March 2017.

     I am fond of The Richmond Free Press.  Free weeklies give a city character and The Richmond Free Press is a quality weekly.  Even better, it has a crusading spirit.  It suffers no confusion about its mission or its readership.  It doesn’t engage in journalistic triangulation.  It also presents a vital counterpoint to Richmond’s daily print outlet.  Now that the coronavirus is ebbing, I’m looking forward to pulling a pulp copy from the box every week.  The paper has a good letters policy; it accepts more lengthy screeds.

     In March 2017, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III slithered from the Potomac to the James to address a law-enforcement crowd.  What is there to say about the man, other than that he’s a Trumpian sack of trash?  Rarely has a cabinet official been more ill-suited for the position or for the moment.  Integrity was evinced during his tenure by a lone, solitary act that was in fact a promise not to act; there will be more about that later.  Mr. Sessions’ speech in Richmond was a signaling of nefarious intent, a probable expansion of the prison industrial complex by resurrecting practices likely to target Blacks and the poor disproportionately.  Somehow it slipped his mind to invite The Richmond Free Press, the outlet most likely to speak to these communities.  I do declare, how ever could that have happened?

Here’s the article:

Free Press Staff, wire reports, “Sessions Seeks to Revive Federal Anti-Crime Program that Targeted African-Americans,” The Richmond Free Press, 16-18 March 2017, A1, A4 (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2017/mar/17/sessions-seeks-revive-federal-anti-crime-program-t/).

Here’s the letter:

“Exclusion ‘Appalling but Unsurprising,’” The Richmond Free Press, 23-25 March 2017, A7 (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2017/mar/24/exclusion-appalling-unsurprising/).