Established in 2005 as The Richmond Defender, The Virginia Defender is a free community newspaper, published quarterly for the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. Print distribution is currently 12,000 and statewide. The online publication launched in Summer 2020.
The night was chilly and the forecast was for possible showers, but more than 50 people still showed up to honor the memory of Gabriel, the Richmond revolutionary who led a massive effort to end slavery in Virginia and was executed on Oct. 10, 1800, at the site of Richmond’s African Burial Ground.
This edition of the Virginia Defender was published on October 28, 2019.
The past few years have seen a sharp increase in the number of people from Central America trying to immigrate to the United States. President Trump and other bigots call it an “invasion” and have enacted barbaric measures to try and terrify people from trying to cross the border. So why do they come?
A different kind of story Ukraine– including a coup, a referendum, at least 42 murders carried out by neo-Nazis which remain uninvestigated, and a Council of Mothers who are finally making progress toward justice.
On Sept. 19, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a story with the headline “Stoney seeks to lease to a developer a Shockoe Bottom parking lot that could sit atop slavery site.” In response to this development, the Defenders’ Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project wrote the following statement.
The first of a developing tsunami of public housing evictions are now sweeping through Creighton Court, home to hundreds of low-income, mostly African-American families in Richmond’s East End.
It was the end of September when the fences and barbed wire went up around Abner Clay Park, the 4-acre green space in the heart of Jackson Ward. That came as a surprise to at least one of the organizations that serves free meals there.
The Virginia Defender 