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EGACY

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Virginia’s West Point makes black history - 2 Report on life after herpes diagnosis - 4 A look at rise in multiracial worship - 8 The U.S. Supreme Court’s right turn - 12

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

WEDNESDAYS • July 4, 2018

Richmond & Hampton Roads

LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE

Cheating workers out of wages is easier than ever ELIZABETH C. TIPPETT

Jara Neal Willis, a nurse at a hospital, usually clocked in a few minutes before the start of her shift and stayed late whenever her patients needed help. Her lunch breaks were often cut short by requests from doctors, patients or their families.

Willis and her colleagues, however, claimed they were not paid for those extra few minutes worked before and after their shifts. Or for working during lunch breaks.

It wasn’t because of mischievous gremlins falsifying their time cards in a backroom, but settings in the software the hospital used to track comings and goings. Two features alone, “rounding” and “automatic break deductions,” could result in the loss of up to 44 minutes a day – or US$1,382 a year at the federal minimum wage.

Timekeeping software was the focus of a study I co-authored last year documenting how it could be used to facilitate wage theft.

But it left a lingering question: Did companies actually use these features to shortchange workers?

Based on my review of hundreds of lawsuits like Willis’, the answer is yes – and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Wage theft gets a tech upgrade “Wage theft” is a shorthand term that refers to situations in which someone isn’t paid for the work. In its simplest form, it might consist of a manager instructing employees to work off the clock. Or a company refusing to pay for overtime hours.

A report from the Economic Policy Institute estimated that employees lose $15 billion to wage theft every year, more than all of the property crime in the United States put together.

That report, however, focused on workers being paid less than the federal or state minimum wage.

Our 2017 study, which was based on promotional materials, employer policies and YouTube videos,

suggested that companies can now use software to avoid paying all sorts of hourly workers.

Hundreds and hundreds When an employee clocks in for the day – using a computer login, ID badge or phone – that employee’s time log becomes a form of data.

I wanted to know if there was any evidence that employers have ever used rounding and automatic break deductions to change that data, to their workers’ detriment. So I did what law professors normally do in such situations: I ran a search of legal opinions to see if there were any cases in which workers sought to reclaim wages lost through digital wage theft.

Before our study, I hadn’t even heard of this practice, so I expected to find only a handful of cases.

Instead, I found hundreds and hundreds of legal opinions involving digital wage theft. And this suggests there are hundreds more because, typically, for every case that results in a legal opinion many more do not.

I decided to read a bunch to get a flavor for what employees were claiming and a window into how employers were using the software.

I eventually stopped after wading

through more than 300 cases, which are described in a study published in the American Business Law Journal.

The study’s methodology does not support quantitative inferences about how often digital wage theft occurs or how much money U.S. workers have lost to these practices over time.

But what I can say is that this is not a theoretical problem. Real workers have lost real money to these practices.

Rounding away Rounding – the functionality used to nickel and dime workers like Jara Willis – is a convenient way for companies to consistently reclaim employee hours.

This illustrates how a rounding system to the quarter hour works.

Even though the software can precisely record the time an employee clocks in and out, the “rounding” functionality changes that time according to a preset increment. Companies argue they use it to increase payroll predictability.

The preferred rounding increment in the cases I reviewed appeared to be to the quarter hour. So arriving to work at 8:53 a.m. would be rounded

to 9, while 8:52 would become 8:45.

In theory, employees could even the odds when it comes to rounding by carefully timing their arrivals and departures. They could show up late or leave early, or punch in extra early or leave extra late.

But companies have two extra weapons to corral employee punches to work in their favor: policies and discipline. Yes, you could show up late or leave early, but then you’d be flagged for discipline under the attendance policy.

A hospital posted a ‘Stop Mooching’ sign to discourage people from coming too early or staying too late, submitted as an evidence in litigation.

Sometimes employers in these cases further stacked the deck by prohibiting workers from punching in more than seven minutes early.

Others actually “invited” employees to punch in up to seven minutes early, labeling it a “grace period,” as though it were an accommodation to workers.

Willis’ hospital, however, took a highly unusual approach to persuading workers to clock in during periods that favored the hospital. According to testimony

(continued on page 3)

The LEGACY

2 • July 4, 2018

Pulse completes more than 30,000 trips completed in first four days

West Point gets 1st black superintendent in 216-year history Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, a 1983 U.S. Military Academy graduate who has held high-ranking Army posts in Europe and Asia, will become the first black officer to command West Point in its 216-year history.

Williams assumed command as the academy’s 60th superintendent during a ceremony Monday in West Point’s Jefferson Hall.

The Alexandria native has served as the deputy chief of staff for the U.S. Army in Europe and the deputy commanding general for support for the 2nd Infantry Division in South

Korea. Most recently Williams was commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, based in Turkey.

Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., the 59th superintendent in West Point history, is retiring after 43 years in the Army and five years as superintendent.

West Point, founded in 1802 along the west bank of the Hudson River 50 miles north of New York City, didn’t graduate its first black cadet until the Reconstruction era in 1877.

No black cadet had graduated in the 20th century when Benjamin O. Davis Jr. arrived in there in 1932.

GRTC Pulse opened its doors to the public at 6 a.m. on June 24, completing 6,240 trips on the first day, the company said.

The ridership goal for Sunday was 1,600. On Monday, the first weekday of service, GRTC Pulse welcomed 8,669 riders aboard, far exceeding the daily weekday ridership goal of 3,500. On Tuesday, ridership remained very high at 7,968, more than double the weekday ridership goal. Wednesday ridership was similar to Tuesday’s, at 7,877. GRTC is still processing the remaining day’s data.

This means that in just the first four days of Pulse service alone, the Pulse welcomed nearly 31,000 riders onto the new service.

The company said that excitement about the new rapid service, coupled with free rides and Summer break, led to an overwhelmingly positive response from riders. Some of these

riders and their stories have been shared on GRTC Pulse’s social media.

The GRTC Pulse was free to ride through June 30, along with free rides on all GRTC bus routes, except the Kings Dominion Express.

The fare to ride the Pulse is the same as local routes at $1.50 per ride or $0.75 for reduced fare customers. The Pulse is free to ride for CARE customers.

The GRTC project was funded and built in partnership with support from the USDOT's TIGER grant program, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, the Virginia Department of Transportation, the City of Richmond, and Henrico County.

GRTC Pulse is a modern, high quality, high capacity rapid transit system that serves a 7.6-mile route along Broad Street and Main Street, from Rocketts Landing in the city of Richmond to Willow Lawn in Henrico County. GRTC Pulse is jointly sponsored by Bon Secours Richmond Health System and VCU Health System.

Lane Construction will continue with some remaining work as the service is in its integration period.

With service now underway, drivers, cyclists and pedestrians are encouraged to pay attention.

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

July 4, 2018 • 3

U.S. reps introduce Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act Reps. Congressman A. Donald McEachin (VA-04) introduced, with Congressman John Faso, the bipartisan Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act of 2018 to help protect children from dangerous lead exposure.

While the incidence of lead poisoning in children has diminished,

(from page 1) from that case, supervisors labeled any employee who clocked in too early or out too late, thereby gaining minutes under the rounding system, a “moocher.”

One manager even posted “no mooching” signs with a picture of a cow and a clock in the hospital hallway.

Working the odds Rounding works the odds, sort of like a casino. And in fact, some of the cases I reviewed actually involved casino workers, perhaps because they are especially attuned to statistics and realize they’re on the wrong side of the equation.

In one case brought by casino workers, the plaintiff’s expert estimated that the 2,100 employees who opted into the lawsuit lost 87,710 hours over a five-year period, or roughly $950,000 at their $10.80 average hourly rate.

This is a casino worker’s time records, annotated by plaintiff’s counsel in litigation.

But the company’s rounding policy actually covered 28,000 employees. If those workers were similarly affected by the policy, that would have meant a loss of about 1.17 million hours, or $12.6 million in wages the company was able to reclaim through the rounding policy over five years.

The case settled for $450,000, about half of which went to attorneys’ fees.

In other words, even though this particular company was caught, dragged through litigation and forced to settle, it still would have made a hefty profit from its rounding policy.

That’s not exactly a deterrent.

Unpaid breaks Employers also reclaim time through what is known as “automatic break deductions.” The software assumes that you took your full meal break, even if you didn’t.

In some workplaces, taking a lunch break can be difficult, especially for those providing patient care in hospitals and nursing homes. Studies of nurses suggest that they are completely unable to take breaks in

regulations as they stand do not adequately prevent contact with lead and its serious detrimental health impacts. Children with lead poisoning often require long-term medical treatment and special education services, as some effects can be irreversible.

“We have a responsibility to keep about 10 percent of shifts and aren’t relieved of duty for meals and breaks in about 40 percent.

In the cases I reviewed, companies didn’t make it easy for workers to override the break deduction.

Employees complained that they didn’t have authorization to do so and instead had to fill out an extra paper form. Or ask their supervisor for approval. Or both.

Companies even discouraged workers from doing so. A nurse received an “action plan” from her hospital after requesting too many break overrides. Rather than fixing the staffing problems that led to the missed breaks, the hospital recommended that she “keep snacks in her office.”

Outdated legal rules So how did this problem come about in the first place?

These types of employer abuses are made possible by half-centuryold rules that permitted rounding because at the time companies had to calculate hours by hand.

The outdated regulations assume that rounding will “average out” in the long term, essentially forcing workers to prove that they don’t – as in the cases I reviewed.

That leaves employers free to use rounding because it’s theoretically possible that it all might average out.

And because collective litigation to recover lost wages requires affected workers to “opt in” to a class action suit, only a small fraction of workers ever get their money back.

While punch cards aren’t that common anymore, many workplaces still use outdated systems for recording and processing employee time.

What’s more, the outdated regulations don’t even mention automatic break deductions. That leaves courts struggling to figure out what’s fair in cases where there often isn’t even an electronic record of the missed break.

This problem is not going away. As long as these regulatory loopholes exist, employers and software makers will find ways to exploit them. That means if you’re paid an hourly wage, you may very well be losing out.

our children as safe as possible,” said McEachin. “One child with lead poisoning is one too many. We have an obligation to ensure that a child’s home is safe. No child should be exposed to hazards simply by living in his or her home. Lead poisoning is an avoidable tragedy and we must do what we can to prevent it. Moreover, preventing lead poisoning is cheaper and less arduous and less painful than trying to mitigate the damage to a child who has been stricken.”

“Every child should be afforded the opportunity to grow up in a home that is safe from toxins, such as lead,” said Faso. “This is a common sense proposal that helps ensure children living in federal housing can grow up in a productive and safe environment. HUD has improved its practices, but it is necessary that Congress acts in a bipartisan manner to get this done.”

The Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act of 2018 provides three protections for children in federally assisted housing. It prohibits the use of visual assessments in housing built before 1978, and instead requires risk assessments – a more comprehensive tool to determine presence of lead hazards. It also necessitates a process for families to relocate if a lead problem is found and the landlord does not mitigate the problem within 30 days of

notification. Finally, the bill requires landlords to disclose if lead is known to be in the home.

This bill has been endorsed by the Virginia Housing Alliance. The Senate companion bill has been endorsed by numerous legal, housing and health groups including the National Center for Homelessness and Poverty, the National Housing Law Project, the Coalition for Human Needs, the National Center for Medical-Legal partnership and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. “We know that the children, especially those living in federally subsidized housing, who are exposed to lead-based hazards represent some of the most vulnerable citizens in Virginia and strongly support legislation that would expand lead poisoning prevention efforts,” said Sim Wimbush, executive director of the Virginia Housing Alliance. “No child in Virginia, or in the United States for that matter, should be caused harm simply because of where they live. No parent should have to worry about whether the air their child breathes in their own home is safe or filled with lead particles. We proudly stand with Virginia’s own Representative McEachin to ensure that children and their families are safe from the threat of lead exposure in their homes.”

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The LEGACY

4 • July 4, 2018

Fighting fire: Life after a herpes diagnosis TALYA FAGGART RVA MAG - Statistics are just statistics until they aren’t, especially when you are young and feel invincible.

“I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s not gonna happen to me,’” said Pilar Monroe (pictured), when talking about the possibility of getting an STD. Monroe felt in control of all aspects of her life, yet one quick turn of events saw her lose that control, and she suddenly had to redefine her identity and status.

“Something wasn’t going right down there,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh it’s fine, I trust this person.

Everything’s great. No need to worry about it.’”

Initially, she didn’t want to get checked by a doctor. When she decided she had to, even her doctors weren’t sure what her diagnosis was, but they decided to medicate her anyway. One week later, she received the phone call from the clinic telling her to check her email–an email that would permanently affect her life.

Monroe was told she tested positive for Herpes Simplex: Virus Type 1, commonly referred to as HSV-1. She had contracted the STD through a past monogamous partnership.

Yet the physical discomfort from the initial outbreak is only one aspect of living with this STD; the other is the inner struggle that Monroe has about herself, becoming more contentious as shame began to

weigh on her.

Her process of grieving had begun.

Overcoming had always been a thing [for me],” she said, when discussing how to be a young woman and cope with herpes. “I was just tired of overcoming another thing.

Prior to contracting herpes, Monroe’s negative connotations about the virus were due to its surrounding stigmas. This includes public misconceptions about what herpes actually is. HSV-1 causes every day cold sores, which is form of oral herpes, yet many distinguish it differently from genital herpes, which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) says can be caused by both the HSV-1 and HSV-2 virus.

Most people are unaware that someone with oral herpes can give someone genital herpes. The CDC says that one out of six people aged 14 to 49 have genital herpes. It’s primarily transmitted through having anal, oral, or vaginal sex with someone who has the disease.

A person can get infected by coming into contact with the skin around the genital area by someone who has the infection, an open sore, or the saliva of someone with oral herpes.

A person can also get it through the genital secretions of someone with genital herpes.

Using condoms can lower the chance of transmission, but does not completely remove the risk, as condoms don’t protect the whole genital region. Transmission is still

possible, even if someone doesn’t have any symptoms. There is no cure for the virus, but symptoms are treatable.

During the aftermath of her diagnosis, Monroe decided on a process of self-education, studying up on disease statistics, and learning from the personal experiences of others. Monroe watched a Ted Talk featuring Ella Dawson, a woman who was diagnosed with genital herpes days before her 21st birthday. Dawson fought the stigmas that come with having an STD by speaking out on own experiences.

Monroe would soon realize that she had more in common with Dawson than just a diagnosis.

As the reality of her positive status settled in, Monroe wanted to feel empowered again. By the turn of the New Year , she decided that she was tired of being upset and started leaning on her faith to see her through the healing process. This included rebuilding her confidence.

“I started telling people like, ‘Oh I have this.’ I would bring it up casually,” she said. She told only a couple friends at first, then told her coworkers. “[Eventually], I would

talk about it to a friend in front of other people, as if it were not a big deal.”

But it was never going to be that easy–some responded to her announcement with apprehension.

“That’s the whole issue I have,” said Monroe. “People are not upfront and straightforward about it. They want to tiptoe around it and I’m like, ‘Yeah it’s here.’ I’m going to make you uncomfortable because you need to be uncomfortable.”

Dating, on the other hand, turned into a much bigger hurdle. She wasn’t sure how to tell a potential partner, or how long she could wait before telling them.

“That was really difficult just because I was so scared,” she said.

“I’m going to have to tell this person that I have this thing, and they’re not going to want to be with me anymore. How long should I wait?

Should I tell them initially? Should I wait until [after] a couple dates?

They’re going to wonder why I won’t have sex with them.”

Monroe waited four months before telling him.

(continued on page 8)

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

July 4, 2018 • 5 NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC OF AN APPLICATION BY VIRGINIA ELECTRIC AND POWER COMPANY, FOR REVISION OF RATE ADJUSTMENT CLAUSE: RIDER B, BIOMASS CONVERSIONS OF THE ALTAVISTA, HOPEWELL, AND SOUTHAMPTON POWER STATIONS CASE NO. PUR-2018-00083

•Virginia Electric and Power Company d/b/a Dominion Energy Virginia (“Dominion”) has applied for approval to revise its rate adjustment clause, Rider B. •Dominion requests a total revenue requirement of $54.189 million for its 2019 Rider B. •A Hearing Examiner appointed by the Commission will hear the case on November 28, 2018, at 10 a.m.

•Further information about this case is available on the State Corporation Commission’s website at: http://www.scc.virginia.gov/case.

On June 1, 2018, Virginia Electric and Power Company d/b/a Dominion Energy Virginia (“Dominion” or “Company”), pursuant to § 56-585.1 A 6 of the Code of Virginia, filed with the State Corporation Commission (“Commission”) an annual update of the Company’s rate adjustment clause, Rider B (“Application”). Through its Application, the Company seeks to recover costs associated with the Altavista, Hopewell, and Southampton Power Stations from coal-burning generation facilities to renewable biomass generation facilities (collectively, the “Biomass Conversion Projects” or “Conversions”).

In 2012, the Commission approved Dominion’s proposed Conversions as major unit modifications, reissued amended certificates of public convenience and necessity, and approved a rate adjustment clause, designated Rider B, for Dominion to recover costs associated with the Conversions. The Biomass Conversion Projects became operational as biomass fueled units as scheduled during 2013.

In this proceeding, Dominion has asked the Commission to approve Rider B for the rate year beginning April 1, 2019, and ending March 31, 2020 (“2019 Rate Year”). The two components of the proposed total revenue requirement for the 2019 Rate Year are the Projected Cost Recovery Factor and the Actual Cost True-Up Factor. The Company is requesting a Projected Cost Recovery Factor revenue requirement of $29,080,000 and an Actual Cost True-Up Factor revenue requirement of $25,109,000. Thus, the Company is requesting a total revenue requirement of $54,189,000 for service rendered during the 2019 Rate Year.

In addition, in response to the Commission Staff’s (“Staff”) concerns in Case No. PUR-2017-00070 (“2017 Annual Update”), Dominion introduces an adjustment to the Actual Cost True-Up Factor, referred to as the Interim True-Up Factor, related to renewable energy certificates (“RECs”) and production tax credits (“PTCs”), which will credit to, or recover from, customers any over/under collection of actual projected RECs and PTCs from January 2018 through March 2019. Dominion further represents that the Company’s revenue requirement in this case complies with the 2017 Annual Update directive to address the capital balance discrepancy identified by Staff.

For purposes of calculating the Projected Cost Recovery Factor in this case, Dominion used a rate of return on common equity (“ROE”) of 9.2%, which comprises the general ROE approved by the Commission in its Final Order in Case No. PUR-2017-00038. For purposes of calculating the Actual Cost True-Up Factor, the Company used an ROE of 11.6% for the months of January 2017 through March 2017, which comprises the general ROE of 9.6% approved by the Commission in its Final Order in Case No. PUE-2015-00058, plus the 200 basis point enhanced return; an ROE of 11.4% for the period of April 1, 2017, through November 28, 2017, which comprises the general ROE of 9.4% approved by the Commission in its Order in Case No. PUE-2016-00059, plus the 200 basis point enhanced return; and an ROE of 11.2% for the period of November 29, 2017, through December 31, 2017, which comprises the general ROE of 9.2% approved by the Commission in its 2017 ROE Order, plus the 200 basis point enhanced return.

If the proposed Rider B for the 2019 Rate Year is approved, the impact on customer bills would depend on the customer’s rate schedule and usage. According to Dominion, implementation of its proposed Rider B on April 1, 2019, would increase the bill of a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours per month by approximately $0.26.

The Company proposes a change in the methodology for the calculation of a certain allocation factor beginning in 2018 to recognize the output of certain non-utility generators to be used to allocate cost responsibility to the Virginia jurisdiction. In addition, with the exception of the removal of certain Federal and retail choice customers from the Virginia Jurisdiction, the Company indicates it has calculated the proposed Rider B rates in accordance with the same methodology as used for rates approved by the Commission in the most recent 2017 Annual Update.

Interested persons are encouraged to review the Application and supporting documents for the details of these and other proposals.

TAKE NOTICE that the Commission may apportion revenues among customer classes and/or design rates in a manner differing from that shown in the Application and supporting documents and thus may adopt rates that differ from those appearing in the Company’s Application and supporting documents.

The Commission entered an Order for Notice and Hearing that, among other things, scheduled a public hearing on November 28, 2018, at 10 a.m., in the Commission’s second floor courtroom located in the Tyler Building, 1300 East Main Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219, to receive testimony from members of the public and evidence related to the Application from the Company, any respondents, and the Staff. Any person desiring to testify as a public witness at this hearing should appear fifteen (15) minutes prior to the starting time of the hearing and contact the Commission’s Bailiff.

The public version of the Company’s Application, as well as the Commission’s Order for Notice and Hearing, are available for public inspection during regular business hours at each of the Company’s business offices in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Copies also may be obtained by submitting a written request to counsel for the Company, Lisa S. Booth, Esquire, Dominion Energy Services, Inc., 120 Tredegar Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219. If acceptable to the requesting party, the Company may provide the documents by electronic means.

Copies of the public version of the Application and other documents filed in this case also are available for interested persons to review in the Commission’s Document Control Center located on the first floor of the Tyler Building, 1300 East Main Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219, between the hours of 8:15 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. Interested persons also may download unofficial copies from the Commission’s website: http://www.scc.virginia.gov/case.

On or before November 20, 2018, any interested person wishing to comment on the Company’s Application shall file written comments on the Application with Joel H. Peck, Clerk, State Corporation Commission, c/o Document Control Center, P.O. Box 2118, Richmond, Virginia 23218-2118. Any interested person desiring to file comments electronically may do so on or before November 20, 2018, by following the instructions on the Commission’s website: http://www.scc.virginia.gov/case. Compact discs or any other form of electronic storage medium may not be filed with the comments. All such comments shall refer to Case No. PUR-2018-00083.

On or before August 31, 2018, any person or entity wishing to participate as a respondent in this proceeding may do so by filing a notice of participation. If not filed electronically, an original and fifteen (15) copies of the notice of participation shall be submitted to the Clerk of the Commission at the address above. A copy of the notice of participation as a respondent also must be sent to counsel for the Company at the address set forth above. Pursuant to Rule 5 VAC 5-20-80 B, Participation as a respondent, of the Commission’s Rules of Practice and Procedure (“Rules of Practice”), any notice of participation shall set forth: (i) a precise statement of the interest of the respondent; (ii) a statement of the specific action sought to the extent then known; and (iii) the factual and legal basis for the action. Any organization, corporation, or government body participating as a respondent must be represented by counsel as required by Rule 5 VAC 5-20-30, Counsel, of the Rules of Practice. All filings shall refer to Case No. PUR-2018-00083.

On or before October 1, 2018, each respondent may file with the Clerk of the Commission, and serve on the Commission’s Staff, the Company, and all other respondents, any testimony and exhibits by which the respondent expects to establish its case, and each witness’s testimony shall include a summary not to exceed one page. If not filed electronically, an original and fifteen (15) copies of such testimony and exhibits shall be submitted to the Clerk of the Commission at the address above. In all filings, respondents shall comply with the Commission’s Rules of Practice, including 5 VAC 5-20-140, Filing and service, and 5 VAC 5-20-240, Prepared testimony and exhibits. All filings shall refer to Case No. PUR 2018-00083.

All documents filed with the Office of the Clerk of the Commission in this docket may use both sides of the paper. In all other respects, all filings shall comply fully with the requirements of 5 VAC 5-20-150, Copies and format, of the Commission’s Rules of Practice.

The Commission’s Rules of Practice may be viewed at http://www.scc.virginia.gov/case. A printed copy of the Commission’s Rules of Practice and an official copy of the Commission’s Order for Notice and Hearing in this proceeding may be obtained from the Clerk of the Commission at the address above.

VIRGINIA ELECTRIC AND POWER COMPANY

6 • July 4, 2018

Op/Ed & Letters

The LEGACY

Trump: The isolationist JULIANNE MALVEAUX Usually, I call him 45. Don’t want to feed the ego of a narcissist by calling out his name. But every shred of ignominy that is associated with this era needs to be associated with this putrid 45th president of the United States. So let’s call it, the Trump era. The era of indifference to human rights, the era of obduracy around international cooperation, the era of pugilism with our allies, the era of abdication of international leadership.

We are riveted by the harrowing sounds of children crying when they are torn from their parents, disgusted when we learn that even a nursing child is torn from her mother’s breast, disturbed when we hear that a child with Down’s syndrome is separated from her parent, angered when a Trump (yes, time to call his name) spokesperson mocks the Downs syndrome children with his sound “wonk, wonk”. And our collective anger pushed our non-apologetic “leader” to sign an executive order that potentially stopped the separation of children from their parents.

At the same time, the international scandal minimized any moral authority our nation has in calling out others on human rights violations. The sound of wailing children makes it impossible for us to take a moral high road against any other country with their own human rights challenges. Thus,

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when United States Ambassador Nikki Haley announced that the United States would resign from the UN Human Rights Council, one had to wonder if she was avoiding approbation for the inhumanity toward children at the US-Mexico border, or if she had another agenda.

She said that she was resigning because the group was unfair to Israel, without acknowledging that there are extreme human rights violations toward Israel against Palestinians. Perhaps she was also removing the US from a body that could censure us for the way children are treated at our border.

President Trump (yes, I’m going to call him by the name this time) has picked fights with anyone he can, isolating our country against our allies, aligning him with dictatorial

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opponents. He wants to be appreciated like Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, asking that people pay as much attention to him as they do to a man he once denigrated as “Little Rocket Man”. At the same time, he picks a fight against our Canadian and Mexican allies, our continental partners, because he is flexing his muscles and making the point that he does not need friends.

Thus, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported that 158 Canadians were killed, and 658 wounded, since the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Canadians sent their troops to fight alongside us. They didn’t have to. They did because there was a relationship, a connection. Now, Mr. Trump is ungratefully picking a fight with Canada over pennies in tariffs, just because he can. He is making an enemy, creating enmity, just because he can.

His behavior at the G-7 meeting in Canada was another alienating, isolating, experience. He went late and left early, signaling disrespect, maybe even contempt for his peers.

He chafed when he was called on his nonsense and declined to sign the customary closing document.

Without even attempting to give others advance notice, he suggested that his mentor (the kindest words I can manage) Russian leader Vladimir Putin, should be part of the

G7. Trump’s advocacy and behavior place him outside the orbit of reason.

He is isolating himself, and our country, with his nonsense.

While the world has always been clear about our nation’s flaws, and we who live here are clear about our nation’s history of oppression, there was a time when we had some moral authority in the world.

We chastised others about human rights violations, excoriated others when they strayed from the tenets of participatory democracy, bribed others to “do the right thing” with foreign aid that was connected to improvements in education and health offerings. We showed up at international conferences and meetings, chanting “women’s rights are human rights”, but now we see no attempt to embrace anybody’s rights. Donald Trump has isolated the United States from its human rights legacy and moral history.

Donald Trump is an isolationist who has failed to understand the ways that our global connection has benefitted us. In isolating us, what has Trump done? And what will we do about it?

Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” is available via www. amazon.com for booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www. juliannemalveaux.com

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July 4, 2018 • 7

P.T. Hoffsteader, Esq.

We must decide

My wife and I were walking around the streets of Annapolis, Maryland most of Wednesday. We had been visiting my Navy son who lives up the road, speaking to a church group and taking an afternoon to enjoy Annapolis.

I never dreamed we were just one day and a few streets away from what would become the next horrific shooting in America. A newspaper office staff was gunned down by a crazed gunman. Our hearts go out to all the loved ones of those gunned down at the Capital Gazette building in Annapolis, Maryland.

Five Americans will not have the opportunity to celebrate Independence day this week.

Because someone was free to walk into a building with a gun and kill people, five working Americans lost their lives.

I realize no one is free to murder but murder occurs in different ways every day in the United States from guns, to cars to knives all sorts of weapons are used to take the lives of others. As we know its difficult to prevent many heinous acts from occurring. Crazy people are often successful at carrying out missions of hate and pure insanity.

Every American must step up to the plate and become a leader in a new pattern of civility in this nation.

What we are doing is not working.

Refusing to serve people in restaurants because of politics or race or sexual preference is further dividing this nation. Slamming people every day in the media is

not helping us. Every cable news show does not have to be a program that instills rage in the minds of its viewers. I realize most media outlets feel they have a point to get across.

We will never live in Mayberry again in this nation.Further, none of us want to return to a time when our heads are buried in the sand and people are hurt or violated in any way. However, the time has come when media from television personalities, news anchors, editors, rock stars, sports figures and all others with a michophone must start leading this nation back to civility, congeniality, grace, helping others, prefering others and treating others the way we would all like to be treated.

America will get worse or we will become better and it's up to each one of us to decide.

Dr. Glenn Mollette

Why the drama

Judging by the coordinated letters to the editors’ of late I can’t help but wonder who’s doing the coordinating?

The nation-wide anti-Trump organization, “Indivisable.org” has a local chapter in Irvington, but, unlike the Tea Party, it’s a secret group and they wouldn’t let me in, so one can only speculate.

It was once illegal for the federal government to propagandize the American People, which was overruled, via Executive Order, under Obama, giving the complicit MSM a license to manipulate public sentiment with lies and recklessly foment violence.

The Left’s most recent, unhinged, hysterical, propagandized outraged has been about criminal, illegal immigrant invaders having the children they claim are theirs separated from them. In America, if you abandon your children and send them alone across a busy street, much less across a continent, you will likely lose custody. If you commit a crime and are incarcerated, you will

be separated from your children.

Even though this policy was instituted by Clinton, perpetrated

by Bush and Obama, no one gave a hoot until the Inspector General Report was released, coincidentally, the same day this ‘immigration crisis’ bomb was dropped.

(Peter Fonda, brother to leftist/ Communist, Jane Fonda, Tweeted that Barron Trump should be ripped from his mother’s arms, thrown into a cage and raped by pedophiles to make Trump pay for the immigration-separation policies in place for decades.)

This report exposed the unprecedented criminal conspiracy, involving the FBI, DOJ, and the Obama White House, to frame Trump in a Russian collusion hoax, the biggest seditious attack against a duly elected President in American history.

I don’t know what it’s going to take for the Left to pursue and reconcile themselves to what is true, but they are perched on a very dangerous precipice, reminiscent of Nero who lit the fires that destroyed Rome and blamed it on the Christians.

Catherine Crabill

Undercutting workers The Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 that profoundly affects the future of workers’ rights, democratic decision making in the workplace, and the preservation of good, middleclass jobs in public employment.

Overturning 40 years of precedent, the court elevated the objections of a minority over the democratically determined choices of the majority of workers and prohibited state and local government workers from negotiating collective bargaining agreements with fair share fee arrangements. In other words, this decision bars unions from requiring workers who benefit from union

representation to pay their fair share of that representation. As a result, workers who wish to join in union will be forced to operate with fewer and fewer resources. This will lead to reduced power—at the bargaining table and in the political process. It will have profound implications for not just the 6.8 million state and local government workers covered by a union contract, but all 17.3 million state and local government workers and indeed for every working person throughout the country.

This decision is the result of litigation financed by a small group of foundations with ties to the largest and most powerful corporate lobbies. Janus is the third case on this issue the court has considered in five years. Today, these billionairebacked organizations finally got their decision, succeeding in advancing an agenda that weakens the bargaining power of workers. The result will be a reduction in state and local government workers’ wages and job quality as well as in the critical public services they provide.

It is likely that this decision will lead to greater instability in state and local workforces. The recent teachers’ strikes in states like West Virginia and Oklahoma provide important examples of the effect of denying workers the right to effective collective bargaining. As more workers are forced to resort to tactics outside of traditional collective bargaining to preserve their wages and benefits, they will do so under the court’s newly conceived First Amendment doctrine, which will undoubtedly evolve in the coming months and years as additional cases are filed challenging its outer limits.

This may prove problematic for those determined to strip workers of their rights—they may ultimately usher in a new era where workers in this country rediscover their voice.

Celine McNicholas

The LEGACY

8 • July 4, 2018

Faith & Religion

Multiracial churches increase for worship togetherness

RNS - For two and a half years, Ja’mel Armstrong and Matt Ness have jointly led One Church, a congregation striving to be diverse in a neighborhood in Louisville, Ky., that is more interracial than most.

It’s a work in progress, they acknowledge, but the AfricanAmerican and white co-pastors say they believe their congregation, which is close to 50 percent black and 50 percent white, is more fulfilling than the more racially segregated churches they used to lead.

“On our own, we just didn’t feel like that’s who we were meant to be,” said Ness, who formerly led a mostly white church. “The picture we believed in was much broader than the local church I was pastoring and the local church Ja’mel was pastoring.”

The co-pastors’ congregation is part of the Evangelical Covenant Church — a small denomination that claims to be one of the most diverse in the country. One Church is part of a trend reported by scholars this month: Multiracial churches are on the rise and so is the percentage of U.S. congregants who attend them.

The percentage of U.S. multiracial congregations almost doubled between 1998 and 2012, from 6.4 percent to 12 percent, according to a study published in June in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. In the same period, the percentage of U.S. congregants attending an interracial church has reached almost one in five, advancing from 12.7 percent to 18.3 percent.

The 2012 statistics are the latest available.

Co-authors Kevin Dougherty, a sociology professor at Baylor University, and Michael Emerson, provost at North Park University,

defined multiracial congregations as ones in which no single racial or ethnic group constitutes more than 80 percent of the people in the pews.

But the co-authors point out that interracial congregations have long faced a number of challenges. And their recent findings show that while the average percentage of black congregants in multiracial congregations has increased, the percentage of Latinos in those kinds of churches has decreased in the same period.

“When you bring groups, different ethnic groups, together in a congregation, they come with different cultures, and those cultures include all types of expectations,” said Dougherty, citing music styles and food choices. “To help them develop a sense of shared identity above and beyond those cultural differences is a key part of the adaptability necessary for a multiracial congregation to succeed.”

Ness, co-pastor of the Louisville church, alternates preaching with Armstrong. He said before One Church opened its doors, they formulated a nontraditional approach to music. The worship team includes a gospel-style keyboardist, a blues, rock and country guitarist and a jazzy drummer and bassist. Singers represent a range of genres.

“We didn’t want to be defined by a particular style and so we didn’t tell you to stand up. We didn’t tell you to lift your hands. We didn’t tell you how to worship,” said Armstrong.

“The goal was: If you are naturally contemplative in your worship style, then you be that. If you are naturally expressive, then you be that.”

It didn’t work for everyone.

Armstrong said there was a gradual

“mass exodus” from the 250-attendee first service in January 2016, with the congregation dropping to about 50.

The congregation has since doubled to 100 after attracting new congregants.

The Rev. Michael Davis, the African-American teaching pastor at 10-year-old Downtown Church in Memphis, Tenn., said intentionality is key to multiracial churches. His congregation strives to have leaders of different races regularly preaching and making announcements. The church avoids identifying with political parties and instead seeks to foster an environment where various viewpoints can be aired.

“So nobody is trying to suffocate the identity of any of our minorities,” said Davis, who co-leads the fledging congregation with its white founder, Richard Rieves. “It’s intentionality,

it’s empowerment and it’s sacrifice.”

The congregation, which Davis calls a “multiracial/class plant” or offshoot of the mostly white Second Presbyterian Church, meets in Clayborn Temple, a historic church that once housed a predominantly white congregation and later a mostly black one.

But Davis acknowledges that his Evangelical Presbyterian Church congregation that is 70 percent white and 30 percent minority (mostly blacks but including some Asians and Latinos) hasn’t achieved all its milestones toward integration, including among its smaller community groups attended by some of the 300 who worship together on Sunday.

(from page 4)

sense of peace, because it made me feel like I had fulfilled a purpose that was deep in my soul,” she said.

Clinics in the Richmond area like Planned Parenthood and the Health Brigade offer services for those diagnosed with the STD. Dominique Graves is a case manager and counselor at the Health Brigade.

He says that those who are tested come in because they are having an outbreak.

“Most people that have herpes wouldn’t know they have it,” he said.

“A lot of people don’t get an outbreak.”

Although herpes is not a nationally reportable infection, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) show that prevalence of HSV-1 & HSV-2 has decreased from 1999 to 2000 and 2015 to 2016. Of those aged 14 to 49, HSV-1 is prevalent in 47.8 percent and HSV-2 is prevalent in 11.9 percent based on the 2015-2016 survey.

After someone is diagnosed, Graves says treatment is the first step to minimize the likelihood of spreading through sexual contact. He also talks to them about how to tell their sexual partners their STD status and if their partners are at risk.

Regardless of having this kind of STD, Monroe wanted to emphasize what is really important: self love, whatever your status is.

“You’re still lovable,” she said. “You can still live a normal life. There’s hope.”

“It ended up working out,” she said.

“I ended up telling someone and it’s perfectly fine now. I think in telling him and him being okay with it helped me gain confidence and just being open about it. I didn’t think it would happen so soon. I thought I would have to wait years to even find someone that’s okay with it.”

People tend to disclose their STD status when they feel comfortable, whether it’s the moment they meet someone or months later. Regardless of the sexual pace one chooses, it’s always important disclose STD status before any sexual interaction.

Since being open about her diagnosis, many have reached out to her for help.

There are so many people who have this or other STDs and they feel silenced about it,” she said. “The shame is something they all had in common.

Being vulnerable was something Monroe has battled with and says her faith helped give her the strength to post her STD status on her Instagram. The post was not only to inform others of her experience, but also to help de-stigmatize anyone with STDs. Instead of questioning why it happened to her, she wanted to use her diagnosis to positively impact others through being transparent.

“Posting it brought me a large

Read the conclusion online at legacynewspaper.com

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

June 4, 2018 • 9

New Poor People’s Campaign goes to Congress campaigners have emphasized a different theme, including, in the week of June 16-22, workers’ rights.

Barber and his co-chair, Rev. Liz Theoharis, have consistently tied all the themes together.

Whether lawmakers and other elected officials will change is another matter. The Republicanrun House just passed legislation imposing work requirements on food stamp recipients, and Trump administration Housing Secretary Ben Carson plans to triple the rents for poor people who live in federally subsidized Section 8 housing, for example.

Meanwhile, GOP President Donald Trump rails against legal migrants to the U.S., GOP-run states enact voterrepression and anti-worker laws, and the GOP-named majority on the U.S. Supreme Court returns challenges to gerrymandered state legislatures WASHINGTON—Culminating 40 days of marches and peaceful civil disobedience in Washington and state capitols, thousands of members and allies of the New Poor People’s Campaign recently brought their demands for ending systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy to Congress – which may not be listening.

And if lawmakers don’t listen, speakers said, the campaign’s next moves are massive voter education, registration and voting out politicians, of both parties, who don’t or won’t act. The Republicans, one speaker said, “won’t build a soul or interrupt violence,” while “elected Democrats won’t build a social safety net.”

Gesturing to the U.S. Capitol behind her, Rev. Traci Blackmon of the United Church of Christ led the crowd in a chant of “Whose house?

Our house!” before adding, “Unless the folk who are occupying that house want to get in with us, then the folk who are occupying that house are going to move out.”

The NPPC laid out a six-point agenda and its co-chair, the Rev. William Barber, emphasized the issues are interrelated. People cannot stick to silos, he declared.

The NPPC wants the nation to commit to ending systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism. Barber, and the

Fifty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a Poor People’s Campaign. As part of that campaign, during an April 1968 trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of African-American sanitation workers striking for higher wages, King was shot dead. Today, a new Poor People’s Campaign is under way. campaign’s website, also denounce “the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.”

The NPPC builds on what Barber calls “the unfinished agenda” of Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights crusade of the 1960s. As he has reminded crowds in past sermons, the 1963 March on Washington was a “March for Jobs and Justice.” And

before his murder, King organized the first Poor People’s encampment – which politicians then largely dismissed or ignored.

But the NPPC has gone beyond King’s themes in its weekly rallies, peaceful nonviolent civil disobedience – resulting in thousands of arrests – teach-ins and education sessions.

Each week since Mother’s Day,

back to lower courts.

And the campaign will continue, Barber and Theoharis declared.

Theoharis made the crowd promise to continue, too. “We must commit to going back to our states, back to our communities, back to our sovereign

(continued on page 15)

10 • July 4, 2018

The LEGACY

ICA’s fall exhibitions will explore race and identity The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University two fall exhibitions featuring leading international contemporary artists, including two new site-specific commissions.

Opening simultaneously on Oct. 17, “Provocations: Rashid Johnson” and “Hedges, Edges, Dirt” explore socially and culturally specific issues that relate to race, identity and the environment in nuanced, conceptual and poetic ways. Through these, the ICA will continue presenting exhibitions that engage audiences with dynamic programming on themes of social relevance and local resonance.

“Building from our inaugural exhibition, ‘Declaration,’ we have continued to ask what the ICA can contribute to our place and time,” said Stephanie Smith, ICA chief curator. “These new projects by an extraordinary group of artists will activate the Markel Center in fresh and beautiful ways and catalyze conversations that reach beyond our walls.”

To launch the ICA’s commission series “Provocations,” artist Rashid Johnson will create a large-scale work that responds to the lightfilled expanse of the ICA’s top-floor exhibition space, the True Farr Luck Gallery. Johnson is known for conceptual multimedia work that re-envisions African-American intellectual and cultural history. His site-specific installation will center on a pyramid-like tower. Continuing motifs from recent projects, Johnson will fill a custom-built steel structure with a selection of plants, artifacts, shea-butter sculptures, books, textiles and video. The work will encourage exploration and contemplation — visitors will be able to walk through the piece, immersing themselves in details or lingering within seating areas designed as part of the work. Zones within the sculpture will feature a regular series of intimate, live performances in which musicians, poets and others will respond to Johnson’s work.

The “Provocations” series takes its name from Steven Holl’s design intention for the ICA’s top-floor gallery space, which he calls “a provocation for artists to engage.”

The Luck Gallery features a sculptural ceiling, cathedral-like acoustics and ample natural light

Rashid Johnson that filters through opaque glass.

Curated by Smith, “Provocations: Rashid Johnson” will be on view through July 7, 2019.

“Hedges, Edges, Dirt” presents new and recent work by Abbas Akhavan, Jonathas de Andrade, David Hartt, Julianne Swartz and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Each artist will show a single project or body of work that explores how we relate to our surroundings, and to each other, when rooted in place or in transition.

Through a range of aesthetic approaches and global perspectives, these artists pose pointed questions, including: What does it mean to perceive ourselves and others as native or non-native, as welcome guests or invasive species? How do we navigate tangible and intangible boundaries? How do expressions of power, dominance and vulnerability permeate our experience of place, self and others?

This international group of artists deploy play, beauty and

poetry to complicate and reimagine relationships among nature and culture, bodies and spaces.

Featured works will include: Conceptual multimedia installations by Abbas Akhavan, who was born in Iran and lives in Toronto, Canada.

An emotive video titled “O peixe” and related photographs by Jonathas de Andrade, a Brazilian who divides his time between Brazil and New York.

David Hartt’s video “The Last Poet” and related works including sculpture, photographs and a new, ICA-commissioned tapestry. Hartt, who was born in Canada, lives in Philadelphia.

Julianne Swartz’s sonic installation “Sine Body.” Swartz, who was born in Arizona, lives in New York.

Sculpture by Pascale Marthine Tayou — a Cameroon native who now lives in Brussels, Belgium — including a new site-specific work from his series “Plastic Tree.”

“The projects in ‘Hedges, Edges, Dirt’ use beauty and artifice to critically engage with spatial and ideological boundaries between culture and nature,” said Amber Esseiva, assistant curator. “At the ICA, sharing a variety of aesthetic approaches allows us to reimagine the ways in which we engage with our immediate surroundings as well as faraway places.”

“Hedges, Edges, Dirt” will be installed in the first-floor Royall Forum, Beverly W. Reynolds Gallery and second-floor galleries. Co-curated

by Esseiva and Smith, the exhibition will be on view through Jan. 6.

The ICA will host exhibitionrelated programs throughout the fall, including film screenings as part of the new ICA Cinema Series, artist-led performances, interdisciplinary discussions and research opportunities for students, faculty members and the community at large.

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

July 4, 2018 • 11

Norfolk mayor declares “Black Press of America Week” STACY M. BROWN Norfolk Mayor Kenneth Alexander issued a proclamation declaring “Black Press of America Week” in the waterfront city in Southeastern Virginia, kicking off the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) annual convention at a welcome reception at the Chrysler Museum.

Reading from the proclamation, the mayor said: “I, Kenneth Alexander, mayor of the city of Norfolk, do hereby proclaim June 26-June 30, 2018 as ‘Black Press of America Week’ in the city of Norfolk, encouraging all citizens to recognize the National Newspaper Publishers Association for its monumental achievement and historic role in reshaping and diversifying the print media industry.”

Alexander said that he was happy that the Black Press was in Norfolk, home to the largest Naval base in the world, for their annual convention.

More than 40 percent of the population of Norfolk is Black.

The theme of the 2018 NNPA annual convention was, “Sustaining, Engaging and Mobilizing Black Communities.”

The convention, which concluded on June 30, brought together many of the 220 African American-owned newspapers and media companies around the country that comprise the Black Press of America.

NNPA, New Journal and Guide Host National Black Parents' Town Hall in Norfolk.

Alexander praised NNPA members, particularly “The New Journal and Guide” and its publisher Brenda Andrews, who hosted this year’s convention.

“The work you do telling stories— rich and deep stories—that would not ordinarily be told, if not for the Black Press,” said Alexander, a Democrat, who became Norfolk’s first Black mayor and the 99th in the city’s history when he was elected in 2016. “We thank you, because of the stories that you have been telling over the years…whether it’s [the

‘Patriotic Fun Ride’ rides through Petersburg National Battlefield On Saturday, July 7 Petersburg National Battlefield will provide a two hour ranger-led biking event, “Patriotic Fun Ride” as part of our summer cycle series. The free event will begin at 9 a.m. at the Eastern Front Battlefield Visitor Center parking lot, (5001 Siege Rd.) beside the bike rack. This event is part of our Bike the Battlefield Series.

About the Cycling Event Riders should plan to arrive early to receive a safety briefing and then mount their bicycles for a 3 mile

roundtrip trek on paved tour road and through parts of the recreational trail system at Petersburg National Battlefield.

This slow ride has some hills and some of the route will be on gravel and dirt paths. This ride is geared towards beginner riders aged 8 and older or those riders comfortable without training wheels. Participants are encouraged to decorate their bikes with patriotic flair and encouraged to dress in red, white, and blue colors.

story of] Plessy v. Ferguson; whether it’s Brown v. Board of Education; the ending of the poll tax; if it’s [story of] the election of the first African American mayor of Norfolk—Brenda, you told that story—we certainly thank you for doing that.”

The New Journal and Guide, was founded in 1900 and has served the Hampton Roads area ever since.

“It’s such a thrill to be the host publisher for the NNPA’s annual convention,” Andrews said.

Not to be outdone, Virginia Democratic Delegate Cliff Hayes also presented NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., and NNPA National Chairman Dorothy R. Leavell with a proclamation from the 100-member state House of Delegates.

That proclamation praised the Black Press for its “high quality journalism” and “engagement in African American communities across the nation.”

Dorothy Leavell, the chairman of the NNPA, said that she had fond memories of Norfolk, in 1997; as then-President of the NNPA she remembered that she was treated well.

“This city has grown tremendously since 1997,” Leavell said. “I can assure you that the warmth and the

sincerity that we have been afforded to us have been outstanding.”

Hayes said that it can be challenging to get stories told the way they need to be told in the Black community; that’s why it was so important to honor the NNPA during this year’s convention.

“The House of Delegates saw fit to make sure we honor the NNPA,” Hayes said, noting the 191-year history of the Black Press that started in 1827 with the publication of “Freedom’s Journal,” the first African American-owned and operated newspaper published in the United States.

“Somebody asked me if we were the Black Press ‘of’ America or the Black Press ‘in’ America,” Andrews said.

“I told that individual that, ‘We are the Black Press ‘of’ America; we are located ‘in’ America.’”

Andrews said that sometimes running a small newspaper with a historic purpose and mission in Norfolk can get a little lonely.

“But, when I get in the company of my brothers and sisters who own newspapers across the United States, it reminds me of the importance and the purpose for which we were created and have kept to the mission for 191 years,” said Andrews.

12 • July 4, 2018

The LEGACY

The U.S. Supreme Court’s right turn JOSEPH P. WILLIAMS As usual, this year’s Supreme Court term had a slow start, with liberals and conservatives reaching consensus on controversial issues, if not avoiding them entirely. But in a dead sprint to the finish line, the high court’s conservative majority triggered a series of unexpected shock waves and gave the nation a glimpse of the future.

The bloc led by Chief Justice John Roberts, and anchored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court’s newest, most conservative member, swept aside progressive arguments (and its own precedents) to defang public-sector labor unions, support “pregnancy crisis centers” that steer women from abortions and uphold what opponents call politically-rigged voting districts.

In approving President Donald Trump's ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, the majority even walked past the high court’s own ugly history of giving the thumbs-up to Japanese internment camps during World War II. The result is indisputable: The nation’s highest court has apologetically defined itself as a highly conservative institution. And the court's four liberals -- several of whom signaled their displeasure at the rightward shift by reading scathing dissents out loud from the bench -- can do nothing about it.

Yet if the last fortnight of the court's spring 2018 term had conservatives collectively making a statement, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a center-right jurist and counterweight to the majority’s power, added a bold-type exclamation point.

His decision to retire, announced last week, gives Trump the opportunity to nominate another staunch conservative to replace him, shoving the court even further to the right and anchoring it there for generations. While progressive activists vow to storm the streets in protest, Senate Democrats, disarmed by majority Republicans during the fight to confirm Gorsuch, don’t have the power to stop or even slow down the move.

“We don’t have the power,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, on a televised program.

“With Justice Kennedy’s retirement, President Trump has an opportunity to nominate another strong young conservative in the mold of Neil Gorsuch who can serve for many years.

“I anticipate the president will take advantage of this opportunity to move the court further in a conservative direction that respects the Constitution and our freedoms.”

- Corey Stewart Virginia’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate challenging Tim Kaine, Former Virginia State Chairman for Donald Trump, and At-Large Board of County Supervisors Chairman of Prince William.

“Under the rules with Justice Gorsuch, in a matter of three months or so, he went from being nominated by the White House to being approved by the United States Senate. In the meantime, there was vetting, investigation, hearing, questions, votes in the committee, consideration on the floor. But it was on a path where the majority controlled the outcome, and at this point, we don’t have the majority.”

Put another way: It’s a lock that the court will become more conservative in the near future. That means questions on high-stakes issues that had been settled, if nominally, in liberals’ favor – affirmative action, access to polls, civil rights, same-sex marriage, immigration, workplace discrimination, government surveillance, a woman's right to an abortion – are likely back in play.

“Some of us might say the court saved the worst for last," Caroline Fredrickson, president of the liberal American Constitution Society, said Thursday at a National Press Club seminar reviewing the Supreme Court's completed term. "After rather terrible rulings on the Muslim ban, worker's rights and women's reproductive health, and after punting on redistricting and claims of religious exemptions to antidiscrimination laws, the bomb went off.”

“We are now at a pivotal moment for this country,” she said.

But Rick Hasen, a University of California-Irvine law professor, curator of the Election Law Blog and a longtime Supreme Court analyst, believes the new conservative order has already started, and hasn't come close to reaching its peak.

“If you did not like what the

Supreme Court has done in the last few weeks on voting rights, publicsector unions, and Trump’s travel ban, things are going to get a whole lot worse,” Hasen wrote recently in an essay published on Slate.com.

Kennedy’s retirement means Roberts “is about to become the new swing justice,” and it’s highly unlikely Trump will be swayed by any arguments from the left, Hasen wrote. “There’s precious little Democrats can do, at least in the short term, either to stop the nomination of another clone of Justice Antonin Scalia, or to stop the political benefit [Trump] is likely to get from such an appointment.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are going all-in, promising swift confirmation of another far-right conservative justice who interprets the Constitution as an imperfect but rigid document. Gorsuch, who was plucked from the ranks of federal appellate judges, is their model: a youthful jurist with glittering academic credentials, unquestionable conservative bona fides and a scant paper trail that doesn’t betray it.

“The Senate stands ready to fulfill its constitutional role by offering advice and consent on President Trump’s nominee to fill this vacancy,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

“We will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy’s successor this fall.”

McConnell did not say if “this fall” meant before or after the election. A new Senate would not be sworn in until January.

But progressive activists vow the seat won’t be filled by a Gorsuch clone without a fight.

“This is a different ballgame than Gorsuch,” said Faiz Shakir, national political director of the American

Civil Liberties Union, referring to the pitched but ultimately losing Senate battle over Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee. Though the stakes were high, he said, Gorsuch was replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia, an arch conservative; replacing him with another conservative didn’t move Kennedy from being the court's flexible ideological center.

But Kennedy’s departure ups the ante because “he has shown independence of thought and has not been a solid vote in either camp” and is willing to side with the liberals, said Shakir. “He was someone in the middle, a swing vote who has power.”

Replacing him with a far-right conservative “will jeopardize [many of] our basic rights and freedom, the most obvious being Roe v.

Wade,” the Supreme Court's 1973 decision guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion, Shakir said.

“Anthony Kennedy staked his name on expanding rights and freedom,” and those precedents “would be in jeopardy.”

Even before Kennedy called it quits, however, the Supreme Court’s 2018 spring term was something of a beatdown for progressives. The swing justice, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, returned to his conservative roots, siding with the four conservatives in several major cases.

In the final nine days of the spring term, the right scored big wins on Trump’s travel ban, union fees, antitrust liability, Texas voting districts opponents say are gerrymandered and a California law ordering anti-abortion pregnancy centers to inform women about abortion. Those rulings were on top of earlier decisions that curbed workers' class-action lawsuits and gave states more power to purge inactive voters from registration databases.

“This may go down as the most conservative, ideologically divided Supreme Court term in the nation's history,” Tom Goldstein, a Washington appellate lawyer who founded the Scotusblog.com website, said in published reports. “The ideological blocs lined up on a huge number of large and small issues, and the left got routed.”

(continued on page 13)

www.LEGACYnewspaper.com

July 4, 2018 • 13

Kaine’s plan to make life better for military spouses could spell a way forward for Democrats ERIN DELMORE When America’s military service members were faced with widespread unemployment five years ago, lawmakers like Sen. Tim Kaine sprang into action to get those who sacrificed for their country back to work. Now, the Virginia Democrat says the same unemployment crisis is plaguing military spouses, a group of women and men — but mostly women — whose professional futures are tied to their partners’ careers in the armed services.

Kaine said that between 12 and 25 percent of military spouses are unemployed; that range is so broad because the government doesn't actually measure the statistic in any formal way.

“If you’re not measuring it, it’s because you don’t care enough about it,” he said.

The former vice presidential nominee has been working with women in his home state to level the playing field and make sure more military spouses are able to pursue careers in the face of red tape, periods of single parenthood, and

(from page 12) “On a lot of the core issues this time around, [liberals hoped] that Kennedy would break from the ideological right on some of those core issues -- voting rights, equality,” said Shakir. “He didn’t do so. That was disappointing for sure.”

Kristine Lucius, executive vice president for Policy, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Kennedy relinquished his position as a swing justice even before he decided to hang up his robe.

“This was an incredibly devastating term that just wrapped up,” she said.

“There were 14 [major] decisions this term that were decided on a 5-4 margin, and Justice Kennedy was on the side of the majority on every one of them. He was not a swing justice in any sense of the word, this term.”

And the court majority, Lucius said, was anything but small-c conservatives: “They overturned precedents,” particularly in Janus v.

AFSCME – a ruling which banned public-sector labor unions from charging “fair share” fees of nonmembers. The court, she said went out of its way to scrap a 40-year-old

Military spouse, TT Robinson

major political party. As Clinton’s running mate, Kaine had as close a view into what happened as anyone — but he seems just as bewildered about it today as Democrats were two years ago.

“As I look back on it, that’s one of the ones that I just really scratch my head about,” he said.

While the senator has his own take on the role former FBI Director James Comey played in the outcome of the election, he also offers insight into how the party can build inroads in the years to come with those women voters it did lose.

having to constantly relocate their families. Kaine’s military spouses initiative also serves as a model of the kind of proposal that could help Democrats earn women’s votes in this year’s midterm elections and beyond.

While more women voted for Kaine and Hillary Clinton than for Mike Pence and Donald Trump in 2016, the same can't be said about white women voters. Fifty-three percent of that group backed Trump, despite Hillary Clinton’s place in history as the first woman nominated by a

An issue that hits home — literally T.T. Robinson lost count of the number of resumes she sent out after her husband, a Navy helicopter pilot, moved to Guam on military orders eight months after they married. Despite having top-level government experience and a degree from a Harvard executive education program, Robinson said she sent out somewhere between 50 and 100 job applications during her first six months in Guam — a search she

precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, to make the ruling.

“They overturned a very longstanding precedent and they didn’t even account for why they needed to do it,” she said Despite the odds stacked against them, Fredrickson, Shakir and Lucius each insist their side can force Trump and Senate Republicans to nominate a moderate for Kennedy's spot through public pressure, including mass demonstrations on the street.

While Trump has insisted he will only nominate justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, it goes against recent public-opinion polls.

A survey sponsored by Fix the Court, a nonpartisan legal-affairs advocacy group, found 71 percent of the public want Roe to remain the law of the land, and clear majorities favor upholding same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians.

“I think that we are in the fight of my lifetime for constitutional rights,” said Lucius. “I’ve been working on judicial nominations for over 14 years, and I can’t remember more

hanging in the balance on a given vacancy.”

Still, Norman Ornstein, a senior scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, believes the fix is in. Trump, he wrote on Twitter, will choose his nominee from a list of candidates already vetted by farright activists and will instruct them, with a wink and a nod, to avoid ideology during Senate confirmation hearings.

“Remember this: every judge on Trump's Supreme Court list has been vetted by the [conservative]

remembers as “soul-crushing.”

“You think that it’s going to be this really patriotic thing to hire a military spouse, and then you realize that companies aren’t seeing it like that,” said Robinson.

That point was hammered home when she showed up to interview for a job she’d already held in Washington, D.C. Robinson got the interview almost immediately after sending in her application. She remembers that the man she met with seemed really excited to talk to someone with her background — until he asked what brought her to Guam.

“I think that people right away, as soon as they hear you’re a military spouse, [people] assume you’re going to be leaving in the next couple of months and think it’s not worth investing in you because you’ll move,” said Robinson.

While the national unemployment rate is at an 18 year low and the veteran unemployment rate recently dropped to its lowest point in 20

(continued on page 14)

Federalist Society,” he wrote on Twitter last week. “There is 100 percent certainty about how they will vote, on Roe, gay rights, voter suppression, campaign finance and labor/corporate issues.”

Like Gorsuch, “all are skillful enough to deflect the questions about their positions,” Ornstein wrote.

“I laughed out loud when [during confirmation hearings] Gorsuch said he would walk out of the Oval Office if Trump had asked him how he would vote on Roe v Wade. Hah. But no one had to ask.”

14 • July 4, 2018

The LEGACY

(from page 13) years, military spouses haven’t had the same luck in the job market.

To fix that, Kaine and his Senate colleagues have rallied behind a new set of proposals to help military spouses stay employed.

Kaine’s Military Spouse Employment Act and the Jobs and Childcare for Military Families Act earned the kind of bipartisan support that’s rare in this political climate.

The bills aim to help military spouses by making it easier for federal agencies to hire them for jobs around bases; expanding child care on base and making off-base care more affordable; supporting continuing education; and offering counseling and transition assistance. The legislation also encourages military bases to offer more opportunities to engage in entrepreneurship. The bills are included in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act and are on their way to becoming law.

The issue hits home quite literally for Kaine. As the father of an infantry commander in the Marine Corps, Kaine said that he’s also been concerned that his daughter-in-law, an attorney, could face the same kind of challenges as Robinson.

“Different states have different rules about whether, if you move, does your law license transfer or not,” Kaine said. “And I can tell you that for [my son], now being married, employment issues for his wife will be a critical factor in his decision about whether he stays in the Marines or not.”

The senator took up the issue after meeting military spouses at a community college in Hampton, Virginia a year and a half ago. One of the participants, Lakesha Cole, was Kaine’s guest at this year’s State of the Union.

“I always thought I spent more time explaining why I moved so much versus explaining why I’m the best person for this job,” Cole remembers about going on job interviews. “What I will say after the 20th interview, you do get pretty skilled at sort of pivoting those conversations or shifting those conversations back to you and back to your skill set. You get really good at selling yourself, because you don’t have any other choice.”

Cole’s ability to sell herself is how she makes a living now. She owns a boutique called She Swank Marketplace in Jacksonville, North Carolina, near Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base. The boutique gave Cole

Navy veteran James Ringold of Cedar Rapids shakes hands with Sen. Tim Kaine. FILE the flexibility to maintain the career she wants and generate a second income for her family. With her success, she’s even been able to allow other military spouses to sell their products through her store.

Entrepreneurship is a lifeline for many military spouses because they relocate so frequently that, to potential employers, it looks like they can’t hold down a job. Service members are reassigned every two years on average. Robinson says that prospective employers can fail to recognize that even though military spouses don’t serve, they do sacrifice.

“You’d think that, you know, as an independent woman, you’ll never base your career around your husband’s moves, and unfortunately, the military dictates that you kind of have to,” she said. “The thing that I think people don’t recognize is that military spouses are a force... if we can handle a ten-month deployment with kids at home and still finding a job, we can handle any project that you want to throw our way.”

Looking backward to pave a way forward Before Kaine took up the cause of military spouses, he served as onehalf of the first woman-led major party presidential ticket. With Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket, Democrats expected to win the support of a majority of women voters. While Clinton did lead among women by more than 10 percentage

points, she ultimately lost a majority of white women voters, who went for Donald Trump.

“As I look back on it, that’s one of the ones that I just really scratch my head about,” said Kaine. “That women, looking at a Donald Trump, who bragged about physically assaulting women, and a Hillary Clinton... especially white women...” he trails off. “Women of color overwhelmingly supported Hillary, but the white women looking at the combination, the choice, between the Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, felt comfortable choosing Donald Trump.

I have a hard time explaining it. I really do.”

For Kaine, this subject conjures up some of the scenes that became fixtures on the 2016 campaign trail, particularly the “lock her up” chants that Trump supporters took up at every mention of Clinton’s name.

That chant actually resurfaced in Kaine’s own re-election race this month, at a primary victory party for his Republican opponent, Corey Stewart.

It’s possible that the recentlyreleased Justice Department inspector general’s report on how the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server breathed new life into the chant. Among other findings, the IG report criticized former FBI Director James Comey for breaking protocol to speak publicly about the Clinton investigation, including just 11 days before the election.

Democrats say that hurt Clinton’s election prospects, but Kaine goes further, calling it “a massive double standard.”

“Women see double standards a lot in their lives and that is the big takeaway from the IG report, that there was a massive double standard,” he said. “Rules that were in place for good reasons were followed with respect to the Trump investigation and they weren’t followed with respect to the Clinton investigation, and that was tragic.”

Now, Kaine is focused on the factors Democrats can control in order to pave a path forward with the voters it lost. As midterm election day approaches, he said he’s practicing what he preaches, pointing to the influence of women leaders in his campaign and senate staff. His own re-election campaign manager, Keren Dongo, is a millennial woman who’s worked with him for seven years, and his senate office leadership team is mostly women.

While his senate staff works to elevate the concerns of Virginia voters, Kaine said the voters themselves often supply the solutions to those concerns, as was the case with the military wives who inspired his legislation.

“I think it begins with listening,” Kaine said. “Listening to concerns and then being creative about addressing them. I tend to feel like good policy is good politics.” © BUSTLE

July 4, 2018 • 15

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Herring sues Purdue Pharma for ‘lies that helped create and prolong’ opioid crisis Virginia’s attorney general sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma this week over alleged deceptive marketing of its drugs, practices the lawsuit said has fueled the state’s opioid crisis.

Attorney General Mark Herring accuses Purdue of lying about the benefits and risks of its drugs through an “elaborate” decades-long scheme comprising aggressive sales tactics and marketing and seemingly independent patient advocacy organizations who were, in fact, paid to support the company’s claims.

“For too long, Purdue has ignored its moral and legal responsibilities, while working overtime to boost the sale of its opioids by increasing the number of doctors who prescribe, increasing how much they prescribe, increasing the number of people asking for and taking opioids and increasing the amount they take,” Herring said in a statement.

In statement similar to its responses to previous lawsuits, Purdue officials said they denied the

allegations, although they said they shared Herring’s concerns about the opioid crisis.

“The attorney general claims Purdue acted improperly by communicating with prescribers about scientific and medical information that the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) has expressly considered and continues to approve,” the statement said, in part. “We believe it is inappropriate for the Commonwealth (of Virginia) to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA.” From 2007 to 2017, 7,890 Virginians died of an opioid overdose, including 4,929 from prescription drugs, according to state data. In 2017, 504 deaths were attributable to prescription opioids, a record toll for the state.

The accusations in the Virginia complaint align with those filed in hundreds of other lawsuits filed by cities, counties and states in the past few years.

(from page 9) lands and organize, organize, organize!” Theoharis said. That means, she added “massive powerbuilding and voter registration” among “poor and low-income people.”

The nation’s ruling class exploits or ignores them, speakers said.

“We must cry out: Take away our poverty, not our children!” Theoharis added.

“We will stand together to declare enough cruelty, enough exploitation, enough amorality. It is time for something different,” one speaker, a young white man, said.

Unions sent busloads of members – four buses of United Food and Commercial Workers members from New York and New Jersey alone – to participate. The organizer of the buses, a stocky white worker who lives near Paterson, talked informally about the ills that brought them to D.C. The problems of the communities of northern New Jersey, he said, include drugs, notably the opioid epidemic, and shootings, though few are related to gang violence.

Downtown Paterson, he said, is hazardous after dark.

Barber reiterated, for the benefit of

Since the beginning of May, the attorneys general of Florida, Nevada, Massachusetts, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah have also announced lawsuits against the company.

In total, 25 states have sued the firm.

Among municipalities, Norwalk, Danbury, Ansonia and Derby earlier this month jointly filed in state Superior Court a lawsuit against Purdue, while also naming as defendants a number of other pharmaceutical firms.

Meanwhile, a Cleveland-based federal judge, Dan Polster, is overseeing “multidistrict litigation” comprising several hundred of the complaints filed against Purdue and other opioid makers and distributors.

Settlement discussions have made “good progress,” Polster has said. But three cases — two of which name Purdue as a defendant — could be heard in a trial starting next March.

At the same time, several hundred

other lawsuits against Purdue and other pharmaceutical firms that are not included in the multidistrict group are proceeding through the courts.

In addition to Danbury and Norwalk, major cities including Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury have also sued Purdue.

As the litigation carries on, Purdue has made major organizational changes. Last week, the company announced about 350 layoffs. Half of those employees represented the remainder of its sales force. A shift in focus from opioids to the research and development of treatments for cancers and nervous-system disorders spurred the restructuring.

Purdue also faces growing protests about its role in the opioid crisis.

Two demonstrations have been held this month outside the company’s downtown headquarters at 201 Tresser Blvd.

PSA As a person who is passionate about Alzheimer’s disease, and, as an Alzheimer’s Association volunteer, I have started a campaign for an revenue sharing ALZHEIMER’S LICENSE PLATE through DMV. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, anyone with a brain should be concerned about Alzheimer’s and, the license plate is a great way to raise funding for awareness and support.

Dr. Liz Theoharis both the crowd and Congress, that the NPPC will continue.

“This is your graduation service,” he told the masses on the Mall. “We intend to fight the powers that be and against poverty and racism until this nation does what it promises, to establish justice for everybody.”

“The people are coming. We want them to hear us coming,” Blackmon said, again gesturing at the U.S. Capitol. “We want them to hear us coming. We want them to feel us coming.”

“We’ll do this again and again and again until policies change,” Barber said.

Since 2000, deaths from Alzheimer’s disease have increased by 89 percent. Alzheimer’s is the only cause of death in the top 10 that cannot be prevented or treated and has no cure. This must change.

Today, 130,000 Virginians are living with Alzheimer’s, and 400,000 are caregiving for someone who has it. We must effectively prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease soon and support those impacted by it until researchers achieve this goal.

We need your help! Together all Virginians can help us get the required 450 prepaid applications needed to be able to get DMV to produce the ALZHEIMER'S LICENSE PLATE. Amanda Chase, Senator, has agreed to present this license plate bill to General Assembly in January 2018 once 450 applications are collected.

Once 1000 license plates are in circulation in the state of Virginia, $15 of the annual $25 cost for the ALZHEIMER’S LICENSE PLATE will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association. *REGISTER TODAY* Online registration available at www.vaendalz.com!

Email: vaendalz@gmail.com for information about the license plate.

Katy Reed, Louisa, VA - 540-967-7098

16 • July 4, 2018

Calendar 7.9 11:30 a.m.

Chesterfield County Public Library, in cooperation with Chesterfield County Public Schools, will provide free lunch to children 18-years-old and younger. The U.S.D.A.-funded program will run from July 9 to Aug. 2, MondayThursday, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at four library locations. No enrollment is required. The service locations are: * Chester Library, 11800 Centre St.; * Ettrick-Matoaca Library, 4501 River Rd.; * LaPrade Library, 9000 Hull Street Rd.; and Meadowdale Library, 4301 Meadowdale Blvd..

For more information visit library. chesterfield.gov or call 804-751-CCPL.

Ongoing

Virginia Department of Social Services (VDSS) is continuing its effort to help provide qualifying households with cooling assistance during the summer months. The application period is open and runs through Aug. 15.

In order to qualify for cooling assistance, a household must have either a child under six years of age, an individual living with a disability, or an adult age 60 or older living in the home. There is also an income requirement for cooling assistance.

This year, the maximum gross monthly income, before taxes, for a one-person household is $1,316 and $2,720 for a household of four.

Types of assistance include: · Payment of electric bills to operate cooling equipment · Payment of security deposits for electricity to operate cooling equipment · Repair of a central air conditioning system or heat pump · Purchase of a whole-house fan, including ceiling or attic fans · Purchase and installation of a window unit air conditioner Local departments of social services determine eligibility based on submitted applications. Families and individuals may submit an application through their local department of social services or by calling the Enterprise Customer Service Center at 1-855-635-4370.

The LEGACY

COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES & EVENTS

Henrico’s Independence Day celebration set for Dorey Park Henrico County’s celebration of Independence Day — Red, White and Lights — will be held for the first time at Dorey Park on July 4.

The free event will begin at 5 p.m. and will feature family activities and live music, including a performance by the Richmond Symphony set to a fireworks and laser light show finale. Guests are encouraged to arrive early and bring blankets or chairs.

“Henrico County is thrilled to celebrate our nation’s 242nd birthday in a setting as beautiful and spacious as Dorey Park,” County Manager John A. Vithoulkas said. “Red, White and Lights is part of a wonderful summer tradition in Henrico. We invite the entire community to join us for an evening of patriotic, family fun.”

Henrico has held a Fourth of July celebration at the Meadow Farm Museum at Crump Park on Mountain Road each year since 1981. Beginning in 2016, the event was scheduled later in the day to include the Richmond Symphony performing with a laser light show. Last year’s Red, White and Lights attracted an audience estimated at 10,700 to the Meadow Farm site.

For 2018, Red, White and Lights is shifting to Dorey Park, 2999 Darbytown Road, and will include an enhanced fireworks and laser light show. Spread across 400 acres, Dorey is Henrico’s largest park, with athletic fields, playgrounds, picnic shelters, a disc golf course, a dog park, a lake and trails, including a link to the Virginia Capital Trail.

Red, White and Lights will include a Family Fun Zone from 5 to 8 p.m., with contests and games, inflatables, an obstacle course, airbrush tattoos, juggler Jonathan Austin, Miss Sheri the Clown and Uncle Sam on Stilts.

DJ Lonnie B will provide music starting at 5 p.m., followed by the Afrofunk jazz group Plunky & Oneness at 6 p.m. Kelli Lemon, a personality for Radio One Richmond’s Kiss FM and iPower Richmond and host of the “Coffee with Strangers” podcast, will serve as emcee. The Richmond Symphony will perform beginning at 8 p.m. under a state-of-the-art mobile covered stage that allows the orchestra to share its music with more communities.

Red, White, and Lights is sponsored by Henrico County and Genworth.

The Henrico Division of Recreation and Parks offers the following tips for an enjoyable evening: • Wear comfortable shoes. Dorey is a large park. Guests may walk up to a quarter-mile from parking areas; • Bring chairs and blankets to set on the lawn in front of the symphony tent; • Bring plenty of water to stay hydrated; • Concessions will be available for purchase. Guests also may bring food into the park. All coolers must have soft sides; and • No alcohol is permitted in Henrico’s parks.

For more information, go to henrico.us/calendar/red-white-and-lights.

7.10, all day

The next pro bono Veterans Legal Services Clinic will take place in Petersburg at the Petersburg Freedom Support Center, 32 West Washington Street.

During the daylong event, in partnership with the Virginia Department of Veterans Services (DVS) and the Virginia State Bar (VSB), volunteer attorneys from Attorney General Mark Herring’s office and the VSB will serve low-income veterans by drafting important estate planning documents like wills, powers of attorney and advance medical directives. Representatives from DVS will also be present to answer questions regarding state and federal benefits that may be available to Virginia veterans including health benefits, disability benefits, financial services, education benefits, burial in a Virginia or United States veterans cemetery, and more.

Qualified veterans can sign up on Attorney General Herring’s website at their local DVS Benefits Services Field Office, or by completing and mailing an application to the attorney general’s office.

Herring, DVS, and VSB have held eight pro bono Veterans Legal Services Clinics, serving more than 185 veterans and their spouses in Hampton Roads, Roanoke, Richmond, Lynchburg, Annandale, and Petersburg.

Clinics provide qualified veterans and their spouses with simple wills, powers of attorneys, and advance medical directives, including notary services, during the one hour time slots which will be filled on a “firstcome, first-served basis.” In order to be eligible for services, veterans and their spouses must fill out an intake questionnaire on the attorney general’s website or at their local Virginia Department of Veterans Services Benefits Center. Because participants must collect information and make significant decisions prior to the clinic, walkups cannot be accepted.

Additional details including qualifications and sign up links can be found at https://oag.state. va.us/programs-initiatives/veteransassistance-resources.

July 4, 2018 • 17

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Prison records from 1800s Georgia show mass incarceration’s racially charged beginnings numbers was primarily due to a rapid and sustained influx of AfricanAmericans between ages 18 and 22.

BARRY GODFREY & STEVEN SOPER Henry Minter was working as a farm laborer in Georgia in the 1870s when he met Mary Dotson, a young black servant girl. The couple never married – which would have been illegal at the time – but they stayed together until Henry’s death.

Mary, who was left with their four children, then became a washerwoman in Atlanta. Their daughter, Florence, tried to raise funds by making moonshine. Caught in 1920, she served three years for illegally making liquor.

When Florence’s father was born in the 1850s, the state prison population was largely white. But, by the time she was imprisoned, the majority of prisoners were black.

Newly digitized records from the 19th and 20th centuries reveal the names and the stories of thousands of prisoners like Florence – as well as the racially charged beginnings of mass incarceration in the U.S. Mass incarceration In 2016, in the U.S., about 1.5 million people were in prison.

Approximately 12 to 13 percent of the national population is AfricanAmerican, but this group makes up over one-third of prisoners.

Why does the American prison system disproportionately imprison black men? Some analysts blame the war on drugs. But that wasn’t the start of the connection between race and imprisonment. Previous historical research shows that, after the Civil War, there was a significant rise in imprisonment of former slaves in the U.S. The end of slavery also saw a rise in prison populations across the British Empire. Before the abolition of slavery in 1833, the West Indies had a prison population of approximately 1,000 inmates. By 1835, it had risen eightfold.

As in the British West Indies, the end of slavery in the U.S. was accompanied by a desire to incapacitate “problem” populations in other ways. As the future governor

Mass incarceration’s racist beginnings revealed in 19c Georgia prison records. of Mississippi’s penitentiary stated at the time, “Emancipating the negroes will require a system of penitentiaries.”

Georgia’s prisoners Ancestry.com has uploaded prison records to the internet, to satisfy genealogists searching for ancestors who may have been imprisoned.

Thousands of digitized prison records are now available for not just the U.S., but also for Canada, the U.K., Australia and other countries.

We presented our research on digitized records of Georgia’s penal system at a workshop on prison history at the University of Georgia on April 10. Our analysis of nearly 25,000 prison register entries shows how connections between race and imprisonment started in the 1860s.

The records’ range of information for Georgia is impressive, running for 200 years from 1817. In addition to the name of the prisoner, the offense and details of the sentence, the records also include details like eye color, height, birthplace and place of conviction, as well as whether the prisoner was subsequently pardoned or escaped.

Before the Civil War, an average of 40 people a year were sent to prison in Georgia. Samuel W. Whitworth from Jones County was a typical prisoner. The blond and blue-

eyed cotton farmer was jailed for causing “mayhem” – probably some drunken violence – on March 1, 1817.

Sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, he managed to escape on Christmas Eve 1820. He was later recaptured and hanged in South Carolina As a white man, Whitworth was part of the majority at a Georgia prison. Between 1817 and 1865, records reveal that a fifth of inmates were described as “black,” “dark” or “copper.” The range of descriptors used to describe “complexion” – later swapped out for the category of “race” in 1868 – were impressionistic and casually derogatory. About 900 people in our sample were described as being the color of “ginger cake.”

In 1864, just seven former slaves were imprisoned in Georgia. By 1868, this had risen to 147.

From the 1870s to the 1900s, sentenced prisoners were forced to labor in the fields, rather than stay inside prison walls. When this convict leasing system ended, the figures again rose inexorably upwards. The number of prisoners rose from 42 in 1900, to over 500 in 1910, to over 1000 by 1920.

Our research shows that the huge upswing in Georgia prison numbers throughout the 19th and early 20th century was caused by sweeping young black men through the prison gates. The increase in

Stories in the data Statistics can only take us so far. Using methods developed in a previous project on British convicts, Digital Panopticon, we have started to match together digitized trial reports, census records, prison documents and family histories in order to reconstruct prisoners’ lives before and after they were imprisoned in the system.

Ultimately, we hope to make this research freely available online.

In our view, these people should not be defined either by their status as former slaves or as prisoners. They spent time in prison, but then were released to build their lives again.

For example, Rose Jackson, with 15 siblings, born in 1856, was convicted of stealing from her employer’s house in Muscogee, Georgia. She served six years inside the prison before resuming her life, never to be in trouble with the courts ever again.

James Wimley – described as a 5’ 4" black man – was convicted of theft at age 15 in Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta. Despite serving six years in custody, he went on to work on a farm, got married and had children.

In 1909, he was still living with four of his children as a widower in the area now known as Cartersville City.

Prisoners like Jackson and Wimley often led successful lives on release, despite the inequalities of the system that had locked them up. When searching for employment and a place to live today, former prisoners of African or Hispanic descent may face similar problems to those faced by former slaves 150 ago.

Black prisoners matter, even if historians have sometimes been blind to that. Thanks to these newly digitized records, researchers can now compare the lives of people who were imprisoned in Alcatraz, Kansas Leavenworth, Eastern State Penitentiary, and so on. Historians like ourselves are now equipped to reveal the names and stories of thousands of forgotten prisoners.

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July 4, 2018 • 19

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HEALTH/PERSONALS/MISCELLANEOUS HELP WANTED / TRUCK DRIVERS CDL TRAINING FOR LOCAL/OTR DRIVERS! $700-$1200 a week! 4-wks or 10 Weekends. Grants available. Veterans in Demand! Richmond/Fredericksburg 877-CDS-4CDL; Lynchburg/Roanoke 855-CDS-4CDL; Front Royal/Winchester 844-CDS-4CDL SERVICES DIVORCE–Uncontested, $395+$86 court cost. No court appearance. Estimated completion time twenty-one days.

Telephone inquiries welcome-no obligation. Hilton Oliver, Attorney. 757-490-0126. Se Habla Español. BBB Member.

IF YOU HAD HIP OR KNEE REPLACEMENT SURGERY AND SUFFERED AN INFECTION between 2010 and the present time, you may be entitled to compensation.

Call Attorney Charles H. Johnson

1-800-535-5727

EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY NOTICE We are pledged to the letter and spirit of Virginia's policy for achieving equal housing opportunity throughout the commonwealth.

We encourage and support advertising and marketing programs in which there are no barriers to obtaining housing because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, elderliness, familial status or handicap.

For more information or to file a housing complaint, call the Virginia Housing Office (804) 367-8530 or (888) 551-3247.

For the hearing-impaired, call (804) 367-9753 or e-mail fairhousing@ dpor.virginia.gov.

CITY OF HAMPTON Tuesday, July 24, 2018 4:00 p.m. EST RFP 18-57/EA

Thursday, August 2, 2018 2:00 p.m. ET -ITB 19-07/CLP

YARD SALES 100 Miles+ Yard Sale. July 7, Business Highways 15, 360, 460, 47-Chase City, Moseley, Amelia, Burkeville, Keysville, Farmville, Blackstone. 804-334-2506 FB: vayardsalemiles

Call 804-644-1550

The Director of Finance or his designated representative will accept written responses in the Procurement Office, 1 Franklin Street, Suite 345, Hampton, VA 23669 on behalf of the Entity listed below until the date and local time specified.

Tuesday, July 31, 2018 2:00 p.m. ET – ITB 19-03/TM

WANTED TO BUY OR TRADE FREON R12 WANTED: CERTIFED BUYER will PAY CA$H for R12 cylinders or cases of cans. (312) 291-9169; www. refrigerantfinders.com

Place your “For sale”, “Wanted”, and “Service”... ads here.

PROC 01-156-002-03600/0629 HAMPTON SOLICITATION

Drivers Mr. Bult’s is hiring Local Class A CDL Drivers. Home Every Night, $1100+/week, Amazing Benefits!

Text WORK to 55000

Alcohol and Controlled Substance Testing Kitchen Equipment Renovation. Non Mandatory pre-bid meeting to be held July 9, 2018 at 11AM ET. Location: 1928 W. Pembroke Ave. Hampton VA 23661 Hampton War Memorial Stadium Grandstand Structural Steel Recoating.

A mandatory attendance on-site pre-bid conference will be held on Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 10:00AM ET at 1889 W. Pembroke Avenue, Hampton, VA 23661.

For additional information, see our web page at http://www.hampton.gov/bids-contracts.

A withdrawal of bid due to error shall be in accordance with Section 2.24330 of the Code of Virginia. All forms relating to these solicitations may be obtained from the above listed address or for further information call (757) 727-2200. The City of Hampton reserves the right to reject any and all responses, to make awards in whole or in part, and to waive any informality in submittals.

Minority-Owned, Woman-Owned and Veteran Businesses are encouraged to participate.

Karl Daughtrey, Director of Finance

TRACTOR TECHNICIAN Marten Transport, Ltd., is in search of experienced technicians at our Colonial Heights location.

Competitive pay based on exp. & full benefits, including: Medical/Dental/Vision Ins. + 401(K) Paid Vacation & holidays Apply online today

www.marten.com EEOE functioning under an AAP

Retrieve knowledge by reading newspapers!

Thank you for picking up your copy of The Legacy

DENTAL Insurance Physicians Mutual Insurance Company

A less expensive way to help get the dental care you deserve If you’re over 50, you can get coverage for about $1 a day* Keep your own dentist! You can go to any dentist you want No wait for preventive care and no deductibles – you could get a checkup tomorrow

Coverage for over 350 procedures – including cleanings, exams,

fillings, crowns…even dentures

NO annual or lifetime cap on the cash benefits you can receive

FREE Information Kit

1-855-401-3274 www.dental50plus.com/legacy

*Individual plan.

Product not available in MN, MT, NH, NM, RI, VT, WA. Acceptance guaranteed for one insurance policy/ certificate of this type. Contact us for complete details about this insurance solicitation. This specific offer is not available in CO, NY; call 1-800-969-4781 or respond for similar offer. Certificate C250A (ID: C250E; PA: C250Q); Insurance Policy P150 (GA: P150GA; NY: P150NY; OK: P150OK; TN: P150TN) 6096E-0917

MB17-NM008Ec