Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and warmer weather continues from now through the foreseeable future. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 70s and most likely no rain for a couple of days. Enjoy!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,483 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 37 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 81 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 7, Henrico: 46, and Richmond: 28). Since this pandemic began, 168 people have died in the Richmond region. Statewide, those are big numbers, however VDH has this alert pinned to the top of their data dashboard: “VDH performed maintenance on its disease reporting system yesterday. COVID-19 data reported during that time were added to today’s numbers.” …OK. Anyway, it’s a big week for coronavirus-related announcements from elected officials. Richmond’s stay on moving into Phase One of recovery ends this week, plus the soonest the rest of the state could move into Phase Two would be this Friday. About the former, I’m really interested in what the Mayor decided to do. Richmond’s percent positivity on May 14th, when the Governor granted the two-week delay, was 22.8%. The latest data has it at 25%. That’s certainly not a 14-day decrease. Plus, that particular percent positivity is pretty dang high when compared to the state’s 14.3%. I’m sure there’s enormous pressure on the Mayor to do something after this two week delay, but, honestly, I don’t know what the data would tell him to do other than keep folks at home and do more testing. Good luck, I guess. Just a hop, skip, and a jump across Broad Street, look for the Governor to make some sort of announcement about mask requirements today. Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who will probably win some sort of award for her reporting on VDH’s testing data, said that on Friday “Northam is weighing the details of a statewide order requiring people to wear face masks to contain the spread of COVID-19, with an announcement planned for Tuesday.” Sounds great to me. Unfortunately, in an incredible own-goal, the Governor was caught on camera with a bunch of folks, maskless, over the weekend. Laura Ingraham picked it up and said “REMEMBER THIS image if this man mandates masks at all time in Virginia.” I don’t really understand why wearing a mask has become a political statement, but here we are.

City Council meets today for their regularly scheduled meeting, and you can find the entire agenda—as it stands at this present moment—here (PDF). It’s a lengthy agenda and Council could, although one can never be certain, take action on a bunch of items that I’m keeping an eye on: the restaurant-only coronagrants resolution has been withdrawn (RES. 2020-R026); Council will decide whether or not to surplus a bunch of Downtown property so they can move forward with some sort of redevelopment following NoBro (RES. 2020-R034); the short-term rentals aka Airbnb ordinance, remember this old chestnut?, has a chance to pass after kicking around the planning department for years (ORD. 2019–343); Council might could disagree with Commission of Architectural Review—in public—over demolishing George Mason Elementary (RES. 2020-R015); and, finally, RES. 2020-R035, which sets up the two-stage budget review process. I wrote a ton of words about the two-stage budget review process over the weekend, so if you’re deeply interested in how this new process will work moving forward into the next fiscal year, make sure you check it out. And that’s not even everything on the agenda! It almost feels like we’re getting back into some sort of civic rhythm. Good for us!

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says a deal is in the works to bring more apartments along Brook Road south of Lombardy Street near VUU. I kept tweetingabout this part of town over the weekend (thanks to @everylot_rva), and with more humans moving into the area there’s a need for more neighborhood-scale retail. You know, places to get toothpaste, toilet paper, and beer—the essentials. You can flip through the VUU / Chamberlayne plan (big PDF) if you’d like to see the approved and adopted vision for the neighborhood.

Alright people, if you want an open/slow street in your neighborhood—so folks have the necessary space to safely walk, bike, roll, get some exercise, make their way to the nearest bus stop, or just get out of their dang homes for a minute—you should fill out this form. This is the official form, and your feedback will get passed along to the team the City has working on creating more safe space for people in our City. Seriously though, fill out the form, it’ll take two minutes.

It’s nearly summer, and this thread on /r/rvahas me missing hot days hanging out around a big table with friends and family, eating crabs, and drinking cheap beer—now this is definitely the essentials, forget toothpaste.

This morning’s longread

I am a simple potato guardian who needs my Second Amendment rights

Alexandra Petri is just the best.

The farmer’s daughter brought me another glass of milk and watched me as I sipped it. I think it is too late to tell her that milk is not a good drink when you are hot in the middle of the day. I think we have gotten into a pattern now, which I regret. She is nice. She has kind eyes, like I imagine a potato would have, though she only has two, which is low for a potato. After drinking the milk, I dozed a little, and when I awoke there were more footprints at the edge of the field. I must be more vigilant. If I do not protect the potatoes, who will?

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What’s the deal? Here’s the deal: One of my 2020 goals (still! even in the midst of a pandemic) is to expand the scope of Good Morning, RVA by including more thoughtful, deeper coverage of topics I find interesting. This could take the form of an interview with a fascinating person over on the GMRVA podcast feed, a long explainer on a complex topic, or something else entirely. The idea is for my work to grow a bit beyond the morning update and become a more useful resource to readers.

This is absolutely some of my favorite stuff to do, but does take a long time to put together. If you’d like to see more of this sort of thing, please become a GMRVA Patron.

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On May 11th, Richmond adopted its FY2021 budget. As you all know—since I never stop talking about it—the City’s budget process is one of my most favorite things, and I look forward to it all year long. This year’s process was, of course, different and unsatisfying. Gone were hourslong meetings, fights over process, jabs at the Mayor’s administration, and—most disappointing to me—gone were the departmental presentations. I love, love, love hearing each department head get up and defend their slice of the budget pie while pitching City Council on why their department rocks. But with The ‘Rona rewriting every portion of public and private life, budget season this year consisted of just a few video meetings, an anemic public hearing or two, and an agreement between both the Mayor’s administration and City Council to have regularly scheduled check-ins and propose budget amendments as necessary. This process sounds fascinating (to…me?), and, if I’m being optimistic, looks kiiiiiind of like the City is gifting us with an entire year of budget season!

That process is outlined in RES. 2020-R035, which sets up a two-stage budget review process the City will use moving forward into the next fiscal year. City Council will take up the resolution at their May 26th, 2020 meeting and hope to kick things off almost immediately.

But, like, do we really need this? Are things that uncertain?…is a hilariously rhetorical question I ask. At the moment, without a ton of data, the Mayor projects a $38.5 million general fund revenue decrease. That’s about a 5% cut from the $782 million budget he proposed back in March, and, if I’m being honest, some of the assumptions made to get to that number feel pretty rosy—a 5% decrease in sales tax, a 10% decrease in the meals tax, a 10% decrease in the admissions tax. I mean, when even is the next time folks will be able to host an event in Richmond that charges admission? Also, keep in mind these projections were set, like, in the unknowably distant past of March—without even a full month of lockdown under our collective belts. I don’t think anyone, anywhere in the country, is looking around expecting revenues to rocket right back to pre-coronavirus levels whenever we all emerge from our quarantines, but who knows!

And that uncertainty and lack of good, current data is exactly why the Mayor and City Council have decided to put together this regularly occurring budget check-in process.

RES. 2020-R035 creates a two-stage process to get updated financial information (expenditures, revenues, overall financial trends, that sort of stuff) into the hands of decision-makers so that they can, if necessary, propose and adopt budget amendments.

Stage One: the technical review! Assuming the resolution passes as currently written, this team will start meeting monthly in June and is tasked with reviewing data, creating monthly reports, and proposing budget amendments based on “priorities identified by the Mayor and the Council.” This team is comprised of the Director of Budget and Strategic Planning, one of their employees, the Deputy Council Chief of Staff, one of their employees, and other folks like the Director of Finance or the City Assessor as needed. One interesting note that reveals a bit about the relationship between Council and the Mayor’s administration: “Consensus between the administrative staff and the Council staff on each report will be sought, and any disagreements between administrative staff and the Council staff will be identified in the report.” Scandalous.

Stage Two: the policy review! These folks will meet quarterly starting in September. They’ll accept or trash any budget amendments that come out of the technical review group, and, if they can get consensus between Team Council and Team Mayor, they’ll recommend those amendments for adoption. The Mayor would then submit the amendments, and Council would then vote on them. This group is compromised of the Mayor’s Chief of Staff or the CAO, the Director of Budget and Strategic Planning, the Council Chief of Staff, the Deputy Council Chief of Staff, and other folks like the Director of Finance or the City Assessor as needed. So more bigwigs, but still lots of overlap with the technical review team.

A note about amending the budget: The City Charter has some things to say on how to go about doing that, and the process differs for amending up vs. amending down. If there’s excess money (LOL!), Council can, with six votes and “the recommendation of the mayor,” amend the budget to spend that extra cash. However, if there’s a deficit (obviously much more likely in the current coronacrisis), “the mayor shall report to the city council without delay, indicating the estimated amount of the deficit, any remedial action taken by the mayor[,] and recommendations as to any other steps to be taken. The council shall then take such further action as it deems necessary to prevent or reduce any deficit, and for that purpose it may by ordinance reduce one or more appropriations.”

As per always, I am not a lawyer, but it certainly reads to me that in a deficit situation Council has a lot more leeway to kind of do whatever it wants to fix the problem. Which is why, from the Mayor’s perspective, having his folks in the room and their potentially-differing opinions noted in the reports is important to the process.

“OK,” I hear you ask, “but how can I, Citizen of Richmond, insert myself into this process?”

One of the things I love (and also maybe hate sometimes?) about Richmond’s government is that so much of it takes place right out in the open. In our neighboring localities—which are not independent cities and that means actual, legal things in Virginia—it’s often hard (or impossible) to put yourself in The Room Where It Happens. In the City, while it’s messy, there’s almost always a way to yell about a thing in public. In fact, one of the “specific purposes of the budgetary reviews” is:

To inform the Mayor, City Council, and ultimately the citizens on the anticipated fiscal position of the City relative to the FY2021 budget and any corresponding adjustments that may be needed to that budget.

The citizens! That’s us! And while I’m not sure if either the technical review team (maybe!) or the policy review team (probably not!) will collect any sort of public feedback, you can be dang sure that City Council will—nay, must—on any proposed budget amendments that make it to the dais. So if I were to advise on keeping one’s powder dry, I might suggest looking for when budget amendments hit City Council agendas. Or, heck, your Councilmember’s job is literally to listen to you. If you see a need in the City that begs for more funding or should have its funding protected, holler at them whenever you’d like!

No one knows what the next year, quarter, or even month will bring—that goes for the City’s budget, sure, but also just about everything else, too. The proposed two-stage budget review process is a way for Richmond to chart some kind of course forward through a sea of compounding unknowns. Unfortunately, if I were to guess, I’d say that the next several technical review meetings will be tense affairs, and the first policy review meeting, absolutely brutal.

Hold on to your butts, keep your Councilmembers close, and, remember, no one really knows what the future holds but we gotta pay attention as it unfolds.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 66 °F, and highs today look like they’ll top out in the low 80s. It’s raining now, it’ll probably rain for the rest of the morning, but Andrew Freiden says today the sun returns! Maybe we’ll even see some more of it over the weekend? 'Twould be nice.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,229 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 25 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 103 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 32, Henrico: 18, and Richmond: 53). Since this pandemic began, 163 people have died in the Richmond region. To be honest, the data in my personal spreadsheet no longer looks anything like the data on the VDH website, which has me both bummed and frustrated. Check out this graph from VDH of Number of Cases by Event Date and compare it to my graph of Number of Positive Cases by Date Reported. These are two different graphs that show two different things, for sure. But, still, every day reporters—and hobbyists like myself—are all “Welp, 1,229 new cases reported today, that’s the most ever in a single day. Yikes.” Meanwhile the VDH graph says, “Nah, that was back on May 16th and today doesn’t look so bad.” I’m not smart enough to know what’s going, but I wonder if its due to the concept of completeness. I figured this was a thing but just found out there’s a specific word for it yesterday via Patron Casey on the GMRVA Slack (which is open to all patrons!).

Mayor Stoney announced that Richmond will use some of that federal CARES Act money to support folks who test positive for COVID-19 and need a safe place to isolate. I’m pretty excited about this as it’s one thing for officials shout at people to isolate if they get sick, but it’s an entirely different thing to actually help sick folks who don’t have the space or opportunity to do that.

It’s Friday, and the Virginia Employment Commission has updated its weekly unemployment insurance claims numbers. 44,699 new people filed for unemployment insurance in the week ending May 16th—this is down 7,440 claimants from last week. The horrifying—but mathematically beautiful—graph of both new and continued claimants continued its previous trends, with the total number of folks filing for unemployment insurance increasing. However, the rate of that increase has slowed, which seems good. It’s still shocking to look at these numbers in the context of this same week form last year, a week that saw “only” 18,177 continued claims. That’s 22 times more claims! VEC also provides a breakdown of claims by locality. For the week ending in May 16th, Richmond saw 18,875 total claimants. That’s two and a half Siegel Centers of people.

Colleen Curran at the Richmond Times-Dispatch talked with some music venues who are basically stuck in eternal pandemic purgatory until…who even knows when. Honestly, it’s nice? refreshing?—neither of these are the right word—to read something about the issues facing any industry other than the restaurant industry. I love restaurants, but, I’m thankful to expand the context of our conversations about how COVID-19 is impacting local businesses. As The Broadberry’s Lucas Fritz says, “We have zero income. The Broadberry is completely closed with no revenue coming in. We still have to pay rent, utilities and insurance fees on a monthly basis. We’ve been burning through cash since March.”

Roberto Roldan at VPM sat down for an interview with John Moeser and Rutledge Dennis to talk about Richmond’s annexation of Chesterfield. My contractual obligation to always link to annexation stories aside, I know about this stuff and am still shocked every time I read about it. Here’s Moeser: “What the Richmond oligarchy decided to do was to simply reduce the black population. And the way to do that was to annex thousands, tens of thousands of white people from the adjoining County, Chesterfield County. In fact, when people learn the story about the annexation, they are amazed. They are shocked. I mean, the number of secret meetings that were held.” Secret meetings! Gah!

Lately, I’m into scavenger hunts or lists of things that give me an excuse to get out and explore parts of Richmond I’ve never seen before—usually by bike. RVA Bike Month’s Treesure Hunt is a great example, and this #RVAHistoryHunt also seems pretty cool. While both of these “events” are ostensibly tied to a time, it’s not like history or trees are going anywhere anytime soon. Save these links for a sunny quaranday when you’ve got nothing else to do!

Logistical note! Monday is Memorial Day, and I will be taking the day off to sleep in a bit and, depending on the weather, maybe go for a wonderfully long bike ride. However! I’ve got some bonus content headed your way, so keep your eyes on your inbox and your ears on your podcast app. We will speak again on Tuesday.

This morning’s longread

Here’s what happens when a contact tracer calls you

My quest to truly understand contact tracing (and maybe become a contact tracer in the process?) continues! Marie Albiges at The Virginian-Pilot sat down for an interview with an actual contact tracer so she could learn about how that process works. So fascinating!

I didn’t want to contract the virus myself, and convincing a stranger to let me listen in on an interview didn’t seem likely. Plus that wouldn’t fly with HIPAA, the law that protects people’s private health information. So the Chesapeake Health District proposed the next best thing: a mock interview, in which I pretend to be a patient with COVID-19. On Wednesday, I got on the phone with epidemiologist Lisa Engle. We settled on the terms — she would ask me questions as if I were a COVID-19 patient, and I would tell her exactly how I spent my days leading up to when I was tested. At the end of the interview, she would shred her notes on my fake illness, and I could write about it.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and today you can expect more of the same! Get ready for temperatures in the 60s, rain here or there, and lots of time to spend pensively staring out of the window. Warmer temperatures, at least, should arrive tomorrow.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 763 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 33 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 103 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 57, Henrico: 22, and Richmond: 35). Since this pandemic began, 162 people have died in the Richmond region. That’s four days in the last week with over 100 new cases in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield combined. Before this week, that’d only happened once—back on May 7th. We know Mayor Stoney has his eye on the data, but I wonder what folks in Chesterfield are thinking as they watch their percent positivity numbers creep upwards. Look at that graph, you can call it flat if you want, but it certainly doesn’t show a fortnight of decrease. If I lived in Chesterfield, which I do not, I might send my Supervisor and County Manager an email with a question or two.

Today, City Council’s Finance and Economic Development committee meets at 1:00 PM. I typically never ever talk about this committee because who even understands how money works?? However, this afternoon they’ll consider Councilmember Gray’s RES. 2020-R026 (PDF) which would set up a restaurant-only grant program in the City of Richmond. If I’m reading it right, it returns to restaurants any meals taxes they paid/will pay in March, April, May, and June—minus the bit of meals tax that go toward schools. It also would give restaurants back half of their BPOL tax over that same time period. Again, just cue up and insert my rant about how relief policies are good but we should be holistic in designing them so that other service industry businesses are not excluded. The Mayor’s administration put together an Administrative Impact Statement (PDF) on this resolution, which puts it bluntly: “The program would potentially have a multi-million dollar negative impact on the FY2020 general fund during uncertain economic times without any identified funding source, and add an administrative burden to implement.” Remember, RES. 2020-R026 is a non-binding resolution that just asks the mayor to submit the budget amendment ordinances necessary to create this program.

Ben Dennis from WRIC reports that a driver sped off the 95 South exit onto Broad Street, jumped the median, and crashed into a Pulse bus last night. Dennis says three people on the bus were injured. What a terrifying and absolutely preventable situation. If you’ve ever taken that off-ramp, you know it’s singularly designed for speed. It’s practically a runway (pictured above in 2017) that literally ends in a crosswalk used by tons of hospital staff. The State could do all sorts of things to slow drivers down as they rocket off the highway into our City. The State could (finally) create a safe way for folks to walk on that part of Broad Street without crossing two highway ramps. They choose not to, and so stuff like this happens and will continue to happen.

/r/rva says that Dominion will IMPLODE their old building on Saturday, May 30th, at 7:00 AM. This is the first I’ve seen a scheduled time, and sounds like if you’re fixing to watch an enormous building get blown up, you’ll have to wake up pretty early. Obviously most of Downtown will be closed off, but there are definitely some pretty choice spots to watch from if you think about it for a second.

Remember sports and arenas and athletic bands and stuff? Good times. To help you remember the good times, here’s a recording posted on the GWAR YouTube of the VCU Peppas covering GWAR’s “Saddam A Go Go.” This is good and peak Richmond, but, dang. It reminds me of college basketball, and now I’m sad. Thanks to /r/rva for this morning rollercoaster of emotions.

This morning’s patron longread

Ahmaud Arbery Holds Us Accountable

Submitted by Patron Erin. Another beautifully written piece. This one’s tough to read, but it’s important that you do so.

Ahmaud’s birthright to this particular place is strong. His people’s fight to maintain their ownership of this particular place is resolute. The dignity and kindness and richness of culture that they have imprinted on this place is indelible. And while that doesn’t give him any greater right to life and justice than any other human anywhere, it does highlight the depravity of any argument that white men had a right to confront him with guns and end his life simply because he was a black man who stood his ground in their neighborhood, because he didn’t explain and supplicate himself to them. But nobody belonged to this particular place more than Ahmaud Arbery.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and today you can expect highs around 60s and some sprinkles here or there. Temperatures start kicking back up in earnest tomorrow and Friday, and maybe we’ll see the sun again soon!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,005 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 27 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 100 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 41, Henrico: 27, and Richmond: 32). Since this pandemic began, 162 people have died in the Richmond region. VDH has reported a single-day total of over a thousand cases just four times ever, and three of those times in the last week. The data’s a lot spikier for testing, but we are pretty dang close to hitting the federal goal of reporting 99 tests per 100,000 Virginians each day(assuming the Feds have even kept the same goals from weeks ago). We’re also creeping up on Virginia’s goal of 10,000 tests per day with a seven-day average of around 7,600. Data note! The testing data VDH provides is a bit of a mess at the moment, and I’ve just kind of thrown all possible testing data into a column in my spreadsheet and called it “frankentests.” It’s column as generous toward the the Governor and VDH as possible. If scientists, analysts, economists, or any other kind of -ists saw what I was up to, they’d probably be physically sick—so keep it to your self!

At a press conference yesterday, Mayor Stoney announced what the City will be doing with its time over the next couple of weeks as Richmond prepares to (possibly) enter Phase One. He’s got a multi-pronged approached that involves: Expanding testing capacity in high-need areas, providing 40,000 masks to residents, supporting small businesses with some zero-interests loans, and expanding public spaces in the form of both bigger patios for restaurants and open/slow streets for neighborhoods. This all sounds good! It’s nice to see the Mayor using the Governor’s two-week Phase One stay to get stuff done rather than just sitting in his office refreshing VDH’s percent positivity graph over and over again (although I can relate to that). Specifically, you know I’m excited about the Mayor’s move to open up more space to the public. We’re all trying to be trapped inside less while sufficiently distanced from other folks who are also trying to be trapped inside less. It’s a tension that increasing public space helps resolve. If you’re a restaurant owner, you get your own dedicated form to fill out that’ll kick off the process to expand your outdoor patio space. If you’re just a regular person and want an open/slow street in your neighborhood, you’ll have to email your City Councilmember and ask them to ask the Mayor’s administration to ask the new internal team dedicated to reviewing this sort of thing.

Richmond Public Schools adopted their budget last night! I think that wraps up our local budget season and officially moves us into the “Now We Review The Budget Super Often Because Who Even Knows What Is Happening Right Now” stage of things. In his now-daily email, Superintendent Kamras says the following list of “enhancements” are official: 2% raise for teachers and all staff; 1.17% step increase for teachers, principals, and nurses; new salary schedules for custodians, bus operators, instructional assistants, and APs; 15 new teachers to reduce K-3 class sizes; 10 new ESL teachers; 10 new preschool teachers to expand VPI enrollment by over 250 students; nine new social workers; eight new middle school teachers; five new nurses; five new reading specialists; new elementary behavior intervention program; new recent immigrant support program; new STEM academies at MLK and Henderson; and new support to increase student attendance. This is a bananas list of new stuff considering we’ve got a pandemic on.

One teensy City Council update: Most of the interesting legislation I had my eye on escaped yesterday’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee and now sits on City Council’s May 26th agenda (PDF). Honestly, assuming that agenda avoids a great Cull and Continue between now and then, Council’s gonna have a pretty interesting night—worth tuning in for, I’d say!

Yesterday, Taber from the Internet launched an everylot bot for Richmond, and I am so incredibly excited about it! An everylot bot posts Google Streetview images of every single lot in a city over the course of many, many years—until August 2024 in Richmond’s case. It’s a small, delightful way to experience the City’s urban fabric, and, fingers crossed, generates useful and productive conversations about our blocks, streets, neighborhoods, trees, land use, zoning, and a bunch of other stuff. Think of it like the urbanist version of a Word of the Day calendar or a twice-hourly land-use conversation starter. Two examples: The post about 1301 W. Main Street ended up in a conversation about high speeds on Cary and Main, while this one about 2937 Brook Road reminded me that the Northside has a ton of Sears kit homes. So, if you’re a Twitter type, give @everylot_rva a follow and see if it sparks joy.

If you must, the Flying Squirrels will offer ballpark food for curbside pickup this Friday from 11:30 AM – 5:00 PM, says RVA Hub. I wonder if I could get a beer as big as my head, which is my current favorite item served at the Diamond?

This morning’s longread

Data for Black Lives: COVID-19 Movement Pulse Check and Roundtable Report

Data for Black Lives is worth checking out and subscribing to their email list, and this report, issued after a recent COVID-19 round table, is worth your time.

Data for Black Lives is working to make data a tool for social change instead of a weapon of political oppression in the lives of Black people. When it comes to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black people, we assert that race on its own is not a risk factor but that racism is; that racism is above all, a technology aimed at deciding who will live and who will die. Our work at Data for Black Lives is to expose and dismantle these forces especially as COVID-19 becomes a compounding force in making structural racism ever more present and even more deadly.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 55 °F, and you can expect potentially soggy highs in the upper 60s. Keep an eye out for rain later tonight. The good news: The seven-day forecast has some sunshine near its end!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 752 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and five new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 53 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 14, Henrico: 20, and Richmond: 21). Since this pandemic began, 160 people have died in the Richmond region. Here’s a chart of the seven-day averages of the number of new cases in Chesterfield, Henrico, and Richmond. You can see Henrico’s big, quick spike early on with its nation-leading outbreak at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center. Now each locality in the entire region sees, on average, about the same number of new cases each day as Henrico did during that terrible outbreak. For whatever reason, VDH’s data dashboard won’t show me the percent positivity for each locality this morning, but the line graph still exists. Even including antibody tests, which, remember, increases the denominator in the calculation, percent positivity across the entire region is up over the last week—slightly up in Chesterfield and Henrico, way up in Richmond.

The Governor named a bunch of folks to his COVID-19 Education Work Group, which will “help chart a path forward for determining how schools can safely reopen later this year.” My immediate impression from that very first sentence of the press release is that the group has decided to open schools in 2020 regardless of whatever we learn about COVID-19 between now and then. I’m certainly not saying the Commonwealth needs to cancel even more school—the current situation is untenable and by most counts inequitable—but I’d love to let the work group do some…work…and report back with what they’ve decided as the best path forward. Along those lines, I much prefer this quote, later on in the press release, from the Secretary of Education: “As we begin to think about how Virginia’s education system can operate in the summer and fall, it is crucial that we have the advice of a diverse, thoughtful group of education leaders…This group will use their expertise to guide our approach and help ensure that all voices are heard and all recommendations are made through the lens of equity.” Or even this quote from the Northam himself, from the recap of the Governor’s Monday press briefing by the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Justin Mattingly: "It is very important for me to get our children back in schools…As soon as we can safely get our students back into the classroom, we will do that. I am hopeful that our students will be back in the classroom this fall.” Unfortunately, scrolling through the list of work group members I don’t see anyone from the Richmond region (unless you count Fredericksburg or Powhatan) and I don’t really see urban school districts represented (other than Chesapeake). I wish I had more time or I would pull the racial demographics of the school districts and the localities represented. A quick, back-of-the-napkin census query shows that the localities represented have a 56% White population—of course, that could be and probably is vastly, vastly different than the demographics of their public schools. Anyway, someone get Jason Kamras on this committee.

OK, who wants to run for mayor? Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says a judge “ruled candidates could appear on the ballot if they submitted 150 signatures from registered voters, with at least 10 in each of the nine City Council districts, by June 23.” 10 signatures in each of the nine districts! That’s an incredibly low bar, and you’ve got an entire month to cross it. Get to work, potential candidates.

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today at 1:00 PM. You can download the agenda here (PDF). I’ve got my eye on all sorts of legislation, and all of it appears to have survived Council’s time-honored Agenda Cull and Continue that typically happens before each meeting. A couple highlights: RES. 2020-R016 has City Council asking the CAO to ask the Director of Public Works to figure out how to keep sidewalks and bike lanes open during construction. A sad, sad resolution that shouldn’t have to exist, and, yet! Here we are! Plus, remember, RES. 2020-R034 will surplus a bunch of downtown property and clear the way for RFPs and new development and all sorts of things now that NoBro is dead and buried. Finally, with RES. 2020-R015 Council will attempt to modify the Commission of Architectural Review’s decision to deny demolition of the 1922 section of the old George Mason Elementary School in Church Hill. Remember that whole thing? A simpler time it was!

It’s Testing Tuesday! That’s not a thing, but the Richmond City Health District will hold a free testing event today at Diversity Richmond (1407 Sherwood Avenue). You’ve got to live in Richmond or Henrico; have some COVID-19 symptoms; and not have insurance, have insurance that doesn’t cover coronavirus testing, or live in an affordable housing community. Make sure to call 804.205.3501 to register in advance! Even if you don’t meet those qualifications, you can still give the number a call and find a place that will get you tested.

I love these #HiddenGemsRVA videos from Richmond’s Parks & Rec! Check out this one on Maury Cemetery (a place I’ve never been!) and this one on Pine Camp (a place I’m at all the time!). I’m looking forward to more of these videos and exploring some of these spots.

This morning’s patron longread

Contact Tracing Explained

Submitted by Patron Casey. Yesterday, I made some jokes about contract tracers moonlighting as disease detectives. Here’s an informative piece from The Forge at Duke explaining a little about what actuallygoes into effective contact tracing.

Traditional contact tracing can be classified as active or passive. Active tracing involves proactive data collection by health system staff, while passive contact tracing relies upon voluntary response to surveys and other calls for information. Both are extremely useful, but both also have inherent limitations. The usefulness of active tracing is typically constrained by the number of tracers, the ability to get in touch with identified contacts, and the limitations of memory and willingness of contacts to share sensitive personal information. Passive tracing on the other hand can have a very broad reach, but is limited to the subjective responses of survey participants and is dependent on the good will of the community to respond candidly and at the necessary scale.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and that’s about the high for today. We’ve got a chance of rain today and maybe every day for the rest of this week. I’m…not looking forward to spending even more time indoors.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 705 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 7 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 53 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 29, Henrico: 26, and Richmond: 17). Since this pandemic began, 160 people have died in the Richmond region. Despite the relatively low number of new cases in the City, Richmond saw more new cases reported over the weekend than ever before (147). In good data news, VDH has update their dashboard to now show percent positivity by health district (tap on “Testing” and then you can select a locality from the drop down). Remember: 7-day positivity rate has become the go-to metric for the governor in his phased recovery plan, and now we’ve got the ability to see that metric change over time. Richmond’s 7-day positivity rate is 25.8% and has increased each of the last eight days. Chesterfield’s remains mostly flat around 11%, and Henrico’s sits at 13.7% having increased from 10.7% since May 12th. Turns out, jurisdictions are different, and the availability of more and more data continues to highlight the inequitable effects the coronavirus. To whit, over the weekend, Sabrina Moreno and Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch looked at the disparate impact COVID-19 has on Black and Latino communities: “Hispanic Virginians make up almost 30% of cases despite being only 9% of the state population. Black residents are 16% of cases, and almost 20% of the population, but in Richmond, make up 16 of the 18 deaths. One is Hispanic and one is not reported.” Additionally, Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury continues her excellent healthdata reporting and has a good piece on how the Commonwealth still fails to meet the governor’s stated metrics for safely moving into recovery. Masters’s piece will also give you some insight into how the data available from VDH has changed, sometimes abruptly, over the last couple of months—much to the dismay of spreadsheetidemiologists and local policy makers alike.

The City’s Planning Commission meets today to hear a presentation on Richmond 300, and you can take a peek at the slides beforehand. First, the draft of the plan drops on May 26th! That’s pretty exciting. Second, you should gird yourself for a bunch of topic- and geography-focused (virtual) meetings in June. Also, if you scroll down a bit in that PDF, you can see the results of the Planning for a Post-Pandemic Society survey I linked to a couple weeks back. Of particular interest to me is page 11 which shows responses to “Which features do you think individuals will want their neighborhoods to have in a post-pandemic society?” Top four answers: Sidewalks, a public park within a short walk, a commercial area within a short walk, and bike lanes. People want safe, easy ways to get to the things they need to live a thriving life—without a car! To prepare for this—while addressing folks' health and safety needs—the City can and should pilot dozens of miles of slow/open streets all over the place. Honestly, the City should have done this months ago, but, for whatever reason, it has not. In fact, when places like Ashland are piloting open streets and talking about making them permanent, it feels like our City’s leadership actively does not want this sort of thing to happen. You should ask them why not ([email protected] and City Council contact information).

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says City Council will take the next baby steps forward in figuring out what to do with the area around the Coliseum, aka NoBro, aka the ex-Navy Hill project. At tomorrow’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meeting Council will consider RES. 2020-R034, which would declare a handful of downtown properties as surplus—something they’ve got to do before issuing Requests for Proposal for future development. I’d like to pause a moment to remind Council that they very much wanted to complete a small area plan for that neighborhood before the City issued any new RFPs. Spiers points out that a plan is mentioned in the resolution’s notes, but, regardless, I wanted to say it out loud while making a concerned face. Probably the biggest single misstep of the entire Navy Hill situation was the lack of public engagement at the RFP-stage of the process. Let’s not go through that whole thing again, OK? Side note: There’s a lot of interesting stuff on the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee’s agenda for tomorrow, and you can see what I’m tracking on this public Trello board.

That Graduate Together 2020 video you may have seen floating around featured Richmond’s own National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson! It also featured other people you may have heard of like “Barack Obama” and “LeBron James”—neither of those people are from Richmond, though. Robinson says some of his words got cut for airtime, but you can read the entirety of his segment over on his Twitter.

Employment note! The Virginia Department of Health is hiring 1,300 contact tracers. I honestly have no idea what’s involved in contact tracing, but it does sound kind of like being a disease detective? VDH wants interested folks to contact one of the staffing agencies found in this PDF.

This morning’s longread

F*ck the Bread. The Bread Is Over.

This is some good, good writing.

I call my mother. “I can’t find bread flour or yeast anywhere.” “F*ck the bread,” says my mother. “The bread is over.” In fairy tales, form is your function and function is your form. If you don’t spin the straw into gold or inherit the kingdom or devour all the oxen or find the flour or get the professorship, you drop out of the fairy tale, and fall over its edge into an endless, blank forest where there is no other function for you, no alternative career. The future for the sons who don’t inherit the kingdom is vanishment. What happens when your skills are no longer needed for the sake of the fairy tale? A great gust comes and carries you away.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and highs today are headed up into the mid 80s! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says today is the best day of the week to chill in your front yard or nearest patch of grass, so make sure to take advantage of it. The weekend ahead of us looks pretty great, with some potential rain as the week approaches. Enjoy!

Water cooler

Late Wednesday morning, Richmond Police were called to the 4300 block of Williamsburg Road and found Dominique Danzy, 22, lying on a bike path, shot to death.

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,067 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 28 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 94 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 47, Henrico: 28, and Richmond: 19). Statewide, 1,067 is a new all-time high for new cases reported in a single day, and, after a week of flirting with 10,000 tests per day, the Commonwealth has fallen back to an average number of reported tests per day under 7,000 (that using either unique people tested or total testing encounters). Yet, for most of the state, today marks the beginning of the Governor’s Phase One of recovery. However, in NOVA, Accomack County, and…Richmond City!…Phase One will start no sooner than May 28th. Yesterday, the Mayor held a press conference at which he announced he’d requested a formal delay of Phase One within the city limits from the Governor, and, last night, the Governor approved his request (PDF). You can read the City’s press release which contains this graph of percent positivity in Richmond, the Governor’s favorite metric, clearly showing an increase over the last two weeks. You can also read the Governor’s press releasein which he says he is “pleased” to grant delays for both Accomack and Richmond. I’m proud of the Mayor and his team for pushing back on the Governor’s timeline, asking for Richmond-specific data, and then making the informed, empathetic, and clear-eyed decision to protect the health and safety of Richmonders. For folks living and working in Henrico and Chesterfield, I’m sorry, and please stay safe. If you can, continue to stay at home and do as much as you can to keep others safe. P.S. Who’s asking VDH for percent positivity data for each locality so we can do some before/after Phase One comparisons?

Speaking of the surrounding counties, I want you to read this letter to the Governor—signed by the county executives of Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover—making extra double sure that the Gov knows they are 1000% ready to open today. This letter, honestly, is one of the most bizarre things I’ve read during the pandemic. The framing of businesses as some kind of living entities that aren’t composed of workers—which are, you know, people—is so off-putting. The letter barely even mentions health! During a pandemic! Compare and contrast this letter from county leadership to the letter the city’s Mayor sent the Governor. The Counties: “Our business community is vulnerable and for those businesses that were deemed essential from a retail perspective to those operating in office environments, great strides have been made by them to have safety standards above even the state guidelines and executive orders.” The Mayor: “As you are aware, the unique nature of Richmond’s dense urban environment and the disparate impact this disease is having on our Black and Brown communities merits consideration for Richmond’s unique position and responsibilities to its residents.” The counties: “We are also aware that many of those businesses, that have not already gone out of business, are dependent upon phase one re-openings as they are currently day-to-day in determining whether to close permanently and are at their most vulnerable point right now.” The Mayor: “16 out of 18 deaths in Richmond have been African American. Where we know the race of our positive residents, African Americans have three times the disease incidence as Whites. Where we know the ethnicity of our cases, Hispanic and Latino Richmonders make up an outsize proportion, representing 23% of cases while only accounting for 6–7% of our total population. Additionally, an analysis by zip code data shows that a higher percentage of positive cases are found in the parts of our city with persistent rates of social and economic hardship.”

The Virginia Employment Commission’s newest unemployment insurance claims numbers are out. The trend over the last couple of weeks continues: initial claims continue to decrease (52,139), while continued claims continue to increase (392,673). The latter is growing more than the former is shrinking, so the total number of folks making unemployment claims has continued go up. These numbers lag a week, but it’ll be interesting to see how the Governor’s move into Phase One of recovery impacts the unemployment claims—“accommodation and food service” and “retail trade” make up 34% of total claimants last week. Related: Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury says the Governor will continue to allow folks to receive their unemployment benefits without looking for a new job every dang week.

Via /r/rva, here’s a picture of two people riding horses in Union Hill? Like, just down the street as if that were a totally normal thing to do in a city? Quarantine life is weird!

This morning’s patron longread

A Tale of Two Truths: Transportation and Nuance in the Time of COVID-19

Submitted by Patron Mariia. I liked this piece about the tension between racial justice and the push for open/slow streets. But, as one of my friends always says when presented with a seemingly either-or choice “why not both?”

You can want open streets and want to hold cities accountable to ensuring new policies do not further harm communities of color. You can want open streets and want to prioritize the acute needs of Black and Brown communities that have been forced to show up for themselves in the midst of a crisis that has impacted them severely. Realizing these ideals in tandem may demand greater imagination and the decentralization of personal desires, but they do not necessitate competition. And yet, I’ve repeatedly observed them held in contempt of one another, particularly in the name of closing streets to vehicle traffic.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and we’ve got a potential bit of rain moving through the area this morning. After that, though, get stoked for temperatures in the mid 70s and beyond until at least next week. Find a reason to spend some time outside!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 946 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 36 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 92 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 25, Henrico: 40, and Richmond: 27). We’ll get one more round of data this afternoon before the Governor’s planned move into Phase One, but, over the last couple of days: the seven-day average of the number of new cases has gone up, the seven-day average of hospitalizations has gone up, the seven-day average of the number of new deaths has gone up, the seven-day average of percent positivity (using unique people tested) has gone up, and the seven-day average of percent positivity (using testing events) has gone up. Some of those data points, especially the Governor’s key metric of percent positivity, rely on testing, which has also steadily gone up over the last couple of weeks. However, we just learned from Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in The Most Important Coronavirus Piece That I’ve Read In A While, that VDH had started to mix antibody test results with its standard, viral test results. To me—not a doctor or an expert—that seems confusing at best and misleading at worst. Yesterday, Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer at the Atlantic have this incredibly damning piece that confirms a lot of my concerns with how the Governor is using unreliable data in his decisions to move into Phase One of recovery. You absolutely must read the entire thing, but I’m going to quote some of the more enraging bits. First, “Virginia’s decision to mix the results of two different kinds of tests marks a new low in data standards…By combining these two types of test, the state is able to portray itself as having a more robust infrastructure for tracking and containing the coronavirus than it actually does.” A Harvard professor of Global Health said of the practice, “It’s terrible. It messes up everything.” Meanwhile, the Governor’s Chief of Staff says that the practice is totally fine because other states are doing it too, but the Atlantic “could not find evidence that other states are blending test results in the way that [the Chief of Staff] claimed. In an email, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Health claimed that Arizona, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia also mingled viral and antibody results. This is false: Those three governments either separate out, or do not report, the result of negative antibody tests to the public.” Then, about how this impacts the Governor’s key percent positivity metric: “But because Virginia combines viral and antibody results, its positivity rate is unusable, said Jha, the Harvard professor…By lumping the two tests together, as Virginia has done, states can artificially improve their test-positivity rate.” Keep all that in mind as the Governor drags the Commonwealth into Phase One tomorrow.

Obviously, as an amateur spreadsheetidemiologist, I’m against the Governor’s rushed recovery plan—but I’m not the only one! Yesterday, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus sent a letter to Governor Northam opposing the plans to begin Phase One tomorrow. I strongly agree with this: “Yet a premature reopening of Virginia’s economy under these aforementioned weaknesses in proper medical infrastructure and capacity will hit Black Virginians and Virginians of Color even harder. Under the current plan, and with the already existent racial disparities that this pandemic and economic crisis are perpetuating, we will be creating a situation where Black and Brown Virginians outside of Northern Virginia will become guinea pigs for our economy.” It’s times like these I’m proud that both of my state legislators are members of the VLBC.

Locally, Mayor Stoney has voiced some of the same concerns as the VLBC and has hinted at asking the Governor for an exemption similar to that given NOVA. Stoney’s position makes a ton of sense, even if none of his regional partners in Chesterfield or Henrico agree. Regardless, Richmond is different than the surrounding counties. Over 20% of Richmond’s population lives below the poverty line, compared to less than 10% in Chesterfield and Henrico. Black people represent 47% of Richmond’s population and just 30% in Henrico and 23% in Chesterfield. Read what the VLBC said again and think about how that plays out locally. We do not need to set Richmond up as an experiment for how putting service industry folks back to work—without the proper testing and tracking infrastructure—impacts the health and lives of Black and Brown people. If you agree with the Mayor, I’d encourage you to let him know. You can drop him an email at [email protected] or send him a tweet at @LevarStoney. It may seem like a small, inconsequential action, but we should publicly support our locally elected leaders who are making the right decisions.

I don’t know how this came about, but ChamberRVA got $250,000 from Facebook to start providing unrestricted grants to small businesses. The application is open until this coming Tuesday, May 19th, so if you’ve got a small business (two to 25 employees) and need some extra cash it’s definitely worth giving the application a once-over.

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has some of the details on the next batch of rezonings to come out of the Pulse Corridor Plan. This next phase would tackle a lot of the weird industrial no-zones between Arthur Ashe Boulevard, the highway, Lombardy, and Broad. Yes! More density on and along Broad Street, please! Planning Commission will take a look at the related ordinance (ORD. 2020–103) on May 18th.

Also from Richmond BizSense, Jack Jacobs says area malls plan to reopen tomorrow? Sure. Do the malls count as “non-essential brick and mortar retail”? Will they have to monitor folks coming in for coronavirus symptoms? Will they need to limit occupancy to 50% of their legally allowed limit? Do the rules only apply to stores within malls? I have so many quesitons.

This morning’s patron longread

The Sickness in Our Food Supply

Submitted by Patron Zac. While I knew the supply chain was busted in all kind of ways due to the coronavirus, I didn’t know about this existing, two parallel food chains nonsense! Seems…suboptimal.

Today the US actually has two separate food chains, each supplying roughly half of the market. The retail food chain links one set of farmers to grocery stores, and a second chain links a different set of farmers to institutional purchasers of food, such as restaurants, schools, and corporate offices. With the shutting down of much of the economy, as Americans stay home, this second food chain has essentially collapsed. But because of the way the industry has developed over the past several decades, it’s virtually impossible to reroute food normally sold in bulk to institutions to the retail outlets now clamoring for it. There’s still plenty of food coming from American farms, but no easy way to get it where it’s needed.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, and today looks like a great day to get outside and move your body around. Expect highs right around 70 °F and lots of sunshine. Take advantage of the opportunity!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 730 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 41 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 90 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 48, Henrico: 23, and Richmond: 19). Locally, this is the third most new reported positive cases in a single day, and that finally got me to put together this chart of the seven-day average of new reported positive cases in Richmond, Chesterfield, and Henrico. As you can see, Chesterfield continues to report more new cases each day, Richmond’s either mostly flat or has a slightly increasing number of new cases, and Henrico is still coming down off its early peak. Statewide, reported deaths shot way up. Doctors and statisticians will hate how I use these numbers—so, grain of salt—but the CDC reports leading causes of deaths for each state, and in Virginia cancer killed 15,064 people in 2017 (the most recent data they’ve got). That’s an average of 41 people per day. Looking at it that way, yesterday, COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in the Commonwealth. Also, not that it matters anymore, VDH reported under 5,000 tests yesterday, and the average number of tests reported over the last six days (for dumb data reasons) is either 6,886 or 7,216—depending on how you define “test.” Both of those numbers are significantly less than 10,000. I’m interested in what the Governor will say at his regularly-scheduled 2:00 PM briefing today, the final one before the May 15th plunge into Phase One.

In potentially huge news locally, Justing Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says Mayor Stoney “is expressing reservations about whether Friday is the right time for officials to start easing restrictions in the city” and that “Richmond is considering asking Northam for an exemption similar to what Northern Virginia received.” Heck yes, Mayor! I’m having…an unplanned emotional reaction…to finally reading about an elected official who I feel like has their focus on the health and safety of me, my family, and my neighbors. Yes, that’s for sure how normal people talk about feelings—as “unplanned emotional reactions.” Anyway, as I hinted at yesterday, I don’t think there’s much weight in the Governor’s continued “my restrictions are a floor not a ceiling” rhetoric. At the moment he appears way more focused on, in his words, “Uniformity across the region is critical to a successful strategy, rather than having restrictions piecemeal across towns and counties.” Here again is Mayor Stoney with the A+ response: "I understand that the governor wants everybody to be on the same page in the region to do so, but I think this is once again where being an independent city in this state kind of penalizes you…We’re different than the counties. That’s just the bottom line.” Super different than the counties in priorities: Both county managers from Henrico and Chesterfield say they plan on going ahead with the May 15th move into Phase One.

I don’t really know what to make of this piece of reporting by Kate Masters in the Virginia Mercury about the State sharing names and addresses of individuals with COVID-19 with 911 dispatch centers. Masters gets into some of the localities' super legit privacy concerns and how VDH seems to be using the same section of the State Code to authorize this use of data while preventing other uses. I’m definitely not against using our personal data to allow for robust contact tracing—in fact, I think it’s critical to me ever getting out of this dang house again. But what we need is a plan, put together by health and data experts, to get this thing done. Not just “release the data to call centers and let localities decide how to handle it properly.”

/r/rva has posts from a ton of folks who were out taking pictures of yesterday’s flyover plus this video. Yes, there was a flyover yesterday! Honestly, I don’t really know what a flyover does during coronatimes. Are we, like, full of morale now? How about hazard pay for the people working in grocery stores? That’d pump up my morale jams for sure. But, because I am still a small child, I can’t be but so cynical when looking at pictures of huge, fast machines.

This morning’s patron longread

The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying

Submitted by Patron Kimberly. Here’s a depressing piece about how, like almost all things in America, race is such an enormous factor in the impact of COVID-19.

The racial contract is not partisan—it guides staunch conservatives and sensitive liberals alike—but it works most effectively when it remains imperceptible to its beneficiaries. As long as it is invisible, members of society can proceed as though the provisions of the social contract apply equally to everyone. But when an injustice pushes the racial contract into the open, it forces people to choose whether to embrace, contest, or deny its existence. Video evidence of unjustified shootings of black people is so jarring in part because it exposes the terms of the racial contract so vividly. But as the process in the Arbery case shows, the racial contract most often operates unnoticed, relying on Americans to have an implicit understanding of who is bound by the rules, and who is exempt from them.

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