Events Beyond Our Control

Dear Constituents:

I'll let you comment, either for or against: 1) Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has introduced the DC School Choice Bill, that would create a pilot school voucher program in DC (http://www.dcwatch.com/schools/ps030211.htm). 2) Representative Ralph Regula (R-OH) has introduced a bill, H.R. 381, that would create a small federal district and return the rest of the District to the state of Maryland (http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/voting08.htm). And 3) scholars at the CATO Institute have filed a Second Amendment lawsuit to overturn the local ban on guns as unconstitutional (http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/gun030210.htm).

Or you can instead tell us about what's happening on your block or in your neighborhood. Think and act locally.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Looting the Rights and Revenues of DC Teachers
Elizabeth A. Davis, teacher, John Philip Sousa Middle School, styeeri@aol.com

After reading the countless articles about the looting of the Washington Teachers' Union by its officers, I thought about how severely the rights, dignity, power, and fair representation of its members have also been looted throughout the reign of the present union administration. For years, members have been looted of their right to fully participate in the running of their union. The process was conducted slowly, silently, and systematically and fueled by a passive and complacent executive board that rubber stamped the whims of the president and failed to demand quarterly and annual audits of the Union's financial records. There is an untold story behind the looting of the teachers' union. The story began long before the money was missing. The missing loot is only one of the symptomatic results of problems, which have been unaddressed by WTU executive officers, Executive Board, Board of Trustees, Public Employees Relations Board, nor by the leadership of AFT. Ironically, D. C. teachers have become victims of an organization that they pay almost $3.5 million annually to guard their contractual, professional, and constitutional rights. However, the looting of teacher's membership dues and their rights didn't happen overnight.

The now vilified WTU elected officers and staff members cited for committing the crime had the full time oversight of AFT staff assigned to the executive board and board of trustees, yet they have blatantly and repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of its members throughout the course of their reign. Quorum-less meetings were systematically orchestrated as a way to keep the rank-and-file members uninformed and disengaged from the day-to-day operations of the WTU. The monthly newspaper was discontinued for years. After membership outcry, a double-side "President's Perspective' newsletter was initiated to replaced the monthly WTU newspaper. Members agreed that the 'President's Perspective' newsletter was appropriately titled, since it was merely the 'president's perspective of the current state of the WTU, not the rank-and-file members. Even now, after the exposure of implausible corruption, the interim President, who conspired to conceal a $8,000 check forged with her signature, is maintained as a consultant to AFT's assigned trustee, George Springer. A trusteeship, which was invoked by the parent to restore the "child," is, in essence, punishing the child. This trusteeship that was invoked in isolation from the WTU rank-and-file members. The first act of the trustee was to arbitrarily and capriciously cancel the regularly scheduled monthly membership meeting of WTU members. The second official act was to suspend the WTU constitution, postpone the WTU biannual election, and dismantle the duly elected elections committee. These were the first official acts of a trustee placed by AFT to stabilize WTU's finances and restore democratic practices to its members. After the first meeting with George Springer, WTU building representatives were clear on two things, and two things only — that Mr. Springer is AFT's top “buffer” between the predominantly Black membership of the Washington Teachers' Union and its parent organization, the AFT, and that Mr. Springer was placed primarily to safeguard the interests of his employer, AFT.

Even now, after in the wake of the current status of our union, leadership is still conducting business as usual. As members listened to George Springer espouse “his” vision for the WTU, many experienced deja vu of days gone by. Somewhere along the way, the WTU transformed itself into a top-down company union in which the rank-and-file regarded the leadership as the authority. This marked the beginning stage of the looting of teachers' power. This had become apparent when the rank-and-file began asking each other “What is 'the union' doing about this?” Although the WTU constitution contends that the ran-and-file members are the ultimate authority of the Union, the manner in which Union leadership has conducted business over the years has intentionally been to assume the position of the ultimate authority. While many members are still seeking reimbursement of the overcharged dues and stringent consequences for all of the parties responsible for the looting, it's important for the interim President and executive board to understand that members are also seeking a new and transformed Union. As evidenced by the continuous rising costs of the looted goods, we can no longer settle for insipid representation of our professional image or our rights in the current business-as-usual manner. We can no longer afford the cost of not questioning our elected leaders. We continue to pay the price for conducting business in this manner. The price tag is simply too high.

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Vacant Accountability
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Two years ago Mayor Williams fought to eliminate the elected Board of Education in favor of a hybrid board with four appointed and five elected members. He campaigned for the Charter Amendment to make this change on the basis of accountability, saying that having mayorally appointed members on the board would give him, as the Mayor, both the ability and the responsibility to supervise public education closely. On January 2 of this year, Mayor Williams's inaugural address repeated his statements that he was committed to public education. He said that, “we must educate our children; they are our pride, our hope, and our future,” and he pledged that he “will work closely with the Board of Education to establish clear expectations of accountability for teachers and principals.”

But events this week have revealed that Mayor Williams has failed to make education a top priority of his administration and that he has not worked closely, or often at all, with even his own appointees on the school board. Earlier this week, Roger Wilkins, one of Mayor Williams's appointees, indicated that, since his term had expired last December, he did not want to be reappointed, and that he would be leaving the Board by the end of this month. Today, Charles Lawrence, another Williams appointee whose term expired in December, announced his resignation and released a statement that gives some insight into the problem: “During the month of January I repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought to meet with the Mayor to discuss my possible reappointment, and it became apparent that for whatever reason the decision to forego discussions with me was deliberate.” It should be noted that the two vacancies on the Board of Education join an unusually high number of vacancies on other important, high-profile boards: two on the National Capital Revitalization Board, two on the Board of Elections and Ethics, one on the Board of Zoning Adjustment, two on the Water and Sewer Authority Board of Directors, two on the Board of Trustees of the University of the District of Columbia, one on the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority Board of Directors, one on the Sports and Entertainment Commission, three on the Board of Appeals and Review, and one on the Board of Real Property Assessments and Appeals.

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Cell Phones While Driving
Tim Cline, Columbia Heights, timandann@aol.com

I am a big freedom of speech fan, but I think that the cell phone while driving thing is getting out of hand. On Monday past, I got on the S2 bus about 6 p.m. to head home from work. The driver says something to me as I drop my fare in the box. I turn to respond and discover that she is not talking to me, but rather she is talking on a cell phone -- one of the "hands-free" kind. So here is someone hauling forty or so passengers through rush hour traffic on 16th Street talking on the phone. Maybe one of those Metro officials who read themail could let us know if they have a policy which allows or (we hope) forbids drivers talking on the phone while they are driving -- and have they communicated this policy to their drivers.

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Opportunity Costs Cut Two Ways
Peter Wolff, intowner@intowner.com

Gary Imhoff wrote that the library board woman advocates the building of “a new, smaller, and more expensive central library on the site of the soon-to-be abandoned old Convention Center — and she argues that the greater cost of the new building could be offset by 'reusing' the current library site. . . .”

I wonder if the library lady realizes that she is, conversely, recommending that the funds that would be needed to rehab the present building could be offset by “reusing” the old Convention Center site? In fact, the old Convention Center complex could be utilized as a temporary MLK facility while its building is rehabbed, and then after everything is moved back in, let the city sell off the full two blocks to private developers who would give up their first-born for the rights to have that site! Then, the city will have itself a tax cash cow machine. (Maybe even have the city council legislate earmarking of those tax dollars for the DC library system and related educational and/or cultural uses.)

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Only One 911 Staffer
John Aravosis, john@SafeStreetsDC.com

It was revealed today that Washington, DC's 911 call center has been staffed with just one person at times, even as the nation's capital fears an imminent terror attack. The Washington Post reported today (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59791-2003Feb11.html) that just one operator was on duty at the city's 911 call center as recently as January 15, the morning a man burned to death while roommates and neighbors tried unsuccessfully to reach 911. The man's home was one mile from the White House. This revelation is the latest in a growing 911 scandal that began the morning of January 15, when several residents of DC's Dupont Circle neighborhood tried in vain to call 911 about a house fire, and allegedly were put on hold for as much as ten minutes. A young man died as a result of burns sustained in the fire. Nicolas Gutman, a housemate of the victim, says he also was put on hold by 911, and then had a police officer drive away after Gutman asked him for help.

I blame city officials for trying to minimize criticism of DC's 911 system, rather than focusing on fixing the problem. In a February 5 E-mail, DC Mayor Anthony Williams encouraged citizens to dismiss lengthy interviews with eyewitnesses to the Dupont Circle fire who said they tried to call 911 and were put on hold. Those interviews appeared on SafeStreetsDC.com's web site (http://www.SafeStreetsDC.com). In an interview last Thursday on local WTOP radio, DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey, responsible for operating the city's 911 call center, was told that a large number of witnesses, including two local doctors, claim to have called 911 and been put on hold for up to 10 minutes each. Chief Ramsey replied that the 911 logs contradict the witnesses' testimony. “Our logs don't show it,” said Ramsey in the interview. But the Washington Post revealed today that the police knew the 911 logs would not show calls that were made to 911 but were put on hold. Either Chief Ramsey doesn't know how 911 really works, or he is intentionally misleading the public. Either way, the nation's capital isn't safe.

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Fighting Crime with Flashing Lights
Bryce A. Suderow, streetstories@juno.com

Matthew Kesler's contribution to themail made me remember the way the police fought crime in SE Capitol Hill near the Safeway at 14th and C. They used public relations. At one point a number of people were robbed near Potomac Ave. Metro and Eastern Market Metro. Inspector Alfred Broadbent of the First District stationed two cars at each Metro every evening and ordered them to turn on their flashing light as they parked there. The intention was to give citizens a warm and fuzzy feeling of safety. However, this was often undercut when the cops left their cars to shop or run other errands, leaving an empty car with a flashing light. Of course, stationing four cars at the metro stations made it impossible for cruisers to cruise the PSA's and prevent crime.

On another occasion after some robberies in SE, Broadbent sent cop cars through the neighborhood with their sirens and lights on. I'm sure many citizens felt reassured. However this practice produced two unexpected results. The sirens and lights alerted criminals that the cops were coming and gave them time to get away. Also since the sirens and lights told criminals where the cops were, the crooks were able to go elsewhere and commit crime, knowing the cops weren't anywhere around. After one string of burglaries Broadbent stationed a rather antique police cruiser at the corner of 7th and East Capitol. He intended to show citizens and criminals that there was a police presence in the area. Unfortunately the police never moved the car to another location. (Perhaps they forgot it was there.) In any case, there the car sat day after day gathering dust. Citizens started calling it the scarecrow cop car. The car even got written up by Duncan Spencer in the Hill Rag. An angry Broadbent yanked the car and blasted the citizens for thwarting an effective crime fighting tool

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Flashing Lights
Lisa Alfred, lisaalfred_lmwreview@yahoo.com

I'd like to respond to Mr. Kessler's remarks regarding the new policy of flashing lights to show you care. 1) It's got to cost money to have those lights flashing all day. 2) As a driver, when you drive regularly, it is disconcerting to see police lights behind you, no matter what color they are. The automatic assumption is that the lights are directed at the driver in front of the flashing cruiser. 3) Finally, and most importantly, the flashing lights don't make me feel safe, nor do they show me that the police are near. They say to me that the police are currently leaving/“cruising” out of my neighborhood.

In every ward, the public has asked for just one thing from the police: get out of the cars, and walk the streets! We did not ask for a PR campaign to show that the police can drive through our neighborhoods; we already know they drive through our neighborhoods because we see them running stop signs and red lights. Crimes are not happening on the major streets, during the day, or in rush hour traffic. Crimes are happening in the areas where the police don't want to walk in because it's dangerous. This is why the public wants the cops out of the cars and walking the streets.

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Is Crime Down, or Just Dumbed Down?
John Aravosis, John@SafeStreetsDC.com

The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and the Mayor have had a field day of late talking about how crime in DC was down in the year 2002. The thing they're not telling you is that maybe crime isn't down at all. In the past few weeks, the MPD made public preliminary data showing a two percent drop in overall crime citywide in 2002. As a result, the media and the Mayor have been saying quite publicly that crime is down in DC. But there are two problems with data, and the problems are so great that crime may actually be up in DC, rather than down.

The first problem is that the MPD and the city know that this new crime data is only preliminary, meaning it will need to massaged and corrected over the next few months to catch all sorts of mistakes and other thing that could result in very different data being released when the final crime statistics for 2002 are released. The MPD knows this, and in fact, when the MPD released its preliminary crime data to SafeStreetsDC.com, we were told in no uncertain terms that were we to use the data publicly, we had to issue a clear caveat that it would not be fair to reach much of any conclusion at all based on this preliminary data since it was, in essence, only a rough guesstimate of what happened last year, and that the numbers were likely to change once the final data was issued. So the first problem is why the Mayor is even talking about crime being down when the data isn't ready yet? (And in fact, Chief Ramsey told WTOP this past Thursday that “we did get a little spike [in crime] last year,” which appears to contradict the Mayor and the MPD's own preliminary stats.)

But things get even murkier. Not only is the data they just released a rough guesstimate of what happened last year, but the MPD has chosen to compare last year's rough data to the year-before's rough data as well. In the preliminary crime data just released by the MPD, to determine the percent change in crime from 2001 to 2002, the MPD compares the preliminary data for 2002 to the preliminary data from 2001, rather than using 2001's real/final data which is clearly a more correct reflection of what the crime numbers really were in 2001. According to the preliminary data, robberies citywide dropped five percent in 2002. The MPD reached that conclusion by comparing the 4,407 preliminary-data robberies from 2001 to the 4,196 preliminary-data robberies from 2002. But the final data for robberies in 2001 shows 3,777 robberies, not the 4,407 listed in the preliminary data. (That means the preliminary data from 2001 overestimated the number of robberies by almost seventeen percent, hardly a small margin of error when the city is claiming crime is down only two percent). Comparing 3,777 final-data robberies in 2001 to 4,196 preliminary-data robberies in 2002, results in an eleven percent increase in robbery in DC, and not a five percent drop. That's one hell of a difference. And it perhaps explains why the Chief told WTOP that crime actually did get a little spike last year. We won't know the final crime data for 2002 until it's released in a few months. But we ought to have a big problem with a police force that compares the preliminary data in a way that conveniently makes it look like robberies are down five percent, when they're really up eleven percent. And we should have an even bigger problem with a mayor who tries to calm our concerns about crime with Enron accounting rather than real solutions.

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BCCRC
Mike Livingston, mlivingston@greens.org

For the record, the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad does not receive any tax funds from any jurisdiction (contrary to some statements in themail), but raises 100 percent of its own money -- mostly through donations from residents of its service area on both sides of Western Avenue, and by renting space out for dance classes and special events.

The problem is not that upper Northwest has this external source of emergency medical services, but that the rest of the colony doesn't have adequate EMS coverage. As the Common Denominator recently reported, the closure of DC General has caused such overcrowding at remaining emergency rooms that up to a third of the District's ambulance fleet is often tied up waiting in line at hospitals. If I'm hit by a car at AU, I want the closest ambulance available and I don't really care whether the license plate says “Taxation Without Representation” or “Treasure the Chesapeake.” Even if prompt ER care is too much to hope for, being aboard an ambulance is better than waiting for one.

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Where the Metro Money Goes
Bruce Wolfe, brucewolfe@erols.com

Susan Ousley said: “For several years, winter or summer, a Metro Access car has arrived to pick up someone on our block. The car arrives 1-2 hours before the rider comes out. It idles, while the driver sleeps. We've reported it three times, through Councilmember Graham, through the Metro chief, through Metro Access. No change. That kind of failure is why we are getting a fare increase.”

Perceiving it as a failure is erroneous. Not as efficient as it might be, but I doubt he's there for a full hour every day. It might be more realistic to just assume it's a long trip and he, like so many other commuters in the DC area, has to leave a very wide margin of error for the times when the traffic is bad. When translated by someone who's never been left stranded by Metro Access for two hours in the cold this appears to be wasteful behavior. In fact, it's really the only way that driver can deliver reliable service on a trip that may span several counties. I'm pretty sure that's why no one has responded to the alarm. It's a good thing, not a bad thing, at least for the handicapped rider requiring the service.

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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED

Part-Time Office Assistant
Christopher Covelli, arribacenter@juno.com

The ARRIBA Center for Independent Living, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit serving the needs of physically disabled persons, is recruiting a capable office assistant for a position that can potentially grow into full time. Flexible work schedule. Requirements: interpersonal skills, writing ability, sensitivity to needs of the disabled population, and, preferably, working knowledge of Spanish. Duties include assisting executive director in grant proposal writing and fund raising; office management and word processing. Available immediately. Salary competitive. Contact Dr. Cris Covelli, Executive Director. Phone 667-3990.

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CLASSIFIEDS — ORGANIZATIONS

“Project Reboot” Computer Recycling Initiative
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

You may or may not have heard about the Capital PC User Group (http://www.cpcug.org), but this nonprofit organization has been doing a world of good here in the DC-area. Not only does this organization teach low-cost computer classes and organize helpful meetings for people to learn computer knowledge from one another. This organization does much more, including distributing free computers to schools, nonprofit organizations and other entities in need of donated computers. (A similar organization, Washington Apple Pi, does great things to support Mac users and Mac-using nonprofit organizations. http://www.wap.org) A friend and I recently visited the “Project Reboot” house that CPCUG has in downtown Rockville. We recorded this visit on video and have posted the video on the web so that others can see what we saw. You can view the video in QuickTime format at http://www.zvideo.org/reboothousetour1.mov or in streaming RealVideo format at http://storymakers.net/projectreboottour.ram. (You will need a high-speed Internet connection to see these videos.) Over the years CPCUG has distributed over 1000 computers — and they could be doing even more with greater community support. If you feel this kind of initiative is worth supporting, you might considering joining CPCUG at $42/year. There is a membership form on the left side of their web site at http://www.cpcug.org. Further info about Project Reboot is at http://www.cpcug.net/reboot.asp.

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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS

Contractor Referral Requested
Bell Clement, bellclement@msn.com

I am seeking, with some urgency, a qualified roof and gutter contractor. I’m hoping for an outfit competent to address the issues of my old Columbia Heights row house. Also desired: a contractor who can be good to my aging (and mistreated) brickwork.

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