News Briefs

PAGE 2 | NOVEMBER 24 - 30, 2022

LOCAL

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

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Falls Church NEWS BRIEFS

F.C. Annual Lighting of Broad Street Trees is Monday

The annual lighting of the Broad Street trees in Falls Church at a new location: Modera Founders Row (110 Founders Ave.) on Monday, November 28 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. City officials and friends will gather for hot chocolate and cookies from Rock Star Realty Group. The City of Falls Church Volunteer Fire Department will escort Santa as well. Giveaways and treats from future Founders Row businesses Chasin’ Tails, Roll Play, Nue, 4EverYoung, and Ellie Bird will be included.

Barbie’s Doggie Bakery and Barkley Square will be on hand with treats. Dinner can be had from the I Smoke You Eat food truck.

Parking instruction are as follows: Enter garage entrance via West Broad Street OR turning from Park Avenue to Founders Avenue. Please note that access to Founders Avenue from Broad Street will be closed.

Fairfax Dems Again Boost ‘Foster Kid Gift Drive’

The Fairfax Democratic Committee is again seeking support for its annual Foster Kid Gift Drive. Last year, the committee set a record for number of donations and money raised for the cause with over $48,000 in gift cards, presents, candy, and contributions going to support the county Department of Family Services and the teens and children it serves.

Co-Chaired by Fairfax County Board chair Jeff McKay and State Senator Barbara Favola, this year’s drive will help over 200 teens and children in the foster care system in Fairfax County.

Contributions are being accepted in the form of monetary gifts, Amazon Wishlist and Target Gift Cards. Any can be given at the Dec. 10 FCDC holiday party in Lake Barcroft.

F.C. Economic Development Committee to Meet Dec. 1

The usual monthly meeting of the Falls Church City Council’s Economic Development Committee co-chaired by Council members Letty Hardi and Phil Duncan will combine November and December meetings into a single Thursday, Dec. 1 meeting at the Oak Room in the Falls Church City Hall at 1 p.m., it was announced yesterday.

F.C. Education Foundation Seeks Year End Contributions

The Falls Church Education Foundation is appealing for year end contributions to continue its work in support of the Falls Church City Public Schools. This year. the FCEF disbursed over $250,000 in support of the schools.

Over $31,000 was disbursed through the Family Assistance Fund which remained a vital source of support for at-risk populations including those most impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Working closely with FCCPS Social Workers and the FCCPS Food Services team, the Family Assistance Fund was able to provide rapid assistance.

News-Press’ Annual Holiday Party Set for Dec. 15

The News-Press announced this week that its annual holiday party, with all friends of the paper invited, will be held at the Art Space of F.C., 700 W. Broad, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 15. It will feature live music by the Meridian High School jazz band and will be catered by Anthony’s Restaurant.

No RSVPs are needed.

Your Paper Without the Paper

See the News-Press Online Just Like you See it in Print With our E-Issue www.fcnp.com

PAGE 4 | NOVEMBER 24 - 30, 2022

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

F.C.’s Gift Card Program ‘Most Comprehensive’ Subsidy Program

Continued from Page 1

patron receives $150 in buying power. A $30 card will get a free $15 gift from the City and a $50 card will get a free $25 from the City.

Patrons are limited to three bonus gift cards each and the cards will expire 90 days from the date of issue.

A long list of local businesses are participating in the program. It is the most comprehensive subsidy program since the City’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) offered a direct grant program to qualifying small businesses using ARPA funds to offset severe losses resulting from the pandemic the last two years.

The list of businesses qualifying in the “Little City Gift Card” program is extensive. Broken down into categories of goods and services, they include:

Beauty – Great Lengths DC, Kess Hair and Skin Care, Mai Van Hair Salon, Nash Hair Design, Perfect Endings Hair Salon, Rejuvenate Hair and Skin, Salon 7 Nails Spa, Snip Snip Barber Shop.

Entertainment – Clay Cafe Studio, Creative Cauldron, Falls Church Arts, The State Theatre.

Grocery – Babylon Market.

Healthcare – Ascension Chiropractic, Body Dynamics, Comfort First Family Dental, Dr. Poorvi Shah, Osteopathy and Integrative Medicine, Falls Church Foot and Ankle, Falls Church Pharmacy, Vision Consultants and Surgeons.

Retail – Action Music, Bikenetic, Brown’s Hardware, Coleman PowerSports, Dominion Jewelers, Doodlehopper 4 Kids, Falls Church Antique Center, Falls Church Hydroponics and Garden Supply, Galleria Florist, Lemon Lane Consignment, Dominion Camera by Ace Photo, New To You, The Toy Nest, Victory Comics, Vida Ciclista Bicycles and Service, Washington Diamond, Zoya Atelier.

Fitness – Falls Church Jazzercise, Jhoon Rhee Tae Kwon Do, YogaSteady.

Food and Drink – Audacious Aleworks Brewery, Borek-G, Cafe Kindred, Clare and Don’s Cuates Grill, Dominion Wine and Beer, Fanny’s Restaurant, Harvey’s, Kaosarn Thai, Liberty Barbecue, Lil City Creamery, Mr. Wish Eden, Northside Social Falls Church, Preservation Biscuit Company, Rare Bird Coffee Roasters, Robeks Fresh Juice and Smoothies, Tea With Mrs. B, the Happy Tart, Thompson Italian, Vivi Bubble Tea. In addition, for a limited time and while supplies last, the City of Falls Church will match gift card sales for shoppers:

Customer buys a $30+ gift card and gets a free $15 gift card from the City.

Customer buys a $50+ gift card and gets a free $25 gift card from the City.

Customer buys a $100+ gift card and gets a free $50 gift card from the City.

Bonus gift cards expire 90 days from when they were issued. Customers are limited to three bonus gift cards per person.

An eDelivery fee of $1.00 + 5% of the gift card (non-bonus) will be applied. Unless prohibited by law, a $3.00 fee will be deducted monthly from eGift balance starting the first day after 12 consecutive months of inactivity. Activity means any action resulting in a change in eGift balance, other than fee imposition, or adjustment due to error or prior transaction reversal.

The Economic Development Office (EDO) and Economic Development Authority (EDA) created The Little City Gift Card program to assist businesses and non-profit organizations recovering from the impacts of Covid-19, as well as to encourage local spending in the City’s diverse business community. The Little City Gift Card Program is funded through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

For details about The Little City Gift Card program, visit fallschurchva.gov/ LittleCityGiftCard.

The Little City Gift Card will be available for purchase at fallschurchva.gov/GiftCard starting on November 26.

Black-Native identity and its expression through art

Children’s Drawing Workshop with Monica Rickert-Bolter

Saturday, Dec. 3 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Recommended for ages 5–10.

Artist Discussion: Ancestors Know Who We Are

Saturday, Dec. 3, 2 p.m.

Join five artists featured in the museum’s online exhibition Ancestors Know Who We Are for a discussion about Black-Native identity and its expression through art.

Event livestream: AmericanIndian.si.edu/ livestream

Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi, Black, and German, b. 1986), Mothers Uplifting, 2021. Pastel.

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Guest Commentary: A Gay Man on ‘Stayin’ Alive’

by Fabrice Houdart

When I came out to the first person in my family, my grandmother — finally safe 4,000 miles away from my home — she told me “not to get AIDS”. It was a pretty usual reaction in 2001. She did not instruct me to be happy now that I was free, she instructed me to stay alive.

I told her I would be careful and I have been. It was not hard for me. Because I have always looked at the world as a dangerous place. Shared animosity against Jews, Gays and Arabs was the glue of social cohesion where I grew up. I lived with my parents rue Copernic down the street from the Synagogue which exploded in 1980.

A decade later when I told to my mother how hurt I was by my family members posting pictures of themselves at “La Manif Pour Tous”, the street protest against same-sex marriage and adoption, she suggested I: “develop a thick skin because it’s going to be like that all [my] life”.

Even today and here, there is a fatalistic consensus that being gay or trans means being headed for a life of trouble.

And an unconscious belief that we have nobody else but ourselves to blame for it: did we really have to be that stubborn about violating norms?

In 1980, after the rue Copernic bombing, Prime Minister Raymond Barre declared himself “full of indignation” in front of “a heinous attack which wanted to strike Jews on their way to the synagogue and struck innocent French people who were crossing the street.” A very telling lapsus about the responsibility for the attack…

When someone asks me how I would react if one of my sons was trans, I often say I would really prefer them not to. It’s a hard life, I think.

I have written too many times about the Gay people who died around me.

My friend Lee quotes me in her book on the cost of homophobia as “seeing another side of gay life on Facebook. [I] received news of friends lost to liver disease, suicides, addiction, or accident.”

But of course death is only the tip of the iceberg. Because for every premature death, there is so much more widespread and invisible suffering. A slower agony.

“What is done to us is not insignificant,” I like to tell LGBTQ+ people wherever I speak. “It’s child abuse” I say. That there are still children going to bed at night having lied about who they are to their parents, teachers and priests praying for their lives to end is unfathomable. It’s truly a shame that I have to remind gay people of that. They often look uncomfortable. I tell them that what is done to us in childhood is also not repairable. Not everything that is broken can be repaired. They feel I am dramatic.

How different our lives would be, if children were told that it is fine to be attracted to people of the same sex or to identify with a different gender. That gay and trans people are worthy. That we are lovable. The very thing Ron DeSantis just made illegal in Florida. It would not take much effort.

The reality is that most gay men and women minimize what is done to them. Particularly, the ones who thrive in this antagonistic environment because they often develop a level of complicity. I often think of Andrew Sullivan as having written nothing but “get over it!” for the past decade. And so we make it easier by our silence.

Yesterday, before the shooting, I posted about Qatar 2022. This time because President Macron encouraged us not to “politicize the World Cup” while announcing he would travel there if France got into the finals. I wrote a lot about the World Cup in the past few weeks because it is another reminder that people really don’t get it. It was best illustrated when British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that LGBTQ+ soccer fans should “be respectful” and show “flex and compromise”.

Flex and compromise? Haven’t we forgiven enough? Haven’t we bent backward to have straight people tolerate us? Haven’t we appealed enough to our common humanity?

I remember when the Orlando shooting happened that I modified a trip I was on to stop by New York and hug my children. I am not sure if it was because straight people were killing our children in a night club the previous night, because they would turn their back on millions of LGBTQ+ children that night or because so many were still opposed to us having children.

The shooting in Colorado Springs is not the culmination of the latest series of verbal campaigns waged against LGBTQ+ people in the United States, as GLAAD mechanically denounced today, it is the continuation of a World engagement in a criminal enterprise against LGBTQ+ people. Every time we minimize it, we step away further from a solution. There cannot be true reconciliation until there is an acknowledgement of the gravity of what was and is being done to LGBTQ+ people everywhere.

COMMENT

NOVEMBER 24 - 30, 2022 | PAGE 5

The religious element in the debate over Missing Middle housing was on dramatic display November 17th, as 257 advocates packed the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington.

Put on by the Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement—a coalition of 50 faith and civic groups—the evening of speakers, music and song came amid continued angry division over the proposal to allow more multifamily structures in single-familyzoned neighborhoods. The Arlington Committee of 100 cancelled its November 9th examination of the topic “because it found itself, at the last minute, unable to present a highquality, balanced program,” I was told.

And that was before anyone knew the results of the November 8th election that resoundingly reelected proMissing-Middle county board member Matt de Ferranti. Though interpretations differ, Sun-Gazette editor Scott McCaffrey and former county treasurer Frank O’Leary agreed that the anti-Missing Middle voter sentiment was not in evidence.

The groups excited by the plan filed into the Unitarian sanctuary to drumming, hymns and call-and-response rituals from the chancel. Their roll call included congregants for Our Lady Queen of Peace (50 attendees), the Unitarians (45), the NAACP (20) and the YIMBYs of Arlington (20). Also represented were St. Mary’s and St. George’s Episcopal churches; Trinity, Clarendon and Arlington Presbyterian churches; NOVA Catholics; Rock Spring Congregational; Temple Rodef Shalom; Iglesia Episcopal San Jose; the Dar AL-Hijrah Islamic Center; the League of Women Voters, Juntos en Justicia; CASA Mariflor, Aspire Afterschool Learning; and staff and teachers from Arlington Public Schools.

Unsuccessful independent county board candidate Adam Theo was there, telling me he viewed his 10 percent of the vote as “a cherry on top” of the push for Missing Middle.

“When all the voices sing out loud, it can be done!” sang the gathering, led by ushers in purple shirts reading, “The Voice: Building Power in We the People.” Their pastor Carol Thomas Cissel said, “We gather to resist and reject injustice,” backing a commitment to “look at how all pieces of Arlington housing fit together.”

Policy analysis came from Unitarian Pat Findikoglu, citing the “general wealth gap” and housing demand that outweighs supply.

Pentagon City renter Sara Mitchell, studying to become a mental health professional, worried about “getting priced out of the county.” And Chip Gurkin, a PTA dad and soccer coach, said he “loves his duplex in the Bluemont neighborhood. It’s easy to clean, and it takes only 10 minutes to mow the grass.”

Rev. Ashley Goff of the virtual Arlington Presbyterian asked board members present to “take a prophetic stance” and include the controversial six-and eight-plex buildings. Board member Christian Dorsey welcomed the hope demonstrated by the “diverse” roll call before shifting to the practical. Zoning in the past “was weaponized” to “separate us,” he said, “and it makes no sense to have

Our Man in Arlington three-fourths of the land not included” in efforts to rebalance. “The By Charlie Clark details are well-understood, and we know the path. But it’s not always quick.” Asked to respond, Peter Rousselot of Arlingtonians for Our Sustainable Future, told me that, while churches can play an important role, ASF’s concern is the “degree to which the participants in the event may be supporting the government’s proposal because they believe it will add racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic diversity, or add affordable housing.” ASF’s research “has demonstrated that none of these desirable outcomes will occur.” Board member Libby Garvey, a Quaker, said she was “lifted up” by the poems and songs. “There’s been a lot of catastrophizing, and change is tough,” she said. “Please stay with us. I’m not saying we will do it all at once, but we will get it done.” *** A Halls Hill congregation teamed with the county on a historic marker at a notable graveyard. On November 20th, two dozen gathered for a Sunday afternoon “unveiling” at Mt. Salvation Baptist Church. Founded in 1884 by African Americans who bought the Culpeper Street land for $80, the church became the burial site for 89 community members—among them influential pastor Deacon Moses Pelham (1874 —1947). “We have toiled for years, but God sees our strength,” proclaimed parishioner Beryl Robinson. County board member Katie Cristol, recalling the board’s February vote, honored the church as a “guardian” of a monument to a “support system” from the days when that congregation was excluded.