#virginia news

[iww-gnv]

Costco workers in Norfolk, Va. have voted to join the Teamsters Local 822, with the union calling this its first organizing victory at the wholesale retailer in two decades. The 238-worker group will join more than 18,000 Teamsters at Costco nationwide. Successful unionization efforts in the retail industry have been relatively rare, but they may pick up steam this year following a strong year for labor in 2023, with successful strikes by the United Auto Workers against the Big Three carmakers and by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America against Hollywood studios.

[renthony]

From the article:

As Republicans nationwide continue to sound the alarm about how children are supposedly being indoctrinated and “groomed” into adopting LGBTQ identities at school, West Virginia legislators are pushing a new kind of crackdown on books deemed “obscene.” The idea is as simple as it is chilling: make librarians and teachers criminally liable for providing such material to kids. House Bill 4654, introduced by Republican Delegate Brandon Steele, passed in the West Virginia House of Delegates on Friday by a vote of 85-12 and now heads to the state Senate. (The “nays” included all 11 Democrats in the House.) Rather than establishing a new law, HB 4654 would simply strike the first two exemptions to an existing code prohibiting the “preparation, distribution, or exhibition of obscene matter to minors.” These include any “bona fide school” presenting the content as part of a “local or state approved curriculum,” as well as any “public library, or museum, which is displaying or distributing any obscene matter to a minor only when the minor was accompanied by his or her parent.” Steele argued in the chamber ahead of the vote that removing those protections against criminal liability for teachers, librarians, and other educators is crucial to children’s safety. “I’m here to protect our young people and make sure they are not put in a vulnerable position where they are presented with pure pornography in an effort to groom them and prepare them for a potential sexual abuse or sexual assault,” he said. Tony Hodge, co-chair of the West Virginia GOP, warned that opponents of the bill “want obscene material available to children.” But the bill’s detractors say it’s a clear attempt to purge books and information that may challenge strict conservative values from institutions of learning. The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia noted that fearmongering about “pedophile librarians” brought HB 4654 out of committee and onto the House floor. “The bill is designed to create confusion for educators about what kinds of materials can be taught or displayed,” the nonprofit chapter posted last week on X (formerly Twitter). It also accused proponents of using examples of allegedly criminal content that did not meet the definition of obscenity. In the West Virginia criminal code, “obscenity” is — as elsewhere — broadly described. It includes matter “intended to appeal to the prurient interest,” or that an “average person, applying community standards, would find depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexually explicit conduct,” or that a “reasonable person would find, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” Such wide-ranging definitions have been key to lawsuits attempting to restrict the availability of books about gender and sexual identity.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇲 💥🔥HOME IN ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA EXPLODES AFTER POLICE RECEIVE CALL OF A MAN FIRING A FLARE GUN🔥💥

A home in Arlington, Virginia explodes after police respond to a call about a man firing a flare gun. Work to extinguish the house continues.

Police responded to a call about a man firing a flare gun in the 800 block of North Burlington Street at approximately 4:45pm local time.

At 8:30pm, officers were attempting to execute a search warrant when the suspect fired multiple rounds shortly before the home exploded.

Arlington Police say officers on the scene only suffered mild injuries and none were taken to hospital.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[madame-helen]

[gwydionmisha]

We warned you this is where this is going.

[fcfvafeed]

Exciting Updates on the Horizon: FCFVA.com's Buy, Sell, and Trade Group Temporarily Paused for Enhancements

FCFVA.com, the premier online destination for everything Virginia, is thrilled to announce a series of upcoming updates to enhance your online experience. One of our most popular features, the Buy, Sell, and Trade group, will be temporarily unavailable as we work diligently to upgrade our platform. Scheduled to relaunch at the end of the month, this pause is a step towards providing our users…

[reasonsforhope]

"Georgia Republicans bundled over a dozen measures that targeted the state’s transgender residents into omnibus packages in a desperate attempt to get them passed. In a stunning defeat for the GOP, every single one of them failed.

Legislators gutted bills that had passed through committee and instead stuffed them full of their anti-LGBTQ+ wishlist items.

Bills that would ban transgender students from playing on teams aligned with their gender identity, ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, opt parents into notification for every book a student checks out of the library, bar sex education before sixth grade, make all sex-ed classes opt-in and expand obscenity laws to make it easier to ban books with LGBTQ+ content all failed.

“MAGA politicians in Georgia tried it all in service to their anti-LGBTQ+ agenda,” said Human Rights Campaign Georgia State Director Bentley Hudgins, “including silencing debate and gutting unrelated, popular bills that had bipartisan support to ram through policies that would have put young LGBTQ+ Georgians in harm’s way. They failed.”

“It’s undeniable that the tides are shifting, both here in Georgia and across the nation,” Georgia Equality executive director Jeff Graham added. “Anti-LGBTQ actors are losing their political power, and more and more Georgians who know and love LGBTQ people are standing up against their baseless fear-mongering.”

In Florida recently, nearly two dozen anti-LGBTQ+ bills were defeated in the wake of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) presidential campaign implosion, dozens of measures in Virginia were tabled [Note: In the US, "tabled" means "shelved" or "taken out of consideration - the opposite of its meaning in the UK and other places], and Ohio’s governor backed off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors. 

Meanwhile, in D.C., Democrats successfully excised 50 anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in the two budget bills passed and signed by President Joe Biden to fund the federal government.

Even Fox News has been forced to acknowledge transgender issues are among the lowest-priority concerns among voters."

-via LGBTQ Nation, April 1, 2024

[politijohn]

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Ending poverty can truly be as simple as giving people money, no stipulations

[don-lichterman]

Housecall Service Brings Healthcare to the Home | Virginia News

Housecall Service Brings Healthcare to the Home | Virginia News

By RACHAEL SMITH, The News & Advance LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) — Stacey Shelor was tired of waiting rooms. She was having a harder time getting doctor’s appointments for her family members and was looking for a change. She became a client of Agenacare Housecalls soon after it launched in 2019 through a mutual friend of the owner. “I tried this out and it was absolutely fabulous because you make a…

[mayanhandballcourt]

Photographer Brendon Burton