Arlington food bank sees record demand “‘I come here because I can’t get food stamps because I make too much,’ said Donald James of Arlington. ‘How can I make too much money when all my money goes to rent and utilities?’” (The Washington Post)

Protesters Occupy Washington, D.C. “Only one protester made a specific reference to race; and she was wearing a message to Herman Cain on her back: ‘I Am Black & Democrat, not brain washed.’ It was an apparent reference to his disparaging remarks about blacks tending to vote Democratic.” (colorlines.com)

St. Dennis Reopens in Victory for Affordable Housing “In 2004, developers set their sights on the building located at Kenyon and 17th Streets in Mt. Pleasant, hoping to turn it into high-priced condos in the fast-gentrifying neighborhood. Bit by bit, they chased away residents, but three steadfastly refused to leave — Eva Martinez and her daughters, Anabell and Eva Aurora.” (DCist)

WestMill Capital’s Miller boys think big development by thinking small “It’s easy to be so brave, of course, when you were raised as Herb Miller’s kid. The pair grew up in a Q Street NW manse…In their childhood world, H Street didn’t exist. They’ll readily admit as much—then check themselves when they realize the political implications of negating a time when the strip served almost exclusively black people.” (Washington City Paper)

Place, Not Race, May Better Explain America’s Health Disparities “What the national statistics are really telling us is that minorities live in much higher numbers in unhealthy neighborhoods. And that means that in trying to address health disparities nationally, we’ve been looking for the answers to the wrong question. We should be asking what’s going on in these communities, not what’s going on within minority populations.” (The Atlantic Cities)

At French immersion school, a love for Russian “Often, the biggest Russian classes are filled with “heritage kids,’’ Sanders said. Not so at Goddard. At this school, where 82 percent of students are black or Hispanic, not a single person in Room 213 has a Russian background.” (The Washington Post)

What the Demise of the Mall Means to Georgetown’s Retail Landscape “The hulking and aging mall fit into the Jane Jacob call to preserve old buildings. She advised this because old buildings with smaller retail spaces tend to be cheaper to rent and thus can house stores that can’t afford prime rents. This leads to more retail diversity.” (The Georgetown Metropolitan)

At French immersion school, a love for Russian “Often, the biggest Russian classes are filled with ‘heritage kids,’ Sanders said. Not so at Goddard. At this school, where 82 percent of students are black or Hispanic, not a single person in Room 213 has a Russian background.” (The Washington Post)

A Constant Struggle For Work “I have no problems passing the drug tests, passing the urine tests. Everybody who says those of us in Ward 8 don’t have any skills. How much experience do you need to sweep a broom? Come on.” (The Root DC)

Bill combating D.C. school residency fraud gains traction “[Council Chairman Kwame R.] Brown said his bill is simply an attempt to preserve resources intended for D.C. children. Students from surrounding jurisdictions are allowed to attend D.C. schools, but they must pay tuition of roughly $10,000 a year. ‘Until Maryland and Virginia cut us a check for us to educate their children, they should not be allowed in our system,’ Mr. Brown said.” (The Washington Times)

Bi-National Gay Couple Facing Separation by Deportation “The Obama administration said bi-national gay couples can be considered low priority deportation cases. Gay immigration advocates have asked for guidelines for immigration officials working same-sex couple cases.” (NBC Washington)

Flickr: Runs With Scissors

Mural of Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. During the 1968 riots, Carmichael, who was a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) obtained special police permission to allow Ben’s Chili Bowl to stay open after curfew to provide food and shelter for activists and public servants who were working to restore order in D.C.

What: Film: “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” (2010)

When: Weekend screenings include: 10:30 a.m.,‎ ‎12:45 p.m., ‎ ‎3:00 p.m.,‎ ‎5:15‎ p.m., ‎7:30‎ p.m., ‎9:45 p.m‎. Check here for updates.

Where: Landmark E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW.

Cost: $11 for general admission. More details here.

Why you should go: As the New York Times put it,

The film begins at a moment when the concept of black power was promoted by Stokely Carmichael, a veteran of the freedom rides early in the decade, who, like many young black activists, had grown frustrated with the Gandhian, nonviolent philosophy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Carmichael, who later moved to Guinea and took the name Kwame Ture, is remembered for the militancy of his views and his confrontational, often slashingly witty speeches, but the Swedish cameras captured another side of him. In the most touching and arresting scene in “Mixtape,” he interviews his mother, Mable, gently prodding her to talk about the effects of poverty and discrimination on her family.

Other events to consider: Fans of conscious hip-hop and global music can combine their passions with one FREE show at the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Stage, where Jewish Israeli recording artist and producer SHI 360 performs on Sunday, Oct. 9 at 6 p.m.

Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 89 “He was Martin Luther King’s most effective and insistent foil: blunt where King was soothing, driven where King was leisurely, and most important, confrontational where King was conciliatory — meaning, critically, that he was more upsetting than King in the eyes of the white public.” (The New York Times)

Sesame Street Takes On Hunger | ThinkProgress “There may be two Americas, but it’s not as if they’re on opposite sides of a wall. Teaching kids not to assume that everyone has the same level of resources is a valuable lesson in social awareness. So many signifiers of coolness — clothes, birthdays, activities, cars, housing — are really signifiers of wealth, and in a deep and prolonged recession, poverty makes you socially as well as materially vulnerable.” (Think Progress)

The safety gap: David Kennedy talks fighting violent crime | The Informant “The ‘safety gap’ is akin to the ‘wealth gap,’ [author David M.] Kennedy explained. As our society has become more economically prosperous, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has grown wider, leaving certain communities behind. Similarly, while much of the country has gotten safer, in certain neighborhoods and certain communities, things have gotten worse.” (The Informant)

At Coolidge High, Student Election Serves As Lesson “Between teaching students at Calvin Coolidge High School in Takoma about the civic responsibilities they’d eventually face, third-year social studies teacher Lauren McKenzie placed a call to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics with what could have been thought of as a stretch of an pitch — would the District’s election authority want to run the student election at Coolidge?” (DCist)

It’s No iPhone 5, But Ward 8 Finally Gets Some Cupcakes “The opening confirms a simple fact: The desire for overpriced flour, butter and sugar knows no bounds of race, geography, or economics. And even better, the line has got to be shorter than the one at Georgetown Cupcakes.” (Washington City Paper)

Too big for Mount Pleasant, Fiesta D.C. eyes Columbia Heights “Although Mount Pleasant has historically been the center of the District’s Latino community, the city’s growing Hispanic population has dispersed east over the past decade to include much of Columbia Heights and Petworth.” (The Washington Post)

Hate speech against Muslims incites violence “Similar smear campaigns by intellectuals, social and political leaders targeted Native Americans, African Americans, Jews and Japanese Americans. These cases wrought untold destruction, until they were revealed as false and horrifying in the extreme.” (The Washington Post)

Occupy DC Protestors Gather In McPherson Square “They call themselves the 99 percent, and in New York, in LA, in Denver, and in DC they’re rebelling against a power structure that’s allowed the top one percent of Americans to amass more than a third of the nation’s wealth.” (WUSA Washington, DC)

Graham requests new audit on Peaceoholics “The group received $13.8 million from seven city agencies and the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. from 2005 to 2010, most during the term of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.” (Washington Times)

The power and pain of the N-word “The word is weighty and powerful and harkens back to a time when whites could do whatever they wanted to black people—call them any name, beat them, rape them and even kill them with impunity.” (The Washington Post)

Promise Neighborhoods: DC Grant Winners Share Their Trials and Triumphs “We can’t just narrowly focus on what resources a student has in class. We’ve been there, done that, and it doesn’t work. So let’s try something different. President Obama has invested federal funding to spur creativity and innovation at the neighborhood level and is letting that work its way up.” (The Root)

Record Number Of Hispanic Children Living In Poverty “The study finds that besides high unemployment, Hispanics also suffered the greatest loss of wealth of all ethnic groups, primarily due to foreclosures. As the Latino birth rate continues to outpace that of whites and blacks, the number of poor Latino children could grow even more.” (wamu.org)

D.C.’s ‘food deserts’ sprout fresh fruits and vegetables “In a Brookland convenience store loaded with beer, wine and prepackaged pastries, Aneika Muhammad slides a heaping bowl of fresh, foot-long carrots onto a refrigerator shelf. It’s part of a new program by D.C. Central Kitchen to get fresh produce — and in some cases, refrigeration units — into ‘food deserts’ around the District.” (The Washington Post)

Mayor Vincent C. Gray Restores Sunday Hours at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library “The library will receive $316,000 for Sunday hours, ensuring that residents continue to have library service seven days a week. The funding also ensures that the library remains open on Sundays, as it has continuously since 1972, the year it opened.” (dclibrary.org)

Unity Market Shuts Down After Contentious Three-Year Run “For Pablo Lazaro, who has run Viva Mexico: Cocina Mexicana for the last three years, the loss isn’t just on vendors, but for the community too…Though he admitted that restaurants had complained and put pressure on vendors to leave, Lazaro argued that they catered to a different consumer — local workers that couldn’t afford restaurants.” (DCist)

Flickr: NCinDC

Howard University Hospital

If you reside in Columbia Heights, Dupont Circle or Friendship Heights, chances are, you live near a practicing physician. For D.C. residents who make their home east of the river, it’s a very different situation, according to a recent article in the Washington Post, which focused on a potential shortage of doctors in this city. One part of the article stood out to us; when it comes to a lack of practicing physicians, certain areas in D.C.- have it much worse than others.

In Ward 3, for example, there is an abundance of physicians, with “literally hundreds of doctors to choose from,” said Michael Williams, chief of health-care operations for the nonprofit D.C. Primary Care Association. But he said only 90 doctors list a business address east of the Anacostia River.

The District has a “severe mal-distribution of physicians” rather than a shortage, given that roughly 23 percent of the population lives east of the river but only a tiny fraction of physicians have a business location there, he said.

The Post reported that there are 4,000 full- or part-time physicians in D.C. but it’s important to keep in mind those doctors are sometimes seeing patients who work in the city, but live in Maryland or Virginia. So doctors who maintain a practice in the city are treating patients from across the region, which for locals makes finding a doctor even more challenging.

Michelle Obama Shops At Washington-Area Target “She spent 30 to 40 minutes shopping, pushing her own cart. She apparently was recognized only by the cashier who rang up her purchases. Since coming to the White House, Mrs. Obama has lamented missing out on what she calls ‘normal stuff,’ like Target runs.” (WUSA 9)

What Happened When I Tried To Buy A Cupcake On The Saint E’s Campus “Today, standing outside of the gates looking in, being humiliated by a security officer that made me feel as if I should have known better, I was made to feel like less than a person, less than a tax payer, less than a resident of the District of Columbia. It didn’t matter that I literally lived up the street, the message was clear: this was not for me and my Ward 8 neighbors. We could look but not touch.” (Congress Heights on the Rise)

Obama’s unfortunate remarks on people’s misfortunes “Things turned ugly for me when Obama, in closing, said: ‘I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain.’ Whether Obama was referring directly to black leaders or indirectly to their financially stressed and frustrated constituents, his point was unnecessary. The people I hear from and personally counsel aren’t sitting around in bedroom slippers grumbling. They don’t have time nor can they afford to just complain. They’re trying desperately to make ends meet.” (Washington Post)

Re-creating the Tuskegee experiment? “Is the District preparing to conduct its own Tuskegee experiment? The synopsis: D.C. Council member David A. Catania is pushing legislation that would mandate mental and behavioral analyses of youths as young as 3, and city schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson testified Tuesday that she has bought into his misguided proposal.” (Washington Times)

Adrian Fenty, Former D.C. Mayor, Has No Regrets One Year Out Of Office “The 2010 vote was seen by many as a referendum on Rhee, his polarizing schools chief, and also as evidence of the widening gap in priorities between long-time, mostly black residents and the district’s gentrifiers. Fenty handily won predominantly white districts, while decisively losing black ones. ‘The election got very emotional,” he said. “It was not, at the end, a discussion that was about performance and results.’” (Huffington Post)

Marion Barry’s free turkeys come with strings attached “Parents of school-age children, for instance, will need to attend parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings in the weeks leading up to the holiday. Other residents will have to prove they’re registered to vote and attend community meetings. Says a flier: “’Together, we can transform the Ward for you, your family and your neighborhood.’” (The Washington Post)

Pulp to Close in November “On a wider scale, the closure comes at a fragile time for the corridor — which, as both long-standing retail fixtures and relatively recent additions are vacating, is experiencing a real shake-up…’The day is rapidly approaching when I won’t be able to buy anything on 14th Street except a $10,000 sofa and a $100 dinner’.” (DCist)

Council drinks high-end bottled water at breakfast “Wednesday morning’s D.C. Council breakfast with the mayor featured your typical buffet spread with one snazzy feature: pricey Voss brand bottled water, which sells for a few bucks per bottle. Is this part of the council’s effort to be more civil to one another?” (Washington Examiner )

Food Stamps for Fast Food: An Absurd Idea “Poor nutrition habits contribute to an obesity epidemic that affects everyone, especially children, the poor and people of color. That’s why allowing food stamps to be used at fast food restaurants is absurd. It makes no sense to use government funds to purchase foods that contribute to disease and increased health care costs.” (The New York Times)

The Value of College Is: (a) Growing (b) Flat (c) Falling (d) All of the Above “The case against college is gaining steam: Tuition costs are rising and graduates’ incomes are flattening. Male bachelor’s-degree holders saw a nearly 10 percent decline in real pay over the last 10 years, according to recent Census figures. The U.S. has the highest college-­dropout rate in the developed world, and studies have found that college confers ‘exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent’ gains in academic skills.” (The Atlantic)

The Link Between Food Stamps and Obesity “Forty-two percent of low-income women in the United States are obese, and the rate of obesity is even higher among women who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly the food stamp program.” (The New York Times)

Gay black youths go from attacked to attackers “Whenever there’s trouble around the Chinatown and Gallery Place Metro stations in the District, the finger of blame often points to a most unusual group of suspects: a black gay gang called Check It…D.C. police estimate that Check It has a core membership of about 20 and counts between 50 and 100 others as ‘associates.’” (The Washington Post)

America’s Fertility Class Divide: What new numbers from the Center for Work-Life Policy and the Guttmacher Institute reveal. “There’s little question why poorer women are having more unintended pregnancies. Only about 40 percent of women who needed publicly funded family planning services between 2000 and 2008 got them…During that same period, as employment levels and the number of employers offering health insurance went down, the number of women who needed these services increased by more than 1 million.” (Slate)

Dismal DCPS Statistics Shared at Council Hearing “10 percent of DCPS eight graders have attempted suicide…Some pretty dismal stuff…considering the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the rate of suicides among children ages 10 to 14 (the age range of most D.C. eighth graders) is merely 0.9 per 100,000.” (DCist)

How does the UC Berkeley ‘diversity bake sale’ rub you? “A group of Republican students at UC Berkeley is moving ahead with plans to hold an ‘increase diversity’ bake sale this Thursday in mockery/protest of legislation awaiting the governor’s signature that would consider race and gender in college admissions. The method of protest? Charging higher prices for the baked goodies to white customers, especially white males, and lower ones to minorities and women.” (Multiamerican)

Poverty Rates Linked To Fractured Families Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling: “Children who are raised by single parents are at greater risk of dropping out of school. They’re at greater risk for teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, living in poverty, and experiencing health, emotional, and behavioral problems.” (WAMU)

The Problem with Diversity Training “I understand the rationale behind diversity training, I really do. It’s important to understand how words and actions can be offensive or hurtful to someone of a different background. It’s important, especially in the work place, for everyone to feel a relative degree of comfort, and to be able to communicate effectively. But I have yet to experience or hear of a good training.” (Huffington Post)