By Liane Scott, on August 13th, 2015 
Back by popular demand Family and Friends of Incarcerated People Present The 10th Annual Public Safety Community Event Saturday, August 15, 2015 Noon – 7:00 PM Anacostia Park, 1900 Anacostia Drive, SE East of the Sousa (Pennsylvania Ave) Bridge, near the roller skating rink
This will be a fun-filled day for the children of those incarcerated and those that may be at risk.
[video src="http://www.grassrootsdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Janelle-Alia-Jobe.mp4" /]
Video produced by Janelle Alia Jobe
Event activities are designed to: • Create harmony among our children o Rebuild our communities • Pass on valuable information o Express ideas on how to help at-risk-youth • Share a wonderful unselfish act of love o For the safety of our community
By Sarah Livingston, on August 11th, 2015 
It was a very welcome sight to this citizen’s eyes to read Grassroots DC’s announcement a few weeks ago about the report on mayoral control of the schools—An Evaluation of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia: Reform in a Changing Landscape. Especially since the report has received far, far less attention in the other media than passing the law that gave the mayor control, the Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA), did in 2007. The reasons for this difference in attention may have something to do with the fact that those who benefit from mayoral control probably aren’t so keen to have a report that shows several deficiencies in this form of school governance widely known amongst the public.
The saddest, but probably not the most surprising, finding the report makes is that in all the schools together, DCPS and charters, 49.9% of the 70,000 plus students are proficient or above in reading and 54.4% proficient or above in math. That means that about half the students in the two systems, some 35,000 of the city’s children and teenagers, have basic or below basic skills in two of the most important things they need to know in order to continue learning.
Without acquiring these skills in the early grades, kindergarten up to third or fourth grade, children are seriously impaired in their ability to go further in their learning and stay on grade level or better. Catching up is hard to do and even harder in schools that aren’t providing these students with what they need to learn the basics in the first place, much less catch up when they do fall behind. But mayoral control has put people in charge of DCPS who don’t seem to know what’s needed and even when the Council increased funds for “at-risk” kids in 2013, spent the money on other things.
Meanwhile, the charter schools have gained a reputation for finding ways to eliminate students who have fallen behind, which helps their reading and math scores look somewhat better—51.4% in reading and 59.6% in math—than the city-wide average shown above. But still, and especially with all the talk of charter school’s superiority and the charter school Board approving one charter after another, many of which go to people who don’t come from DC but are funded by DC taxpayers, these figures from the Evaluation are the “bottom line” of what mayoral control has added up to in its eight years.
This is a painfully telling finding especially to the honest who’ve been going along with it in a good faith effort to give it a try. And, perhaps, it’s a “bottom line” that those benefiting from mayoral control would rather not get much, if any, attention.
By Grassroots DC, on August 7th, 2015 
Cross-posted on behalf of the Stop Police Terror Project DC
August 9th will mark one year since 18-year-old Mike Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Mike Brown’s death, and the subsequent non-indictment of the officer that killed him, resulted in a shockwave of marches, rallies, shut downs and die-ins all across the country. The recent deaths of Sandra Bland in Texas and Kindra Chapman Alabama, both at the hands of police, show the need to continue struggling against racist police terror and to show that we will not stand for the ongoing brutalization and killing of Black people in America. Join Stop Police Terror Project DC on Saturday, August 8th at the African American Civil Memorial to rally and march in the memory of Mike Brown and other victims of police killings past and present.
SHUT IT DOWN FOR MICHAEL BROWN! Rally and March in Memory of Mike Brown and other police terror victims. August 8th, 2015, 7:00 p.m. African American Civil War Memorial
DCFerguson, a group that’s done a great deal to confront police terror, has changed their name and expanded their mission. Learn more about the new organization Stop Police Terror Project DC below.
Formal statement on the dissolution of DCFerguson:
DCFerguson first emerged during a vital and spirited time in the burgeoning national anti-racist movement. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, and the subsequent non-indictment of the policemen that killed them galvanized the country, and after several successful actions, the organizers decided to form a coalition to address police terror locally. The organization was able to raise awareness about the jump-out squads and other militarized police tactics, collected testimonies of local police terror victims, and demanded that city funds being used to increase police presence on the street be redirected to community-led security efforts.
Recently, due to pressures created in part by our efforts, the Metropolitan Police Department, under the leadership of Chief Cathy Lanier, has shifted its tactics. The department will reorganize the seven individual vice units that are currently responsible for most of the recent misconduct, and create a central Narcotics and Special Investigation Division along with a Crime Interdiction Unit. Lanier claims these changes are a part of a shifting focus in the MPD from low level dealers to suppliers, along with a new focus on synthetic drugs, but we believe this is simply a cosmetic change being made to avoid changing the lethal tactics that lead to the death of people like Ralphael Briscoe and DeOnte Rawlings.
As they change and adapt, so do we, and as such, DCFerguson has decided to reorganize under a new name with new leadership. Ferguson brought us to where we are, but at this juncture so many tragic incidents nationally and locally have illuminated our understanding of these issues. As such we wanted our name to reflect that expanded reality.
The new organization, Stop Police Terror Project, D.C. (SPTP), will continue to function as an organization dedicated to ending racist militarized policing in our region. SPTP will continue to be structured as a set of volunteer committees who meet independently to complete tasks for the organization’s different projects. Everyone who was active on these committees in DCFerguson is encouraged to continue their work in SPTP as we intend to move forward with our plans as outlined in the last few months.
Since the state has reorganized itself in a fraudulent way for the problem to continue under a new guise, we intend to reorganize in a genuine way in order to put a stop to these abuses. So with a history rooted in addressing racist police tactics in a concrete way, SPTP will continue to expose the institutional violence perpetrated upon poor and working Blacks in the area, will continue to highlight the interconnectedness of forms of oppression related to police terror, and of course, will continue to be in the streets. The struggle continues.
Sincerely,
Tiffany Flowers Sean Blackmon Yasmina Mrabet Eugene Puryear
By Guest Contributor, on July 30th, 2015 
Cross-posted from District Measured written by Steven Giachetti
It has long been a tenet of American society that income disparity is more acceptable provided that there is a reasonable chance that someone who starts poor can make their way up the economic ladder to at least middle class status through education and work. This is the premise of the American dream and of a society based on the principle of meritocracy. In this post we use DC taxpayer data to analyze income mobility, the extent to which an individual’s income changes over time. This data allows us to determine the probability of an individual moving up the rungs of the economic ladder. The analysis also determines how far up one is likely to move up the economic ladder, starting at the bottom.
We focus initially on singles since income mobility is easier to define for a single individual than for married couples, where income is defined on an aggregate basis. For a married couple, upward mobility could be the result of various outcomes- both spouses moving up the ladder simultaneously, one spouse moving up the ladder and the other remaining steady, or some other combination.
We examined mobility for singles by looking at where individuals stood on the economic ladder in 2002 and compared this to where they ended up in 2012. The percentage of filers who changed positions on the ladder measures the probability of moving on the ladder.
Here’s how to interpret the results shown in the matrix below:
Reading across starting from the top row, 39 percent of individuals who were in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in 2002 remained in the bottom twenty percent in 2012, 28 percent moved up one rung of the ladder to the second quintile (20th to 40th percentile), 15 percent to the third quintile and so on for the other quintiles. Similarly for the second row, 18 percent of individuals who were in the second quintile in 2002 fell down the ladder ending up in the lowest quintile in 2012, 35 percent remained in the same quintile and so on. Shaded boxes in yellow denote no change in income status, blue shading denotes upward mobility and red denotes downwards mobility.
Income Mobility: Chances of Moving on the Economic Ladder by Income Range, 2002-2012
Source: DC Income Tax Data 2002-2012, DISTRICTMEASURED.COM
Highlights
Thirty nine percent of singles who started poor (in the lowest quintile) remained poor after a decade. The median age for filers stuck at the bottom was 49 years. Given that these individuals are well into their career paths, the chances of their income prospects improving in the next ten years are likely to be small. Twenty eight percent who started at the bottom moved up one rung of the ladder, and 33 percent from the lowest quintile made it to middle class status or higher (40th percentile and higher). For those starting in the second quintile in 2002, the chance of moving up to middle class status one decade later was 47 percent. The likelihood of remaining in the middle class in 2012 for those already in the middle class in 2002 was greater than 25 percent.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
By Liane Scott, on July 24th, 2015 
Meet Charles Wright. He’s a tenant at 1229 G Street SE, which is home to about 140 seniors and persons with disabilities inside the Potomac Gardens Public Housing Complex. Charles is a senior with a seizure disorder. He also has HIV. He was diagnosed in 1999 or somewhere there abouts. A number of people living at 1229 G Street SE are HIV positive or living with AIDS, but not many are willing to talk about it. As a volunteer at Whitman Walker Charles is not shy about the disease, his condition or how he got there.
Charles Wright was born and raised in the District of Columbia. He and his family lived on Euclid Street Northwest in Petworth, which even then was a relatively fashionable. He fully admits that he was very spoiled. He bought his clothes at Woodies and Landburgh’s. His father bought him a Triumph Spitfire. Plenty of girls were interested in Charles but there was only one girl for him. Yes indeed, Charles Wright was a big man at Roosevelt Senior High School. Like the other popular boys, he played basketball in a park on Hamilton Street and smoked reefer with his best friend Ronald and the other guys playing pick up ball on the court. Eventually, the reefer led to harder drugs, heroine, cocaine and eventually crack.
It’s hard to say when Charles contracted HIV. Despite his drug use, he functioned reasonably well. After high school, he went to Maryland Eastern Shore for accounting, but he left after two years. It was enough to land him a job at the United Planning Organization and later a better job as a tax accountant at the Department of Finance and Revenue. But the money he was making, didn’t allow him to live the spoiled life to which he had become accustomed. He needed money, not just for the drugs but to dress well and look good when he went to the clubs. So Charles started forging checks and credit cards.
His drug use lost him his high school sweet heart, but looking good at the clubs got him a new girl. “We met at Tiffany’s,” Charles remembers fondly. “She had pretty feet. In fact, that was my pick up line, ‘you have cute toes.’” They danced the Hustle and because it was pay day, Charles bought everyone at the table a drink. The rest is history. They fell in love, moved into an apartment together in Northeast DC and had a son.
All was going smoothly until he got caught for his forgery and found out that he was positive for HIV. Fortunately, he hadn’t infected his partner and so his son was spared as well. He spent eight years in a low-security prison. When he got out, he was still using drugs but this time without the steady accounting job or the illegal income. Charles and his son’s mother continued to get along well, but he didn’t move back in with her. She didn’t ask for child support and encouraged him to be a part of their son’s life. He admits that he might have been more present for his son, if he hadn’t been chasing the drugs. Somewhere during this time, Charles’ high school friend Ronald died of an overdose.
Fortunately, for Charles he found Whitman Walker and his life began to turn around. Having finally decided to quit using drugs, he started going to their Narcotic Anonymous meetings. Eventually, he was allowed in their drug rehabilitation program, which unlike the vast majority of in-patient treatment programs, was entirely free. That was three years ago. Charles stayed off drugs for two of those years but eventually, overcome by loneliness, he started using again. “I was frustrated and mad,” he says, “so I started using weed and crack again. The loneliness is the hardest part about drug use. You get in your apartment and you just get lonely. And then you go and do what happens.”
Charles still struggles to keep from using but he is trying to quit again. He has a new girl friend. She does not like his drug use and Charles wants her to be proud of him. So, he’s started going to the Narcotics Anonymous meetings at Whitman Walker again. “In the beginning, they know you won’t be clean,” he says, “but by taking the meetings, they expect you to get strong enough to get clean.” Charles hopes to go through Whitman Walker’s drug treatment program again when they agree he’s ready. . . . → Read More: Potomac Gardens’ Resident Fights HIV & Addiction
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
|
)% 
%categories-linked( 