So Anonymous Sent Us An Email...

It's actually addressed to city council and the mayor's office, but I guess it was intended as an open letter-style press release. The upshot is that they hate the proposal for a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom. I'm not sure how I feel about it either, but my first reaction to this email was to think, "Wow, this is really over-the-top." And that was after one sentence. It gets even more so from there--I particularly enjoyed the jab at "'local' media sources" (scare quotes theirs) and their "corporate masters" (scare quotes mine). It's always fun to be indirectly accused of being a corporate lackey when the owner of your publication is younger than you are and sitting at a desk right next to you. Believe me, I wish we had corporate backing! Those catered lunches are probably tasty--and I could really use some health insurance.

Anyway, this email cracked me up, so I figured I'd share it with you. Obviously we here at RVA Magazine do not endorse any of the political viewpoints expressed within the email--they are Anonymous's own, and should not be interpreted as editorial policy. I'm posting this email primarily with the intent of entertaining you. Besides, I question whether this was sent by anyone having anything to do with the original 4Chan-related group--somehow I don't see them getting worked up over property issues in a medium-sized Southern city. Which, in turn, makes me wonder why this group didn't give themselves a name that more properly represents their areas of concern. Then again, if it didn't say Anonymous at the top, I probably wouldn't be sharing it with you now, so I guess their plan worked.

Below is the full, unaltered text of the email from "Anonymous." Keep an eye out for references to "shadowy elite,""land barons," and "unrepentant capitalists." But to get serious for a moment, the legacy of institutionalized racism and social injustice that the email references in detail is real and pernicious, and even if the over-the-top tone makes this whole thing somewhat difficult to take seriously, there are parts of it that are absolutely important. All that "We call you out" stuff at the end is kind of crazy though.

May 8th, 2013

TO THE SITTING MEMBERS OF RICHMOND CITY COUNCIL AND MAYOR'S OFFICE

We have watched with displeasure the most recent crimes of the Richmond City administration and its petty ambitions; it sells its soul to the rapacious FIRE sector and throws its citizens to the wolves to appease the never-ending greed of its shadowy elite. There is no change in Richmond, only the quiet hum of the Jones Machine and the avaricious stare of the sitting mayor, dancing obediently on the strings of privileged and secret interests. There is no hope in Richmond, only despair for those who remember the lessons of the past. There is no voice in Richmond, only a pathetic handful of 'local' media sources who are content to take their pittances from corporate masters while their city rots around them. The corruption leaking from every pore of the city is indicative of its inability to understand or accept its own past.

In this city once flourished the most oppressive and disgusting form of business ever created by mankind: the slave trade. Human beings were bought and sold like chattel by the hundreds of thousands based solely on the color of their skin. From Richmond, blacks were shipped all over the country to sweat, bleed, and die at the pleasure of white slave-owners. The scars of this atrocity still bleed and fester in the forms of institutionalized racism and economic apartheid against people of color.

For too long Richmond's elites have systematically manipulated and disenfranchised its black majority through regressive economic policy, criminally negligent spending priorities, mock elections, and shadowy real estate deals. Jackson Ward was obliterated by white elites to make room for an interstate highway. Navy Hill's earthly remains consist of a marker found in a parking garage by a local professor. The black children of Richmond's school system suffer from a 75% poverty rate. Black preschoolers attend a program for disadvantaged youth on top of an unlined dump in a school that was built during the era of Jim Crow. Huge swathes of East Broad Street were gentrified to make way for the Richmond Convention Center and CenterStage Theater, a coup for the conspicuous consumers that make up Richmond's elite patrons and coordinated by Bob Mooney, former chief financier of Richmond-based Ethyl Corp. Monument Avenue's statuary stands as false exoneration of the 'heroes' of the Civil War; 'heroes' whose greatest achievement will forever be marked as failing to win the war they fought so desperately to win.

Decades ago, the discovery of the Burial Ground for Negroes (now Richmond's African Burial Ground) by Elizabeth Cann Kambourian under a parking lot in Shockoe Bottom began the decades-long struggle towards the reclamation of the nation's second-most-successful slave market by the inheritors of its legacy of cruelty and hate.

Now, as Richmond's black residents continue to make progress to regain their past and right the great injustice that white supremacist power has laid upon them, the white land barons have again mobilized to murder the threat of black power in its crib. The specter of the Shockoe Ballpark has been resurrected by Richmond's criminal capitalist class under the guise of 'growth' and 'wealth.' The charge is in part led by one H. Louis Salomonsky, an unrepentant capitalist sent to prison several years ago for bribing a public official in a failed bid to swing a mayoral election; his cries of "community!" serve merely to increase the value of his many real estate holdings through wasteful public expenditure projects. His tendrils, and those of others like him, extend far into local politics; the real estate sector outspends the next highest industry in Richmond political campaigns by two to one.

We call you out, Dwight Jones. Your 2012 unopposed mayoral election garnered you $314,499 in funds; $43,350 came from the land barons and their interests, with $2,500 alone from Salomonsky and his subsidiaries. Over the course of your sixteen-year political career, the landlords have bribed you for $135,917.

We call you out, Charles Samuels. Your 2012 election garnered you $63,225 in funds; $10,850 came from the land barons and their interests. Over the course of your four-year political career, the landlords have bribe you for $24,250.

We call you out, Chris Hilbert. Your 2012 election against a neophyte social worker garnered you $41,702 in funds; $5,155 came from the land barons and their interests. Over the course of your eight-year political career, the landlords have bribed you for $43,472.

We call you out, Kathy Graziano. Your 2012 election garnered you $96,838 in funds; $12,450 came from the land barons and their interests. Over the course of your eight-year political career, the landlords have bribed you for $71,706.

We call you out, Ellen Robertson. Your 2012 unopposed election garnered you $12,110 in funds; $1,000 came from the land barons and their interests. Over the course of your nine-year political career, the landlords have bribed you for $29,525.

We call you out, Cynthia Newbille. Your 2012 unopposed election garnered you $17,166 in funds; $1,300 came from the land barons and their interests. Over the course of your three-year political career, the landlords have bribed you for $4,100.

We call you out, Reva Trammell. Your 2012 election garnered you $65,141 in funds; $6,645 came from the land barons and their interests. Over the course of your political career, the landlords have bribed you for more than $20,095.

We are watching you, Jon Baliles. Bruce Tyler was sold to the landlords for only $82,307.

We are watching you, Parker Agelasto. Martin Jewell was sold to the landlords for only $20,600.

We are watching you, Michelle Mosby. Douglas Conner was sold to the landlords for only $29,400.

We demand that the city permanently halt attempts by its white landowners to build a ballpark in this critically important district and commit fully and transparently to enacting recommendations by the Richmond Trail of Enslaved Africans Commission for a heritage site in Shockoe Bottom.

We will be watching.

WE ARE ANONYMOUS.
WE ARE LEGION.
WE DO NOT FORGIVE.
WE DO NOT FORGET.
EXPECT US.

http://www.defendersfje.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/shockoeb...

http://www.us.iofc.org/unpacking-iofc-census

http://saverichmond.com/?p=173

http://www.change.org/petitions/richmond-school-board-do-norrell-element...

http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/reconnecting-dotts/Content?oid=13608...

http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/free-and-clear/Content?oid=1887302

http://www.vpap.org/donors/profile/index/10145?start_year=2012&end_year=...

http://www.vpap.org/donors/profile/index/128997?start_year=2012&end_year...

http://www.vpap.org/donors/profile/index/133714?cmte_type_1=local_cands&...

http://www.vpap.org/candidates/profile/money_in_industry1/1614?start_yea...