As a breeze blew and a light rain fell, Anthony Gaboton prayed to remember those in cells who cannot feel wind or rain.
Gaboton, a member of the Richmond Hill ecumenical community on Church Hill, raised his prayer among many in a public vigil in Shockoe Bottom on Sunday to call for Virginia legislators to find new ways to release people incarcerated in prisons, jails and detention centers, where the coronavirus has been rampant.
The vigil — conducted by Clergy Action RVA and VA COVID-19 Justice Coalition — was aimed at the Virginia General Assembly, which will meet in Richmond on Tuesday for a special legislative session to revise a state budget upended by the public health crisis and consider new laws to curb police misconduct.
But an assortment of clergy and laypersons of many faiths also wants the assembly to act on legislation to make it easier for prison inmates to gain early release for good conduct and expand options for paroling others who are less than a year from release and pose no threat of harm to others.
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“People’s lives are in their hands,” said the Rev. Hollie Woodruff, minister at Seventh Street Christian Church in Richmond.
Virginia had confirmed 3,252 cases of COVID-19 and 16 deaths from the virus in 51 coronavirus outbreaks in correctional facilities by Sunday morning, which gave urgency to the prayers of those gathered that evening in front of the Reconciliation Statue that memorializes Richmond’s role in the African slave trade.
“We are here to call on you to do the right thing,” said the Rev. Donte McCutchen, pastor of Love Cathedral Community Church in Richmond.
McCutchen said prisons are supposed to reform those sentenced to them, but he said, “Their only hope for reform is if they live.”
The vigil included prayers from Islam and Judaism, from an aspiring rabbi and a potential Episcopal priest, and a Zen priest who insisted wryly that not all silence is capitulation.
“Silence has a very rich vocabulary,” said Eden Kevin Heffernan, of Richmond Zen, before leading the group in meditation beneath the noisy Interstate 95 overpass.
The Rev. Sarah Kye Price, priest associate at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, read the words of families who suffer with the incarceration of someone they love — a sister, a mother, a wife who each fear for the health of a brother, a son, a father.
“These men and women were not sentenced to death,” Price quoted Frances Ross, whose “forever person” is incarcerated.