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Welcome Back Party

Let's welcome home Delegate Price as she has returned from the 2019 Legislative Session! Come hear more about session, sign her petitions, and sign up for her campaign! Come anytime between 4:30p-8:00p!

Redistricting reform clears first major hurdle with General Assembly approval

Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, said she was disappointed to see there was only a mention of the Voting Rights Act, not language from the federal law. She voted no on the measure.
“If the Voting Rights Act is gutted, this mention wouldn’t offer the protection the Voting Rights Act does,” she said.
She also didn’t like language that says “districts shall provide, where practicable, opportunities for racial and ethnic communities to elect candidates of their choice.”
“I just don’t think that racial fairness … minority fairness, cultural fairness should be parenthetical,” she said.
House Democratic leaders said they have “great hope” the bill will stop the creation of unconstitutional voting districts in the state, but said their members who voted no on the bill had good reason to do so.
“This plan does not ensure any minority representation on the redistricting commission,” House Democratic Leader Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, and Caucus Chair Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, said in a statement.
“If we are to take anything away from the Bethune-Hill case as well as the events of this legislative session, it is that our commonwealth must take greater strides toward achieving racial equity. Next year, it will be a top priority of our caucus to pass criteria that ensures minority representation on the redistricting commission.”

‘No short road to redemption:’ Budget is a step toward racial reconciliation, black lawmakers say

With race front-and-center during the General Assembly session that concluded Sunday, lawmakers approved a budget that fulfilled requests from black lawmakers to begin addressing inequities.
“Poverty is a commonwealth-wide conversation and it shouldn’t be up to just the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus to discuss, it should be our collective responsibility,” Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, said on the House floor earlier this month when the body considered the now-passed tax plan. “Equality might feel good, might make us feel like we’ve accomplished something, but the real work of justice is equity.”
“Systematic racism is real. Equity is not codifying policy that will keep people stuck.”
Price said black lawmakers would make their demands in any year. But this year, budget negotiations came after a photo of people in blackface and in a Ku Klux Klan robe were found on the medical school yearbook page of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. He apologized for it, but later said he was sure he wasn’t in the photo.
“I think it was a perfect storm for the silver lining of this Dumpster fire,” Price said. “We did have this important conversation whether people wanted to or not.”

Budget pushes legislative session into a day of overtime

Dels. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, and Marcia Price, D-Newport News, tweeted a video from the House floor during a recess to emphasize what they saw as the need for more time to review the budget and Republican inconsistency in how they enforce House rules. “We just had this whole conversation,” Price said, as Aird added, “About rules matter!”