Even as they rest, preached one speaker at the Kingdom Family Worship Center Sunday afternoon, Black women are still working.
It’s unlikely that anyone in the audience appreciated that statement quite like Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling (D-Henrico).
LeVere Bolling, who represents Virginia’s 80th House District, was still recovering from labor this past February when she cast the first of several historically-remote votes in the General Assembly.
Staff from the General Assembly and Speaker of the House Don Scott’s office had outfitted LeVere Bolling’s recovery room at Henrico Doctors Hospital with an iPad, in case she was called on to participate from her hospital bed. In fact, Scott was the first non-family member to visit her.
“And he told me to take time,” LeVere Bolling said in an interview following Sunday’s Women’s Black History Month tea, where she was honored as keynote speaker. “He was like, ‘You don’t have to come back immediately. Take your time.’ ”
She took some, but not much.
LeVere Bolling gave birth to her daughter Liauna in the pre-dawn hours on Feb. 5, a Wednesday. By Monday, she was back home, virtually attending committee meetings.
“It was a crazy time for me,” she said.
Case in point: LeVere Bolling revealed she doesn’t remember the actual bill she voted on that first afternoon, the particulars obscured in a postpartum haze. (According to VPM, it was SB1307, a bill allowing a 1-percent tax for school construction that was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin).
“When we adjourned and I was able to log out of everything, I just turned to my husband [Chris] and was like, ‘What in the world? Why did I do that?’ ”
The answer, she said, didn’t stem from a desire to normalize working mothers, or to blaze a parliamentary trail. It had more to do with taxes, collective bargaining and minimum wage.
“The real impetus of wanting to participate was my constituents,” LeVere Bolling said. “And I’m one of my own constituents. And I represent my own house right where I live.”
She also pointed to her party’s slim, 51-49 majority in the chamber as a factor in finishing out the session from home.
“You know, [the vote] could come down to someone who might be up in the bathroom at the time, right?” she said.
Sunday’s event in Fredericksburg was hosted by Del. Joshua Cole, a Democrat who is running for re-election in Virginia’s 65th District. Cole, a well-known pastor, surprised a good portion of the audience with his chops on piano during a selection of spiritual numbers.
“This man has many skills, doesn’t he?” Scott said as he took the lectern.
For his part, Scott was originally scheduled to attend a campaign kickoff event for Democratic House candidate Nicole Cole across town the same afternoon. However, he joked that, with Joshua Cole “being the bully that he is, and me being as afraid of him as I am, I said I better come by and say hello.”
In his brief remarks, Scott referenced the recent arrest of a Wisconsin judge by federal agents and likened the current administration’s recent flurry of actions to “a game of whack-a-mole.”
“Every time they pop their little heads up doing something crazy, we’ve got to pop it back down,” he said. “Because they’re counting on us to get worn down, to despair, to give up.”
Scott also noted that, besides New Jersey, Virginia is the only state scheduled to hold midterm elections this year.
“We’re going to send a message to the rest of the country in November 2025,” Scott said. “We’re going to send a love letter. We love America, we’re not going to let it go backwards.”
Toward the end of Sunday’s event, Joshua Cole and LeVere Bolling surprised several local Black women with resolutions from the House of Delegates. Honorees included: longtime educator Shirley Smith Johnson, Ambassador Pamela Bridgewater, Fredericksburg City School Board member Malvina Rollins Kay, youth advocate Robyn Wilson and representatives from the Greater Rappahannock Chapter of the Links, Inc.
