Alexsis Rodgers and Kim Gray In Richmond Mayoral Race

By Charles McGuigan, photos by Rebecca D’Angelo 10.2020

From the moment Richmond mayoral candidates burst from the gate, there were two notable front runners. Both are Black, both are women, both were born and raised in the Richmond area. This, too: both of them are critical of the incumbent mayor’s leadership.

Kim Gray is a seasoned politician with an insider’s understanding of the machineries that run Richmond, or bring it to a grinding halt. She has served as 2nd District Councilor for the past four years, and has spent much of her adult life working on local boards, and for non-profit and civic organizations. To date, Kim has raised more than $320,000, second only to Mayor Levar Stoney.

Alexsis Rodgers worked as a policy director under then-Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam. She then went to work for Planned Parenthood, and is currently state director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which this year succeeded in “winning protections for nannies, cleaners and homecare workers.” Alexsis announced her candidacy at the eleventh hour, and within a week her war chest grew to over $55,000 from more than 700 contributors. She has now raised about $315,000.

This past summer, in the wake of the sadistic murder of George Floyd as Black Lives Matter protests rose to a deafening crescendo, I interviewed each of these women near monuments that had become flashpoints for demonstrations. Kim Gray met me at Allen and Monument avenues in the shadow of the last monument standing there. Alexsis and I talked at one of her favorite sites in Richmond—Libby Hill Park—just yards away from “the pencil”, the tall pedestal that once supported a statue of an anonymous Confederate soldier, which was removed this past July.

On June 1, a month after protests erupted across the country, peaceful demonstrators gathered around the rotary and greensward surrounding the Lee Monument, which had become a focal point for BLM protests. It was nearly a half hour before an eight o’clock curfew imposed by Mayor Stoney. What would happen next seemed surreal and dystopian.

Two armored vehicles arrived and deployed police officers some of whom were armed with assault rifles and side arms. There was no provocation or warning. Police fired canisters of tear gas into the crowd, and doused others with pepper spray. Mayhem ensued.

Here’s what each of the candidates had to say about that event.

KIM GRAY

“I was subjected to teargas out on Broad Street, and I know what it feels like. Definitely someone made a big mistake in releasing that teargas. I think that this is evidence of major systemic problems within our city government and how things are run and I think it comes back to leadership at every turn.”

ALEXSIS RODGERS

“The first week in June was incredibly frustrating and scary for a lot of us. I woke up on June 1 and one of my friends had gone missing and as we later found she went out to protest and didn’t come back because she had been arrested. She was one of the 233 people who had been arrested, who were zip-tied, left on a bus overnight at the jail, no food, no water, never mind that it’s the pandemic and that they’re in close proximity with other people.

“I marched down to City Hall on June 3 to hear the mayor’s apology, and I was hopeful that we would get more than an apology, but we didn’t and in fact we got, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you, I’m not in charge of investigating the police. I can’t do what you’re asking for. You have to call someone else’s office.’

“To me as the mayor of the city, the buck stops with you. And you need to be able to stand up in moments of crisis and say unequivocally what’s right and wrong, and what you’re going to do within your platform to make the change. I’m not naïve. I know there are certain things that you need to call on someone else’s department or agency head to do, but he didn’t do that. And that was unacceptable.”

Both candidates see a failure of the city’s current administration in something as simple and straightforward as the granting of permits.

ALEXSIS RODGERS                               

“This was definitely something I’ve heard of in casual conversations with other folks whether it’s trying to do an addition on the house, or open a business, etcetera. Permits matter. They can hold up health care projects. I think what we have seen is that the mayor has been really focused on some of the shiny projects and the things that get him in the news and headlines. I’m not gonna say that I wouldn’t want to do a ribbon-cutting either, but I’ve got to make sure we’re handling the permits, and the things that make the city run on a day-to-day basis.”

KIM GRAY

“Several of the businesses damaged during the protests in Jackson Ward are having to rebuild. But they aren’t able to fast track or get their permits. There are so many people who are out of work and need social services, and they’re not able to get the services they need. There’s so much brokenness in our city government and I think that’s key to remain focused on. The people are protesting because they aren’t getting what they require from our city, state and federal government.”

Alexsis and Kim agree that non-violent protesters are simply exercising their constitutional rights, and attempting to silence them is a dangerous and unpatriotic tactic.

KIM GRAY

“I am all about social activism and making sure we are holding our government accountable to us. It is our government. Peaceful protests are always welcomed. I’ve participated in protesting over the years multiple times. I’ve gone to the White House; I’ve gone to the Mall in DC with the women’s march, with the Million Black Man March. I’ve been a protester.”

ALEXSIS RODGERS

“I think a lot of people have said, ‘Oh well these concerns, these are just young people out here making noise’, but honestly I talked to many folks that are my grandparents age who remember themselves putting their bodies on the line for their Civil Rights moment and I think a lot of folks who are older maybe they’re not in the streets right now because they don’t think it’s safe, but they relate to the movement that’s currently happening because they’ve seen it in their own generation.

“I would say that not just federal folks have been intentionally following and trying to silence protesters. We’ve seen the same kind of tactics when it comes to state police and local officers intentionally trying to identify who are the organizers of the protests and using them as literally a political football to try and squash the movement overall. And again these are protesters exercising their First Amendment right and it is unjust and completely wrong that any city employee, whether they’re an officer or otherwise, to say that your protest is not valid, is not welcome. And it’s scary actually, and an assault on our civil rights to see some of the tactics that the police specifically have been using to discriminate and target protesters.”

Both candidates are also opposed to the destruction of private property and other violent actions. Kim Gray, who lives in Jackson Ward, has witnessed both destruction of private property and intimidation.

ALEXSIS RODGERS

“I certainly don’t condone any form of violence against people or property. I think there are certainly going to be efforts to undermine our movement. This is not something new. I had the pleasure of working with Alicia Garza who is one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter. They saw this after Fergusson. They‘ve seen this generally in response to any concerted effort of Black Lives Matter for other insurgent organizations or groups to try to undermine it with distraction or misinformation So this is not new. So we should expect to see it in Richmond. But for me, I’m focused on making sure that folks are laser-focused on the demands that we’ve put forward related to the Marcus Alert, civilian review board, police accountability and transparency and data.”

KIM GRAY

“I’m at ground zero near Abner Clay Park. I’ve had very, very scary moments as a mother. My youngest son who is twelve was in the house when all this stuff was happening downtown. There were plumes of teargas in the neighborhood and smoke coming into the windows. I’ve had him isolated because he’s very fragile because he has asthma.

“And to have many fires set in our neighborhood—car fires, and dumpster fires, and sofas being set on fire. There are folks setting super cans on fire and pushing them up against the properties. It is violence inflicted on my neighbors, many of them struggling as it is, especially with the COVID -19 shutdowns.  To come out and have a windshield smashed to pieces and not being able to get to work. I’ve had grown men calling me, crying, because they’re just getting back to work and now this. It’s been a real struggle these past few weeks.

“Waller Jewelers has been around for 120 years. They started off in the same neighborhood where my grandfather lived a hundred years ago. And they’re part of our fabric and our history. Dr. Randy Adams has served our community and our children as a dentist for over thirty years. He specializes in seeing children with disabilities and special needs. He’s a needed resource for our children and our community and his place was hit along with Waller’s. There was an attempt to burn the Hippodrome and the 2C apartments. Those two buildings are an important part of our Jackson Ward history, Black Wall Street, the Harlem of the South. We’ve been out there fighting people off because if you’re really about Black lives and supporting Black people, don’t set fires in my historically Black neighborhood and tear up Black businesses.

“No businesses should be subjected to vandalism, fires, any of the things that are happening because we depend upon those investors, those people who come into our community. We depend upon them. The Rite Aid Pharmacy serves all of the community around here. The Wells Fargo is the bank that many of my neighbors use, and many of them are elderly and can’t get around. Our bus service was shut down. There are so many people who could not get to work because a bus was set afire, and it was not safe to ride buses. So I absolutely oppose violence on every level. I oppose vandalism and burning out of our buildings down here.”

There is no denying that systemic racism exists in this country and in our city. The question remains: how do you change it?

KIM GRAY

“I grew up within a mile and a half of the monuments, which were disturbing reminders, but I look toward the positive and I don’t focus in on the negative. Growing up when I did as a biracial child in the city, we were traumatized, we had a lot of negative actions and things done to us that shouldn’t have happened to children. I’ve always taken the course of trying to bring people together. It’s been what I’ve done form birth. I try to force a dialogue to move things in a way that we’re not just changing physical aspects of our environment but we’re changing peoples’ hearts.”

ALEXSIS RODGERS

“A lot of these demands we’re calling for today people have been called for for years, if not decades. The Richmond NAACP has been calling for a civilian review board for literally decades, and we haven’t had the leadership we need in City Hall to address these concerns seriously. So, for me, number one we’re going to be proactively listening and trying to address these real legitimate concerns from the community before it gets to a moment of crisis like we’ve seen in June and July. And certainly when there are incidents of crisis, let’s be honest about what we can do.

“Richmond has been calling for a lot of these changes for a long time but there’s a new sense of urgency here in the city and nationally that Black Lives Matter. We’re not going to settle for police violence against Black folks any longer and if you’re not with it, you’re out of here. And that’s why I stepped up to run.

“First we have to reinvest in services that are going to fund black futures. And that explicitly is because policing has historically had a disproportionate negative impact on black and brown people. So when it comes to reinvesting though, I think we can have really intentional and authentic conversations with the community about how we keep ourselves safe and what would make us safer, whether that’s work force training, education, mental health services.”

There are also calls to reform police departments across the country.

ALEXSIS RODGERS

“Specifically, equity when it comes to policing and public safety, we need to reduce the scope and scale of policing. And that means not sending officers into situations that they’re not prepared to address. There are great models all across this country. Where at the dispatch level, they’re deciding, ‘Hey, this response is actually for a mental health professional. This response should be for medical services.’ Right now in the city if you call 911 and you don’t tell them specifically that you didn’t need a law enforcement response, you’ll end up there with an officer and maybe it was just a homeless person that needed to get into a cooling shelter, but that doesn’t require a law enforcement response. 

“We definitely need better training and continued learning for police officers. We need better training, holistic training, about not just criminal response, but sensitive and informed response to diverse communities , immigrant populations, LGBTQ folk, making sure that officers are competent when it comes to these very diverse communities and can respond in a way that makes sense.

“When I’m talking about defunding police, it’s all about taking that money and reinvesting it into black futures. Whether you call it reparations or investments in black futures, for me it’s about making sure that communities that historically have been the most harmed by an unjust system are getting the benefits as we move forward.”

KIM GRAY

“I always want to balance what I’m doing and what I’m saying with public safety and protection of our people. It’s a delicate balance.  I think a lot of what we’re seeing right now with the teargassing and the violence that’s happening in our communities and the vandalism is a result of not striking that balance very well, and not taking action against aggressive officers. There are many, many more well-behaved officers than there are aggressive ones, but it doesn’t matter when you’re the one encountering that bad one. It means nothing to know that there are really good ones out there.

“It’s really tough and I hear a lot of talk about defunding the police, but I’ve been down here calling for the police and fire for their assistance when things are happening and I know in those moments when you’re on your own and you don’t feel like anybody’s going to come to your rescue, it’s a very scary thing. And I think we need to take a breath and have a longer conversation about what our policing looks like, and to take a breath and see what happens. , but when children are getting injured in fires as a result of not being able to get firetrucks through, or management decisions to not send fire crews in because a lot of these fires when I was calling for assistance to get these fires out.

“Two young police officers were shot on South Side. They got a call about someone with a weapon and they pulled up and as they were getting out of the car, it appears they were ambushed. They had to retreat back into their car. It was very disturbing. One of them was in surgery for seven hours and had several more surgeries ahead of him. He was critical in those few days. These are rookie cops, brand new. A lot of these cops are really shaken, and they’re just trying to make a living. They’re not the bad guys who are out here. They’re here to protect and serve us.  They’re not the ones who are out here doing the evil things that we’ve seen happen with George Floyd and so many other victims.

“My heart breaks for George Floyd and his family. I could not finish watching the film. It just tears me apart to think that that could happen, and that there were other officers who could have done something who chose not to.

“We’ve got to bring about true community policing that supports everyone, and doesn’t look upon someone as a criminal before they get know who they are and what they’re about.”