DCentric

D.C. has its share of gentrification stories in neighborhoods that never fully recovered from riots long ago, but here’s one from Brooklyn: The New York Times profiles neighborhood changes in Crown Heights, a neighborhood that saw riots between black and Jewish residents in 1991.

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• Source: Nytimes
• Via: @Will_Doig

The riots erupted when a driver from a Hasidic official’s motorcade struck and killed a 7-year-old black boy, which prompted black residents to take to the streets, some calling for revenge. A 29-year-old Hasidic scholar visiting from Australia was attacked and fatally stabbed.

Richard Green, who founded the Crown Heights Youth Coalition in the mid-1980s, said the racial violence occurred in part because blacks and Jews had kept to themselves. “We were never really formally introduced to each other,” Mr. Green said. “That’s a good lesson as we see new groups coming in.”

Read more at: www.nytimes.com

Much attention has been given to food deserts, which are low-income communities with limited access to super markets or large grocery stores. But a new survey by nonprofit Share Our Strength shows that most urban families are satisfied with their food options. Having time to cook and the price of groceries were more pressing concerns.

Food reporter Jane Black writes that the survey’s findings challenge the notion that food deserts are the major culprits in the fight against heath inequality. “It may be easier to plunk down a new Walmart in the inner city,” she writes. Interestingly enough, Walmart is one of the sponsors of the program that ran the survey, and the big box retailer’s plans to build six D.C. stores include a campaign emphasizing a lack of access to fresh foods in District neighborhoods.

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• Source: Janeblack
• Via: @BSweeneyDC

The data reflects what my husband, Brent Cunningham, and I saw while reporting for six months in Huntington, West Virginia. Among the families we followed, the very poorest was the one most likely to cook healthy meals at home. But it required intense planning and basic cooking skills. The families least likely to eat well were the ones who, frankly, didn’t have to. They had enough money to swing by Burger King for dinner on the way home instead of cooking family meals and eating leftovers… They shopped impulsively, instead of methodically, at the grocery store, which meant their carts were filled with frozen pizzas, chips and snacks.

Read more at: www.janeblack.net

If you want to see gentrification-in-action, head to H Street NE, where disputes between longtime and newer residents and businesses are well-documented. But a new project by Cultural Tourism DC is helping build some bridges; a heritage trail is planned for the corridor, with people of all stripes involved in helping to document the neighborhood’s past.

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• Source: Washingtonpost

Community meetings to determine what goes on the signs bring out new and old residents alike, Levey said, groups who are often at odds over neighborhood issues. Off H Street, for instance, new white residents are annoyed by the overflow of cars at African American churches on Sunday, while older African American residents worry about being priced out of their homes.

“We usually have community meetings over concerns or controversies,” said [Marqui] Lyons, whose family has lived on H Street for five generations. “So it was nice to have a harmony-building project where people who had just moved to the community become enraptured with the history and older residents feel like their stories are being collected and listened to.”

Read more at: www.washingtonpost.com

Joi-Marie McKenzie noticed a different kind of media coverage disparity, namely that few African Americans appeared in the society pages. In 2007, she started DC Fab, a website that covers nightlife, parties and profiles prominent D.C. personalities. TBD’s Jenny Rogers chatted with McKenzie about her motivations for running the site.

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• Source: Tbd

“We cover the browner D.C.,” explains McKenzie. Black faces from the worlds of sports, non-profits, music, and occasionally the clergy fill DC Fab’s pages.

“I remember when we started, there was no one like us,” says McKenzie. “You’ll flip through Washington Life, or Washingtonian, and you’d never guess there was this whole world, making hundreds of thousands, I’d say millions of dollars, of these urban professionals.”

“I want to showcase my peers,” she says. “There’s industry here. There’s tastemakers. Who’s going to talk for us? Who’s going to navigate this world?”

Read more at: www.tbd.com

D.C. schools with the fewest “effective” or “highly effective” teachers are concentrated in low-income parts of the city, according to a Washington Examiner analysis. The D.C. Public School System evaluates teacher effectiveness using a number of methods, including classroom evaluations and test scores. Garfield Elementary School, where 83 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, has one such teacher per every 50 students.

Although schools with a high ratio of effective teachers to students are concentrated in wealthier parts of town, there are exceptions. For instance, Tubman Elementary School, where 81 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, has one effective or highly effective teacher per every 11 students.

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• Source: Washingtonexaminer