If I had the time, I’d post every police brutality video here, just to have a record. This is clearly not the worst behavior. No one died after all. But these two videos are helpful in that the second puts the first into context.
You might think that context ease your anger. In this case, you’d be wrong. What we may never know is how the charges against these teens may follow them forever. This is what white supremacy looks like.
Below is video of 19-year-old Tatiana speaks about what started the fight between her and another woman. This event sparked the police coming to break up the pool party. @ejohnsoniv on instagram @ejcreoleboy on twitter to see images and follow the story.
Cross-posted from The Root Written by Richard Prince
A 27-year-old African American reporter who committed herself to covering the blackest, most neglected portion of the District of Columbia was shot to death Wednesday night when, police said, she was used as a human shield in an exchange of gunfire by two groups of dirt bike riders.
Charnice Milton, who lived east of the Anacostia River, the area she covered, was a contributor to Capital Community News and a graduate of Ball State and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She was shot as she walked on one of the area’s major streets to transfer buses. Milton had covered the monthly meeting of a community advisory committee.
” ‘At 9:28, she texted me and said, “I’m on my way home,” ‘ the victim’s mother, Francine Milton, said,” Derrick Ward and Andrea Swalec reported Friday for Washington’s WRC-TV, the NBC-owned and -operated station. ‘So, I was waiting for her to text me back and let me know if she needed me to pick her up, if she needed us, where she was. And we never got that text last night.’ . . .” Their daughter was rushed to a hospital, where she died.
“Her editor, Andrew Lightman, the managing editor of Capital Community News, noted that Milton was one of the few people in the city doing that grassroots level reporting in the east of the river communities. Her loss, he said, will be felt in those stories that will no longer get covered.
” ‘Not only did they gun down a young woman, they also silenced one of our reporters,’ Lightman said. ‘I think it’s a real loss not only for us and her family but also the communities that she covered . . . She was one of a handful of reporters across the District who was looking at the nuts and bolts of everyday life.’ . . . ”
“She loved to cover the area east of the Anacostia where she grew up.
” ‘She could have worked at any news media organization she wanted to,’ said her father Ken McClenton. ‘She had the credentials, she had the expertise, she had the knowledge, but she sacrificed and she stayed and wrote in Ward 8.’
” ‘Everyone says the same thing, that she was just a beautiful young lady,’ said Francine Milton, the victim’s mother. ‘And she loved to write, and she loved people. And most of all she loved God.’ . . .”
” ‘We want to know,’ said Bowser. ‘We know that people were in and around the area. We have gotten very little information and we need the public to provide that information so Charnice’s killer can be captured.’ . . .”
BloomScreen and DC Moving Pictures present a collection of experimental short films created in response to recent cases of police misconduct and the resulting protests and civil unrest…
In recent weeks, protesters have marched against police violence in cities from New York to Boston as troops stood by in Baltimore to enforce a curfew imposed after civil unrest over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. The tragedy in Baltimore is just the latest in a proliferation of high-profile police violence cases that have occurred over the last three years.
Since 2014, filmmaker Can Tuzcu and other independent filmmakers have created a number of avant-garde documentary short films that engage current political events and provide a militant call to action – to end police violence! We will screen and discuss four of these short films. (Parental Advisory: Some videos reference police violence and are not suitable for all ages).
The screening will be followed by audience discussion and Q&A with filmmaker Can Tuzcu, and Chris Rue, of DC Moving Pictures – a movie screening project dedicated to showcasing great movies and great filmmakers at local spaces in and around the District.
*Suggested Donation: $10. Proceeds support BloomBars. Free organic popcorn.
BloomScreen Indie Film Night is a weekly series of independent and foreign films, accompanied by discussions with filmmakers, experts and other guests.
Last week’s post A Place to Play: Potomac Gardens, Public Housing and Our Children made clear that the playground at the Potomac Gardens public housing complex had seen better days. The children who live in Potomac Gardens had stopped using it and their parents wanted it replaced. But the owners of the property, the District of Columbia Housing Authority, really couldn’t come up with the money to make that happen.
Despite the obvious need for affordable housing in the District of Columbia and indeed urban centers across the country, only a ridiculously small percentage of our taxes supports public housing. As a result, a new playground for Potomac Gardens wouldn’t be funded by the Public Housing Operating Fund or the Public Housing Capital Fund.
It’s very popular among the political right to rely on Ronald Reagan’s edict that “government is not the solution, government is the problem.” One may consider the former state of Potomac Gardens playground as supporting that statement but the reality is we rely on government for a lot of things—infrastructure, education, security, etc. If basic safety net issues were funded properly, government might do better by us all. Until that day arrives (and it might never happen), communities have to make demands of their elected representatives and government officials and then hold them to their mandate to serve the citizenry.
So here’s how Potomac Gardens got its new playground. Parents brought their concerns to the Potomac Gardens Resident Council. Resident Council President and D.C. Housing Authority Commissioner Aquarius Vann-Ghasri, worked with both Little Lights Urban Ministries and DCHA Director of Asset Management Laurie Putscher to try and solve the problem. Little Lights had a relationship with the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project, and despite the fact that the children who live in Potomac Gardens are not in fact homeless, they were willing to work with Little Lights and the Potomac Gardens community. Unfortunately, after months of negotiations and missed deadlines the new playground didn’t materialize.
Residents vote on playground design.
Residents vote on playground design.
Residents vote on playground design.
At this point, DCHA Director of Asset Management Laurie Putscher stepped up to the plate. Though she was unable to leverage DCHA funds for the playground, she was able to leverage resources from the District’s non-profit and corporate sectors. First of all, Putscher contacted Make Kids Smile, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to providing playground equipment for underserved children in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Make Kids Smile raises money for playground equipment and donates the materials to the recipient. They also pay a certified installer to be present on the day of the build to ensure the project is properly constructed and meets all applicable safety standards.
The president of Make Kids Smile, brought in a troop of volunteers from Foulger-Pratt, who had assembled and installed playground equipment before. They were joined by a slew of Potomac Gardens’ residents who were delighted to finally see their wishes brought to fruition. Little Lights Urban Ministries, happy to finally have a playground they can use during their summer programming, also sent volunteers.
In addition to volunteers, Foulger-Pratt also donated $5000 to fix the basketball rims, add additional landscaping beautification, and some painting. CT Management, the company DCHA has under contract to manage Potomac Gardens, also donated $5,000 and provided lunch for many of the volunteers. Finally, Laurie Putscher also contacted the Earth Conservation Corps who planted 20-30 trees, not just along the side of the playground itself, but throughout the property.
Providing a playground for kids who live in public housing shouldn’t be more complicated than building a dog park but in the District of Columbia, it might be. In 2007, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) issued regulations which allowed for the creation of official, public dog parks on District-owned parkland. So far there are two dog parks in Ward Six and a third, which will be funded privately, has been approved. DPR has been around in one form or another since 1790 and yet only maintains eight playgrounds for children in Ward Six, the playground in Potomac Gardens is not one of them.
Public-private partnerships make sense for dog parks but do they make sense for playgrounds? Ward 6 Councilman Charles Allen was happy to ask DCHA Director Adrian Todman to get more involved and push for a new playground at Potomac Gardens, but the driving energy definitely came from the community. Without their willingness to hold elected representatives and public officials accountable to their constituents even this small victory could not have been achieved.
Below are images of the playground on the Potomac Gardens public housing complex as it was when Grassroots DC was founded and moved onto the property back in 2013. Broken down and missing safety rails, is the playground at Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex safe? How do public housing communities fix these issues?
playground
no safety rails
swingset but no swings
no safety rails here either
The state of the playground was a topic of discussion in our basic computer class and a cause for concern in resident council meetings. Little Lights Urban Ministries, another nonprofit located in Potomac Gardens, who offers tutoring and a summer program for kids from pre-k to the 8th grade, also had concerns. The basketball court was another issue. Potomac Gardens’ resident Carlton Moxley sometimes laid out his own cash to replace the backboards.
One might assume that the playground of a public housing complex would be paid for and maintained by the government, but public housing is a complicated business. Most of us don’t even know who owns public housing. Is it the city? Is it the federal government? Below are some answers.
While the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) oversees the public housing program, it is administered locally by about 3,100 public housing agencies across the United States. The local public housing agency that administers Potomac Gardens and indeed all of D.C.’s public housing complexes is the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA). Most public housing agencies own and manage their public housing developments themselves, but some contract with private management companies. DCHA does not manage Potomac Gardens itself; management of the property has been contracted out to CT Management.
All of this information, still leaves unanswered the question, where do the funds for the replacement of playgrounds in public housing developments like Potomac Gardens come from? The federal government funds public housing through two main streams: (1) the Public Housing Operating Fund, which is intended to cover the gap between the rents that public housing tenants pay and the developments’ operating costs (such as maintenance and security); and (2) the Public Housing Capital Fund, which funds renovation of developments and replacement of items such as appliances and heating and cooling equipment.
The purchase and installation of a new playground can easily cost more than $100,000. According to the US Department of Housing Operating Fund Budget for 2016 the D.C. Housing Authority will receive about $6,164 per unit to cover the gap between the rents that public housing tenants pay and the development’s actual operating cost. HUD’s Annual Budget does not explicitly state that District gets $6,164 per unit from the Operating Fund. The total budget for the Public Housing Operating Fund in 2015 was $4.44 billion. The share that goes to the District of Columbia Housing Authority is 1.1 percent or $48.84 million. The District of Columbia Housing Authority manages 7,924 units. Divide the $48.84 million by 7,924 units and you get $6,164 per unit. Of course, DCHA doesn’t spend $6,164 on each unit. Most of the money goes to salaries and other overhead costs. But this figure gives us an idea what kind of money DCHA has to work with to meet the maintenance and operating needs of the District’s public housing. In any case, we can’t expect DCHA to allocate $100,000 from the Operating Fund to pay for a single playground in one housing complex.
It might be more logical for the money to come from the Public Housing Capital Fund. In fact, DCHA received $27 million from the Capital Fund in 2014 and an additional $34.4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. However, the Captial Fund grants were probably used for renovations and replacements needed in a single, housing complex or for specific projects like lead abatement, renovations needed to bring DCHA properties up to accessibility standards or environmental sustainability initiatives. Most of the Recovery Act funding will go to enhance housing projects that have or will become mixed-income developments like the townhouses at Cappers Carrollsburg. Getting money from the Capital Fund or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to replace a single playground in a 100 percent low-income housing development is highly unlikely.
So, what then? Clearly, the playground in the images above needs to be replaced or torn down all together. If the community within the Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex can’t expect help for a project like this from the District of Columbia Housing Authority, what do they do? That question will be answered in the next post…
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