NEWS: THE “SAFE CELLS” ARE UNSAFE AT THE DC JAIL 4 SPORTS: MYSTICS CELEBRATE WNBA’S 25TH BIRTHDAY 14 FOOD: A NEW CHAPTER FOR GLEN’S GARDEN MARKET 18 THE DISTRICT’S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 41, NO. 5 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM MAY 2021
Have We Grown
The pandemic exposed fault lines and places of possibility. Here’s what we might keep from this radical period of change.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 9 Have We Grown: Possibilities from the pandemic we’ll take with us as D.C. prepares to reopen
NEWS 4 Loose Lips: Critics continue to pressure the Department of Corrections about conditions inside the “safe cells” of the DC Jail. 6 Prickly Subject: Employers of health care workers and first responders push to increase the vaccination rates in their workplaces.
SPORTS 14 First Quarter: The Mystics prepare to start their season and celebrate the WNBA’s 25th anniversary.
FOOD 18 Marketing Plan: The ownership and name of Glen’s Garden Market may be changing, but expect the ethos of the Dupont grocery store to stay the same.
ARTS 23 Community Supported Art N’ Culture: A new model for arts funding draws its inspiration from the world of agriculture. 25 Books: Ottenberg on Eric Nguyen’s Things We Lost to the Water 26 Film: Zilberman on The Killing of Two Lovers
CITY LIGHTS 29 City Lights: Visit a new museum in Montgomery County or check out online and outdoor photo exhibits.
DIVERSIONS 27 Crossword 30 Savage Love 31 Classifieds On the cover: Illustration by Julia Terbrock
Darrow Montgomery | 3200 Block of Georgia Ave. NW, May 6 Editorial Interim Editor CAROLINE JONES Arts and City Lights Editor EMMA SARAPPO Food Editor LAURA HAYES Sports Editor KELYN SOONG Multimedia Editor WILL WARREN Loose Lips Reporter MITCH RYALS City Desk Reporter AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ Staff Photographer DARROW MONTGOMERY Creative Director JULIA TERBROCK Design Assistant GRACE COOPER Copy Editor GAIL O’HARA Interns JAY MATTHEWS, SARAH OROZCO
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NEWS LOOSE LIPS
Hell Blocks
Darrow Montgomery/File
Department of Corrections Director Quincy Booth says he hasn’t heard concerns about solitary “safe cells” at the DC Jail. Critics have been raising the issue for years.
By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Sophia Dalke no longer wanted to live. In November 2015, the then 31-year-old wrote an email to friends and headed to her office building on K Street NW, where she planned to end her life. She was arrested on firearms charges following a 10-hour standoff with police and taken to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital. She stayed there for about a month, she says. Then Dalke was taken to the DC Jail, where she was placed in a special cell outfitted to prevent occupants from inflicting harm on themselves, known as a “safe cell,” a cruelly ironic moniker according to those who’ve stayed inside them. Dalke says she was stripped of her clothes and given only a “safety smock,” which she likened to moving blankets that fasten with Velcro. Inside the cell was a hard plastic box that acted as a bed, but no mattress. There was a toilet and sink, but no running water, which means she couldn’t immediately flush the toilet or wash her hands.
The cell was freezing, she says, and bright fluorescent lights were left on 24 hours a day. A sign outside the cell door said no one was allowed to speak with her, and Dalke says she was initially denied her medications, including antidepressants. There were dark smears on the walls, which she believes were feces from previous occupants. “Here I am, a mentally ill, suicidal person who is being thrown into what are literally used as interrogation techniques: constant lighting, forced nudity, freezing temperatures,” Dalke says. “It’s like fuckin’ Abu Ghraib in there.” The use of solitary confinement in jails and prisons has gained wider attention in recent years. Research has linked the practice to self-harm, and several states are passing restrictions on its use. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts condemned the isolation of those charged in the Capitol riots. And D.C. councilmembers and U.S. representatives slammed the DC Jail’s 23-hour per day medical lockdown that has lasted for more than a year, as reported by the Washington Post in April. (The reaction from Congress, in this case, came from Republicans,
4 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
who used the issue as an argument against D.C. statehood.) The D.C. Department of Corrections later reduced the lockdown to 22 hours per day. Much less attention has been paid to safe cells, another sort of solitary confinement practiced in the DC Jail that lawyers, advocates, and experts have tried to reform for years. Those critics concede that DOC has made some progress since Dalke’s incarceration more than five years ago. The agency updated its policy in 2017, for example, and emphasized specific rights safe cell occupants are allowed. But policy doesn’t always translate to practice. Lawyers with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, University Legal Services, and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs say in interviews and letters that several recent and ongoing concerns include restricted access to water, no out-of-cell time, and retaliation from correctional officers. Their efforts to push for improvements came to a head in February during DOC’s annual oversight hearing in front of the Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. Asked about the inhumane conditions inside the cells that house people in crisis, DOC Director Quincy Booth told councilmembers, “This is the first time I’m hearing about this as it relates to this matter regarding the safe cells.” Booth’s brief response was a punch in the gut for those who have repeatedly raised concerns. “After all of the efforts to bring about real change in the use of safe cells, it was shocking and appalling to hear Director Booth’s sworn testimony before the Council’s judiciary committee,” says Mani Golzari, a D.C. public defender who’s worked to improve the conditions in safe cells. Booth was not available for an interview before publication, but in a statement DOC spokesperson Keena Blackmon says the department is aware of the discussions regarding safe cells and welcomes meeting with advocates. “The mental health of DOC residents is one of our focal points in implementing best and promising practices and we continue to meet industry standards on the use and accommodations inside safe cells,” the statement says. “Our goal is always to provide comprehensive mental health care and that safe cells are used in coordination with other care. We will continue working internally to minimize the need for safe cells.” In 2013, following a rash of suicides inside the DC Jail, DOC hired Lindsay Hayes, a nationally recognized suicide prevention expert in jails and prisons. His report, released in November of that year, said DOC should avoid isolation as well as the removal of clothing and cancellation of privileges such as phone calls, visitation, and recreation except as a last resort. DOC claimed to have implemented Hayes’ recommendations, including removing ligature points in cells and beefing up suicide prevention training, in a 2015 document. But later that same year, around the time Dalke was housed in a safe cell, conditions got so bad that PDS brought their concerns to a D.C. Superior Court judge. Documents in a case separate from Dalke’s describe conditions similar to those she experienced.
In a 2016 affidavit, public defender Amy Phillips described meeting with a client in a safe cell. The client was wearing a smock, similar to the one Dalke says she was given, that revealed their naked chest and groin as they shifted their body during the meeting. Phillips saw vomit and dark stains in the toilet that hadn’t been flushed and noted the smell of feces in the cell. The client told Phillips that they had to ask correctional officers to flush the toilet and “that on more than one occasion, a request for water or the toilet had been ignored.” A sign posted on the door outside listed items safe cell occupants were not allowed to have: clothes, socks, blankets, religious material, legal material or paperwork, or personal property. They were not allowed showers, visitation, phone calls, personal conversations with other jail residents or officers, or food other than “finger foods,” and the water was to remain turned off except for brief intervals, according to Phillips’ affidavit. Martin Horn, a former head of New York City jails hired by PDS to weigh in on the case, wrote in a report that he had never seen “conditions of deprivation so severe and punitive. On first seeing them, they shocked me. “In my observation, the DC Jail has attempted to create a cell that is physically safe from the point of view that it makes it difficult for an inmate confined therein to engage in self-harm,” he continues. “However, they have added a level of deprivation that is unnecessary, punitive and damaging to the mental health of the persons confined in these conditions.” In a recent interview, Horn notes that the thinking around solitary confinement in general, and the effects of isolation in jails and prisons, has progressed since 2016. He points to a new law in New York state that limits the use of solitary confinement to no more than 15 days and requires screening for suicide risk. “We used solitary confinement much more years ago and understood it much differently years ago,” he says. “But it’s these additional restrictions that the DC Jail employed that makes it so horrific.” Horn says he has not evaluated safe cells in the DC Jail since 2016. In 2017, following litigation in the case where Horn and Phillips’ observations appear, DOC rolled out new policies around suicide prevention and interevention. The new policies give safe cell occupants more rights such as 30 minutes out of their cells each day and access to running water, phone calls, legal visits, and personal property. But those rights can be taken away based on “exigent circumstances or legitimate penological reasons,” according to the policy. Despite the policy updates, lawyers who represent people with mental and intellectual disabilities continued to hear from their clients about inhumane conditions. In 2018, PDS joined with the WLC, ULS, and the law firm Sidley Austin to continue to push for improvements. The coalition toured the jail with Booth in November 2018. They documented their observations in a letter that describes “positive and productive” discussions and lists changes such as availability of “safety mattresses” and blankets and dimmers
NEWS installed on all lights for every safe cell, so they can be turned down at night. Starting in September 2019, Natasha Walls Smith, then a legal fellow with ULS’ DC Jail and Prison Advocacy Project, got access through federal law to monitor safe cell conditions in person. She visited the jail on a regular basis until March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began. The two most glaring and consistent policy violations are restricted access to running water and the lack of out-of-cell time, she tells LL in a recent interview. DOC policy says safe cell occupants “shall have access to running water,” but that can be restricted if they have a history of attempting to flood their cell or inflicting self-harm by drowning. Rather than shutting off water to one cell, correctional officers will shut off water to the entire block of safe cells, which is a policy violation, Walls Smith says. The consequence is that occupants cannot flush their toilets immediately, wash their hands, or have ready access to drinking water. Walls Smith says she is not aware of any time where safe cell occupants were let out of their cells as the policy requires. “Every [correctional officer] I’ve talked to about this, including supervisors, are unaware that people in safe cells are supposed to get recreation,” she says, noting that she hasn’t been inside the jail in more than a year. Walls Smith also says she’s observed officers informally changing safe cell occupants’ treatment plans in response to a rule violation and without a doctor’s approval. She describes a situation where an occupant feels they’ve been mistreated and responds by “jacking their slot,” which involves sticking their arm through the slot in their door to prevent it from closing. The officer then responds by taking away the occupants’ access to showers, phone calls, running water, or reading materials, which is against policy. “The times I have seen anyone who’s in a safe cell do anything described as acting out or misbehaving or not following the rules only happened because they believed they were being mistreated,” Walls Smith says. “And it was the only thing they could do on their own to address the mistreatment.” After March 2020, when Walls Smith stopped in-person monitoring and the DC Jail implemented a 23-hour per day medical lockdown to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, attorneys continued to hear reports of the horrific conditions in safe cells. “It is hard to imagine that the conditions inside safe cells have gotten better since the level of transparency has only become even more limited during the pandemic,” says D.C. public defender Jenna Cobb, who has worked with Golzari to change conditions in safe cells. Some of those details are captured in an affidavit from “John Doe,” filed in a lawsuit against Booth and DOC over COVID-19 precautions. The affidavit, dated May 8, 2020, says John Doe had been held in a safe cell since March and was not allowed out. He had no access to water, could not flush the toilet, and was not allowed to call his family. The affidavit says the man was not given underwear, socks, or shoes to wear—only a “dirty smock” that he described as “dingy, smelly, with stains on it.” The light was left on 24 hours a day.
The coalition of PDS, ULS, WLC, and Sidley Austin sent Booth another letter shortly after the affidavit was signed in May. It describes inconsistent and falsified security checks and retaliation from officers who deny showers, drinking water, shoes, and socks when they view safe cell occupants as noncompliant, “including when [occupants] ask for items that their treatment plans expressly provide. “This occurred even when the occupant’s behavior was a symptom of the occupant’s psychological condition or disorder,” the letter says. Booth and DOC did not respond to the letter, so in October 2020, Golzari and Cobb emailed him directly. They repeated concerns about officers using water access as a form of punishment and control, lights left on for 24 hours, legal phone calls denied, and dirty mattresses, among other issues. DOC general counsel Eric Glover replied that he hadn’t heard the allegations before and promised to look into them. The three discussed the issues again over the phone in December 2020, but PDS attorneys continue to hear from their clients, including as recently as this month, about horrific conditions. Ahead of Booth’s testimony in February, PDS lawyers and advocates with the criminal justice policy shop DC Justice Lab testified about the use of safe cells and solitary confinement in general in the DC Jail. Demands include judicial review of each person held in solitary confinement after two days and an audit of DOC’s use of safe cells. PDS’ special counsel for policy and legislation Katerina Semyonova asked that the Council pass legislation banning the use of solitary in safe cells. Outside of the oversight hearing, Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen says his office has not heard as many complaints about safe cells as he has other issues in the jail. Much of his current focus, he says, is addressing the 22-hour per day medical lockdown. For Walls Smith, the relative lack of attention to safe cells reflects her larger frustrations with the conversation around solitary confinement. “I don’t know why solitary is unacceptable for discipline,” she says. “But solitary confinement in the form of safe cells that go beyond the restrictions in solitary is an acceptable treatment.” Walls Smith says she was able to make some progress in improving safe cell conditions while she was inside the jail more than a year ago. She intends to return to that in-person monitoring later this year. But even if DOC followed its policies, the conditions are still overly harsh, she says. She believes more focus is needed on preventative measures to keep people out of safe cells to begin with. “We’re not sitting here talking about whether or not the policies are being enforced around solitary confinement,” she says. “We’ve looked at the overall system and said, ‘This is not a good approach for discipline. It actually causes more harm. And yet we’re still talking about whether policies and procedures are being followed for safe cells and not ‘do we want to be treating suicidal ideation by putting people in a room that just physically limits their ability to harm themselves?’”
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NEWS CITY DESK
Prickly Subject
Darrow Montgomery
Employers of health care workers and first responders continue to encourage more workers to get the shot.
Vicente Torres By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez A dental office manager who became extremely ill from COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic declined initial chances to get the vaccine because he worried about the side effects. He also doubted that he would get infected again. A program director at a health center whose son got COVID-19 initially said no to the vaccine because she needed time to decide whether she felt it was safe. “Where did this come from? What’s going in my body? Will it hurt me later?” she wondered. Many people assume that individuals working directly or indirectly in health care fields will not only be accepting of the COVID-19 vaccine, but eager to get it. Some of these workers know just how lethal the coronavirus can be. The death count isn’t just numerical to them— they’ve seen the pathogen destroy lives. Still, not every worker in a health care setting has been vaccinated despite being eligible to get the shot in D.C. for months. This hesitation or unwillingness to get the shot can’t just be chalked up to COVID-19 denial. The dental office manager, Vicente Torres, declined when he was offered the vaccine in
January. At the time, he was more certain of reinfection being rare than of the side effects from the vaccine. He didn’t know anyone who had been vaccinated at the time. When he contracted COVID-19, he didn’t know anyone who tested positive. But unlike with vaccination, he had no control over getting sick. Torres tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, when little was known about the virus and people were afraid of catching something from touching surfaces. He wasn’t hospitalized, but he says he had never been that sick before. He ran a fever and lost his sense of smell and taste for a week, and had a lingering cough for a month. Getting sick also meant he nearly missed being in the room for the birth of his daughter. His 14-day quarantine ended just before his girlfriend delivered their baby. Less than a year later, his employer, Mary’s Center, offered him a vaccine that experts said could prevent serious illness or death. The D.C. government selected Mary’s Center, a federally qualified health center, to administer the shot to frontline workers. Torres weighed the risk of reinfection against the side effects and said no. He ended up getting the shot almost a month later, once some of his colleagues had gone
6 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
through the process and he could see how they reacted. In the interim, Torres was also able to get his specific questions answered from one of the center’s medical directors. After learning more about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and feeling compelled to protect his family, Torres decided to go with Moderna. “Even though I saw that the risk of reinfection was low, I still wanted to get the vaccine to try to prevent getting COVID and passing it on to my daughter,” Torres says. “All the symptoms that you can get from COVID are a million times worse than having symptoms from the vaccine.” (He only had a sore arm and a slight fever after inoculation.) Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration prioritized health care workers and first responders when the federal government started sending DC Health shipments of the vaccine late last year, and some got offered the shot as early as mid-December. Five months in, roughly twothirds of those workers are vaccinated, according to DC Health testimony and accounts from various employers. The numbers could be higher, since not every employer requires workers to report their vaccination status. In
D.C., daily shot counts have dropped, just as they have nationwide. Recognizing that each person has their own reason for continuing to decline the vaccine, employers of frontline workers are exploring ways to convince the holdouts. One-on-ones? Bonuses? Mandates? The Bowser administration is also considering incentives, including monetary ones. The administration already offered free beer at one vaccine site last week; 162 people who attended got vaccinated. Meanwhile, workers such as Torres who changed their minds stress the importance of having a trusted source listen and answer questions. Workplaces that foster open dialogues, especially around the coronavirus, have an edge. People may feel even less comfortable asking questions nowadays because the assumption is everyone who hasn’t gotten vaccinated yet has made up their minds. He wears an “I vaccinated” sticker on his ID badge to encourage his colleagues. “I’ve heard comments from people [saying], ‘Oh, I have dumb questions,’” he says. “There’s no such thing as dumb questions, especially with something as big as the vaccine.” Getting as many frontline workers as possible vaccinated helps D.C. build immunity and slow infections, but what is many? “We should all be striving toward the current federal goal of 70 percent vaccinated,” says Dr. Keri N. Althoff, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “That is a good first goal.” She says vaccination coverage should be even higher for health care workers and first responders because they are potentially exposed to COVID-19 on a daily basis as a part of their jobs. Overall coverage among health care workers and first responders appears to be below 70 percent, as of mid-May. That coverage estimate may not be not entirely accurate because it’s based on personal testimony and workplaces don’t mandate that employees share their vaccination status. Some employers, such as Whitman-Walker Health, ask their workers for this information so they could enforce CDC guidelines, which eases quarantine and testing requirements, among other things, for fully vaccinated people. According to Whitman-Walker Health, 75 percent of their workers are fully vaccinated. When asked what coverage among health care workers looks like, Dr. Ankoor Shah, DC Health’s vaccine lead, told the Council at an April 29 hearing that 63 percent of workers at D.C.’s federally qualified health centers are fully vaccinated. He suspects other health care providers have similar rates. “That is similar across other employee groups and demographics,” Shah told Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray, who chairs the health committee, during the hearing. “We hit kind of a wall once you get somewhere between 60 to 75 percent, or you have to do a lot more engagement.” Gray’s office requested but did not receive any more data on vaccinations among health care workers. A DC Health spokesperson says updated data is not available. Coverage for the D.C. Fire and EMS Department is comparable and has not budged
in recent weeks. Roughly 1,300 members, or 62 percent, are fully vaccinated, according to Doug Buchanan, the department’s chief communications officer. Firefighters and first responders who remain uncertain have lingering questions, including about the side effects and mRNA, the technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Some also don’t trust the emergency regulatory process behind approving the vaccines, or the government for that matter. “Pretty much anything you read on the Internet, I think we’ve heard,” says FEMS Chief John Donnelly. “I would like to be at 100 percent,” Donnelly says of his department’s coverage. “I also recognize at the same time that our workforce is a microcosm of society, and it’s probably an unreasonable goal to be at 100 percent when we’re not going to get the whole country to 100 percent. But we’re going to keep working on it.” Despite some experts believing there is legal authority to require vaccination, few employers in D.C. are ready to make that leap, including those of frontline workers. Donnelly is not mandating that his members be vaccinated. “If it were mandatory, our members would generally comply,” he says. No hospital is conditioning employment on vaccination, according to Jennifer Hirt, the spokesperson for the D.C. Hospital Association. Instead, the focus among employers of frontline workers has been to reach out to workers who are not yet vaccinated, learn what concerns they still have, and reiterate what scientists know in layman’s terms. Employers have also leaned on workers who’ve already gotten the shot to help their cause. Sometimes, they’ll have them share their stories via social media or internal email. Other times, workers are speaking out about their experiences in staff meetings. Community of Hope, a federally qualified health center that’s administering doses, is currently surveying staff to better understand vaccine hesitancy and to identify strategies that could change opinions. According to CEO Kelly Sweeney McShane, 61 percent of her staff is vaccinated. This includes administrative staff and case managers. Coverage among health care workers at Community of Hope is higher, at 71 percent. The health center is not requiring proof of vaccination, so the data is gleaned from workers getting vaccinated on site or independently offering this information. McShane believes some are concerned that the rollout happened too quickly and others want to wait a bit longer because they don’t trust the health system. Community of Hope’s staff is majority Black, so medical racism plays a factor, says McShane. “We definitely have had staff test positive for COVID. We currently have staff who are testing positive for COVID. I would say most of that does not appear to be work-related,” she adds. “Despite that, we still don’t have everyone vaccinated. So there’s still underlying questions that people have as they are weighing the risk of a vaccine versus the risk of COVID.” Despite COVID-19 hitting firefighters and first responders hard, a significant number are
not yet inoculated. Of the 432 members who have tested positive for COVID-19, 35 have either been admitted to the hospital or seen at the emergency room. The department is optimistic that if they compare these stats to the vaccine’s—1,300 members have gotten the shot and only two have visited the emergency room but weren’t admitted—in their messaging, they could get more workers vaccinated. People often highlight the fact that vaccines prevent serious illness or death, which doesn’t always resonate with firefighters and first responders. “They come to work every day with significant inherent risk,” says Dr. Ryan Geret, the assistant medical director for FEMS. “What influences folks more in recent weeks is the idea of long-haul symptoms. The idea that ‘My life can change forever. Even if I don’t die, even if my disease is not that severe, I see my friends or I see my family or I see a coworker who can’t get up out of bed in the morning and is too fatigued or has muscle aches that they can’t explain.’” A video shared on Twitter from one firefighter who got sick from COVID-19 changed minds for this very reason, the department believes. Captain Joe Boling tested positive in early April and spent nearly a week in the hospital with a severe respiratory infection. He’s still recovering and regrets not getting vaccinated. The department has at least 10 members who are considered COVID-19 long haulers. Their symptoms are so severe that many have not returned to full duty. Some continue to rely on supplemental oxygen. Some employers of frontline workers have exceeded the federal goal. At Mary’s Center, 74
“Despite some experts believing there is legal authority to require vaccination, few employers in D.C. are ready to make that leap, including those of frontline workers.” percent of staff is fully vaccinated and 77 percent have at least received their first dose. The numbers are even better for clinical staff: 100 percent of doctors and 94 percent of nurses are vaccinated. The health center is in the midst of reconciling data to see if anyone got vaccinated outside of work. It’s unclear why coverage is slightly higher because Mary’s Center is using outreach strategies similar to other employers. Leaders continue to consider incentivizing people to get vaccinated by offering them money
Darrow Montgomery
NEWS
Vicente Torres or other opportunities. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, for example, is offering state employees who get the vaccine $100. (A spokesperson for Hogan says “anecdotal responses have been positive,” but wouldn’t elaborate beyond that.) Employers of frontline workers in D.C. question the effectiveness of these tactics. “There are some really legitimate and understandable fears within different communities based on historical injustices and stories passed down from friends and family that we can’t ignore,” says Dara Koppelman, chief nursing officer at Mary’s Center. “I don’t know that incentives will get past those things.” “What I’m trying to balance is encouraging people to be vaccinated, but also respecting their ability to make a choice,” says McShane of Community of Hope. “If you say, I’ll pay you, but not you, are you punishing someone? I mean, you’re incentivizing, but is there a negative judgment—punishment—of someone else who you don’t know what their experience is. You don’t know why they’re still hesitant.” Community of Hope might see vaccinations increase when more employees can no longer work remotely, says McShane, which she predicts will happen in the fall. FEMS might see more vaccinations if mask requirements or other restrictions are lifted for fully vaccinated people. “They want to see the benefit. Being safe is not a big enough benefit,” says Donnelly. There is some polling on incentive-based approaches that offer insight. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 39 percent of people who want to “wait and see” would be inclined to get vaccinated if their employer offered them an extra $200. However, slightly larger numbers of this demographic would get vaccinated if their employer offered them paid time off to recover from any side effects, and the vaccine was administered at a place they normally go for health care. Some experts are skeptical of incentives, particularly monetary ones. They could backfire by inflaming concerns or appearing coercive. Dr. Evan Benjamin, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says there is a “small role” for incentives, but he
does not believe they will move the needle quite like one-on-one conversations with a trusted physician would. Nor has he seen any evidence to suggest that incentives from doughnuts to dollars would. Benjamin studies vaccine hesitancy. As the chief medical officer of Ariadne Labs, he helped create a toolkit that helps health care providers build confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine using what he calls “motivational interviewing” because he thinks this approach will convince more people who are on the fence. “The best way to get people to make a decision is really through education,” says Benjamin. “We really have to persuade. And therefore giving people the right information that addresses their specific needs, we have found has been the most effective way.” Sherri Watkins, director of the Bellevue Family Success Center at Community of Hope, needed to hear a colleague explain the vaccine’s safety and efficiency on four separate occasions to feel good about getting the shot. When she was first offered the vaccine in January, Watkins did not understand how it could be manufactured this quickly when so many other diseases lack remedies. Her colleague helped her understand. Because the nurse practitioner delivered information confidently and consistently, without using any jargon that would make it sound like she was reading from a textbook, Watkins says she felt empowered to get the shot. Watkins got vaccinated in April. When she called her employer, Watkins says Community of Hope booked her an appointment that same day. Watkins later convinced her husband and son to get vaccinated too. Her family knows COVID-19 is real—it made her son seriously ill. Her personal connection to the virus didn’t factor into her decision-making because Watkins figured she could mask and social distance. Ultimately, she says, she needed to reach a conclusion on her own, not be guilted into one. “I don’t want to do it because somebody told me I need to,” Watkins says. “I want to do it because I’m ready to do it. And no matter what happens to me, then I can say, ‘You know what, Sherri, that was your decision and your decision alone.’”
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As D.C. prepares to reopen, what concepts will we incorporate into our new normal? Story by City Paper staff • Photos By Darrow Montgomery • Illustration by Julia Terbrock
Have We Grown
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T
he COVID-19 pandemic forced people around the world to instantly change the way they lived their lives: how they bought groceries, how they traveled, and if and how they worked. Elected officials on the local and national level responded with financial resources, rent and utility assistance programs, emergency housing for those experiencing homelessness, and initiatives that gave residents staying closer to home more use of their streets. Neighbors got to work as well: They organized mutual aid groups, helped one another book vaccination appointments, and offered helping hands. The past 14 months have by no means been good, but at least we know we’re all in this together. Although the pandemic continues to ravage the globe, things in D.C. appear to be turning around. Vaccines are readily available and this week, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced her intent for the city to fully reopen without any capacity restrictions by mid-June. What will this reopened world look like? Despite a widely expressed desire for a return to normalcy, we know there’s no going back after a world changing period like this one. Nor should we. What
if instead of going back to normal, we incorporate improvements to issues the pandemic highlighted into a new normal? Below, City Paper writers reflect on those improvements. While many of these ideas are far from new, the pandemic reminded us of their importance. Above all, they reflect the need to care for all Washingtonians, regardless of where they live, where they work, or what language they speak. —Caroline Jones
Improving Language Access for Non-English Speakers The only way to enforce D.C.’s language access laws seems to be through public shaming. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration launched two critical websites during the pandemic—one where residents could register for the COVID-19 vaccine and the other where they could sign up for rental and utility assistance—but neither was translated at first. It took a month after vaccinate.dc.gov launched for the site to be translated into six commonly spoken languages, and two weeks for stay.dc.gov to be translated. Officials fielded plenty of questions (and criticism) before the websites were accessible. “They’re welcoming immigrants to the city, but at the same time you don’t see that equality in services,” Veronica Hernandez, a program supervisor at Mary’s Center who helps non-English-speaking patients apply for government benefits, told City Paper at the time. “They are not getting the same access as any other community.” D.C. law requires equal access to information for residents who cannot or do not proficiently speak English. The Language Access Act of 2004 says the D.C. government has to offer oral language services and written translations of programs and “vital documents” if they are likely to serve 3 percent of non-English speakers or 500 individuals, whichever is less. But when the government was charged with connecting residents and workers to health care and aid during an unprecedented public health emergency, information was not immediately translated into Amharic, Spanish, or other languages primarily spoken by 17 percent of the D.C. population. What gives? Advocates say the law has no teeth. “There was an assumption that people would follow the law and provide language access …
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but that obviously hasn’t been happening,” says Allison Miles-Lee, a managing attorney with Bread for the City and member of the D.C. Language Access Coalition. “Even the jurisdictions that are doing the best at language access still have a long way to go,” says David Steib, the language access director at Ayuda, a nonprofit offering legal, language, and social services to immigrants across the region. “It’s complicated. It takes a lot of expertise and funding to make sure that you have professional interpretation and translation services.” The Council amended the original 2004 law more than a decade later, empowering the D.C. Office of Human Rights to impose
a fine of $2,500 on entities for any violations. However, the Language Access for Education Amendment Act of 2018 was subject to appropriations, and the Council has yet to dedicate any funding for the bill, including enforcement. The Office of the Chief Financial Officer said the bill would have cost $35 million over four years, in part because OHR, which monitors compliance with the law, would have to expand. Advocates are hoping that changes this budget cycle. They believe that fines will compel D.C. government agencies to comply with the law. The fines could also incentivize more residents to file complaints with OHR when agencies fail to translate materials, advocates say. The process can be time consuming, so complainants might be more willing to file if they knew OHR could do more than just notify an agency that they are not in compliance with the law. According to the most recent report from OHR, 19 complaints were filed in 2019—that was one more than in 2018 but 21 less than in 2017. Of the 19 complaints, OHR determined that one agency (the Metropolitan Police Department) did not comply with the Language Access Act by failing to provide a translation service. In the report, OHR says that most agencies did better at complying with the law than they did the year before. The Department of Corrections, Department of Health Care Finance, and Department of Small and Local Business Development had the lowest overall compliance scores. While DOC failed to provide training to staff or its providers in 2019, DHCF had no language access policy. All three struggled with reporting requirements.
“Even the jurisdictions that are doing the best at language access still have a long way to go.”
Meanwhile, the District of Columbia Public Library, Department of Employment Services, the Office of the People’s Counsel, and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education had the best overall scores. It’s unclear how agencies scored in 2020, but a report is expected in the coming months. The pandemic underscored the importance of language access. Everyone needed to be on the same page to collectively flatten the curve. —Amanda Michelle Gomez
Making Voting Easier In the face of a pandemic that severely restricted human contact, the D.C. Board of Elections had to revamp the entire voting process for the primary and general elections. To make voting easier, BOE placed 55 ballot drop boxes throughout the city weeks before the general election (the most popular voting method), opened “super voting centers,” and mailed every D.C. resident a ballot. Of the 346,491 ballots cast in the November 3 general election, 234,758 came in the form of mail-in ballots, according to the BOE. Fifty-five percent of voters returned their completed ballot either by mailing it or dropping it in a drop box or at an early voting center, which opened 10 days before Election Day. Only 29,036 ballots were cast in person on Election Day, according to BOE data. Other steps designed to ensure public safety during the pandemic, such as ballot tracking and the ability to vote anywhere in the city rather than at a designated precinct, helped facilitate a higher turnout than any of the previous five presidential elections. The increase in democratic participation prompted advocates to push for the permanent implementation of these initiatives. “The 2020 elections were ... unique because of the pandemic but there are definitely opportunities to expand on things that we said were only for the pandemic that are better for elections in general,” says Michelle Whittaker, who managed Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George’s successful campaign. “Vote by mail is one of the biggest examples.” Still, these innovations came with growing pains. During the chaotic and frustrating primary election, for example, BOE asked residents to request absentee ballots instead of proactively mailing ballots to every registered D.C. voter as it did in the general election. Many people never received ballots despite submitting their requests on time, and long lines on Primary Election Day suggested ineffective public messaging about the early voting period. In deeply Democratic D.C., the primary election is decisive for most local races. Some campaigns took advantage of the confusion over the ballot request process. Whittaker says phone canvassers for George essentially offered to help voters willing to provide them with the required information apply for absentee ballots. And Chuck Thies, who ran Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray’s reelection campaign, says his team mailed a targeted set of voters campaign-made ballot applications with stamped envelopes. “Mail-in voting and early voting is here to stay,” Thies says. “There are lots of kinks to work out, but until then, there is an opportunity for campaigns to take advantage of that.”
Five months later, in the run up to the general election, the new processes again came with a few hiccups. A confusing ballot tracker on BOE’s website caused concern that votes would go uncounted. And a design flaw in a BOE form asking residents to update their addresses left many confused. The doublesided mailer instructed residents to provide a different address if they wanted to receive an absentee ballot or update their address. But if they tore the mailer along the perforated line as instructed, the updated information would be separated from BOE’s return address. Since the election, the BOE has held two town halls to gather feedback on how the public thinks elections should look going forward. Mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes are among the more popular initiatives. Whittaker also encourages the board to consider using multiple methods to inform the public about new voting methods. The public outreach campaign should include yard signs, postcards, phone calls, and town halls, as well as text messages, emails, and social media campaigns, she says. BOE spokesperson Nick Jacobs says the board hasn’t made any decisions on what will stay and what will go, and it might hold a third town hall before the 2022 election cycle to gather more input. “The challenge is from a capacity point of view,” he says. “We can’t quite do something of that magnitude again. So we’re trying to figure out what makes the most sense.” Cost is one of the biggest hurdles, Jacobs says, and uncertain availability of large venues is also a potential obstacle for the super voting centers. Printing and postage for mail-in voting alone cost $900,000, according to Jacobs. Additional costs included temporary workers and machines to help process the ballots. —Mitch Ryals
Closing Streets to Cars Ask D.C.-area bicyclists what they’d like to see remain as the city continues to open up to pre-pandemic levels and two words will consistently come up: Beach Drive. In April 2020, the National Park Service closed Beach Drive NW to motor vehicles from Broad Branch Road NW to Joyce Road NW, from Picnic Grove 10 to Wise Road NW, and from West Beach Drive NW to the Maryland border, to allow car-free recreation until the beginning of Phase Four of Mayor B owser’s C OV I D -19 reopening plan. Local bicycling advocates want the closures to be permanent. “It’s a great safe space to spread out,” says Rachel Maisler, the Ward 4 representative on the D.C. Bicycle Advisory Council. “It’s wider than a regular multiuse path, so there’s room for all sorts of users in that space. There’s room for runners. There’s room for the kids on the little scooter things and kids learning to ride their balance bikes and people who are walking ... And if you’re one of the roadies who’s training for some event that got canceled, there’s even room for you to ride without menacing other users.” This April, six D.C. councilmembers— Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1), Brooke Pinto (Ward 2), Mary Cheh (Ward 3), Janeese Lewis George (Ward 4), Charles Allen (Ward 6) and Anita Bonds (At-Large)—introduced a resolution to close upper Beach Drive to cars on a permanent basis, writing that “many District residents have found the closure of upper Beach
Drive to cars to be a safe and pleasant space for biking, walking, and enjoying the serenity of Rock Creek Park.” On May 4, the D.C. Council retained the resolution and it could be brought up for a vote before the Council as soon as May 18, during the body’s legislative meeting. The Council does not have authority to close Beach Drive since it’s technically federal property, but the resolution will be used as a tool to demonstrate support for the road closure. “The closure of upper Beach Drive to car traffic has provided residents with a safe, expansive o u t do o r s p ac e du ring the pandemic and, importantly, it has also brought us closer to the original intent of the founding of Rock Creek Park: to provide access to beautiful natural spaces and to help preserve the District’s woodland environment,” Cheh writes in a statement to City Paper. “When the Council advocated for the parkway to remain open to cars back in 2003, the focus was primarily on traffic congestion. But, as we’ve seen from the more recent 2017–2019 closures, congestion actually decreased when upper Beach Drive was closed. The pandemic has provided us with the rather unexpected opportunity to reimagine our roadways and priorities, and I’m hopeful that the National Park Service will join us in recognizing the extraordinary local and environmental benefits of permanently closing upper Beach Drive.” NPS spokesperson Jonathan Shafer tells City Paper that the agency will “continue to consider the needs of all visitors in making decisions
“We are taking steps to evaluate how to best manage Beach Drive in the future and need to consider factors such as accessibility, the effects of traffic diversion, and impacts to park resources.”
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about how to manage the park.” “We recognize that temporarily limiting vehicle access to Beach Drive has provided value to many people,” he adds. “We are taking steps to evaluate how to best manage Beach Drive in the future and need to consider factors such as accessibility, the effects of traffic diversion, and impacts to park resources.” In addition to the closure of Beach Drive, which falls under federal purview, the District Department of Transportation has created a Streatery program, reduced speed limits on local roads, extended sidewalks, and launched a Slow Streets initiative, which is set to end later this month, in response to the decrease in car traffic during the pandemic and to make the city more accommodating to bicyclists. DDOT “remains committed to bolstering the District’s bike infrastructure by installing 20 miles of protected bike lanes by 2022, prioritizing improvements at locations with high injuries and crashes and supports Mayor Bowser’s Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries,” DDOT Interim Director Everett Lott tells City Paper. “These changes will increase safety for all users by reducing vehicular capacity on the corridor and simultaneously increasing bicycle and pedestrian capacity.” But to biking advocates such as Maisler and Jeremiah Lowery, the advocacy director for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, some of these initiatives leave much to be desired. Lowery believes the Slow Streets program was not effectively communicated throughout the city, and Maisler says it was “too little, too late”; the latter wrote in a Nov. 16, 2020, testimony that “without a clear understanding of what Slow Streets are, drivers don’t respect them.” Ultimately, closing portions of Beach Drive to vehicles, extending sidewalks,
and implementing “slow streets” for cars are just the first steps of many that local bicyclists believe will make the city safer. According to Metropolitan Police Department data, there have been 16 traffic fatalities this year as of May 10, an increase of 60 percent from this time last year. “I think the idea of open space needs to remain ... like the idea of open space for people to bike, to walk, and to be,” Lowery says. “We need to expand upon the idea. Beach Drive is great, but Beach Drive shouldn’t be the only location. It should be one of many locations. We need to be looking at how do we get people more access to the streets.” —Kelyn Soong
Better Supporting Gig Workers The pandemic has been financially crippling for artists, musicians, performers, and the venues they work in. Artists often work as independent contractors paid gig by gig or night by night (whether in cash or on the books) and, as a result, are typically ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits. But pandemic unemployment assistance, authorized by the federal CARES Act, made a difference for workers who could get it. (Not everyone could, or can—the Department of Employment Services has miscommunicated with claimants and the Council for months, plus sent payments late or not at all. Despite an $11 million investment announced in February, improvements have yet to fully materialize, and the D.C. Office of the Inspector General is now performing an audit.) “PUA, for me personally, it pays my rent right now,” says Graham Smith-White, a musician and local advocate. It doesn’t cover other costs—but it represents musicians being “really considered as workers by the government” in a way they weren’t before. “What we do is commonly referred to as play, but a more professional way
to talk about it would be performance,” he says. “We are a really important part of livability and standard of living.” But this isn’t just a musicians’ issue. Programs such as PUA “also set the tone for just thinking about the entire landscape of freelancing and how many different doors are closed,” says Ajoke Williams, a program manager at Guilded, an initiative of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives that focuses on providing benefits such as health care and tax preparation to freelancers. “Right across the border in Virginia, Senator [Mark] Warner was promoting portable benefits, and that’s what Guilded kind of gets at, that we need benefits that are independent of a worker being tied to a particular employer. They need to be tied to the worker. So that means just because you lose your job, you shouldn’t lose your health insurance. Just because a freelancer has to switch gigs or is not in that employment structure doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have health insurance,” she says. That would be a sea change for all freelance workers, whether they’re app-based couriers and drivers or theater artists. Smith-White and other members of the DMV Music Stakeholders are beginning to advocate for a new program: universal basic income for artists. They point to a pilot program operating in San Francisco where some artists will receive $1,000 a month from the city for half a year as a model. “[PUA] was the first step toward a precedent showing that we need to
support our artists on a regular basis and make sure that they’re able to continue to provide the public good that they do,” says Chris Naoum, co-founder of Listen Local First. “So we’re taking the thought one step further.” Guaranteed income could be a “buffer” against artists being driven out of D.C. by rising costs of living, he says, and could represent “infrastructure to recognize artists” and provide more opportunities for them to make money. Local artists need more infrastructure, says Angela Byrd, founder of Made in the DMV. That can come in multiple forms: She mentions a need for more recording studios and artist housing, and praises artists’ residencies such as the Nicholson Project in Southeast. “There should be some type of funding that artists can apply for,” says Byrd. “You know, especially for creators and musicians. We really need D.C. to get it together with the venues and the artists right now,” adding that DJs and go-go artists are specifically in need of support. But infrastructure can also look like the government being easier (and cheaper) for artists to work with, Byrd says—whether that’s by waiving fees, making RFP processes easier to navigate, or collaborating more easily with local artists and freelancers to fill their web, video, and other creative needs. “We just don’t need the petty rules. We need to be able to come out and be able to eat and let artists work,” she says. “We don’t need them to make us jump through hoops to do this.” Naoum also mentions that dispersing government or grant money to individual artists takes far too long, and that grant timelines meant for large artistic entities or nonprofits don’t work for self-employed artists. Williams says gig workers should feel empowered to band together. “I think I would just stress the ability of freelancers to join unions and advocate for themselves, because right now there are very few avenues for artists and musicians to feel as if they can voice their concerns as a unified front and have them taken seriously.” —Emma Sarappo
“There should be some type of funding that artists can apply for. You know, especially for creators and musicians. We really need D.C. to get it together with the venues and the artists right now.”
Practicing Mutual Aid “I’ve been doing mutual aid all my life,” says Maurice Cook, the founder of Serve Your City. “Mutual aid is how we survive from the system.” Before the pandemic, Serve Your City focused on youth enrichment programming, including tutoring and college visits. “The way that it works is that people who have access support the work to acquire access for those who do not have said access,” Cook says. Mutual aid is nothing new, but more people have embraced the concept since the pandemic started, and the idea has grown in response. Some residents have established new mutual aid groups, and organizers have expanded their work. Serve Your City, for example, branched out with virtual tutoring, organized food deliveries, and providing personal protective equipment. Organizers say mutual aid has been powerful and essential during the pandemic for the same reasons it was necessary before the pandemic. 12 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
Releasing Old and Sick Prisoners The First Step Act, which Congress passed in 2018, provided old and sick people incarcerated within the federal prison system an avenue for release. But the law did not apply to those convicted of felonies in D.C. Superior Court who serve their sentences in federal facilities. The D.C. Council did not act for nearly two years, until a deadly virus threatened the lives of people in prisons. In March 2020, the Council included a provision in its coronavirus emergency bill that allowed older and sick people convicted of D.C.-specific crimes to ask a judge for release. To qualify for compassionate release under the new D.C. law, a person must be at least 60 years old, have a terminal or debilitating illness, a medical condition related to aging that puts them at acute risk of dying from the coronavirus, or have served at least 20 years, among other qualifications. Judges also consider a person’s risk to public safety. So if a combative Congress could pass similar legislation, what took the D.C. Council so long? “We can ask that about so many things,” says Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who chairs Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. “When we think about the criminal justice system, it’s hard to separate the politics that are behind it. We’ve seen what took place in the ’90s and early 2000s when it was easy for people to run for office on a tough-oncrime message.”
The new law is showing early success. As of March 16, 2021, 693 people had filed motions for compassionate release in D.C. Superior Court, 433 have been decided, and 143, or roughly one-third, have been granted, according to the D.C. Corrections Information Council. An analysis of 135 people released under the new law between March 16, 2020, and Feb. 26, 2021, by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council showed that none have been rearrested. “I don’t know how much more you could ask for,” Allen says. Jessica Steinberg, the director of George Washington University Law School’s Prisoner & Reentry Clinic, helped push for the legislation. Although health risks associated with COVID-19 was the impetus, she says judges are now granting release independent of the virus. “Many prisoners have gotten COVID and have gotten better, and still get released,” she says. “So we’re moving away from COVID as a justification to a more broad, humanitarian aspect.” Steinberg works on a handful of compassionate release cases with her law students, and recalls one man who had been incarcerated for 50 years and was in declining health. He was most recently housed in a federal prison in rural Kentucky, far from friends and family. Letters correctional officers sent over the years to then Mayor Marion Barry spoke highly of his character and advocated for his release. “For 30 years, prison of f icials were throwing their weight behind his release,” Steinberg says of the man, who she did not identify because she did not have his permission. “And it didn’t take effect because there was no mechanism for it to do so.” D.C. mayors have some pardon authority, though the U.S. Department of Justice has opined that the president has exclusive clemency authority over D.C. felonies. Steinberg also pushed to add another piece to the Council’s emergency coronavirus bill that addresses people serving long prison sentences but has gotten less attention: the expansion of “good t ime” credits. People conv icted of D.C . felon ies du ring the tough-on-crime era in the 1990s earned no good time credits, which shave off about 15 percent of a sentence per year. D.C. eventually reinstated good time credits in 2000, but did not make the law retroactive, creating another unequal system. “It just gives them what everyone else in the system has gotten,” Steinberg says of the recent changes. It’s unclear how many people have been released due to the new good time provisions, but Steinberg says she’s aware of at least two people who became eligible for parole hearings as a result. Their cases are pending, she says. The Council passed legislation to make compassionate release and expanded good time credits permanent in December. —Mitch Ryals
“Many prisoners have gotten COVID and have gotten better, and still get released. So we’re moving away from COVID as a justification to a more broad, humanitarian aspect.”
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For one thing, mutual aid is not charity. “In charity, there’s a power dynamic,” Cook says. “Charity absolves the complicity of those who benefit from the systems that put people in the place where they supposedly need charity.” Mutual aid is also different from government assistance. Lark, an organizer with Ward 5 Mutual Aid, says asking for government help can be demeaning and demoralizing, and comes with a lot of red tape. With mutual aid, “you don’t feel like you’re a smaller person for asking for stuff,” she says. The other big difference is that mutual aid fills gaps the government leaves—gaps that are often intentional. “Every law that comes out of America is racist and classist,” Lark says. “Because it’s not going to intentionally help people, it’s going to help the powerful and there’s an innate prejudice that the weak and the vulnerable have to be punished more, just to keep the powerful in strength.” Systemic oppression pervades every aspect of life in the U.S., from home loans and highway construction to voter suppression. And the systemically oppressive systems that necessitate mutual aid, or “mutual survival,” as Cook likes to call it, will not disappear when the pandemic ends. COVID-19 may have “exacerbated the situation, may have definitely expedited people’s suffering,” says Cook. “But it was built upon structures that were normalized. I will say this, people died outside on the street here in Washington, D.C., way before COVID-19.” —Will Warren
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SPORTS BASKETBALL
Ned Dishman/NBAE via Washington Mystics
Shavonte Zellous
First Quarter As the WNBA celebrates its 25th season, Mystics players reflect on how the league has evolved and grown. By Kelyn Soong @Kelyn Soong Shavonte Zellous doesn’t have to look far to find reminders of her age on the basketball court. All she needs to do is talk to her Washington Mystics teammates. “Every time ... I ask a rookie how old they are, and they say like 22 and 23, I’ll be like, ‘Oh my gosh. I feel so old,’” Zellous, 34, says with a laugh. It’s a thought that crosses her mind whenever she realizes that some of her teammates are younger than the WNBA. This year, the WNBA celebrates its 25th anniversary, and events highlighting the milestones of the league and its evolution will take place over the course of the season. Zellous, an 11-year guard and 2012 WNBA champion with the Indiana Fever, signed with the Mystics this offseason. She recalls a time when the WNBA did not exist and the challenges, both financial and in terms of public support, the league has faced during her time as a professional basketball player. The NBA Board of Governors approved the concept of the WNBA on April 24, 1996, and eight teams played in its inaugural season a year later. The Mystics, who will play their season opener against the Chicago Sky on May 15, launched as an expansion franchise in 1998. As a standout youth track and field athlete in Orlando, Zellous didn’t dream of becoming a professional basketball player. She wanted to compete for Team USA in the Olympics. It
wasn’t until high school in the early 2000s that Zellous decided to focus on basketball at the encouragement of her coaches. It helped that by the time she transitioned from track to basketball in the 10th grade, she had professional basketball stars she could look up to. Zellous remembers attending Orlando Miracle games and “being the biggest cheerleader” while watching players such as Nykesha Sales, Carla McGhee, and Taj McWilliamsFranklin. (The Miracle relocated in 2003 and became the Connecticut Sun.) Sales was “hands down” Zellous’ favorite player to watch while in high school, and just having the opportunity to attend professional women’s basketball games excited Zellous and her friends. The now-defunct Detroit Shock drafted Zellous 11th overall in the 2009 WNBA Draft and she would go on to play with Sales for the Turkish team Beşiktaş J.K. The Shock eventually moved to Dallas and became the Dallas Wings. “It was very inspiring, because growing up, you always have goals and dreams to become something,” Zellous says. “It just made me work harder and push myself for my craft, like if these girls can do it and I can compete at the highest level, I mean, I can do it. So I think I took it serious because it was finally something that we can look forward to ... It just made me try to reach the goal [of what] ultimately I wanted to do and that was to be in the WNBA.”
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Guard Natasha Cloud, who the Mystics drafted in 2015, recognizes that the older generation didn’t have the same role models that she and Zellous did. “When you talk to the OGs of our league, they didn’t necessarily have a league to watch and to aspire to be,” she says. “But I had the pleasure and the privilege of having that. So I have women that I’m standing on their shoulders. Because they were here, I’m here. I don’t take that for granted. I understand that there is a next generation of women that are looking at me and I will be that next stepping stone for them.” The number of teams in the league peaked between 2000 and 2002, when 16 teams competed; it has consisted of 12 teams since the 2010 season. Since the inaugural 1997 season, six WNBA franchises have folded, and that does not include the teams that have gone to another city. The league suffered from record low ratings and a drop in television viewership during its 20th anniversary season. But things appear to be turning around. This month, the WNBA, which hired Cathy Engelbert as its new commissioner in 2019, signed a multiyear deal with Google to be the league’s presenting partner for the playoffs, and 25 WNBA games will be televised on ABC and ESPN this season. Mystics head coach and general manager Mike Thibault has led a WNBA team for nearly two decades: He was head coach of the Connecticut Sun from 2003 to 2012 and has coached the Mystics since 2013. He guided
Washington to its first WNBA championship title in 2019 and has seen support for the league fluctuate. “Early in the history of the WNBA you had a team like Washington, who won all these attendance banners. They had all these big crowds, but they weren’t treated like a business,” he says. “There were discounted tickets, there were freebies, and teams continued to lose money. I think owners have understood that there’s a value to these teams, that you don’t want to keep losing money. And so you’re doing a better job now both at the league level and at the team level of getting true sponsorship and TV deals ... Between the [WNBA] League Pass and CBS Sports Network and local TV and ESPN, you can watch every game. And that wasn’t true at all of the league when I first came in.” Zellous points to the new collective bargaining agreement, which kicked in last season and runs through 2027, as a sign of the league’s evolution. This CBA allows WNBA players to receive a sizable jump in compensation and provides maternity leave and family planning benefits. “Our motto for the Mystics is, ‘We shall not be denied,’” Cloud says. “I feel like that’s what we’ve done since I’ve been here in the league. We will not be denied. We’re going to continue to push this needle forward, whether it is making our pay more equitable, our league more equitable, our sponsorships, endorsements, our viewership, all of that. I mean, look at the contract we just got for TV games. That’s betting on women.” The support the league has shown to players off the court is equally (or even more) important to them. In 2016, the New York Times described WNBA players wearing warmup shirts showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement as a “rare public stance.” The league did not approve, and fined the Indiana Fever, New York Liberty, and Phoenix Mercury and their players for violating its uniform policy. It ultimately rescinded the fines. But in recent years, WNBA players have become increasingly more comfortable speaking out against police brutality, anti-Black racism, and other social justice causes. The Mystics, with support of the WNBA, played an influential role last year with their protests while playing in the WNBA bubble in Bradenton, Florida, and also with their voting rights efforts. In the WNBA’s press release celebrating its 25th anniversary, the league boasted about being “at the forefront of advancement, inclusion, and social change for 25 years.” That may not have always been the case, but players like Zellous take pride in what the league has become. “I don’t think 10 years ago people would have stood out and spoke out about certain things,” she says. “The biggest thing now is nobody is fearful for anything. Everybody is speaking their mind ... Back then you really couldn’t say what you feel. It was always, you gotta kind of mumble, you gotta kind of watch what you say. But now it’s like, we don’t care. We’re going to use our platform. We’re going to use our voices.”
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Your next weekend getaway starts in Montgomery County, Maryland. Explore the outdoors, soak up history, unwind at local breweries and wineries, and indulge in some of the country’s finest museums and performance venues. Experience your weekend, your way – with classic Maryland flavor!
VisitMontgomery.com/Weekend washingtoncitypaper.com may 2021 15
Summer Entertainment and Travel Spotlight Keeping the fun safe all summer long! BY SARAH MARLOFF
Dust off your shades and lather the kids in sunblock! D.C. is reopening across the region. As temperatures rise, making outside spaces more enjoyable for socially-distanced gatherings for family and friends, and the number of vaccinated folks continues to grow, we’re anticipating Summer 2021 will be the summer of fun.
CHRISTINE GOERKE
JOYCE YANG
CYNTHIA ERIVO
JoANN FALLETTA
But revelry doesn’t mean COVID-19 precautions will go by the wayside. As venues, restaurants, and shops begin to reopen, the enjoyment and safety of patrons, staff, and performers are the top priorities. One such venue, Fairfax County’s beloved Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, has announced its longawaited reopening with major plans to—safely—celebrate the venue’s 50th season. More than a year has passed since it hosted a live performance, but starting June 18, musicophiles can return to the Filene Center for live shows and picnics on the lawn.
FIFTY YEARS TOGETHER: A CELEBRATION OF WOLF TRAP NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
AN EVENING WITH
AMOS LEE
JUL 21 + 22
A KAY SHOUSE GREAT PERFORMANCE
JUL 1
“Since opening in 1971, concerts at Wolf Trap have helped define the summer for generations of music lovers,” says Arvind Manocha, President and CEO of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. While it’ll look a little different, this summer will continue that tradition. Scheduled performers include Amos Lee, Aoife O’Donovan, and “thank you community concerts” — free shows for frontline healthcare, education workers, and volunteers. Kids will also be able to enjoy the Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods performances, featuring fun programming for the wee ones. Operating at a cashless, reduced capacity, Wolf Trap’s reopening protocols allow concert goers to come in “pods” of 2-8 people. Masks are required when moving about, but can be removed when seated. forward for us all,” says Manocha.
AOIFE O’DONOVAN
JUL 24 + 25
WITH MEMBERS OF THE KNIGHTS JUL 28
“Our pandemic intermission is nearing its end, and the resumption of concerts can finally begin—an important first step
Cory Van Horn, Visit Montgomery’s director of marketing, confirms big things are happening across state lines too. In April, Montgomery County entered the first of three reopening phases that correlate with the percentage of vaccinated residents. While face masks and social distancing are still required, the county’s many attractions are excited to welcome guests. There will be live outdoor shows at the Olney Theatre Center and the Music Center at Strathmore, both of which are hosting performances on the lawn all summer. *There will be live outdoor shows at the Olney Theatre Center and the Music Center at Strathmore, both of which are hosting performances on the lawn all summer. *With its 14acre campus and outdoor stage, Olney Theatre’s Director of Marketing and Communications Joshua Ford says: “It made sense to welcome audiences back with outdoor performances while we all get used to gathering in groups again. We’ve got the room so 200 people can comfortably watch a free production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or a jazz combo, or a cabaret performance, while still keeping a little distance from their neighbor as we ease back into live entertainment.”* For those looking for more kid-friendly activities, there’s rio in Gaithersburg where children can ride three carousels and the entire family can enjoy paddle boats along the lake. The County is home to three national parks—Clara Barton National Historic Site, Glen Echo Park, and C&O Canal National Historical Park, and glamping lovers will love an opportunity to rent out an historic lockhouse along the C&O Canal for a weekend away-ish. Van Horn also recommends making reservations at Adventure Park in Sandy Spring where ziplines and climbing courses are aplenty. The park has a robust events calendar —Glow in the Park, anyone?—but walk-ins cannot currently be accommodated. *John Hines, owner of Adventure Park, has found a silver lining in current safety restrictions, which cut capacity by more than 50%, has led to some guest benefits: “the park is never crowded like it was pre-pandemic.” Starting Memorial Day, the park will open seven days a week. “Now more than ever, families are looking to take a break from their digital devices and reconnect beyond the screen,” says Van Horn. “Montgomery County offers a wide range of experiences that appeal to kids, parents, and grandparents.” Whatever outdoor fun and entertainment you’re craving, this summer promises to be one to remember. Our Summer Spotlights will continue to highlight new activities and SPONSORED STORY 16 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
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SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET IN CONCERT WOLF TRAP OPERA NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
JUL 2 + 3
MAX WEINBERG’S JUKEBOX JUL 10 + 11 BIG TONY AND TROUBLE FUNK JUL 18 THE WAR AND TREATY JUL 29 NORM LEWIS
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WOLFTRAP.ORG washingtoncitypaper.com may 2021 17
FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY
Marketing Plan
Darrow Montgomery
Even though a Dupont Circle grocer is changing hands, you’ll still recognize the employees when Glen’s Garden Market becomes Dawson’s Market this summer.
Danielle Vogel and Bart Yablonsky
By Laura Hayes @LauraHayesDC Shopping at Glen’s Garden Market has never felt like an errand. While you might not be able to buy everything you need to make a detailed recipe ripped from the pages of Bon Appétit, perusing the shelves for the latest local products and chatting with sales associates about where the sweet potatoes comes from leaves you feeling like you’re part of a like-minded community that puts the planet first. Danielle Vogel, a fourth-generation grocer, intentionally opened Glen’s on Earth Day 2013 after leaving a career on Capitol Hill advising lawmakers on environmental issues. When sweeping climate change legislation died in the Senate in 2010, Vogel sought to make incremental progress “one bite at a time.” The store on S Street NW in Dupont Circle is solar-powered, offers free composting, and operates with zero food waste. Washingtonians count on Glen’s for holiday spreads, breads and sweets from a master
baker, local beer and cider, quick meals from the prepared foods section, fresh produce, and what might be the best pulled-pork sandwich in the city. Before the pandemic, friends and neighbors mingled inside at the store’s bar and outside on its patio. As Glen’s found its footing in the early years, customers cheered them on. Vogel recalls a surprising moment in 2014, as business picked up. “A regular neighbor found me stocking groceries and asked if I’d moved the milk again,” she says. “I told her I was embarrassed to report that we were a grocery store with no milk to sell—we’d run out. Instead of being disappointed and sharing her frustration about the inconvenience, her face lit up, she clapped her hands, bounced in the air, and exclaimed, ‘We’re so busy!’ Glen’s success was very much a group activity. We’ve been rooting for each other from the start.” That success was tested in 2015 when a $70 check to a small purveyor bounced. “When you run a no-margin business and your bank account runs dry, the math problem is particularly acute,” Vogel says. “We pulled it together
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quickly and strategically, but to this day, that bounce notice sits on the wall above my desk to remind me to never stop hustling.” Another challenge came when Vogel expanded to Shaw and opened a second Glen’s Garden Market, which operated from December 2015 to April 2018. Vogel says the occupancy never materialized at The Shay development that housed the store. “Then Whole Foods broke ground and I knew in two years they’d eat our lunch.” Vogel vowed to reinvest her resources into making the original Glen’s “like an activated community center, which was always the dream.” Union Kitchen took over the Shaw space that Glen’s vacated. But Glen’s biggest test was the pandemic. The shop had to shut down two of its biggest revenue drivers—the bar and the sandwich counter. Vogel was complying with restrictions the city established and ensuring that customers shopping for groceries and household goods were prioritized over people popping in for a sandwich since capacity limits were in place. She also focused on keeping what staff she could retain safe and financially stable. She split
employees into pods on set schedules and built in paid time for staff to stay home and recuperate from the anxiety of working a frontline job during a public health crisis. “We had everything we needed and she took time and effort to think through how the store would operate in the safest way for our team in a way that also fed the community and kept up what we hold to be valuable at Glen’s,” says Zoe Serratelli, who heads the perishables department. Serratelli’s two-year employment anniversary is coming up in June. By then, Glen’s will be without the leader employees fondly call “D.” Over the winter, Vogel realized she’d reached her goals and was ready to move on “after leaving it all on the field.” “I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on what it would mean to close Glen’s for the community, the team, and the vendors,” she told City Paper in February. “I’m feeling compelled to do it from an economic perspective, but culturally, there’s a big gap in my heart.” Before the pandemic, Vogel had started to think about whether there was a path forward for Glen’s without her. She reached out to other regional grocers to float the possibility of an acquisition. “One was a flat-out no. Another was impossible. A third was willing to have a conversation,” she says. Enter Bart Yablonsky, the owner of Dawson’s Market in Rockville Town Square. He’ll officially acquire Glen’s sometime in June and will convert it into a second location of Dawson’s. Vogel made Yablonsky “an offer he couldn’t refuse” with a couple of nonnegotiables. Vogel often says she measures success in progress, not profit. The structure of the acquisition deal was no exception. She was more concerned about Yablonsky committing to protecting her employees’ jobs at their current pay rates than about recouping her financial investments. “Bart and I reached an agreement to protect everyone’s jobs, we’ve paid down our debts, and the acquisition will ensure Dupont has a fantastic place to shop for groceries indefinitely,” Vogel says. “I feel really good about all of it.” Yablonsky has shepherded a similar transition before. The Baltimore native was the general manager at Dawson’s when grocer Rick Hood opened it in 2012. He stayed on until Hood closed it in 2018. Seven weeks later, Dawson’s reopened with Yablonsky in the driver’s seat. When rebuilding Dawson’s from scratch, he used the opportunity to cement the store’s commitment to selling local products and building community. “I didn’t have the intention of looking for another location, but when we started talking this made so much sense because we’re so similar,” Yablonsky says. The Rockville location is bigger than Glen’s, but has similar components, including a bar. “We want to be here long term and having a second location will solidify that.” During his career, Yablonsky has done everything from open the first Whole Foods in Georgia and work in frozen-food manufacturing in Arlington to owning a string of day spas with his wife in the D.C. area. At one point, he ran the Fresh Fields on River Road in Bethesda,
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FOOD the grocer’s highest grossing store in the country per square foot. (Whole Foods acquired Fresh Fields in 1996.) While Yablonsky was working at Dawson’s Market, he also served as the director of operations for Hood’s other grocery store— Ellwood Thompson’s in Richmond. Vogel and Yablonsky share a similar ethos when it comes to sustainability and supporting local businesses. Over the course of eight years, Glen’s launched almost 100 small local brands. Women own 60 percent of them and 20 are BIPOC-founded. In the freezer aisle alone, you can find products from M’Panadas, Nomad Dumplings, and Ice Cream Jubilee. Then there’s chocolatier Petite Soeur, nonalcoholic drink maker Mocktail Club, and Lemonade Love. Vogel also ran an AccelerateHERdc contest to help new food brands that are environmentally conscious find their footing through financial support and mentorship. Seventeen miles away, Yablonsky was hosting “meet the locals” events at Dawson’s so shoppers could mingle with 10 to 15 vendors who shared product samples. He hopes to resume them once it’s safe to do so. He says he’s eager to build on Glen’s portfolio of local products
Yablonsky says. “I ended up buying flour from our gourmet cheese distributor. If you’re a Whole Foods, a Giant, or a Safeway, you can’t adapt that quickly.” Once the deal was inked and both parties were confident about the future of the store, it was time for Vogel to break the news to employees. Eight Earth Days after Glen’s opened, she told her staff about the transition just before an “Earth Day birthday” tie-dyeing party complete with a six-foot sub from The Italian Store in a park near the market. Serratelli was touched that Vogel “put everything on the line” to preserve jobs and wages and is optimistic about Yablonsky’s leadership. “I’m looking forward to seeing how we can grow under him,” she says. “He’s still dedicated to local and staying as sustainable as possible. We have to hold him to it.” For others the news stung. “I was really upset,” says Haley Dean. The Howard University student works the register, stocks products, checks expiration dates, and assists customers with questions. “Danielle and I have gotten really close,” she says. “It’s not like we’re selling the store and I don’t want new people, it’s just that Danielle is so irreplaceable.”
YOU’LL WANT TO GET
“I think people are going to realize soon that Amazon is incredibly convenient and easy, but you’re really isolating yourself.” with ones that have been popular at his store. As a part of the acquisition deal, Yablonsky is retaining Vogel as a consultant for three years so she can continue her efforts helping emerging businesses get started in retail. “We want to provide a wider assortment,” Yablonsky says. “That’s the first thing we’ll work on.” Vogel and Yablonsky also see eye to eye on the important role that small, independent grocery stores play in big cities, especially in the Amazon era. “People like to know where their food comes from!” Vogel says. “They like to know the people who bag their groceries. They like to engage with one another and discover delicious new food.” Vogel’s father, Glen, the store’s namesake, used to say, “As long as people keep having babies, there’s a need for grocery stores. People need to eat!” “Amazon is the enemy,” Yablonsky says. “I think people are going to realize soon that Amazon is incredibly convenient and easy, but you’re really isolating yourself.” He says the conditions COVID-19 brought about, including supply-chain shortages, demonstrated how important small grocers are in communities. Both he and Vogel say they were more nimble than big corporate competitors. “The person making decisions is in the building and can make decisions to change quickly,”
Dean started at Glen’s in January 2020 and only worked for about a month before going on spring break. Howard told its students not to come back because of the pandemic. There were several false starts when the university recommended that students return to campus only to reverse their decision. She ultimately returned to D.C. in August 2020. “The whole time [Vogel] was so patient with me,” Dean says. “She made me feel like she was looking out for me and that I’d have a job to come back to.” The rising junior is studying criminology. Vogel, who is an adjunct associate professor of law at American University Washington College of Law, mentors her. “She’s proofread every assignment for me,” Dean says. “I’m upset to see her go, but I understand she has to do what she has to do and I’m excited to see what she does. It’s not the last we’ll hear of her.” Vogel says she’s working on a few projects in the local food space, but for now she’s going to kick back after an impossible year. “I’m looking forward to enjoying a summer rainstorm without worrying that the store will flood or a hot summer day without frantically checking if a refrigerator has failed,” she says. “I’m looking forward to cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, instead of slinging dozens of them.”
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Important Facts About DOVATO
Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. This is only a brief summary of important information about DOVATO and Some medicines interact with DOVATO. Keep a list of your medicines and show it to does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. and treatment. • You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for a list of medicines that What is the most important information I should know about DOVATO? interact with DOVATO. If you have both human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) and hepatitis B • Do not start taking a new medicine without telling your healthcare virus (HBV) infection, DOVATO can cause serious side effects, including: provider. Your healthcare provider can tell you if it is safe to take DOVATO with • Resistant HBV infection. Your healthcare provider will test you for HBV other medicines. infection before you start treatment with DOVATO. If you have HIV-1 and What are possible side effects of DOVATO? hepatitis B, the hepatitis B virus can change (mutate) during your treatment with DOVATO can cause serious side effects, including: DOVATO and become harder to treat (resistant). It is not known if DOVATO is • Those in the “What is the most important information I should know safe and effective in people who have HIV-1 and HBV infection. about DOVATO?” section. • Worsening of HBV infection. If you have HIV-1 and HBV infection, your HBV • Allergic reactions. Call your healthcare provider right away if you may get worse (flare-up) if you stop taking DOVATO. A “flare-up” is when your develop a rash with DOVATO. Stop taking DOVATO and get medical HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before. Worsening liver help right away if you develop a rash with any of the following signs or disease can be serious and may lead to death. symptoms: fever; generally ill feeling; tiredness; muscle or joint aches; blisters ° Do not run out of DOVATO. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare or sores in mouth; blisters or peeling of the skin; redness or swelling of the eyes; provider before your DOVATO is all gone. swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue; problems breathing. ° Do not stop DOVATO without first talking to your healthcare provider. • Liver problems. People with a history of hepatitis B or C virus may have an If you stop taking DOVATO, your healthcare provider will need to check your increased risk of developing new or worsening changes in certain liver tests health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your liver. during treatment with DOVATO. Liver problems, including liver failure, have also What is DOVATO? happened in people without a history of liver disease or other risk factors. Your DOVATO is a prescription medicine that is used without other HIV-1 medicines to healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your liver. treat human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infection in adults: who have not Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following received HIV-1 medicines in the past, or to replace their current HIV-1 medicines signs or symptoms of liver problems: your skin or the white part of your when their healthcare provider determines that they meet certain requirements. HIV-1 eyes turns yellow (jaundice); dark or “tea-colored” urine; light-colored stools is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). It is not (bowel movements); nausea or vomiting; loss of appetite; and/or pain, aching, or known if DOVATO is safe and effective in children. tenderness on the right side of your stomach area. • Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis is Who should not take DOVATO? a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare Do not take DOVATO if you: provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms that could • have ever had an allergic reaction to a medicine that contains dolutegravir be signs of lactic acidosis: feel very weak or tired; unusual (not normal) or lamivudine. muscle pain; trouble breathing; stomach pain with nausea and vomiting; feel • take dofetilide. cold, especially in your arms and legs; feel dizzy or lightheaded; and/or a fast or What should I tell my healthcare provider before using DOVATO? irregular heartbeat. Tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including • Lactic acidosis can also lead to severe liver problems, which can lead to if you: death. Your liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and you may develop fat in • have or have had liver problems, including hepatitis B or C infection. your liver (steatosis). Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get any • have kidney problems. of the signs or symptoms of liver problems which are listed above under • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. One of the medicines in DOVATO “Liver problems.” You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe (dolutegravir) may harm your unborn baby. liver problems if you are female or very overweight (obese). ° Your healthcare provider may prescribe a different medicine than DOVATO if • Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) you are planning to become pregnant or if pregnancy is confirmed during the can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines. Your immune system may first 12 weeks of pregnancy. get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body ° If you can become pregnant, your healthcare provider will perform a pregnancy for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having new test before you start treatment with DOVATO. symptoms after you start taking DOVATO. ° If you can become pregnant, you should consistently use effective birth control • The most common side effects of DOVATO include: headache; nausea; (contraception) during treatment with DOVATO. diarrhea; trouble sleeping; tiredness; and anxiety. ° Tell your healthcare provider right away if you are planning to become pregnant, These are not all the possible side effects of DOVATO. Call your doctor for medical you become pregnant, or think you may be pregnant during treatment advice about side effects. with DOVATO. • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take DOVATO. ° You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby. ° One of the medicines in DOVATO (lamivudine) passes into your breastmilk. ° Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby.
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SO MUCH GOES INTO WHO I AM HIV MEDICINE IS ONE PART OF IT. Why could DOVATO be right for you? DOVATO is proven to help control HIV with just 2 medicines in 1 pill. That means fewer medicines* in your body while taking DOVATO. It’s proven as effective as an HIV treatment with 3 or 4 medicines. Learn more about fewer medicines at DOVATO.com DOVATO is a complete prescription regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have not received HIV-1 medicines in the past or to replace their current HIV-1 medicines when their doctor determines they meet certain requirements. Results may vary. *As compared with 3- or 4-drug regimens.
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You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Where can I find more information? • Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist. • Go to DOVATO.com or call 1-877-844-8872, where you can also get FDA-approved labeling. August 2020 DVT:4PIL Trademark is owned by or licensed to the ViiV Healthcare group of companies.
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Empower DC Leads the Way for Equitable Development Capital One invests in grassroots community-led work Before Detrice Belt became the chair of the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association, she was a resident at Barry Farm, a Ward 8 public housing community just west of Anacostia. Belt called Barry Farm home for most of her life—first, as a teen with her family, and later as a single mom with her daughter and their two dogs. Belt’s Barry Farm townhouse was across the street from her mother’s home, which made it easy for them to share meals, childcare duties, and holidays with family. All that ended in 2019, when Barry Farm residents were forced to relocate due to redevelopment plans for the historic public housing community. For Belt, that meant relocating to a new apartment where she had to give up her dogs and the place she long called home. Belt connected with Empower DC, a grassroots organization that advances racial, economic, and environmental justice by investing in the leadership and organized political power of the city’s residents with low to moderate incomes. Though Empower DC is citywide, it has a long history of supporting Barry Farm and Ivy City residents—two of D.C.’s many historically Black communities. Barry Farm, designated as a D.C. historic landmark in 2020, was once home to Black luminaries like abolitionist Emily Edmonson and Charles R. Douglass, son of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as well as Etta Mae Horn, a national leader on welfare rights. Belt credits Empower DC with doing exactly what the organization’s name implies: empowering her and her neighbors to start the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association (BFTAA) to address residents’ needs. The BFTAA and Empower DC were able to successfully appeal the redevelopment plan and secure a historic landmark designation for five buildings on the property. The new plan has yet to be revealed, but Empower DC’s Executive Director Parisa Norouzi said the organization will be there to support BFTAA through the process. “Empower DC has taught me to ask questions, like, ‘How can we do it in a better way for the residents?’”
Belt said. “We’re the ones who live here. We’re the ones who are affected by this.” Founded in 2003, by Norouzi and Linda Leaks, much of Empower DC’s work is centered around the fight for community-led equitable development and helping neighborhoods navigate gentrification and avoid displacement. Its housing work is especially focused on securing, improving, and preserving public housing for D.C.’s lowest income residents— those making 30% or below the median family income. To succeed, Empower DC is working to ensure the ongoing rewrite of D.C.’s comprehensive land use plan is equitable and includes mandates for affordable housing. In 2017, the organization formed the DC Grassroots Planning Coalition. Made up of residents, advisory neighborhood commissions, civic associations, and other organizations committed to equitable development in communities of color, the fundamental purpose of the Coalition is to challenge development patterns that have led to displacement and gentrification. Since its creation, Norouzi says the Grassroots Planning Coalition has mobilized and educated over 1,200 residents around land use and the comprehensive plan. SPONSORED STORY FROM CAPITAL ONE
22 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
Capital One has partnered with Empower DC’s Grassroots Planning Coalition as part of the Capital One Impact Initiative, an initial five-year, $200 million commitment that seeks to create equal opportunity for all to prosper by supporting growth in underserved communities, advancing socioeconomic mobility, and closing opportunity gaps. Through that support, Capital One will help the Grassroots Planning Coalition shape public housing redevelopment efforts across the city and help Empower DC achieve its goals including developing an educational curriculum and creating a network of experts that low income residents can use as a resource to navigate challenges surrounding redevelopment. “Lack of access to socioeconomic mobility is one of the most pervasive and long-standing issues in our society,” said Desiree Francis, head of Community Finance at Capital One. “That is why we are committed to marshaling our resources and partnering with nonprofits like Empower DC that are engaging and empowering local communities with the tools to create lasting and equitable change.”
ARTS
Community Supported Art N’ Culture
Julia Terbrock
A new grant repurposes the CSA model for local artists and art lovers.
By Michelle Delgado Contributing Writer Starting this summer, there’s a new CSA in town—but instead of receiving heirloom tomatoes or zucchini, participants will receive “shares” of original artwork created by artists in the D.C. area. The Community Supported Art program is the result of a new collaboration between Rhizome DC, the Takoma-based community art nonprofit, and Guilded: A Freelancer Cooperative, a local chapter of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives currently recruiting members for its pilot phase. With time, the founders hope the CSA might even blossom into a sustainable way to actively foster community support for the area’s many artists. Using the same model as community supported agriculture, the new program will allow art lovers to pay for artwork up front, then await a summer-long harvest spread across three COVID-safe pickup events. The money will fund $1,500 grants, and artists will also be eligible to receive benefits from Guilded, including
six months of primary care, vision, and dental coverage, and help with tax preparation. On May 3, the two groups announced the grant recipients: Jorge E. Bañales, a musician and photographer; Katie Macyshyn, an interactive multimedia designer; Julia Marks, a theater artist; Xena Ni, a multimedia artist and designer; Peter Redgrave, a cultural worker exploring embodied experiences; Lucas J. Rougeux, an interdisciplinary artist exploring sexuality, queerness, spirituality, and more; Nate Scheible, a drummer and composer; SIFU SUN, an experimental artist focusing on painting, movement, and sound; and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, a performance artist and writer. Their projects encompass an eclectic range of thematic concepts and forms of media. Ni plans to guide shareholders through a series of futuretelling experiences, a methodology she’s developed for prompting rich imaginings of future visions of self and society. Bañales plans to produce 7-inch vinyl records featuring original music composed using modular synths (and possibly samples of the emerging
cicadas’ familiar whine). Redgrave will explore the mythology of the wild in the form of a book that juxtaposes photographs of trail blazes with writings about humans and the natural world, and Marks will publish a plantable zine printed on paper studded with native flower seeds. Others plan to experiment with poetry, wood burning, and zinemaking. CSA co-founder Ajoke Williams is a longtime organizer who also serves as the program manager of Guilded. A trained electrical engineer with a knack for designing sustainable systems, Williams was troubled by the pandemic’s devastating impact on arts workers. As she worked with Guilded to develop services for freelance workers, Williams began to wonder how D.C.’s artists could receive more support from the community around them—and found herself reflecting on the CSA model. In a typical CSA, community members purchase shares of a farm’s expected harvest in advance, providing the seed money for the season. As crops ripen, the farmer distributes them among the members. Shareholders receive both tangible shares of the harvest
and the larger benefit of sustainable local agriculture. “You’re supporting actual economic exchange,” Williams says, “but then you’re also supporting more of an ecosystem.” With a vision in mind, Williams next set out to find a partner organization that could launch a CSA program for artists, and Rhizome DC caught her eye. Williams was impressed that the organization managed to adapt its programming to pandemic conditions, even as larger arts centers across the country shuttered. “It seemed like they had a really strong commitment, going a bit above and beyond,” Williams says. Layne Garrett, Rhizome DC’s program director, was very receptive to the idea, in part because he had previously worked at a farm himself. “I really saw the benefits of that model, in terms of providing funding upfront and having the risk shared among the members,” Garrett says. Even better, he was also aware of precedents in the art world. Though the mechanics initially seemed intimidating, Garrett found resources from other arts organizations with successful CSA programs, particularly Minnesota-based Mn Artists and Springboard for the Arts. The grants will be funded by the CSA’s 50 shares, which are currently available for purchase. Participants will pay around $350 in exchange for a curated selection of physical artwork that will be distributed via three pickup events this summer and fall. For those who can afford more or less, there will be a sliding scale ranging from $200 to $500. The CSA model also departs from familiar notions of how art functions as a commodity. Instead of purchasing specific artworks, shareholders will pay in advance for a complete collection of all nine artists’ limited-run series. All artists will create multiples of their artwork, with some planning to contribute to one pickup event and others planning to create a project that spans all three. The CSA’s holistic approach to support is part of Williams’ larger goal of changing the conversation around how arts workers are compensated for their labor. “Art is not just this atomizable piece that you can take,” Williams says. “How do you quantify the fact that someone’s constantly digesting their environment to produce something for you? And how do you even quantify the fact that the person needs some type of social security in order to be able to create art?” Clients often pay inadequate rates for artwork, and they rarely contribute toward the costs of essentials such as health care. “A dead person can’t create art for you, which is obvious,” Williams says. “But the way artists are paid, it seems as if clients and businesses think that there’s some way to just extract [that] singular [artistic] skill.” More than a year into the pandemic, D.C.’s unemployment rate is still hovering near 8 percent. But it’s difficult to determine how self-employed artists, freelancers, and gig workers—whose employment is often pieced together from multiple sources—factor into this data. In December 2020, a survey by the
washingtoncitypaper.com may 2021 23
ARTS
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National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that arts workers are 3.6 times more likely to be self-employed than workers in other sectors. Despite their often-tenuous employment status, arts workers have an outsize impact on the economy. This spring, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that arts and culture work accounted for 4.3 percent of the United States’ total GDP in 2019, representing nearly $920 billion. A 2021 joint study by the National Endowment for the Arts, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Argonne National Laboratory found that in past years, this contribution has been “larger than the share contributed by industries as diverse as construction, agriculture, and transportation.” Though art can seem like a rarefied field, the reality is that practically every industry employs arts workers to design websites, produce graphic design, shoot photos, write copy, or complete a host of other creative work. Grant recipient Ni has a full-time design job in addition to her work as a multimedia artist. The pay disparity between the two is “more than an order of magnitude,” she says, even though both types of work draw on very similar skills. “I’m the same person,” Ni says. “It’s the same brain, it’s the same body doing this labor.” Despite the importance of their contributions, arts workers, along with many other essential workers in the gig economy, have a difficult time accessing basic necessities such as affordable health care and dental benefits. Though the percentage of uninsured Americans has decreased over time, companies that provide benefits for their employees typically cover two-thirds of medical premiums— a cost that self-employed workers must fully cover by themselves. Throughout the pandemic, Garrett has tried to find ways for Rhizome’s limited resources to support local artists who may be struggling. “We’ve always been really grounded in the community and built around the idea that one function of community is to help each other out,” he says. Through the partnership with Williams, grant recipients are eligible for the same benefits Guilded members receive, including six months of health care, dental, and vision services. Once enrolled, they’ll be able to access health services from Guilded’s network of direct primary care clinics, which charge a monthly subscription fee that fully covers regular checkups, as well as bulk rate pricing for prescriptions and minor surgeries. During its pilot phase, Guilded is fully covering the first six months of subscription fees for members, as well as helping them develop contracts that build the cost into what they charge their clients. Williams says she’s currently working to expand the offerings to include a wider range of providers, including healers, therapists, and more. These benefits signaled a deeper set of values to Ni. “I was really moved when I saw the potential for health, dental, and other forms of coverage,” Ni says. “It really made me feel like this opportunity was one where I would possibly be cared for as an entire person.”
Redgrave, another grant recipient, also views the benefits as a welcome form of support, particularly the promise of a vision checkup. Unsure of whether his current Medicare plan would cover an optometry appointment, he’s been relying on a pair of drugstore reading glasses. “The idea that I could have somebody help me navigate how to get glasses, for example, would be great,” Redgrave says. Similarly, Bañales has also found his Medicare coverage to be lacking. He had previously worked as a writer, translator, and designer at the CMS Office of Minority Health. “I’ve seen the whole health care issue from that side, and I don’t like that having health care is tied to having a job,” Bañales says. Though basic services are generally covered, his current Medicare plan offers little beyond that; for example, dental cleanings are covered, but a cavity would lead to a hefty bill. “The past three years, I’ve been neglecting my health a little bit by not going to the doctor as much as I used to,” he says. Just as navigating health care can be daunting, many arts workers also face the challenge of filing tax returns that tend to be more complicated than the average office worker’s. As the May 17 deadline for 2021 taxes draws near, self-employed workers must organize a year’s worth of 1099s and navigate tricky rules around reporting income, health insurance coverage, and more. When performance artist Tbakhi graduated from college in 2019, he was prepared to work hard to pursue a creative career. But the financial reality of the path felt like a different kind of test—one that made him uncomfortably aware of his upbringing in a lower income household, without the financial literacy of his wealthier peers. “It’s kind of intentionally confusing, I think,” Tbakhi says of both the IRS’s baroque rules and the predatory ecosystem of services such as TurboTax that prey on workers’ uncertainty of whether they qualify for free tax filing. The CSA grant’s promise of tax prep assistance was a major reason he submitted an application. “It is something that is very hard to find anywhere and is not typically included in any other kind of grant or any other kind of residency,” he says. “You’re just kind of expected to know how to do things.” Beyond providing for artists’ holistic needs, Williams hopes the CSA program might become a more permanent fixture in the area. Between pandemic-induced lockdowns that have shuttered creative venues and algorithmic curation that leaves little room for surprise, Williams sees a need for more organic ways to encounter the arts. “You can’t always decide what you’re going to get from a CSA, right? You know you’re going to get produce, and you have a variety of options that could come through, depending on how kind the farming gods are,” Williams says. “It would be great if we started to view art that way as well.” Through a CSA, “you get to see artists that you probably would have never come in contact with—and that could be a couple blocks away from you,” Williams says.
ARTS BOOK REVIEW
Beyond the Sea Things We Lost to the Water By Eric Nguyen Knopf, 289 pages, $26.95
When a family flees their home for another place—or another country—and starts over, they must make sacrifices. That melancholy sense of loss seeps through the pages of D.C. author Eric Nguyen’s Things We Lost to the Water, about a Vietnamese family of refugees who emigrate to New Orleans after the Vietnam War—except the entire family doesn’t make it. The father is left behind. The pregnant mother, Huong, and her 5-year-old son, Tuân, arrive in Louisiana penniless. Following their journey from the late 1970s to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the novel tells a story that is melancholy, authentic, and powerful. This small family has to struggle just to survive. Huong works in a nail salon while her boys attend public school and an elderly neighbor babysits them in their small Vietnamese community after school. Their little apartment is cramped, their food is cheap—ramen and boxed cereals. As the boys get older, Tuân joins a gang and has to prove himself by committing felonies. The younger son, Bình, avoids gangs, but stress takes its toll on the family. Both boys drop out of high school and, while Bình later resumes his education, neither son is on a solid career path. The novel’s theme is loss—above all, the loss of the father. Their lives are informed by his absence, even Bình’s, who never even met his dad. War and its displacement casts a long shadow over the book. “There was a war, Ben,” Tuân tells his younger brother. “Things go horribly wrong during wars. Even without wars, things go horribly wrong all the time. You pick yourself up, you move on, be glad with what you do have.” It’s hard for families to plant new roots and grow a new life after enduring such adversity. Major events such as wars, hurricanes, and disasters are the inflection points in these characters’ lives. Huong and her children feel helpless
during these catastrophes, because circumstances beyond their control are forming their lives, transforming them into shapes they might not choose for themselves. “‘Everything was a mess,’” says Vinh, a car salesman Huong ends up dating. “‘War makes everything a mess. And everyone is guilty of doing something bad. No one came out of it not doing anything bad, even all the good guys. It was a mess.’” War destroys life, and people must try to construct new lives amid the ruins when it’s over. Yet there is no self-pity in this book. Instead, it presents a clear-eyed assessment of horizons that are limited by a lack of money and by being adrift in a new land. Still, these boys’ fortunes are informed by internal values and resources. As it turns out, there are some crimes Tuân just won’t commit, no matter how much his gang pressures him. When he realizes this, he takes his first step toward adulthood and independence. Indeed, the next time the reader encounters him, he lives by himself in his own New Orleans apartment and finds work in a restaurant. Unlike Bình, Tuân’s link to his mother never frays. But then again, Tuân knew his father and experienced life in a more typical family unit. Bình is somehow more at sea. This modern take on social realism shows how money—or the lack of it—affects the novel’s characters. Bình, Tuân and Huong belong to the Vietnamese community of New Orleans, and their experiences are similar to those of their peers. But they also interact with other groups, such as recent Haitian immigrants and wealthy White professionals. While the family’s position in the social hierarchy is not absolutely fixed, it is static enough that it’s hard to imagine Tuân as an affluent doctor or lawyer. It’s not impossible, but it is difficult considering the odds stacked against him. While these characters struggle, work long hours, and adapt to U.S. society, their social limitations become part of the setting. Inside this environment, the family unit is central. Huong’s view is: “The world was cold and wild. A country could collapse. A father could disappear. She would have to protect her sons.” She and her sons are vital to each other, even when the family falls apart. They have each other—even when they don’t. —Eve Ottenberg
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ARTS FILM REVIEW
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of our work! As we finalize thehttps://ddc.dc.gov/page/2022-2026-state-plan State2022–2026 Plan, we invite individuals withdirection disabilities, can bePlan found Five-Year State forhere: fiscal years to guide the future andfamily goals The Districtadvocates, of Columbia Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC) is developing its new members, and other stakeholders to provide their comments. The draft plan Virtual Public Hearings will be held in English, Spanish, and ASL onfamily of our work! As we finalize the State Plan, we invite individuals with disabilities, Five-Year can State forhere: fiscal https://ddc.dc.gov/page/2022-2026-state-plan years 2022–2026 to guide the future direction and goals bePlan found Thursday, Mayto 27, 2021their members, advocates, and other stakeholders provide comments. The draft Virtual Public Hearings will be held in English, Spanish, and ASL on plan of our work! As we finalize the State Plan, we invite individuals with disabilities, family Register May in advance! can be found here: https://ddc.dc.gov/page/2022-2026-state-plan Thursday, 27, 2021 members, advocates, and other stakeholders to their comments. The draft Virtual Public Hearings will be held in provide English, Spanish, and ASL on plan Register in advance! can be found here: https://ddc.dc.gov/page/2022-2026-state-plan Thursday, May 27, 2021 to 11:00 AM Virtual Public Hearings 10:00 will beAM held in English, Spanish, and ASL on Register in https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpdOuhrDgqHdyWVvrX41ytnB-l_MNbpAdI 10:00 AMMay to advance! 11:00 AM Thursday, 27, 2021 Virtual Public Hearings will be held in English, Spanish, and ASL on https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpdOuhrDgqHdyWVvrX41ytnB-l_MNbpAdI Register in advance! Thursday, 27,PM 2021 10:00 to AM 1:00 AM PMMay to 11:00 2:00 Register in advance! https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpdOuhrDgqHdyWVvrX41ytnB-l_MNbpAdI https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucumqqTgoGNN4FEJihLTJ2SWYsaic4JYg 10:00 AM 1:00 AM PM to 11:00 2:00 PM
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DDC Five-Year State Plan 2022-2026 DDC Five-Year State Plan 2022-2026 45-Day Public Comment Period 45-Day Public Comment Period DDC Five-Year State Plan 2022-2026 May 5, 2021 to June 18, 2021 DDC Five-Year Plan18, 2022-2026 May 5, Public 2021State to June 2021 45-Day Comment Period The District of Columbia Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC) is developing its new DDC Five-Year State Plan 2022-2026 45-Day Public Comment Period May 5, years 2021 to June 18,the(DDC) 2021 Five-Year Plan for Developmental fiscal 2022–2026 to guide futureisdirection anditsgoals The DistrictState of Columbia Disabilities Council developing new 45-Day Public Comment Period of our work! As Plan we finalize theyears State2022–2026 Plan, we invite individuals withdirection disabilities, May 5, 2021 to June 18,the 2021 Five-Year State for fiscal to guide future andfamily goals The District ofAs Columbia Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC) is developing its new members, advocates, and other stakeholders to provide their comments. The draft plan of our work! we finalize the State Plan, invite individuals with disabilities, family May 5, 2021 toweJune 18, 2021 Five-Year State Plan for fiscal years 2022–2026 to guide the future can found here: https://ddc.dc.gov/page/2022-2026-state-plan members, advocates, and other stakeholders to provide their comments. The and draft plan The District of be Columbia Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC) isdirection developing itsgoals new
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10:00 to AM 1:00 PM to 11:00 2:00 PM The DDC State Plan’s main goals are AM Self-Determination, Advocacy and Leadership, https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpdOuhrDgqHdyWVvrX41ytnB-l_MNbpAdI https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucumqqTgoGNN4FEJihLTJ2SWYsaic4JYg Employment, Community Living. Other areas include The DDC State and Plan’s main goals are PM Self-Determination, Advocacy and Education, Leadership, 1:00 to 2:00 PMof emphasis Housing, and Living. Formal Other and Informal Support. https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucumqqTgoGNN4FEJihLTJ2SWYsaic4JYg Employment, and Health, Community areas ofCommunity emphasis include Education, 1:00 to 2:00 PM The DDC State Plan’s main and goals are PM Self-Determination, Advocacy and Leadership, Housing, Health, Formal and Informal Community Support. https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucumqqTgoGNN4FEJihLTJ2SWYsaic4JYg Employment, Community Living. Other areas emphasis include Comments can alsoSelf-Determination, be made in of our survey at: and Education, The DDC State and Plan’s main goals are Advocacy Leadership, Housing, Health, Formal andmade Informal Community Support. English - and https://forms.gle/cpXoa4z1r7fyTSHb6 Comments can also be in of our survey include at: Employment, and Community Living. Other areas emphasis Education, The DDC State Plan’s main goals are Self-Determination, Advocacy and Leadership, EspañolEnglish (Spanish) - https://forms.gle/QdW3XheKMcwdee8XA - and https://forms.gle/cpXoa4z1r7fyTSHb6 Housing, Health, Formal and Informal Community Support. Comments also be made in of our survey include at: Employment, and Community Living. Other areas emphasis Education, Français (French)can https://forms.gle/2tKVzXY26h7ZTDGH9 Español (Spanish) -- https://forms.gle/QdW3XheKMcwdee8XA English https://forms.gle/cpXoa4z1r7fyTSHb6 Housing, Health, and Formal andmade Informal Community Support. Français (French) - https://forms.gle/2tKVzXY26h7ZTDGH9 also be in our survey at: 汉语Comments (Chinese) -can https://forms.gle/6TMWXYbWEYau8J7R8 EspañolEnglish (Spanish) - https://forms.gle/QdW3XheKMcwdee8XA - https://forms.gle/cpXoa4z1r7fyTSHb6 汉语Việt (Chinese) - https://forms.gle/6TMWXYbWEYau8J7R8 Tiếng (Vietnamese) - https://forms.gle/zTJKrLtWykoyiAjA6 Comments also be made in our survey at: Français (French)can https://forms.gle/2tKVzXY26h7ZTDGH9 Español (Spanish) -- https://forms.gle/QdW3XheKMcwdee8XA Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) - https://forms.gle/zTJKrLtWykoyiAjA6 한국어 (Korean) -https://forms.gle/6TMWXYbWEYau8J7R8 https://forms.gle/MWiHEXgrx76uPC8K7 English - https://forms.gle/cpXoa4z1r7fyTSHb6 汉语 (Chinese) Français (French) - https://forms.gle/2tKVzXY26h7ZTDGH9 Español (Spanish) https://forms.gle/QdW3XheKMcwdee8XA 한국어 (Korean)---https://forms.gle/DHTu5hThMDpRQ82C8 https://forms.gle/MWiHEXgrx76uPC8K7 አማርኛ (Amharic) Tiếng (Vietnamese) - https://forms.gle/zTJKrLtWykoyiAjA6 汉语Việt (Chinese) - https://forms.gle/6TMWXYbWEYau8J7R8 Français (French) - https://forms.gle/2tKVzXY26h7ZTDGH9 አማርኛ (Amharic) - https://forms.gle/DHTu5hThMDpRQ82C8 한국어 (Korean) - https://forms.gle/MWiHEXgrx76uPC8K7 Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) - https://forms.gle/zTJKrLtWykoyiAjA6 (Chinese) - https://forms.gle/6TMWXYbWEYau8J7R8 Comments 汉语 can also be emailed to ddcstateplan.comments@dc.gov or mailed to አማርኛ (Amharic) --https://forms.gle/DHTu5hThMDpRQ82C8 한국어 (Korean) https://forms.gle/MWiHEXgrx76uPC8K7 Developmental Disabilities Council, 441 4th Street NW, 729N, Washington, DC 20001. Tiếng - https://forms.gle/zTJKrLtWykoyiAjA6 Comments canViệt also(Vietnamese) be emailed to ddcstateplan.comments@dc.gov or mailed to አማርኛ (Amharic) --https://forms.gle/DHTu5hThMDpRQ82C8 Developmental Disabilities Council, 441 4th Street NW, 729N, Washington, DC 20001. 한국어 (Korean) https://forms.gle/MWiHEXgrx76uPC8K7 Comments can also be emailed to ddcstateplan.comments@dc.gov or mailed toor For more information or to request accommodations, email alison.whyte@dc.gov th Street NW, 729N, Washington, DC 20001. አማርኛ (Amharic) - https://forms.gle/DHTu5hThMDpRQ82C8 Developmental Disabilities Council, 441 4 call/text 202-340-8563. For more information or to request accommodations, email alison.whyte@dc.gov Comments can also be emailed to ddcstateplan.comments@dc.gov or mailed toor call/text Developmental Disabilities Council, 441 202-340-8563. 4th Street NW, 729N, Washington, DC 20001. Comments can also or beto emailed ddcstateplan.comments@dc.gov or mailed toor For more information requesttoaccommodations, email alison.whyte@dc.gov Developmental Disabilities Council, 441 202-340-8563. 4th Street NW, 729N, Washington, DC 20001. call/text For more information or to request accommodations, email alison.whyte@dc.gov or
The Killing of Two Lovers Directed by Robert Machoian
The Killing of Two Lovers opens with a moment of heightened tension. A man stands in a bedroom where two people are fast asleep. He points a pistol at both of them, then ultimately decides to spare them both, leaving through the window. Over the course of the film, writer and director Robert Machoian answers the unresolved questions from this scene. His title is a slight bait and switch—it’s more of a drama than a thriller—though his command of tone and character make up for the misdirection. As these flawed characters argue and negotiate toward a happier life, the uncompromising depiction of their lives helps us to understand the compromises they make with each other. After David (Clayne Crawford) decides against a double murder, he hurries back to the modest, borderline-rundown house where he lives. This happens without dialogue, so the first lines are shocking: He has a gentle conversation with his ailing father (Bruce Graham) about dinner. The conversation is loose and friendly, which raises questions about David’s overall mental state. He is in the middle of a trial separation with his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), and it is not going well. She’s sleeping with someone else, Derek (Chris Coy), and it will not shock you to learn that these two are the lovers in question. Most of the film covers David’s attempts to preserve some routine with his children, or to rekindle his marriage, except none go according to plan. David is only humiliated further, until he feels he has few options left. The landscapes and exteriors are key to the desperation shared among the characters. Machoian and cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez shoot in a forgotten, barren part of the American West where a sense of loneliness seeps into everyone’s bones. The Killing of Two Lovers drains the area of infrastructure and
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institutions—the scenes are empty roads, houses far apart, and snow-capped mountains in the distance—until family is what matters most. This need for family is never clearer than during the strained, awkward conversations between David and Nikki. She still has affection for him, even as she tries to establish boundaries. One storytelling masterstroke is that the film never pins down why the couple split, though we know from the opening scene that David can be erratic, even dangerous. This lack of specific detail is what gives each scene the illusion of free will; you never quite know what the actors might do or say. They all find the right combination of honesty and ambiguity, then stick with it. Music often augments a film’s mood, and this film’s fractured approach to music is meant to provoke genuine unease. There is some jagged, experimental music, but the most common refrain is a loop of a car engine wheezing back to life. Perhaps Machoian meant the sound to represent David’s inner turmoil; the pressure builds in him as he devotes a lot of energy to saying the right thing or winning his family back, and the music is a supporting monologue. Some scenes where he lashes out—at one point, he beats up a boxing mannequin—have no soundtrack. We understand exactly what he is feeling, and without the empathetic quality of music, his rage is almost pathetic. Some moviegoers may find The Killing of Two Lovers frustrating. As mentioned above, the title is not literal, though it does refer to something specific. Its actors avoid histrionics, opting to speak in shorthand or whispers. This creates a sense of realism, though the scenes are unusually tense. In other words, this film could alienate genre fans, who may look for thrills, and the regular arthouse crowd, who might prefer a drama without too much suspense, in equal measure. That only speaks to its ultimate strength. The destination matters more than the journey for David and Nikki, to the point where, if Nikki learned about the opening scene, we can sort of imagine why she might still forgive him. That is no small filmmaking feat, and to his credit, Machoian never makes a big deal of it. —Alan Zilberman The Killing of Two Lovers is available on demand starting May 14.
DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD
A Show Of Hands By Brendan Emmett Quigley
DEPARTMENT OF SMALL AND LOCAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING AND PRELIMINARY FINDING ON THE RECERTIFICATION OF THE ADAMS MORGAN PARTNERSHIP BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
The public hearing will be held at 2:00 pm on Monday, June 21, 2021 in Suite 850N, 441 4th Street NW, Washington, D.C.
Notice is hereby given that, pursuant to section 19 of the Business Improvement Districts Act of 1996, effective May 29, 1996 (D.C. Law 11-134; D.C. Official Code § 2-1215.18) (“Act”), the Department of Small and Local Business Development (DSLBD) will hold a public hearing on the recertification of the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District.
Across 1. Systemic Equality org. 5. Wave off the coast of Rio? 8. Spit (out) 13. Lane out of Smallville 14. Up to the minute 15. Piece of cake, for a dieter 16. Scarlet Witch, for Wanda Maximoff 18. Down to earth 19. Motherfucking problem 21. “Anybody seen my hoodie?” 22. Comic routine 23. Tee-___ 24. “___ Année Sans Lumière” (Arcade Fire song) 25. Human rights attorney Clooney 27. Response to a slow server, say 29. Wagers 30. Ledecky who stays in her lane! 32. First route of attack 34. Where an Anglican might worship 40. Carlo who produced Fellini’s La Strada
41. Vowel-heavy papal name 42. They’re found under layers 45. “It’s not a tumor!” speaker, fondly 48. Make like those in Nomadland 49. Jemison in space 50. Rock genre possibly named after the sound the guitar makes 51. Great leveler 53. Small pill? 54. Trying location? 58. Needing no introduction 59. Return fire on social media, or this puzzle’s theme 61. “You dig it?” 62. Some Bandcamp purchases 63. Floride, e.g. 64. Mortise fitter 65. ___ jam 66. Macerates flax Down 1. Copying 2. Bright way to see the world? 3. Book club? 4. Secondhand 5. Target of many a strike
29. Eddie ___ (outdoor brand) 31. Zero-waste pref. 33. Coyotes’ domain, in short 35. Currently passionate (about) 36. Letter-shaped plumbers part 37. Number on a hotel door 38. Animal whose poop is used in gourmet coffee beans 39. Went like mad 42. Cowboy Smith 43. Lacking social graces 44. Like some salami 46. “Seems fine” 47. Box up 50. Son 52. Put cheese on, say 55. Passionate about 56. Chase no. 57. App with a “Where to?” bar 60. Chess pieces with L-shaped moves: Abbr.
6. Smoothly, on the keyboard 7. Man not on a mission 8. Deenie author 9. Not firm 10. Vodka brand with a raspberry flavor 11. Show mercy 12. Scary dinos 15. Heavy waterproof boot 17. BBQ morsel 20. Take a personal day, say 21. Smoke a bowl 26. Vocal coach challenges 28. Rapper who runs the Nappy Boy record label
LAST CROSSWORD: CREATIVE STRUGGLE
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ANSWER: A SHOW OF HANDS
DSLBD Director Kristi Whitfield has informed the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District that the filing criteria set forth in D.C. Official Code § 2-1215.18 have been met and their application is otherwise in conformity with the Act.
$ & / 8 2 / $ % / 8 5 7 / 2 , 6 1 ( : 6 / , 9 ( 5 $ / 7 to(testify5at the(public *hearing. 2 Witnesses + should 8 bring 0 a%copy of/ their( DSLBD invites the public written testimony to the hearing. Additional written statements may be submitted by e-mail to 2 (or mailed ' ,to: Lincoln 3 $ / DSLBD, & 2 0Street, 3 NW,/Suite(850N,; Lincoln.lashley@dc.gov Lashley, 441 4th Washington, DC 20001. % 5 5 % , 7 + ( ( 8 1 ( The public hearing record will close ten business days following the conclusion of the hearing, or Tuesday, July 2021$ before/5:00 p.m. Persons 7 should 6 $ 6,0 1 2submitting 7 written , 3statements%for the(record observe this deadline. . $ 7 , ( 3 / $ 1 $ ( 3 , 6 & 2 3 $ / & + 8 5 & + 3 2 1 / ( 2 , , WE’RE HERE TO7 , ( * * 6 $ 5 1 , ( 5 2 9 ( 0 $ ( 6 . $ 7 1 7 0 ( ' 0 8 1 , YOUR & , 3 $ / & 2 BILL. 8 5 7 MANAGE UTILITY , & 2 1 , & & / $ 3 % $ & . 7 + $PAYMENT 7 2 .OPTIONS & ' 6 ( 7 $ 7 FLEXIBLE There are several payment options available to help manage 7 ( 1 2 1 7 2 ( 5 ( your 7 6 The BID application is available for review by the public during normal business hours on weekdays at 1640 Columbia Road, N.W., in the offices of the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District; and by the public online at https://dslbd.dc.gov/page/notice-publichearing-and-preliminary-finding-recertification-adams-morgan-partnership-business.
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washingtoncitypaper.com may 2021 27
28 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
CITY LIGHTS
Shervin Lainez
High Dive
For most of 2018 and 2019, the members of SHAED were touring the world behind the juggernaut of a single, “Trampoline,” the now twice platinum song that simply would not die. The pressure to deliver a full-length album was on, with the band members taking a day off here and there to create new material. Then came COVID, forcing the trio off the road, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. “We had an entire album lined up ready to go before the pandemic,” says band member Max Ernst. “We were in lockdown and we were finally able to look at everything we had. It didn’t sound cohesive. It didn’t sound like who we were. We scrapped the entire thing.” Starting from scratch in their home studio in Virginia, the band wrote and produced High Dive (out May 14 via Photo Finish Records), an album full of concise dance pop gems heavily influenced by ’80s new wave artists including New Order, Peter Gabriel, and the Psychedelic Furs. The main highlight of the album is lead singer Chelsea Lee’s vocal ability—she sounds like she attended the Sia School for Belters and majored in vocal gymnastics. “We treat her voice as the heart and soul of this band,” says bandmate Spencer Ernst. “We really try to make sure there’s room for her to shine through the production.” The album will be available on colored vinyl, something SHAED took into account while sequencing the album specifically for that format. “We spent probably like three weeks trying to figure it out,” says Lee. “We had so many drafts and we were definitely thinking about vinyl during the process.” The band are currently prepping for a few 2021 live shows, including an appearance at the Life Is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas in September. “As we were creating this album, we started thinking about our live show months ago,” says Spencer, revealing that there will be a drum rig onstage. “Max and I will be fighting over it,” he says, laughing. “It will still be us three,” adds Lee. “We’re so excited for live shows—I can’t even tell you.” High Dive will be available via all streaming services starting May 14. To purchase the colored vinyl, visit shaed.limitedrun.com. Free–$30. — Christina Smart
Baker. The exhibits cover everything from the violence Henson witnessed as a young child and his subsequent escape to Canada in 1830, where he helped establish the Dawn Settlement community for formerly enslaved Americans, to how racist portrayals of the fictional character Uncle Tom turned the character into a caricature and eventually a term of contempt. From the outside, visitors will see more remnants of the not-so-distant past as the home owned by Riley, renovated in the 1930s after new ownership, still stands. The log structure attached to the house referred to by some as “Uncle Tom’s cabin” is actually a kitchen built in 1850. Henson, who died at age 93 in Canada, lived in quarters elsewhere on the plantation, and archaeologists are still continuing to excavate and search for other structures. The park is open daily from sunrise to sunset, and the museum is open Friday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are available at activemontgomery.org. $4–$5. —Kelyn Soong
City Lights
Telling Your Story Photoworks’ online exhibit Telling Your Story consists of “8 Artists, 8 Stories” created by members of a 2020 class led by Ernesto Bazan, a photographer with extensive experience in Europe and Latin America. The “stories” in the exhibit are all elliptical; none include any explanatory text, leaving the photographic images to speak for themselves. The decision to be wordless undercuts the most enigmatic of the eight collections: Karen Keating’s images of what appear to be tattered and burnt American flags. Without an explanation, it’s difficult to avoid befuddlement at what could have produced this result. As for the other collections, documentary photographs of children are a common theme, with Joan Lederer and Rebecca Wiltshire each turning to color, while Marc Pfeiffer leverages ethereal black-and-white to pay clear homage to the celebrated work of Sally Mann. But the finest collections in the exhibit come from collections that skip the “story” altogether and revel instead in their basic visual nature. One series, by Carolina Zumaran-Jones, features botanical images taken at night; the petals’ fragility is heightened by the blackness of the photographs’ backgrounds, which invoke the drama of Dutch masters paintings. The other, by Guillermo Hakim, offers close-ups of glass bottles whose surfaces and interiors exude a thoroughly unexpected sensuality. The exhibition is available indefinitely online at glenechophotoworks.org. Free.—Louis Jacobson
City Lights
Josiah Henson Museum & Park Right off a busy stretch of Old Georgetown Road in North Bethesda sits a relic of pre–Civil War America. During that time, approximately a third of Montgomery County’s residents were enslaved, including a child named Josiah Henson, who was born into slavery on June 15, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, and spent decades of his life enslaved at Riley Farm, a plantation owned by Isaac Riley. That area is now the site of the recently opened Josiah Henson Museum & Park, which aims to educate visitors about the life of Henson, an author, abolitionist, and minister whose memoir chronicling the horrors of slavery served as the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Inside the museum, visitors will learn about Henson’s extraordinary life through illustrations on panels by New York–based artist Kyle
City Lights
Listen to DJ Alizay’s new tracks
DJ Alizay
City Lights
Isaiah “DJ Alizay” Johnson has acquired many skills during his 20-plus years working in the music industry: writing, producing, A&R duties, and, of course, DJing and rocking live audiences all over the world. He has also dabbled in artist management and is credited with discovering superstar rapper Wale; he was the first DJ to play Wale’s music on the radio when he worked at WKYS. Recently, Johnson has been especially industrious. He coproduced “We’re in This Together” on Justin Bieber’s latest EP, Freedom; Johnson is also listed as a lyricist and composer on the track. “The song came together based on different collaborations and relationships,” Johnson says. “One of my good friends is Tay James, who is Bieber’s A&R and DJ. Tay got my song to Bieber and he liked it and decided to use it on the new EP.” Johnson also released an extraordinary project last month called Live from the Go-Go—a collection of classic Isley Brothers and Earth Wind & Fire songs remixed with go-go beats. For example, Johnson mashes up Earth Wind & Fire’s “Sun Goddess” with the
explosive percussion from Northeast Groovers’ “The Water” to create “Water Goddess.” “Reasons,” another seminal EWF track, is layered over a lively bounce beat to create the buoyant “Reasons To Bounce.” Making Live from the Go-Go was a labor of love for Johnson, because he has a deep personal connection to D.C.’s indigenous music culture. During the pandemic, he did livestream performances playing only go-go music. He also participated in the live outdoor Moechella concerts to support the Don’t Mute DC movement. “The idea for the Isley Brothers/EWF project originated when I saw them featured on the Verzuz series,” Johnson says. “I decided to strip ‘Footprints in the Dark’ down to the a cappella. When I put Ronald Isley’s voice over the go-go beat, I got goose bumps! I was able to show the range of go-go music by using it with mainstream songs and highlighting the versatility.” “We’re in This Together” is available on major streaming services. Live from the Go-Go is available at Bandcamp. Free–$12. —Sidney Thomas
City Lights
50 Fotografías Con Historia For a pandemic-safe activity just a short walk away from the Columbia Heights Metro, stop by the Spanish Embassy’s outdoor exhibition titled 50 Fotografías Con Historia. The exhibition displays 25 photographs in the spring and summer, with 25 more slated for the fall and winter, along the ambassadors’ former residence’s fencing on 16th Street NW, providing an overview of Spain’s past 80 years through key images. While it offers a sense of Spain’s history, the exhibition primarily focuses on the breadth of photography as an element of Spanish culture. Photos range from a disturbing scene of Spain’s civil war to a playful portrait titled “Afronauta,” a play on the Spanish word for astronaut and the African heritage of the portrait’s subject. The Cultural Center notes that the photos from the period following the civil war represent an important cultural era known as the Spanish Transition. Viewers can work to spot these stylistic changes across the (mostly) chronological array of photos. The curated, and award-winning, photographs focus on important figures and are deliberately diverse in capturing Spain’s rich history. The exhibition is not just a pandemic-safe, outdoor replacement for closed museums: It is Spain’s way of representing itself humanely and intimately in a public space. The exhibition is available at 2801 16th St. NW to Feb. 21, 2022. More information is available at spainculture.us. Free. —Sarah Orozco
washingtoncitypaper.com may 2021 29
DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE I’m someone who does gay porn for a living. How do people who do gay porn meet someone who doesn’t just sexualize or fetishize them? I can’t eat, sleep, and breathe my work constantly, but the guys I meet want me to live out the “porn persona” version of myself all the time. How does someone who does porn know who you can be yourself with? —Aiden Ward, @aidenxxxward
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“Living with two identities is definitely a balancing act,” says Devin Franco, an awardwinning gay porn performer. “Being in porn means juggling the ‘real world’ person I actually am—a person who has to navigate rent, health care, bills, and a social life—and a porn star alter ego. And these days our porn alter egos don’t just have to perform. We also have to do a lot of our own shooting and our own PR while maintaining our images. It’s a lot, and reality always comes knocking no matter how much fun you’re having. The bills always come due.” Franco’s first bit of advice is to remember that you are not your alter ego. “It’s a beautiful and sexy part of you that you have the opportunity to show to the world, but it’s not all of you,” Franco says. “That will help you stay grounded.” It also helps to remember that being “porn famous” doesn’t mean everyone knows who you are. “A lot of people you meet will have no idea who you are, which means a lot of the time you’ll get to choose when you want to introduce yourself as your porn alter ego or when you want to just be yourself,” says Franco, “This makes it easier to create boundaries between your real life and your porn life. Knowing you get to decide when or even if you want to introduce yourself as your actual self or as that fantasy version of yourself—your alter ego—means you can control how a lot of people perceive you.” So even if you get as porn famous as Franco is, Aiden, you’ll still have lots of opportunities for people to get to know the real you—not the porn persona—before you tell them what you do for a living. As with so many things (being HIV+, trans, kinky, polyam, etc.), when you tell a guy you do porn, Aiden, you’re telling him one thing he needs to know about you, but his reaction will tell you everything you need to know about him. If he starts shaming you about what you do—or if he goes from seeing you as a person who is also an object to seeing you as just an object—that’s really all you need to know: Don’t see him, unfollow him, block him. “Lots of the people who fetishize and sexualize you are your fans, your audience, the ones who pay your bills, and you have to recognize that and you do have to keep them interested, but you don’t have to give them all of your time and attention,” Franco says, “Because at the end of the day, it’s your work and you’ve got other shit to do. You will meet people both in and out of the industry who recognize that you are a real person, with a real life, and who will get to know the real you. And sometimes you’ll find that some of
30 may 2021 washingtoncitypaper.com
the people who fetishized you at first don’t anymore once they get to know the real you.” Franco shared your question with another high-profile porn star named CagedJock, who shared his strategy for finding guys he can be himself around: “I like to hang out with people who work in the same industry because they don’t sexualize me,” he says, “Devin and I have been friends since 2019. He’s super sexy and I adore him. While other guys might only see him only as a fantasy figure, I don’t because I know our work doesn’t define us 24/7. We’re friends.” Follow Devin Franco on Twitter @devinfrancoxxx and CagedJock @cagedjock. —Dan Savage
“If he starts shaming you about what you do—or if he goes from seeing you as a person who is also an object to seeing you as just an object—that’s really all you need to know: Don’t see him, unfollow him, block him.” I’m a gay male in his 30s and I stayed with a straight male friend and his girlfriend during the pandemic. He had been flirty with me over the years—sending me nude photos and drunkenly telling me that he loved me. When his girlfriend was away visiting family, we got drunk together. He bought all the alcohol, he mixed it, and he served it. During this time, we had a series of drunken encounters. The first time, he took out his cock and asked me if I wanted to play with it. There was some brief licking and he grabbed my hair and finished on my face. He hugged me and rubbed my back after. The next two times were less serious, but he took off his shirt and pants. On one of those occasions, his girlfriend called and he put his clothes back on, took the call, then came back and took his clothes off again. All three times it happened, he was fully engaged and communicating his wants and initiating things. His girlfriend eventually found out about one of the incidents. After a month of drama, he told her everything and they broke up. Shortly
after, he claimed that I took advantage of him and claimed he was too drunk to give consent! I am not sure what to make of this. First, he is the one that supplied the alcohol and made us both really strong drinks. He also drinks a lot regularly, so his tolerance is much higher than mine, but we drank the same amount and I was much drunker than he was. Third, he continued to hang out with me until his girlfriend found out. I am deeply hurt. I’ve lost two friends, and I admit that I am partly to blame. I knew they were together. But I don’t know what to do about the accusation that I forced him to be sexual without his consent. I have played the events over and over in my mind and I don’t understand how he could say this. He supplied the alcohol, he was an active participant, and when I asked if he really wanted to do this, he said yes. I am not sure if he is gaslighting me or if he honestly remembers things differently. —Boy Lost and Hurt At some point in our gay lives, every gay man learns not to mess around with a friend’s drunk, straight-identified boyfriend. No matter how many dick pics they send us, no matter how much they claim to want to, when it comes to shit—as it invariably does—the gay guy is gonna get the blame. It’s a lesson most of us learn earlier in life (I was 16 when I learned it), BLAH, but it’s a lesson most of us learn after messing around with the drunk, straight-identified boyfriend of a friend. We fuck around, we find out. Anyway, your male former friend obviously wanted to mess around with another dude— he wasn’t sending you dick pics by accident— and the drinks he made were as much about lowering his inhibitions and yours (about cheating with him) as they were about giving him some plausible deniability (“Man, I was so drunk last night!”) if the worst should happen. And it did: You fucked around, she found out. But after you guys got caught—which almost everybody does—instead of taking responsibility or coming out as bi or bicurious or at the very least heteroflexible, BLAH, your former friend weaponized the toxic stereotype of the predatory homosexual against you. It’s understandable that you’re upset. If it’ll make you feel better—and it would certainly make me feel better—you could send screenshots of the dick pics he sent you to him and his ex-girlfriend. Because if anyone was making passes here, it was him. If anyone was taking advantage here, it was him. You could send those screenshots, but you shouldn’t. As wrong as it was of him to weaponize anti-gay stereotypes against you, BLAH, using his dick pics against him would also be wrong, and probably a crime under revenge porn statutes. But you have every right to push back against the accusation that you forced yourself on your former friend—and while you have the receipts and he knows it, BLAH, you shouldn’t produce them. Maybe just knowing you have them will make you feel better. —DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.
CLASSIFIEDS Legal I DREAM PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL- Request For Proposal for Before and After care. All inquiries should be emailed no later than 5:00 PM on May 28, 2021. Contact mwhitnall@idreampcs.org. FRIENDSHIP PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Various Services Friendship Public Charter School is seeking bids from prospective vendors to provide: * Consulting services for the review and assessment of organizational structure * Software platform to house all human resources performance management Information and documents * Regulated medical waste collection and disposal services * Registered nurses services to assist with medically fragile students and Covid 19 testing The competitive RFP can be found on FPCS website at: http://www.friendshipschools.org/procurement. Proposals are due no later than 4:00 P.M., EST, Friday June 4, 2021. Questions and Proposals should be submitted on-line at: P rocurementinquiry@ friendshipschools.org . All bids not addressing all areas as outlined in the RFP will not be considered. No proposals will be accepted after the deadline. MONUMENT ACADEMY PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL Request for Proposals Monument Academy PCS solicits proposals for the following: • Janitorial and Building Maintenance Services Full RFP available by request. Proposals shall be submitted as PDF documents no later than 5:00 PM on Friday, June 04, 2021. Contact: bids@ mapcsdc.org WASHINGTON LEADERSHIP ACADEMY PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL INTENT TO AWARD A SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT Modular CompetencyBased English Curriculum Washington Leadership Academy intends to award a sole source contract to CommonLit for modular competency-based English curriculum. For more information, contact Mandy Leiter at mleiter@wlapcs.org.
BRIDGES PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE: FOR PROPOSALS FOR MULTIPLE SERVICES Bridges Public Charter School in accordance with section 2204(c) of the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995 solicits proposals for Special Education Services for SY21-22. * Special Education Services * Student Information System Services Proposals should be submitted in PDF format and for any further information regarding this notice to bids@bridgespcs.org no later than 4:00 pm Monday, May 24, 2021.
LLC d/b/a Pivot Physical Therapy is applying for Certificates of Need for physical therapy services at its 8 existing clinics at the following addresses: 1090 Vermont Ave. NW, 20005 and 1115 U St. NW, Ste. 202, 20009, in Ward 1; 1150 18th St. NW, 20036 and 1001 G St. NW, 20001, in Ward 2; 3508 Connecticut Ave. NW, 20008 and 3301 New Mexico Ave. NW Ste. 250, 20016, in Ward 3; and 470 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Ste. 602, 20024 and 300 M Street SE, Unit 104, 20003, in Ward 6. SHPDA has waived the requirement for a letter of intent. For additional information contact the SHPDA at (202) 442-5875.
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