Cville Dems

The Charlottesville Democratic Committee

Interested in an Informational Forum on the City’s Zoning Plan?

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Horizontally-oriented graphic reading "Community Forums" in a yellow handwriting-looking script and "Long-Range Planning" in a standard print font surrounded by a white background and an abstract geometric design
At the March 27 Full Committee meeting, we continued discussing whether to sponsor an informational forum about the City’s upcoming Draft Zoning Plan (Modules #1 and #2 of 3 are now available) on which our local party hasn’t taken a position. We did an informal straw poll at the meeting and a significant majority voted to hold a forum.
So far, most of the informational events have either been the City presenting the plan or presentations from local activist group Livable Cville; there’s not been an event where people can hear perspectives from multiple stakeholders.
We’re thinking that, in addition to being useful in and of itself, such an event can be part of our agenda of increasing outreach to the community. Working class and minority families are increasingly being priced out of the local housing market, and they need to know that we hear and share their concerns.
This will be on the agenda for the 4/24 Executive Committee meeting, so we want to check one more time to see:
  1. Would you like to see this kind of multiple stakeholder panel/forum on the Draft Zoning Plan?
  2. If so, what groups/people would you be most interested in hearing from?
  3. Any other thoughts about this that you’d like to share with us?
Please send your thoughts to cvilledemschair@gmail.com .
More broadly on the topic of community outreach: we’re always looking for ideas and projects to increase our involvement in our community, and we would love to hear from you about what we can do in that regard (e.g. each newsletter issue now identifies a possible action item that’s relatively quick and easy for people to engage with). Please send any ideas or suggestions for anything else related to community engagement: cvilledemschair@gmail.com . Thank you!

Thanks to the Signature Verifying Team!!

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Magnifying glass with handle enlarging the letters ABC on a piece of paper.The nine-member team checked 1000+ signatures in five hours of meetings over two weekends, ensuring that all of our primary candidates (House of Delegates District and City Council) qualified to be on the ballot under State and DPVA requirements. This work is part of the machinery that keeps our democracy going!
Thanks to Nancy Damon, Alev Erisir, Judy Harmon, Mary Ann Harris, Suzanne Michels, Erin Monaghan, Elayne Phillips, Barbara Shenefield, and (Albemarle County Dem and also a member of the House District 54 nominating committee) Teresa Willis.

Meet the June Candidates (6/20 Primaries)

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Round graphic saying "Virginia is for Voters" put out by Virginia Department of ElectionsHere are the names as they will appear on the ballot (for the first and second races in ballot order):

House of Delegates District 54

Charlottesville City Council (3 seats)

State Senate District 11

(ballot order will be determined later by drawing straws)
Note: as a matter of policy, the Cville Dems don’t take sides in primaries, but we’ll continue to share information about these races through June in an even-handed way.
We’re tracking these races on our website and giving candidates some access to our social media… and we’re offering each candidate some space towards the bottom of each newsletter for campaign information/graphics.

Meet the June Candidates (6/20 Primaries)

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Here’s what we knew about the candidates in the 2023 Charlottesville primary election races:

State Senate District 11

House of Delegates District 54

[David Brown left the race on Feb. 22, Dashad Cooper left on March 14 to enter City Council race]

Charlottesville City Council (3 seats)

In addition to what’s on the web and in our social media, we’re giving each candidate some space near the bottom of each newsletter to communicate with you.
Note: as a matter of policy, the Cville Dems don’t take sides in primaries, but we’ll continue to share information about these races through June in an even-handed way.

A Word about “The Former Guy”

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Cartoon of Pres. Trump in a jail cell (only a cot and commode) wearing an orange prison jump suit holding a coffee mug reading "Lock Her Up". The caption reads "The Indicted Presidents Club".It’s a sad day for America when an ex-President is indicted.

But we’ve had plenty of sad days given all the illegal, unethical, and immoral actions perpetrated by ex-Pres. Trump (and somehow he’s still the leading Republican candidate for 2024!!????).

So for many of us, yesterday’s sadness was long long overdue.

Report: Full Committee Meeting (3/27)

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cartoon people sitting around a meeting table
1. Ashley Cinalli-Mathews from Central Virginia Community Justice gave us an overview of the renamed and expanding restorative justice organization and invited us to attend its free introductory party on April 25 (6:00-7:30pm at Visible Records, 1740 Broadway Street).

2. Plans continue to advance for our June 2 annual fundraiser (see below for more details). In the near future, we’ll need some volunteers to go through our phone list to recruit sponsors for the event. Please contact Nancy Damon (nancycdamon@gmail.com) if you might be able to help.

3. Here’s our game plan for holding forums for primary candidates, with additional event details to be announced as soon as they’re set (details of the first event were not known as of the meeting date, we’ve filled those in):
  • House of Delegates — We’ll have one forum at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on 4/26, 7:00-8:30pm, for all the primary candidates for both our District 54 (Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle) and also our neighboring District 55 (which includes the rest of Albemarle). This is co-sponsored by the Albemarle Dems.
  • City Council — Now that we need to hold a primary (currently 4 candidates for 3 seats) we’ll arrange a forum.
  • State Senate — We’ll will try to set up something with the candidates as soon as possible after candidate registrations for the primary end on April 6. The Senior Statesman club is arranging a forum close to the June primary date, but we want to give our members an earlier look.
4. We discussed whether to hold an informational forum about the City’s Draft Zoning Plan (see below for much more on this!).