News

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com
Scene from the Arlington Arts Festival on Saturday in Clarendon (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Family Demands $10M for Gunston Incident — “The family of a Virginia eighth-grader sent Arlington Public Schools Tuesday a ‘notice of claim and demand’ after they say he was forced to play a cotton picking game in class earlier this year. They are demanding a $10 million settlement in the case. Former Va. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, the family’s attorney, sent the letter to APS.” [WJLA, Fox 5]

Green Valley Leaders Blast County — “Leaders of the Green Valley Civic Association have blasted county leadership for what they term as ‘offensive, arrogant and hateful’ its suggestion that they stay out of the nitty-gritty of capital project that impact their community. The comments came in an April 21 letter to County Board Chairman Christian Dorsey, complaining that the Green Valley community’s feedback on plans for an Arlington Transit (ART) operations and management facility still is not being taken seriously.” [Gazette Leader]

Man with Knife Tased — From ACPD: “At approximately 2:08 p.m. on May 1, police were dispatched to the 1100 block of S. Barton Street for a mental health call for service. Responding officers made contact with the individual who, during the course of the incident, was in possession of a knife, allegedly made threatening statements and set fire to the carpet of the home, which was quickly extinguished. An officer deployed their taser and the individual was taken into custody on an Emergency Custody Order.” [Twitter]

ART Bus Crash in Crystal City — A car collided with an ART bus at the intersection of Crystal Drive and 15th Street S. yesterday afternoon. Despite initial reports of an injury, scanner traffic later suggested that no one was hurt. [Twitter]

Gondola Now Shirt Goes International — “Beautiful gondola in Gaia, Portugal but it doesn’t cross the river to Porto. #gondolaNow @ARLnowDOTcom” [Twitter, Amazon]

AI-Written Audio News Update — ARLnow is experimenting with AI-written audio news briefs, summarizing the past day’s stories, to potentially be published as a daily podcast. Let us know what you think. [MP3]

It’s Wednesday — Overcast. Cool. High of 61 and low of 45. Sunrise at 6:08 am and sunset at 8:02 pm. [Weather.gov]

Around Town

ARLnow Daily Debrief for May 2, 2023

By ARLnow.com

Good Tuesday evening, Arlington. Today we published articles that were read a total of 16964 times… so far.

📈 Top stories

The following are the most-read articles for today — May 2, 2023.

  1. Woman slapped, stabbed and robbed near Key Bridge in Rosslyn last night
  2. New Korean-style fried chicken restaurant set to open late next month in Va. Square
  3. BREAKING: Katie Cristol stepping down from Arlington County Board to lead Tysons booster org
  4. Someone keeps masturbating near the Walter Reed pickleball courts

📅 Upcoming events

Here is what’s going on Wednesday in Arlington, from our event calendar.

🌥 Wednesday’s forecast

Overcast. Cool. High of 61 and low of 45. Sunrise at 6:08 am and sunset at 8:02 pm. See more from Weather.gov.

💡 Haiku of the Day

Rivers winding path
Shapes the earth with flowing grace
Nature’s story told

🌅 Tonight’s sunset

Thanks for reading! Feel free to discuss the day’s happenings in the comments.

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By ARLnow.com
My Painter's local headquarters

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Act now — this patriotic offer won’t last long.

News

Arlington asking residents to weigh in on potential transportation upgrades in Courthouse

By Jo DeVoe
1/5

Arlington County is looking to make a three-block stretch in Courthouse safer for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.

Specifically, it is looking for ways to improve conditions along a three-block stretch of Wilson Blvd and Clarendon Blvd between N. Uhle Street and N. Adams Street.

The county says the overall project goal is to “create a safe and consistent travel experience for people walking, taking transit, biking, and driving through the Courthouse section of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor,” which has a lot of pedestrian, transit and micro-mobility activity.

Through this Sunday, the county is asking people to share their current experiences as road users and what upgrades matter to them.

When it comes to government priorities, safety is a top concern. The county says Clarendon and Wilson Blvd have seen a higher concentration of critical crashes in recent years.

They are included in a “High Injury Network,” a designation the county uses to prioritize adding transportation safety features to its least-safe roads. This is part of Arlington’s Vision Zero initiative to eliminate fatal and severe-injury crashes by 2030.

Within the project’s boundaries, there was a pedestrian crash with severe injuries on Clarendon Blvd in 2015, per a dashboard of crashes with severe and fatal injuries. One block east of the intersection with N. Uhle Street, there was a fatal pedestrian crash in 2014.

Another aim is to fill a “missing link” in bicycling facilities. Clarendon and Wilson Blvd are identified as “primary bicycling corridors” in the county’s Master Transportation Plan, as is N. Veitch Street, which connects cyclists to Langston Blvd, the Custis Trail and the Arlington Blvd Trail.

The county says it aims to realize community visions for better walking, cycling and transit experiences in Courthouse with new curbs and ramps for people with disabilities and improved bus stops and facilities near the Courthouse Metro station.

To encourage (proper) use of shared e-bikes and scooters, the county will review and provide “adequate end of trip facilities.” That could look like the corrals it has installed elsewhere in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor and in Crystal City and Pentagon City.

Whatever improvements are selected would link to upcoming road resurfacing work. The county previously incorporated small upgrades when it resurfaced Clarendon Blvd from Courthouse Road and N. Scott Street and from N. Garfield Street to N. Adams Street.

The improvements would also link to street upgrades developer Greystar is delivering via its under-construction Landmark development (2050 Wilson Blvd), set to wrap up this fall, and its redevelopment on the former Wendy’s site (2025 Clarendon Blvd).

Those projects will bring about:

  • A “bike island” at the intersection of 15th Street N. and Clarendon Blvd, as well as more and wider protected and dedicated bike lanes
  • Wider sidewalks
  • Improving pedestrian crossings of Wilson Blvd and Clarendon Blvd
  • Two new “floating” bus stops
  • A pedestrian promenade along N. Uhle Street from Clarendon Blvd and 15th Street N.
  • Relocated and newly installed traffic signals
News

Civil rights icon Joan Mulholland honored at the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington

By Jo DeVoe
1/9

When living civil rights legend Joan Trumpauer Mulholland participated in sit-ins, she carried a Bible with her.

She kept her birth certificate inside “so that they could identify the body,” her son, Loki, said during an event on Saturday at the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington honoring his mother’s activism.

Joan piped up: “I didn’t have a driver’s license or anything like that. So I needed some way for them to know who I am.”

For protesting segregation with lunch counter sit-ins and bus trips known as Freedom Rides, Mulholland was briefly incarcerated in a maximum security prison and hunted by the Ku Klux Klan. In the intervening 60 years, her activism inspired books and documentaries and the creation of the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation, which provides anti-racist education.

During the event — just shy of the 60th anniversary of a historic sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi, in which Mulholland participated — people gathered at the Columbia Pike museum to hear from her and check out an expanded exhibit with objects from her days as a Freedom Rider.

Just under her Bible, visitors can see memorabilia from the historically Black sorority she joined, Delta Sigma Theta, to advance racial integration.

Nearby is a blue dress she wore during a sit-in at the Woolworth’s in Jackson, Mississippi on May 28, 1963, in which white people attacked her and other Tougaloo College student and faculty demonstrators.

“We want to honor her… because when I talk around and ask people to name some white, anti-racist civil rights leaders, they can’t name anybody but Abe Lincoln, but there’s a lot of them,” museum president Scott Taylor says. “If you don’t know what to do with white privilege, you can look at this right here and she’ll show you.”

Author M. J. O’Brien told attendees that seeing a photo of two demonstrators flanking her — “in all her glory, getting sugar dumped on her, as if she wasn’t sweet enough” — moved him to write a book about the impact of the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in, “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

Reminiscing, Mulholland said that photo, taken by local newspaper photographer Fred Blackwell, “went worldwide.”

“Back in the days before color photography in the press, it was colorized on the front page above the centerfold of the Paris Match, the most widely read newspaper in Europe,” she recounted.

Mulholland called it “the most integrated picture” of a sit-in, as fellow demonstrators included Anne Moody, a Black woman, and John Hunter Gray, who was of Native American descent.

The Woolworth’s sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, taken by photographer Fred Blackwell (via KHSU)

“We didn’t have any Asian-American students at that time in the school, but we had it pretty well-covered,” she said.

(more…)

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