The former capital of the Confederacy's all-out plan to fight poverty and confront its past (Washington Post)
Jepson professor Thad Williamson, who is currently serving as director of the Office of Community Wealth Building in Richmond, is featured in an article on the city's first comprehensive antipoverty initiative.
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Those who arrive for the first time at the downtown workforce center usually do so in some stage of desperation. They show up expecting another orientation for another city program that will require a great deal of patience and a certain level of abasement.
Most come from the city’s north and south sides, from the east end and from the African American neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated in aging housing projects near rundown schools and where Victorian masterpieces await reclamation along streets punctuated by loitering men and gleeful children and small, proud homes. The job-seekers take the bus, which ferries them around the city more or less on time, but not into the counties where a majority of the jobs are.