The City Council Is Your Worst Enemy: A Chaotic Life in Charlottesville

By Stanton Braverman

After a successful career as an economist, attorney, real estate investor, and high school teacher, Stanton Braverman moves to Charlottesville as a part of his retirement plan. Up until then, everything went his way. But in Charlottesville, things went wrong. It did not make sense. Why did the city not care about the redevelopment of the Belmont neighborhood? While it was on the wrong side of the railroad tracks that ran through the town and home to many of the urban poor, it had a lot going for itself at a time when most cities were developing neglected neighborhoods. But Charlottesville was not interested in this development and was active in trying to curb any turnaround. For the author, this was crazy.

Braverman fought with the city council about their neglect of the community. At the same time, the urban renewal movement caught on in Belmont—houses were remodeled and real estate values increased at startling rates. The area became charming, and tourists wanted to be there. And yet the council did not care. They were being obstructionists. They continuously misled the community about condemned bridges that resulted in a fight over the rezoning of a residential area and a court fight over a fresh water dam worth thirty-one million dollars that was not needed. In the story, Braverman tries to figure out why his house and his neighborhood are ground zero for such a battle with the council. He shows how the council’s inability to connect with the community led to the violent riots over the removal of the statute of Robert E. Lee. Moreover, he concludes that when the council fully understands what was happening, then the war between the council and the neighborhood will end peacefully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796043099

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

HOW DID I GET HERE?

I T IS NOT clear exactly how we ended up in this town. A person can make mistakes and being here is one of them. Over the years I have lived in many cities and towns and got along well with the local government. That includes inner city Washington DC when Marion Barry was mayor. Once I got here there was no choice but to declare war on the City Council.

It is a well-known small town about 120 miles south of Washington DC. The University of Virginia is there as well as a major medical center that is part of the university. But there was something about it that told me to stay away. Years ago there were things about the place that just did not mesh with who I was. It was known as a place where many of the people were haughty. The conversations were about Polo Pony events, the Fox Hunts, who was rich and important. They were not well liked by many Washingtonians. It was a place with a major university where the students were relatively quiet during the massive protests against the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, which were going on while I was in law school.

In the 1960s and 1970s Washington DC was dynamic. So much was happening there. The eyes of the world were focused on it. In 1966, when I first got there, with a job as an International Economist at the US Treasury I met up with thousands of young people such as myself, professionals who were determined to do something to help America. We were the generation that heard John F. Kennedy tell us to ask not what our country can do for us. Ask what we can do for our country. We heard and we believed it.

For years my world was with the peasants, a love of the masses, of hard working people who were close to their families and cared for their neighbors. Life started in South Philadelphia, the streets that Rocky Balboa would run through as he trained for his next major fight. University life was Temple while living at home, working to pay for tuition. There were no university football games, no fancy parties, just a lost kid trying to find his way in the world. As an undergraduate, my major was Finance. There was something that was intriguing about money: what it was, how it got its value and how people earned it. But to a Jewish kid in Philly in the 1960s with the local banks controlled by the Upper Class (or the Blue Bloods as Dad always labeled them), there was no room for a Jew. It was an accepted fact of life that we were told by the local Jewish community and I did not believe it until I graduated and applied for a job at a bank. They were honest and confirmed that Jews were not wanted.

In a way, that was probably the best thing that happened to me. It meant going back to the university at night for an MBA and a job as a long term substitute teacher at a rough high school in the worst section of the city. This time my focus was International Finance, exchange rates, and international financial institutions. It was dull stuff to most people but I loved it. That led to a job at the Treasury and working in Washington DC. That was a great job where I learned more about finance and economics than from all of the 60 plus economic credits from two degrees. The job taught a young student how to write and think; the kid from Philly found himself. But I needed more. It was time to reach out to other worlds and it lead to enrollment at American University law school at night. My expectation was that law would be an adjunct to economics but after falling in love with law, it was economics that was the adjunct to a new career as an attorney.

Washington has more lawyers per capita than any other city in the world. And many of them are looking for work. I needed to find a shortcut to a law career and that was to open my own office; after all, the fastest way to become a senior partner in a law firm is to start your own. My first office was two small rooms across the street from the Treasury where I continued to work on a part time basis. My secretary was the answering machine. There was an unlisted telephone number, a desk and me. About a month later a man walked in and said he needed an attorney and I replied, This is our lucky day, because I need a client. and from there it was one client after another and it was great to be the boss, to get a reputation for being a good attorney and to make enough money to feed the family, provide for the kids’ education and to put a roof over their heads.

At times when I think back to the job interview in Philly at the bank and being told that they are not hiring Jews, I wish I could thank them for doing what they did because it pushed me onto better and more interesting things. Had they given me the job, 40 years later I would probably be sitting at the same desk.

The years quickly went by. Being an attorney was far more exciting than being an international economist and before I knew it, it was time to retire; we sold the house in Arlington and moved out to the mountain cabin, a quiet place in Madison county, surrounded by the Shenandoah National Park where there were more bears than people. It was great living there, but it could get boring or lonely or there was a need to be around more people. This led to buying a house in Charlottesville Virginia: a town that many years before was a bypass zone, a place that did not interest me. But it was only 40 miles south of the cabin; after going there for groceries and observing what seemed to be significant changes, we decided to try it. At first we intended to live there and use the cabin as a weekend retreat. But it was financed from the proceeds of the sale of a rental house and the CPA advised that we had to rent it or pay a huge tax bill. That took us by surprise and the house was rented and we just stayed as full time residents at the cabin. The real home was in the mountains and the Charlottesville house would have been a place to go to when there was a need for the chaos of city life. And all through this journey from Philly to Cville, life seemed to go my way. And even Cville was acceptable; in many ways it’s still acceptable, except for the need to declare war on the local government. This book is about this war, how I fought it and why it was necessary to be so aggressive.

CHAPTER 2

WHO AM I?

M OST PEOPLE ARE not inclined to be aggressive. They are trained to be quiet, to remain calm and if there is a problem, they should hold the anger back and slowly let it out. But any person who started life in South Philadelphia, taught high school at a rough inner-city ghetto school and spent four decades representing demanding immigrants from almost every country in the world has lost any skills in being so well mannered. There would be arguments with clients, government officials, neighbors, friends and family. We would tell it as it is. Then after the storm, it was time to laugh, tell jokes and convey the fact that we cared for each other. One friend, who was from the well-mannered school cried when I yelled at him. He did not know how to deal with it. You must hate me, he said as he wiped back the tears. But that was not true because it take a lot of effort to yell at someone. I told him that in a strange way it means I care for him and was willing to invest so much energy into the conversation. After our tempers cooled down we remained friends.

One day at the office a Chinese client wanted me to prepare a visa application that included fraudulent statements. I refused to prepare the application the way he wanted it done and told him that it was illegal to make a false statement to the government. The false statement dealt with an issue which, while he thought it to be important, had no relationship to the petition and did not have to be made. When he insisted that it be done his way I would not agree with him. At that time I was taking prednisone because of a medical problem which made me rather irritable. The client got angry and grabbed his file from my desk and started running to the door. I got up, chased him into the corridor about four feet from the office door, tackled him and we were scuffing at each other. After we both calmed down he agreed to do it my way. The documents were filed and his adjustment of status application was quickly approved. We then talked about the incident and by then he realized that his need to make a false statement would not have worked out. After the adjustment interview we started to joke about the fight. He started off by saying, I got scared. I saw you as a John Wayne type character that would kick the shit out of me.

Then I replied, "That is funny because I saw you as a Bruce Lee fighter who was about to give me a karate chop that would leave me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. We laughed, shook hands and agreed to keep in contact.

Reading stories of how aggressive I was at times would convince the reader that I was a mad man. That was true only some of the time. Mostly I was a quiet person who got along with other people except when I perceived them as trying to pull a fast one on me. As Jennifer would tell people, my temperament could go from zero to sixty in a split second. While such behavior at times scared people it was a great attribute for being an immigration attorney. And it was this part of my personality that carried me through the war with the City Council.

CHAPTER 3

THE LAW OFFICE

A FTER OPENING THE first law office and working on a variety of legal issues – divorces, contracts, personal injury, etc. - I quickly realized that a single attorney could not run a general practice law firm It was just too much work and there was a need to focus on one type of law. Specialization of labor is the secret to the industrial revolution and it was time to go in that direction. Within a month after opening the office I starting working on a number of immigration issues. It was an area of law that was slowly emerging; there were only five other attorneys in the city who had any real knowledge of this issue. Most other lawyers thought that an immigration law was a joke and often refused to acknowledge that is was real legal work and not something that could be done by a paralegal. Often, other attorneys would comment that all an immigration lawyer did was walk around the immigration service with a bag of money and hand it out to government officials as a way of getting green cards for clients. This was in the early 1980s when the immigration laws were quite generous. It was not illegal to hire an undocumented worker; they could easily get social security cards and driver’s licenses. It was a time when an employer could hire and train an employee for a job and then sponsor the immigrant. There was an annual meeting of the American Immigration and Naturalization Attorneys, with the acronym of AINL. Two hundred attorneys from the private bar and about 100 government officials would meet to discuss the emerging area of law that was so new of a field of study that there was almost no literature on the subject. The participants spent hours telling stories and trading secrets on how the immigration system worked. There were not many immigrants in the country at that time but their numbers were quickly growing. The Immigration law group, which consisted of attorneys and government officials who worked with immigration issues, became close friends. It was similar to being in a huge family that would meet each year. The annual meeting was a family reunion where government officials and the private bar would come together.

My law office opened in 1972, the year I passed the Bar Examination, the year I left my job at the Treasury Department. Because there was a shortage of immigration attorneys the practice grew and there was a huge assortment of immigrants who needed legal advice. At first the clients were maids and cooks, then auto mechanics and construction workers. These were the type of folks that I enjoyed working for. But soon the clientele went upscale and there were foreign research scientists and medical doctors and university professors and employees of international organizations. One moment I would be on the phone talking to a housewife who hired a maid and governess for her family. That would be followed by a phone conversation with a medical doctor and the hospital administration that wanted to employ him. And that conversation followed by another telephone conversation with a major research company that needed to hire a foreign scientist to assist in a secret government project; what the research about was something I was not allowed to know. I could list a number of major corporations who had retained me to help with their employees. The immigrants and the employers were exciting and interesting people to work with. Many of the immigrants were poor and glad to find jobs and many of the employers needed the immigrants. The best part was the practice made a nice income while most of the Bar thought that immigrants could not afford a lawyer. My work was to help people secure their lives, find jobs and feed their children.

This was the most exciting period of my life. Law school, a marriage that turned sour and a job that I got tired of were behind me. The drive was not for money, but rather to be whatever I wanted to be. In a way it was a secret world. There was no competition from other lawyers because they all believed that immigrants could not pay a legal fee (which clearly was not true.) There was no interest by other lawyers in being part of the group, especially a group with the acronym of AINL. Being my own boss, I could do what I wanted to do. I could pick and choose clients, I could determine the hours and days of the week the office would be open and when I made a decision about how to handle a complicated legal matter, it was my decision and there was not a senior person near me to veto the action. At times my decisions were based on my low level of insanity which surprisingly worked in my favor. For example, when I opened the office I attempted to have a listing in the telephone book. After all, in 1972 every attorney has his or her name listed. While talking to the phone company about this listing, I was told that there was only a free listing for the Washington D.C. phone book; to be listed in the Northern Virginia and Maryland phone books, even though they were the same metropolitan area, would cost a lot of money. Yet to be listed in only the Washington DC phone book would reach out to only a small part of the local community. It was ridiculous and it was the telephone company’s way of ripping off the local business community. To a 1960s hippy it was unconscionable. Just before I slammed down the instrument, I told the telephone company to just make it an unlisted telephone number, not to list the phone number anywhere, which did not cost anything. Other lawyers laughed when they found out about this - the office phone was an unlisted number. They said I was crazy because the listing in the phone book was the only way to get new clients. Braverman, you are crazy but I stuck to my decision and soon this worked to my advantage. Clients, when in the office, would take with them a number of my business cards. They would give them out to their friends and tell them that this lawyer is so good his name is not in the telephone book. As my father taught me years ago, every successful business got started because of a successful gimmick. There had to be something to make the business different from the competitors and my gimmick, for the moment, was the fact that the office was the only law firm in Washington DC that was not listed in the phone book.

CHAPTER 4

THE LAW OFFICE AND CHARLOTTESVILLE

T HE PERCEPTION OF immigration law started to change by 1980. About that time both the Washington Post and the New York Times wrote articles that told the public that immigration lawyers were making money. That got almost every law firm in America interested in the influx of immigrants and by 1985 it became known as the law for the future. Clients were from every country and they lived throughout the United States. It was a time when America woke up to the skills those immigrants had to offer the country. The employers were anxious to assist, to find out if there was something they could to do to help. That was true everywhere except in one town and that was Charlottesville. Whenever an employer from there would call, it always left me with the nagging feeling that that employer was more interested in exploiting the immigrant than helping and the call was often nothing more than a front to convince the immigrant that they were seriously concerned about their immigrant status. And almost every time my feeling turned out to be correct because the employer would refuse to fully cooperate. Often when the immigrant came to my office to find out if the employer was cooperative my advice was to find another job outside of that town.

I just could not fully understand why I did not like the town. Maybe it was the upper class rich southern white Anglo-Saxon society that reminded me of the bank officer who interviewed me. It could be that my attitude toward the people in the town could be felt by them in the limited conversations and they just did not like me. Whatever the case, I did not like the place.

Being a socialist at heart may be the problem. Representing the cooks, maids, and mechanics was not what most Charlottesville attorneys saw as a successful practice. The law work was also so much different from the work at the Treasury where I had little contact with real people and saw the world through statistics and numbers generated through an IBM 1400. . The world came into being from the mud and water around us and it grew into what it is today. That is the way the world progressed. It starts with supporting basic humanity and it was highly rewarding. Consider the maids. They worked so hard, they paid their taxes; they raised a number of American children while their parents worked and they never got arrested for anything. To me they were important people and I treated them with kindness and understanding.

Immigrant maids like to talk or gossip with each other. And they would often talk about the immigration lawyer who was working on their green card. They would pass around my name and one of my many business cards to a friend who in turn would pass it on someone else. They would ask their employer for help in getting a legal status in the country and they would give my card to the employer with a request that they call me.