GUEST EDITORIAL BY CHELSEA HIGGS WISE: DESPITE MONDAY’S TWEET BY @NAVYHILLRVA, I DIDN’T START THE CONVERSATIONS AROUND NAVY HILL BUT I WILL BE ONE OF THE MANY TO HELP END THEM

I may not have physically attended Monday’s City Council meeting, but I somehow still landed as the latest target of the tactics by the public/private partnership NH District Corp. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that I, and other organizers, have been targeted on social media by NH District Corp and the people that work on their behalf. 

This past Saturday is an example of the spaces Richmonders organized to not only protect ourselves from corporate intimidation but to re-energize for the next few weeks. Being a Richmond For All member has provided a much-needed infrastructure for the balance of collective celebration, grief, and solidarity when taking on a multimillion-dollar corporate buy-out of our city.

As we approach the last few weeks before the vote on the biggest economic development proposal ever in the history of Richmond, any day can turn into a full-scale political soap opera.  Monday, January 27^th just happened to be the latest, and possibly the most significant “drama-filled” in the Navy Hill melodrama.  

Here’s a rundown of the events of the first day of the final week before Black History Month: 

• First was the announcement that with the new arena, Richmond would get a minor league hockey team. I shook my head at this notification for about 4 seconds before moving on. Most of us remember hockey being one of the many tried and failed sports projects of Richmond’s past.
  • Then I saw the tweet that reported that five members of Richmond City Council were sponsoring a resolution to request Mayor Stoney to withdraw his arena proposal and submit a new RFP. 
  • Then my inbox tells me that Levar Stoney now says that school funding will be held harmless for any loss due to the financing of this new deal. 
  • Finally, at about 6:30, Mayor Stoney decided to hold a press conference downstairs of City Hall, while the council met upstairs. 

That evening I got my daughter all set up with dinner so we can do our regular livestream viewing of the Richmond city council meeting. The action-packed day of politics, the video access at home, plus the varying narratives on twitter, made this meeting a political commentator’s dream. I was that commentator in all of my private group chats but as soon as I commented on a public tweet, the Navy Hill twitter account dove in my mentions and tagged me to say that I was the one who started community conversations around Navy Hill. 

This is actually how it started @ChelseaWiseRVA — with a community discussion facilitated by YOU. Note the hashtags and the date of the post. @RVAdirt pic.twitter.com/lndLTiWya8

— Navy Hill RVA (@navyhillrva) January 28, 2020

For me, conversations around Navy Hill RVA started on July 25, 2018, with a group of Black Richmond “influencers” that was hosted by SIR. I left the meeting mostly with skepticism, and was followed up the next month by Jeff Kelley because he was writing blogs from people that attended that meeting. I gave it a chance and he wrote up a blog post based on our phone interview, but I never responded for it to be published because the narrative strategy was clear to me. Their tactic was one I recognize in persuasive speakers, only describing values rather than specifics so that no one notices what the devil planted in the details. Its typical political strategy that I highlight in my narrative work, and by the fall of 2018, I was done with strategy and was running my mouth to anyone that would listen about this project which seemed to be coming full speed ahead. 

Over the next few weeks, which turned into months, I continued to attend public district meetings and I shared my concerns on my personal social media platforms and on WRIR shows like Open Source RVA, where I publicly described my disgust with how the developers, and Mayor Stoney, colonized the historically Black neighborhood name and didn’t think anyone would mind. There were two other private meetings I had with representatives of NH District Corp after the initial group one in July, both I left feeling like I was being manipulated, but more importantly that the city was being manipulated. 

Through my outrage, I recognized the usual pattern of the Richmond City government which perpetuates a lack of public access and neglects the intentional efforts made to listen, so I, and the women of RVA Dirt, made a plan for that. 

Our independent discussion was not branded with Navy Hill, and just like I still do, I use the hashtags to connect the dialogue of the place and space. 

Organizing this community discussion came after 5 months of hearing the same marketing feed without any true listening from the Mayor nor the developers. I teamed up with these other women in media to make space for Richmonders to learn, discuss, and reflect, all with offering free food. 

On December 20th, 2018, at the Main Branch Library, we hosted this community forum and posted the video of the meeting along with people’s feedback cards temporarily online for full transparency. 

By February 2019, I had decided to start a regular hour-long radio show and podcast called Race Capitol, to interrogate racial narrative in the former capital of the confederacy of Richmond, Virginia. I’ve utilized my radio platforms to cover corporate development proposals in a variety of stories to include Union sHill, Richmond Housing Crisis, Richmond Housing history, and a rundown of the Navy Hill project. I am thankful for everyone who has put in the work and trusted me to put out their voice. 

Off the radio airwaves, I was in awe this past year watching the co-founders of Richmond for All advocate for the NH Advisory Commission in November 2018 as well as their successful mobilization for schools in January 2019. It felt like a natural evolution for me to join them at their newest RVA political home and stand with elected officials that believe in our voices such as School Board Member Kenya Gibson and Councilwoman Kim Gray. With everyone’s help, we are winning for a better Richmond.

This winners’ feeling is keeping many organizers on a high, but I can’t say the same for the wealthy men who aren’t used to not getting their way. Appearing to be on the losing side of Navy Hill RVA, not to mention the wrong side of history, can’t be an easy tweet to swallow. I’m unsure of Navy Hill’s strategy in falsely saying that in December 2018 I was the one who started their community conversations, but in 2020 I can confidently say, I’m one of the many to help end them. 

Chelsea Higgs Wise is a lifelong Virginian committed to racial justice. She is the founder and host of Race Capitol on WRIR and the founder of Marijuana Justice.