Wes Bellamy
Wes Bellamy is the vice mayor of the city of Charlottesville, Virginia and member of the Democratic Party.
Bellamy was elected to the Charlottesville City Council on November 3, 2015, where he received the most amount of votes of the three other supervisors.
Biography
Bellamy moved to the Charlottesville area in 2009 to work for the National Ground Intelligence Center. He left that position shortly afterwards and began teaching in Albemarle schools. He established the Helping Young People Evolve in 2011 and soon afterwards entered city politics.
Bellamy was honored by the Daily ProgresS in 2013 as part of their Distinguished Dozen series.
Ballamy received his doctoral degree from Virginia State University on August 11, 2017.
Robert E. Lee statue and tweet controversy
In March 2016, Bellamy called a press conference to call for the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. This drew the criticism of activist Jason Kessler.
In November of that year, Kessler revealed a series of lewd and offensive tweets made by Bellamy in the past. In the tweets Bellamy stated that he hates black people who "act white" and "talk white" and considers white women to be the "devil." In another tweet he said hates seeing "White people in Orangeburg." Other tweets included the homophobic slur "[...]" and sexist remarks such as “I’m all for equal opportunity..but a Female Principal with a school full of female teachers is fkn a sure fire way to fk our lil boys up smh,”
Bellamy apologized for the tweets and resigned from both the Virginia Board of Education and his teaching position. However, he did not step down from his position as vice-mayor. In December, Kessler who labeled Bellamy as "anti-white" began circulating a petition demanding that Bellamy resign or be removed from office. The petition ultimately failed and Kessler went on to organize the Unite the Right rally.
Committee assignments
After being elected, Bellamy was assigned to the following committees:
- Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority
- Citizen's Advisory Panel (CAP)
- Cville Development Corp.
- Darden Towe Park Board
- Retirement Commission
Soon after election, Governor Terry McAuliffe appointed him to the State Board of Election.