Absentee Taxi Chair Pushes Anti-Driver Agenda

Posted on April 1, 2012 by admin

Despite widespread concerns, D.C. Taxicab Commission (DCTC) chair Ron Linton intends to rapidly overhaul the city’s taxicab industry in the coming months. In testimony before the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Environment, Public Works and Transportation on Wednesday, the pugnacious and frequently absent taxi chair told Councilmember Mary Cheh that he plans to mandate the installation of “smart meters” with tracking devices in all District cabs by year’s end, a move which may be unconstitutional.

Additionally, Linton called for the removal of older taxis (which he’s previously defined as more than five years in age), a doubling of hack inspectors (who drivers report suffering widespread abuse under), a so-called fare increase (which drivers contend isn’t much of an increase at all, and which Linton may have played an inappropriate role in crafting), as well as a $0.25 to $0.50 surcharge on each ride (which will go to the commission, not drivers).

Linton also called for the installation of a panic button in all cabs. Coincidentally, Linton told ABC 7 Friday that there’s been a string of drivers assaulting their passengers. “What we’re seeing is an increase in [drivers] physically manhandling their fares,” said Linton, who offered little if any evidence to substantiate his accusations. “Striking them. Pulling them out of their cabs. One woman was pulled out by her ankles.”

During Linton’s Januarytestimony, more than 400 drivers showed up to voice their opposition to his efforts. Many said they may be forced out of business if the changes are forced through at a time when drivers are financially strapped.  Continue reading →

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Trayvon Martin’s Death Gives Life to a Movement

Posted on March 25, 2012 by admin

Listen to speakers from Saturday’s rally at Freedom Plaza

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The death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin has given life to a movement that seems to grow exponentially with each passing day. On a rainy Saturday afternoon, thousands heeded the call put out on Facebook and black radio and descended upon Freedom Plaza.

“We have to make sure that this is a shot heard around the world,” said Maliaka, one of the event’s four young organizers, as she looked out over a sea of protesters wearing black hoodies. Feb. 26, the night Trayvon was murdered by a neighborhood watch volunteer, he wore a black hoodie as he walked home.

Event organizers Heather, Megan and Maliaka, with Rev. Tony Lee (right)

“This is nothing but a modern day 21st century Emmet Till,” said radio host Joe Madison. The sudden, large and growing movement surrounding Trayvon’s murder may indeed cause his name to go down in the history books alongside other victims of U.S. racism whose death helped spur a movement for change, like the recently executed Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis, as well as Till, whose 1955 open casket funeral showed his disfigured 14-year-old body to the world and forced the ravages of racism into public consciousness. Continue reading →

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One for Pepco, Zero for the People’s Counsel: Public Advocate’s Nomination Rejected

Posted on March 20, 2012 by admin

Councilmembers, from l to r: Mary Cheh, Muriel Bowser, Yvette Alexander, Phil Mendelson, Jim Graham

Listen to committee markup here: 

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As Pepco executives looked on, the D.C. Council’s Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs voted 3-2 last week to reject the long-stalled nomination of consumer advocate Elizabeth “Betty” Noel to the Public Service Commission (PSC), the three-member body which oversees the District’s utility companies.

“What’s really behind this objection to Betty Noel?” Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh asked just before the vote. Cheh, who along with Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham voted in favor of Noel’s nomination, continued, “The current commission is captured by Pepco. They want someone who’s compliant and weak. They want puppy dogs… Betty Noel is nobody’s puppet and Pepco knows it and that’s what’s behind all of this.”

Despite Pepco’s poor performance in recent years, which led to its being named The Most Hated Company in America by Business Insider, the electric utility remains very profitable. According to a report by U.S. Public Interest Research Group, from 2008-2010 Pepco turned a profit of $882 million, thanks in no small measure to its negative federal tax rate of -57.6 percent which earned the company $508 million, as well as a spot on PIRG’s “Dirty Thirty” list of “companies that were especially aggressive at dodging taxes and lobbying Congress.” Continue reading →

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One City In Crisis: D.C. Faces Large Deficit (Despite Talk of Surplus)

Posted on March 15, 2012 by admin

Activists prepare for the One City In Crisis Summit on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building

Listen to budget director Eric Goulet and DCFPI director Ed Lazere

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At a Ward 4 candidates forum Tuesday night, Councilmember Muriel Bowser said she’s proud of her 2011 vote to oppose raising taxes on the District’s highest income earners, and she pointed to last year’s budget surplus as proof that it wasn’t necessary. Bowser’s strong comments may have left audience members with the impression that D.C. presently has a budget surplus. It does not.

The city is facing a deficit of “about $170 [million] right now,” said Eric Goulet, Mayor Gray’s budget director. Comparing this year’s budget to last year’s, which resulted in deep cuts to social services, Goulet told TheFightBack, “In many ways it’s a much more difficult challenge.”

The budget’s impact on the most vulnerable received significant media scrutiny last year, but the poor seem to have been forgotten this time around. Maybe that’s to be expected when elected officials go around talking about surpluses at a time when the city faces major deficits, as well as poverty so severe it touches the lives of one in three children. Continue reading →

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School Officials Use Force and Police to Thwart Student Walkout

Posted on March 14, 2012 by admin

Northwestern High School students after Monday's town hall

Listen to town hall, beginning with Principal Batenga

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“I will not discuss the suspensions in this forum,” Northwestern High School Principal Edgar Batenga said Monday evening at a town hall at the Hyattsville school. Batenga gave five-day suspensions to four students, and possibly shorter suspensions to others, for their alleged role in organizing an attempted walkout on March 1, which was billed as a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education.

A flier entitled “The Students Are Angry!” listed some of the students’ concerns which led to their walkout: unsanitary conditions and food; large class sizes, commonly with 40-plus students; poor teacher pay and treatment, especially regarding the deportation of Filipino teachers; underfunded programs such as band and ESOL; and an overall environment where “students have pretty much no say in educational policies.”

The attempted walkout, which students codenamed “Project XBox,” was met by force as administrators and police blocked doors and prevented students from leaving the school, according to numerous student accounts. “I would like an apology from Mr. Jones for being hit in the face just because I was trying to walkout,” a female student said Monday, before adding that it was the administration and not the students who were violent. Continue reading →

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Release Betty Noel

Posted on March 8, 2012 by admin

Councilmember Alexander discusses Betty Noel's nomination with protesters

Listen to Herb Harris, and Councilmember Alexander:

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“The corporate influence… that is undermining the City Council is in full display with this nomination,” D.C. Consumer Utility Board chairman Herb Harris told TheFightBack Wednesday at a protest outside the John A. Wilson Building. Civic and union leaders gathered to call on the D.C. Council, and Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander in particular, to hold a vote on Mayor Vincent Gray’s nomination to the Public Service Commission, Elizabeth “Betty” Noel.

“This woman has been scrutinized more than a U.S. Supreme Court justice,” said Metro Council President Jos Williams. “We call upon Yvette Alexander to release Betty Noel.” Williams let councilmembers know that Noel’s nomination was “a litmus test,” and he called for the vote to come prior to the April 3 primary election so unions can use the polls to let politicians “know where labor stands.”

For eighteen years, Betty Noel served as head of the D.C. Office of People’s Counsel, where she fought to ensure that D.C.’s electric, gas and phone utilities provided quality service at a fair price. As a result of her work as a consumer advocate, Noel has built up a broad-base of support, at least among residents.  Continue reading →

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Is a Movement Afoot in Montgomery?

Posted on March 5, 2012 by admin

Kensington Town Council meeting, from l to r: Mayor Peter Fosselman, Council members Sean McMullen and Lydia Sullivan

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“The scale [of the plan] has the giant hand of the developer on it.”   – Kensington Town Council member Lydia Sullivan

“Post-vote fabrication,” “hogwash,” “distasteful,” “disservice to the entire community,” “not correct,” “misrepresenting the position,” “categorically false,” “complete hogwash.” These were among the accusations leveled against Kensington Town Council member Lydia Sullivan by her colleagues at a Feb. 27 meeting.

“That’s nothing,” said Sullivan, who’s faced the threat of censure from her fellow council members. “This is what people who are fighting monied interests have to endure,” she told TheFightBack directly following the contentious meeting.

Sullivan has raised concerns over the massive upbuild proposed in the Kensington Sector Plan, which is scheduled to go before the Montgomery County Council for a straw vote Tuesday. “Developers hold a lot of sway right now in a county that is cash poor,” said Sullivan, who sees the vote on the Kensington Sector Plan as a harbinger of things to come in Montgomery County. “Because we’re one of the first sector plans, what happens here has implications countywide,” particularly downcounty, said Sullivan.  Continue reading →

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Occupy the DOE

Posted on March 4, 2012 by admin

Listen to TheFightBack’s March 3 show:

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“You’re going to have a generation of young people enslaved to the credit card industry, enslaved to the student debt industry,” Justin Butler, a student at George Washington University Law School, said as he marched to the Department of Education, having just left a protest outside the private student lender Sallie Mae. “We just keep piling it on and piling it on and eventually it’s going to blow up in our faces just like the housing crisis did,” he told TheFightBack.

March 1 was billed as a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education. In D.C., around a hundred student activists gathered at Occupy DC at McPherson Square before taking to the street for a lively march on Sallie Mae and DOE. The action was organized by the DC Student Coalition for Education, which describes itself as “a coalition of students in the DC area in solidarity with the Occupy movement looking to change the problems with education that stem from income inequality and other causes.”

Outside DOE, students used Occupy Wall Street’s trademark “mic check” to deliver the Students’ Declaration of Grievances and Demands, which begins with these words: “We the students hold these truths to be self-evident: that education is a fundamental right.”  Continue reading →

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Freddie Mac, “Can You Hear Me Now?”

Posted on February 29, 2012 by admin

Bertina Jones speaks with reporters outside Freddie Mac

Listen to Bertina Jones, Rooj Alwazir and Rev. Graylan Hagler:

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“Can you hear me now?” Bertina Jones asked Monday at a demonstration outside the downtown office of Freddie Mac. Despite its pending seizure of her home in Prince George’s County, Jones has found the government-backed mortgage lender difficult to reach. But after Monday’s protest, which shut down its Seventh Street NW office, Freddie Mac seems eager to listen to this grandmother.

An hour after the demonstration, spokesman Brad German told the Washington Post that Freddie Mac was looking for a “positive resolution” to Jones’ situation. The merits of the case, not the boisterous action organized by Occupy Our Homes DC, prompted Freddie Mac’s sudden change of heart, explained German.

While activists with Occupy DC are hopeful that Freddie Mac will renegotiate Jones’ mortgage, they’re prepared to take action if things don’t work out. “If they are trying to evict her, we’re literally going to use our bodies as shields, and Bertina Jones is down as well,” Rooj Alwazir, an organizer with Occupy Our Homes DC, told TheFightBack.  Continue reading →

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If Walmart Sells Cheerleading Outfits, D.C. Officials Won’t Have To Go Far

Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

Listen to Michael Wilson:

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“We don’t feel like D.C. should trust Walmart’s track record to build the future of this city,” Respect DC organizer Mike Wilson said Saturday morning. He spoke with TheFightBack in the lobby of Northwest One Public Library, just a couple blocks from the future site of the Ward 6 Walmart, one of six slated to come to D.C.

Wilson was scheduled to be among the panelists at a community meeting organized by Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6C on the Ward 6 Walmart planned for 801 New Jersey Ave, NW. Representatives from Walmart and JBG, the developer for the Ward 6 site (and the Fort Totten Walmart), were also scheduled to participate, but the meeting was suddenly cancelled Friday afternoon.

“Once Walmart and JBG found out that we had invited community members and residents to attend what they had wanted to be a closed meeting, it was cancelled by the Advisory Neighborhood Commission,” said Wilson. Continue reading →

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