to stave off man-made climate catastrophe, a feat which would potentially require a massive overhauling of the American economy. Thankfully, Ocasio-Cortez seems to be approaching a viable solution.
(01/03/19 9:30pm)
After a debasing competition of states and municipalities seeking Amazon’s next headquarters it was announced that the winners of HQ2 would be New York and Northern Virginia’s own Crystal City. Leaders of Virginia’s public institutions tripped over themselves to praise the decision that could land the area 25,000 new jobs. At face value, bringing in Amazon is a remarkable achievement, “a testament to everything the commonwealth has to offer,” according to University President Jim Ryan. But when the mask is off, it becomes clear that Amazon coming to Crystal City is a horrible outcome of an even worse process that highlights the broken nature of our economy and democracy.