AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your original push to have the Robert E. Lee statue taken down and what you ultimately got, that isn’t talked about as much, which is some kind of—
WES BELLAMY: Equity package, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —some kind of funds for reparations?
WES BELLAMY: Yeah, so, this all started nearly a year and a half ago, in March of last year. I received several different phone calls, emails. There was a petition from a local student here in the area about an effort and a push to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee. People in Charlottesville have been talking about this for some years, but just last year there was a nuance in a bill that was vetoed at the state House by our governor that essentially said that if you want to move these kind of statues and things of that nature, it’s a local issue, so you have the right to be able to do so. My colleague and I, Ms. Kristin Szakos, we both decided to push really hard.
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And in the midst of all of this, we also got an equity package passed, which I presented in January, before we had our first vote—and it was unanimously passed—which gave us $950,000 to our African American Heritage Center, $250,000 to build onto one of the parks in the local African-American community. We got $2.5 million to public housing redevelopment, $50,000 annually for anyone who lives in public housing to get free GED training, another $50,000 to anyone who lives 80 percent below the AMI, which is the annual median income, as well as public housing, to have scholarships of sorts to go to our local community college. We got a position for black male achievement, which we’re calling a youth opportunity coordinator. So, I mean, in all, in all, it was about $4 million, basically, from funding, put specifically into marginalized communities to help bridge the gap and create equity.
All of this is about equity. We need equity, and not equality. Those are two different things. Equity is giving everyone what they need in order to have the same playing field. Equality is just giving everyone the same thing. I don’t want equality. I want us to have equity. And we’re going to push for equity in every space, whether that’s public parks, whether that’s in our city budget, no matter where it is, as long as I’m on council. And I’m going to push for it until the day I die.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/7/charlottesville_va_backs_reparations_fund_for
Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer declared the city a “capital of resistance” to the administration of President Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon.
Signer hosted a news conference in front of City Hall, calling on attendees to help fight Trump’s orders on immigration and the refugee program, including the 90-day travel ban on citizens of seven countries considered a high risk for terrorism by administration officials.
Signer [] teaches political theory courses at the University of Virginia