By Sean Furmage, on May 25th, 2011 
Homeless service advocates marching to the Wilson Building. (Photo by Roshan Ghimire).
On May 18th, around 100 homeless people and homeless advocates gathered at the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) shelter to participate in the “March to Save Homeless Services”. This event was organized to protest budget cuts that could lead to the loss of funding for a number of homeless services and the closing of city shelters next April. After marching along E street to the Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, the group met with a “Reality Tour” event organized by Save Our Safety Net DC. The marchers joined with activists interested in restoring funding for all social service programs, and not just homeless services. Over 200 people crammed into the Wilson Building to protest budget cuts soon to be introduced by Mayor Vincent Gray’s city council. If these cuts go through, vital social services for some of DC’s most vulnerable residents will be lost.
Listen to our audio report of the event!
Photo by Roshan Ghimire.
Binnie and I spoke to Robert Warren, a formerly homeless advocate for the People’s Fairness Coalition, and Blair Rush, a current CCNV shelter resident, to get their views on the budget cuts and what it will mean to them. Robert has had problems with the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) which provides assistance with rent to individuals and families at risk of becoming homeless as well as those exiting homelessness. As federally funded programs like the HPRP fail to provide sustainable assistance to people facing homelessness, local cuts to homeless services in DC will only make things worse for residents.
Robert Warren inside the Wilson Building. (Photo by Hazal Yolga).
Blair Rush interviewed with her service dog Kelo inside the Wilson Building. (Photo by Hazal Yolga).
Blair faces having her Interim Disability Assistance (IDA) cut off. Initially, Mayor Gray’s proposed budget cuts sought to eliminate all funding for the Interim Disability Program. Although Chairman Kwame Brown’s as yet unfunded proposals would result in some funding being restored for IDA, there are still over three million dollars of cuts on the table. This will mean hundreds of people will lose their IDA income and over a thousand will remain on a long waiting list. IDA provides a lifeline for many DC residents and cutting it will have devastating results for over a thousand people who currently receive it.
The DC Fiscal Policy Institute notes that these budget cuts are coming at a time when a large number of low-income DC residents are still experiencing unemployment and are unable to provide for themselves and their families in the wake of the recession. Cuts to homeless and other safety net services in the District will only worsen the situation for homeless, unemployed, low-income and struggling residents.
Save our Safety Net DC is organizing an emergency action where activists will gather again at the Wilson Building at noon on Tuesday, May 24th. This will be the last chance to ask the city council to vote against 19 million dollars of budget cuts to social services. So far, Chairman Kwame Brown has refused to raise taxes at all for DC residents. Activists from Save our Safety Net DC and other DC residents and advocates for restoring funding for social services argue that these harmful budget cuts could be avoided through a small increase in income tax for those residents earning in excess of 100,000 dollars per year. This would be an alternative to what many claim is the balancing of the budget on the backs of the poor.
People crowd into the corridors of the Wilson building outside councilmembers' offices. (Photo by Roshan Ghimire).
By Liane Scott, on March 16th, 2011 
Workers Rally at Giant Food in Greenbelt, Maryland
When you buy a box of cereal or a roll of toilet paper from a Giant in Maryland or the District of Columbia, chances are those products were stored at a warehouse in Jessup, Maryland before they went to your neighborhood grocery store. More than 500 employees of that warehouse in Jessup are in danger of losing their jobs. Giant plans to turnover operations of the shop to a notoriously anti-union company, C & S Wholesale Grocers, who will more than likely outsource the work to a non-union warehouse in Pennsylvania. This fear is justified by C&S’s closure of a distribution center in Woodbridge, N.J., which resulted in more than 1,000 layoffs.
To stop the loss of area jobs, hundreds of grocery and wholesale workers held a rally at a Giant in Greenbelt Maryland last Sunday, March 13, demanding that Giant respect the community that supports it by employing locally. If you weren’t able to attend the rally but recognize that the loss of jobs in the region is none too good for the local economy or if you feel solidarity for the workers because you yourself or someone you know has been or is at risk of being outsourced, you can at least keep yourself informed thanks to the following audio report produced by Netfa Freeman: Giant Food Worker Rally
For more information on the campaign itself and how you can get involved go to the Justice at Giant campaign website.
Giant is hoping this little maneuver will save them $10 million annually in non-labor costs. Turnout at the rally was perhaps better than it’s been for most labor demonstrations because of events taking place in Wisconsin, Ohio and as far flung as Egypt and Tunisia. It seems that workers around the world are finally coming to the conclusion that those of us on the relatively far Left have understood for a long time––the corporate oligarchies that control our economy don’t really have the best interest of the working- and middle-class at heart. Our elected officials, who are bought and paid for by those same oligarchies, will put the interests of their corporate masters ahead of the electorate every time.
So, when corporations like Giant Foods and elected officials like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and DC Mayor Vincent Gray say, “times are tough. We all have to take a hit.” We know they don’t really mean we as in everyone, todo el mundo. This may seem like common sense to your average progressive, but we haven’t been good at convincing most of the working- and middle-class of these facts. By bailing out those that caused the worst economic calamity since 1929 and having no empathy for the rest of us, our elected officials are making the case for us.
The sizable rally against Giant and the support for striking nurses at Washington Hospital Center are ripples of this growing realization that we are feeling here in the District of Columbia. Will it translate into a growing fight against austerity measures proposed to balance the city budget? Will more people get on board the effort to keep the city from selling off publicly-owned properties to developers or stop the corporate take over of public schools?
We as individuals cannot be at every rally. We cannot stay on top of every issue but we can get the word out about the events that we are able to attend in just the same manner as Netfa Freeman. Netfa Freeman is a volunteer radio producer at WPFW. He co-produces the public affairs program Voices With Vision. I am quite pleased to announce that he will be teaching a radio production class for the Grassroots Media Project which will meet on four consecutive Wednesdays starting March 23, 2011. There schedule is as follows:
Wednesday March 23 ……………….. 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Wednesday March 30 ……………….. 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Wednesday April 6 ……………………. 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Wednesday April 13 ………………….. 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Class will be held in the media lab at Empower DC, 1419 V Street NW, from 6-8pm. To sign up, email the coordinator at liane@grassrootsmediaproject.org. There are only six slots available.
If this movement that we are finally seeing is to be sustained, it will need a voice. Sign up for this radio production class and help give the movement, locally at least, the voice it needs to sustain itself.
. . . → Read More: Time To Get Involved: Giant Food & Beyond
By Liane Scott, on February 15th, 2011 
Godfather of Go-go, Mr. Chuck Brown
Grassroots Media Project radio producers Brenda Hayes and Be Steadwell interviewed Chuck Brown, the Godfather of Go-go, at WPFW a couple of weeks before the Grammy’s. Mr. Brown was nominated for the song LOVE featuring Jill Scott with Marcus Miller in the category Best R&B Performance By a Duo or Group With Vocals. As no one outside of the DC radius has a proper understanding of Go-go, Chuck Brown did not win. However, all you Go-go fans out there will want to hear the Hayes/Steadwell interview of Chuck Brown because as I said, he never lets us down.
Chuck Brown Interview
Thank you Wikipedia for the following information:
Chuck Brown (born August 28, 1936) is a guitarist and singer who is affectionately called “The Godfather of Go-go“. Go-go is a subgenre of funk music developed in and around Washington, D.C. in the mid- and late 1970s. While its musical classification, influences, and origins are debated, Brown is regarded as the fundamental force behind the creation of go-go music.
Brown’s musical career began in the 1960s playing guitar with Jerry Butler and The Earls of Rhythm, joining Los Latinos in 1965. He still performs music today and is commonly known in the Washington, DC area. Brown’s early hits include “I Need Some Money” and “Bustin’ Loose“. “Bustin’ Loose” has been adopted by the Washington Nationals baseball team as its home run celebration song, and was interpolated by Nelly for his 2002 number one hit “Hot in Herre.” Brown also recorded go-go covers of early jazz and blues songs, such as “Go-Go Swing” Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing If Ain’t Got That Swing“, “Moody’s Mood for Love”, Johnny Mercer’s “Midnight Sun“, Louis Jordan’s “Run Joe”, and T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday”.
He has influenced other go-go bands such as Big G and The Backyard Band, Rare Essence, Experience Unlimited (EU), Little Benny and the Masters, and Trouble Funk.
The song “Ashley’s Roachclip” from the Soul Searchers’ 1974 album Salt of the Earth contains a famous drum break, sampled countless times in various other tracks.[1]
In the mid-1990s, he performed the theme music of Fox‘s sitcom The Sinbad Show which later aired on The Family Channel and Disney Channel.
Brown is considered a local legend in Washington, D.C., and has appeared in television advertisements for the Washington Post and other area companies. The D.C. Lottery‘s “Rolling Cash 5” ad campaign features Chuck Brown singing his 2007 song “The Party Roll” in front of various D.C. city landmarks such as Ben’s Chili Bowl.
Brown resides in Waldorf, Maryland. His son, Nekos, was a defensive end/linebacker for the Virginia Tech football team. While his son was in college, Brown scheduled concerts and other appearances around the Hokies home schedule to ensure that he would never miss a game, and became a fixture at Lane Stadium. Following the Virginia Tech massacre, Brown was “absolutely devastated” by the tragedy, and cried every day for two weeks.[2] In shows that followed, Brown would pause for a moment in prayer for the victims and their families before beginning his performance, and dedicated several shows to their memory.
Brown was the subject of the cover article in The Washington Post Magazine on October 4, 2009, entitled Chuck Brown’s Long Dance.[3] He received his first Grammy Award nomination in 2010 for Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals for “Love” (with Jill Scott and Marcus Miller), from the album We Got This.
. . . → Read More: Chuck Brown Never Lets Us Down
By Liane Scott, on February 8th, 2011 
Integrated Classroom at Anacostia High, 1957
Gentrification has a tendency to spread and as it spreads, communities turn over. Examples of racial and economic integration, which we all hope will be the result of urban development, are truly hard to find. In the 1940s & ’50s Anacostia was white and believe it or not, Georgetown was black. While it may be unlikely that Georgetown will ever be affordable enough to sustain a majority black population again, Anacostia may revert to it’s previous status. For much of the last decade many long-term residents of DC (black, white and Latino) who at one time lived in Northwest have sought more affordable homes east of the river. With the recession still in full force in Wards 7 & 8, a considerable number are heading even farther east, across the border into Maryland. Who will remain?
One black-owned DC business that will not be relocating to Ward 9 (Prince George’s County) is Stewart’s Funeral Home. In an exploration of gentrification and those who are able to survive it, Brenda Hayes and Be Steadwell produced the following audio report: A_Home_Away_From_Home. It’s clear that Stewart’s Funeral Home is part of a legacy within DC’s black communities of taking care of their own that stretches from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. But will that tradition last now that the black majority of the District of Columbia is dwindling and will soon cease to exist?
Video producers Judith Hawkins and Valencia Rutledge of Valencia’s It Is What It Is Mobile Talk Show make the case that it is not only African-American business owners who have been established for decades that will survive. The tradition of fulfilling the needs of the community within the community remains, despite the neglect that accompanied the flight of the middle class after integration. Their report on gentrification features a businessman who sells his wares on the street. No, he doesn’t deal drugs, but if you can’t afford a brick and mortar store, then pounding the pavement and taking the product directly to the consumer is one way to go. It may not make him rich, but it will keep him in his Ward 8 home.
The stories featured in this post show the kind of tenacity that’s necessary if native Washingtonians or immigrants from other parts of the country or other parts of the world are to strengthen their roots here and survive gentrification. To rebuild a sense of financial security among the middle class, working class and even low-income residents of DC, we must push for real economic opportunities that extend not only to for-profit developers but also to residents whose investments in the community represents more than just the all mighty dollar but the true wealth of the District of Columbia.
By Liane Scott, on February 5th, 2011 
14th and U Street NW before the Metro.
Gentrification is a funny thing. The developers who bought up all the property along the U Street Corridor staked their fortunes on being able to attract wealthy individuals looking for a central location to live and shop. They capitalized on the history along the corridor and named buildings and businesses after DC’s most famous African-Americans. Ironically, they attracted a whole slew of white folks who seem to think the cultural history of DC is cool, but the low-income and working class black folk who are alive and well today don’t always make the best neighbors. Thus, a neighborhood like Shaw, which was for decades a bastion of the black middle class, who came together to build a sense of stability within a deeply segregated city, remains stable only for those African-Americans who bought and paid for property before the housing bubble or those who are extremely well-heeled.
And so it was with the U Street Corridor. Only three U Street businesses between Georgia Avenue and 16th Street survived the riots of the 60s, the neglect of the 70s, the housing boom and the coming of the U Street/Cardozo Metro Station. Those three businesses are Lee’s Flower and Card Shop, the Industrial Bank of Washington and Ben’s Chili Bowl. How they survived is chronicled in the audio podcast 192 Years of Black B’ness on U Street produced by Brenda Hayes and Be Steadwell. The report makes it clear that although these business owners are thriving now, that was not always the case. For those of us attempting to withstand the harsh winds of gentrification, it is a history well worth remembering.
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