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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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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[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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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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[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
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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