In the Richmond, Virginia area? Join MuckRock, the Community Justice Network, and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for a public records workshop, book reading, and other events to celebrate the life of Lillie A. Estes.

Richmond, Virginia’s public housing agency is working to demolish public housing while excluding the public from any input in the process.

Ever get the feeling that your local government agency is hoping you just go away?

That certainly seems to be the case with the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Virginia. Over the last six months, prying event basic information about plans to demolish its existing public housing in favor of an entirely voucher-based system has been an exercise in futility. By the time you get the document, you’re too late.

The Virginia-based advocacy group Richmond Transparency and Accountability Project talks to Tom Nash about how they use public records to push for police oversight.

The same day the Richmond Police Department in Virginia faced national scrutiny after an on-camera white officer threatened black middle schoolers that when they turn 18, “you’re mine,” the department announced a collaboration that will allow neighbors to turn the cameras on each other.

Richmond School Board offers a special lesson in how the Virginia Freedom of Information Act is not supposed to work.

Before Virginia Military Institute cadets were photographed in blackface in yearbooks, they fought to preserve slavery during the Civil War in the Battle of New Market. The 2015 film Field of Lost Shoes - produced with $1 million in Virginia public funds - chronicles that battle.

Oliver White Hill is among the country’s most important civil rights attorneys of the 20th century, known for pursuing cases to dismantle segregation in Virginia before and after serving in the army during World War II. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s file on Hill, however, offers its own remarkably skewed, racist, and paranoid view of Hill’s work, in keeping with Director J. Edgar Hoover’s deeply held suspicion of the Civil Rights movement.

As the Community Justice Films Series aired its final film in Richmond last February, the assembled individuals and groups began thinking about how to harness the energy and lessons learned from the two-year-long program. Public records provided part of the answer.