Of, by, and for the people

Those who’ve followed this podcast since its inception know that I live in northern Virginia. But a handful of times in the last year, I’ve gone to Roanoke to see what’s going on in this deep blue dot in the red sea of western Virginia.

After the 2024 presidential election, I found a community in distress. I returned in March and witnessed one that was organizing to defend itself. And I headed back again on Sunday in the wake of this month’s elections to get a sense of how everything was going one year in—and also to be part of my friend Beth Macy’s Tuesday night announcement that she’s running to represent Virginia’s 6th District in Congress.

Fair warning: there will be a lot of Macy in the back half of this post. I’m very partial to her, due to nearly eighteen years of collaboration on writing and almost that long as friends in the real world. I admire her fierce devotion to reporting on the world without fear in the hope that if people know what’s going on, they might do something about it. Still, her bid for a Congressional seat is just one piece of the story I want to tell you today.

Around the country

Ever since Trump has returned to office, attacking the very ways we live and take care of one another, I’ve highlighted the way that different places around the country have responded. I’ve written about the refusal of judges and juries to accept the government at its word anymore, or to be complicit in its lawbreaking. In Los Angeles, I’ve considered how people are stepping up in the face of immigration raids. We’ve all pondered the Portland frog in amazed wonder.

Chicago has likewise shown up for its immigrants. More recently, Charlotte is speed-running defense tactics already developed elsewhere. Roanoke has similarities to these models in that people are stepping up, but also some differences, in that they are not yet facing the same kind of broadside by ICE or CBP, though that is surely coming soon. Today, I’ll write about what’s been happening in the city.

December 2024

As I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before, I met Dina Imbriani early in 2024 through Beth Macy. Dina had interviewed me about my book One Long Night for a podcast she was putting together.

After the election, she wanted to talk again. She invited me to Roanoke to speak at an event she was putting together—a series of speakers who could address the terrible effects Trump’s presidency was likely to have on all kinds of vulnerable groups. She wanted to brainstorm about actions to take.

The first concern I heard was the people were scared about what would happen to the people Trump had targeted so directly during the runup to the election itself: immigrants and trans people especially, but also Black folks, queer communities in general, and women.

The night in December, a crowd gathered at the Grandin Theater downtown. They were eager to find ways to protect their community and and help each other. Representatives from existing local groups spoke about refugee and immigrant assistance, women’s reproductive health, diversity initiatives, and Roanoke’s LGBTQ+ community. Sam Rasoul, the delegate representing the 38th district in the Virginia House of Delegates came to answer questions and help constituents figure out their priorities.

Dina was hoping to find a way to build a coalition in Roanoke to support and bring together all the people endangered by Trump’s victory. Of course, in the end, that meant almost everyone. The result was a group called DoGood Virginia, proudly claiming the mantle of do-gooders, people who were interested enough in kindness and basic human decency that it prompted them to take action.

Evolution of a weekly protest

In the weeks that followed, protesters began assembling every Monday at the corner of Franklin & Jefferson in downtown Roanoke. If they couldn’t get Congressman Ben Cline, their representative, to talk to them, they would show up each week to pressure him to change his mind. Local news outlets began covering the protests more frequently in the spring, noting that Cline had not held a town hall in five months, despite constituent demands.

By that point, the protests were focused on the federal jobs targeted by DOGE and projected cuts to federal programs. More than one in five Virginians in Cline’s district are on Medicaid. I saw tremendous fear what proposed cuts would do to local healthcare system and to veterans.

March 2025

I returned to the city in March to see how the DoGood effort was evolving. By that time, information sessions followed the Monday protests, so the expanding community of volunteers could learn about needs as they arose.

Sometimes these sessions just let people know ways to get involved. Sometimes attendees were enlisted to help with immediate crises. And sometimes speakers educational talks. Dina would order pizzas, so that people could have lunch. On that visit, I spoke to the group in one of the after-protest sessions, laying out where the country was at with its rising authoritarianism and how to plan for likely future threats.

November 2025 elections

Earlier this month, off-year elections were held around the country. In New York City and New Jersey, candidates appeared who rejected not only Trumpism but also a lot of calls to distance themselves from the minority populations Republicans had directly targeted. Meanwhile, Virginia voters had to choose a new governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.

Once deep red, now-purple Virginia’s more densely populated areas have tinted state totals bluer and bluer in recent decades. Still, since the civil rights era, the state has typically elected a governor from the opposite party of the current president. Earlier this month, that trend held.

But how it held was especially interesting. Every county in Virginia went bluer, and Spanberger beat her opponent by 15 points. That opponent ran on a platform that seemed entirely composed of anti-trans ad—millions and millions of dollars of them. Occasionally, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears also mentioned continuing Trump and current Virginia governor Youngkin’s policies via her campaign motto: “Let’s keep a good thing going.”

The election damage to the Republican cause went far beyond any one candidate for office, with a blowout statewide. The GOP lost thirteen seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates. Even candidate for state attorney general Jay Jones—who had faced a scandal revolving around his foolish repetition of a very old joke about shooting one’s enemy—handily defeated his opponent.

November 17 in Roanoke

Returning to Roanoke this week, I got to the weekly protest right at noon and counted a hundred people demonstrating within the first few minutes. A few dozen more arrived as the protest continued.

A small band played singable songs like “This Land Is Your Land,” and handed out revised lyrics for classic tunes. (“Trump is in the files / Trump is in the files / No matter what he says or does / Trump is in the files.”)

Though the election had just taken place, there was an early indication of one person’s preferred candidate for next November’s election: a man in the crowd carried a sign that said “PAPER GIRL beats PAPER TIGER”, with Congressman Cline’s face on the tiger.

(Beth Macy’s new book, Paper Girl, is about the Ohio town where she grew up and what has happened to it as our country has fractured in the decades since.)

A policeman walked through the crowd on its densest corner, reminding demonstrators to keep a walking path clear on the sidewalk for pedestrians who were just aiming to get from point A to point B. That was the only police presence I saw on Monday.

As before, people showed up in front of the Thieves’ Tattoo parlor, holding signs and waving as cars went by. Drivers often honked their support. I overheard a man named Richard, who seemed to be one of the organizers, saying this was the 39th protest against Cline’s votes and policies, with only fifty left to go before he could be voted out. But the big excitement was over the planned Tuesday announcement from Macy.

People discussed how early they needed to get there, for fear of not getting into the building. One protester wandered the crowd looking for the soon-to-be candidate, who hadn’t yet arrived, because he had a check for her campaign. The Monday crowd had been the core group of people who wound up drafting Macy to run, prodding her week after week, trying to convince her she was the only candidate who could oust the incumbent.

After the protest, some fifty people headed to the library. Dr. Ahoo Salem, director of the Blue Ridge Literacy Program stopped by and introduced herself, apologizing that she couldn’t stay the whole hour. While everyone ate pizza, Joy Sylvester-Johnson—a longtime community leader around the unhoused and refugees alike—spoke about current challenges facing the Roanoke Refugee Asylum-Seekers Support Network, and ways to help immigrants get to their court dates and appointments, to make sure community members with papers don’t lose their status.

When she was done, I talked about where the country is at now, and how we can move forward to support each other on the ground, while recognizing the larger pattern of events unfolding nationally and even internationally—all the things I’ve been addressing lately on the podcast. I discussed the elections and the critical nature of standing up together, without shearing off inconvenient groups according to the whims of consultant-class pundits.

My sense is that we’re losing the best parts of the country while its worst aspects are skyrocketing. This is a time to redefine politics and what we demand from it.

Monday evening, I went to another education session at the Grandin Theater. The group that showed up was smaller, but they engaged deeply with Decca Knight, who talked about the perils of white saviorism and the ways that different communities and people can learn to work collaboratively to deal honestly with conflicts that come up. Attendees discussed in part the highly segregated history of the city and what that history means for programs on the ground today.

Big night

But the main event of this trip was the Tuesday night announcement about Macy running for Congress. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll share that I read a draft of her speech ahead of the evening and gave her my thoughts on it.)

The announcement took place in the old Fire Station 1, which has been renovated into a showroom for Txtur, a line of furniture built locally from sustainable materials. More than 450 people had RSVP’d. The venue filled well before the start time of 5:30pm. An overflow crowd began to gather where they could listen via a public address system in the park behind the firehouse.

Inside, I talked to a number of people about why they were there. Trish White-Boyd noted that the region had been sending Republicans to Congress for too long, suggesting it was time for a change. “Not a Democrat has been in that seat since 1993, and this is very exciting.”

Nick Fisher spoke about backing Macy as part of a larger project of change. Karen Fisher noted Macy’s background writing about challenges facing Roanoke and the country. Others, like Rob Lunsford, suggested Macy would be an improvement over the current state of affairs. Rob Lanahan talked about the importance of government serving the public, and feels that’s not happening now.

Before things got started at the firehouse, I asked Dina Imbriani where she’s at now with DoGood Virginia. She noted that the group has over 500 members, with people taking on all kinds of work. “This community,” she said, “has pulled together in ways that continue to amaze me.”

The main event

Macy’s husband Tom Landon (or as he noted, “Mr. Beth Macy”) was the master of ceremonies for the evening. The crowd first heard from the mayor of Roanoke, Joe Cobb. Cobb opened with the certainty that in office, Macy would do what Representative Cline is currently refusing to: meet with the protesters outside his Roanoke office every week.

Andrew Tait, a farmer and factory worker from the area who recently wrote an essay about the shattering of the American Dream for the Daily Yonder, gave a stunning speech about just how hard life has become for rural working folks.

“Fairness doesn’t happen by accident,” he said, “It’s built by intention.” It was the kind of speech that immediately sparked discussions of what office he should run for himself.

Doctor Reverend Bill Lee, who spent 40 years leading Loudon Avenue Christian Church and founded New Horizons Healthcare, offered a story recalling The Wizard of Oz, bringing up the Tin Man, who, of course, wanted a heart. In the wake of government policies this year that have been decimating the community, Reverend Lee tried to meet with Washington officials and convince them to help.

But he found they were Tin Men who seemed to have no heart. They could go down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the Wizard there was just a showman, and he had no heart to give them. Dr. Lee suggested that Macy, whose work reporting on the community had made her heart bigger with every story she shared about the people of Roanoke.

“Tonight,” he said, “with great joy I’m going to tell you we are going to send another Tin Woman to Congress. And she does not need to see the wizard, because she already has a heart. Beth is not running against anyone. She is running for us. If she runs for us, she cannot lose this race.”

Dr. Brenda Hale, longtime leader of the Roanoke NAACP, made clear she was present last night to speak as a U.S. veteran and a nurse. She spoke of how important it was for politicians to serve the community. She spoke to the necessity of Macy beating Cline.

“And not just beat him, whip him!” She said, revving the crowd up, just as Lee had before her. “We want to whip him! Because he does not represent the constituents.”

Another speaker, opioid treatment expert Dr. Cheri Hartman, talked about Macy’s 1993 feature for The Roanoke Times, “Pregnant and Proud,” which looked at pregnant teens in Roanoke trying to finish high school, and considered how so many girls wound up in the same situation. That story, she said, had changed local policies, sparking the creation of services that are still in place today. “Facing our truths,” she said, “is the only way to move forward.”

Delegate Lily Franklin flipped a seat this month to win a term in the Virginia House and will soon head to Richmond for new delegate orientation. She suggested that Macy’s run and the change we’re seeing is “the beginning of a movement. She doesn’t run away from the hard stuff, she runs toward it.”

Macy talked about holding politicians who abuse power to account, and about income inequality. The rising tide that was supposed to lift all boats, she noted, has somehow only lifted up those who own yachts. “I’m running for Congress,” she said, “because decent grown-ass people should know when they have enough.”

She talked about the three rural health clinics already closed in the region and hospitals under threat while Republicans are trying to scare us about bathrooms. “Do your freakin’ jobs” she demanded. She talked about increasing the minimum wage, expanding access to Medicaid, while addressing skyrocketing health care premiums, and more. We have to, she said, “put our communities before billionaires.”

Macy talked about how the creation of DoGood in Virginia and the protests had built a network. She talked about how people began coming up to her and telling her she needed to run against Ben Cline, and the process by which they slowly convinced her.

She had never planned to be a politician, she said—“never on my bingo card.'‘ But that she’d grown deeply worried about the future of American democracy and what world we’re leaving to our children.

She pledged to give the kind of constituent service that Virginians in her district have sorely lacked. “People are yearning for real representation. I pledge right here and now to visit every county in the district, red or blue, to do the same thing I’ve been doing as a reporter for four decades: to listen. And believe me, y’all, I will be taking notes.”

The night was cathartic for so many who are not only looking for a way to push back against the world that Trump is trying to build, but also to make deeper and lasting changes to how we all live together.

There are fantastic examples of large cities coming together to refuse the current government overreach. I wanted to write today how Roanoke can offer a model for mid-size cities or even smaller towns to think about resistance and change. As someone who’s followed and tangentially been part of this process for a year now, I came away from the evening astounded by how motivated the community is to take on so many challenges. Macy’s announcement is a big piece of news that’s giving a lot of people hope. But it’s just one part of a movement that is already changing Roanoke.

Dina’s DoGood idea expanded to include the protests then grew to include educational trainings. Lots of people were already doing things in their community, but now they’re all networked together, at a grass-roots level. Many of them have been part of community projects for years. But some of them have told me that now they’re more in tune with the material and financial realities of all their neighbors.

They began to realize that they could plan for a different future, with different elected officials, and that maybe the biggest obstacle to the change they wanted was them making the choice to act.

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