Equal Rights
Dear Citizens:
“The District of Columbia is not a state, and should not be treated
as a state. It is purely a federal enclave, and its residents do not
have the same rights as the residents of states, including the rights
enumerated in the Bill of Rights. They are second-class citizens, and
should be.” If anyone said that to you, you would probably be furious.
You would regard the person who said it as an enemy of the District of
Columbia and its citizens, and you would be right. Yet that is exactly
the argument made by two mayors of the District of Columbia and their
respective Attorneys General in Shelly Parker v. District of Columbia
and Adrian Fenty, the Second Amendment case that the Court of
Appeals decided on Friday. The District offered other arguments,
too. It argued that the citizens who brought the case had no standing to
sue because they hadn’t been indicted for owning a gun, and it argued
that the Second Amendment to the Constitution only gave states the right
to have armed militia, and conferred no rights on individual citizens.
But its most innovative argument — and the one that should insult and
anger every DC resident — was that even if the Second Amendment does
give individual citizens the right to “keep and bear arms,” it doesn’t
give that right to residents of the District, because DC isn’t a
state.
Luckily, the US Court of Appeals for the District found against the
arguments of the DC government on all counts. It found that one of the
plaintiffs did have standing because he had applied for and been denied
a gun permit. It neatly disposed of the District’s militia argument,
noting that, “But because the District reads ‘a well regulated
Militia’ to signify only the organized militias of the founding era
— institutions that the District implicitly argues are no longer in
existence today — invocation of the Second Amendment right is
conditioned upon service in a defunct institution. . . . In short, we
take the District’s position to be that the Second Amendment is a dead
letter.” Most importantly for us, the Court held, contrary to the
position of our city government, that, “In any event, the Supreme
Court has unambiguously held that the Constitution and Bill of Rights
are in effect in the District.”
The danger of the city government’s argument is amply illustrated
in the dissenting opinion by Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson.
Henderson is a proponent of the theory that only members of an organized
state militia have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, but she
leans most heavily on the District’s denigration of its citizens’
equal status as US citizens. “I believe that, under Miller, the
District is inescapably excluded from the Second Amendment because it is
not a State,” she writes. “The Second Amendment’s ‘character and
aim’ does not require that we treat the District as a State. . . .
Unlike the States, the District had — and has — no need to protect
itself from the federal government because it is a federal entity
created as the seat of that government. . . . That the Second Amendment
does not apply to the District, then, is, to me, an unavoidable
conclusion.”
Regardless of what your personal feelings are about gun ownership or
your political theory of the meaning of the Second Amendment, I hope
that you will agree with me that the District government should be
trying to protect your rights as American citizens, and should assert
your equality with other citizens of the United States, rather than
trying to undermine your rights and equality, and trying to consign you
to the status of a second-class citizen. The US Court of Appeals for the
District Circuit opinion is at http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/gun070309.htm;
pleadings and motions in the case from both sides are at http://www.gurapossessky.com/parker_pleadings.htm.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
Broken Windows Policing Is about Quality of
Life
Nancee Lorn, nanceelorn@yahoo.com
For too long I felt as though our police force was so consumed with
major crime that it allowed small crimes that plague the average citizen
to go unchecked. It seems to me that the broken windows theory that Jack
McKay writes about in the March 8 issue of themail is simply a plan to
try to improve the quality of life for citizens.
Of course I still want police to concentrate on major crime, but that
doesn’t mean citizens should have to endure the petty crimes that
impact their daily life. In the twelve years that I’ve lived on
Capitol Hill, I’ve had my car vandalized four or five times. I’ve
had to replace my car stereo so often that when I bought my last car,
which came with a factory-installed cassette deck, I left it in figuring
it was worthless to criminals — despite the fact that I own no
cassette tapes. Auto and home vandalism is so rampant in certain
neighborhoods that it has become a way of life. And once it becomes a
way of life, it becomes acceptable. Eventually when those crimes give
way to bigger crimes like shootings, people begin to react similarly. I
hear occasional gunfire in the distance and I don’t even flinch
because the culture of crime has become pervasive.
Of the twelve times that I’ve called the police to report drug
dealing, rowdiness, fights, and other petty crimes, they probably showed
up once or twice. While no one was being killed during these incidents,
residents were certainly losing sleep due to noise issues or in general
experiencing a feeling of not feeling safe in their own neighborhoods.
Small crimes that impact residents’ day-to-day quality of life are the
issues that make an area unfit to live and probably encourage people to
move most. I also believe that when unchecked, they lead criminals to
believe that no one is watching, which clears the way for bigger, more
violent, bolder crimes.
###############
Broken Windows
Ron Linton, rmlch@rcn.com
The problem with using labels is that they mean different things to
different people. The broken windows theory, if we really pursue it,
doesn’t mean just arresting for small crimes. It means a coordinated
effort by multiple city agencies to prevent a neighborhood from
deteriorating to a point where it becomes an environment for crime.
Small crimes? Well, let’s see. My experience in patrolling these
neighborhoods (acknowledging that we are now talking the 70’s and 80’s)
is that as buildings deteriorate they are filled by individuals who need
pay no rent and who sustain themselves by breaking into vending
machines, automobiles, or helping themselves to the property of their
neighbors, mostly low income. Are these small crimes?
If you ignore them, the vending machines disappear as do the autos
and the neighbors. Now these same individuals committing the small
crimes, most of whom are also using narcotics, still need cash, so the
crimes become muggings. Is that still a small crime? As the crime
opportunities in the broken window neighborhood vanish, these
individuals move out into more lucrative surroundings where they commit
robberies and burglaries. Are we now up to big crimes?
The problem is not the theory. The problem is addressing it. As the
Fenty public safety transition team (which I led) said in its report, we
are training officers to be arresting machines instead of peace officers
(another label?). A peace officer is one who understands that when a
landlord allows a rented building to become uninhabitable it does not
encourage renters to feel responsibility for their premises. This
requires reaching out to the appropriate agency to enforce codes. One of
my tasks as an assistant chief was to develop a liaison and coordinated
program with other city agencies to address elimination of the
conditions that breed crime. the officer on the street was interested,
the line bureaucrats in the other agencies were interested. The bosses
were not. We never got anything off the ground. Hopefully, the mayor’s
embracing the broken windows theory means a recognition that it is not
just limited to police department arrests, but to a joint city agency
program that starts with a police officer who feels ownership for his
neighborhood and has the power to bring other non-police agencies into
dealing with the problem, in fact the power to make them do their jobs.
###############
Recall in themail
Michael Bindner, mikeybdc at yahoo.com
There are a few things to do to stop changes to the charter. The
first is to attempt a referendum to overturn the act asking Congress to
change the Charter. This will in and of itself send a message. The
second is to attempt to recall any non-freshman councilmember who votes
for it (you cannot circulate a petition on the new members until after
one year), and the others after that. Of course, given the amount of
dead weight on the voter roles (which are not automatically purged),
this is a tall order.
In the long term, if the drive to transform the school board really
galls you, support candidates who will allow charter amendment by
citizen initiative and who will mandate that the voter rolls be purged
on a regular basis, thus making initiative, referendum, and recall
petitions easier to put on the ballot.
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DC Tax and Revenue Office Unable to Locate Own
Posterior With Both Hands
Mark Eckenwiler, themale at ingot dot org
As you mull over your new real property tax bill and your proposed
2008 assessment, it’s worth remembering that Tax and Revenue is
letting other property owners get away with painfully obvious fraud.
Last October, I commented in themail on a single owner receiving the
homestead deduction on four separate properties (http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2006/06-10-18.htm).
As of March 9, nothing has changed, despite OTR’s periodic claims that
it is mercilessly hunting down such tax cheats (see, e.g., http://newsroom.dc.gov/show.aspx/agency/otr/section/2/release/10267/year/2006/month/12).
###############
Legal Scholars Support DC Voting Rights
Kevin Kiger, kkiger@dcvote.org
Legal scholars from universities around the country have signed on to
a letter supporting the constitutionality of congressional voting rights
for the District of Columbia. DC Vote, an education and advocacy group,
will send the letter to members of Congress this week to quell any
lingering constitutionality concerns. Sheryll D. Cashin and Viet D. Dinh
of Georgetown University Law Center, Charles J. Ogletree of Harvard Law
School and Jamin Raskin of American University Washington College of Law
were among the first cosigners of the letter to the Hill. Signed by
twenty-five legal scholars, the letter states, “As law professors and
scholars, we would like to address these questions and put to rest any
concerns about the constitutionality of extending the right of
representation to residents of the District.” The text of the entire
letter can be found on the DC Vote web site here: http://www.dcvote.org/pdfs/congress/legalscholarsdcvra03082007.pdf.
Latham & Watkins LLP released a legal memo today that echoes the
consensus view that the DC Voting Rights Act is constitutional. That
bill that will be heard in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday,
March 14. This memo is found here: http://www.dcvote.org/pdfs/congress/lathamwatkinscrs03062007.pdf.
DC Appleseed Executive Director Walter Smith and other legal experts
have found that Congress has repeatedly treated DC as if it were a state
for purposes of the Commerce Clause and Diversity Jurisdiction section
of the Constitution. Therefore, if Congress can use the District Clause
for purposes of those provisions of the Constitution, Congress can use
that power to provide representation as well. Additionally, no court has
ever decided whether the DC Voting Rights Act is constitutional. Once
the DC Voting Rights Act is enacted into law, there may be legal
challenges. Ultimately, the courts will decide its constitutionality. We
believe, given the arguments presented by nationally renowned scholars
and former judges, that the courts will find that the DC Voting Rights
Act is constitutional.
###############
Your coverage of the legislative session related to my nomination [themail,
March 7] had several glaring misrepresentations. First, you stated that
I initially said that I had made a loan to a friend and that it
eventually came out that the money was an investment in the Nationals.
That is not true. At my confirmation hearing I testified that I had a
joint venture with a minority owner of the Nationals to secure a portion
of his required funds to the Nationals. I never stated it was a loan. I
always asserted it to be an investment. At that time I also offered to
recuse myself from issues related to the Nationals. In addition, the
amount of my investment is $200,000, not $250,000.
Second, I never worked for Councilmember Schwartz, although I do
consider her a friend. I did, however, work for Councilmember Charlene
Drew Jarvis. Third, you state that my being on the Commission and having
to recuse myself from baseball would have made me practically useless. I
wholeheartedly disagree with you. The Commission covers many other
areas, such as the construction and development of the soccer stadium,
operations and improvements to RFK, events at the Armory/RFK and the
adjacent parking lots for RFK/Armory, community outreach, grants, and
lots of issues related to the construction of the new ballpark that do
not directly/indirectly impact the Washington Nationals. The Armory has
been recently renovated and should be hosting a lot more major events
than it has in the past. With my leadership as the chair of the Events
Committee, this will happen. I am also chair for the Soccer Committee.
Those two committees alone will keep me extremely busy. At a recent
board hearing this past Wednesday, baseball was maybe twenty percent of
the meeting. Your assertion that the Commission is only about baseball
is correct for the last three years, but not now.
Fourth, you state that Councilmember Graham asked a sensible question
about how it could be considered a blind trust if I knew what the trust
contained. However, you fail to consider that every public official that
creates a blind trust always knows what assets are going in it. To
suggest that I should not know what assets are going in the trust is
ridiculous. What makes a blind trust blind is not knowing how the asset
is managed after it goes in the trust. I sent this E-mail to simply
provide some clarification and to point out some factual misstatements.
[It is interesting to know that Mr. Soto believes that baseball and
the ballpark are no longer terribly important to the operations of the
DC Sports and Entertainment Commission; we shall continue to disagree on
that issue. However, the crucial point is whether or not he initially
disclosed the extent of his involvement with the Nationals. (I am glad
that Mr. Soto has clarified that his investment was $200,000. The amount
was repeatedly referred to in the council legislative session as
$250,000, but Mr. Soto himself had not disclosed the actual amount in
any of his public submissions to the council. However, Peter Nickles,
General Counsel to the Mayor, did write to the council that, “Mr. Soto’s
business relationship with a minority owner of the Nationals is so small
and indirect. . . ,” which provides a useful measure of how the
administration gauges the size of an investment that would cause a
conflict of interest. Mr. Soto himself wrote to the council that, “I,
together with other parties, provided de minimis funding to one of the
members of the minority ownership group of the Washington National’s
franchise.” Again, we may disagree on whether $200,000 or $250,000 is de
minimis funding; it isn’t in my circles, but it may be in his.
However, I do not believe that this statement clarifies that the funding
was provided as part of a joint venture investment, and not as a loan.
I do want to correct one error in my posting, which Councilmember
Kwame Brown brought to my attention. I wrote that it was Councilmember
Brown who argued in the legislative session that we should just be proud
that a minority businessman had a quarter million dollars to invest;
Brown informs me that it was instead Councilmember Marion Barry who made
that argument. — Gary Imhoff]
###############
Okay, okay. Let’s get down to cases so we can all MIDAMO (mark it
down and move on). First, I agree, as a matter of high school Civics
101, that the Council should wait until the Ward 4 and 7 seats are
filled before voting on Fenty’s plans for changing public school
governance. Second, I frankly doubt that taking this particular matter
to a special election will change much: there appears to be a slight,
but clearly very nervous, majority in the city to at least try something
like what Fenty wants to do to and with the public schools. Anything to
start rebuilding the educational infrastructure of this town. But, then,
third, it probably won’t delay anything critical to take the matter to
the voters of the city. So if it rebuts some of the less consequential
criticism of what the mayor proposes to get additional validation at the
ballot box, fine. Let’s do it and, again, move on.
Fourth, as a third-generation African-American Washingtonian, I must
confess that I am emotionally exhausted -- and really almost offended --
by the historically lopsided argument that I keep hearing that just the
provenance of the DC Board of Education alone — the first elected
political body in the city since 1874 and so on — should somehow spare
it from some kind of root-and-branch reconstitution if such a
fundamental change proved necessary, which most people seem to think it
does. Most of the city’s electorate agrees that either the mayor’s
governance proposal or, what is more likely, some kind of compromise
that those skittish councilmembers can digest politically is clearly
called for. All we’re really debating now is the form, extent and
timetable of the change.
Fifth, and at bottom, I am far more concerned about what happens to
the children than whether or not eleven adults sitting downtown have a
dispositive role in the public schools or only an advisory one. To
paraphrase what Churchill once said of Lenin, if Fenty had not come
along and proposed what he is proposing to fundamentally reconstitute
the public school system in this town, it would have been necessary to
invent someone to do so.
###############
Postpone the Board of Education’s Vote on
Graduation Requirements
Erich Martel, ehmartel@starpower.net
DCPS Superintendent Clifford Janey’s proposal to increase
graduation requirements from 23.5 to 26.0 credits is scheduled for a
vote by the Board of Education on March 14. It will affect incoming
ninth grade students (Class of 2006) and cause major scheduling changes
and problems that will immediately affect all students. This critical
decision will be made at a time when the elected District 2 seat,
representing Wards 3 and 4, is vacant. A matter with such import for all
students and their families should not take place at a time when 25
percent of the city’s population will not be represented in vote.
This would be the third change in graduation requirements since the
1970’s. In 1983, they were increased from 17.5 to 20.5 credits and, in
1992, to the present 23.5. If the proposal passes, DCPS will have the
odd distinction of having the lowest NAEP achievement scores in the
nation and the most stringent minimum diploma requirements of all the
fifty states. Much has been written about respecting the historical
governance role of the Board of Education. Shouldn’t the Board, in its
deliberations on a matter of momentous consequence, defer to the same
democratic considerations? Such a decision should not be made when a
quarter of the city’s population is without an elected voice.
###############
The Superintendent has proposed that District of Columbia Public
Schools high schools have the appearance of more rigor. He has responded
to critics of so-called social promotion by asking the Board of
Education to increase the number of credits required of high schoolers
for them to earn a diploma from DCPS. The Board will vote on this
proposal this week. They should vote it down. Given evidence elsewhere
of chaotic learning environments around the country in middle and junior
high schools, and the link between poor performance then and subsequent
low attainment later, referred to below, the Board should look elsewhere
to improve learning in DCPS high schools.
If graduation requirements are increased by the Board, DC will be in
the top 25 percent of required credit hours. They already exceed those
of many states, where the fraction of high schoolers graduating is
higher, and certainly exceed requirements of states in which the
achievement of graduates in math and science is higher. DCPS already
appears rigorous. The question is whether there is any evidence to
support the notion of a causal link between high school credits
graduation requirements and learning which would increase the
achievement of low performing students. We already know that high
performing and supported students are inclined to take more courses than
the bare minimum required. Fortunately, national data from the most
rigorous and broadly supported program to assess achievement in our
schools, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), has just
released data matching transcript records of a sample of Class of 2005
graduates with their achievement on senior year NAEP test performance in
science and math (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard).
NAEP data do not support the Superintendent’s proposals and the
expectations of those on the School Board who would vote for it this
week.
Controlling for indicators of students’ social background and ninth
grade GPA — an indicator of their readiness for high school studies
—,there is no consistent or educationally significant difference in
average performance for having earned varying numbers of credits during
high school, This is true for both math and science test performance.
Second, those required to have earned the most credits in order to
graduate may have performed significantly lower, in a statistical if not
substantive sense, than those required to earn the fewest. Third, even
when one looks for a connection between more rigorous credit-earned
requirements in a graduated field of study — math — in which
additional course work would seem to imply greater depth, there is no
broad evidence that students from systems requiring more courses have
graduated with higher average math knowledge than graduates from systems
with lower requirements.
Please, please, read the sentences above carefully. They do not mean
that significant learning does not take place in high school classes or
that more and more rigorous classes are not associated with and even
necessary for greater achievement. What they do mean is that the best
available data support the argument that the learning of high school
students who have performed poorly early on and who are less well
supported in school is not increased by taking on or having imposed
additional course burdens. It is the role of serious and qualified
educational leaders and Board members to evaluate whether there is a
benefit to appearances of rigor that may belie reality. The best
available data do not support the Superintendent’s proposal for
further burdening students and schools with additional course
requirements.
###############
This is to advise that the March 2007 online edition has been
uploaded and may be accessed at http://www.intowner.com.
Included are the lead stories, community news items and crime reports,
editorials (including prior months’ archived), restaurant reviews
(prior months’ also archived), and the text from the ever-popular
“Scenes from the Past” feature (the accompanying images can be seen
in the archived PDF version). Also included are all current classified
ads. The complete issue (along with prior issues back to March 2003)
also is available in PDF file format directly from our home page at no
charge simply by clicking the link in the Current & Back Issues
Archive. Here you will be able to view the entire issue as it appears in
print, including all photos and advertisements. The next issue will
publish on April 12 (the 2nd Friday of the month, as always). The
complete PDF version will be posted by the preceding night or early that
Friday morning at the latest, following which the text of the lead
stories, community news, and selected features will be uploaded shortly
thereafter.
To read this month’s lead stories, simply click the link on the
home page to the following headlines: 1) “Third District Police
Announce Initiation of Plan for Enhanced Officer Presence on Streets —
Many Residents Skeptical Yet Hoping for Results”; 2) “New Upscale
Restaurant and Lounge on P Street West of Circle Subject of Neighbors’
Ire for Noise and Congestion — ANC Not Moved to Oppose.”
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Guy Mason Recreation Center Classes
Toni Ritzenberg, taritzdc@aol.com
Registration for spring 2007 classes at the Guy Mason Recreation
Center (3600 Calvert Street, NW) began on March 3 and continues until
classes start the week of March 23. There are classes for your physical
and mental health — Pilates, Move It (Dancersize) and Yoga (with a bit
of “Rock and Roll”). Senior Momentum is available on Wednesdays and
Fridays and, just for fun, there is Ballroom Dancing.
Art classes, china painting, copper enameling workshops, and pottery
are again available, and digital photo and knitting have been added.
French and Spanish classes are again being offered and duplicate bridge
is ongoing on Mondays and Thursdays. Even though Guy Mason is one of the
few adult centers in the District, two classes for "young"
people are offered. Music Together is for children from birth to four
years of age and Abrakadooodle, an art class is for children twenty
months to three years (obviously accompanied by a parent and/or another
adult).
For specific program start dates, visit the Center’s web site at http://www.guymasonstudioarts.com.
To register online, visit http://www.dpr.dc.gov
and click on Activities Program Registration and follow the
instructions. For further information and/or to register in person,
visit the Guy Mason Recreation Center at 3600 Calvert Street, NW,
Monday-Friday 9:00 a.m.-10:00 p.m. and Saturdays 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., or
call Robert Haldeman/Caryl King at 282-2180. Do not miss your chance to
participate in one of the few bargains the District has to offer.
###############
Rally to Save Our Schools, March 13
Gina Arlotto, citymom@dcaccess.net
The Save Our Schools Coalition has been working with several other
groups throughout the city to find a way to register our opposition to
the Mayor’s scheme to take over our schools. We waited for hours and
testified against the plan at the Wilson Building, and for our trouble,
we were thoroughly abused by the councilmembers. We have sent countless
E-mails and phone calls to our elected councilmembers. We have attended
community meetings, and even voted overwhelmingly against this plan in
ward forums, all to no avail. After much thought and discussion we have
decided that we can only make our voices heard by taking our concerns
straight to Adrian Fenty’s front door.
We will hold a rally at Adrian Fenty’s house next Tuesday, March
13, at 6:30 p.m., at 4712 17th Street, NW, near Decatur Street. We are
hoping to bring the Mayor back from this undemocratic, unfair, and
dictatorial action and return him to his true populist roots. Please
join me and others throughout the city on March 13. For more information
call 521-0377.
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DC Public Library Events, March 13-14
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov
Tuesday, March 13, 12:00 p.m., West End Neighborhood Library, 1101
24th Street, NW. West End Library Film Club. Bring your lunch and enjoy
watching Big Fish (PG-13). For more information, call 724-8707.
Wednesday, March 14, 7:00 p.m., Juanita E. Thornton/Shepherd Park
Neighborhood Library, 7420 Georgia Avenue, NW, Activity room. Author Vee
Williams Garcia will read from her book Jazz Flower. For
information, call 541-6100.
Wednesday, March 14, 12:00 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial
Library, 901 G Street, NW, Great Hall. Insurance Products for Consumers.
Philip Barlow, associate commissioner, and Lily Qi, public information
officer, of the DC Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking, will
present a seminar to acquaint DC residents with information on
commercially available insurance products.
Wednesday, March 14, 1:00 p.m., Juanita E. Thornton/Shepherd Park
Neighborhood Library, 7420 Georgia Avenue, NW. Shepherd Park Wednesday
Afternoon Book Club. Enjoy a lively book discussion of No Boundaries:
A Cancer Surgeon’s Odyssey, by LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., M.D. For
more information, call 541-6100.
###############
DHCD FY 2008 Action Plan Hearing, March 14
Najuma Thorpe, najuma.thorpe@dc.gov
The Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) will hold
a public hearing on the “Draft Fiscal Year 2008 Consolidated Annual
Action Plan for the District of Columbia” on March 14 at 6:30 p.m. The
purpose of the hearing, which will be held at DHCD Headquarters, 801
North Capitol Street, NE, is to provide the public with an opportunity
to express its views on the plan and budgets to be submitted to the US
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the following
federal entitlement programs: Community Development Block Grant Program,
HOME Investment Partnerships Program, Emergency Shelter Grant Program,
and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS Program (HOPWA).
The Department will utilize the public’s input, consistent with the
District’s economic development strategy, citywide strategic plan, and
identified strategic target areas, to finalize the Plan for submission
to the Council of the District of Columbia and HUD. The Action Plan is
available at http://www.dhcd.dc.gov.
If you wish to present oral testimony, contact Mrs. Pamela Hillsman-Johnson,
Community Development Resource Specialist, at 442-7250, as soon as
possible. Written statements may be submitted for the record at the
hearing or until close of business, Friday, March 23. Written statements
may be mailed to Mr. Victor L. Selman, Interim Director, Department of
Housing and Community Development, Attention: Office of Strategy and
Communications, 801 North Capitol Street, NE, 20002. For
Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) relay service, call
800-201-7165. A sign language interpreter and Spanish translation
services will be provided.
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CLASSIFIEDS — DONATIONS
Dress for Success Clothing Drive, March 15
Tina Schumacher, tina.schumacher@ketchum.com
It’s time for you to clean out your closet and donate to the second
“Send a Suit” professional women’s clothing drive on Thursday,
March 15, from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., at the FedEx Special Delivery
Truck at the corner of 1st and D Streets, SE, the Capitol South Metro
Station Join FedEx Special Delivery and Dress for Success on Capitol
Hill for a donation drive that will knock your socks off! In 2006, the
“Send a Suit” drive collected more than six hundred items from
Capitol Hill staffers and neighborhood residents. Help women dress for
success by donating dry-cleaned contemporary women’s suits, gently
used shoes, blouses, and accessories appropriate for the current season.
Your donations will help solve the “Catch-22” dilemma faced by
many low-income women trying to enter the workforce in the Washington,
DC, area: without a job, how can you afford professional clothing? But
without professional clothing, how can you get that job? Just one item
from your closet will help these women put their best foot forward and
Dress for Success!
FedEx Special Delivery is a nationwide program that provides
transportation and logistics assistance at community events. Dress for
Success is a not-for-profit organization that offers services to help
low-income women enter the workforce and stay employed.
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I need a telephone and can’t afford to buy one. Do any themail
readers have an old phone they don’t want any more?
###############
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