VOP Newsfeed

4/11/10 Why do I pay only $474 in Virginia income tax?

4/7/10 Grassroots Response to Health Care Passage

4/3/2010 Grassroots group eyes reform

3/30/10 Augusta Free Press audio show on VOP's state budget proposals

3/15/10 New Yorker audio slides on Martinsville, site of VOP's newest office

1/22/10 VOP on NPR's Morning Edition

11/25/09 Charges dropped against Joe Szakos, the Anthem Blue Cross customer arrested for questioning rate increases

Great New Books on Organizing:

Booker T. Washington Community Center in Staunton, Virginia, is being revived as a place where local people learn that their participation counts.

The Larry Vickers, the center’s program director, recently was awarded the Citizen of the Year Award by the Greater Augusta County Chamber of Commerce for his work in re-developing the abandoned school building into a vital part of the community. Vickers accepted the award in honor of his mother, Rosalie Vickers, who is remembered on Johnson Street for her community activism.

Vickers graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1965, just before public schools were integrated in Virginia. After spending a year at Howard University, he moved to New York City where he excelled as an entertainer including work in Broadway shows. Vickers also directed and choreographed events in Paris, Monte Carlo and other places around the world and worked with people like Shirley MacLaine and Whoopi Goldberg.

In 2000, when Vickers attended the dedication of Vickers Way — a street named for his parents and grandparents – Rita Wilson and some other leaders in the community asked him to help revive the old school that had been abandoned after serving as Staunton’s police station for many years. Although he found a building with windows boarded up, school awards, mementos and files plundered and scattered throughout the city and asbestos-filled walls, Vickers’ vision was still of the place he remembered as the center of the community. He remembered a place where students, writers and leaders were prepared intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically for participation in an often hostile world outside.

Using a big mug on his desk to illustrate, Vickers explains his understanding of how small Staunton is in terms of the whole world, but how important one building is to a community. Vickers wants to see the Booker T. Washington Community Center become a place where lines erode, where people of all races come together and find validation. His dream for BTWCC is to be the “heartbeat of the community.”

Larry Vickers has many stories about his own recognition of how he is different.

“I know I’m different, but I know that I can make a difference,” he said.

He hopes his work with other leaders in Staunton will continue to impact his community through the revival of a 1937 school building standing at the top of the hill.

The asbestos is gone. The gym gleams in a glow of activity. The floors and windows are gradually being replaced. A family resource center has the warm feel left from the old library. And a computer lab is being assembled.

The road leading up the hill has been improved to allow for the cars that come from all over the city to club meetings, play rehearsals, organization gatherings and a multitude of other activities. But thanks to the hard work of people like Larry Vickers, Rita Wilson, Walter Brown and others, nothing has stopped the spirit or activity of those who gather at the Booker T. Washington Community Center in Staunton.