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It’s Budget Season: Are We Living the Tale of Two Cities?

By Grassroots DC, on March 11th, 2014

It’s budget season. The mayor’s fiscal year 2015 budget is almost complete. According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, it could use some work.

 

In Addition to this report, the Fair Budget Coalition invites you to join them at their Tale of Two Cities Action.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 10:oo am – 12:00 pm The Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

This is your last chance to pressure the mayor to fund your priorities before he finishes his budget! So join the Fair Budget Coalition to demonstrate, in people power, how important safety net services are to DC residents and allies. It will be a dynamic and fun action so don’t miss it!

Bring your ID to enter the building

For more information: Contact Janelle at 202.986.9580

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Living wage advocates rally as DC Council votes, fails to override LRAA veto

By Guest Contributor, on September 19th, 2013

On the 17th of September, supporters of the Large Retailer Accountability Act gathered in front of the Wilson Building for an attempt to stiffen coucilmember’s backbones. Mayor Gray has chosen Wal-Mart over low income workers and good jobs by vetoing the bill, as this is written it is yet to be seen if the Council will have the backbone to override.

Many speakers warned that “their next mayor” supports the LRAA, meaning that the councilmembers who are running for Mayor lose their votes unless they vote to override the Mayor’s Wal-Mart ordered veto of the LRAA.

Some possible next steps:

1: A ballot initiative identical to the LRAA. Does not involve the city’s budget so it can be done by ballot initiative. Poll results for the LRAA indicate this would pass, and door to door work has already been done to collect some of the poll data

2: Recall campaigns could be mounted against Councilmembers who voted with the Mayor. Anita Bonds would be an obvious targets, but difficult as she is at-large.

Tommy Wells and Murial Bowser should forget about their campaigns for mayor, they may have just made themselves unelectable, effectively recalling themselves before they could ever be elected in the first place.

3: Allegations of financial ties between Mayor Gray and Wal-Mart should be pursued aggressively. The Mayor is already worried about the danger of indictment for soliciting illegal campaign contributions, and for failure to report “shadow campaign” income and expenses. If any illegal funds are traced to Wal-Mart, the Mayor’s career is over, regardless of whether or not any indictment is ever issued.

When if comes to dealing with Wal-Mart and the proliferation of jobs that don’t pay enough to stay off welfare, no option should be off the table, no punches should be pulled, no quarter asked or given.

Comments are closed   Gentrification, Labor, Walmart   , , , , ,  

The Fight For Ivy City

By Guest Contributor, on September 17th, 2013

Cross-Posted From Street Sense Written by Eric Falquero

Three children race through the intersection of Providence and Capitol streets NE. Two kids ride scooters and one is on a bike. An oncoming taxi stops short.

Danger seen, crisis averted.

But traffic pollution poses a more insidious threat to neighborhood health, local activists say. And it is proving harder to stop than a hurrying cab.

In the low-income community where many residents already suffer from respiratory ailments, the Ivy City Civic Association (ICCA) is fighting to keep the city from opening a new tour bus parking lot. The neighborhood is hemmed in by busy New York Ave.NE as well as train yards, warehouses and city vehicle lots. And advocates worry the increased fumes from the charter buses will only make health problems worse.

“We can’t just let you come in and kill us,” says ICCA president Alicia Swanson-Canty, 40, who has spent her whole life in Ivy City. She worries that current pollution levels in the neighborhood are taking a particularly heavy toll on elders, including her mother.

On December 10, 2012, Superior Court Judge Judith Macaluso buoyed the advocates in their fight against city hall. She ruled that city officials violated the law when they moved forward with plans for the bus depot without getting the required input from the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) or doing a mandated environmental review.

But now, the Ivy City activists are bracing for the next round of their battle.

City Mayor Vincent Gray is appealing the ruling and his day in court is is scheduled for Sept. 17. The office of the mayor would offer no comment for this story, except to say the city is pursuing the requirements specified in the injunction.

Advocates hope the December ruling will stand. And they hope for more. Their ultimate goal is seeing the former Alexander Crummell School, where the bus lot is proposed, transformed into a community or recreation center that could offer resources that are now in short supply such as a safe play area for kids and adult education classes.

“If they’re trying to make this a community, we need a rec,” said Ivy City resident Juice Williams, age 39. “We don’t need buses, we nee

d something productive: job training, GED classes…”

His fellow resident Nate Wales and David Hayes agreed that a community center would be a haven for children like the ones they had just watched cross the street in front of the taxi.dents Nat

“They’re not doing anything but chasing each other in the same circles,” Wales says of the kids.

Hayes could not help but compare the lack of services in Ivy City to the resources in other neighborhoods. “Brentwood has a work program, Rosedale has a rec, Edgewood has a rec…”

Wales added that the presence of a juvenile detention center does not send a hopeful message to young people. “There’s nothing to do, but they’re ready for you when you get destructive.”

Swanson-Canty said she believes that workforce development programs could help both longtime residents and men staying at the New York Avenue Shelter, which is also located in the neighborhood. She pointed out that the city has been promising a community center to Ivy City for years.

“Just give us what you said you would,” said Swanson-Canty. Most recently the city’s 2006 comprehensive economic development plan called for a community center and additional green space in Ivy City.

To Read The Entire Article CLICK HERE

2 comments - (Comments are closed)   Communities, Gentrification, Ivy City, Ivy City, Public Property   , , , , , , , , , ,  

LRAA Final Call to Action!

By Guest Contributor, on September 13th, 2013

Yesterday DC Mayor Vincent Gray caved in to pressure by Big Business and vetoed the Large Retailer Accountability Act. We are not surprised but yet we are very angry and disappointed. Let’s focus our energies on making sure we get the 9th vote we need to override the Mayor’s spineless veto.

The final step for the campaign is focused on getting the 9th vote from Tommy Wells, Ward 6 Council member who theoretically supports a living wage bill and is running for mayor. There are three things that people can do to help move Tommy Wells to vote for the interests of the people of DC and not for Big Business.

Call Tommy Wells and get others to do the same. 888-264-6154 Tell him to support the living wage bill and vote to override the veto. Attend Tommy Wells’ Town Hall meeting scheduled for this Sunday at 2:00 pm. The event is to focused on public safety but we’ll respectfully insist that he publicly address his position on the LRAA before the override vote on Tuesday, September 17th.

When: Sunday, September 15 | 2:00 pm Where: Anacostia Playhouse 2020 Shannon Pl SE, Washington, DC 20020

And finally,

Attend rally and press conference on the date of the Council override vote and show your support!

When: Tuesday, September 17 | Noon Where: At the steps of the Wilson Building 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.

Cross-posted with permission from the AFL-CIO.

Comments are closed   Issues   , , , ,  

Say what? A close look at Mayor Gray’s plan for public education

By Sarah Livingston, on September 11th, 2013

This past June 20, two and a half years after taking office, Mayor Gray gave an address on “Next Steps” in his plan for public education at the Savoy Elementary School in Anacostia.

Simply put, his plan is to continue the “education reform” of charter schools that began 15 years ago, which mayoral control in 2007 was intended to speed up, into the future. Through three “overarching strategies” he expects to create, “as One City, a comprehensive system of schools that provides high quality options to all children.” He pointed to the “partnership” between Savoy ES and Thurgood Marshall Academy Charter School as a “snapshot of that future.”

Each of the strategies has a number of measures. But, the Mayor said, to reach the goal, “it is imperative that charters and DCPS collaborate” and that people give up favoring one education “reform philosophy” over another, such as advocating for DCPS or for charter schools. They must give up their “fear and distrust” and the “language of competition” and embrace instead “a new spirit of collaboration and problem-solving that ensures parents and students are first.”

Below are the three strategies and their measures, some of which are already in place:

1) Scale up

• by replicating successful programs so they serve more students such as linking a middle school with McKinley Tech High School and merging School Without Walls with Francis-Stevens preK-8 • by giving the chancellor authority to grant charters • lease more DCPS school buildings to charters • have DCPS and charter schools look together at city-wide data in making plans to fill gaps, expand, close or move schools.

2) Strengthen

• by raising the quality of pre-K programs with two new tools for quality and assessment • continue Race to the Top grants for training DCPS and charter school teachers in the Common Core Standards • build Career and Technical Academies in DCPS and charter schools in line with jobs in demand and the Five Year Economic Development Plan • develope a Graduation Pathways Project to get off-track students back on track • continue the OSSE pilot program offering DCPS and charter schools access to a consortium of special education service providers • expand Flamboyen Family Engagement Partnership to 26 more DCPS and charter schools • revamp the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula and • find ways to link LEA payments to enrollment throughout the year while also insisting on more equity between DCPS and charters in providing special education services and truancy prevention.

3) Simplify

• with a single lottery for DCPS and charters using a common application and a common enrollment deadline • release new standardized state-wide report cards from OSSE for all schools • create a Re-Engagement Center as a single source of information for dis-engaged youth to re-engage (deadline for blueprint, October 1, 2013) • use the Malcolm X Elementary School and Achievement Prep Charter School located in the same building as a model of two schools fully integrating the strength of a neighborhood school and the innovation of a charter school • create by legislation that has been submitted to the Council, the “option for charter schools to elect to provide a neighborhood preference” and for schools chartered by the chancellor to become schools-of-right in high need areas • allow for cross-LEA (Local Education Agency) feeder patterns in the coming school boundary revisions “where a DCPS school might feed into a charter school, or vice versa.”

This is what the Mayor is referring to when he says we must “stay the course.” It is clearly a plan to knit, link, merge, mush and subsume the city’s traditional public school district, into the charter school ethos of using public money to pay for the private dreams of people who want to run their own school. Or for the private dreams of those who wish to profit by the “steady revenue stream” of public tax dollars going into charter schools and back out to real estate companies, hedge funds or charter management organizations, among others.

But, is this what we the people want? Is this what we expect from our elected leaders who are responsible for using the power we have given them to spend our public dollars in the public, not private, interest?

Comments are closed   Education, School "Reform"   , , , ,  
 
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