By Guest Contributor, on April 1st, 2011 
By Ben Parisi, Empower DC Child Care Organizer
On Thursday, March 17, 2011, St. Patrick’s Day, members of Empower DC’s Child Care for All Campaign and Save Our Safety Net DC came together to demand that newly elected Mayor Vincent Gray “Show Us the Green” for Child Care Subsidies.
Most of the people featured in this video, and many of their neighbors in Ward 7 and 8 supported Gray – without those wards Gray may well have lost the election. Yet many are worried that Gray will continue some of the same dangerous trends that Fenty began – including slashing the budget for child care subsidies.
The Child Care Subsidy Program is a critically important program that allows low-income families to access child care so that they can keep their jobs, enroll in school, and provide for their families. If these subsidies are cut further, parents will be left with no option but to forego employment and remove their children from quality early childhood education. Child care providers, who rely on DC’s reimbursement for serving subsidy-holders, will be left with no option but to close – as over 50 have already in the past year.
Child care like that provided by those featured in this video ensure that children are more likely to be prepared to enter school, successfully graduate high school, move on to college, and stay out of the criminal justice system. Investment in early childhood has a huge return on investment by saving taxpayer money down the line on reduced need for remedial education and pressure on the penal system.
In four years, this critical program that also employs nearly 6,000 people in DC, has been cut nearly $30 million. THE CUTS MUST STOP NOW. Send Mayor Gray the message: eom@dc.gov.
Thank you to all the Child Care for All Campaign members, to Save Our Safety Net DC, and the Puppet Underground (for the great signs in this video)!!
By Liane Scott, on December 15th, 2010 
Not so much written by the Coordinator, as posted by the Coordinator. This piece was actually written by Ben Parisi of Empower DC
On Tuesday, December 7, 2010, the DC Council voted on a last-minute measure to close a $188 million deficit in the fiscal year 2011 budget. On the chopping block were nearly $50 million in services for DC’s low-income residents. Among these critical services were affordable housing programs, child care subsidies, interim disability assistance, HIV/AIDS screening, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, and more.
Thousands of residents demanded a simple solution of the DC council: a 1% tax increase on income over $200,000. This would have affected only 5% of DC’s wealthiest residents, most of whom have not seen any of their city services cut and have not felt the crunch of this recession as low-income people have. This tax, as small as it is, would have raised more than enough revenue to allow the Council to make the better choice by restoring all the proposed cuts to safety net programs.
A group of 100+ people and organizations, led by Empower DC, DC Jobs with Justice, Save our Safety Net, DC We the People, and H St small businesses, met at the Council Building that morning to voice their protest over the proposed cuts and to call on their elected representatives to make the better choice. Since the council gave only one opportunity for public comment, announced right before Thanksgiving, many of those residents who stood to be impacted by the cuts did not have ample opportunity to voice their opinions. Because of this, a People’s Hearing was planned to take place outside the Council Building that morning, giving spokespeople from an array of safety net programs the opportunity to address the impact of these cuts. Due to the fact that temperatures outside were sub-freezing and there were small children present, the group took its hearing inside, to the fifth floor outside the chamber where the Council would vote in a matter of hours. Immediately, security descended upon those who had gathered to raise their voices to their elected representatives. Spokespeople agreed to whisper, and the audience gathered closely around them. Still, security intervened, claiming that rules forbade gathering. With no other option, the group entered the hearing room, filling all the seats, and waited for the hearing to begin. When it did, individuals stood up and made their statements directly to the Councilmembers on the dais, since they had been given no other chance to speak with their elected representatives.
Ten individuals stood to call upon the council to make the better choice and not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. All ten were powerful voices and represented thousands of residents struggling with similar circumstances. All ten were thrown out of the building by security.
Despite all this, 5 councilmembers heard the call for progressive income taxes to save the safety net that these groups had been making for months. They stood on the right side of this struggle, but their other 8 colleagues voted against their proposals and brought the ax down on critical programs in DC that save lives. As a result, thousands of low-income residents of our nation’s capital will suffer an especially cold holiday season.
If this angers you, turn your anger into a plan! Join Empower DC and get organized! Give us a call at (202) 234-9119, and get involved! In making these cuts, the Council was led by Chairman Vincent Gray, DC’s mayor-elect. When he is sworn in as mayor in less than a month, one of the first things he will do is draft a budget for fiscal year 2012. Let’s be prepared to make sure it turns out differently this time! (202) 234-9119
Post Script,
For the record, those who voted for a more progressive tax code were At-Large Councilmember Michael Brown, Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham, Ward Five Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr., Ward Six Councilmember Tommy Wells and Ward Eight Councilmember Marion Barry.
Those opposed were, Council Chair Vincent Gray, At-Large Councilmember David Catania, At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, Ward Two Councilmember Jack Evans, Ward Three Councilmember Mary Cheh, Ward Four Councilmember Muriel Bowser, Ward Seven Councilmember Yvette Alexander.
Be sure to send your councilmember words of encouragement or otherwise. We are also hoping the above video will go viral, at least here in the District of Columbia. Please feel free to post it on blogs and Facebook pages at . . . → Read More: Austerity Measures in the District of Columbia
By Liane Scott, on November 29th, 2010 
Vince Gray is very proud of the legislation he sponsored making pre-k education universal for all 3- and 4-year-olds. He declared it as one of his major accomplishments in all of his town hall meetings prior to November’s general election. To be sure, early childhood education is extremely important. Children who receive high-quality child care from an early age are better prepared for school, more likely to graduate high school, go on to college, and to stay out of prison. But which service providers are able to take advantage of the money made available by this legislation is also important.
When the bill to make pre-k education universal was first proposed in 2008, 50 percent of the new slots provided were supposed to go to community-based child care providers. By the time the legislation was passed, that number was down to 25 percent. In addition, funding for the District’s Child Care Subsidy Program, which also benefits community-based child care providers as well as low-income parents in need of affordable child care, has been cut each of the past five years.
While Gray wants to do right by his youngest constituents, he seems less concerned about their parents or the middle-class workforce that at one time provided the backbone for DC’s tax base. A pattern that we should be familiar with from the Fenty Administration, who closed down Department of Recreation Early Childhood programs in wards 6, 7 & 8 while leaving the same programs open in the wealthier wards. This action, which Gray is unlikely to reverse, insured an increase in the unemployment rates in those wards hardest hit by the recession as child care providers from the Department of Recreation were fired. The closing of the Recreation Department child care programs also increased the burden on low-income parents by decreasing the number of affordable child care providers within the city’s poorest communities, a number which has already been decreased by the consistent de-funding of the District’s Child Care Subsidy Program.
Subsidized child care, which provides low-income parents with vouchers that pay a portion of their child care costs, is one of the most important work support programs available in DC and around the country. Child care costs can easily amount to $15,000 per year, per child. Without subsidies that help to make child care affordable for low-income families, thousands of parents in DC would be unable to work, unable to look for work or attend school so they are better qualified for work.
In addition to the huge benefits for children and their families, investing in early child care and education helps to strengthen a field whose workforce in DC is predominantly low-income women of color. Child care providers rely on these subsidies from the government to cover their costs. Without them, they would have to lay off the hundreds of people, mostly women, who work in this field. Many child care providers have already had to close their doors for good, even though these are precisely the kinds of small business that Gray claims to support.
The District of Columbia City Council will hold a a public hearing Tuesday November 30, 2010 to hear testimony regarding childcare in the District’s budget. Community members who are impacted–children, parents, child-care providers, etc., are encouraged to testify. If you are interested in testifying at the hearing, attending in support or getting more information, contact Ben Parisi, Child Care organizer for Empower DC at (202) 234-9119 or Ben (at) empowerdc.org.
By Liane Scott, on October 29th, 2010 
That’s right, gentle Ben Parisi, Empower DC’s Childcare For All Campaign Organizer, pictured here holding the child of an Empower DC member, got a bit riled up in the aftermath of some rather shallow reporting on last week’s town hall meetings.
The back story: City Council Chairman Vince Gray, soon to be Mayor Gray, has been shoring up his presumptive victory with a series of town hall meetings. According to Wikepedia a town hall meeting is an informal public meeting where members of the community are invited to voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and elected officials about shared subjects of interest. With that in mind, members of Empower DC attended a number of Gray’s town hall meetings and made a few demands. Specifically, they demanded that presumptive Mayor Gray honor the promise that the city made to rebuild Bruce Monroe Elementary school and that the city fully fund the childcare subsidy program.
DCist columnist Martin Austermuhle seems to have a different understanding of the purpose of a town hall meeting, I think taking issue with the expressing of demands in a loud and visible manor. I’m going to quote his references to Empower DC here because I personally think they’re funny.
Regarding Empower DC’s appearance at the Ward 1 town hall meeting, Austermuhle said:
Hey, folks who really want Bruce Monroe Elementary re-built (it was closed in 2007) — we get it. Thirty of you showed up, you held up your signs, you started a chant, you asked Gray a question and then you walked out. Everyone has their cause. But there’s no need to use the town halls to make us all painfully aware of them.
After the Ward 8 town hall meeting, Austermuhle said this:
…this was the second consecutive town hall where Empower D.C. has shown up with signs and t-shirts and demanded something concrete from Gray. …you guys have a noble cause, but less-than-noble ways of communicating it. Let’s just imagine how chaotic the next two town halls would be if everyone with a point to make decided to do it as loudly and visibly as you have. Not so much fun anymore, is it?
Is he serious?! That would be SO much fun! Especially if everybody who had a point to make encouraged city officials to prioritize the needs of the city’s low- and moderate-income residents over developers and the wealthy transient population who has no real stake in the city because they’re going to leave when their bosses get voted out of power anyway. But I digress. Ben Parisi was not amused by Austermuhle’s disparaging remarks. He posted this response on Facebook. Read it, if you dare.
Ben Parisi’s Response to DCist
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 . . . → Read More: Ben Parisi is Pissed!
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