Ben Parisi is Pissed!

First of all, Martin Austermuhle, I should thank you for what in one light is some very generous coverage. You write of the Ward 8 town hall that “this was the second consecutive town hall where Empower DC has shown up with signs and t-shirts and demanded something concrete from Gray.” And then you wonder what it would be like if everyone decided to make their points “as loudly and visibly” as Empower DC has. So, thank you – because visibly making a concrete demand of our elected officials is exactly what we’re out to do and, indeed, it’s what 50 of our members did this week at the Ward 1 and Ward 8 Town Halls. They should be commended for their efforts at keeping our presumptive mayor accountable. Gray once called the closing of Bruce-Monroe a “sad joke” and he has campaigned on an early education platform. No wonder why we think he should commit to rebuilding Bruce-Monroe and reimbursing the professionals who provide child care for low-income families a fair rate.

I guess this all seems too much for you, is that it Martin? You think that you should not have to be made “painfully aware” of these issues at a town hall, as you say. Was it really that painful? Was witnessing a group of citizens empowered and confident enough to stand truth to power and demand what they have been promised really that painful to you? Where did it hurt exactly? Maybe issues of child care, the privatization of DC’s school system and the excruciatingly profound ripple effects that they have wouldn’t be quite so painful to you if you were confronted with them on a more regular basis.

Maybe if, as the 50 Empower DC members who showed up to express their opinion this week to our new Mayor, you confronted these realities on a daily basis you would be more sensitive to the real pain in this situation. Not that pain you feel watching a forceful and powerful display of citizens’ dissent, but the pain of having to leave your job because the child care center you took your child to closed, knowing that you only have a few weeks before you’ll be unable to provide for your family, and knowing that subsidized child care slots are few and far between and getting fewer and farther with every passing day that our elected officials decide not to do a thing about it.

Maybe you don’t even need to experience all that yourself. Maybe it would be enough if our news outlets and online media sources would decide once in a while to cover the stories of the unemployed and working low-income residents. Hmm, let’s see… On DCist.com the closest thing I see is your piece about the town halls – except there you belittle the issues and the people literally standing up for them. What a shame that this city’s media doesn’t really care to cover the stories that matter. And what a shame that in the few instances we get our stories covered, it is by someone with your perspective who willfully chooses to ignore the truth of the situation.

You accurately quote both the demands of Empower DC members as well as Gray’s response. But did you ever stop to consider what those words actually mean? In the case of the child care provider who asked that Gray make a commitment to increasing provider reimbursement rates in his first 180 days in office, those words mean a great deal. It means that she will be able to continue operating her center. It means that the hundreds of child care professionals employed in centers and homes like hers will be able to continue working and earning a wage. With an increase in reimbursements, which by the way (since you failed to quote this part of the question) are federally mandated to occur every two years but haven’t happened in DC since 2004, that wage might even be able to go up a little bit. It might even be able to be at or above DC’s living wage of $12.60 per hour, which most child care professionals don’t receive today because reimbursements are so low. An increase in the rate of reimbursement would mean that parents at those centers would be able to keep their jobs, confident in the fact that their child is safe and being well prepared for school during the day. And those children, as decades of research has shown us, will be more prepared to enter school, more likely to graduate high school, go on to college, and stay out of jail. Wow. All that from an increase in a reimbursement rate for a child care provider? That’s right, Martin. If you had taken a few minutes after the town hall to – I don’t know, what’s the word you journalists use for talking to people – interview one of the Empower DC members you might have learned all of this.

And if you’d really listened to Gray’s response, you might well have realized that it was not true. He is trying to convince everyone of a falsehood, that giving someone something means taking it away from someone else. That is not how a community works. That is certainly not how a city, let alone the “One City” of the Gray campaign, should work. Is the economy tight? Absolutely. Just talk to any of those child care providers who are trying to keep their centers open, or any of the parents who are struggling to pay their parental co-pay on top of their rent. We all know it’s a rough economic time. But if Gray decided to do what thousands of people asked him to do months ago, there would be a little more wiggle room. That is, if he decided, instead of trying to gain the affection of the wealthy DC residents who spurned him in favor of Adrian Dog-Park Fenty, to create new tax brackets above the ridiculously low current top tax bracket of $40,000, then he would be able to raise the revenue we need to make the critical investment in social services like child care. But do you know what would happen then, if Gray decided to raise taxes on people making, say $200,000 a year? They wouldn’t visit his town halls wearing Empower DC t-shirts and holding signs. They wouldn’t stand on the street passing out leaflets trying to encourage poor people to stand in solidarity with them. They probably wouldn’t even have to talk to each other. But one by one they would send an email – they might even pick up the phone or – Heavens! – visit the Wilson Building. They would tell Gray, very politely – no chanting, no marching – that he should think twice about that new income tax bracket. They would ask him to remember who paid for all those yard signs, who got those television commercials on air, and who’s going to pay for his transition team. And, just like we’ve seen countless times from others in his position, he will back down. Unless people, a lot of us, together with the same message, maybe even the same t-shirt and a fun chant or two, stand together, forcing him to remember the voters whose deeply felt anger allowed him to take the role he now has – lest he forget that his opponent was unelected, it was not Gray who was elected.

And, Martin, considering the low opinion you clearly hold of the organized group of Empower DC members present at these town halls, you do well to remember Gray’s own call to organize. At the Ward 8 town hall he talked again of statehood and what it would take to get us there. He told us that he would not be able to do anything by himself, that a closed door meeting between him and a few congresspeople wouldn’t cut it. He told us we, in the thousands, would have to stand behind him in support. Funny. That sounds like something – that sounds like the 50 Empower DC members who stood behind their spokesperson who asked a question, made a demand of Gray. Funny that the two visions get such different reception. Funny that Gray can actually quote* Frederick Douglass in saying that “power concedes nothing without a demand” – yet both he and the media covering the story look disdainfully upon those who have dared to make a demand of power.

*For the record, Gray actually misquoted this, saying “struggle” instead of “demand” but this is no doubt the quote he intended.