DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Here are the five things we are perusing, right now:

Former DC Mayor Sharon Pratt Unable To Deliver Letter To Obama To Advocate for D.C. Voting Rights "Former District of Columbia Mayor Sharon Pratt has been foiled in her efforts to hand-deliver a letter to the White House expressing her support for DC voting rights in Congress…The letters asks President Barack Obama to display the district's "Taxation Without Representation" license plates on his official vehicle, as former President Bill Clinton did. Pratt says she'll get the letter to Obama even if she has to "have a pigeon deliver it to him." (myfoxdc.com)

Georgetown flooding spurs class-action suit on behalf of restaurants "(Gary Mason) filed the suit against D.C.-based MRP Realty on behalf of Charles Holcomb, a bartender at one of five restaurants that suffered heavy damages and have been closed since the flood Monday morning…(Mason) said the dollar amount is based on projections of how long people will be out of work. “We’re very sympathetic to the hardship this is imposing on a lot of low-income people,” he said. (Washington Times)

Harassment Because My Boyfriend's White "There is little difference between street harassment in Cairo and in urban areas like DC: these men are usually young, uneducated, disenfranchised, and disrespect for women is an inter-generational issue ignored or condoned by families and communities. The need to control women and constantly threaten their security is one only felt by men who feel weak in other facets of their lives. Black women, all women, should not have to negotiate public space to get from Point A to Point B." (beachbumchronicles.blogspot.com)

Rich Americans Have No Idea How Rich They Are "Catherine Rampell at the New York Times also theorizes it's the "Middle Kingdom effect": "[P]eople who are rich but not the richest—in the $250,000 zone, say—see they have more than lots of poor people, but also much less than a few very visibly rich people. Then they conclude they’re in the middle, so they must be middle class." The end result is a blind giant of an upper class—a thing that wields large amounts of wealth and power while also believing that it deserves even more." (GOOD.is)

At Howard, mother tries to raise awareness of need for black bone marrow donors "For nearly seven months, (Odiney) Brown tried anything — chemotherapy, a bone marrow donor drive and an unusual transfusion — that might save her daughter’s life. But at each turn, Brown found a dearth of blacks and Latinos who were on the central bone marrow donor registry run by the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis. The chances of a donor match were slim, even for Shannon, 11, whose plight garnered extra attention because she was a performer in “The Lion King” on Broadway. Shannon died from her illness in November." (The Washington Post)