Good Morning, RVA: Vote ’em if you’ve got ’em!

Hot weather rolls in to give us a new, yet familiar, thing to complain about.

June 9, 2015; 6:53 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Mykl Roventine

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and yesterday’s late-night downpour did nothing to cool things off. Highs today exceed yesterday’s and head into the low-90s. We may see some residual rain this morning, but it should clear up by this afternoon and send us straight into the next couple days of dry hotness!

Water cooler

If you’re both registered to vote and live in a place with a primary, you should exercise the right to the former today. Here’s the info you need, just in case you haven’t thought about it until now.

Alert! The RTD’s Michael Paul Williams brings you today’s 6th Street Market Place mention in an article about the Main Street Station shed. While I remain ambivalent toward the future of this project, I don’t think it’s fair to ding the City for requesting public feedback on the shed’s eventual use. We complain when the city trundles forward without a care in the world for what it’s citizenry may think–we can’t have it both ways!

If any of the above sentences frustrated you, how about this: City Council delayed a vote that would have asked the Mayor to issue an RFP for development on the Boulevard due to Children’s Hospital reasons. This was a vote to ask a guy to ask other people to maybe submit possible ideas–as far as you can get from eliminating a Children’s Hospital located on the Boulevard. But alas, the can is kicked further down the road.

Apple’s WWDC keynote yesterday filled fanboys with joy, excitement, and possibly confusion as iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and Apple Music were all announced.

Sports!

• Squirrels return home (finally!) and host Portland tonight at 6:35 PM. Tickets are available online.
• Nats at the Yankees today, 7:05 PM.
• USA down undered Australia in the Women’s World Cup, 3-1.

What to expect

Today, learn about these things:

• 10 arts for 10 weeks
• Cheap ways to do family
• The Women’s World Cup continues
• The Children’s Museum’s summer series

This morning’s longread

I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

Nevertheless, many Americans believe that police officers are generally good, noble heroes. A Gallup poll from last year asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various fields: police officers ranked in the top five, just above members of the clergy. The profession — the endeavor — is noble. But this myth about the general goodness of cops obscures the truth of what needs to be done to fix the system. It makes it look like all we need to do is hire good people, rather than fix the entire system. Institutional racism runs throughout our criminal justice system. Its presence in police culture, though often flatly denied by the many police apologists that appear in the media now, has been central to the breakdown in police-community relationships for decades in spite of good people doing police work.

This morning’s Instagram

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June 9, 2015 6:53 AM 0