By Brenda Hayes, on June 14th, 2013 
Dr. Ysaye Maria Barnwell formerly of Sweet Honey in the Rock
Dr. Ysaye Barnwell was a member of internationally renowned Sweet Honey In The Rock from 1978 – 2013. As composer, educator, and performer, her career has reflected her desire to form community through music. In this interview, hear about her journey as an artist and activist, as well as her recent opera Fortune’s Bones. Dr. Barnwell’ s final performance with Sweet Honey in the Rock took place May 2013.
Interview of Ysaye Barnwell [audio:http://www.grassrootsdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/DR-_Ysaye_Barnwell-on-This-Light.mp3]
The first hour of This Light: Sounds for Social Change, which airs every other Sunday night on CPR radio from 9-11 PM, is devoted to the interview. The second hour is typically dedicated to the music of the artist/activists. In keeping with that tradition, an hour of Ysaye Barnwell’s music is posted below. Enjoy! [audio:http://www.grassrootsdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dr_Ysaye_Barnwell-On_This_Light_2-.mp3]
By Stuart Anderson, on June 13th, 2013
By Sarah Livingston, on June 13th, 2013 
From left to right – Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray, Kaya Henderson and Michelle Rhee.
Although the injunction that would have stopped the closing of 15 DC Public Schools was denied and we’re still waiting to find out the date for the hearing that will decide the actual merits of the case, it might make sense to remind ourselves of the events that led to the lawsuit in the first place.
In my experience, the seeds for the lawsuit were sown in the first week of January, 2007, when the newly elected Council chair (Vincent Gray) dissolved the Committee on Education and the newly elected mayor (Adrian Fenty) announced his intention to take over the schools.
There was strong opposition to that idea expressed in testimony at the hearings and through protests and demonstrations. There was a call for the matter to be decided by the people in a referendum since a mayoral takeover required a change to the Home Rule Charter that would decrease the people’s power in determining their own affairs for themselves.
By June, Fenty had, through the Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007 (PERAA), stolen the power of the people and taken it unto himself. The law further decreased the power of the people by putting the elected Board of Education way over there to the side as an advisory body with little if any power, while the Council’s power to focus on education matters through a committee was weakened to near nothing by being dispersed among all thirteen members.
With the people shoved aside–no more Board of Education responsible for hiring the best qualified school Superintendent and no more Education Committee on the Council–Fenty used his power to appoint into the PERAA created position of “chancellor,” a woman who had never run a public school district before in her life. This too was opposed because the mayor bypassed the provisions of the law that first, required a search committee be formed to find candidates for the position, and second, required that the person be qualified by education and experience. That opposition was ignored as well.
Rhee’s experience in education consisted of attendance at private schools herself, three years of Teach for America experience in a pilot program to test a profit making company’s idea in a Baltimore public school, and 10 years as the founder and president of a teacher placement agency called the New Teacher Project in NYC. Nevertheless, Fenty handed DCPS over to her on a silver platter and the two of them quickly adopted an attitude that DCPS belonged to them in a very private manner and no one else had any say in it. Within two years of the establishment of the Ombudsman’s office, it was “defunded” and never heard about again.
Parents protest the closing of their children’s schools.
Throughout their tenures, opposition arose to many of the actions they took. Hundreds of people, elementary, middle and high school students among them, testified at innumerable Council hearings about the way teachers and their union were being treated–closing 23 schools, budgets that were all over the place, the assignment and reassignment of principles in all manner of nonsensical ways and much, much more. For the most part, the Council’s response was to shrug their shoulders claiming there was nothing they could do.
In 2010, Fenty was defeated by Gray; Rhee left; and Gray, also ignoring the provisions in PERAA for filling the position of “chancellor,” simply calls up Rhee’s Deputy, Kaya Henderson, who had no more idea of how to run a public school system than Rhee. Henderson came from public schools in a middle class suburban district, also got into teaching the Teach for America way and spent 3 years teaching Spanish before she became the Vice-president of the New Teacher Project (NTP). In that position she acquired a contract for NTP with DCPS to place teachers in it and eventually moved to DC to manage the contract on site.
Henderson and Gray have continued what Fenty and Rhee started–keeping the public’s voice out of any say in how the schools are run, despite the fact they they are funded by the public’s money.
The five year report on the mayoral takeover required by PERAA came due in 2012. But it has not been forthcoming. What the public got instead was another so-called Five Year Strategic Plan, “A Capital Commitment” that reads as nothing more than a list of many of the same problems DCPS started . . . → Read More: Events Leading Up To DC Public School Closings Lawsuit
By Guest Contributor, on June 12th, 2013 
Cross-post from WAMU by Julie Patel and Patrick Maden
No. 3 in the series: Deals for Developers, Cash for Campaigns
Construction on the Marriott Marquis Convention Center Hotel on June 6, 2012. (Flickr photo by thisisbossi)
Seven years ago, during D.C.’s real estate boom, the District asked developers to submit proposals to build on public land in the Southwest waterfront area.
Dozens of developers lined up for a shot, forming 17 development teams in early 2006. They could potentially score the land and receive other subsidies but they’d have to provide affordable housing and meet other criteria.
That’s why controversy emerged when the winning team later wanted to relax affordable housing requirements.
What most people didn’t know is that months before the city’s economic development committee approved scaling back the affordable housing, five of the companies on the development team made nine campaign contributions, on the same day, to the chairman of the committee, then-Council Member Kwame Brown. The council approved the plan shortly after the committee vote.
A WAMU investigation found a dozen developers donated the most the year their subsidy was approved. In addition, the investigation identified ten cases in which campaign contributions were recorded as being made on the same day, to a single candidate, by three or more developers working jointly on subsidized projects. In some cases, the subsidies were proposed or approved around the same time.
Two of the 110 projects examined that received the largest subsidies — the Wharf and the convention center hotel — are among those with developers contributing on the same day and around the time legislation was proposed or approved.
“The timing of a contribution is important,” said Sheila Krumholz, with the Center for Responsive Politics. “There have been times when contributions have come in right around a vote, before a vote. That might be a kind of carrot. There might also be an element of reward if a vote is taken that favors a special interest or donor.”
The investigation also found 133 groups donated more than $2.5 million in campaign cash and received $1.7 billion in subsidies over the past decade
“Trust is undermined if money is being exchanged with patterns like the ones [WAMU has] discovered. It gives rise to reasonable suspicions,” said Dennis Thompson, a political philosophy professor at Harvard and director of the university’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. “Is the subsidy going to the right person?”
CLICK HERE to read the whole story and listen to the podcast.
By Brenda Hayes, on June 10th, 2013 
Not fifteen minutes after leaving Potomac Gardens, where the second membership meeting of Grassroots DC was held, buoyed by the productivity that took place and possibilities for change that the organization holds, my joyous mood came to a screeching halt as I turned right onto 6th St from Florida Avenue. What greeted me as I drove north on 6th was the large warehouse formerly known as The Florida Avenue Market (D.C. Farmers Market) and is now, as the 10 foot letters herald from the building’s rooftop, The Union Market.
The familiar scenarios that accompanied the D.C. Farmers Market; the weekend flea market where you could find anything from a pair of wingtips to an old Delphonics 45 record, have been replaced by a white building; its starkness broken only by the bright orange awnings that hang above the market’s doors and windows.
The changes unfortunately don’t stop with the exterior revamps; the smells of freshly butchered meat, fried fish, the flickering fluorescent lights, have all been replaced by chandeliers, artwork, and a new patronage. There was a time when a customer of the market could by a whole pig, snout to tail, everything except the squeal, fresh greens, chittlins, fish, sauces, chow chow. More than the food, it was a community meeting place, a place to catch up with fellow Farmers Market customers, exchange cooking tips, and recipes, a place on which you could depend to have the items, ingredients you needed for family recipes that are typically passed from generation to generation. Today “The Union Market” offers its customers aged cheeses, chocolatiers, designer olive oils, free yoga classes and no visible signs of the authentic District of Columbia so many residents long for and whose passing we mourn.
More than the tactile and visual changes that gentrification brings, the intangible impacts of gentrification are just as destructive. Let’s examine a remark made by Jodie McLean the head of EDENS, the company that took over the D.C. Farmers Market. ” We want to be a part of a project in a truly authentic part of the city,” EDENS President Jodie McLean said. “The market is a storied part of D.C. We want to bring in high-quality, locally prepared fresh produce, meat, poultry and fish.” We want to be a part of a project in a truly authentic part of the city,” EDENS President Jodie McLean said. “The market is a storied part of D.C. We want to bring in high-quality, locally prepared fresh produce, meat, poultry and fish.” I’m not really certain what Mclean means by “authentic part of the city” as gentrification usually leaves little room for authenticity.
The idea that the produce, meats, and other products that the Farmers Market vendors offered weren’t of high quality, is at best an insult; this wholesale discounting of culture, history, and race are what I consider to be at the heart of gentrification. Though I would never claim to know the mind of real estate developers who are an integral part of the gentrification equation, the callous disregard for generations’ old communities and traditions seemingly make the process of displacing people at will more palatable to those doing the displacement.
Deciding on the issues and topics we would cover at Grassroots DC was part of the agenda at our meeting; at the top of the list of issues we plan to address is gentrification; stay tuned.
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