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August 15, 2007

Influence

Dear Influentials:

Dorothy writes, below, about influential people in DC. I’d like to hear what you have to say about it. DCist, which provided its first draft list today as a reply to the GQ list of the most powerful people in Washington’s national city, has asked for additional names. Dorothy provides some below, but both lists barely scratch the surface of people who should be named. Whom would you like to add?

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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How Can a Child Learn to Compute Fractions?
Karl Rudder, krudder222@aol.com

The DC Public Schools should be employing its resources to help expand the learning experience for DC youth by providing tutorial workshops for parents at the beginning of the school year. The myth that a child can become educated only within the hours of 9 a.m.-3 p.m. needs to be dismissed. A child will not learn how to walk, speak, or go to the bathroom, or learn any academic skill without continuous practice. We all know this, yet too many have resigned the academic development of too many children to only what the child can possibly experience during the school day. If there are only four report cards for the entire school year, we will continue to fail to develop a strong team effort between parents and teachers. Our ability to cooperate will be determined by our ability to communicate. Allowing eight exchanges between teachers and parents will double the current effort and will double the possibility of a successful exchange between parents and teachers for the benefit of DCPS students.

Parents, especially parents of elementary school age children, need to develop positive experiences at home for their children. A positive peer influence can be achieved easily by having parents work with each other to provide more frequent opportunities for their children and their children’s friends to develop their academic study skills and their reading, spelling, handwriting, and basic writing skills. How can a children learn how to compute fractions, decimals and compute basic algebra and geometry when they have yet to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers? Can only an educational expert reliably provide an exchange for a child to slowly but surely learn how to study and learn basic academic skills?

The vast resources within the DC community need to be effectively coordinated to provide far more effective tutorial assistance for DC youth. The many graduate and undergraduate students at Howard University, the University of the District of Columbia, and the many other local universities can start an educational revolution in this country and provide a wonderful model for other cities to follow. There are many churches in every community of the District of Columbia, and just a fraction of the active members of each church can provide very effective tutorial services for the children within their communities. Can you imagine the power of just three to five churches working together for the benefit of the children in your community? Thousands of proud graduates of the DC Public Schools are still here in Washington, DC. We can coordinate our vast resources to help develop the studying and test taking skills of our little brothers and sisters of the DC Public Schools. Limiting the resources of a tutorial program for DC youth limits the effectiveness of that program.

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Influence
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

I’m flattered, of course, but mystified. Today the DCist named me as one of DC’s most influential people (http://dcist.com/2007/08/15/dc_most_influen.php). Influential? Most frustrated, maybe. Most like Sisyphus, forever rolling the rock uphill and never getting there, certainly. But influential? Martin Austermuhle, who compiled the initial list for DCist, asked who should be added to it, and I have some suggestions for people who belong on the list whom he didn’t name.

Among current elected officials, why not Vincent Gray; he’s the city council chairman. Within the Fenty administration, Peter Nickles is the local equivalent of both Dick Cheney and Karl Rove; influence doesn’t always have to be for good. Speaking of which, among longtime lobbyists and influence peddlers, Fred Cooke and David Wilmot still make more private deals for their clients than anyone else. Among public school advocates, if school advocates will have any influence in the future, Mary Levy, Iris Toyer, and Mary Filardo have the background, experience, knowledge, and history to make a contribution. Among television reporters, Bruce DePuyt, Bruce Johnson, and Tom Sherwood have the deep knowledge to do stories that aren’t just rewrites of press releases. The many people who run neighborhood and community listservs and blogs are providing news that is personally important to local residents, a job that has been largely abandoned by newspapers and broadcast outlets. Judy Feldman (Save Our Mall) and Robin Diener (DC Library Renaissance Project) are providing valuable services to the whole city, as are Kent Cooper, Charles Cassell, and Arthur Cotton Moore on architectural issues.

What’s interesting is the number of fields in which prominent names don’t come to mind easily. What Washington Post editorialist and columnist can fill the shoes of Colby King and William Raspberry, when they provided that paper’s local perspective on the editorial and op-ed pages? What business leader is as much or more interested in the good of the city as in his own corporation — like John Hechinger, Gilbert Hahn, Katherine Graham, and Joseph Danzansky were? What business interest or large law firm contributes more to the city than it gets from the city’s government? The big foots — the Federal City Council, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, the DC Hospital Association, the contractors, developers, sports promoters, and so on — look out for themselves. What university president has made the university more of a contributor to its local neighborhood than it is an opponent of the city’s residents and its surrounding community? Same question for large churches. Name a local philanthropist. If you can, try naming two. In any case, thank you for the mention, Martin. Anybody can make a mistake.

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Lack of Respect Goes On
Ed Dixon, Georgetown Reservoir, jedxn@yahoo.com

Having acted in defense of my own community’s playing fields at Hardy Recreation Center, I understand the need to protect the public commons. However, Clyde Howard’s comment (Lack of Respect, August 12) on calling in Immigration and Customs Enforcement on soccer players is unnecessary and is the equivalent of calling for a Klan rally to curtail particular individual’s behavior. I know some will say, “but ICE is government sanctioned,” as if the Klan never was.

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Hot Air in themail
Peter Turner, felinehostage@yahoo.com

There’s more than heat blowing in themail these days. Of the last ten editorials of this newsletter, seven have continued the obsessive banter about DC schools, and two have given a bizarre spotlight to the Rees versus Cheh who-had-how-much-campaign-office-space crisis. One would think from this list that there was nothing else going on in the city worth reporting. That the most recent edition opened with a supporting quote from the Washington Times (of all publications) is another sign of how DCWatch has gone off the rails.

Having said that, one item that is very alarming and worth further investigation is the revelations surrounding E-mail archiving by the DC government. Given the well established requirements for archiving set by, among others, Sarbanes-Oxley, NARA, and the FOIA, it is a disgrace that the local DC government, particularly given its fiscal dependence on the federal government, is not up to speed on this issue.

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Shameless Plug
Mark Segraves, msegraves@wtopnews.com

Plotkin has taken the last few weeks of August off, and I am hosting his show. With just a few days left before the start of school, DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee and School Facilities Director Allen Lew will will take calls and E-mails from listeners to the Politics Program on Washington Post Radio Friday at 12:00 p.m. You can call 1-877-POST-107 between noon and 1 p.m. on Friday or E-mail questions anytime before the show to comment@washingtonpostradio.com

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InTowner Correction
Peter Wolff, intowner@intowner.com

Among the page 1 lead stories noted in our monthly new content notification advisory [themail, August 12] was the following: “New Farmers Market in the Bloomingdale Neighborhood Welcomed and Very Popular.” Unfortunately, there was a small typographical error, but one that required correcting because it affected the proper reporting of the actual location of the farmers market.

In the first sentence of the third paragraph the location of the market printed as being in the 100 block of First Street, rather than as being in the 1700 block (or at 1st and R Streets, NW) as it should have appeared. We very much regret the inadvertent error and can assure our readers that the article text appearing under the lead story’s header has already been corrected, as has the PDF version found in the Current and Back Issues Archive. Obviously, nothing can be done about the thousands of copies already distributed to our five hundred locations; a correction notice, however, will appear in the September print edition. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DC Public Library Events, August 16, 20
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov

Thursday, August 16, 1:00 p.m., Chevy Chase Branch Library, 5625 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Summer Foreign Film Series. The second film in the series is The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1996), a film based on Leo Tolstoy's story of the same title about an oddball pair of Russian soldiers who are captured by a Chechen father hoping to barter them for the release of his own captive sons. Directed by Sergei Bodrov. In Russian with English subtitles. Not rated. The series will continue in September. For more information, call 282-0021.

Monday, August 20, 6:30 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Room 221. All the World's a Stage Film Club. We will watch The Three Musketeers (1973), directed by Richard Lester and starring Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway.

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Event for Adam Clampitt for DC City Council, August 18
Lane Hudson, lane@lanehudson.com

A campaign event for Adam Clampitt will be held at 5 Prospect, Rehoboth Beach, at the home of David Salie and Mark Bromley, on Saturday, August 18, 5 p.m.-7 p.m. Beach attire is welcome. Food and drinks will be provided. Donations will be appreciated.

Adam Clampitt has lived in DC since he was eleven years old. He is a progressive candidate who holds a masters degree in public policy from the University of Southern California and is also an officer in the Naval Reserves. Adam is a community activist and intends to focus on education, healthcare, public safety, and affordable housing throughout his campaign and once a member of city council. He plans to run an aggressive, grassroots campaign to engage all DC residents.

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WiMAX and Building a Scalable Back Office, August 18
Barbara Conn, bconn@cpcug.org

In recent years, IT software and services have changed dramatically. How have these changes affected the building of back office systems, and infrastructure? Doug Smith, CIO of DigitalBridge Communications, will discuss the building of an end-to-end, automated back-office environment in a short period of time with limited human and capital resources. The presentation includes an overview of WiMAX, how it works and its pros and cons.

Gather your colleagues and bring them to this Saturday, August 18, 1:00 p.m., gathering of the Capital PC User Group (CPCUG) Entrepreneurs and Consultants Special Interest Group (E&C SIG). These monthly events are free and open to all. This month’s event is at the Cleveland Park Branch Library (first floor large meeting room) at 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW (between Macomb and Newark Streets), just over a block south of the Cleveland Park Metrorail Station on the Red Line. For more information about the presentation, the speaker, and CPCUG (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization), visit http://entrepreneur.cpcug.org/807meet.html. To register, send E-mail to Bconn@cpcug.org.

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A Lesson in Democracy, September 2
Michon Boston, mboston_tv@yahoo.com

ITVS Community Cinema, now in its third season, and PBS member station WHUT will present a free public preview of Please Vote for Me at Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th Street, NW, just in time for back to school on Sunday, September 2, at 5 p.m. The screening will be followed

by a discussion with DC-area teachers and educators who recently traveled to China through programs (including a Fulbright-Hays Group project sponsored by Howard University’s School of Education) to promote educational and cultural cooperation between Washington, DC, and the Peoples Republic of China. Sally Schwartz of the DC Center for Global Education and Leadership and others will share their observations and experiences in China and the importance of global education for public school students here and abroad. No admission fee, but an RSVP is required to pleaevoteforme@communitycinema-dc.org or 939-0794. For more information, see http://www.communitycinema-dc.org.

How does democracy work? An important assignment is given to a third grade elementary school class in the city of Wuhan in central China, where three eight-year-old students campaign for the coveted position of class monitor. It is the first election for a class leader to be held in China. The three candidates hold debates, campaign tirelessly, and show their intellectual and artistic skills, until one is voted the winner. Winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the 2007 Silverdocs Film Festival, Please Vote for Me will be broadcast nationally on the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens on October 23. The documentary will air on WHUT on November 3.

ITVS Community Cinema is the monthly screening series featuring upcoming selections from the Independent Lens season on PBS. Presented in partnership with local public television stations and leading community organizations, ITVS Community Cinema holds preview screenings in select markets across the country making a real contribution on a range of current social issues by connecting communities with organizations, information, and the opportunity to get involved. For more information, see http://www.itvs.org/outreach.

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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED

Paralegal
Tolu Tolu, Tolu2Books@aol.com

Seeking paralegal with excellent civil case background to work with pro se plaintiff on researching, writing brief, civil procedure for PG Circuit Court and Civil rules. Call Tolu, 263-6806.

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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS

A Penny for Your Thoughts About Banks
Paul Penniman, paul@mathteachingtoday.com

I seem to be asking this question every few years, but is anyone out there happy with their bank service? We were happy with BB&T, but their service has really gone downhill these last few years. I guess I would like a local bank that won’t keep nickeling and diming us.

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