Healing Charlottesville
Mail bag letter to C-ville Weekly.Wednesday 9 January 2002
Mail Bag Your newspaper brims with braggadocio (Jan. 8: Fishbowl: Fenton�s address). John Borgmeyer states that, in the last council election, "there was almost no coverage of the candidates or their platforms outside the pages of C-VILLE." You're joking, right? What about that native guy, the write-in your paper censored? You know, the one who only got four votes. The one who talked about urban renewal, Jefferson School, revenue sharing, street violence and school violence, water quality, property rights, and bathrooms on the downtown mall. The Daily Progress reported on this candidate four times and put his name on the front page two days before the election. The Observer invited him to write an essay on education and wrote a summary of his platform. WVIR-29 reported on him twice. WINA radio covered his campaign countless times. Twenty-year-old media watchdog Waldo Jaquith laments that "real discussions about complicated issues, such as Charlottesville�s stark racial divide, don�t happen." Waldo is not a good watchdog. I was the candidate whose family integrated Westhaven when I was in elementary school. I was the white kid in Upward Bound. I proposed that the Tenth Street Connector be named in honor of two local women of history, one black and one white. I was the only candidate who spoke about controversies still raging after three decades. I was the voice of black Charlottesville. Perhaps C-VILLE could publish its policy toward coverage of certified candidates for the upcoming council campaign. This clarification could prevent a candidate with limited resources from wasting time and effort trying to gain access to C-VILLE.
Blair Hawkins Printed 22 Jan 2002, a week after editor Hawes Spencer was fired. Posted
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