DistrictMatters

More than a year ago, I became involved in the School Libraries Project (SLP), a non-profit supported by the Capitol Hill Community Foundation as well as DCPS. Realizing that the disrepair of our public schools included the libraries, a group of concerned parents on the Hill took matters into their own hands and began raising money to renovate the libraries in neighborhood schools such as Brent, J.O. Wilson and Peabody. On October 24th, the final library will be complete, capping a multi-year effort that highlighted the commitment of an entire community to solve a serious problem.

As good as this project is, it serves only one neighborhood and eight schools. Thousands of children around our city deserve to have quality libraries. SLP is one of the few public school successes ocurring before the launch of Mayor Fenty’s aggressive school reform plan. IT is also one that needs to be expanded.

Parents and residents in neighborhoods all across the city have a great example in SLP to see what their own schools can become. I encourage you to visit SLP and see for yourself. It truly is a model we should strive for as a city. My hat goes off to Todd Cymrot, Suzanne Wells, Catherine Townsend and many other parents who made this vision come to life.

In a blog posting from several months ago, I mentioned the concerns held by Fraternal Order of Police President, Kris Baumann, about the coming surge in DC violence. It appears that the surge is upon us, as children are being murdered nightly on the streets of DC. Each child that loses his or her life is a piece of DC’s future that disappears. The surge in violence saddens me, but also makes me more determined to fix our city.

Last night, I attended the Peaceoholics annual awards benefit. Jauhar Abraham, the CEO and co-founder of the Peaceoholics, who is also a close friend, gave an award to one of the greatest success stories of youth turning their lives around. The infamous Choppa City Girls terrorized Anacostia just last year. The girls were sisters and attended Anacostia High School. Businesses, bus drivers and other students lived in constant fear of attacks by the gang.

One day, the girls were introduced to the Peaceoholics. Through the mentorship offered by Jauhar and other co-founder, Ronald Moten, the girls went from causing violence to preventing it. It was the Peaceoholics that made them realize the futility of their behavior. Jauhar took them under his wing and even brought them to North Carolina to visit various universities and worked closely with the schools to ensure that the girls would be accepted. Now, two of the sisters are attending Shaw University in Raleigh and frequently come back to DC to work side by side with the Peaceoholics to fight violence.

Jauhar and Moe are special people. Our city owes them a debt of gratitude for all the good work that they do every day. The Choppa City Girls are just one of countless Peaceoholics success stories. They are a prime example of a community coming together to save our children. Let’s salute them!

As a Lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve, I am required to serve in an active military capacity one weekend per month and two weeks per year. During times of crisis, I can be called to go to war in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. While I have not been sent to a war zone, I have been to other hot spots around the world, such as post-tsunami Indonesia, where I was part of a humanitarian relief effort. Serving in thhe Navy has been an extremely rewarding experience for me, as it has been for many others.

How does this connect to issues in DC? Sometimes, the military may be one of the only ways out for kids living in dire circumstances. While many youth in DC have fractured families and are surrounded by guns, drugs and crime, the military offers them a way to travel, become better educated, learn discipline and organizational skills, and perhaps pick up a trade that can be of value in the civilian world. In many ways, the military can harness young energy in a positive way that can turn lives around.

The war in Iraq has tainted the reputation of the military, despite the hard work and dedication of our young men and women in uniform. But let’s remember that the military has been around since before our nation was born, and it has fostered some of the most well respected leaders in the history of our nation. Most of our Presidents have been in the military and so have many successful CEOs, writers and other outstanding citizens. The military is not the solution for everyone, but for some of our city’s youth, it may just well be. I am proud to serve my country in the United States Navy and I know that many other DC residents are as well.

District Matters is back after a month-long hiatus. Though I haven’t posted in the past few weeks, my crusade to make this city a better place for everyone has been ongoing throughout the summer.

As many of you know, keeping a strong and vibrant middle class in this city is a passion of mine. It is key to maintaining a strong and healthy tax base and will secure the long-term finanical health of our city. But a middle class must be about more than finances. A strong middle class must concern itself with the matter of human decency. When I read the data today from the U.S. Census Bureau about the widening income gap between blacks and whites in DC, I was extremely disheartened. The latest figures show that whites earn a median income of $89,000 per year while blacks earn only $34,000. The numbers don’t lie; we have a problem on our hands.

This income disparity cannot be cured overnight. But the DC government can do its part to help level the playing field. We need quality schools, improved job training, quality health care and improved constituent services. DC residents in all income categories bring value to this city; we must provide possibilities for those with fewer opportunities to shine. I am committed to finding concrete policy solutions that will enable all residents in Washington to live productive, decent lives. DC is a family, and we must behave as such.

Fighting crime and creating a safe environment for residents is a top priority for any DC official. So where was the outrage when DC’s murder rate went way up in 2007?

Over the past year, I spent countless hours speaking with the police, community leaders and members of DC government lobbying solutions to help make DC’s streets safer. This includes reforming our arrest booking system, otherwise known as “papering.”

What most people don’t know is that anytime an MPD officer makes an arrest, s/he must spend hours filling out paperwork and then appear in federal court first thing the next morning to present it to a magistrate. This is because DC has no court system of its own or an independently elected Attorney General and cannot have these arrests processed as quickly as other states. The result is that too many criminals are released since the police do not have the time to uphold this costly bureaucracy. This system costs DC government $5 million annually in overtime and puts the public at risk. With such a system is it any wonder that crime is going up?

The best way to fight and deter crime is to get more officers out from behind their desks and onto the streets. That is why I lobbied for the solutions that I did and as a result of those efforts and the efforts of Councilmember Tommy Wells, we now have a task force that is working to reverse this faulty system. I can only hope that soon we will have a government that lets cops do what they are supposed to do – patrol the streets to keep us safe.

Republican Carol Schwartz has been in office since 1974, and she should know better than anyone that when crime goes up, the entire District suffers. But instead of working overtime to lobby and find new ways to support our police officers, she has been content to let a broken system continue.

This election year offers voters a chance to choose between the same stale options and constructive, innovative change. Just as the historic candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are showing a new direction for our nation, the District also needs new leadership with new ideas and a commitment to change.

Mayor Adrian Fenty, Councilmembers Tommy Wells and Mary Cheh, and School Chancellor Michelle Rhee have started that process. But many of their most inventive ideas face a wall of resistance from entrenched forces that oppose all change. Republican Councilmember Carol Schwartz has made her career out of stubbornly defending failed policies for more than 34 years.

I commend Ms. Schwartz for her long service in DC government, but over three decades in public office she has become too either complacent or too stuck in the politics of the past to fight for the changes we need. Her do-nothing ideology led her to oppose our smoke-free restaurant law, oppose Mayor Fenty’s education reforms, and oppose equal marriage rights for same sex couples. The only thing she seems to be for is more of the same.

DC deserves better. We can end the Teacher Brain Drain by setting aside $2 million to reward and retain top-performing educators in DC schools, and by creating a fund to support teachers who want to live and work in our city. We can fight crime by implementing my 10,000 Hour Plan, a simple bureaucratic fix that will free up 10,000 additional police hours each year at little or no cost. We need an elected attorney general to aggressively prosecute crimes that occur, and be answerable to the public. A $1 million fund will keep police officers living and working in the city they serve and protect. And we can defend our middle class by creating a public-private partnership to help any resident at risk of losing his or her home because of a job loss or other life-changing event.

Our environment demands aggressive protection. We should emulate world capitals like London and create a downtown congestion zone. This innovation would reduce the number of cars and SUVs from the suburbs that foul our air, relieve gridlock, and provide more funding for mass transit, bike lines, and trails. We should offer financial incentives to encourage residents and taxi fleets to switch to hybrid vehicles, and to convert the city’s entire non-emergency fleet to low-emission vehicles within five years.

Instead of sitting idly by while millions of dollars are stolen by corrupt city employees, we need a council member who will ask the tough questions and hold bureaucrats responsible for honest, competent, and courteous service to the public. With proper oversight, we can ensure that every office of the DC government works for the people.

Simply put, DC residents deserve better.

For the next three weeks, I will be away from Washington, DC fulfilling my annual commitment as an officer in the US Naval Reserves. As my responsibilities allow, I will stay connected by elaborating through entries to this blog on my proposals for change.

I’ll be back on the campaign trail later this month, and I look forward to a spirited debate about how we can work together to build on our successes and overcome our daunting challenges. Together, we will make Washington the world class city it can be.

Democracy in the District should not be a question. Sadly, it still is. Though DC has been denied full and appropriate representation in the federal government for 218 years, the District has enjoyed increasing degrees of local democracy for thirty-five years. Yet, remnants of a broken system remain denying 17% of District residents the right to vote in primary elections. This is because DC law forbids independents from participating in primary elections and forbids parties from determining who can vote in their primary elections. This unconstitutional measure must be overturned and that is why I applaud the efforts of Councilmember Catania (At Large) for his introduction of the Open Primary Act of 2008.

Without question, it is the prerogative of the parties to determine how their District residents will select their respective nominees, but DC government must not make this choice for them. I believe open primaries provide the best method for allowing all District residents to select the competing candidates for the general election. Regardless of one’s political affiliation, we can all agree that this year’s presidential candidates are among the most impressive in years, and many analysts agree that independents have been a key factor in producing such an excellent selection.

School Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty are on the right track in improving school maintenance and construction, reducing bureaucratic bloat, and helping students raise their academic achievement. But our schools remain in crisis, in part because longtime opponents of reform continue to block innovative ideas and bold thinking.

Republican Councilmember Carol Schwartz is one such stubborn obstacle to change. I commend Mrs. Schwartz for her 34 years on the school board and DC Council, but her record shows she has contributed little beyond an unwavering opposition to innovation and new ideas. She is either too conservative or too complacent to fight for the changes we need to improve our schools.

Great schools are impossible without great teachers, and one of DC’s challenges is retaining high-performing educators in our classrooms. The District has the highest teacher turnover rate in the region, losing talented teachers to Maryland and Virginia every year. Our Teacher Brain Drain deprives DC’s kids of the best and brightest, the mentors they need to thrive.

That is why I will work with Chancellor Rhee to create a $2 million High Performing Teacher Fund to reward our best educators with annual bonuses for extraordinary accomplishments and dedication. We can keep these great teachers working for DC children by rewarding excellence and providing incentives for professional growth — just as the most successful companies do in the private sector. We demand that educators be professionals, and we should reward them as such.

It’s time to end the Teacher Brain Drain. With innovative ideas and strong leadership, we can overcome the challenges that face us and make Washington the world class city it can be.