[NFBV-Announce] Addressing Concerns about Security in Richmond

[Tracy Soforenko]

Dear Members:

As you may have heard, the governor of the commonwealth has issued a state
of emergency in response to a demonstration/rally planned for Monday
morning. Naturally, our first concern is your safety. After careful
research and communications with the Delta Hotel manager and members of the
general Assembly, we have decided to move forward with the Sunday Chapter
Leadership Institute (CLI) winter meeting, the Monday board of directors
meeting, as well as the legislative appointments on Tuesday.



Please know that participation is your decision to make and we respect your
decision. However, we want to provide some additional information to
provide insights you will not hear from the news media.



Scott Jones, General Manager of the Delta Hotel, is the head of the
Richmond Hotel Association, a leader in the downtown Richmond business
community, a member of the Richmond Security Committee, and a board member
for the DBVI Business Opportunities for the Blind program.



Today, I talked with Scott along with some legislators.



Before any of the events related to the “rally,” this weekend was an
incredibly busy weekend in Richmond due to the 20,000+ students’ parents,
and college recruiters attending a premier Volleyball tournament held each
year in Richmond. The tournament finals will be held on Monday. Almost all
the hotel guests on Sunday night across all the hotel properties in the
city are related to this tournament.



The rally is scheduled for Monday morning and events are expected to break
up by early afternoon. Rally participants are expected to be arriving
mostly via bus on Monday morning and are expected to depart on Monday
afternoon.

At present, the rally is confined to the area around the Governor’s mansion
and around the General Assembly offices, 9 blocks to the East of the Delta
Hotel property. As of today, a parade permit has not been issued to allow
demonstrators to depart this area.



The Delta Hotel is located between the US Federal Reserve Bank and the
Dominion Power headquarters. Given security around these landmarks of
Richmond, Scott doesn’t believe there is any possibility that demonstrators
will be allowed anywhere near the hotel property. On my request, Scott
connected with the heads of security at both landmark properties and they
agreed that they didn’t have additional information to contradict Scott’s
assessment.



The hotel is also located just off the expressway so the route to the hotel
should be open even if some streets in Richmond downtown are closed.



Our Monday afternoon Board of Directors meeting is located at the Library
and Resource Center on DBVI’s Campus in the outskirts of Richmond. This is
8 miles from the Capitol. When the meeting is concluded at 4:00 PM, we will
assess the situation and determine if there are any concerns with going
downtown to the Delta Hotel. We recognize that we need to be aware of the
situation and plan accordingly.



After talking with staff of General Assembly leaders, we are told that the
legislators fully expect business as usual on Tuesday morning, that
legislators and their staff will be working on Tuesday morning, and that we
should expect some additional security at the Pocahontas Building.



We are certainly advising people to avoid the area near the General
Assembly offices on Monday during the morning and afternoon. Our Chapter
Leadership Institute events will be held within the hotel property or at
DBVI’s campus.


The Delta Hotel will be completely booked, as we forewarned in the
weeks leading up to our reservation’s deadline. There is a waiting list of
50 parents requesting rooms at the hotel so any reservations that become
available will be provided to tournament related families.

Tournament officials are already arriving at the Delta Hotel and the
tournament will likewise continue as planned. For any parents who may feel
uncertain about the
safety of their children, we would be glad to facilitate a chat with
the manager to help field your concerns.

If anyone chooses to withdraw who has a pending reservation at the
hotel, please communicate this to Joe Orozco no later than Friday at
12 PM. Please email him at: jsorozco at gmail.com.

We look forward to visiting Richmond and communicating our legislative
priorities to our state delegates and senators. We have several key
issues we need the legislature to act upon. We respect the freedom of
other groups to demonstrate their rights. As the leading blindness
organization in Virginia, we remain committed to descending upon the
capital and advocating for ours.

Yours in service,

Tracy Soforenko

President, National Federation of the Blind of Virginia

202 285-4595
Tracy.soforenko at gmail.com
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