Community leaders and residents convened in Staunton on Saturday, for an annual forum about recent federal policy changes, their local impacts, and what they could do about it. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
At the historic Booker T. Washington High School, more than 90 people gathered around homemade cookies and lemonade for the annual "Breaking Bread" community conversation, where concerned citizens get together to talk about national political, social, and economic trends, and how they're manifesting at home.
Ophie Kier is the former vice-mayor of Staunton and founder of the organization Building Bridges for the Greater Good, which puts on the event.
OPHIE KIER [to crowd]: It's going to take people like you that are present, that are going to be willing to speak up, to stand up, and help this country move forward.
Five panelists gave remarks about how federal policy has affected their field in the last three months. Leslie Beauregard, the city manager of Staunton, spoke about several federal funding challenges – including the uncertainty of an $8.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to revitalize the Uniontown neighborhood. A week before the application deadline, city staff found out the name and description of the grant had been changed to remove words like "diversity," "equity," and "disadvantaged populations."
LESLIE BEAUREGARD [to crowd]: We had to literally turn on a dime and make sure that we did not have language in that grant that would somehow make us immediately disqualified for these funds.
Uniontown is a historically African American community. According to a Neighborhood Action Plan, in the 1960s, the city rezoned the neighborhood under an industrial classification, which "prohibited new residential construction and limited renovations to existing homes."
BEAUREGARD [in interview]: There's no sewer service that goes into that section of the city, for instance. A lot of the homes no longer exist or are dilapidated. The roads are not in good condition. The community was basically ignored for decades.
The grant, if awarded to Staunton, would address these major infrastructure needs, and build a pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks. Beauregard said they expect an answer in July or August.
Getting down to these societal brass tacks is what Kier has been seeking from these conversations for more than a decade.
KIER [in interview]: We decided to tackle the topics that nobody else wanted to tackle: food insecurities, housing, the welfare of the homeless.
The Breaking Bread event started with a public forum in 2013 about racial justice, following the killing of Trayvon Martin.
KIER: When I served on city council, I decided that we needed to have a meeting to discuss the things that were happening in the nation. There were a lot of Black men being killed, being beaten, and I felt that we were heading in a direction that would take us back to the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Looks like we're going that way now, too. But after that public forum that I held at city hall – people were there in the entire city council chambers and all the way down the hallway. And this was so that, again, people could speak their emotions and tell their feelings about where we are in society.
Amy Tillerson Brown, the chair of the history department at Mary Baldwin University and dean of the school's College for Women, was another one of Saturday's panelists. She gave a 20-minute indictment of the Trump administration's actions on education, immigration, economics, and civil rights; the historical legacies upon which they build; and the ways in which they affect local residents.
AMY TILLERSON BROWN [to crowd]: One of Trump's key stated goals is to close the education department entirely – an idea central to "Project 2025" and the current Republican platform. … This hardline approach to immigration, treating people as security threats rather than contributors, also mirrors the Project 2025 agenda's nationalist strain.
She also drew a throughline to the economic policies of the Gilded Age, which Trump has publicly admired.
TILLERSON BROWN: That was the lowest point for Black Americans after Reconstruction, when white supremacist laws and violence wiped out Black voting rights and economic gains. It's no coincidence that the original Gilded Age's laissez-faire economics went hand in hand with vicious racial oppression. … We must heed that lesson.
Tillerson Brown cited local education statistics as evidence that DEI programs and civil rights laws are still needed to push back against systemic disadvantage. According to Staunton's school quality profile published by the Virginia Department of Education, Black students make up about 13% of the school population, but over a quarter of all short-term suspensions, and two-thirds of all long-term suspensions.
TILLERSON BROWN: The disparities exist because the systems are biased, not because our children are broken.
After giving Tillerson Brown a standing ovation, attendees broke up into small groups to discuss issues they were concerned about, then reported back to the whole room. Education was the hot topic of the day, as demonstrated by participant and Staunton Commonwealth's Attorney candidate John Baber.
JOHN BABER: We have people that are going to go into teaching. … What can they or can they not teach? … What does it look like as far as loan forgiveness?
City Councilmember Alice Woods said her group was eager to get to work.
ALICE WOODS: How do we – I like to say – how do we put out boots on the ground?
The meeting ended with members of nonprofits and grassroots groups, such as Shenandoah Green and the Valley Children's Advocacy Center, sharing how prospective volunteers could plug in.
