The DC you don't see...

I am not one to write to reporters or call radio talk show hosts or spin my wheels worrying about things that are out of my control. For years I have read your columns in the Washington Post and for a while they just dragged me down. Not that your opinions and stories were not on point and well written or well thought out. I used to watch your television show with the various brothers discussing the topics of the day, that to was informative and balanced. Still you sometimes seemed to go on these long missions about the state of the District. I am still looking for you to discover that the District has never been what it appears to be. Let me share with some of my personal experiences that dramatically changed my opinion mainly on the plight of African-American children of the District as a focus during this holiday season. I respect your talent and outpourings that you dedicated over the years to the District. But the mission is so complex to solve that neither the politicians, the business community or the District Government itself have a clue as to how to solve for a solution that lays out of their control.

I would like to begin by asking you to look further and deeper into the historical and political positions that have always clip the progress for the District. From slow rule, the overseers at the capital building and the fact that the states of Maryland and Virginia practiced and still do to some degree, de facto segregation. Maryland and Virginia both held in abundance if not the highest percentages of African slaves. Our founding fathers all held slaves, indentured servants, they also freed men. Many of these freed men landed or ended up right here in the capital region. They worked the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers right along side the natives of the area. Once President Lincoln emancipated the slaves, the African population around this region grew in overwhelming numbers. Ever since that time it’s been an effort to rid the area of the African slave. Facts and circumstances point to the migration of freed men from southern rural Virginia and the out migration from North Carolina in the 30’s and 40’s and 50’s. The first migration took place during reconstruction and Jim Crow, the second right during and after the Second World War. Washington at best was about 200 Negro families at best. The freed men bureau was the key step in the outgrowth and potentially the greatest island of black professional prosperity in the United States. The creation of Howard University and the formalization of Hampton Institute were central to the expansion of the Black middle class. Since those attempts along with the civil rights movement itself were all middle class revolts. From John Brown at Harpers Ferry, to the denial of Jefferson and Washington illegitimate African offspring the search for the condition of Negro or African American political and living standards have always come under attack.


Integration, psychological damage caused by the 400 years of being captive slaves, the Jim Crow laws and the color line and class issues that resulted in unfair and unbalanced representation of the freed men. The huge dependence on a selected class and never receiving the neglected class under its breasts has probably been the most challenging concern facing the advancement of Americans of African descent.

All these reasons and countless others are the scars and cancers that haunt the march of progress towards better and stronger communities. The further you draw back on the timeline, then and only then can you connect the dots. The flight of the black middle class from the District, not the flight of the white middle class was the most damaging concentrated movement that hurt the District. The neglect of the neighborhoods such as Shaw, Trinidad-Ivy City, Fairlawn, Congress Heights, Columbia Heights, Upper Cardozo, Benning Heights and Marshall Heights at the expense of the revitalization of Downtown Washington is principally the mark that has arrested development. How can a depressed neighborhood recover after 30 years of neglect, losing three to four generations to drugs, organized criminal activity, poor schools, malnourished children, dilapidated housing, and ill functioning public housing? Add to the mix political mis-management, Governmental denial, both federal and local, inadequate heath care and an exploding population of foreign immigrants who have faced far worse in their native countries. It’s a recipe for disaster. But the opposite message is being sent from the power structure. The current Mayor’s answers are short on damage control but long on misguided substance. As we saw during the control board take over, the real power is in the hands of the federals. And no one concedes power, easily. The current Mayor's focus is primarily to complete the project begun some fifty years ago; two dissect and autopsies the District. Yes, the District died and has been given a new life for the last ten to fifteen years. What does this say to those that some how managed to survive the suicide of a charismatic council member, the image of a drug induced mayor, a homicide rate that fluctuates like seasonal winds, strapped services that neither function. Hideous customer service skills to its constituents. Currently a maniac is torching homes in the District and the District extended and the months add up in an attempt to apprehend this fool. But the current power structure is obsessed with changing the income, the image, the removal of those that will not be around to benefit from this new District. The writing is on the wall. The new convention center, with its monumental bearing, has crushed what once was Shaw. The revival of Adams-Morgan, Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights, crucial to bring the new prosperity, is still unbalanced. With homes soaring above 300 hundred thousand dollars, who is going to by those homes? The extermination of Adams-Morgan, Shaw, Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights, Petworth, Trinidad-Ivy City, Anacostia-Fairlawn, Capitol Hill, the East end of downtown Washington, Bloomingdale, if it’s five to six miles east, north or south of the U.S. Capitol it’s going, going gone. Look it up (see Southwest Washington, see Georgetown and Foggy Bottom).

And so what does this say to the children of the District? It says we don’t care anymore, if we ever did. It says this isn’t Petey Greene’s Washington and hasn’t been for quite sometime. That the great flight to Prince Georges County wasn’t such a bad thing. It says you were never welcomed in the first place. Just keep on killing yourselves like animals in the jungle, keep fighting amongst yourselves, keep your vision short and forget about a future. It points out that despite residual efforts from wealthy patrons, religious organizations and community activists alike, it’s to massive a problem to solve.
The breakdown in community policing, community insight, the once proud local African American community is reduced to self indulgence and band aid therapy. For example, take the plight of juvenile delinquency and truancy, out of control. Another example is the great fear in the community not to get involved in the prosecution and conviction of neighborhood criminals who prey on the young and the elderly. The overwhelming and sometimes numbing experience of crime committed in the community. The years of blood and gore and violence on the streets has a strong physiological effect on young and old alike. The huge amount of ignorance and intolerance between blacks themselves on how these issues could be mitigated and resolved are seldom even bridged, everybody has a piece of the puzzle, but not a clue as to where to begin to solve the puzzle. The problem is you need glue in 21st century inner-city America. Glue to make the puzzle stay together and progress measured and tracked. Is there a model to end street gang violence and reduce criminal activity on the Eastern seaboard of the United States? You could look at Boston, I believe the Mayor did. You could look at Manhattan, which is what the District will eventually morph into, but more of San Francisco. Less the population. The foundation has been grounded and the base is set for the District to resurrect itself into something few people will even recognize in years to come. And if far southeast and northeast don’t want to change, a change is going to come. Once the reconstruction of New York Avenue for example is complete, the Eastern gateway former warehousing district will become a major revenue and artery for the new District. Once the building of a new hospital in conjunction with the Howard University community is set into place, in near southeast that will begin to put a band aid on the health crisis. Eventually a major employer, primarily the District Government or the federal government sell out and shut down St. Elizabeth’s hospital campus complex that will create the catalyst to continue to build and develop on the rolling vistas of St. Elizabeth’s. This also includes the Camp Simms sight. Anacostia and Good Hope Road are going to see better days. No question progress is needed, and the revitalization of this area’s is crucial to the rebirth of an anacostia waterfront and the extension of Pennsylvania Avenue going into Prince Georges County. The old housing projects disappearing are part of a larger plan, the abolishment of the public dole or aid. But, where does this leave the children while the next twenty years take a dramatic turn?

God bless the child who has his own. The children who compete and excel will be the future of the District. With college a rite of passage and the military service a stand by option or trade school experience possibly waiting in the wings. The children who have a sense of direction and parental involvement will excel in the District. Any young man or women graduating from Banneker high school, with its old school emphasis on the three R’s will certainly be able to compete. Even if it is elitist. The charter schools and academies will continue to flourish and those children should also be able become competitive. If you are a child currently in the District and not grounded, not holding to any educational, vocational, community or church sponsored activity. You’re treading water. Those children are the children of the lawlessness, gang and crew affiliation, drug money influenced, strife induced and drug abusing and possibly gun recklessness we read about everyday. These are the children of ill-equipped parents, young teen aged mothers who gave birth to a whole flock of children in the 80’s and 90’s. These are the children of street hustlers and gangsters, who fall into the gap with the children of the housing projects and homeless. These are the children of abusive and sometimes neglected circumstances. Victims of the spinning venom poverty and despair, couple that with lower middle class children who were raised by their grandmothers, whose options for being caught in between are you either do or you don’t. Add to the equation these could be everybody’s child. These children are in abundance. Their parents were riddled with aids (take example former University of Maryland’s basketball star, Juan Dixon). Is it any wonder are jails are over populated with young african-american males? Divorce rates among African American men and women sky high. Again the answer lies with the compliance and ability of the African –American middle class to answer the call. To reestablish the inner city even if your removed by thirty years. To become entrepreneurial and network on building partnerships and foundations and trusts that will become conduits and lifelines to the inner city and rural community affected by the same nonsense the District has suffered politically. Because we must save the children as our ancestors did. We must save our children despite all the misogynistic Hip Hop and sex and gun and diet depraved influences from corporate America. The business of saving the children is tantamount with the District evolving into something more than a scripted theater play. The greater community each year is so focused on saving the children, that we sometimes don’t like to admit that a whole bunch a folks spend a lot of time trying to be creative and looking for ways to solve these crisis. But as we know it’s to late when it has become as crisis. When it becomes a crisis that means it is a failure. And the policies toward children and teenagers in this country don’t help. Policy’s directed toward the young and the old alike don’t help to solve. Chances are that if don’t focus on the solutions or gage solutions for the children of this beloved community, we will continue to lose countless lives, year after year.

Leadership. Leadership and willingness to work the dividing lines. Only Walter Washington worked the divide of Washington. He was as we sued to say around the way” People”. Barry, Dixon, Williams, all were and are polemics. Dividers, not unifiers. Barry sold out the working people of the District; Dixon was the old school “Uptowner”, who couldn’t relate to Barry Farms. Williams is the corporate cold bean counter and over educated and aloof. He looks bored. His mission is to turn around the direction of black Washington at the expense of the remaining citizenry that was Black Washington. He knows most of influential White and Black Washington doesn’t even live in the city. And if they do, we all know where, it’s either Georgetown, who should succeed from Washington and elect its own Mayor. Somewhere in ward 3 or 4 or 2. He is well educated and very astute that in order for him to create his vision, he will need to gut the confidence out people. He will need to add centerpieces of accomplishments, the convention center, a new public hospital, school vouchers, superior snow removal. And the technological upgrade of all the District systems. He doesn’t care if he can relate to Barry Farms. The future of Barry Farms is suspect; the future of any Black neighborhood is suspect. Even Kenilworth and Marshall Heights. Because he understands that if you can make small changes it will in effect change and create commerce and possibly revenue. Williams will go down as the wonk that rewired Washington. And he has the blessing of the power structure, the Greater Board of Trade, Council of Governments, Congress, and most of ward 3. With no one is willing to give the Mayor a run. He gets to put his policies and mission to work and close the damages created by Marion Barry. In turn crushing the Barry legacy of a bloated bureaucracy and the pimping of the District Government to local contractors and sham artists. Leadership was crucial to the District. As a teenager I supported Marion Barry. He was cool. Some how the Mayor lost his grip of himself, and if your personal affairs are a shambles, than your business may be next. And if your business was to run the Nation’s Capital, manage the budgets and control the spending and delegate your responsibility, then you just mucked it up terribly. On the other hand a handkerchief head like Walter Washington who loved this city and understood it with his style of grace and ease, put folks at calm. I was a child during the 68’ riots. The worse riots ever in Washington, it destroyed the neighborhoods where I grew up. Walter Washington wasn’t afraid to step to 14th street, when 14th street blew up. He approached northeast the same way I heard. I recall Walter Washington, coming up to 14th and Irving streets during a free Trouble Funk and Rare Essence concert that grew into a mass of four thousand young people , in the dead heat of the summer of 78’. At night. He stepped out of his limo, looked back from Park road to Irving street, and I heard him say to the riot geared policemen, “Don’t touch any of these kids”, their just having fun”. They policemen were lined up in riot formation as if they were going to punish all the kids who were into this “go-go music junk”. They cleared the streets. The kids from southeast and northeast got back on their mopeds and headed home, all the uptown kids went their way, and for whatever reason the policemen went their way to. I was nineteen years old and ever since then, I never talked bad about Walter Washington again, to anybody. All I knew was that Marion Barry was going to be the new Mayor and all the okey doke crap that represented the petite bourgeoisie of old black Washington was going to disappear. It never did disappear. It became a contest of the neighborhood that gentrifies the quickest. Any one with any ounce of intelligence at all recognized during the Reagan era, the whole process was a joke; most of all D.C. became a national joke. It became embarrassing to excuse Marion Barry for all his shortcomings. He couldn’t even clear the snow. The “Mayor” was always out lollygagging out of town. Word spread that he was a Rayful customer. As in the master hustler of that era, Rayful Edmond. And Rayful himself proved that Harvard business school could have recruited him and presented him with a Masters in business administration. Rayful as legendary as he became on the streets of Washington, was just another low key gangster. This guy had people kill people to kill more people. He recruited people from all over the city, including David McGraw who I grew up with in Mt. Pleasant. McGraw is now locked up until the sun burns out. And David was a basically a nice guy who could ball. The secret to Rayful’s success was that if you could ball, he was looking to have you on his team. But neither was Rayful the only hustler. It was almost if at one point the entire law enforcement community thought if we lock this guy up, all the craziness would end. Leadership. During this time chief Turner and Chief Fullwood didn’t understand how a “Mayberry town “ like D.C., where everything is personal and cliquish, could come to a street infested-drug corner market-seven –eleven battle of marketing share and networking. The best leader in town was a local drug lord. He made things happen. He had recruited guys from all over the city, including the adjacent Maryland suburbs. He had his lieutenant out in the unsuspecting Arlington County, Virginia. And all during this period in the late eighties. The emergence of la Mara salvatrucha was brewing in the streets of Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, Adams-Morgan, and Shaw and Langley Park, Maryland. Not a soul caught to all these Hispanic guys running around with tattoos and bandanas in their pockets. When the Mt. Pleasant riots took place in 1990, no one listened to these Spanish guys. Now everybody is listening. Because Leadership was to busy running on empty promises. Marion Barry after being locked up for a minute, came back and routed ward seven and eight for their votes. Guess he won and the community lost. The Mayor knew everybody. His favorite line was, “hey, call me at 202-727-DCDC”. I’ll get you hooked up. Hooked up to what? The community “the uptown Hispanic community “saw the Mayor as being out of touch. He knew the “Carlos Rosario” community. But the “Carlos Rosario community” was dieing out. The original D.C. Hispanic community had begun to move itself out of the barrio. The eighties brought in a new immigrant, mainly ignorant, illiterate, and with loyalties to the pueblos that they coyoted from. Much different than the small Dominican, Puerto Rican and Venezuelan and Cuban and Panamanian communities. The civil war between the contras and their rival countrymen in El Salvador brought to D.C., cheap labor but a divided and undereducated population. The Mara had to form out of necessity. Because the first stop for this huge migration was Los Angeles, home to the original Chicano zoot suit warring traditions that go back some seventy years. As one Salvadoran explained to me, quite well in plain English. These gangs had to form because they were picked on in Los Angeles, and even worse picked on here once they got to Washington, that is black Washington. Leadership was missing. The community was divided amongst income, race, neighborhood affiliations and the war against street crime. The city council for all its posturing and bearing couldn’t handle the constant turf battled between the Mayor and the council and rule for power. As of today, their still is a “beef”. A beef between Williams and the council and the soon to be out of business school board. These are my suggestions to save of what will be remaining of the once proud “Chocolate City”. Now basically known as truffle town. Chocolate on the outside with a white chocolate middle and growing.




The top ten issues to rescue the District, and maybe give people some hope.

Number one; obtain some form of full representation, other than an elected delegate. Nobody works harder than Eleanor Holmes Norton. The District needs a Governor, and two representatives in the house.

Number two, get rid of the school board and let the city council handle the schools not the “Mayor”.

Number three, build a lot more affordable housing throughout the city, that means ward three, and spread this housing evenly. This means tear down what doesn’t work anymore and build up. Save all the historic buildings, especially in the “hood”.

Number Four; build a light rail system amongst the three major urban avenues, Georgia, Minnesota, and New York. All connecting to metro rail stations. Metro doesn’t work for the city it was built to take people from the suburbs into town, not through town.

Number five, community police stations in every crook and crannies and pocket of Washington. With working communications and a staging area where the police can become active in the community. Not just in Georgetown. But on Whaler road, south east, Morton street northwest, Orleans place, northeast. Open small two men or three men operations and give incentives for landlords and realtors to give space for these facilities. And man these staging area’s 24-7. Get the hell out of your patrol cars and walk amongst the people.

Number six, if you begin to repair lamppost and create brighter street lights throughout the city, increasing the lights, especially in far northeast and southeast will slow down the drug use and drug selling. This needs to be taken seriously. Lights should be brighter after 9:00 pm and 5:00 am daily. Parks should be well lit, shrubs trimmed, debris removed. Streets should be seen for blocks. Alleys should never be dark.

Number seven, aggressive panhandling, loitering, littering, jaywalking, spitting, should be taken seriously. Fine these folks. Curfews for youths under eighteen should be taken seriously. Fine the parents if underage youths are loitering out on the block. Community policemen should know these youths, where they live, who the parents are. The District needs to be Manhattanized.


Number eight, some form of a commuter tax needs to be levied at folks teetering in and working for the federal government and all these law firms , non-profits and lobbying groups downtown. Take this seriously. Northern Virginia and Maryland for to long have taken DC for granted and have used the District as selling and marketing tool.


Number nine, change some laws. Gun control; explain fully to folks that if you do a capital crime in the nation’s capital, you will receive the death penalty. Make DC unattractive for criminal activity or enterprise.

Number ten, pre-natal care and expectant mothers need to be educated as part of being young un-wed, teenage mothers. Young men need to be trained as early as 3rd grade on the misadventures of sexual promiscuity. Education is the key, not giving away condoms. Some of these youngsters won’t wear one because of the stigma attached to ritually having to practice safe sex women between the ages of 18-25. We shouldn’t be surprised at the rising AIDS rate amongst young men and women.

Special number eleven; establish an award ceremony for youths in the District on a regular basis, throughout the entire school system, on kids making their marks. Kids going to college, kids going into the military, kids going into the work force. Track and measure the progress of these children. Build spirited corps of achievers, strivers and alumni, creating data bases of student achievers.




In conclusion, the District is evolving and changing faster and quicker than ever before. I suspect that my cynicism and anger towards the District Government and the federal government make me out as a mad radical. But I will always be radical and progressive in terms of the future of the District and its children, its seniors and its street drug addicted community. Sadly, I don’t believe this current or any other early millennium city government administrations will address the displacement of poor people, the abuse of the moderate income neighborhoods and the dumping of its seniors. It’s become fashionable for the condominium and row house revitalization gay community to over power and block out voices in the inner city pocket neighborhoods of the district. Yes, no doubt the early pioneering white and black gay male and lesbian communities projected their interests on to and innocent and unsuspecting black community. But during this twenty to thirty year transitions directly after the riots, this community has trumped and integrated their vision of what the District should be and is becoming. Along with the greater Washington Board of Trade, the Council of Governments, the Federal Government, the three major suburbs that experienced major growth and traffic and cost of living and housing issues. These counties are Montgomery, Fairfax, and Prince Georges, with Alexandria and Arlington counties as benefactors and despots, to undermine the creditability of the District and make it difficult to have a strong functioning urban core. I do agree with the current Mayor on this issue entirely. These counties should be working with the District on job growth and regional transportation issues. Not just crime related and criminal border crossings. It will be a sad day once the full revitalization and commercial efforts capture the city and price out the firemen, the policemen and teachers and government workers grades two to ten. The metro bus drivers and the nursing aids and food service workers and restaurant employees. Once in the district, African-Americans used to drive cabs, own carry-out shops, work in the local Giants and Safeway. African-Americans in the District still rely on the phantom three, liquor stores, funeral parlors and churches. But those are becoming dinosaurs with histories. Liquor stores should be history, with all the damage and cancer associated with them, their toxic. Funeral parlors are the service providers that we can do with less fan fare, they should be regulated and held accountable, and most are corporate now anyway. Ah, the churches, they have begun to move out of the District, to where the majority of their congregation has mustered to, suburban Maryland. The last hurrah is the future of the Latino population. The Latino population has arranged itself in the nearby close-in suburbs, causing havoc with gang strife and gunplay. But they also have nested in the District, settling into factions, with the main branch being the El Salvadorians. The question is how long will this community be of the body of the District and when will the Salvadorian community receive their dues. The future will result in battles between the surging El Salvadorians, the childless double income folks, the valiant gay community and the weaning black community, who in thirty years time will be based primarily in wards, seven and eight. And wards eight and seven will be struggling to maintain their historic identifies. Yes face the music, the future looks bleak. Unless we expedite change and political will and understand what is of value to the black community. We must be willing to understand ourselves better and resolves are differences. It’s now or never.