Episode 12: How will Black Lives Matter change Virginia?

It’s been a tumultuous month across the country and across the world—that’s no secret. Today, we’re talking to Chelsea Higgs Wise, a longtime activist in the Richmond community, about recent protests in the state capital; Black Lives Matter, the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, and the work that still needs to be done to achieve equality in Virginia. After that, UVA Professor Siva Vaidyanathan discusses the way that social media alters—and damages—our political discourse.

Nathan Moore: This is Bold Dominion, an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I’m Nathan Moore.

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You’ve certainly heard of George Floyd. He was the black man in Minneapolis who was killed by a white police officer on May 25th. Killed by a knee-on-neck chokehold for almost nine minutes. The video of his death sparked a wave of protests around the country that’s still happening in many major cities.

In Virginia, we’ve seen protests and demonstrations in all kinds of communities -- even small towns like Abington, Orange, and South Boston. But the city that’s felt the greatest impact is the former capital of the Confederacy and today’s capital of Virginia: Richmond.

On May 31st, Governor Northam unleashed the National Guard and implemented a citywide curfew in Richmond. One day later, as protestors gathered at the Robert E. Lee monument on Monument Avenue, the National Guard troops tear gassed about a hundred peaceful protestors. Three days after that, Governor Northam announced that the state would remove the Lee monument.

Bold Dominion producer Charlie Bruce spoke with Chelsea Higgs Wise about the protests in Richmond and what they mean. She’s the founder of Richmond For All, and host of Race Capitol on WRIR community radio in Richmond. 

Charlie Bruce: I wanted to talk to you today because you've been very involved in activism in the Richmond community. And you've seen over the years, the different protests that have happened in the wake of police brutality, and the murders of black people. And this is definitely not like other moments that we've had before. And I'd love for you to describe how the protests that have happened this week compare to previous events. 

Chelsea Higgs Wise: Sure, so I've been organizing in Richmond for a few years now. And one of the biggest events that brought a lot of the community organizers together that still organize today--under a name called Richmond For All that is now a formal political organization here In the city--we were tackling issues throughout the city. But on May 14, Marcus David Peters was shot by the Richmond Police Department. He was suffering from a mental health crisis.  He had de-robed completely, he was naked, and had bizarre behavior running around saying words that did not make any sense. It was just very incoherent. The officer stated that day on the dispatch that Marcus looked like he was suffering from a mental health crisis. He did not dispatch mental health crisis from our Richmond mental health department. And when Marcus David Peters was running, the officer then said that he felt Marcus was charging at him and took out not one but two weapons, a taser and a gun, used both and shot and killed Marcus. All because he said that he was scared for his life.

That moment caused an uproar. It caused a lot of pushback here in the city. We had a couple different marches, but nothing as compared to what's happening today. People are begging right now today of when's the next March? When can we get on the street? And two years ago, I do feel like we had to do a lot of begging. This particular time Mayor Levar Stoney came out with an apology. And we couldn't even get him to say Marcus David Peters’ name two years ago. But it does not seem like the political structure here in Richmond is moving very much. The demands that people are putting forward are not being met by Levar Stoney nor the chief of police. Officers here that have been tear gassing, and pepper spraying people truly just for existing in the street. And with that moment, we're also seeing a newness of people being really interested in electoral politics. So, in this moment, it's amazing to have the global support. It's amazing to have the statewide support. And in the city, we don't have official support, but we do have the people’s support and that is what’s really dope.

CB: There have been a lot of videos and pictures of the protests of like, records of people coming out to join the movement, which is really, really exciting. I have seen some pictures of elected officials like Mayor Levar Stoney or state senators Ghazala Hashmi and Jennifer McClellan join these protests and petition to take down the monuments. But there are many people who have said that just taking down the monuments--these monuments being the Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue--is no longer sufficient as a symbol of change. Why is that?

CHW: Well, honestly, it's because removing monuments is not going to do anything for our quality of life. And it does something for the narrative of the place. It also showed us that Governor Ralph Northam always had the authority to move the Robert E. Lee Statue that sits in the city. And so our big question is what is, what is this moment that all of a sudden he changed his mind and wanted to use that authority? It wasn't because of the hundreds of advocates across the state that came during General Assembly. It wasn't all of the officials and the people saying it's time, it wasn't all those community dialogues. It was something else that happened for Governor Northam to have to come out and say: “We're going to move these monuments.”

Now for someone like me--and I will say, I have a different lens--but what I see the reason why Governor Ralph Northam did that...two reasons. Number one, is because he has to do something in this moment. Otherwise, he would look wild. And number two, he knows that moving the monument won't actually do anything for his business community either, meaning it won't hurt them. Doing actual policy change will impact his favorite buddies at the business corporations as well as his best friend Brian Moran, which is a top cop of the state and of public safety and homeland security. And it’s important for Ralph Northam to protect Mayor Levar Stone and the mayoral positions here in Richmond because it’s the capital. It’s where people come to serve in the General Assembly. It's. like, the home squad team now especially now that the Democrats have a majority. And so being the mayor of Richmond is very important to the Virginia Democratic Party. And by removing this monument, he's helping Levar’s campaign, because Levar can now say, look what we did together. Look what we united together. But the reality is, there is a new candidate in town that is just as progressive on monuments as Levar is. And so removing the monument now actually does him no favors in this new election.

CB: Who is this new candidate that's running? And what do you think are some of the policies that they're going to advocate for that are going to challenge the status quo?

CHW: Her name is Alexsis Rodgers. Alexsis has been probably one of the most active people in Virginia politics. She's one of the best organizers in Virginia politics. And in fact, if you have a favorite Virginia Democrat, she probably helped get them elected. She was the president of the Virginia Young Dems. She's the chair of Virginia Emerge that helps train women that want to be elected. She is really ready to look at our resources, the actual equity model of where we put our resources, and that’s going to go back into our public institutions that really need it, like our schools, public housing, as well as affordable healthcare.

CB: And speaking of some of the policies that you've been talking about, about redistributing our resources, one of the common themes that I've heard in this moment among activists is defunding the police. Can you talk about why this is a moment when this is a necessary thing to be talking about?

CHW: Sure. Defunding the police is truly a method that gets our attention of where we are financing our values. And right now, just for an example, the city of Richmond, our largest expenditure of our budget, is to public safety and the police. Our crime rate has basically stayed flat, but yet our police department continues to get more and more money. And we also know that the Richmond Police Department is also on a performance-based budget. And that means the better you do, and the better impact that you have, the more money you should have. But looking at the benchmarks and the measurements of what we can find with the Richmond City Police Department, nothing has changed. Nothing that they’re doing is actually really helping. 

And also Defund the police is really about “divest” and “invest.” Right? So it's not just defund and then the money goes into a savings account and we get to fight over it later. We have real institutions and public sector services that need money right now, and actually provide us more public safety and more public health than the police ever have. And that's what we've seen in COVID for these last few months, is that our public safety has actually been restrained to our public health. And we need to keep the same type of mindset as we address the inequities not just in policing, but in many of our sectors. You know, something else that it's funny to me when people are having all these questions about defund the police and things like that: I want to remind folks that United States of America, Virginia is an expert at disinvesting in public sector systems to make it hard for those system to survive, So whatever the United States has done to our education system, to our housing systems, so that we are now the leading rate across the country for evictions and education, then we need to do that thing acting to the police. So we know how to drain institutions of money. We're just not ready to do it for an institution that has historically always protected white people.

And, you know, finally, I want to also mention that all of these protests are happening and what I will say here in Richmond, Virginia is that we're not working with the police in our protest. And you know what? We’ve been able to keep us safe. Not with the police, but with one another. And that's how we should be moving forward with that same mutual aid type of mentality that we've been seeing through COVID and through everything else.

CB: Yeah, I would love if you could tell us a little bit more about what mutual aid is and what it looks like and how it's been manifesting right now in these protests.

CHW: Yeah, so mutual aid here in Richmond has just been incredible. It's been people that have come together...the residents of the city, they were able to work with a local business person for a space that was donated to them. And then from there, they create their own supply chain that reaches the people that need it the most with with the least amount of barriers. And so what I'm also really just encouraging people to think about imagining aid models at a scale that would reach the entire community. What if we take that into our new...our new world? 

CB: What is something significant about this moment that you are going to be thinking about and carrying with you in the next coming months and years of activism?

CHW: Two really important pieces, just for me, that are coming in at this moment, are one: the youth energy and the value of that energy. Most folks call me a veteran organizer and I'm 35 years old. And what I've been telling folks in my circle that these young folks are keeping us relevant. And they're keeping the conversation at the table. They're mobilizing in ways we hadn't been before. And if we don't find a place and a way to value that energy, then we're going to lose again. 

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NM: Chelsea Higgs Wise is the founder of Richmond For All, and host of Race Capitol on WRIR community radio in Richmond. She spoke with Bold Dominion producer Charlie Bruce.

As these demonstrations continue... and as calls for change amplify... we’re faced with an overarching question: How do we know what we know? How does social media impact our ability to have a national civic discourse around these issues and more?

Stay with us… We’re taking a short pause, and then we’re back with UVA Professor Siva Vaidyanathan. 

You’re listening to Bold Dominion, a state politics explainer for a changing Virginia. Visit us online at Bold Dominion.org. Have a friend who’s trying to figure out Virginia state politics? Tell them about this show. And then subscribe in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever fine podcasts are served up.

Bold Dominion is a member of the Virginia Audio Collective, online at Virginia Audi.org. While you’re isolated at home, check out Not Even Past. It’s from the Encyclopedia Virginia at Virginia Humanities. The hosts comb through the encyclopedia looking for the most interesting people and provocative questions.  Not Even Past isn’t just for history lovers, it's for anyone who loves a good story. That podcast and many more at Virginia Audio.org.

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Well, in Richmond and so many other cities, all signs indicate that this is some kind of big social pivot point. There’s just no way the status quo will stay the way it is. But what we pivot to is still yet to be determined. At the time of this recording, the City of Charlottesville school board has voted to end their use of city police as School Resource Officers. And a new law taking effect on July 1st will give Virginia cities the ability to take down Confederate monuments. While those are some changes indeed, an awful lot of people are calling for more substantive policy changes around policing, jobs, and investments in health.

In the second half of this episode, we’re examining where we get our information, particularly amidst this global pandemic. While many people get news from TV or local press outlets, it’s hard to overstate the role of social media platforms in our national discourse. But these platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have been used to push an avalanche of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Everything from child soldiers in Atlanta to the Lincoln Memorial being severely damaged to Antifa busing protesters into mostly white areas of cities to loot homes and businesses. None of these are true but, people share and retweet them anyway

Our producer Charlie Bruce recently spoke to Siva Vaidhyanathan about how these systems affect our perceptions and beliefs, and what we can do to fight back. He’s a UVA Professor of Media Studies, Director of the Deliberative Media Lab, and the author of “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy”. 

CB: You've described in great detail your own belief that it's not likely that a lot of change is going to happen from Facebook or from regulatory agencies. I'm wondering what, what users can do to avoid this wearing down that you spoke of. How can we get sources of information that are reliable, that don't feed into this machine of this social media platform?  

Siva Vaidhynanathan: There’s not much we can do, right? As Facebook users, I am, and you are, one of 2.5 billion people. And that number is growing constantly, so we’re pretty worthless as individuals in the Facebook world. Nothing else is close, by the way, and nothing else has ever been close to that level of penetration into human minds. No company, no church, no religion, no, you know, government has had the ability to influence 2 billion to 2.5 billion people at any given time. It’s a truly remarkable moment in human history.

Here's what we can do. And none of this is going to be easy. None of this is going to be quick. We should not fool ourselves. I think all we can do really is push for more criticism, more awareness to make two different power centers change. One is Facebook employees, right? The more we raise issues about these companies, the more the tech workers are going to want to demand changes inside their companies and they have some leverage. The other big area of influence is advertisers. If we put enough pressure on Procter and Gamble, and on Coca Cola, and on Nike, and on Amazon, even, to stop advertising on these platforms until they change their policies--till they change some very important core things about themselves--that might have an effect. Addressing the bottom line might have an effect. 

Now here's the big long game, though. The big long game is to substitute what Facebook does for us with other healthier things in life. This is both going to be a personal and a community transformation. It's maybe a society-wide transformation, maybe a global transformation. But for the past 40 years long before Facebook ever came along, before Mark Zuckerberg was even born. We have been, in the United States and in Western Europe, defunding the institutions that help us think critically, deeply, deliberately about our problems. We have been defunding schools. We've been defunding museums, defunding libraries, defunding universities, defunding science, defunding public media, you know, that those are the institutions that give us a chance to catalog our problems, analyze our problems, and address our problems in reasonable rational way, rational ways, like grownups, across a range of different perspectives, right? Deliberation is crucial to democracy. Facebook is the best motivational platform anyone has ever found. It's the best possible way to find like-minded people and gather them and push them toward a common action. It's why so many of the protests we see in the streets today are organized on Facebook and why the Women's March in early 2017 was organised on Facebook. Also why the Unite the Right rally was organized not just through Facebook, but through other social media platforms, right? It's so good at that. 

But democracies need much more than motivation. Democracies need deliberation to balance out the extreme passions of motivation. We've lost that idea. We have been focusing so much on maximizing speech, turning up the volume on everything, creating cacophony, giving everyone a voice, that we’ve forgotten that we need institutions that help us listen, not just talk. Our cultural habits, our political organizations, and our media systems keep sweeping us back into nihilism and sophistry.

CB: I don't know if you saw the graphic from the New York Times about how these protests these demonstrations, have helped change public opinion around the Black Lives Matter movement, and how before 2018 it was strong disapproval of the Black Lives Matter movement. And then in the last couple years--but especially in the last two weeks--public opinion has massively shifted to be overwhelmingly positive. More than 50% of people believe that this movement is important or necessary, or they agree with the principles. And it goes back to your point that what we need is discourse that happens between people and not platforms telling us and feeding us information that we already agree with. Otherwise, we're going to get caught in this tiny bubble of thinking and never change.

SV: Well, you know, what we've seen in the past few weeks with Black Lives Matter and the protests against police violence, and then the subsequent police violence is an example of motivational power of social media. The revelatory power of social media, right? Where images and videos of people being brutalized has had a visceral effect on a whole lot of people made the made the issue, impossible to ignore, and then when you combine that with Trump's reaction to it which has been so vicious and violent and racist...and I think we just see that some things are impossible to ignore at this point. We should not waste this opportunity. But the next step is deliberation. The next step will be: what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do to change our policing habits in the United States, our policing policies and training and, and and legal protections of the police? Are we capable of moving from Step 1 to Step 2? You know, anybody can win an election most of the time. That's not the goal, right? The goal is actually to build up our capacity to govern ourselves, because that's what democracy really means.

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NM: Siva Vaidhyanathan is a UVA Professor of Media Studies and the author of “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.” Thanks to him and also to Richmond For All founder Chelsea Higgs Wise.

Charlie Bruce and Aaryan Balu produced this episode of Bold Dominion -- with tremendous acumen and skill, if I may say so. My name’s Nathan Moore, and I’m the host of Bold Dominion. Find this show online at Bolddominion.org. Go ahead and subscribe… it’s just a click away.

Keep social distancing, y’all, and I’ll talk with you again in two weeks!