Written by Darryl Fears, cross-posted from the Washington Post
(Jared Soares/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ) – Ivy City resident Andria Swanson near the grounds of the closed Alexander Crummell School.
On any scale, Ivy City is a 98-pound weakling among District neighborhoods. It measures only 1.7 square miles near the Maryland border in Northeast and has some of the city’s poorest residents, with an unemployment rate approaching 50 percent.
But that has not stopped the D.C. government from placing a heavy burden on Ivy City’s scrawny shoulders, making it a base of operations for large projects other neighborhoods shun, “a dumping ground,” residents say.
Ivy City is dotted with parking lots for scores of government vehicles — quarter-ton snowplows, salt trucks, parking-enforcement vehicles and school buses that belch exhaust as they rumble through the streets. Recently, when Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) announced a plan to build a bus depot for 65 D.C-to-New York motorcoaches in the heart of Ivy City, residents said “enough” and filed a lawsuit to stop it.
There is a lot at stake in the showdown between one of the city’s smallest neighborhoods and the mayor. Bus travel is a major boon for the city; ridership rose from nearly 2 million in 1999 to nearly 7 million in 2009, according to the District Department of Transportation’s 2011 Motorcoach Action Plan.
By Luke, Crossposted from DC’s Independent Media Center.
The multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan for Union Station includes an ugly extra: an “Interim plan” to park idling inter-city buses at Crummell School, in Ivy City. Many residents there already have asthma. On the 15th of August, over half of participants in an “open house” at Union Station about the proposed “master plan” were from Empower DC.
This was not a speaking presentation, but rather a collection of tables with information about the planned project. As usual, they were not soliciting any real public input, just saying “here’s what we have already decided to do” while meeting legal technicalities required of such projects.
Children wore dust masks as a symbol of diesel smoke from idling buses. Empower DC T-shirts were everywhere, as were tough questions about parking “Chinatown” buses in an African-American residential neighborhood.
One of the tough questions was my own: where’s the money, an estimated $7 billion, for the project going to come from. The answer was that they don’t know-nobody is admitting to a funding source for the project. Artwork for the proposal shows office buildings built in the “air rights” over the tracks, but relying on the demand for office space for funding is chancy at best in an uncertain economy. If funding evaporates partway through the project, the proposed 10 year “interim” bus parking at Crummell School could become permanent.
Kids in masks, hopefully they won’t have to wear them for 10 years of “interim” bus parking!
Empower DC marches in, security says no but gives up after being ignored.
Who’s in the (open) house? Empower DC dominates event as not many other DC residents show up.
The Centennial of the Alexander Crummell School, a long-neglected historic landmark in the Ivy City community, was celebrated on Saturday, November 19, 2011. (Yes, this post is well after the fact, but certainly still relevant.) Empower DC released the Ivy City Neighborhood & Oral History Project, a book that features photos, excerpts from oral history interviews, and archival news clippings about one of DC’s most historic yet least known neighborhoods. The booklet will be distributed to participants, community members and libraries.
The reception was attended by many of the former Ivy City residents and alumni of Ivy City’s Alexander Crummell School. In 2002, several Crummell alumni played a key role, along with the Ivy City–Trinidad Civic Association, in winning historic landmark status for the Alexander Crummell School, which was built in 1911 and served as one of the District of Columbia’s first public elementary schools for black children until its closure in 1972. The Crummell alumni and current residents of the community share the goal of not only preserving the school but also having it renovated to serve as a recreation and workforce development center for the neighborhood, which currently lacks amenities of the sort.
Photos featured in the book demonstrate how Ivy City was a haven for middle- and working-class blacks during the District of Columbia’s more segregated past. The book also documents the efforts of the children and youth of Ivy City as they attempt to transform the abandoned Crummell School into a community center, including a photo of DC Mayor Adrian Fenty signing a pledge to renovate Crummell for community needs. “The book will be a resource for teachers, students and all DC residents, who can learn about this small but uniquely tight-knit community,” explains Empower DC Executive Director Parisa Norouzi. “This is the first known record of the community’s history.” The goal of the Ivy City Neighborhood and Oral History Project is to bring together the former and current residents who both have the best interest of the community at heart as well as to foster pride in the community through the sharing of oral history and personal stories.
In addition to the release of the Ivy City Neighborhood & Oral History Project book, the celebration was also an opportunity to screen the documentary Crummell School: Heart and Soul of the Community, which was produced by American University Anthropology student and Grassroots Media Project intern Sean Furmage.
Ivy City is a neighborhood in northeast DC. Bordered on one side by Gallaudet University and Mt. Olivet Cemetery on the other, it’s a little off the beaten path. Not being within walking distance of a Metro subway line, development and it’s not so welcome counterpart displacement have not overwhelmed the area. For those in the neighborhood whose incomes cause them to fear the harsh winds of gentrification this is both a blessing and a curse. Nearby Trinidad, which is just a little closer to the H Street Corridor, has gotten a state-of-the-art recreation center along with its increased property values and higher-income neighbors. Ivy City on the other hand can’t get a library kiosk or a basketball court but it has gotten a youth detention facility. This is in keeping with the slow decline of Ivy City which was one of those DC neighborhoods where African-American families were able to thrive despite segregation during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Unfortunately, like many low-income and working class African-American neighborhoods, it began to decline in the 1970s and ’80s. Many Ivy City residents site the closing of Crummell, the community’s elementary school, in 1972 as marking the downward trajectory of the neighborhood. For more than thirty years, the Crummell School Alumni Association has tried to convince the District Government to turn Crummell into a community center or a recreation center or a workforce development center, anything that would be a positive investment in the community and uplift its residents. The following audio documentary produced by Empower DC as part of their Ivy City History Project gives you a good idea of how much work has gone into the effort.
We Act Radio’s Live Wire: Empower DC Community Hour 2-27-12 – Ivy City Audio Documentary [haiku url=”http://www.grassrootsmediaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ivy-City-Audio-Documentary-2-27-12.mp3″ title=”Ivy City Audio Documentary”]
This version of the podcast varies slightly from the original as we broadcast it on We Act Radio’s Live Wire: The Empower DC Community Hour. Unfortunately, this was to be our last episode of the radio program as the Grassroots Media Project is already stretched beyond our limited capacity. We are continuing to produce radio features to air on WPFW, and hopefully We Act Radio as well, but a one hour broadcast each week is not possible at this time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite anyone out there in radio land who would like to help us build our capacity to a…
Grassroots Media Project Open House
Meet the Director of the Grassroots Media Project &
Find Out How You Can Contribute To The Work of Empower DC’s Media Corps.
Sign up for classes in basic radio & video production and help Empower
DC get the word out about our work!
Saturday April 21 & 28
Anytime between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM
1419 V Street NW
(2 ½ blocks northwest of the U Street/Cardozo Metro Station, 13th Street Exit)
Snacks Will Be Provided. Children Are Welcome. Please RSVP Liane Scott at 202-234-9119 ext 106 or email Liane@empowerdc.org.
Both schools have been considered under-enrolled, yet one was demolished and the other completely refurbished. William Jordan, a member of the list serve Concerned for DCPS has some theories as to why. I’ve reprinted them below because I think they are worthy of your consideration.
Posted on the Concerned For DCPS List Serve on January 5, 2012:
Takoma Educational Campus after the Rehabilitation
I would suggest anyone who has followed or participated in the “Bruce Monroe School” over the years to pick up the Wednesday, December 28, 2011 addition of Northwest_Current 12.28.11 . On the front page is an article about the reopening of the Takoma Educational Campus one year after a fire closed the school. The article is relevant to Bruce Monroe because the city and officials, including Councilmember Graham, etc. found a way to address the needs of Takoma doing the very things they told our community and Bruce Monroe stakeholders they could not do months prior to the Takoma fire. It reveals the pattern of dishonesty and political disdain by then Chancellor Rhee and Councilmember Graham toward this community and the population of families and students served by Bruce Monroe.
Bruce Monroe Elementary after the Demolition
The article explains how the city initially planned to make $2 million in repairs but later decided to invest $25.5 million in a complete rehab. Via a bait & switch, Councilmember Graham and Rhee mislead this community into believing that the DCPS capital budget could not be adjusted to do a complete rehab of Bruce Monroe either as part of the redevelopment of the old site or as rehab of Bruce Monroe at Park View as they promised in prior years.
As evidence of what was actually promised, the notes from community meetings in which the future of Bruce Monroe was discussed can be downloaded via the following links.:
Bruce Monroe, Park View & Meyer were closed down as part of the 2008 DCPS Rhee closings supposedly because of low enrollment. It should be noted that Takoma Enrollment was on par with Meyer. However, Bruce Monroe was reconstituted and the students shipped to Park View the least hospitable of all 3 buildings. In fact Park View at the time could have easily been considered dangerous. Despite this Bruce Monroe students were not relocated to the Meyer building which was in much better shape, they went to Park View. In the meantime, Councilmember Graham placed a boxing program in Meyer Elementary, to which he had been funneling earmarks for years with no community or practical oversight. Clearly, Ward 1 closings were not so much about education, but politics and real estate development. Rhee closed schools with minimal responsibility and Councilmember Graham place his political concerns above those of DCPS students or the community at large.
In this case Councilmember Graham and then Chancellor Rhee engaged in operating at one of the lowest political and ethical standards possible under the guise of school reform. To politically punish and breakup the Bruce Monroe school family, they place a school primarily serving working class Latino and African American families in building (Park View) which at the time had become unfit when better alternatives were available. The positive outcome for Takoma when placed in context makes clear the dishonest nature of reform under Rhee, the unethical cesspool that is Ward 1 politics and ultimately the nexus between pay-to-play politics, real estate development and school reform.
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