Around the City

Urban affairs, neighborhoods, subways and the people who are affected by them all.

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March 4, 2011 | 4:36 PM | By

Wal-Mart and Communities of Color

Flickr: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

While the Washington Times probes whether it’s a conflict of interest for Council member Yvette Alexander’s advisers to work as paid consultants for Wal-Mart, over at Colorlines, Juell Stewart examines Michelle Obama’s endorsement of the company.

In January, the first lady joined Wal-Mart executives in southeast D.C.—a traditionally black neighborhood in which the controversial chain recently announced plans to open stores—to announce the company’s effort to make its pre-packaged foods healthier and more affordable than less healthy options by 2015. Obama called it a “huge victory” that left her feeling “more hopeful than ever before.”…

Other critics say that by teaming up with corporate giants like Wal-Mart, the first lady risks undermining activism on other issues, like fair labor practices in communities of color that are increasingly dependent upon service sector jobs.

Cheap food isn’t always nutritious. Could Walmart make healthy food more affordable?

The “huge victory” Obama championed in the Wal-Mart announcement is creating viable choices for informed consumers. She and others have argued that communities can only win if there is cost parity between healthy food and the high-calorie snacks that contribute to obesity. “If you have a dollar menu item and a healthier salad that costs three times as much, it’s not a choice for people living on a limited income,” says Antronette K. Yancey, co-director of the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Food, Race and Class, Walmart
March 3, 2011 | 12:34 PM | By

Wonkette on H Street

Flickr: thecourtyard

H Street NE

Wonkette reviews Smith Commons restaurant, thinks H Street is a “Mainstream Urban Oasis”, and deems it our version of an “Epcot-like recreation of Brooklyn”:

Smith Commons is a fine establishment on H Street and just because it’s not overwhelmingly cartoon-y, it doesn’t mean that the area is losing its charm. Or maybe this Gentrification Part Two of the area is exactly what this means! We do not know these things. The New York Times hasn’t written a profile of H Street NE in years, probably because they’re too afraid to venture to the Northeast quadrant, so we guess we’ll never know. Oh well. We would just like some streetcars, please. The END.

Like Paul Masson wine, there will be no gray lady profile of a “hip” D.C. nabe, before its time.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Gentrification, H Street NE
February 23, 2011 | 10:01 AM | By

Our Place D.C.: Treating Ex-Cons With Compassion

DCentric

A sign at Our Place D.C.

Women behind bars have rights, too.

That’s the premise behind Our Place D.C., a non-profit that helps and advocates for  currently and formerly incarcerated women.

“While I know the goal is to protect society from offenders, I’d like you to ask yourselves how long should this punishment endure after the offender has served her sentence and at what cost?” reads one of the large signs posted at its office on K Street Northwest.

Ashley McSwain, executive director of Our Place, said the group helps reduce how many former prisoners commit new crimes and go back to jail – something that benefits everyone.

DCentric

HIV 101

She’s especially proud that Our Place hires back 60 percent of its former clients: “The women we serve are running our company. I love that; it’s the neatest part of this team.” Often, women who are released from prison take a bus straight to K street, arriving with nothing more than the clothes on their back. McSwan described what happens after that bus ride:
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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Non-profits, Poverty, Race and Class
February 22, 2011 | 10:14 AM | By

Our Place: Helping Forgotten Women Find Their Place in D.C.

DCentric

Our Place D.C.

When a man is sentenced to serve time in prison, he often has a support system; if visits are allowed, his partner dutifully shows up, dressed to impress, exclaiming to children about how they’re “going to see Daddy!” When a woman is sentenced, whatever support she has is usually marshaled in service to her kids, to keep them out of the foster care system; there are few visitors making the drive to women’s facilities, eagerly anticipating a glimpse of Mommy.

That disparity is also reflected in the dearth of organizations dedicated to helping women who were formerly incarcerated transition to life on the outside. In fact, there is only one group in the country that focuses solely on helping such women– Our Place D.C. Our Place is on K street NW, just down the street from Pedro and Vinny’s renowned burrito stand. There, on “burrito block”, in an understated building, in a cozy suite of offices one floor up from the traffic on Route 29, lives are being changed.

It’s easy to forget about such women; they are imperfect, guilty of poor judgment or more, and all of them are ex-cons. Most of us reserve our support for the “innocent”, or more accurately, for sympathetic victims. It doesn’t occur to us to consider those who have served their time, only to be dropped off in this city with nothing but a prison-issued sweatsuit on their backs. “It used to be worse”, Ashley McSwain tells me. She’s the Executive Director of Our Place. Before, newly-released women would arrive in that orange jumpsuit associated with inmates. “We convinced them to change that. The effort was called ‘Justice, not Jumpsuits’.”

McSwain is the kind of warm, unpretentious lady you’d want to sit next to at a beauty salon; the non-profit she runs reflects that vibe, all brightly painted rooms, uplifting art and comfy chairs. When I walked in to Our Place last week, I didn’t think “prisoners”. It actually reminded me of a college counseling department. I kept expecting to see internship offers or posters for graduate school on the walls.
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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Non-profits, Poverty, Race and Class
February 18, 2011 | 5:37 PM | By

A Different Aspect of the Digital Divide

Flickr: Wayan Vota

Sorry, baby. Your internet is slow!

Everything is nicer in the suburbs, including broadband! Via the Investigative Reporting Workshop at AU:

People who live in low-income areas of the District of Columbia on average get less for their broadband dollar than those who live in the wealthy suburbs — and subscribers in rural areas get the worst deals of all, according to a new study.

The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University analyzed customer speed tests and surveys around the nation’s eighth-largest metropolitan statistical area, which has a population of about 5.4 million…

The numbers indicate that while people in poor neighborhoods may pay a little less each month for service, they are likely to experience much slower speeds.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Digital Divide, Race and Class
February 18, 2011 | 10:15 AM | By

Metro Really DOES Need Maintenance, ASAP

Flickr: James Calder

Riders wait at Foggy Bottom Metro

Some serious, scary trouble at Foggy Bottom this morning (via Unsuck DC Metro):

After unloading from a train, people were exiting the gates, and a Metro employee was telling everyone leaving the station to take the left hand escalator…So everyone starts trudging up the left, until…

The bottom two or three steps of the escalator literally collapsed! They fell through leaving a gaping hole at the bottom of the stairs. Two or three people fell in. I would say it was about a three foot drop into jagged steel from the overturned stairs, not to mention whatever else is underneath the escalator. The people managed to pull themselves out and didn’t look seriously injured, but one woman was pretty shaken up.

Metro’s response was also less than encouraging. When the stairs first fell through, people started yelling, and one employee (the same one who had told us to take the left hand escalator in the first place) began walking toward the commotion. But then he stopped, turned around, and ran back yelling for someone else to do something.

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Metro, WMATA
February 16, 2011 | 10:33 AM | By

And Now, Another View of Anacostia, from David Garber

The Morning Edition story about Anacostia which riled some locals.

Yesterday, NPR’s Morning Edition aired a piece about how Washington, D.C. is changing: “D.C., Long ‘Chocolate City,’ Becoming More Vanilla“. The segment was taped in Anacostia, and if social media is an accurate way to gauge local reactions, this highly-anticipated story dismayed and disappointed some listeners who live in Chocolate City.

While the racial makeup of D.C. is changing (everywhere– not just east of the river), some D.C. residents worried that the story showed an incomplete picture of a community which already struggles with how it is stereotyped and viewed. Did journalist Alex Kellogg go to Anacostia with a predetermined narrative in mind, which he padded with formulaic soundbites? A black resident is forced out. A young white gentrifier takes his place. People are robbed and pistol-whipped in an “edgy”, poor, black part of town.

Or is Kellogg guilty of dwelling on a community’s challenges instead of its immense potential? Is it even possible to tell a Ward 8 community’s story in under eight minutes? After speaking with David Garber, one of the people who was interviewed by Kellogg, I wonder if the answer to that last question is…”Maybe not.”

I emailed Garber as soon as I saw his tweets, which denounced the piece. Here’s what I knew about him from reading his blog, “And Now, Anacostia“, before Morning Edition taught me what he actually sounded like; Garber had lived in Anacostia, he was a booster for that community and he ceaselessly tried to counter the negative reactions it inspires. When I type “ceaseless”, I mean it– in 2009, when four men broke into his home during a holiday party and robbed his guests, Garber wrote:

As the night unfolded I was most frustrated that this happened in the presence of my guests, and that they would no doubt think differently about a neighborhood that they had grown comfortable with.

That’s right. Garber wasn’t worried about his safety or that he was a target– he was concerned that people who were already hesitant to visit him in Anacostia had just had their worst assumptions validated. And that’s the biggest complaint I saw yesterday– that Kellogg’s story conveniently confirmed the worst stereotypes about Anacostia. The fact that the story aired on Morning Edition, a respected program which thoughtful people trust for a nuanced take on the news only made it that much more powerful– and painful.

I called Garber yesterday, and spoke with him about Morning Edition, how he was portrayed and what he thinks about gentrification. He had quite a bit to say.
Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: The People, Anacostia, Gentrification, NPR, Ward 8
February 14, 2011 | 3:22 PM | By

Miss Metro? Hire a Taxi or Sleep on the Street.

Flickr: Chris Dag

Fisheye view of the red line.

Last week, I posted about the debate surrounding Metro’s proposal to close earlier on the weekends for maintenance and monetary reasons– “Metro: It’s not just for drunks.“. This weekend, the Washington Post dispatched four reporters to spend “the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings riding the trains to gauge reaction.” Most of the piece focused on party people, but one anecdote stood out:

After midnight, Metro is the domain of the young and intoxicated. In this atmosphere, it’s easy to pick out the night commuters, who stand out of the way like hungover club kids might in the morning rush.

On the Green Line, Aloh Che, 63, quietly reads a newspaper. His eyes look tired. A patch on his jacket explains why he is out at 1 a.m.: security. His job often ends at midnight.

“Once you miss the bus, then you miss the train, then your only alternative is hiring a taxi or sleeping on the street,” he says. He’s done that – slept on the street until Metro started up again. “Three or four times,” he says.

Che, a native of Cameroon, works in Bethesda and has worked two shifts this day. By the time he gets home to New Carrollton, the buses will have stopped running, so he will pay a taxi driver $10 to take him the rest of the way.

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Immigrants, Metro, Race and Class, WMATA
February 14, 2011 | 11:29 AM | By

Chocolate City gets Wealthier and Whiter

Flickr: Oblivious Dude

The Georgetown Waterfront. Lazy and uncreative shorthand for "wealthy" and "white"? Perhaps, but it's such a pretty photograph!

Loyal DCentric reader @BelmontMedina used Twitter to point us to this WaPo story from V. Dion Haynes. Haynes says that jobs are “changing D.C.’s income and racial makeup”. Or, to be blunter, the people of D.C. are becoming richer and whiter.

From 2000 to 2009, the District gained 39,000 households with incomes of $75,000 and higher, according to a Brookings analysis of Census data. During that same period, the city lost 37,600 households with incomes of $50,000 or less.

At the same time, the city’s proportion of black residents dropped to 52.7 percent from 59.4 percent, while its share of white residents rose to 33.3 percent from 27.8 percent.

Why such a stark change?

The loss of middle- and low-income residents is likely related to a growing mismatch between the people who calls the District home and the jobs available. A large number of the city’s unemployed may not be qualified for the jobs that are being created — mainly in the federal government and in professional and business services. Some experts say they believe those factors are driving minorities into suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia…

The problem is particularly acute for black D.C. residents, whose unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2010 was 18.9 percent, compared with 2.5 percent for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A large proportion of blacks in the District are undereducated and do not qualify for the jobs most in demand.

And now, two things I want to point out:

1) When the City Paper included this story in their Loose Lips Daily roundup, they noted that the “District is becoming richer and whiter, says new Brookings report—just not on election day!” Zing! One D.C. resident had this to say about that snark wit. I mean, tweet.

Is @wcp trying to provoke? "District is becoming richer and whiter... just not on election day!" http://t.co/8EyAc6T
February 14, 2011 12:11 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite
@EricFidler
Eric Fidler

2) Speaking of tweets, please feel free to send similar tips or story ideas to us via Twitter. We’re @DCntrc and we are always grateful for the help.

FILED UNDER: The People, Gentrification, Money, Race and Class, Racial Divide