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!
By Liane Scott, on October 8th, 2010 
Often times I feel that the progressive movement in DC is getting nowhere. I’ll make the mistake of reading the comments following some article that actually pertains to community organizing on DCist or the City Paper site and I am sickened by the classism and thinly veiled racism there. Spend too much time wading through DC’s blogosphere and one can start to believe that the gentrifiers are the only people whose opinions matter in this town. By contrast, last night’s Organizing for Post Election Accountability Empowerment Circle was heartening.
DC Rapper Head-Roc performs Change In America.
We discussed the record of the soon to be previous mayor Adrian Fenty. He and the city council did many things that the community didn’t appreciate in the last four years. In many ways, the city is not better off. We are not better off without Franklin Shelter, or the 23 neighborhood schools that were closed down, or the 13 early childhood and out of school time programs that were shuttered at Parks and Recreation Centers in wards 6, 7 and 8. But none of those things were taken away without a fight.
Hundreds of homeless and homeless advocates protested in Franklin Square, testified before the city council and won emergency legislation to keep the shelter open. Mayor Fenty ignored the emergency legislation, and the city council that enacted it did not sue the Fenty Administration for flouting the law, but the activists did. The fight to reopen Franklin Shelter continues. On Friday, October 8, the federal courts will hear the case. Go to Reopen Franklin Shelter Now for the latest updates.
Under Mayor Fenty, schools chancellor Michelle Rhee managed to close down 23 neighborhood schools that were supposedly under-enrolled and/or under-performing. As it turns out, some were and some weren’t. She fired 266 teachers and support staff due to a shortfall in the budget that turned out to be some kind of accounting error. And she fired or forced to retire dozens of beloved and committed school principals. But none of this came without a price.
After rallies, demonstrations, school walkouts and many, many lawsuits over illegal terminations, alleged warrior woman Michelle Rhee’s days are numbered. Parents from Bruce Monroe Elementary School, which was closed with the promise that a new school would be rebuilt on the site, have continued to pressure the Fenty Administration, the city council and even the developers who’ve shown an interest in building commercial property on the site. So far as the parents are concerned, the school will be rebuilt as promised. The plan to turn Hardy Elementary School in Georgetown, a high performing feeder school that caters to children from every ward in the District, into a neighborhood school that serves only the wealthy and mostly white students from Georgetown, has also met stiff opposition. For developments on opposition to school reform without community input, check out long time DCPS advocate Candi Peterson’s blog The Washington Teacher.
While we are still waiting to hear the outcomes of the lawsuits on behalf of those Park and Recreation employees who staffed the early childhood programs in Wards 6, 7 & 8, before they were closed down, another lawsuit was won outright.
Remember the checkpoints in Trinidad? In the summer of 2008, the Northeast DC neighborhood began to take on the feeling of a police state, as motorists were stopped and asked to provide ID and prove that they had a “legitimate” reason to be in the neighborhood. Those checkpoints are gone now. Why? That would be because the Partnership for Civil Justice sued the District on behalf of four activists who simply refused to accept the infringements on their rights. You can read the details in the Washington Post article Federal Court Says D.C. Police Checkpoints Were Unconstitutional.
The point of all this and the Empowerment Circle that reminded me of these events is that organizing works. We have held Mayor Fenty accountable by firing him. Although the city council, complicit in the above crimes against the community, has not been held accountable, half of them will be up for re-election again in 2012. We’ve all agreed that we can expect little better treatment from presumptive mayor Vincent Gray, but we’re not going to wait for him and the council to disappoint us as many did with Mayor Fenty. Holding our elected official accountable is a process that must be consistent and ongoing.
To that end, Empower DC has planned a series of events designed . . . → Read More: Post Election Accountability and The Empower DC Outreach Tour
By Liane Scott, on August 31st, 2010 
Having had parents who put a premium on education and having a daughter myself who is in DCPS, I try to follow what’s going on with the public schools. I have to admit being greatly disappointed every time Michelle Rhee makes an appearance on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi show. She was on again this last Friday August 28, 2010. You can find a copy of the transcript at the following link – http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2010-08-27/politics-hour. A lot of what she says sounds great, but if you’re looking for specifics, you have to wait for a knowledgeable listener to make it on the air with a question.
Michelle Rhee’s Great Disapearing Act
For example, when Rhee was asked what she would do to improve special education in DCPS she gave a two paragraph answer, but the only specifics she gave came in these two sentences: “We spend upwards of $90 million a year transporting our students to a lot of private schools throughout the region. And we really need to look at what we’re doing to build the capacity within DCPS to serve a lot of those students better, so that they can attend their neighborhood schools.” So hopefully, Rhee is gonna ask her people to “look at what they’re doing,” with regard to special education. That’s reassuring, I guess.
Another caller asked about the drop in AYP test scores, which much of her reform was designed to improve. Rhee said that despite the fact that test scores have dropped, the huge gap between black and white student achievement has narrowed, has in fact narrowed significantly at the secondary level. But after looking at the statistics provided by Epsilon, the caller who posed the test score question, I’m wondering how she defines significant. According to Epsilon, “the most recent scores that came out for AYP shows that 88 percent of the schools in Ward 3 made AYP while 86 percent of the schools in Ward 8 failed. The achievements gap between blacks and whites is even more telling. The lowest achievement level for whites is at Watkins on Capitol Hill, which was 83.78 percent and then it goes up to 95.69 percent at Murch. While in Ward 8, we have Stanton School with the achievement of black — I mean, the achievement level for blacks is 12.72 percent. At Terrell, it’s 28.23 percent. At Savoy, a brand-new school, is 21.62 percent.”
I’m wondering how bad the gap was before the “significant” improvement. I also wonder if the gap wouldn’t have narrowed further and perhaps without the pain of school closings and teacher firings if Michelle Rhee and the Fenty Administration had taken a look at the funding gap between low-income schools and wealthier schools. I know that schools in DC are funded on a per pupil basis, but some pupils cost more to educate than others. No doubt, a look at the individual school budgets will verify this. Special education and special needs students, as Rhee herself seems to be aware, cost the city a significant amount of money in transportation alone. So what does it mean when these students attend low-income schools at a higher rate than wealthier schools? As far as I know, DC public schools don’t get more money for students that require specialized instruction.
How the city deals with special education students isn’t the only thing that contributes to the achievement gap between black and white students, but it is one thing that Rhee doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about. What else is she missing? Kojo Nnamdi and his guest analyst Tom Sherwood seemed more concerned about whether or not Rhee would stay on the job if Mayor Fenty loses his re-election bid. (Sounds like the answer is no by the way.) Neither of them questioned her about the controversies at Bruce Monroe or Hardy Elementary Schools. They praised the physical renovations taking place in schools on Capital Hill, but no mention was made of other schools, like Parkview Elementary (which currently houses students from the recently demolished Bruce Monroe) continue to deal with rodent infestations in the food supply. Rhee’s answers sounded like those of a politician, rather than an educational professional with an intricate understanding of the system she hopes to reform.
On the other hand, if you do in fact want to hear an educational professional willing to give detailed analysis and an honest assessment of the DC public school system, the place to turn would have to be WPFW. Reporter Pete Tucker . . . → Read More: Covering Education: Tucker vs Nnamdi
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