Good morning, Arlington. Jo here. It’s Thursday, August 26: National Women’s Equality Day and NBA star James Harden’s 32nd birthday.

Morning Status

• Today’s Weather: Scattered showers and thunderstorms in the evening. Mostly sunny, with a high near 94. Heat index values as high as 103.
• Tomorrow’s Weather: A chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2 p.m. Sunny, with a high near 94. Heat index values as high as 101.
• Sunrise: 6:29 a.m.
• Sunset: 7:40 p.m.

What We’re Covering Today

Morning Notes

• Lebanese Taverna Helping to Feed Refugees — From World Central Kitchen: “Today’s scene at Dulles Airport outside DC To support families landing from Afghanistan, the WCK team is here to provide fresh, hot meals upon arrival. People have not eaten in hours — or days — by the time they land. Today’s plates came from @lebanesetaverna.” [Twitter]
• Air Quality Alert Today — “The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments… has issued a Code ORANGE Air Quality Alert Thursday for the DC metro area. A Code Orange Air Quality Alert means that air pollution concentrations within the region may become unhealthy for sensitive groups. Sensitive groups include children, people suffering from asthma, heart disease or other lung diseases and the elderly.” [National Weather Service]
• Missing Senior Found — From Virginia State Police: “Virginia Senior Alert CANCELLED: Per @ArlingtonVaPD, Mr. Charilaos Dimopoulos, 92, has been SAFELY LOCATED.” [Twitter]
• Committee of 100 Stays Remote — “It will be the start of 2022 at the earliest before the Arlington Committee of 100 returns to in-person meetings. ‘Our board has decided to continue providing our programs ‘virtually’ through December,’ the organization said in a recent e-mail to participants. ‘Our hope is eventually to provide hybrid programs, where you can connect with fellow members in person or watch them from the comfort of your home.'” [Sun Gazette]
• Girls Flag Football Coach Profiled — “Rivera remains here in Arlington, coaching… year-round in both flag and girls’ basketball under the banner of the Hurricanes organization, which he founded… Rivera has taken Virginia Hurricanes select flag teams to the NFL nationals — the championships for the official NFL flag football league — seven times. They’ve won the national championship three times–twice for the 14-and-under (14U) age group, and once for the 12U age group. The 10U and 12U teams qualified for the upcoming nationals in Nevada in January 2022, and the 14U team will compete to qualify in November.” [Arlington Magazine]
• Reminder on a Hot Day — From AAA Mid-Atlantic: “We’re looking at another hot and humid day in VA, it’s time to focus on protecting children & pets from the heat: Never leave them in a vehicle unattended. Always look in the back seat every time you exit. Always lock the car and put keys out of reach.” [Twitter]

The following are preview of stories we’re planning to cover later today. Note that some stories may be pushed back, depending on the day’s news. 

Armed Robbery in Pentagon City: Yesterday afternoon, a prearranged meeting to sell sneakers in the Pentagon City Harris Teeter parking lot turned violent. Police say during a meet-up, suspects brandished a weapon, assaulted and stole cash from their victims, and fled in a car. U.S. Park Police officers identified and stopped the car near the National Mall in D.C. The four suspects were taken into custody and charges are pending.

New Café and Bar Opens in Courthouse: Lorton-based, woman-owned RĀKO Coffee Roasters is opening RĀKO, its first brick-and-mortar location on Saturday in Courthouse. To celebrate the grand opening coffee drinks $1 coffees from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, with specially priced natural wines available all day Saturday until 9 p.m. The coffee shop will serve drinks with sustainably sourced and roasted coffee, wine and cocktails, as well as seasonal plates.

Dry Cleaners Starts GoFundMe: Local dry cleaner Eagle Cleaners is on the verge of closing, unless the operator can raise enough money to buy the business. Mathew Srebrow set up a GoFundMe to do just that, banking on the support of his family’s customers over the decades to keep the business open after next Wednesday, Sept. 1.

County Fair Considers Moving Locations: Arlington County is exploring the idea of accommodating the Arlington County Fair’s request to move to Long Bridge Park and away from its longtime home, the Thomas Jefferson Community Center. It is seeking community engagement to gauge how fair-goers feel about the move.

And in case you missed it, here’s a story that published Wednesday evening. 

Man Wielding Knife Tased Outside Police HQ:  A man armed with a pair of knives threatened officers outside Arlington police headquarters Wednesday evening, according to police. Officers tased him twice before he was finally taken into custody. A spokeswoman noted that officers “showed great restraint” in resolving the encounter.

Reporter’s Notepad

Any time members of Arlington Parents for Education (APE), which coalesced around a full-time return to school, and members of the Arlington branch of the NAACP come together on an opinion, it’s worth noting.

This week, APE called on the Arlington County Democratic Committee to stop its annual School Board endorsement caucus. In these nonpartisan races, parties’ involvement is limited to endorsing candidates, but in Arlington, candidates who lose agree not to run in the general election — so the process can resemble a primary.

APE’s statement tied pandemic-era leadership to the fact that all Board members are ACDC-endorsed. It said the caucus limits broad participation and called on the committee to keep politics out of schools. In response, ACDC said it has a right to endorse and emphasized that Democratic leadership is especially important now, pointing “the recent alt-right fracas at a Loudoun School Board meeting” over Critical Race Theory and the treatment of transgender students.

But members of the NAACP and a list of local Democrats, including many names recognizable in Arlington civic circles, also say the caucus isn’t good for Democrats. In an NAACP-moderated candidate discussion in March, candidates were asked whether the caucus precludes truly diverse candidates from running.

A letter arguing similarly appears to have originated among a group of Black public-school parents — including Symone Walker, who dropped out of the caucus and ran a failed independent bid for the board.

From the dissenting Democrats: “The past few election cycles have shown that the caucus does not necessarily yield the candidate who best represents the values of the Democratic Party. Instead, it rewards candidates who are well-connected to party insiders or who are adept at courting the establishment elites… The caucus, in short, consolidates power in a small group of long-active, engaged Arlington Democrats. Of course, anyone familiar with the history of Arlington knows that ‘long-active’ and ‘engaged’ tend to overlap a number of other categories, like white, wealthy, and older. In the case of the school board race, it also often means a candidate with no children in APS.”

(I can’t speak for the diversity of School Board elections before I started covering Arlington, but note that the newest school board members are David Priddy, a Black parent of public-school children, and Cristina Diaz-Torres, a Latina educator.)

Finally, while I was researching this story, I skimmed the comments sections and found an array of commenters I often see disagreeing with each other actually agreeing about ending the caucus. It’s interesting to me that a diverse range of folks are publicly calling for the caucus to end, as reflected in conversations on ARLnow.