By Liane Scott, on May 15th, 2011 
Time is almost up. The city budget is scheduled for a vote May 25, 2011. There are still a couple of things you can do to keep the outrageous cuts to the social services from happening. Call, email, or visit the members of the council who remain against the proposal to increase taxes on DC’s wealthiest citizens by a mere .4 percent. There names and contact information follow:
Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans 202- 724-8058 jackevans@dccouncil.us
Council Chair Kwame Brown 202-724-8032 kbrown@dccouncil.us
At-Large Councilmember David Catania 202-724-7772 dcatania@dccouncil.us
Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser 202-724-8052 mbowser@dccouncil.us
There’s also one more rally. The details follow:
Critical, Unified Fair Budget Action: Social Services Walking Tour Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave, NW May 18th, 11 a.m. -1 p.m.
Even if the budget passes with a slightly more progressive tax code, many cuts to social services will remain. DC’s progressive activists work hard for positive outcomes during budget season, but the low- and moderate-income residents who are most affected by these budget cuts must deal with them year round. We should be organizing year round. The following video, “How to Be an Affordable Housing Advocate,” suggests that we stay informed about legislation and that we hold our elected officials accountable however and whenever possible. Enjoy.
By Liane Scott, on April 15th, 2011 
So, you didn’t make it to last Tuesday’s Winning a Better Budget Dinner and Action Session at Bread for the City. That’s okay. This week Empower DC and DC Jobs With Justice will be having a free training on the DC Budget. Here are the details.
DC BUDGET TRAINING It’s YOUR Money! Where is it Going?
Tues. April 19, 2011 6:30-8:30 PM Empower DC, 1419 V St, NW (2 1/2 blocks from the U Street Metro)
Special guest Jenny Reed from DC Fiscal Policy Institute will fill us in on the details of Mayor Gray’s budget. How much money is going to subsidize DC’s for profit developers and how much money is being cut from child care, affordable housing, human services programs, etc. Being sponsored by Empower DC and DC Jobs With Justice much of the discussion will be about what we can all do about it.
The following videos, which the Grassroots Media Project produced last year at budget time, show some of the issues at stake. The first is about hits to the city’s subsidized child care program, the second is about the need for adult education and the third is about the council’s refusal to adopt a more progressive income tax code. Enjoy or, ya know, get indignant. Hope to see you on Tuesday night.
DC Doesn’t Work Without Child Care
Adult Education and the Millionaire’s Tax
Dear City Council …
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 December 2nd, 2010 
If you haven’t yet heard, and you may not have, as this doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of play in the mainstream press, Mayor Fenty has proposed one last round of cuts to the 2011 fiscal year budget, including more cuts to child care subsidies, TANF, adult job training, disability assistance, the grandparent caregivers program, the local rent supplement program, etc. As a low-income resident of the District, I’m feelin’ a little panicky.
It may be a last ditch effort to do as much damage as possible to the constituents that threw him out of office, but we cannot let it stand. At issue is a $188 million budget gap. On Tuesday, December 7th, the DC Council will decide how to close that gap. The budget that lame-duck Mayor Adrian Fenty has proposed would cut vital programs that help low-income and working families. (Low-income and working families who are often one in the same.) According to Joni Podschun, Save Our Safety Net, nearly 40% of the cuts (that’s $50 million) would impact human services, even though these programs make up only a quarter of the city’s budget and have experienced deep reductions–approximately $100 million–in the last three years. Fortunately there is a clear alternative. A one percent income tax increase on income above $200,000, would raise $65 million. That’s $15 million more than would be needed to keep funding of social service programs at their current level.
There are some on the council who will say this alternative is crazy. That to consider this more progressive tax income rate would be engaging in class-warfare and what’s more, it might just damage our triple-A bond rating. I’ll admit it. I don’t even know what a triple-A bond rating means but I’m guessing that it doesn’t mean much to my neighbors and I in Wards 7 & 8, suffering under a 19 and 30 percent unemployment rate respectively. Those of us who are not in poverty yet are often one pay check away from it, and may find ourselves in desperate need of those social services that the city council is considering reducing further, as if $100 million worth of cuts in the last three years isn’t enough. Thus, that panicky feeling.
What does any of this have to do with the above video of Queen Noble, former candidate for congress as a representative of the District of Columbia? This video was shot and edited by Judith Hawkins, co-producer of Valencia’s It Is What It Is Mobile Talk Show (which I suggest you subscribe to on Youtube.) It was one of the first videos that Judith edited as a member of the Grassroots Media Project. She uploaded it to Youtube and it’s since gotten thousands of hits and hundreds of comments, some positive, some negative, a lot of them very funny.
Although Queen Noble may not fit squarely into what we consider to be a sociological norm, she has brought a lot of attention to issues that are important to her and to the residents of the District of Columbia. She might not be the best candidate for public office, but one cannot imagine her cutting an additional $50 million from the city’s safety net at a time when poverty in the District is already increasing at an alarming rate, without cuts to services meant to ease that situation. Class warfare indeed. It is conjecture on my part, but I believe Queen Noble wouldn’t hesitate to vote for legislation that increases the income tax rate just one percent on the city’s wealthiest and least needy residents.
Because she is what she is, she may not be the best representative for the causes she espouses, namely reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans and reform of the DC police department, but at least she brings attention to those issues. I post her here because I want us–DC progressives in general and progressives who want to produce through the Grassroots Media Project specifically–to go to the People’s Hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, December 7, at 9 AM at the Wilson Building, and videotape someone or preferably several people who can represent the issue. If Queen Noble can go viral nationwide, is it not worth our effort to find those people who are impacted by the cuts in social services, a number of whom we hope will be present at Tuesday’s People’s Hearing, and put there stories out there? If we can make this issue go viral in Washington, DC, we might just be . . . → Read More: A Call To Action: The People’s Hearing
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