Walter Virgil Jr., a community activist, nonprofit organizer and Director of Strategic Projects and Alliances at Liberty University, has filed to run as an independent for an at-large seat on Lynchburg City Council in this November’s election.
Council is made up of seven members, four of whom represent the city’s four wards and three of whom are chosen at large. This year, all three at-large seats will be on the ballot, with the three highest vote-getters earning four-year terms.
Virgil joins newcomers Patrick Earl, Martin Misjuns, Stephanie Reed and Larry Taylor, as well as incumbents Treney Tweedy and Beau Wright on the ballot, rounding out all of the candidates for this November’s at-large election.
Virgil, a native of New Brunswick, New Jersey, moved to Lynchburg in 2010 and has been involved in several community organizations, churches and educational institutions with the goal of giving back to the city that he said has provided so many opportunities for him.
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“It’s been really, really cool to be taking this journey in the city and learning so much about the different pockets of people who are here,” Virgil said about his time running for a seat on council.
Virgil’s journey in Lynchburg started after meeting Bishop S.Y. Younger, who found out Virgil was living out of his car for a period of time in 2007, after not being able to return to college for financial reasons.
After getting plugged into the James Crossing community as a resident services coordinator, Virgil began to see the importance of non-profits in Lynchburg and wanted to start building bridges between organizations and community.
Now a 12-year resident with his wife, Kristal, and two children — a six-year-old son and a six-month-old daughter — Virgil is hoping to give back to the city that helped him become the man he is.
“My journey here has been really awesome,” Virgil said, “so there’s this great sense of paying it forward and giving back, because I came here as a college dropout kid that didn’t know what I was going to do and found my purpose, found my mission.”
During the campaign, Virgil is emphasizing two areas that he feels are most important for the future of the city: Lynchburg City Schools and crime in the community.
The father of one LCS student, he stressed the importance of a strong public school system, which he says starts with valuing the educators in the classrooms.
“If we’re going to focus on making maximum impact on the young people that we have here,” Virgil said, “we need to ensure they have quality educators that feel valued themselves in the system, and supported in the system so their focus can be where it’s supposed to be.”
Additionally, he wants to see more financial accountability from city departments, which in turn would allow them to come back and ask for more money down the road if they can show they can handle what they are given.
“We are always going to have organizations and entities that are going to lobby for more money,” he said, “but I think when we have organizations that can show their fiscal responsibility with the money they are being allocated, that becomes the initial argument that really … allows them to advocate for more money.”
He also said he wants to build his campaign on accountability and listening, recognizing that he may not have the answer for every question.
“They try to come in with an agenda, they try to come in with an itinerary and miss the opportunity to listen and take inventory,” he said about some organizational and city leaders in Lynchburg, “so that’s really my number one commitment, to take effective inventory on our systems … to be able to provide a phenomenal service.”
He also wants to use his listening abilities to create inroads in the community to help curb crime in the very neighborhoods it happens in.
Virgil spent a lot of time working in jails and juvenile detention centers in Central Virginia through ministry programs, which helped him create ideas for integrating formerly incarcerated people back into the community.
“Some of the most influential individuals that we have in the communities where we see most of the violent crime are other individuals that have criminal backgrounds,” he said.
“Those are the guys that can walk on a hostile corner and push up on another young man that’s considering doing something foolish, and because of the legitimacy and credibility he has in that circle, he can diffuse a very hostile situation.”
Virgil added, “it’s going to look like building those relationships and figuring out who those individuals we need to work with so we can figure out the culture and climate of that community.”
Through the campaign and his leadership, Virgil said he needs to be unconventional to figure out the answers that “stagnant leadership” has yet to solve for the community, while not “throwing mud” during election season.
“As I began to listen [to voters], that’s when I started to hear all this stuff where it’s like, ‘We feel like it’s a joke,’ or, ‘We feel like it’s a bunch of theatrics and the options we’ve had are limited,'” Virgil said.
“They want something to believe in that’s real, and that’s what I bring to the table, I’m running to go to work for the city.”
