Month: January 2020

Troparion for the New Martrys of Russia, “In joy the Russian Church forms a choir, praising her New Martyrs and Confessors: Hierarchs and priests, royal Passion Bearers, right-believing princes and princesses, venerable men and women and all Orthodox Christians, who during the days of godless persecution laid down their life for faith in Christ, and preserved the truth by the shedding of blood. By their protections, O long-suffering Lord, keep Russia in Orthodoxy till the end of the age.”

Today, the Orthodox Church commemorated the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. The feast celebrates those who were subjected to abuse or murdered for their faith in Christ after the October Revolution in 1917. The date was chosen to coincide with the death of the first Hieromartyr of the Bolshevik Yoke, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev.

In December 2018, my family and I visited Moscow’s Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors, which was completed in 2017 to mark 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution. It’s nestled within Sretenksy Monastery – a cloistered Holy place founded in 1397 by Grand Prince Vasili I.

The origin of the monastery’s name comes from “Sretenie,” which is the Church Slavonic word for “meeting.” So, it was built on the spot where the Muscovites and Prince Vasily I had “met” the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir on August 26, 1395, when it was moved from Vladimir to Moscow in order to protect the capital from the Mongols’ raping and sacking. Soon thereafter, the invading armies retreated and the grateful monarch founded the monastery to commemorate the miracle.

In 1552, the Muscovites “met” again at the walls of the monastery to greet the Russian army returning home after the conquest of Kazan under Ivan the Terrible. This put an end to 100 years of Mongolian Khan rule in that southwestern Russian city.

As was the barbarity of the atheist tyrants, many of the older churches within the seminary were “disassembled” by the Communists. Some of these razed Sretensky structures dated back to the 14th century.

Interestingly, the monastery is located in Lubyanka, an area of Moscow known for its infamous Soviet prison. It was said that if you were sent to Lubyanka, you’d never come back. The former NKVD headquarters are next door to Sretensky, as well.

Such is the irony that is woven into the fabric of modern-day Russia: a country whose past is filled with both pride and persecution, gloried sagas and shocking suppression, and whose future is built upon both ancient faith and modern aspirations.

The full body of Hieromartyr Hilarion Troitsky, Archbishop of Vereiya is in repose at the large Sretensky church. Images of New Martyrs and Confessors adorn the walls, columns, and ceilings, such as this icon of the Russian imperial family, the Romanovs.

Today’s Kontakion, “The New Martyrs of Russia stand in white robes before the Lamb of God, and with the angels they sing the hymn of victory to God: blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and praise, and honor, and power, and strength be to our God unto ages of ages. Amen.”

In July 1918, the Romanovs and their four servants (who chose to accompany them into imprisonment in Yekaterinburg) were shot and bayoneted to death by Bolsheviks – the final blow of the ascendant Soviets’ smashing of the old, traditional order, thus, solidifying the new, totalitarian state system.

There was debate as to whether the tsar and his family were “martyrs,” meaning people who are killed explicitly for their faith. But in 2000, Moscow Patriarchate Kirill canonized the family as “passion bearers”: pious Christians who face death with resignation, but do so in a Christ-like manner.

It’s estimated that more Christians were martyred under Soviet Communism than were during the first three centuries of Christianity. “The Russian Church lost millions of its sons and daughters, not only at the hands of external enemies, but also those of their own country,” states the Orthodox Church of America. “Among those who were murdered and tortured in the years of persecution were countless Orthodox: laity, monks, priests, and bishops, whose only ‘crime’ was their unshakable faith in God.”

About 20 miles outside of Moscow in Leninsky District lay the Butovo Firing Range. Some call it the “Russian Golgotha,” as it was the site of industrial-scale executions that took place during Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror.

Between August 1937 and October 1938, an estimated 20,765 people were executed and buried at Butovo. About 1,000 of these victims were Orthodox clergy. These are the New Martyrs of Butovo.

The purge was at its height during these two years, with an average of 50 “enemies of the people” murdered here daily, although February 28, 1938, ranks first, with 562 people shot and killed on that one single date. Butovo remained a functioning “firing range” for dissidents until 1953.

The “Garden of Memory” opened in 2017 and is made of an angular horseshoe-shaped granite wall. At 984-feet long and 6 1/2-feet high, the giant memorial features the names of those who perished at Butovo throughout the years.

During Divine Liturgy today, the Gospel reading was Luke 21:8-19, which advised the weary to be strengthened in Christ and the distracted to stay focused on the Son of Man. The Lord said, “Take heed that you are not astray; for many shall come in My name, saying ‘I am he!” and ‘The time is at hand!’ Do not go after them. And when you hear of wars and tumult, do not be terrified; for this must first take place, but the end shall not be at once. … there shall be great terrors and great signs from heaven.“

“But before all this they shall lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you shall be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This shall be a time for you to bear testimony. … You shall be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they shall put to death; you shall be hated by all for My name’s sake. But do not a hair of your head shall perish. By your endurance you shall win your souls.”

Russia’s New Martyrs and Confessors are a witness to this. It’s like my priest explains, “Our salvation is much more than … simply being saved from something. It is rather being saved to something.” Through their tribulation and righteousness, these saints were never separated from the love of God. That is salvation.

The saints are a lesson in rebirth and redemption. St. John Chrysostom preached that “We have been freed from punishment, we have put off all wickedness, and we have been reborn from above, and we have risen again.”

In 1940, Archpriest Gregory Petroff knew well these truths as he died in a Soviet prison camp. He clung to the words of Metropolitan Tryphon of Turkestan, who wrote “Akathist of Thanksgiving” during the height of Communist oppression in the 1930s.

“No one can put together what has crumbled into dust. But You can restore a conscience turned to ashes; You can restore to its former beauty a soul lost and without hope.” The new martyrs and confessors – preservers of truth through the shedding of blood – are a lived reminder of this. Let us not forget. Beauty for ashes.

Source: Dissident Mama – New Martyrs & Confessors

I once read a travel writer describe Ireland as “mystical and modern, beautiful yet bleak, proud and vulnerable, peaceful yet divided, rich in talent but poor in resources, foreign and friendly.” I think Richmond, Virginia, is such a paradox.

I’m a native Richmonder and have a love-hate relationship with my home of 24 years. Richmond molded me, yet I didn’t even go to my 30th high school reunion in the fall because I find its current state so damned depressing. Brimming with progressive zealots, apathetic Boomers, invaders both foreign and domestic, and quislings as far as the eye can see, it’s a case study in the effects of 100+ years of “New South” reconstruction. As Leslie Alexander succinctly describes my emotion, I feel like a “stranger in a strange land.”

Take Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, who’s not only a gun-grabbing turncoat, but also a self-loathing Southerner seeking to replace the Robert E. Lee statue in the US Capitol with a Virginian who “would better represent our Commonwealth.” As one option, he suggested Booker T. Washington, who actually is worthy of a monument since the famous orator wasn’t a revenge-filled ingrate. Washington actually sought true peace and reconciliation, just like Robert E. Lee, and unlike Northam and his regime of ancestral ruination.

“Confederate statue critics increasingly argue that the monuments should be torn down because they honor traitors,” explains Philip Leigh. Okay, seems about on par with cultural-Marxist histrionics. But what is mind-blowing is that “Among such advocates is Christy Coleman, CEO of the Richmond’s American Civil War Museum.” This is the current level of racial-retribution insanity that seems to permeate the Old Dominion capital, from its hipster brew pubs to its cobblestone streets.

Richmond’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts now displays the social-justice sculpture “Rumors of War” – a comical and “intersectional” version of the exquisite J.E.B. Stuart statue, which was erected on the city’s famous Monument Avenue back in 1907. Talk about cultural appropriation.

In line with the ceaseless penance for and self-flagellation of white folks, Richmond City Council renamed The Boulevard (the historic street that has long been home to a stunning Stonewall Jackson statue at its crossroad with Monument Avenue) Arthur Ashe Boulevard. Richmonders seem to revere the black tennis great nearly on a level with MLK. But at least Ashe wasn’t a heretic and a commie, like Saint King, so there’s always that.

I could go on. And on. And on.

This is one of the reasons my husband Stephen and I went back and forth all weekend as to whether we should attend VCDL Lobby Day. Our plans literally changed from minute to minute. We both wanted to go. Then neither of us. Then one of us. Then not. Then the other. Then neither one again.

We thought, “Why should we stick our necks out for Richmond, whose people have let the city and state go to hell? We don’t even live in Virginia.”

Ultimately, Stephen did decide to attend the event without me, but with my sister, who is a lifelong Richmonder and a VCDL member. He wanted me to stay back in NC with our sons, just in case something bad happened at the event. No sense in upping the chances of losing two parents to leftist violence.

We kept coming back to the idea that the rally represented a much-needed and long-overdue testing point. Turns out it’s not gay marriage. Or endless wars. Or hate-speech laws and censorship. Or corporate capitalism. Or environmental religiosity. Or the high taxes. Or assaults on parental rights a la vaccines or homeschooling.

It’s not illegal and legal immigration. Or abortion. Or LGBT coercion or Drag Queen Story Hour or the normalization of pedophilia. It’s not even satanism. The line in the sand is guns.

We thought that maybe, just maybe the normies who’ve been sleepwalking through the last two years, or two decades, or two centuries will arouse from their slumber. Will the Pledge-reciting, thin-blue-line-cheerleading, military-worshiping, rule-following, Medicare-loving masses wake up?

Will they come to understand that they are as much the archetype as is David Duke? I mean, just being a straight white man is considered violence in 2020. If he tries to assert his rights, it’s intimidation. If he acts masculine, it’s toxic. If he builds coalitions, it’s white nationalism. If he breaks the chains of his master, it’s hate. How dare he challenge the “progress” of dismantling his own culture, his own belief system, and everything he holds dear. Bigot. Now throw some guns and Christianity on top of that, and well, you have the makings of a domestic terrorist.

Will they see that being painfully silent or incessantly disavowing “white supremacists” does no good. It doesn’t matter if you think those people are scoundrels, “racist rioters” who deserve to rot in jail. Or that you are an anti-racist who’s defending everyone’s constitutional rights, a patriot who may even have mixed-race grandchildren and know a gay person or two. No one cares. To the globalists and the malevolent mobs who do their bidding, you’re the same as Richard Spencer.

Will they grasp that in 2020, not practicing identity politics is a suicide pact? Tribalism is applauded for “diverse” peoples, so why not you? Notice that the very same people who are at risk of losing the most – Southern-without-apology folks, traditionalists, conservative Christians, nuclear families, straight white men, law-abiding gun owners, etc. – are typically the only ones who adhere to the “live and let live” mantra. It’s a deep-seated altruism that flows through us normal Americans, but it will also be the death of us if we don’t get real real fast.

Will people see that this is bigger than “muh Constitution” or “USA” chants? After all, my family doesn’t even live in Virginia, but neither does the progressive California professor who federal courts allowed to redraw the Commonwealth’s electoral maps, ensuring permanent Dem domination. Why should elite-appointed “experts” get to have all the fun, and we plebs have to follow all the old rules that leftists smashed to bits in 1865? (Or if that’s too much truth for you to handle, let’s just say 1965 then.)

Take the Sanctuary County movement spreading across Virginia. Philosophically, it’s nullification. “Whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers … a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy,” wrote Jefferson.

However, 2A-sanctuary is not technically in line with Jeffersonian republicanism. Legally, counties are a creation of the state, and therefore cannot nullify bad law. Constitutionally, states have the right to pass any kind of gun control they want if done through the legislative process. The 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution only applies to the federal government. “Congress shall make no law.” Brion McClanahan explains it well.

In my opinion, this isn’t about the law; it’s about realpolitik. US 2A or VA Article I, Section 13, it doesn’t matter to me. You’re not getting my guns! Resisting the imperial status quo is the conservative approach.

Plus, when was the last time progressives upheld their oaths of office? When was the last time Congress voted for a war? When was the last time oligarchs had to live by the same laws as the rest of us? When was the last time “the people” told the courts to stick it where the sun don’t shine when the judicial branch legislates? When was the last time the states said, “Hey, feds. All your alphabet-soup agencies are illegal, so we’re not going to play the law game with a bunch of lying law-breakers. No more money for you, Leviathan!”

Don’t like a state law? Nullify the legislation. Don’t like a good guy being railroaded in the courts? Practice jury nullification. Don’t like a federal regulation, act, or executive order? Don’t capitulate. Nullify! Don’t like the corporate media trying to pass fake news as fact? Nullify the leftist narrative! Don’t like the smut on TV? Nullify Netflix!

We conservatives so often play under the elastic rules of the faulty incorporation doctrine. It’s a like a loose-fitting but snug noose. When progressives want federal edicts, they rally around the 14th and 15th Amendments with the US Supreme Court always giving aid and comfort. When they want to start the cultural-Marxist ball rolling closer to home, they all of a sudden become ardent states-rights advocates.

As nation-statist Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “The great object of an incorporation is to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a collective and changing body of men.” Translation: progress as defined by the kritarchy. I say, it’s well past high time to cut the rope.

This precisely what the VCDL did. They went “on the offensive” against the draconian anti-gun bills that affected not only their right of self-defense, but also extended the web of oppression to free speech and corporate censorship. That’s how you attack tyranny of law: never be on the defensive. Never apologize. Never play by the left’s rules. Know your enemy.

This 2A sanctuary movement is growing, even in my neck of the woods, so let’s not get complacent. Don’t listen to the normies who fall back asleep because the rally seemed to be an overwhelmingly successful event. Ignore the libertarians who wouldn’t know solidarity if it smacked them upside their objectivist heads. Laugh at social-justice bullies when they call you nasty names. Get teflon about it and empathize when you hear someone maligned as a “white supremacist,” now that you’ve been castigated as one. (Perhaps there aren’t as many “Nazis” running around as the narrative would have you think.) Build networks. Ally with like-minded people. And stay focused. This could be the beginning of something big, y’all.

I agree with Pat Buchanan: Virginia is the front lines of the culture war. It represents secession from leftist degeneracy and destruction, secession from progressive reform and reconstruction, secession from nihilism and identity-less-ness. Richmond was just one battle, but it did one fat chink in the globalists’ armor.

Southerners and their conservative compatriots need to continue being a lot more tribalistic and a lot less hospitable to hostile ideas that threaten their hearth and home, the way Italian-Americans do, advises Paul Gottfried. Don’t be afraid. Keep tapping into your rebel roots, like you did today.

Richmond. The place where Patrick Henry gave his revolutionary “Liberty or Death” speech. The site where Henry and other anti-federalists like George Mason railed against the culture-crushing, liberty-usurping potential of the US Constitution, with Mason demanding a Bill of Rights at this Virginia Ratifying Convention. The city where Thomas Ritchie and Spencer Roane disseminated those same Jeffersonian principles through the Richmond Junto. And the final resting place of Southern heroes, from Jefferson Davis and John Tyler, James Monroe and George Pickett, to J.E.B. Stuart and my kin A.P. Hill.

Today, VCDL members, Virginians like my sister, and their courageous allies like my husband raised the black flag. Stonewall would be proud. Keep it flying high, y’all.

As the paleocon stalwart Russell Kirk once opined, Dixie has become “homogeneous with all the rest of the nation,” thus, “its peculiar role as conservator of norm and convention [has been] terminated.” If the South’s “permanence … will have ceased to exist: it will have lost its genius.” After today’s fine stand, maybe the Richmond hasn’t lost its genius after all. The paradox still persists, but permanence clings to life. Lord willing, thus always to tyrants.

Source: Dissident Mama – Richmond: Paradox & permanence

My husband, Stephen, left for Richmond this afternoon. Armed with only his new St. Tikhon’s Seminary prayer book, his prayer rope, a recent confession with our priest, and the Eucharist from Diving Liturgy this morning, he’s ready to attend Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) Lobby Day tomorrow.

Even though he has a North Carolina conceal-carry permit, Stephen decided not to take a weapon to Virginia, not even for the drive up. There is reciprocity between the two neighboring states, but he doesn’t want to give anyone the impression that he’s a trouble-maker. He’s just a normal guy going to take a stand for his rights and to symbolically fight for his family and his children’s future.

It’s all about optics these days. And Stephen is under no illusions about the well-funded and well-protected beast he’s up against. He knows the narrative is usually whatever the state and their apparatchiks want it to be.

VCDL members and other law-abiding rally attendees are already being painted as “gun extremists … [who] will descend on the Virginia General Assembly, hoping to intimidate lawmakers into rejecting the democratic will of the people.” In case you didn’t hear that, “right-wing gun fanatics [will] descend on Richmond.” Like locusts, law-abiding gun owners are the hungry instigators, you see, just devouring the benevolent, well-intentioned work of selfless public servants who simply want to lead and protect the people. Don’t fall prey to conservative hate.

The narrative of the blood-thirsty brutes rabble-rousing their way into the otherwise peaceful city of Richmond has been engineered by Gov. Ralph Northam, who already declared a temporary State of Emergency. This is the exact same thing that then-VA-governer Terry McAuliffe did before the lawful Unite the Right rally, and we know how that turned out.

In fact, Northam name-drops “Charlottesville” because he knows darn well the political power it wields him, hushing critics and empowering leftist foot soldiers, both on the streets and in the newsrooms. The state, the corporate media, the police, and progressive lawyers have done a bang-up job of creating the mythos that “white supremacists” descended upon the otherwise happy city. They were just minding their business and, poof!, “neo-Nazis” were taking over and trying to ruin their quaint Blue Ridge utopia. These domestic terrorists only hate us for our freedoms, you know.

And to further poke his finger in the collective eye of legal gun-owners, Northam’s executive order also includes a ban of all weapons in Capitol Square because … Charlottesville. And since the “deadly 2017 white nationalist rally … involved heavily armed protesters,” writes NBC, “Northam’s declaration will also ban items like helmets and shields … [which] some white nationalists carried.”

Yeah, it was those very shields that protected my good friend Carolina Contrarian and her stay-at-home-mom companion as they made their way through the cop-less and barbaric “gauntlet” set up in Charlottesville. But, but Nazis! Protect your women and hide your children! Huh, turns out it was those devilish “white supremacists” who were the ones protecting the ladies. Yet, the narrative rolls on despite the facts.

Northam cites “threats of armed militia storming our Capitol” and “extremist rhetoric similar to what has been seen before in … [wait for it] … Charlottesville.” See, the man’s just keeping us safe. Northam says that “out-of-state militia groups and hate groups … are coming to intimidate and to cause harm.” Bad guys are aiming for you, but this time, they have guns.

Conveniently, the FBI just happened to nab some “neo-Nazis” who they claim were planning to descend upon Richmond and wreak havoc. And we’re supposed to believe this, why? Because a corrupt federal police force that considers sharing “racist views” and having “disdain” for protected minority groups a crime, and the liars at the New York Times tell us so?

Or because elitists pedal the propaganda of the Counter Extremism Project, which is akin to an international version of the subversive Southern Poverty Law Center, constantly calling a “hate group” any organization that opposes globalism and multiculturalism, and a “hater” any person who stands for decentralization and tradition. As far as I can surmise, these supposed “neo-Nazis” broke no laws, other than not worshiping at the altar of cultural Marxism. If you don’t believe that’s a thing, just ask James Fields.

It is this supposed “credible intelligence” that Northam continues to use in defense of his illegal banning of weapons from capitol grounds. It’s all undergirded by the fictional, but too-often believed Charlottesville narrative and the anarcho-tyranny that has become the “new normal” as a consequence.

As thousands of people visit [no, that can’t be the right verb] … come to [hmm, still not volatile enough] … travel to [oh yeah, enter in our fifth-column talking point] …. “descend on” Richmond, state lawyers say they are “determined to prevent another tragedy” like Charlottesville. Don’t worry your pretty little head that Northam is clearly in violation of a 2012 law the General Assembly passed in reaction to the disarmament of law-abiding citizens in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina.

The law “specifically forbids the governor from using a declaration of emergency to ban guns, except within emergency shelters,” explains WaPo. “Both Northam and state Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) … were state senators at the time and voted in favor of the policy.” My how times have changed.

A Circuit Court denied a motion made by VCDL and the Gun Owners of America against Northam’s restriction of firearms on Capitol grounds. And then when the groups appealed it to the VA Supreme Court, the high-court lawyers claimed the pro-gun attorneys failed “to include enough information to merit taking action” and that no transcript of the lower-court hearing was provided. Now the appeal won’t be heard until after the rally and after the temporary ban has ended on Tuesday. Convenient.

The leftists screech, white nationalists are coming to town to “disrupt our democratic process,” so screw the law! They’re even disrupting the holiest and most reverent holiday of Saint MLK! The racist bastards should be shot. Perhaps we can arrange that.

But what I’ve heard from a good cop friend and Dissident Mama follower who is actually on duty for tomorrow’s rally is that the police are using Charlottesville as the template of what NOT to do. And I’ve been assured that VCDL, which has held its annual lobbying event for years without incident, has always had a good rapport with both police and legislators. The thinking is that this bodes well for the protection of pro-gun rally-goers.

Typically, lobby days are pretty innocuous. NGOs meet with politicians and other public employees to advocate for the group’s cause usually without much fuss. The NRA’s lobby day was held the previous Monday without too much fanfare, well, except for the Capitol Police harassing this man at his home more than 100 miles away from Richmond days after the event. Hmm.

It’s precisely because of these topsy-turvy times that I don’t find much solace in assurances of law and order. Plus, what about the counterintelligence feds, who will surely be woven into the crowds unofficially? Or what about the VA Police who will be officially on duty in Richmond?

After all, it was the State Police who were part of the “law enforcement” that followed stand-down orders, allowing barbaric nihilists to take over the streets of the Charlottesville both during and after that fateful Unite the Right rally. It was this state-supported chaos that emboldened UNC professor Dwayne Dixon and his Redneck Revolt minions to chase James Fields, creating the very scenario that got the Heather Heyer killed. (If you don’t think Dixon’s proud admission via Tweet condemns him, watch this video.)

Speaking of tax-payer-subsidized “counter-protester” Dixon, Redneck Revolt and their equally violent comrades in the John Brown Gun Club and other assorted flavors of the anti-racist rainbow mafia will be present at tomorrow’s lobby day. Whereas the gun-totin’ lefties claim they want to recruit VCDL members to their armed revolution, the vast majority of cultural Marxists see self-defense for a movement overwhelmingly comprised of white folks as racist. Bigoted crackers just want to make everyone’s “lives miserable through intimidation.”

I did a “Richmond” search on Twitter late Friday evening, and the vast majority of posts were mainstream “news” stories about the arrest of the three shoot-em-up “neo-Nazis,” accompanied by unhinged editorials and endless comments ranting that MLK Day was being diminished by the gun-nut rally. Apostasy!

The deceitful narrative continues to be spoon-fed to the masses, but who will you believe? The power-hungry government, the lying media, and the anarcho-tyrants who want to disarm, silence, and maybe even kill you? Or will you believe my husband of 20 years – a father of three sons, a computer geek, and a devout Orthodox Christian – who is in Richmond in peace. He will be in attendance with my sister, Lisa, who is a government employee, a traditional Catholic, and a mother of two. Maybe you’ll believe her.

Armed with only body cameras, love for their families, and conviction in the Lord, these two fun-loving foodies and dedicated dog-people have bravely chosen to be just a couple of the “10,000 unarmed” citizens VCDL hopes to have within the gun-free barriers. They’re simply normal people taking a stand for what they know is right.

But will it be Charlottesville 2.0? Or Charlottesville x 1,000? Or the Boston Marathon Bombing? Or the Boston Massacre? Or Tienamnen Square? No one knows till tomorrow.

What I do know is that I love my husband. He is my and my children’s hero. And I adore my sister. She has always set me straight. Won’t you please pray for them, and all the good people who will be in Richmond? And let’s also pray that people’s eyes are wide open to truth.

“O Lord, you who steadied the hand of Peter as he began to sink on the stormy sea, if you are with Stephen and Lisa, no one is against them. Grant to them the shield of faith and the mighty armor of the Holy Spirit to protect them and guide them to do Your will. The future we put into your hands, O Lord, and we follow You to a life in Christ. Amen.”

I’ll be posting an essay as to why Stephen and I felt like at least one of us should go to VCDL Lobby Day. It should be up by morning, since I can’t sleep anyway.

Source: Dissident Mama – Please pray for Richmond