Clark, Qatar and the Cloth: CityCenter Receives Subsidies, But Where Are the Jobs?

Posted on February 26, 2012 by admin

Ministers marching on Clark Construction's CityCenter project.

Listen to Pastors Walker and Gilbert, as well as protesters, here:

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“We live in this city. Many of us are born in this city. It’s only fair that we have an opportunity to work and feed our families,” Pastor Patrick Walker, president of the Missionary Baptist Ministers’ Conference of Washington, D.C., told a gathering at Greater New Hope Baptist Church on Thursday.

Pastor Walker’s remarks came just minutes before he and other clergy members led a one-block march to the site of the $950 million CityCenter project in downtown D.C. at 10th and H Streets, NW. Protesters, most of them native Washingtonians, shut down the entrances to the 10-acre construction site, chanting, “Clark Construction’s got to go!”  Continue reading →

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TheFightBack, Feb. 25: Jobs, Not Jails

Posted on February 26, 2012 by admin

Activists conducting a speakout outside DC Jail.

Listen to TheFightBack‘s Feb. 25 show:

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This week on TheFightBack, we hear from activists on two separate but related issues: the lack of jobs for District residents and the abundance of jails.

On the prison front, we play speeches from a recent demonstration outside DC Jail where activists protested the criminal justice system and its disproportionate impact on people of color, and called for an end to what they referred to as “The New Jim Crow.”

Then, on the jobs front, we hear from clergy, union activists and native Washingtonians who say Clark Construction is providing too few jobs to District residents at CityCenter, a nearly $1 billion project being constructed on five blocks of public land in downtown DC.  Continue reading →

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Nader Keynotes “Americans Who Tell the Truth” Symposium at AU

Posted on February 23, 2012 by admin

Portrait of Ralph Nader by Robert Shetterly

Listen to speech by Ralph Nader and introduction by Jamie Raskin

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Feb. 13, lawyer and consumer advocate Ralph Nader keynoted a symposium at American University’s Washington College of Law entitled “Americans Who Tell the Truth,” which is the title of a series of portraits by artist Robert Shetterly, who also attended.

Among the other speakers at the event, which was presented by the National Lawyers Guild and the Program on Law and Government, were human rights activist Jennifer Harbury and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. Also in attendance was Jane Mayer, who was awarded a 2011 George Polk Award this week for her profile of Drake in The New Yorker.

“15 or 20,000 days [is what] you’ve got to go before you retire. That’s a little over 2,000 weeks,” Nader told law students. “So you don’t want to defer developing your own public philosophy.”  Continue reading →

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Criminal (In)Justice in D.C.

Posted on February 22, 2012 by admin

Victoria Clark outside DC Jail

Listen to Victoria Clark:

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“The whole criminal justice system… needs to be dismantled,” Victoria Clark said outside DC Jail at a Presidents Day rally organized by Occupy DC’s Criminal (In)Justice Committee.

“We need to do away with for-profit prisons [because] when you make it so a company or corporation makes money off of locking people up there’s no incentive not to,” Clark, 24, told TheFightBack.

All told, Clark’s family has spent more than a century behind bars, which didn’t seem unusual to her, until she left D.C. Looking at it from the outside “you realize how crazy it is to grow up with almost every other family member in prison,” said Clark, who recently graduated from Temple University.  Continue reading →

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TheFightBack, Feb. 18: Lesser-Known Presidential Candidates; Public Funding for Stadiums; D.C.’s Human Rights Report Card

Posted on February 19, 2012 by admin

Rocky Anderson speaks with Pete at Occupy DC

Listen to TheFightBack‘s Feb. 18 Show:

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This week on TheFightBack on We Act Radio 1480 AM WPWC, we hear from three lesser-known presidential candidates: Rocky Anderson, former Salt Lake City mayor and outspoken Bush critic, is running on the newly created Justice Party ticket; actress and comedian Roseanne Barr is a Green Party candidate for president; and Candidate Walmart, the first corporate person to run for the nation’s highest office, says he’s running in the Republican primary.

Before that, on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building, activists discuss their 36-page report card on how well the District is living up to its 2008 declaration which made D.C. the first Human Rights City in the U.S. “The District has a long way to go toward achieving the promise of its declaration,” the report concludes.

But first, as District officials weigh different options for bringing the Washington football team back to D.C., we speak with sports and politics writer Dave Zirin about the use of  public funding for stadiums. “If you’re a billionaire, pay for your own damn stadium,” says Zirin, who also discusses the Redskins’ racist name and history.

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Roseanne Barr on Mother’s Day, running for president

Posted on February 19, 2012 by admin
Roseanne Barr. Photo: Huffington Post

Roseanne Barr. Photo: Huffington Post

Listen to Roseanne Barr:

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Just three weeks into Roseanne Barr’s campaign for U.S. president, one national poll has her at 6 percent in a three-way race with President Obama and Mitt Romney. The actress and comedian is seeking the Green Party nomination for president in an effort to challenge “the two corporate parties of the 1%” and rid the world of patriarchy.

“My campaign is the beginning of the end of patriarchal politics,” Barr said in a press release. “Just this past week, we’ve witnessed a bunch of 70-year-old men… who haven’t gotten laid in decades attempting to dictate whether women have access to contraception or not.”

Mother’s Day weekend 2010, TheFightBack interviewed Barr just after she delivered a speech outside the White House. Stepping down from her soap box – literally a box marked “SOAP” – Barr said, “I’m trying to jumpstart the world into the Golden Age.”  Continue reading →

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Republican Primary May Get More Interesting: Meet Candidate Walmart

Posted on February 17, 2012 by admin

Candidate Walmart

Listen to Candidate Walmart:

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As Republican presidential hopefuls vie for their party’s nomination, one last-minute entry has gone largely overlooked despite his impressive right-wing credentials.

“I’m more Republican than any of the candidates,” said Candidate Walmart, the first corporate person to run for president. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which determined that corporations are people and entitled to constitutional rights, “we decided that it only made sense that we should actually have a corporation run for president,” he said.

Candidate Walmart characterized his opponents as being too moderate. “Any of their promises, I can outdo them,” he told TheFightBack while dressed sharply in a jacket emblazoned with dollar signs. “Newt Gingrich wants to get rid of child labor laws. I say get rid of all labor laws.” Continue reading →

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A Report Card on D.C.’s Status as a Human Rights City

Posted on February 15, 2012 by admin

From l to r: Jean-Louis Peta Ilkambana, Mai Abdul Rahman, David Schwartzman, Mary Harding, Anise Jenkins

Listen to the report card contributors:

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In 2008, the D.C. Council declared the District of Columbia the first Human Rights City in the U.S. On a chilly morning last week on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building, several local activists issued a 36-page report card which concluded, “the District has a long way to go toward achieving the promise of its declaration.”

“For somebody who came here from a country where human rights violations are things that we see on a daily basis, I was really shocked to see that D.C. residents were being pushed out of their houses because of financial issues,” said report contributor Jean-Louis Peta Ilkambana of the American Friends Service Committee. “I always see people in front of my own office seeking shelter. I said, ‘What is this? Am I back home or I’m in Washington, D.C.?'” asked Ilkambana, who’s originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Continue reading →

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Should DC Subsidize a Racist Team?

Posted on February 14, 2012 by admin

Evans (r) spearheaded the effort to build Nationals Park. Will he do the same for the Washington football team? Photo by The Washington Post

Listen to Dave Zirin:

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“Everyone loves the Redskins,” D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans said of the local football team with the racist name. At a meeting of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association last week, Evans said the city was engaging in “ongoing” conversations with the team, City Paper reported.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if’ they come back, it’s a matter of ‘when,'” he said. Coming from Evans, those words shouldn’t be taken lightly. As chair of the Finance and Revenue Committee, Evans helped deliver more than $600 million in public money for the construction of the privately owned Nationals Park.

While few would argue the ballpark has worked out well for District residents, a football stadium may be even worse. “If you flew a plane that had a billion dollars of cash in it and just dumped it on a city and let people pick it up and spend it, you’d be doing more for the economy of a city than you would by building a stadium,” said sports and politics writer Dave Zirin, citing an economist.  Continue reading →

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Unlike Mayor, AIDS Activists Face Serious Sentences for Civil Disobedience

Posted on February 12, 2012 by admin

AIDS activist Antonio Davis may may get six months behind bars for an act of civil disobedience. Photo by Larry Bryant

Listen to Matthew Kavanagh and Antonio Davis on TheFightBack on We Act Radio:

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Last year, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray went to jail when he and forty others committed an act of civil disobedience outside the U.S. Capitol in order to highlight the District of Columbia’s inability to spend its own tax dollars as it chooses.

Also on that day, April 11, a dozen activists were arrested outside the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who proposed cuts to HIV/AIDS funding, as well as to the District’s needle exchange program.

The group which included Mayor Gray and six sitting D.C. councilmembers received light sentences, mostly amounting to no more than $50 fines. The HIV/AIDS activists, however, are facing more serious charges. Continue reading →

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