The Community Forward working group has continued to meet each week as whole as well as in smaller teams. We have been working to educate ourselves on the relevant issues and ideas involved in possible street or neighborhood renaming, we’ve been having conversations with neighbors over email, and we’ve been preparing to connect with our neighbors in live online listening sessions. We’d like to share these updates.
City Council Working Session October 6
The City Council had a public working session on October 6, which included the nomenclature topic. You can view a recording of the session online here.
The Council discussed and informally expressed some consensus for a high level plan for reviewing places named with civil war and confederate themes. That review would cover — across the city — street names, neighborhood names, and historic plaques. It would also involve identifying any old restrictive covenants on properties.
The City is working in a partnership with George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Their next action will be either at their October 13 or 27 meeting, at which time they will officially vote on whether to proceed with the process and timeline as outlined Tuesday night. The rough timeline carries through summer 2021 at which time they would just be committing to further process for renames, should they decide name changes are in order; any actual changes would still be further in the future.
The Mosby Woods Communication Association was not involved in the working session in any way, but we did hear that the city intends to gather a small team of community stakeholders; our hope is to be involved.
Contextual Content
Back in the neighborhood, our context group is finishing a collection of blog posts we will soon publish. These blogs will cover: Civil War history, John Mosby, neighborhood history, and current events. If you have not already, sign up for email notifications at the top of our blog so you see these as soon as they go live.
Listening Sessions
In addition to the October listening session dates, we now also have November dates:
- Tues. Oct 20, 7:30 – 8:30pm [SESSION FULL]
- Thurs. Oct. 22, 10:00am – 11:30am
- Sat. Oct. 24, 10:00am – 11:30am
- Sun. Oct. 25, 4:00pm – 5:30pm
- Tues, Nov. 10, 7:30 – 9:00pm
- Thurs. Nov. 12, 10:00 – 11:30am
- Sat. Nov. 14, 10:00 – 11:30am
- Sun. Nov. 15, 4:00 – 5:30pm
- Mon. Nov. 16, 7:30 – 9:00pm
- Wed. Nov. 18, 7:30 – 9:00pm
These will be small, moderated, online meetings, and will provide one way for residents to listen to each other and share their own questions, concerns, and ideas about potential renaming. Visit the blog for more details or go right to the google signup page.
Other ways to connect
Many residents have begun reaching out to us at CFMosbyWoods@gmail.com. You are welcome to share your thoughts by email, and they will be included in a report to city council.
And once again, if you have not already signed up for automated emails from our blog, please consider this way to keep abreast of updates as soon as we publish them. Once you enter your email address on the blog page, the system we’re using to host the website, WordPress, will send an email. You will need to click through to confirm your email subscription before blog emails will start coming your way.
Mosby Woods 