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February 4, 2007

Arrogance

Dear Modest Readers:

As he has often done, Colbert King has written the column I would have liked to have written before and better than I could have (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/02/AR2007020201526.html). Usually I let this pass, but today I’ll just steal quotes from him. King questions whether the Board of Education and the governance structure of the schools can really be fairly blamed for poor student performance: “If governance and lack of accountability are the main problems, why do students attending Lafayette and Murch elementary schools, which are west of Rock Creek Park, exceed proficiency targets in reading and math by wide margins while students at Ketchum and Stanton elementary schools, east of the Anacostia River, fall far short of the mark? The four schools are in the same governance structure. Their principals report to the same superintendent and are guided by the same school board policies. True, Lafayette and Murch, located in middle-income neighborhoods, have more white students. But before going off on a racial tangent, consider this: Black students attending Lafayette and Murch, in contrast to their counterparts in Southeast, also excel in reading and math.”

So King interviewed Mayor Fenty and asked him the question of why his takeover of the schools will improve student performance citywide. “His bottom line: he has the energy, determination, and sense of urgency that he feels are missing among school leaders to make those things happen.” In order words, and this is my characterization and not King’s, Fenty is filled with foolhardy arrogance. The Control Board made the same assumption when they replaced the Board of Education with their school trustees, and Mayor Williams made the same assumption when he demanded the right to appoint half the members of the Board of Education. We’re smarter, we’re more committed, we’re more competent, we’re just better in every way than those stumblebums on the Board of Education. (Stumblebums, by the way, like Victor Reinoso, Fenty’s Deputy Mayor for Education.) This arrogant attitude is also known as the pride that goeth before the fall. The Control Board and its appointed school savior, General Becton, failed miserably. So did Mayor Williams, who lost interest in the schools almost immediately after he hand-picked and appointed school board members who also made little difference.

Fenty stands little or no chance of doing better than the Control Board and Williams. The Control Board (and Williams, by the time he appointed his school board members) at least had some experience and a broad range of contacts. By contrast — and this is Colbert King’s evaluation — “And the bench strength of Fenty’s education team? Big talk, little track record.” Or, as Stephen Sondheim wrote, “Quick, send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.”

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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What Happened to DC’s First Abraham Lincoln Statue?
Aaron Lloyd, aaronlloyddc@hotmail.com

It was located in front of the old DC Superior Court (On D Street between 4th and 5th), but now isn’t there. Anyone who loves DC history and has followed the sad fate of the Boss Shepherd statue should be concerned. This is the oldest surviving memorial to the slain president in the nation. Let’s make sure that they/we have a plan for bringing the statue back.

On the history of the statue see http://www.nowpublic.com/oldest_lincoln_statue_in_dc and http://www.dccourts.gov/dccourts/about/judiciary.jsp.

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Christmas Trees
Brigid Quinn, brigidq@yahoo.com

I know Christmas is long gone, but you wouldn’t know it by all of the Christmas trees in my Logan Circle neighborhood awaiting city pick up. I didn’t support Adrian Fenty for mayor. However, once he was elected I started looking to the positives, numbering among them what I thought would be his dogged attention to city services (a.k.a. constituent services in his last job). Not so. I read in the Post and in community newspapers that the city would pick up Christmas trees between January 2 and January 13. In 2007, I assumed. I also read that they should be placed in the front of one’s house, not out back, and they shouldn’t be placed in tree bags. All of the trees in my neighborhood fit the city’s bill, but I’ve held my fire (and now my ire) until the month of January ended. Are Christmas trees a prevalent landscape fixture along the sidewalks of any other neighborhoods, or has my little part of town been overlooked? I’m hoping that some self-starter from the Department of Public Works will see this E-mail and get a truck over to the 1400 blocks of Q and Corcoran Streets, NW, forthwith.

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Old Shopping Malls Require Much More Than Cosmetic Surgery
Gabe Goldberg, gabe at gabegold dot com

An interesting story by Roger K. Lewis yesterday in the Washington Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101893.html): “At the University of Maryland a few years ago, an architecture student undertook an unusual master’s thesis project: the functional and aesthetic redesign of a strip shopping area in suburban Maryland.”

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The District’s Historic Preservation Law
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net

Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer David Maloney denies [themail, January 31] that District law gives historic preservation absolute priority over human needs, and asserts that the Historic Preservation Review Board does consider “the needs and desires” of residents as they work to “adapt” historic buildings for current use. But the District’s law is unequivocal: its purpose is “to assure that alterations of existing structures are compatible with the character of the historic district,” and the Board “shall advise the mayor on the compatibility with the purposes of this act.” No doubt the HPRB considers the needs and desires of residents, but they cannot legally permit any alterations that conflict with this clause. There is no personal hardship exception in the District’s historic preservation law.

Contrast this with, for example, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place with rather a lot of history and significant architecture. “If a Commission determines that denial of an application would cause substantial hardship to the applicant, financial or otherwise, and that the work may be approved without substantial detriment to the district or the building, a Certificate of Hardship may be issued. Hardship certificates are generally issued on a temporary basis and for the life of a particular applicant’s use of the property, such as for the installation of features related to accessibility for persons with disabilities in a private residence.”

Why does the District historic preservation law have no such hardship provision? Why is the historic preservation bureaucracy so up in arms because the Mount Pleasant ANC passed a resolution calling for such a provision? Either the preservationist bureaucracy is already respecting the needs and desires of residents, including the disabled, in which case a hardship provision in the law won’t compel any changes to their ways; or they are not really doing so, and it will.

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Field of Dreams
Christopher Jerry, cjerrydc@gmail.com

[Re: Leo Alexander, “DC’s Field of Dreams,” themail, January 31] This from a year ago in the Washington Post (“Baseball Consents To Revised Lease Deal: Rising Costs Still Worry Key Council Members,” by David Nakamura and Thomas Heath, January 28, 2006): “District leaders reached an agreement on a revised stadium lease with Major League Baseball yesterday that includes a commitment from baseball for a $3.5 million youth academy but fell short of fully answering the concerns of some key D.C. Council members. The lease was submitted to the council with a letter that offered several promises that were not contained in the lease, including capping the cost of the stadium project.”

[So the lease contained a commitment for a youth baseball academy. Is the team breaking the lease by running the academy in the Dominican Republic, or is the lease silent about where the academy should be located? Did the DC negotiators just assume that the academy would be in DC rather than in the Dominican Republic, and were the Major League Baseball negotiators content to mislead them? — Gary Imhoff]

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Only in the Movies
Bill Coe, bceedeec@aol.com

By an amusing coincidence, January 31’s issue of themail contains two postings which make use of the metaphorical catch phrase, “Build it, and they will come.” We know the origin of these words -- a movie (now almost twenty years old) about an Iowa farmer who hears a voice from beyond and obeys its command to erect a baseball park in his cornfield, dismaying his family. Lo and behold, a ghostly all-star team arrives, composed of bygone players who presumably were unable to find a good game in the afterlife.

The story is fantastic, literally, but so are the notions advanced by themail’s two contributors. One asserts that a few dollars more in pay will lend professional luster to the job of mopping floors and thus make the work attractive to Washington’s young people. (Presumably, the same tactic could induce our youngsters to go forth and pick lettuce or grapefruit.) I’m no expert in immigration affairs, and I do believe all honest work deserves fair minimal compensation (if not more), but it seems to me these are precisely the sorts of employment for which our nation has always needed a steady stream of newcomers, both legal and not.

The other posting suggests that DC is an overlooked gold mine of young baseball talent, waiting to be tapped by the creation of a Dominican-style academy but grievously ignored by our local major-league tycoons. This is ghost talk. It’s true that the game is played here by kids and other amateurs, among whom an exceptional player or two occasionally emerges, but let’s not delude ourselves. DC’s game is basketball. There is no passion here for sandlot baseball, as there is in the Caribbean (where it’s said that no one ever walked off the island). The Washington Post recently ran a series on the growth of basketball academies in eastern Europe, where promising young players are properly fed, supervised, and trained for the professional game. This should be of more interest to fans in DC than a baseball academy. If we are to demand high-level professional athletic development facilities for DC’s youth — a dubious field of dreams nowadays — maybe we should look to Slovakia for our model rather than the Dominican Republic. Maybe, too, we should take our complaint not to the Washington Nationals but instead to the Washington Wizards.

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Blacks and Janitorial Work
Cecilio Morales, cecilio.morales@gmail.com

[Re: Roger Scott, “African Americans, Immigrants, and Janitorial Work,” themail, January 31] Post after post after post in themail have boiled the local economic impact of immigration down to DC Blacks vying with Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants for the privilege of cleaning white professionals’ toilets. I would have thought that DC Blacks and the DC Black leadership would aspire to somewhat more upscale work for the Black community. It scarcely seems possible that keen observers in an 80 percent African-American city would credibly reduce the great struggle from John Brown to Frederick Douglass to W.E.B. DuBois to M.L. King to Malcolm X to scrambling with another population of color to be the ones chosen to clean the nice white offices and homes.

I am very surprised. Am I the only one?

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DC Cannot Afford to Leave Wards 4 and 7 Without a Vote on Schools
Jamal Turner, 7A06@anc.dc.gov

Leaders past and present have worked tirelessly over the years to bring respect and better services to Ward 7 and east of the river in general. They worked hard to make sure that the rights of citizens east of the river were not trampled on. Ward 7 leaders must be strong now to make sure that the citizens are not taken for granted now in the debate on the school takeover plans. We must be heard through our elected leadership and I urge the city leadership to wait until a few weeks after May 1 to finalize any decisions on the mayor’s education plan.

Ward 7 has 19,420 youth ages seventeen and under (http://planning.dc.gov/planning/cwp/view,a,1282,q,569530.asp), with only Ward 8’s 25,464 youth surpassing us, and Ward 4 following behind with 15,691 youth. Ward 5 follows closely behind Ward 4 in the 2000 Census data, with 15,328 youth age seventeen and under. According to an article in the Washington Examiner on January 31, http://www.examiner.com/a-538601~Board_president_supports_uniting_District_schools.html, 11,743 students (20 percent) reside in Ward 7, 14,484 (24 percent) in Ward 8, 8,213 (14 percent) in Ward 5, and 7,916 (13 percent) in Ward 4. Clearly there are too many students/youth in Ward 7 and Ward 4 not to have elected council members voting on the education plan, should there be a need to consider any changes to the District’s home rule charter. Ward 7’s illustrious former council member has moved up in the leadership hierarchy and left a void in Ward 7. Ward 4 has a similar situation. There is a rush to vote on the mayor’s education plan by April; however, Wards 7 and 4 won’t have an opportunity to elect a council member until May 1. Neither will Ward 4 be able to vote for a school board member (District II) until that same date. The previous Wards 4 and 7 council members now represent the entire city, and there is no ward councilmember to speak for these wards. Wards 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8 will be at the table to vote, yet we clearly represent a large part of the city’s electorate. I expect the mayor and council chair to insist that the vote be delayed until their own wards have elected council members in place. As former elected leaders of those wards, it is their responsibility and obligation to see that their former ward constituents are represented with new ward councilmembers. That sounds fair, doesn’t it, especially since they once had a personal interest in these wards as its leaders. The mayor and council chair are no longer the elected leaders for just these ward. They are citywide with a larger constituency that they have to consider and respond to, while ward councilmembers are supposed to listen to their constituents first and go to battle for them before all others.

As a new ANC commissioner (ANC 7A-06) and product of the DC public schools, I call for a delay in the vote on the mayor’s and school board’s plans until Ward 7 and Ward 4 have a voice at the table through their own elected councilmembers to represent us in the debate over the schools. To do less is a slap in the face of the people in Ward 7 and a sign of disrespect for our citizens. I ask that the District of Columbia mayor and council to do the right thing and don’t leave Ward 7 out when it’s time for a formal vote by the council. Ideally, I would rather there not be a change to the governance structure, and would like to see a compromise plan putting the best of the school board’s and mayor’s plans together combined with the thoughtful input of the citizenry.

For the sake of the children, let’s come together and make quality education for all children and not the changing of the schools’ governance the goal. As a fairly recent college graduate with a major in political science, I know what democracy and an opportunity to vote mean to people. Disenfranchising Ward 7 voters in any way and circumventing the rights of citizens by clearing the way through Congress to avoid a referendum is not the right thing to do. Bypassing the citizens’ approval through a referendum sends the wrong message to our children, voters, Congress, and the world that covets democracy. Ward 7 must have an elected Ward 7 council member to weigh in on the discussion and vote. To do less is unfair and ignores our standing in the scheme of events in the nation’s capital. We deserve better than to be left out of this very important vote. Only then, when there is time, can we talk about some other problems plaguing DC, particularly in my section of town.

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New Mayor Wastes Political Capital Wresting Control from Schools and Rights from Voters
Kathryn Pearson, kap8082@aol.com

Is it unbridled ambition run amok? Is the new mayor’s agenda a little too full with expectations so early in his tenure? Once they thought of him as the people’s champion, now some supporters and critics are referring to the new mayor as the “Puppet Dictator.” They wonder, to whom is the mayor listening? Who’s really calling the shots behind the scenes? Does he really care what citizens think and want. Does he have a real clue or is he Blackberry controlled. Citizens bristle at his seeming arrogance as he appears to show indifference to the need for citizens’ advice and consent and makes photo ops his governing style. He thinks he already has the approval of the citizens because they voted for him and that makes it so. That thinking must give him a feeling of omnipotence. With several Blackberries to symbolize his get-it-done attitude and perceived wizardry, the mayor boasts his self confidence on Capitol Hill as he works to make the citizens’ vote via referendum on the school governance issue irrelevant. Surely he feels like Governor Blackberry already as he makes his case for statehood/self determination at the same time. What an inconsistency in messages to the public and Congress!

Yet there is seeming indifference on the part of many citizens as many sit back frustrated and apathetic with a city and schools constantly in upheaval. So they put their hopes and dreams to the side and close their eyes as their hard-earned rights to have some say-so in the change in the home rule charter are tossed out the window by the mayor and his cohorts on the council. After all, this is the councilmembers’ time to amass more power while using the new mayor as the scapegoat to acquire it.

Am I angry and disappointed at the new mayor who has only been in office a month? Am I a little hard on him? Yes. And yes with more to come. I expect more from this native son, and I expect him to honor the rights and freedoms citizens fought for and not try to emulate the millionaire Republican mayor of New York that has a different type animal on his hands. I haven’t heard anything about Mayor Bloomberg’s involvement in helping DC get a vote in Congress, yet he showcase his education model to DC leaders. But from what you read, he has a long way to go with those schools and he still is amassing more and more power. Now that Bloomberg is the man, maybe we should wait on him to guide us in the march on Capitol Hill for a vote in Congress and ultimately self determination. Some would have the audacity to ask the citizens that are being disenfranchised by the mayor trying to wrest control of the schools to actually march with him and others as he seeks support for DC voting rights. That strategic thinking is a little inconsistent for many of us to fathom. It borders on demagoguery. Future Governor Blackberry can walk that march with many of us.

Instead of uniting citizens behind him and working toward the One DC that is advocated in political circles, we get a pact made between the mayor and the council to win this battle with the schools at any cost that shows disrespect for the citizens of Wards 4 and 7 who don’t even have council members. A month after the vote they will elect council members. In exchange for this disenfranchisement, councilmembers get a line item veto over the school budget and they get to respond to complaints from citizens, and maybe there might be a few more patronage jobs to pass around since the control would be shifted. And the media gets to blame somebody else and the businesses get easier access to whatever they might want. We all know that everybody is altruistic when it comes to the education of our children and their can be no motive other than the children. Right!

Only a month into Mayor Fenty’s term, my kids’ seventeen-year-old second cousin was killed at a club and both my neighbor’s and son’s cars were vandalized. More apartments have been built in my community than I could have ever imagined and more condos and apartments are coming soon to a community that was once like living in the suburbs, since few knew of our existence except for the politicians that ventured here in voter-rich upper Northeast, Wards 5 and 4. College educated citizens are still looking for quality jobs and the not-so-skilled are begging even more. The cost to live in Washington, DC, is outrageous. Families are torn and stressed. The neighborhood libraries need help. Teachers need better salaries and more respect. Labor unions need leaders and employers to respect workers’ rights and do the right thing by them. The faith community needs support in tending to the needs of the downtrodden and hopeless. Many minorities feel left out of the revitalization boon of the District and want to get some of the benefits of a prospering city. Taxes remain too high. People are being shot in communities surrounding schools and kids are scared to go to school. The street pharmaceutical industry is still alive and well and neighborhoods and individuals are suffering because of it. Seniors live longer and need more help. Young people need better recreation programs and more supervision. More after-school programs are needed. Childcare is expensive. Too many families have absent fathers. Too many sons and daughters need male role models and mentoring. Family values, religion, and faith seem to be bad words to some and only in the province of some political parties. Opportunities in the city still seem to go to those who live in the suburbs and those in the suburbs sometimes seem to be the ones that have the ear of the city.

Mr. Mayor and City Councilmembers, you have a full plate with all that you need to do and should be doing on the executive and legislative side. Education is not your arena. Dump the mayor’s plan and let’s start the discussion with the school board’s plan and see how it can be improved. If you just want a new superintendent, then say so. It was a collaborative partnership with the mayor, council, and school board that got the current superintendent here. And please don’t hire another General Becton type. You may feel footsteps behind you on the school board and may be threatened by the possibility that one day you may be replaced by a deserving leader. After all, current Councilmembers Marion Barry, Carol Schwartz, and Tommy Wells made the leap from the Board to the school. The school board is a good proving ground and those who do well may well be rewarded with a promotion to the council. But then, there are those that were once ANCs and members of the DC Democratic State Committee that made the leap. They may be stripped of power one day, too, if we don’t watch out. Competition is healthy and good. Stop the madness with this charade of hearings and let’s go back to the drawing board with educating our youth, improving our schools, and championing better lives for our children.

The schools can be a model for the world, but not with the plan on the table and certainly not with the disrespect shown to the voters of DC, with this accelerated push to overthrow the elected school leadership and be “top dawg.” I hope there is a way to sue the District if our elected leaders ramrod this plan through without Wards 4 and 7 having elected leadership at the table, and if there isn’t a referendum should home rule changes be required. What kind of leader would dare rush a vote without these two big wards at the table? Looks like we’re all being “dissed” in this travesty of an education plan. Grabbing power from the first elected body is not the answer to improving test scores and educating young minds. It is only a show of force and a diversion to keep us away from the real problems in the District of Columbia. It puts the stakeholders further away from the power and solutions. When is the next election? Referendum, not a recall, is the chant of the day. Tomorrow that may change. The citizens and advocates are not the bad guys for demanding that a real plan for education be addressed and our rights be kept in tact. Bend a little when it comes to rights and the rest will be history. Those in Baghdad, Iraq, better see how we treat our rights and throw them away when there’s a new boss. We don’t call our leaders dictators though when they trample on our rights. We call them elected leaders that have our backs. We don’t need to think either in the District of Columbia because we are about to be told what to do for our own good and because we had the foresight to elect the right leaders in 2006 to take over in 2007 and beyond. We elected these folks and there is no recourse, of course. And we thought things would be different. We’ve been down this path before, but at least the leaders honored our rights and the rule of law when it came down to it.

Let the citizens know if this public force-feeding for our own good is to be the new type of governing and legislating. And when people testify, are critics of plans to be bullied and talked down to. I hope not. Sometimes you wish you could recall your votes and politicians. At least we can dream like they have to listen to the taxpayers and voters. Not all are on the bandwagon and not all have to be out front to demonstrate their displeasure with the Machiavellian techniques in play to undermine the people’s vote and rights. There isn’t much time to get educated, react, and organize. Now that’s the Prince at his best.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DCenter at the Historical Society, February 8
Bell Clement, clementdc at verizon dot net

On Thursday, February 8, at 6:30 p.m., the Historical Society of Washington will host a presentation from DC’s new city journal, dcenter, at The Carnegie on Mount Vernon Square, 801 K Street, NW (please use our south, K Street, entrance). Editor Julian Hunt and Randall Ott, Dean of Catholic University’s School of Architecture, will discuss this new endeavor, which aims to create a link that “strengthens the connections between the architectural community, the municipality, and the public,” and which has ambitions to offer the writing and criticism a great city deserve. Editor Hunt predicts that dcenter offerings will "be controversial, sometimes wrong — or just irritating, but necessarily so." Hunt and Ott will be joined for this discussion by first issue contributors Mark David Richards (“Excremental Progress”), Uwe Brandes (“Recapturing the Anacostia River”), and Adnan Morshed (“Urbanity of Henry James’s Washington”). Copies of dcenter’s maiden issue and subscriptions will be for sale. The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. Please RSVP to 383-1837 or RSVP@historydc.org.

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Cuban Healthcare, February 8
Pat Bitondo, pbitondo@aol.com

Peter Bourne, MD, presents Salud! A Film Exploring Cuba’s Extensive Global Health Initiatives. Thanks to Dr. Peter Bourne, the Woman’s National Democratic Club is prescreening SALUD before it premieres in Los Angeles. Dr. Bourne, the executive producer of the film, is a visiting scholar at Green College, Oxford University, Vice Chancellor Emeritus of St. George’s University, Granada; and chairman of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) . He served as Special Assistant for Health Issues in the Carter Administration and later as an Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations.

SALUD! is a feature documentary directed by Academy Award nominee Connie Field. The film examines the remarkable case of Cuba, a cash-strapped country with “one of the world’s best health systems,” and explores Cuba’s extensive global health initiatives, The film introduces some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals staffing public health systems in more than fifty countries. Their stories, and those of young medical students — now numbering 30,000 — from the Americas, Africa, and Asia studying in Cuba, raise provocative thoughts about the potential for better international health cooperation. Thursday, February 8, cash bar opens at 6:00 p.m., dinner 6:30 p.m., film program begins at 7:00 p.m. Members: $22 Nonmembers: $27. For reservations contact Patricia Fitzgerald at 232-7363 or pfitzgerald@democraticwoman.org. The Woman’s National Democratic Club is at 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW (Dupont Circle).

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Who Should Run Our Schools, February 11
George Idelson, g.idelson@verizon.net

“Who Should Run Our Schools?” is the subject of a community meeting sponsored by The Cleveland Park Citizens Association on Sunday, February 11, 2 p.m., at the Cleveland Park Library (Connecticut Avenue and Macomb Street, NW). Speakers include Mary Levy, Director, Public Education Reform Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs; Eric Lerum, Chief of Staff to Victor Reinoso, Deputy Mayor for Public Education; and Kevin Clinton, Executive Secretary of the DC Board of Education. All are welcome.

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DC Public Library Events, February 12
India Young, india.young@dc.gov

Tuesday, February 12, 10:30 a.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Room A-5. “Civil War to Civil Rights: The Trials and Triumphs of Black America.” Lecture and discussion on the Civil War and Civil Rights. For more information, call the Black Studies Division at 727-1208.

Mondays, February 12, and February 26, 4:30 p.m., Capitol View Neighborhood Library, 5501 Central Avenue, SE. Monday Night Movies and Black History Trivia. African American movies for teens and young adults ages 12-19. For more information, call 645-0755.

Monday, February 12, 7:00 p.m., Chevy Chase Neighborhood Library, 5625 Connecticut Avenue, NW. “Breaking the Phalanx: Smashing Jim Crow in the Nation’s Capital.” Historian C. R. Gibbs will discuss the efforts that helped to end Jim Crow laws in Washington, DC. For more information, call 282-0021.

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Artee Milligan Campaign Kickoff, February 13
Artee Milligan, arteemilligan@aol.com

Michelle Caldwell Huckaby, Shirley Richardson, Vera Carley, Mattie Jones, and Denise Rosemond cordially invite you to join Artee Milligan, who is running for the open Ward 4 council seat, at his campaign kickoff and benefit reception on Tuesday, February 13, from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Red Line Grill in Takoma Park. RSVP to rtevent@gmail.com or 939-0995. Suggested donations range from $25.00 to $50.00.

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Energy Efficient at Wal-Mart, February 14
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org

Wednesday, February 14, 12:30-1:30 p.m., Building for the 21st Century: The Continuing Evolution of Energy-Efficient Facilities at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, America’s largest retailer, has made energy efficiency a high priority and has set several ambitious goals: to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain resources and the environment. Charles Zimmerman, P.E., vice president of prototype and new format development for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., has played a key role in this effort and will share examples of Wal-Mart’s real-life systems. He’ll review the company’s efforts in daylight harvesting, heat reclamation, LED lighting technology, Energy Management Systems, Photovoltaics, and Solar Walls, as well as provide insights on where some of the newer initiatives are headed. Free. Registration not required. Building for the 21st Century is sponsored by the US Department of Energy. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line.

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CLASSIFIEDS — SERVICES

AARP Tax Aide
Grier Mendel, gmendel@aarp.org

This tax season, District taxpayers are again benefiting from free tax help through AARP Tax-Aide, an AARP Foundation program and the nation’s largest volunteer-run tax counseling and preparation service. The program offers help to low- and middle-income taxpayers with special attention to those who are sixty and older. Here in the District, sixty-five AARP Tax-Aide volunteers will be helping thousands of District residents file their taxes at nineteen Tax-Aide locations throughout the city. Last year, more than three thousand DC residents received Tax-Aide assistance. AARP Tax-Aide volunteers, trained in cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service, can assist in filling tax forms and schedules, including the 1040, 1040A and 1040EZ.

To find the Tax-Aide location nearest them, District residents can call 1-888-AARPNOW (1-888-227-7669) or visit http://www.aarp.org/taxaide. AARP Tax-Aide is America’s largest free, volunteer-run tax preparation and assistance program. It provides services to taxpayers each year from February 1 through April 15 at almost 8,400 sites around the country. Sites are located in places such as senior centers, libraries and community centers. In addition, volunteers can visit hospitals and nursing homes for those who are homebound. Help is available on a walk-in basis or by appointment, depending on the site. The program began in 1968 with only four volunteers who worked on one hundred returns, but it has grown dramatically. Last tax season, AARP Tax-Aide served more than two million people with more than 32,000 volunteers nationwide.

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