Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality

Make your plans now to attend the 2016 Virginia People’s Assembly For Jobs, Peace & Justice! The 8th Annual Virginia People’s Assembly for Jobs, Peace & Justice will be held Saturday, April 23, 2016, at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church (1720 Mechanicsville Turnpike) in Richmond, Va. Doors open for onsite registration at 8 am, with the conference starting at 9 am. The VPA is an annual gathering of people from many communities across Virginia who are engaged in a broad range of struggles. We are union members, community activists, ex-prisoners and prisoner advocates, immigrants, students, youth, elders, women, antiwar organizers, veterans, members of Black Lives Matter, members of the LGBT community, the physically and mentally disabled, environmentalists and more. We are fighting against police abuse and for a $15 wage for fast-food and other low-wage workers. We are defending our unions and organizing the unorganized. We are struggling against war, racism, classis...

The Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality will be holding a Public Forum on Saturday, Feb. 20, to promote solidarity among local communities and struggles now under attack. Please think about joining us - to learn what our sisters and brothers are going through now, and how we can come together in mutual defense. https://www.facebook.com/events/616893275115539/ This forum represents a major theme for this year's Virginia People's Assembly, scheduled for April 23, 2014.

MON., FEB. 1 – "TALK TO THE EDITOR" – The Defenders live, monthly, call-in talk radio show with host PHIL WILAYTO, Editor of The Virginia Defender. With this month’s special guest CAROLINA VELEZ, speaking on efforts by the local Latino/a community to defend itself from the threat of federal raids against undocumented immigrants. Plus, get the latest updates on the Shockoe Bottom campaign and other important community news. WCLM 1450 AM and online at: www.wclmradioonline.com Call in at (804) 231-7685. FRI., FEB. 5 - The first incredible GENERATION DREAM - a moving youth production in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 7 pm, Richmond Public Library's Main Branch, 101 E. Franklin St.. Sponsored by the Richmond Peace Education Center. www.rpec.org THURS., FEB. 11 - 38th Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. DROP ALL THE SANCTIONS NOW! MON., FEB. 15 - MARCH FOR OUR RIVERS - Noon, Virginia General Assembly, 201 9th St., Richmond. Sponsored by NO APC. www.facebook.c...

The new issue has gone to press and is available online.  Click here!

Click here to read or download the special 4-page issue of The Virginia Defender   This issue is an expository to help visitors to Richmond learn the current social struggles in Richmond regarding Confederate symbolism, racism and coming to terms with the conflicting narratives of our history as a freedom-seeking nation. Learn about the call to move the race route from highlighting the city's largest single Confederate shrine: Monument Avenue; the struggle to protect Shockoe Bottom from destruction just as we're coming to understand the enormity of its role in the slave trade and the origins of the city; and on the community proposal for Shockoe Bottom. Richmond today bears the scars of our country’s original contradiction: that the “Land of the Free” was founded as a slave society, and continued as such for 246 years. The effects of that history on today’s social, economic and political issues have never been fully examined.    Shockoe Bottom can be the place ...

Click here  for the Summer 2015 issue.

VICTORY IN THE  SHOCKOE BOTTOM STADIUM STRUGGLE! Statement by the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality Bowing to years of growing local, national and international pressure, Richmond City Council voted Nov. 10 to keep baseball on the Boulevard, where it has been played for nearly 60 years. This effectively kills – for now – the reactionary, developer-driven proposal to build a baseball stadium in historic Shockoe Bottom, once the center of the massive U.S. domestic slave trade. As we celebrate this important victory, we call on all defenders of Black History to rededicate ourselves to reclaiming and memorializing a section of Shockoe Bottom in order to pay homage to the hundreds of thousands of Black people who suffered and resisted on this sacred ground. ......................................................... This latest proposal to build a stadium in the Bottom – the fourth such proposal that we are aware of – was first raised Aug 5, 2012, in a ...