Where’s Walmart?

Posted on April 28, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO VOICES FROM THE LIVING WAGES, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES RALLY:

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“The wages are pathetic. You cannot raise a family on what Walmart pays,” said Ernestine Bassett, a D.C. resident who has worked at Walmart’s Laurel, Md. store for the past four years. Bassett started out at $9.50 an hour and now earns $10.70 an hour. “That’s how far I’ve come,” she said with irony.

Standing outside Walmart’s D.C. offices last week, Bassett told protesters, “The majority of workers at Walmart, they are holding down a second job to make ends meet. With the price of gas, food, babysitting costs, housing, you need two or three jobs if you are working at Walmart.” Continue reading →

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Vincent Orange Returns to D.C. Council

Posted on April 26, 2011 by admin

Vincent Orange, the former Ward 5 councilmember, is now councilmember once again, this time as an at-large member. Mr. Orange secured 12,216 votes, or 28 percent, according to unofficial election results from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics for Tuesday’s special election.

Republican Patrick Mara, who received the Washington Post‘s endorsement, finished second with a surprising 11,096 votes, about 26 percent of the vote.

Councilmember Sekou Biddle finished third with 8,842 votes, or about 20 percent. In January, Biddle, who represented Ward 4 on the State Board of Education, was selected by the D.C. Democratic State Committee to fill the at-large seat vacated when Kwame Brown became Council chair. Continue reading →

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Mayor Gray’s Budget May Be a Recipe for Disaster

Posted on April 26, 2011 by admin

Brian Powell and Marina Streznewski in front of the John A. Wilson Building

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“We want a budget that is fair,” said Marina Streznewski, coordinator of the DC Jobs Council and chair of the steering committee of the Fair Budget Coalition, which organized last week’s demonstration against Mayor Gray’s proposed budget cuts.

Addressing protesters outside the John A. Wilson Building, Streznewski said, “We know [the budget] has to be balanced. We know that Wall Street is watching us. We know that Congress is trying to take away what little autonomy we have. And we still want a fair budget. A budget that helps us take care of our most vulnerable neighbors and that doesn’t leave people out in the cold and that doesn’t have people go hungry.” Continue reading →

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April 26 Special Election: At-Large D.C. Council Candidates Patrick Mara and Sekou Biddle In Their Own Words

Posted on April 25, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO SEKOU BIDDLE

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LISTEN TO PATRICK MARA

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Tomorrow is the special election for the D.C. Council (and the State Board of Education for Wards 4 and 8). TheFightBack has put the same ten questions to each of the candidates for at-large councilmember. The last two candidates to be interviewed are Councilmember Sekou Biddle and D.C. State Board of Education member Patrick Mara.

From The Current: “Sekou Biddle has been an interim at-large D.C. Council member since January. The Democratic State Committee selected him to fill the seat temporarily when Kwame Brown was elected council chairman. A former D.C. Board of Education member, Biddle previously worked as a regional executive director for Jumpstart for Young Children and directed community outreach for KIPP DC (Knowledge Is Power Program), which runs three city charter schools.” Continue reading →

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April 26 Special Election: At-Large D.C. Council Candidates Bryan Weaver and Tom Brown In Their Own Words

Posted on April 22, 2011 by admin

The April 26th special election for the D.C. Council (as well as for the State Board of Education for Wards 4 and 8 ) is in just four days.

LISTEN TO BRYAN WEAVER

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LISTEN TO TOM BROWN

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Voting has already begun at One Judiciary Square.

TheFightBack is putting the same ten questions to each of the candidates for at-large councilmember.

From Tom Brown’s website [The Current omitted a write-up of Brown’s candidacy]: “A native Washingtonian, Tom Brown… attended H.D. Woodson Senior High School and later went on to join the United States Air Force… In the late 1980s Tom worked in the social service capacity as an assistant director of an assisted living facility which housed over 250 adults, many of whom were homeless and/or diagnosed with mental/emotional challenges…  In 1999, Tom was recruited by an executive at Riggs Bank (now PNC Bank) to start an entrepreneurship program at Anacostia Senior High School.” Continue reading →

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Navid Nasr on the Middle East Protests, Part II

Posted on April 21, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO NAVID NASR

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Saturday, March 26 was a memorable day. Outside the White demonstrations were taking place surrounding Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and Libya.

Like so much of north Africa and the middle east, these countries are experiencing populist uprisings.

Navid Nasr, a local activist, took me on a guided tour. Physically we moved only a few feet as we went from one protest to the other, but historically and politically we covered a great deal of ground. Continue reading →

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Voices From the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston: Sally Castleman and Judy Alter of Election Defense Alliance

Posted on April 20, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO SALLY CASTLEMAN AND JUDY ALTER

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“At the present time, something like 97 or 98 percent of our votes are counted by machine which means we’re not only having a secret vote, but we’re also having a secret vote count. There’s no citizen oversight for machine counting. And we think that that doesn’t really belong in a democracy,” said Sally Castleman, national chairperson of Election Defense Alliance.

Sitting beside her fellow EDA member, Judy Alter said, “We need our votes accurately counted and you count in public and you add the numbers. So we shouldn’t be talking about computers at all. We should be talking about just counting the votes. And you can do that on a black board or an adding machine with no [computer] program.”

Continue reading →

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Linda Leaks: Mayor Gray Is Balancing the Budget on Backs of the Poor

Posted on April 19, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO LINDA LEAKS

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PT. 2 – Q & A

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“The mayor is pitting one set of low income people against another set of low income people,” said Linda Leaks, lead housing organizer for Empower DC. Leaks spoke Saturday at an event put on by the Gray Panthers on Fighting Back Against the Budget Cuts.

“Vincent Gray’s budget is a continuation of pushing [lower income] people out. We see that what his budget calls for is major, major, major cuts of social services and healthcare, programs that benefit the lowest income, the most vulnerable people.”

The DC Fiscal Policy Institute noted, “Mayor Gray’s budget proposal contains close to $190 million in cuts, most of which would fall on human services and other low-income programs. Two out of every three dollars in cuts comes from human services, even though that part of the budget makes up only one out of every four dollars overall.” Continue reading →

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D.C. Emancipation Day

Posted on April 18, 2011 by admin

Courtesy of Malcolm Wiseman

LISTEN TO ANISE JENKINS

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April 16, 1862, nine months before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln freed more than 3,000 slaves in the District of Columbia. Saturday – DC Emancipation Day – marked the 149th anniversary of this historic event.

Anise Jenkins, president of Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C., said, “It’s called a compensated emancipation. D.C. was the only location in the country where the slave masters were compensated and paid… [but] the slaves were freed [and] given nothing for all of their years.”

Jenkins was wearing a plastic bracelet – “my badge” – with the number “14” on it. Another participant in Saturday’s events at the Washington Historical Society had a matching piece of jewelry.

Courtesy of Malcolm Wiseman

Courtesy of Malcolm Wiseman

LISTEN TO MAYOR VINCENT GRAY

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Mayor Vincent Gray’s bracelet was marked “3” because he was the third person arrested at the April 11 civil disobedience in front of the Hart Senate Office Building. Continue reading →

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Voices from The National Conference for Media Reform in Boston: Shirley Kressel, Muckraker

Posted on April 15, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO SHIRLEY KRESSELL

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Shirley Kressel was unable to find work as a landscape architect in Boston due to her activism.

While Kessel asked too many questions for her chosen profession, she asked just the right amount for the profession that chose her.

A journalist’s job is to follow the money, and there are few who do it better than Kressel.

In Boston, a significant amount of public money ends up in a quasi-governmental agency called the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). Among the problems with the BRA is that it lacks oversight, according to Kressel.

“The city councilors were sent to their room with milk and cookies in 1960 [by the BRA] and have been scratching their heads looking for a job ever since, because they don’t have a say over any of the important things in the city,” said Kressel at last weekend’s National Conference for Media Reform in Boston.
Continue reading →

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