Mayor Fenty Goes To Press Club

Greeted by the President of the National Press Club Sylvia Smith and several Press Club board members, the Mayor went to the Club to share a Proclamation.



The National Press Club Board of Directors greeted the mayor in the lobby of the National Press Building.



The Mayor greeted many Press Club workers and a lot of members who came out to meet him. The mayor asked who was the worker who'd worked the longest. Waiter Andrew Price told him he'd been there forty years.




He read the Proclamation, making Saturday, April 5th 2008 National Press Club Day in the city.



Sylvia Smith posed with the Mayor showing the Proclamation.



Sylvia gave the mayor a copy of the book, Press Club at 100 years.



After the formalities were dispensed with, the mayor continued greeting the people of the Press Club.



The last to be greeted was David Crawford, the daytime security guard at the Press Club.

LET THEM EAT CAKE!! Happy Birthday National Press Club



The National Press Club First 100 Years, the film, played tonight at the Press Club. Tomorrow is National Press Club Day in the District of Columbia.

The kids were bored through the movie. Getting the cake was the reward for sitting still to the end. They were first in line to get cake. When Sylvia Smith, the Press Club President, came in to cut the cake, there were Kelvin Velasquez, age 12, 6th grade H.D. Cooke Elementary School in the District, and Daniela Shia-Sevilla, age 8, 3rd grade at Piney Branch Elementary School in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Sylvia enlisted their help. Kelvin helped cut the cake and held plates for her to serve into. Daniela passed the plates.




They ate cake. . .



. . . and ate cake.

Community Policing Comes to Adams Morgan Tonight

Community Policing came to Adams Morgan tonight when Sergeant Aceto brought his friends from the Latino Liaison Unit to the Mary Center to meet with the tenants of 2359 and 2401 Ontario Road, NW.

The buildings of 2359 and 2401 Ontario Road have been under siege for a long time from a lot of sides. The landlord is an absentee slumlord. The city levied fines against the buildings’ owners for housing code violations, but the city has not begun the collection of the fines. The hallways were lined with gang graffiti and solid waste for a long time before ANC Commissioner Wilson Reynolds got involved, at the request of the tenants and neighbors. The buildings are in his single member district. The tenants came to the Adams Morgan Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting in October 2007. One mother showed video of a shower from the ceiling in her kitchen that happened nightly at 8:00 pm. The Commissioners decided to help the tenants clean the buildings, starting with painting the hallways and plugging up rat holes.

The landlord decided to retaliate by suing one commissioner for a hundred thousand dollars, claiming destruction of property. The DC Office of the Attorney General, under the former OAG, refused to take the case. ANC commissioners are by law indemnified against these kinds of lawsuits. Four of us took part in the clean-up. The only commissioner being sued is the one who “led the charge” to address the problems the tenants were dealing with daily. It’s his Single Member District and his responsibility.

Tonight the tenants met with the police to address the issues of crime in their buildings. Jose Sueiro translated while Officer Rodriguez spoke to the tenants of how to be safe from ATM robberies and telephone scams. After the scripted issues came issues of the building: Michelle goes out every morning early and sees a police car parked across the street with an officer sleeping inside. Sergeant Aceto told her to get the number of the car and report it and told her where to find the number of the car. There was a discussion of a homeless person living on the top floor of 2359, and marijuana smoking in the hallway and possible prostitution going on in one of the apartments. The tenants were given directions on what to do. There were ten tenants, 3 commissioners and 5 MPD representatives at tonight’s meeting.

The group of people who came to the ANC in October have now incorporated into a Tenants Association. That makes the situation more viable, more believable, more reason to hope for a bright outcome for the people who live in the two buildings.

A campaign for the Adams Morgan ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission)

October 2006



In August of 06, I was sitting with friends in a group house in Adams Morgan. One of the friends was running for mayor for the Statehood Green Party. I ruminated on running for ANC but didn't relish the responsibilities that go along with winning. It's an unpaid position, a neighborhood commissioner. You have the possibility of 2000 constituents calling and asking for help with a myriad of problems, mostly with the city and its government.

I decided to run because the woman running was a recent import to the neighborhood and couldn't possibly understand the single member district in all its complexity of problems. The biggest, or at least most visible problem in my single member district was the H.D. Cooke Elementary School at 2525 17th Street, NW. The children of the school were getting bussed from in front of the school to a swing space near Howard University. Bussing cost the city a million a year. H.D. Cooke was supposed to have been under renovation, but the project stood still for the 3 years the children had been bussed.

My friend the mayoral candidate suggested I organize a rally in front of the school demanding DCPS start renovating. After the DC Primary in September, I gathered outdated political lawn signs and covered them with campaign posters to start the renovation and fix the school. There was a colorful array of posters, many done by the HD Cooke students, asking for renovation to begin, and more. As the children gathered in front of their school each morning, they saw the buildup of posters announcing the rally.

Traffic @ 17th and Kalorama

The streets are thirty feet wide. Right now, there is parking on both sides of both streets, and both streets are two ways. This will change some time this year, a month or two before the new Harris Teeter Grocery Store opens up at this corner.
If the Harris Teeter sign represents the front door of the grocery store, some neighbors in the Dorchester House next door are right up under that front door. This little crowded street called Kalorama Road is expected to withstand, put up with and extend a welcoming hand to what is alleged to be 40 to 50 more trucks and 1,500 more cars per day when the store opens.



What the neighborhood looks like now

The building is called The Citadel. It used to be a skating rink way back when. Other uses have been made of it, but none has lasted. It sits next door to the Dorchester facing Kalorama Road and spans the entire block to the corner of Kalorama and 17th Street, NW.




Flowing into Kalorama from the south is a one-way 17th Street. This street is proposed to change to two ways between Belmont and Kalorama, but closed to trucks.




Flowing down into Kalorama from the north is a two-way 17th street, scheduled to change to a one-way 17th Street before the store opens.




Looking up Kalorama Road from 17th to 16th Streets, you see the road the traffic will flow down. This street is scheduled to turn from two-way to one-way going east in this block.

Right now, the only big vehicles coming down Kalorama and turning north onto 17th Street are the large (Trailways size) school buses picking up and returning the students at the H.D. Cooke Elementary School two blocks north of the proposed Harris Teeter project. Three large buses make travel this route three times a day.


Making the approach to the turn up 17th Street . . .









. . . the corner has to be clear of all traffic.










Even when clear of all traffic, the busses have to back up and maneuver boing back and forth to make the turn at this corner.













When the bus clears, the corner and makes its way on up 17th Street, NW, the Cooke students have to hope that there isn't much traffic to delay the end of their school day.