Bold Dominion

After two long months of socially distanced and Zoom-based negotiations, the Virginia General Assembly has finally finished its 2020 Special Session--called to deal with police reform and amending the state budget.

This week, we're joined by state Delegate Sally Hudson; she walks us through some victories on police reform and the state's strategy for economic recovery--and the ways we need to improve our approach to both, going forward.

With gun sales up, violence in the streets, and an overwhelming majority of the nation thinking that we're heading down the wrong track, it's no secret that America is in a troubled place right now.

That isn't helped by the actions of President Trump, who, in the last few weeks, has suggested that he wouldn't accept the results of the upcoming election if he lost, encouraged supporters to watch polling places, and refused to denounce white supremacists on live television.

Combine that with a recent FBI report that called far-right militias an "immediate extremist threat,” and you've got a powder keg set to blow this November. This week, we spoke to anti-racist activist Emily Gorcenski and journalist Peter Galuszka about the threats we might face both on the ground and in Washington.

If you've gotten your ballot for the upcoming election, you may have noticed a question about a proposed Amendment to the Virginia State Constitution.

The Amendent proposes a bipartisan commission to end the process of gerrymandering--politicians drawing districts to suit their own interests--in Virginia. That's important, because next year, Virginia will be holding its state elections based on those districts.

But does the amendment go far enough? How did Virginia get here in the first place? This week we talk to journalist Peter Galuszka and historian Brent Tarter, author of Gerrymanders: How Redistricting Has Protected Slavery, White Supremacy, and Partisan Minorities in Virginia.

The proposed Amendment to the State Constitution can be found here.

In some ways, we have two different Virginias that live side-by-side. On one side, white-collar workers who have adjusted to the pandemic with Zoom meetings and social distancing; on the other, blue-collar workers who have faced losses of their jobs, healthcare, housing, and economic stability in the face of a global pandemic.

But COVID-19 has only exacerbated trends that have plagued Virginia for forty years, if not the state's entire history. This week, we spoke with journalist Peter Galuszka about the growing divide in Virginia's economy, and UVA Professor James Harrigan about the economic trends that have heightened income inequality nationwide for the last forty years.

Virginia's General Assembly convened on August 18 for a special session, originally dedicated to balancing the state budget in the face of COVID-19. Now following nationwide protests, the special session alsopromises to tackle the issue of criminal justice reform.

This week, in a special crossover episode the Transition Virginia podcast, we talk to hosts Michael Pope and Thomas Bowman about the first week of the special session. You can find the full discussion in their latest episode, or visit them at www.transitionvirginia.com.

For five months, we've known that to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, we need to stay at home. But how can Virginians stay at home if those homes are taken away? With no end to the crisis in sight, thousands of Virginia citizens are facing evictions from their homes. What can lawmakers do about the crisis, and why are Virginia tenants so uniquely vulnerable?

This week, we spoke with Ned Oliver, a reporter at the Virginia Mercury, and Christie Marra, an advocate at the Virginia Poverty Law Center (804-782-9430), about the recent eviction moratorium and the history of Virginia's unequal tenant laws.

“The Virginia Way” is an old-fashioned ideal here in the Commonwealth--the notion that our public servants have so much integrity that we don’t need laws to regulate money that goes into the political process. As a result, we have almost no campaign finance regulation--a fact that's been exploited by aristocrats and corporations for decades, if not centuries.

This week, we sat down with state Delegate Sally Hudson and author Jeff Thomas ("The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power after 2016") to discuss the history of the Virginia Way and how the culture of Richmond might be changing in a new era.

For the last six years, Dominion Energy has been working to build a natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Hampton Roads. But just a few weeks after winning a Supreme Court case to regain permits for the project, the pipeline was cancelled--leaving Dominion is out more than three billion dollars already spent. This week, we sat down with Richmond-based journalist Peter Galuszka and New York Times Renewable Energy Correspondent Ivan Penn to understand why Dominion pulled the plug--and what it might mean for the future of energy in Virginia.

Facebook ads, Twitter bots, TikTok teens—over the last decade, social media has played an increasingly important role in our social and political discourse. This week, we continue our conversation with UVA Media Studies Professor Siva Vaidyanathan to discuss the way social media algorithms can unintentionally help organize radical groups and why social media platforms don’t bear the same liability for content as other publishers—namely, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. After that, journalist Brad Kutner takes us into a recent defamation suit in Virginia involving California Congressman Devin Nunes, Section 230, and a Twitter account for a fake cow.

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