We are Virginia SONG. We are queers in the good old commonwealth. We are artists, activists, organizers; immigrants, language interpreters, and students of the universe. We are bike babez, barrier-breakers, femmes, butch, and bois. We are parents, spirit-builders and poets—speakers of our truth. We are rowdy and wild, brilliant and loud. We’re fighters and queer liberationists who are birthing new ways of being by reimagining what is possible in our lifetimes.
Many of us come together in Richmond, Virginia, where the colonial confederate memory still lingers on the roads, street signs, and psyches. Here in RVA, the River City, the preservation of Confederate statues takes precedent over the history of slave burial grounds and Black liberation. Despite all of this difficult history, we have an LGBTQ community that is vibrant and multifarious. Travelers passing our city via I-95 can spot that big, and perhaps the only rainbow building, just one symbol of the many histories here. SONG believes in a 21st century Richmond that is rooted in justice and truth.
As LGBTQ people, we find ourselves in a defining moment in our city. Recently, Mayor Dwight C. Jones put forth an economic development plan called Revitalize RVA that would “re-develop” an area of our city called Shockoe Bottom. Shockoe Bottom was once the second largest site of the slave trade industry in the entire nation. An estimated 300,000 to
350, 000 people were sold from the state of Virginia. The Bottom was a thriving economic district reliant on slave jails, traders, auction houses, and other slave-trade businesses. Profits gained were dependent on the selling and torture of human beings and served as capital for a growing city, region, and nation. Revitalize RVA calls for the construction of a new multi-million dollar minor league baseball stadium in the middle of Shockoe Bottom, paving over much of that yet to be fully recovered history of chattel slavery in Richmond.
Revitalize RVA reveals the long-standing marriage between corporate interests and city government. This undemocratic convergence between politicians and economic developers functions only to maintain the financial and political power at the expense of most of the residents of the city. While people of color face the higher likelihood of unemployment and public school buildings are literally falling apart, Richmond politicians are making closed-door deals with private entities who believe money is all they need to buy power and avoid transparency and democratic processes.
SONG has chosen to join the struggle against the proposed stadium plan by organizing our LGBTQ forces into action through grassroots organizing, communications, and strategic support of all our comrades fighting back. This issue is directly linked to education justice and queer liberation. We have the opportunity to hold our city officials accountable by taking on this fight. We want to build an LGBTQ flank within this work in order to show OUT and show up for ALL of our people who believe in liberation.
To get connected to the work in Richmond email salem@southernersonnewground.org