Washington City Paper (September 4, 2020)

NEWS POLICE COMPLAINTS ARE HARD TO ACQUIRE 4 SPORTS ARIEL ATKINS ON THE WNBA GAME STRIKE 8 FOOD IMMIGRANTS SELL PUPUSAS FROM HOME 12 THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 40, NO. 35 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM SEPT. 4–10, 2020

SANCTUWARY CITY Local legislation limits D.C. cooperation with immigration agencies to maintain D.C.'s sanctuary city status. But court documents appear to show the Metropolitan Police Department contacting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement with information about an undocumented person.

By Will Lennon PAGE 10

DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD

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34. Why not?, in an initialism 35. 1983 Meryl Streep movie about a whistleblower 36. Enjoying some R.E.M.?

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Across 1. Bygone ruler whose name is an anagram of an oath 5. Greek letters 9. Altar in the night sky 12. “A Message to You, ___� (The Specials) 13. Mortgage broker’s numbers 15. One-named body-positive supermodel 16. Way to position electronics so as to read the brand label?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 10 Sanctu-wary City: Despite D.C.’s legislative protections for immigrants, court documents show that MPD communicated with ICE about an undocumented resident.

NEWS 4 Loose Lips: Personal privacy exemptions keep police complaints hidden from the public.

6 The Price of Surviving: A new fundraising campaign supports survivors of sexual assault at Howard University.

7 Asking for Alice: A new D.C. Auditor report chronicles unhoused residents’ lack of continuous care.

SPORTS 8 Power, Forward: The Mystics and other female athletes lead the charge for social change.

9 Remembering John Thompson Jr., 1941–2020: The longtime Georgetown basketball coach crafted a program unlike any other.

FOOD 12 Home Cooking: Out-of-work immigrants earn a little money from their home-based pupusa businesses.

ARTS 13 Film: Zilberman on I’m Thinking of Ending Things 14 Memorial Days: A look at the soonto-be-unveiled Eisenhower Memorial 15 Here We Go-Go: Scott Van Pelt’s new SportsCenter broadcast comes with a distinctly D.C. theme.

CITY LIGHTS 18 City Lights: Learn to make block prints and remember the Stono Rebellion through a dance performance.

DIVERSIONS 2 Crossword 18 Savage Love 19 Classifieds

Darrow Montgomery | 1660 Block of Lamont Street NW, August 31 Editorial

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NEWS LOOSE LIPS

No Complaints? and a fourth stood with a liquor bottle near his feet.

The woman sitting in her car, who ultimately filed the complaint against Brathwaite and is not identified in the publicly released OPC records, said she had been drinking ice water from a cup that sat on the car’s roof.

As the officers approached, Brathwaite asked ever yone for identification. The woman, according to Brathwaite, “snatched” her ID when he handed it back. She says she

At one point during the encounter, when Brathwaite and another officer had returned to his police cruiser, he said, “Don’t nobody snatch nothing from me, not even my sister snatch something from me,” according to the OPC investigator’s description of the body camera footage. Brathwaite also called the woman a “rude bitch,” and said she “done fucked this up.”

The OPC complaint examiner, who is typically a lawyer hired on a contract basis to

least two active lawsuits. The first, filed in 2015, stems from his involvement in Elijah Jackson’s arrest in May of 2015.

Jackson had rear-ended a moped on Florida Avenue NE around 1:30 a.m., according to court filings in his lawsuit. The driver demanded cash from Jackson, who had none, so he drove away. When police later stopped Jackson, a scuff le ensued during which Jackson says officers slammed his face into the side of his car, maced him, and punched him.

Brathwaite and his partner arrived after the initial confrontation, and though Jackson could not see because of the chemical irritant the officers sprayed in his eyes, he believes Brathwaite participated in the physical altercation.

Brathwaite rode with Jackson to the hospital, according to court records, where he was

did not “snatch” the ID card; rather, she “took it with authority,” according to the records provided by OPC. Brathwaite asked the woman if she had an attitude, to which she calmly responded, “Yes,” according to the OPC investigator.

Brathwaite then handcuffed the woman and arrested her and two of the other people she was with for possession of a container of alcohol. The fourth person was given a citation.

Body camera footage reviewed by the OPC investigator shows that neither Brathwaite nor the other officer checked the woman’s cup sitting on top of the car as she repeatedly asked them to do.

review police complaints, concluded that Brathwaite and his partner did not have probable cause to arrest the woman.

“Because [Brathwaite] questioned [the woman] about her attitude immediately before he proceeded to arrest her,” the complaint examiner writes, “she was more likely arrested for appearing to have an attitude.”

Still, “the BWC footage does not demonstrate that [the woman] had an attitude and even if she did it is not a criminal offense,” the complaint examiner notes.

Prosecutors ended up dropping the charge against her.

Brathwaite is a named defendant in at

diagnosed with a broken nose and herniated discs in his neck. On the ride there, Jackson was spitting in the ambulance because of the mace, his attorney Meredith Kenner says. According to Jackson’s recollection, Brathwaite told him, “If you spit on me, you think that was bad, I’ll fuck you up even more.”

Once at the hospital, Brathwaite told the doctor that Jackson had been maced, but did not mention any other trauma, the lawsuit says. Jackson became unresponsive at least twice and was eventually taken to the ICU. His physician later called an MPD sergeant, who told the doctor that “officers

A peek into the Office of Police Complaints’ records leaves much to be desired.

The Office of Police Complaints will neither confirm nor deny the existence of misconduct allegations against all but one of the 21 officers recently identified for their roles in killing civilians. OPC won’t even release the raw number of complaints filed against each of the 21 officers. Doing so would violate their personal privacy, an office representative wrote in response to LL’s Freedom of Information Act requests.

A similar request filed to the Metropolitan Police Department, which also asked for any accolades the 21 officers received, was denied in full.

The D.C. government regularly hides behind the “personal privacy” exemption to D.C.’s FOIA law. In the balancing act between the public’s right to know about officers’ actions and officers’ rights to privacy, D.C. often sides with the cops.

In late July, Mayor Muriel Bowser was forced to identify the officers involved in fatal civilian encounters after the D.C. Council passed an emergency police reform bill. The new law, which is in effect temporarily and will receive a full hearing this fall, requires the release of officers’ names and body camera footage for each fatal incident dating back to October 2014, when the District’s body camera program began.

The list of 21 officers spans 10 fatal encounters, with the earliest incident occurring on June 27, 2016. Officer Antoine Brathwaite is the only officer on that list with a sustained OPC complaint, according to the agency’s response to LL’s FOIA request. OPC found that Brathwaite harassed a woman who he arrested without probable cause, according to records provided by OPC. He also referred to her as a “rude bitch,” when he thought she was out of earshot, but his comments were caught on body camera video, OPC records show.

MPD declined to make Brathwaite available for an interview or to say what discipline he faced as a result of the sustained complaint. But OPC provided LL with a 2018 letter from MPD explaining that the department “has implemented corrective action, in the form of Education Based Development,” and then closed the matter.

In August 2016, Officer Brathwaite and his partner, who remains anonymous in OPC records, approached four people, one of whom was sitting in her car with the door open. Another person held a beer in a brown paper bag, a third held a white styrofoam cup,

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4 september 4, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

NEWS

But back to OPC’s FOIA response. LL requested all complaints and subsequent investigations for each of the 21 officers involved in fatal incidents, and the number of complaints against each officer. OPC responded with the sustained findings

against Brathwaite and denied the rest of the requests, citing the officers’ right to privacy.

In effect, OPC’s response means the agency believes it can only release certain details, including officers’ identities, for sustained complaints, and only if the requestor first identifies the officer.

Disclosure doesn’t work in reverse, OPC

Up to a point, Tobin’s assertion is correct, says Thomas Susman, president of the DC Open Government Coalition. The agency could be stuck defending a lawsuit if it releases too much information. The DC Police Union recently tried a similar tactic to prevent the District from identifying officers involved in future fatal incidents. But con-

“The bottom line is it seems like it’s an obstruction of access rather than facilitation in keeping with what the [FOIA] law requires.” says. LL cannot, for example, provide a list of sustained complaints, such as the 10 investigations completed in 2020 and published on OPC’s website, and ask for the officers’ identities.

OPC Director Michael Tobin says FOIA and MPD’s collective bargaining agreement limit the kind of information the office can release.

“I don’t want to end up in court because I’ve released something we’re not supposed to,” he says.

tracts, such as a collective bargaining agreement, cannot trump the law, Susman says.

In order to get a complete understanding of all the MPD officers that OPC found to have committed misconduct, theoretically a requester would need to submit the names of all 3,600 sworn members.

OPC’s interpretation of FOIA also hides the identities of the six officers who, as OPC’s 2019 annual report says, received 10 complaints each, the five officers who received five complaints each, the 13 officers who received

four complaints each, and the 35 officers against whom members of the public filed three complaints each.

It seems to LL that the public might want to compare the names of those officers to the names of the three officers identified in OPC’s 2018 annual report who received six complaints, the three officers who received five complaints, the 16 officers who received four complaints, and the 41 officers who received three complaints.

“Especially those whose complaints may have involved use of force—that’s precisely the stuff that should be in the public domain,” Susman says. “The bottom line is it seems like it’s an obstruction of access rather than facilitation in keeping with what the [FOIA] law requires.”

Tobin agrees that the interpretation of FOIA law in the District is too restrictive for police records. He says he supports tipping the scales more in favor of the public’s interest when it comes to disciplinary records specifically, and notes that New York recently repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret.

“It would add a lot to community trust if the community was aware what kind of discipline was being handed out to MPD officers,” he says. “Right now, I don’t think we strike a very good balance between those things.”

MARTIN LUTHER

KING

JR.

punched Jackson in the face once, sprayed him with mace, and subjected him to a ‘tactical takedown.’”

Brathwaite’s second lawsuit stems from his fatal shooting of Timothy Williams in 2017. The wrongful death suit filed by Williams’ family accuses Brathwaite and his partner, Officer Patrick Bacon, of using excessive force and violating Williams’ civil rights. The Office of the Attorney General for D.C., which is defending the District in the suit, argues that the officers acted out of self defense and has asked a judge to dismiss the case.

Although body camera footage exists, Williams’ family asked that it not be publicly released, as the temporary police reform law allows.

The U. S. Attorney’s Of f ice for D.C . declined to file criminal charges against Brathwaite, but his name is not included in prosecutors’ announcement of the investigation’s conclusion. Williams’ family’s attorney did not return a call and email seeking comment.

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A GoFundMe for current and former Howard students puts money in the hands of survivors

By Sarah Marloff Contributing Writer Five years have passed since Nylah Burton was sexually assaulted while attending Howard University, but she’s still feeling the financial burden of being a survivor. Therapy remains a recurring fee. She’s also paying to take additional college classes. Burton plans to go into medicine—it’s her long-term goal, and one that was put on hold following her assault as she grappled with self-blame, self-doubt, and the fear of seeing her rapist around campus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the “cost of rape” is $122,461 per survivor. That total includes the cost of lost productivity, as well as medical and criminal justice system fees. Data on the prevalence of sexual assault is limited, and rape remains one of the most under-reported crimes.

(According to data spanning 2010 to 2017 from the U.S. Department of Justice, three out of four rapes go unreported.) Chandra Dawson, deputy director of the DC Rape Crisis Center, says college-age individuals, those between the ages of 18 and 24, are a high-risk group for sexual assault and gender-based violence. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, 23.1 percent of undergraduate women and 5.4 percent of undergraduate men have been sexually assaulted “through force, violence, or incapacitation,” and 21 percent of transgender and gender nonconforming college students have been sexually assaulted.

Those numbers start to add up. “People don’t realize how [many] costs there are related to being a survivor,” Burton tells City Paper. “I am still paying a lot of money to heal from that experience.”

The price of surviving inspired Burton to start the Black Survivors Healing Fund, a GoFundMe campaign for current and former Howard students who’ve survived sexual violence during their time at the university that’s raised more than $26,000 of its $50,000 goal.

Run by Burton and several other Howard alumni, it’s assisting 20 survivors who reached out for financial support. Another 20 people are on the waitlist. The fund’s ultimate goal is to give each survivor $5,000 to use as needed, and Burton says the original 20 have, so far, received

6 september 4, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Darrow Montgomery/File

The Price of Surviving

about $1,200 each. The fund hopes to eventually expand to support all Black survivors.

The fund began collecting donations in June, after dozens of Howard students shared their experiences of sexual harassment and violence during their time at the university on Twitter.

Some spoke of the same alleged perpetrator, whose exposure, Burton suspects, sparked the social media outpouring.

Seeing these stories, Burton says, was “heartbreaking.” She thought of the trauma that survivors face, both from the assault and from public disclosure. She wanted to help immediately.

Money was her solution.

She envisioned a repatriations-type movement, supported, funded, and shared by cisgender, straight men, perpetrators, and fraternities.

That, she says, hasn’t happened. Instead, it’s become more of a mutual aid society; a large portion of the donors have been women, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of color, the same people the fund was set up to support. Its GoFundMe page emphasizes that sexual violence is a problem on all college campuses, but adds “Black people—especially female-identified Black people, Black people with disabilities, and Black LGBTQ+ people”— experience this trauma at a higher rate.

According to EndRapeOnCampus.org, roughly 22 percent of Black women reported being raped in a 2014 study, but “for every Black woman who reports, at least 15 Black women do not.”

Dawson interprets this information as a result of “living in the margin.” “You can’t address sexual violence within the A frican A merican community and not address racial injustice,” she says. The prevalence of sexual violence against Black women, Black men, and the Black trans community is “rooted in where we sit societally … Any person of color or anyone outside of the mainstream, you sit on the margins of the system. Being on that side of the aisle makes you vulnerable to all other forms of victimization, including sexual violence.”

Burton, who’s also worked in sexual assault prevention advocacy, agrees. That’s why she wants the fund to “uplift the most marginalized—Black women, Black people of other marginalized genders, Black people who struggle socio-economically. The people who are most likely to be exploited,” she says.

Yet, in the midst of ongoing unrest over racial inequities and a pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color, the fund, according to Burton and Dawson, has received backlash for focusing on Black survivors, for not dictating how the money is spent, and for not confirming recipients are, in fact, survivors of sexual violence. Burton says much

of the backlash came from “friends and former classmates” after the fund reached out for input and help spreading the word. In response to the questions about not including all survivors, Dawson says Black and Brown survivors have unique needs and may lack certain privileges, including family support, financial resources, and even access to drop-in centers.

“Individuals need to understand, it’s not level in terms of the delivery of service provision,” she says. As for the inquiries on how the money is spent and how the fund confirms recipients’ assaults, Burton says these questions are “very much rooted in rape culture.”

Burton purposefully created the Black Survivors Healing Fund for survivors to control how they spend the money. “For me,” she says, “being a survivor was so much more complicated than ‘just get therapy.’” After her second assault, Burton says she became estranged from her parents and worried about not being able to afford food. That fear forced her to find a job that further impacted her ability to focus on classes.

“Choice. Power. Options. Those are the benefits of the Black Survivors Healing Fund,” Dawson says, noting that the fund’s organizers have a clear understanding of survivorship that is not contingent on qualifiers. It’s not about giving survivors money, says Dawson, it’s about giving them the autonomy to navigate healing on their terms. “They didn’t get to choose the sexual assault, somebody else did that,” she explains, but “you get to take the cash and do what you deem imperative, critical, or beneficial for your individualized healing.” That journey, Dawson and Burton say, looks different for everyone.

Many of the fund’s recipients have used the money for rent; others have used the funds for therapy. But the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have only increased the need, especially for rent support. “Honestly, this is so many things at once,” Burton says. “If anything, it proves how much being a survivor overlaps with every single part of your life.”

That’s certainly true for T, a recipient of the fund who spoke to City Paper on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. A current Howard student, T described his assault as coercion by his girlfriend at the time. She became violent and manipulative after he refused to have sex with her. Eventually, scared that the police could be called, he “gave in to deescalate the situation,” he says.

The assault caused him to become depressed.

He struggled to get out of bed and go to class, which in turn cost him his scholarship. He describes the resulting interactions with both his parents and the school as a “very sour experience.”

Today, he’s grateful the Black Survivors Healing Fund treats his past with care. “The truth is, sexual assault is still very stigmatized,” he says. “As in my case, the trauma it causes often has financial implications.” The money T received from the fund helped him pay part of his tuition balance. It also gave him hope. “It’s a huge part of the reason I can say I’m on track to graduate from Howard in May 2021,” he says.

College sexual assault is not specific to Howard. According to Dawson, DCRCC has fostered relationships with many universities in the area to aid with prevention, advocacy, and intervention. Campus sexual violence, she adds, is a national issue. As for Howard’s handling of the student’s sexual violence claims, however, Burton says fund recipients have said they felt “failed by Howard's administration, not only on the prevention side, but also on the supporting survivors with resources.”

In a statement given to City Paper, Howard University Provost Anthony Wutoh says the school “prohibits all forms of sexual misconduct and we are deeply concerned about the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of all students, especially during this challenging and turbulent period.” Wutoh’s statement does not include the number of assaults reported yearly on campus, but says the university provides free, confidential counseling for students.

Students are encouraged to report any concerns to the university’s Title IX office, which remains open to assist students in understanding the process. “This is our personal commitment to rid our community of such traumatic acts that have a devastating impact on college students across the nation,” Wutoh’s statement concludes.

For Burton, college remains a complicated part of her past. It’s where she fell in love, learned about her Blackness, and met lifelong friends. She also experienced horrible, lonely moments. “Howard's failure to provide the support I needed really made me more vulnerable to repeated incidents of abuse,” she says.

“I often wonder what my life would have looked like, who I would have been, if only I had not had those experiences. I think here’s the part where many women and people of marginalized genders—but especially those of us who exist at the intersection of gender oppression and anti-Blackness—are supposed to say that the experience made us stronger.

And I suppose, in many ways, it did make me stronger. But I’d rather not be strong.

I’d rather be protected and loved and cared about.” The fund, she says, is her attempt to give survivors a little bit of what was taken from her.

You can contribute to the fund by visiting gofundme.com/f/black-survivors-healing-fund.

Round-the-clock support from the DCRCC is available at dcrcc.org or by calling (202) 333-7273.

To report an incident of misconduct or assault to Howard’s Title IX Office, visit howard.edu/titleix/home or contact the office directly by emailing TitleIX@howard.edu. For free, confidential counseling services, email HUcounseling@howard.edu or call (202) 806-6870.

NEWS

Asking for Alice A Street Sense Media report on the life of Alice Carter aims to help highlight the gaps in D.C.’s continuity of care system for people experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders, and mental health crises.

By Chelsea Cirruzzo Contributing Writer In early December 2019, Alice Carter, a transgender woman experiencing homelessness, met with the clinical director of Street Sense Media, Lissa Ramsepaul, and told her she wanted to “do some different things” to change her life. Carter was a ubiquitous and beloved figure in D.C., with an “infectious smile” and a love for poetry and music. She even performed her poetry onstage at Busboys and Poets.

But for years, Carter struggled with both a mental health and substance use disorder, and was repeatedly incarcerated. She had also recently told a nurse at Community Connections, an organization that provides behavioral health care and primary care services to people with substance use disorders and mental illnesses, that she was drinking four pints of alcohol a day and using cocaine, PCP, and K2.

On Dec. 17, soon after her final meeting with Ramsepaul, passersby and Metropolitan Police Department officers found Carter unconscious in front of a McDonald’s on 17th Street NW. She was transported to Howard University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Her death certificate lists her cause of death as alcohol intoxication; she was less than 10 days from turning 36.

These details about Carter’s life, her treatment in D.C., and the circumstances that led to her death—all based on medical records and accounts by the people who knew and worked with her—are included in a new case study conducted by Street Sense Media for the D.C. Auditor. The report examines the public and private institutions that shaped Carter’s life in an attempt to “put a human face” on substance use disorders and incarceration, according to D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson.

The report is a rare and somewhat unprecedented look at the intimate details of life that officials often decline to provide—or are legally barred from providing—to the press. But Clara Hendrickson, the reporter who wrote the case study, says telling Carter’s story in this way provides an opportunity for the city to better support people experiencing homelessness.

(Carter’s records come from Carter’s next-ofkin, her mother, who gave Street Sense Media permission to review records she obtained from D.C. agencies and community service providers. The Court Services and Offender

Supervision Agency declined to provide access to their reports. The agency didn’t respond to City Paper’s request for comment.)

“Not everyone has a case study written about them, but every death has a story that the city is missing out on learning from,” Hendrickson says. “Each instance of someone experiencing homelessness dying in D.C. is a chance for us to learn how to do better.”

Carter was one of at least 81 people experiencing homelessness who died in 2019, and throughout her life, she engaged with a number of organizations in D.C. geared toward people who face housing, substance use, mental health, and other issues.

Patterson writes that, by telling Carter’s story, “after hundreds of professionals tried to help her with housing, medical care, and legal support, we might help others who struggle as she did.”

The revelations in Street Sense Media’s report and in a companion report for the D.C. Auditor authored by the Court for Community Excellence are staggering. Looking specifically at the years 2015 through 2018—the length of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s first term—the groups found that the D.C. government failed to provide continuous care to people with substance use disorders before, during, and after incarceration, with just over 1 percent of incarcerated people receiving full care continuity, out of more than 4,600 cases.

The 42-page case study from Street Sense Media explores Carter’s numerous incarcerations and overdoses, diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and polysubstance dependence, and chronic homelessness as she weaved in and out of substance use and psychiatric treatment programs. At times, Carter was involuntarily committed to treatment programs.

Throughout, those who knew her also remember her smile and creativity. She routinely wrote poetry published in Street Sense.

“I think that’s really what she would want to be remembered for, is her art,” Colleen Cosgriff, a case manager at Street Sense Media, says in the case study.

Drawing from Carter’s life, the companion report concludes that MPD officers should arrest fewer people experiencing mental health crises, asks D.C.’s Department of Corrections to adopt substance use disorder screening tools as well as intervention services for returning citizens who spent a short amount of time in jail, and calls on the D.C. Council to fund a pilot

program to keep at least one substance use disorder service provider open 24/7.

The idea to look more fully at Carter’s life came after Street Sense Media CEO Brian Carome wrote about her death in the Washington Post, Patterson says. Earlier this year, Street Sense Media, helmed by Hendrickson, began sorting through countless records provided by Carter’s mother to piece together years of Carter’s life.

For many of those who knew Carter, reading the case study meant witnessing the entirety of Carter’s struggles and pain. “I felt grief all over again,” Ramsepaul tells City Paper. But for Ramsepaul and the many advocates who continue to work with similar populations, the case study also renews their continued push for change in the services that help people experiencing homelessness, incarceration, and behavioral health disorders.

“This report is meaningless without action,” Carome says. “There are a lot of other Alices out there.”

The report points out that almost every level of the system failed Carter in some way, failures that include city officials failing to afford Carter basic dignity. On several occasions throughout her life, she was incarcerated with male inmates, despite asks from herself, her attorney—and even, at one point, the judge presiding over her case—to be placed with female inmates.

According to Hendrickson, in documents provided by Carter’s mother from DOC, Carter was often referred to using the wrong pronouns by mental health providers within DOC. “I just think it’s pretty unacceptable to have a criminal justice system that can’t accommodate transgender individuals,” says Hendrickson.

Schroeder Stribling, CEO of N Street Village, which operates several shelters and day centers Carter used during her life, and Pathways to Housing Executive Director Christy Respress tell City Paper there needs to be more of a housing-first approach to health care, where people experiencing homelessness first receive a place to sleep, without barriers like requiring sobriety.

“The solution to homelessness is a home,” Stribling says. She says people are more likely to be able to seek help on substance use or mental illness when they are housed. A jail cell, she says, is not the right place for someone with multiple mental health needs like Carter.

“We have relegated mental health to the criminal justice system,” she says.

Respress wants returning citizens to have housing waiting for them, pointing out that Carter was repeatedly discharged from the hospital or jail without a place to go, and without her care team being notified of her whereabouts.

The case study also notes there aren’t specific shelters in D.C. for transgender people.

“Ideally, someone like Alice would never have to go to shelter. People who are interacting with the criminal legal system should have prioritization directly into housing,” Respress says.

But before a person is even arrested and potentially incarcerated, advocates tell City Paper it’s time to rethink how police interact with people experiencing mental health crises.

As Carome points out, Carter’s most consistent intervention was from DOC. He says there are lessons to take from the movement to defund the police in D.C., which means reimagining public safety so mental health professionals can respond to crises.

“There needs to be consideration of properly funding alternatives to the police in responding to people who are in mental health crisis,” Carome says. What if people could call another number than 911 when they see a person in need, he asks, and reach a behavioral health professional?

Patterson says the Department of Behavioral Health has been embracing the pre-arrest diversion program, which it launched in 2018 as a way to provide treatment opportunities to adults with substance use disorders and mental illnesses rather than arrest them. But, she notes, the key to its success is having more MPD officers properly trained in the program— and only 1 percent currently are, according to the report.

“The whole ‘defund the police’ movement is helping us think a little more comprehensively about what tasks we have given officers carrying guns that could be undertaken by a different set of individuals with a different kind of training,” she says. She says the police reform commission assembled earlier this summer by the D.C. Council is looking into the issue.

That hints at a broader issue outlined by Street Sense Media’s report: the need for better interagency communication and support for individuals receiving city services, as well as a broader conversation on what voluntary and involuntary commitment for treatment looks like. That should include folding clients into conversations about their own care, Respress says.

“The Alices of the world, the people who have experienced involuntary hospitalization, they need to be at the table, talking through what it needs to look like,” she says. “And that’s just not always the case.” Pointing to the later CCE report, Ramsepaul and Patterson suggest that there be an interagency information sharing agreement, with protocols established for addressing privacy concerns.

Both DOC and DBH declined to comment on the case study, citing their inability to comment on residents’ cases. (The agencies issued a joint statement to City Paper touting their contract with Unity Healthcare, which provides medical and behavioral health care to their clients, claiming it has helped support a push towards continuity of care.)

Patterson says the D.C. Council also has a role to play in holding agencies accountable in these situations.

A staffer with the D.C. Council’s health committee told City Paper that an upcoming public oversight hearing on DBH scheduled for Oct. 22 will look at a number of oversight issues associated with the agency, with the case study and report likely to be discussed.

“I think the case study really kind of points out … a lot of people who fall through the cracks of the system and then don’t get the attention they need,” the staffer said.

washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 7

SPORTS BASKETBALL

Power, Forward

Darrow Montgomery

Female athletes, like those on the Mystics, have been at the forefront of the ongoing battle for social and racial justice. They are often overlooked compared to their male counterparts.

Ariel Atkins, second from left, at the Mystics championship rally in October 2019

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong For four minutes, Ariel Atkins spoke from the heart.

Flanked by her teammates and one of their young sons, the normally reticent Atkins explained to ESPN’s Holly Rowe why the Washington Mystics had decided to sit out of their Aug. 26 game against the Atlanta Dream, hitting pause on the WNBA season just days after Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was shot seven times in the back by a White police officer. She talked about being a Black woman, and how she’s used to “people trying to tell us to shut up.” She said she was more than just a basketball player, and told anyone watching that, if they disagreed, they were watching the wrong sport.

Atkins simply had enough. She was angry.

Sad. Tired. Afterward, Atkins told her coach Mike Thibault that she didn’t realize just how much she had let her emotions build up while competing at the WNBA bubble in Bradenton, Florida.

“For me, it’s tough because I try not to put too many things into my head,” Atkins tells City Paper. “I try not to see a lot of things, but it’s almost impossible to go on the internet today and not see something about social injustice simply because it’s happening too much. I feel like as a community, we’re being desensitized to Black people being killed at the hands of authority ... I’m the type of person that just lets things build up, and you don’t really understand how much it affects you until it kinda hits.”

In a league where approximately 80 percent of the players competing in the bubble are Black, the actions by Atkins, a third-year guard, and the Mystics demonstrated just how important the WNBA is when it comes to advocating for social and racial justice. The graphic videos of police brutality can feel personal to many of them. The trauma is visceral. And while female athletes have been at the forefront of this ongoing battle for social reform, they are often not given the credit they deserve for their advocacy.

Like the Milwaukee Bucks, the first professional sports team to sit out during the playoffs to protest the shooting of Blake and demand

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justice, the Mystics took a calculated risk in postponing their game. By the end of the night, none of the NBA or WNBA games scheduled that night were played. The WNBA’s Dream, Los Angeles Sparks, Minnesota Lynx, Connecticut Sun, and Phoenix Mercury also sat out of their games, following the Mystics’ lead. But in comparison to their NBA counterparts and male athletes in general, WNBA players have sometimes had to demand the same respect and attention, and don’t receive the same credit for their social activism.

“I think women in sports really have to fight for everything that we get,” says Atkins, who is 24. “I’m super thankful to be a part of a league that I personally grew up in, but my [draft] class was the first class to grow up with the WNBA. That’s 24 years later, but I just feel like we’re used to fighting for things, and it takes a special person to speak out on things that they’re not comfortable with … I mean, you have people that are like, ‘Oh, women shouldn’t be playing sports, women should be doing this, doing that.’”

It was just four years ago that players on the

Minnesota Lynx wore T-shirts during warmups in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and to honor the memory of two Black men killed by police officers, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, only to be met with widespread criticism. Four off-duty cops working as arena security walked off the job in protest. This happened more than a month before Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem in an NFL preseason game.

One of those players was four-time WNBA champion and former league MVP Maya Moore, who has skipped the past two WNBA seasons to focus on criminal justice reform advocacy. This season, Mystics guard Natasha Cloud also decided to opt out of the season, announcing that she will instead “continue the fight on the front lines for social reform, because until Black lives matter, all lives can’t matter.”

“I know that Maya Moore’s name gets sprinkled in here and there, but I mean, she left the game in her prime,” says Christy Winters Scott, a color analyst for the Mystics and the Big Ten Network. “I mean, can you imagine any NBA player stepping away during their prime or NFL players stepping away during their prime to help others? I don’t think her name gets mentioned enough.”

Winters Scott, who starred for the University of Maryland women’s basketball team from 1986 to 1990, remembers a time not too long ago when athletes like herself were taught not to challenge the status quo—at least not publicly.

They were told to compartmentalize their feelings and just play.

Social media has fueled athletes’ ability to reach a wider audience, but that doesn’t mean speaking out is easy. It requires courage, especially when the trauma is personal.

“I think these women feel it on so many levels,” Winters Scott says. “I know, personally, for me as a mom of three Black teenagers, it’s terrifying. And it’s exhausting. And especially, I mean, we’re in a health pandemic on top of a racial pandemic, to be quite honest, and it’s scary.”

The Mystics had originally planned to play that night at 7 p.m. against the Dream, and would kneel, lock arms, and raise their fists during the national anthem in protest. They considered holding a media blackout, refusing to answer questions about the team, and instead using their media availability to talk about Blake and police brutality. That afternoon, at Thibault’s suggestion of making “visual statements,” the players, in particular Emma Meesseman and Myisha Hines-Allen, made T-shirts that spelled out Jacob Blake’s name on the front, with each player wearing one letter, and seven red dots on the back to represent the seven times Blake was shot at close range. They would wear those during warmups.

But while riding the bus on the way to the arena, the Bucks had decided to sit out of their game—a wildcat strike—and Atkins says the Mystics players “weren’t OK emotionally” over the shooting in Wisconsin. “Trying to lock in for a game is one thing, but it was just a lot,” she explains.

When they arrived at the arena, the Mystics

SPORTS

Remembering John Thompson Jr., 1941–2020 The Basketball Hall of Fame member and first Black coach to win the men’s NCAA basketball championship made Georgetown’s program his own.

Courtesy of Georgetown University

entered a long discussion with players on the Dream. Not all of the players felt comfortable sitting out. Some wondered if that meant the end of the season. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert was also there, and Atkins says she told the players that she didn’t want them to be silenced by not playing and encouraged the team not to give up airtime by striking.

In the end, the Mystics collectively made the decision to postpone the game, and no WNBA games were played that night or the following day. Engelbert would later express pride for her players and tell ESPN that the league “absolutely” supported the players’ decision. Both the NBA and WNBA have since resumed play.

“It was a demonstration of our ability to choose what we get to do,” Atkins says, when asked if she considers what the team did a boycott or strike. “If we feel the need to make a statement and that statement is not playing, then we have the choice to do that … This wasn’t a self-care day. This wasn’t a reflection day. It was a day to show people that not only do we stand in solidarity with our NBA brothers, but we understand that when you get down to the gist of things … it becomes a game of life, as crazy and drastic as that sounds. That’s what it feels like you’re telling us, to choose our community or to choose to play a game, a game that we all love, and yes, we get paid to do it. But we do have to understand that sometimes things are just bigger than the game.”

In an image that quickly went viral, every player set to play that night is seen kneeling and linking arms. Staff members also have arms linked, and in the front row is a 5-year-old named Emanuel. The young child is wearing a red shirt. Next to him is his mother, Mystics forward Tianna Hawkins. Recently, she’s had to explain to him why he can’t play with a Nerf gun outside, like they’ve seen White kids do.

“We’re tired. We’re frustrated. We’re pissed off,” Hawkins says. “Me personally, I was emotional. Just because putting on that T-shirt with seven bullet holes in my back, raising a young man, a soon to be young man, just knowing that that could be him in the next 12 to 13 years.

We’re tired.”

Many of the Mystics players also personally know someone who has been directly affected by police brutality. Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, a former Mystics player now with the Los Angeles Sparks, lost her cousin, who was shot and killed by an off-duty Arlington deputy sheriff in 2013.

This is why, for Atkins, speaking up for Black lives is not a political statement. It’s her reality.

In every graphic, gruesome, heart-wrenching video of Black men being shot, she sees her brother, her dad, her cousins, and her uncles.

She sees herself in Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed while she was sleeping at home in Louisville, Kentucky.

“I sleep at night; every night, I’m doing nothing, no different than what she was doing when I’m sleeping at my home,” Atkins says. “There’s things that people say that we can do to avoid these situations, and it’s hard to avoid a situation where your skin is seen as a weapon, your skin is seen as something that works against you ... We wake up Black.”

John Thompson Jr.

By Leonard Shapiro Contributing Writer The news that legendary Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson Jr. had died Sunday, Aug. 30, at 78 released a rush of memories dating back 50 years.

I first met and interviewed “Big John” in his tiny office at St. Anthony’s High School in Northeast Washington. The small Catholic school no longer exists, but that’s where Thompson’s storied coaching career began in 1966, a year after he retired as a reserve center for the Boston Celtics. Thompson was the back-up for the great Bill Russell, a perennial All-Star and first ballot Hall of Famer, and most of his playing action occurred either in practice or during “garbage time” at the end of games, when the dominant Celtics were far ahead on the scoreboard.

Tired of the travel and disappointed about being chosen by Chicago in an expansion draft, he decided to retire and return to his native D.C., where he had played on arguably the greatest team in local high school basketball history at Archbishop Carroll High School.

The Lions won three straight city titles and

Thompson and teammates Tom Hoover, Edward “Monk” Malloy, and George Leftwich all earned Division I scholarships.

Thompson, 6-foot-10 and close to 300 pounds, started at Providence College for three straight years. Malloy played at Notre Dame, joined the priesthood, and later served as the university’s president. Leftwich and Hoover starred at Villanova University. A knee injury ended Leftwich’s pro chances, and he later came back to coach the Carroll team himself. Hoover, a rugged 6-foot-9 forward, had a long pro career in the NBA and now defunct American Basketball Association.

The coverage of Thompson’s career in the coming days surely will focus on his 27 seasons at Georgetown University, where his teams won seven Big East championships, played in three Final Fours, and earned the school’s only national championship in 1984. In doing so, Thompson became the first Black head coach to win an NCAA men’s basketball title.

I have other memories, one of them triggered not long ago when I opened up a rarely used desk drawer looking for who knows what and instead found a yellowed, 48-year-old copy of the Washington Post Magazine, once known as Potomac, dated Aug. 27, 1972.

“Heroes of the City Game” was the cover headline, and inside was a story about playground basketball I had written, mostly at Thompson’s suggestion. He had only recently been named the Georgetown coach, and still occasionally played pickup basketball around the city and offered to give me a guided tour one weekend earlier that summer.

He took me to Watkins Playground in Southeast D.C. Those courts were known back then as the “House of Champions” because so many legendary local players had made it their home concrete on the way to the NBA. Among them were Hall of Famers like Elgin Baylor, Dave Bing, and Austin Carr.

That day, he introduced me to 25-yearold Ronald Cunningham, best known as “Biggie,” an apt description for a chiseled 6-foot-5 behemoth who weighed 240 pounds and scattered other big bodies any time he headed to the hoop. He had played for three years at the University of Utah before dropping out and returning home to drive a truck and raise his family.

Biggie in turn introduced me to the term “boguarding.” As I wrote back then, “when Biggie takes his man to the basket and bulls his way in for a lay-up on sheer brute strength, he has boguarded his opponent. When Biggie tells a smaller dude he has next [game] when he really doesn’t, and the little fellow agrees, Biggie is the boguarder; the shrimp, in effect, the boguardee … ‘If you can’t take it,’ says Biggie, ‘You get off the court.’”

I also quoted Thompson in that story.

“It’s always important to get a boguarder on your team,” he said. “There’s no referee on the playground, and there’s always some kind of dispute about the score, about who’s got the down. The boguarder is generally the guy who wins the argument. If you don’t have a big guy with a reputation, you’ll lose.”

In many respects, Thompson was the ultimate boguarder as Georgetown’s basketball coach. He did it his way, and if you don’t like it, take a hike.

If you wanted to make fun of his early-season schedule against puff-ball opposition, go right ahead.

If he closed his locker room to the media after games, too bad.

If he wanted his team to stay in a hotel and hold a closed practice 60 miles from a Final Four site, that’s your problem, not his.

If you want to call that “Hoya Paranoia,” feel free. It wasn’t going to change.

And if he decided to walk off the court at the start of a game to stage his own personal protest of a new NCAA rule he felt racially discriminated against minority athletes, just deal with it.

It was his way or the highway, and who could argue with the results—a 596-239 record, a 98 percent graduation rate for players who stayed in the program for four years, and the development of Hall of Fame players like Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and Allen Iverson.

Thompson was always a big guy with a welldeserved reputation. A boguarder through and through, to the very end.

washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 9

SANCTU-WARY CITY D.C. claims its laws protect undocumented people, but court documents describe MPD sharing information with ICE. Both agencies say it never happened. By Will Lennon

On March 18, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it would focus its removal efforts on people with criminal backgrounds who are subject to mandatory detention and on people who posed “safety risks” to the public. In spite of the policy change, the agency’s presence is still acutely felt in Washington, D.C., thanks in part to continued raids and a massive COVID-19 outbreak at a nearby ICE detention center.

D.C. considers itself a sanctuary city, and Mayor Muriel Bowser touts the Immigrant Justice Legal Service grant program, which funds legal services, “Know Your Rights” workshops, and other resources, as evidence of her administration’s commitment to undocumented residents. The Bowser administration committed $2.5 million to the program for 2020.

In June, D.C.’s government facilitated additional relief for undocumented people that COVID-19 impacted. In partnership with the Greater Washington Community Foundation and Events DC, the Executive Office of the Mayor supported the distribution of a $5 million relief fund for undocumented workers.

“On any given day, the D.C. Government provides for our residents when they seek medical care, attend school, or call police for help regardless of their status,” John Falcicchio, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said in a post announcing the relief fund.

Whether undocumented community members are actually adequately protected

by D.C.’s sanctuary policies is still a matter of controversy. Just last summer, documents obtained by City Paper through a public records request revealed that D.C.’s Department of Corrections had been honoring detainers from ICE by alerting the federal agency in advance when they released undocumented people from custody.

New sanctuary legislation from the D.C. Council was passed in response to the DOC’s policy. The law, which explicitly forbids the DOC from honoring ICE detainers, is temporary and expires on Oct. 9, 2020, but a public hearing on a permanent version of the legislation is scheduled for Oct. 1.

“ICE has created an unsafe, fearful environment for the District’s immigrant residents,” says a resolution attached to the Council’s sanctuary legislation. “When the District cooperates with ICE, trust in District agencies by the immigrant community erodes, and public safety is compromised.

Immigrant residents become less likely to seek the help of District agencies, particularly law enforcement.”

One councilmember, Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau, has even suggested that members of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department work with ICE, in spite of policies that restrict the District from contributing resources to federal immigration enforcement activities.

Court documents obtained by City Paper appear to corroborate this. According to the documents, MPD contacted ICE at least twice with information about an undocumented person.

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The documents say the first incident occurred in December 2019, a month to the day after Mayor Bowser signed the Sanctuary Values Temporary Amendment Act, which limits D.C.’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The second incident is described as having occurred in January 2020, at the same library where, in November 2016, Mayor Bowser told protestors “we are a sanctuary city and our policies are clear.”

ICE denies that the contacts described in the sworn affidavit from an ICE deportation officer ever happened. MPD says they had “no information on [their] end to suggest that MPD notified ICE about the undocumented individual named in the affidavit.”

The first instance of collaboration described in the court documents occurred on Dec. 18, 2019, when MPD officers arrested an undocumented individual in the Columbia Heights Target. According to an incident report, the individual was charging their phone in the cafe area when Target security called the police. Target employees had barred the individual from the store the previous day.

“MPD notified ICE of [the undocumented person’s] arrest for misdemeanor unlawful entry while [they were] present inside a shopping mall,” says the affidavit by an ICE deportation officer.

“The DC Department of Corrections, where [the undocumented person] was being held, prohibited ICE from interviewing [them], and [they were] subsequently released.”

According to a document filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office requesting the individual be released to ICE custody, D.C.’s Department of Corrections appears to be following the letter of the Council’s sanctuary law. “[F]ederal agents from ICE have reported recent experiences in which the D.C. Jail has failed to honor detainers, and instead, released defendants who have no lawful authority to reside in the United States directly into the community,” wrote an assistant U.S. attorney.

Christine Miller, treasurer of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1A, which includes the part of Columbia Heights where the first incident occurred, says she has heard rumors about similar ICE activities in the area before. She believes such talk agitates an already nervous relationship between undocumented people and the D.C. government.

“It erodes a trust that’s already thin and was made thinner when Trump took office,” says Miller. “They don’t always trust the people who are supposed to be protecting them … How can I send someone in my community who needs help to the police if there is a breakdown and they are worried they’ll be handed over to ICE?” The undocumented individual was homeless at the time of the Target incident, and was identified by their Catholic Charities ID. When asked for an address, they listed that of a church that provides services for homeless people.

The Target where the first incident occurred is just a block from where protesters

In August 2019, Nadeau told City Paper that there were “instances where we know that individual MPD officers have cooperated with ICE.” Citing the safety of her constituents, she declined to further elaborate at that time.

Earlier that same summer, MPD tweeted a video reaffirming their commitment to sanctuary policies. In the video, an MPD officer says that “as members of the Metropolitan Police Department, we are committed to protecting all immigrant populations, regardless of your status. We are here to build trust on a daily basis and safeguard you, your family, and the broader community … The bottom line is, MPD does not enforce federal immigration laws.”

As a councilmember, Mayor Bowser voted for the Immigration Detainer Compliance Amendment Act, which restricted the District’s compliance with ICE detainers to cases in which detainees were over 18 and had been convicted of violent or dangerous crimes.

“Being a sanctuary city means we are not an agent of the federal government,” Bowser said at a press conference called in response to President Donald Trump’s 2017 attempt to pull federal funding from sanctuary cities. “It means our police can focus on serving D.C. residents … If you call the police, you’re going to get help from your government.”

But activists critical of Bowser say her administration has not done enough to create a safe environment for undocumented people.

described in the affidavit. A media spokesperson for the agency wrote in a June email that their Washington field office received an “automatic notification” about the Target arrest. After the arrest at the library, the spokesperson says ICE “received notification of a biometric match,” which prompted them to issue a detainer.

When asked where the “automatic notification” came from, ICE’s spokesperson explained that when a person is booked into “local custody” and fingerprinted, their prints are sent to the Department of Justice so the DOJ can check the arrestee’s outstanding warrants and criminal history. The DOJ in turn shares those fingerprints with the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, which runs them through their

Darrow Montgomery

held a demonstration last summer condemning ICE raids in Columbia Heights. (ICE performed raids in the neighborhood in the summers of 2018 and 2019.)

“Not everyone in this government has gotten the message,” said Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, addressing protestors at the 2019 demonstration. “Not everyone understands there are consequences for working with ICE.” The deportation officer’s affidavit also describes a second incident, this one in early January, during which MPD contacted ICE about the same individual.

“On January 4, 2020, MPD notified ICE that on January 3, 2020, [the undocumented person] had been arrested,” the affidavit states.

It was raining on the day a library police officer approached the undocumented individual while they were drinking a beer in front of the Mount Pleasant Library. According to an incident report, the library police officer told the individual to leave, and a physical struggle ensued when they refused. MPD arrived to assist the library police officer and the undocumented individual was arrested.

At the time the affidavit was filed, the undocumented person was in ICE custody, awaiting deportation.

“MPD has stated on multiple occasions to ANC 1D that they do not coordinate or collaborate with ICE,” says Jon Stewart, an ANC commissioner in the Mount Pleasant area.

“It would be outrageous and a breach of trust with the neighborhood if that’s not true.”

According to the “Policy on Immigration Enforcement” page on the MPD website, the Department will “issue a media communication explaining the operation and the nature of MPD’s role after any action that involves both MPD and immigration officials.” None of the posts on MPD’s newsroom page from the dates of the Target incident or the library incident refer to communications with ICE. The immigration enforcement page also reiterates MPD’s commitment to not asking about citizenship or residency status and says that “violations of that policy will not be tolerated.”

After viewing the affidavit, Julie Mao, a local immigration attorney working with Just Futures Law, says MPD’s actions appear to be a clear violation of the District’s sanctuary legislation.

“I’ve seen a couple of these complaints filed that show MPD collaboration with ICE,” says Mao. “This is not an isolated incident.”

Mount Pleasant Library “(Bowser) wants to consider D.C. a sanctuary city but does nothing to make that happen,” an organizer from the Justice for Muslims Collective said at a 2018 demonstration outside the Wilson Center, according to Street Sense.

Alex Taliadoros, an organizer with immigrants rights group Sanctuary DMV, believes the incidents described in the affidavit are indicative of a broader pattern of behavior.

Sanctuary DMV shared a redacted version of the affidavit with City Paper after the National Immigrant Justice Center found it while doing research for a report on prosecutions for illegal entry and re-entry.

“Based on what we have seen, this case is indicative of how MPD treats undocumented people in their custody,” says Taliadoros.

In an email exchange, ICE flatly denied that MPD communicated with the agency as

Automated Biometric Identification System.

ICE receives an automatic notification when the fingerprint submissions match their immigration records.

The spokesperson also linked to ICE’s page on the Secure Communities program.

Secure Communities, launched in the late Bush-era and expanded under the Obama administration, is an information sharing system described by ICE as a “common sense way to carry out ICE’s enforcement priorities for those aliens detained in the custody of another law enforcement agency.”

Under Secure Communities, the FBI shares fingerprints received from local jurisdictions with DHS and ICE. According to the Secure Communities page on the ICE website, “If these checks reveal that an individual is unlawfully present in the United States or otherwise removable, ICE takes en-

forcement action.”

Although the program was officially discontinued partway through the Obama administration, ICE’s website says “biometric interoperability has remained constant” in D.C. and all 50 states since 2013. Trump reactivated the program by executive order in 2017.

In an email exchange, an MPD representative said the department does not participate in Secure Communities, although they did acknowledge that they share fingerprints with the FBI, except in the case of some minor violations such as disorderly conduct or speeding. The FBI declined to comment on whether fingerprints they receive from MPD are shared with DHS. Calling any jurisdiction a sanctuary city is a legally nebulous proposition to begin with, according to Immigration Voice, a proimmigrant nonprofit. The group’s “Immigration 101” page says there is “no single definition of what is a sanctuary city.” In an article entitled “What are sanctuary cities?” CNN says that sanctuary city is a “broad term applied to jurisdictions that have policies in place designed to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions.”

Viridiana Martinez, an immigration activist, has a more radical theory: Sanctuary cities are a myth.

“It’s what we’ve been saying for a long time,” says Martinez.

As a Deferred Action for Child Arrivals recipient, Martinez has firsthand knowledge of the perils undocumented people face in the U.S. In spite of this, she works on the bleeding edge of immigration activism, once going so far as to intentionally get herself detained at a Florida ICE facility run by the Geo Group to help disseminate advocacy strategies to those inside, many of whom were, in her estimation, saddled with inadequate legal representation. Martinez currently works in North Carolina with Alerta Migratoria, a community hotline that supports undocumented immigrants and refugees. (Martinez adds that a lot of her job consists of talking to “White liberals who don’t want to push their elected officials to protect immigrants.”)

D.C. makes a strong case study for Martinez’s theory on sanctuary cities. One of the major loopholes in D.C.’s sanctuary status comes in the form of D.C. Superior Court, which, despite functioning as D.C.’s local courthouse, is staffed by the U.S. Marshals Service, a federal agency. USMS honors ICE detainers, so undocumented people suspected of even minor infractions can find themseves in ICE custody after what might have been a short trip to court for a U.S. citizen.

ICE also unilaterally performs raids in D.C. In July 2018, ICE detained more than 100 people in the D.C. area in what it called “Operation Eagle’s Shield.” There were reports of ICE using racial profiling to detain people off the street. ICE returned to detain more people from D.C. the next summer.

“These laws and resolutions are passed, but ICE has federal jurisdiction,” says Martinez. “They can show up anywhere and anytime.”

washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 11

FOOD

Home Cooking Without substantial public or private aid, undocumented workers in D.C. try to make ends meet by selling pupusas to neighbors and friends.

Alberto calls softly to his mom and puts down the bags in his hands when he hears a knock at the door of their Takoma Park apartment. He can guess who it is. He’s on his way to drop off two orders in Shaw, but he’ll take care of these regular customers first. Every Sunday, Alberto and his mother Johana expect to see loyal fans of their pupusas.

It’s a neighbor and her daughter. Johana comes around the corner to say hello. She and Alberto always wear masks when working, but no mask can hide how she feels when cooking. She’s proud of her work and pleased to know how much others enjoy it too.

Alberto and Johana’s regulars rely on them. The man next door is a sous chef at a restaurant in Shaw and orders pupusas every Sunday after work. He gets in late and his order is usually the last of the day. His door is so close to theirs that he only needs to reach across the hall. There’s nothing better than homemade pupusas at the end of the week, he tells Alberto.

Pupusas are a staple of Salvadoran cuisine. The griddled masa cakes are a comfort food, and they’re how Alberto, Johana, and others in the undocumented community are currently making ends meet. Many undocumented residents don’t qualify for local or federal unemployment benefits because of their immigration status, leaving them without a governmental safety net and scrambling to provide for their families. The pupusas help.

The money these food entrepreneurs bring in isn’t much, but it covers groceries and some utilities. Some of it also gets sent to their relatives abroad. Like many immigrants, Alberto and Johana still have family members in El Salvador who count on them to provide for their various expenses, including food, rent, and health care.

What they can earn is limited by the fact that they can’t openly advertise their businesses and don’t feel comfortable divulging their

Darrow Montgomery

By Michael Loria Contributing Writer

Aydee full or real names. (Alberto and Johana asked to be identified by their middle names.) They fear the consequences of being discovered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or being fined for having an unlicensed business.

As a result, they can only grow their enterprises through word of mouth.

Johana stuffs her pupusas with lighter fillings than the traditional refried beans and cheese or chicharón and cheese. She says her health has suffered during the pandemic even without contracting COVID-19, and she wants to make her customers feel well physically and emotionally. Alberto prepares the accompaniments—homemade salsa and pickled cabbage known as curtido—in addition to handling orders.

In early March, Johana lost her job as a cook at a restaurant in Navy Yard and has been unemployed since. She was given a day’s notice before the restaurant closed. Alberto lost his restaurant job a week after that. He’s since found work at three different places, but each business can each only provide him with hours one day per week.

Collectively, the mother and son have lived in the U.S. for eight years, and they’ve paid taxes the entire time. When they got to the U.S., they obtained individual taxpayer identification numbers through the IRS, which allow the government to collect taxes from residents without social security numbers.

Johana studied marketing in El Salvador and Alberto is bilingual, so they’ve managed to establish a brand for themselves and can reach more customers, namely those with

12 september 4, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

disposable income. Alberto also studied computer science and quickly hired another unemployed service industry worker to help him build a website where known contacts can order pupusas for takeout or delivery.

On a good weekend, they can bring in as much as $150 after selling 150 pupusas for $2 each. But most weekends, they sell about 50. They only operate during the week if they receive a big order. While they might be able to make more, Alberto and Johana won’t compromise by using subpar ingredients.

Most immigrant entrepreneurs, like Benji and Aydee, don’t have those kinds of resources. Aydee makes tamales and pupusas, but she relies on people to reach out via WhatsApp or Facebook. This is the norm for many undocumented food entrepreneurs.

The couple have collectively lived in D.C. for 13 years, and before the pandemic, they worked together at a restaurant on U Street NW. Aydee cooked and Benji ran food. They just had their second child in January.

Benji heard the news that their restaurant would be closing before Aydee. “I came home really worried,” he says. “I didn’t know how I was going to tell her … I felt like crying.”

Now, Benji works one or two days a week in construction. Sometimes he sells lunch to his coworkers, but Benji and Aydee need more customers. For now, the money they earn selling pupusas is supplemental. They sell about 35 every weekend for $2 each. It helps them buy some groceries, but Benji still picks up produce at his eldest son’s school or from churches who offer aid. Sometimes they

keep costs low by using the same produce in their pupusas.

They’re able to send home only a fraction of what they could before. “We came to this country to get a better life for our families and we do things right, and now, in this moment, they look right past us,” Benji says.

He came to the District from Guatemala, where his father and other family members still live. They are also out of work, and because they have to pay for time spent on the internet, he rarely hears from them on WhatsApp or Facebook. Aydee, on the other hand, speaks regularly with her mother and sisters in El Salvador. She rallies the family.

“What matters now is that we take care of one another in these difficult times,” she says.

“One way or another, we’re going to make it out. We’re fighters and we’re going to make it.

Hope is all we have.”

Marta’s food business started by accident.

One day, just after she lost her job as a busser, she made too many tamales. A friend noticed, asked to buy some, and together they ended up selling the rest. After that, she thought, “I used to make pupusas in El Salvador. Why not here?”

Now, she too waits for WhatsApp or Facebook messages from people looking for a taste of home. She and her husband Jose have been in D.C. for a collective 52 years.

He’s also from El Salvador, and they live with their three kids. Jose has a green card, but because Marta is undocumented, their family has been excluded from any unemployment benefits. (Both Marta and Jose are pseudonyms.)

FOOD ARTS FILM REVIEW Marta used to work at a Dupont Circle restaurant. She knew the pandemic was coming and she spent what would be her last shift sanitizing the restaurant and spacing the tables according to reopening guidelines. That was supposed to be enough. A few days later, she learned from a co-worker that the restaurant would close either temporarily or for good.

“What am I going to do for work now?” she asks. “What am I going to live on? I have my mother in El Salvador, who’s already sick with diabetes and needs insulin every day. How am I going to look after her? How am I going to cover her groceries, her medicines?”

Marta’s mother only has her to rely on, and Marta feels immense pressure to provide for those she cares about. Her family can’t receive benefits because of her own immigration status and, more than anyone, her mom could use the financial support. The money Marta makes selling pupusas is enough for her immediate family in the U.S., but it leaves her with little to send home.

She laments that many others are in the same situation—they’re out of work and have no options other than cooking in their homes.

It’s no way to live long term, and it saturates the market. At the start of the pandemic, she was making about 90 pupusas every weekend. Now, it’s more like 45.

She plans to keep cooking and seeking new customers for now, but she’s desperate for support. “We’re very stressed, very frustrated,” Marta says. “The government is really at fault for what’s going on because of how they discriminate against us, how they exclude us from so many things, but it would be good if they would come out with another stimulus package and include us, because we pay our taxes. We’re not in this country for free, we contribute to this country, and are working hard for it.”

Some have it harder than others. Aydee at least knows that her two sisters are with her mother in El Salvador. They can’t find work right now, but Aydee’s grateful her mother isn’t alone. In Alberto’s case, his dad never lost his job in construction and sent home the money that Alberto couldn’t for a while.

But every week, it’s a struggle for them and thousands of others who have been largely left without much assistance. In June, Events DC, the District’s official convention and sports authority, finalized its plans for a $5 million relief fund for undocumented workers.

The Greater Washington Community Foundation distributed $1,000 prepaid debit cards to immigrant families via five nonprofit organizations. While 5,000 people received debit cards, $1,000 doesn’t go far in a city with a high cost of living and no end to the pandemic in sight. (None of the immigrants interviewed for this story received these funds.)

In the meantime, Alberto, Johana, Aydee, Benji, and Marta keep making pupusas. Back in Takoma Park, Alberto gets in his car and puts on Destroyer. It’s Sunday, around 5 p.m.

The drive to Shaw won’t take long. His phone goes off. Another order is coming in.

The End I’m Thinking of Ending Things Directed by Charlie Kaufman The mind is a prison, at least according to films written by Charlie Kaufman. In Being John Malkovich, the hapless adult protagonist ends the film stuck in a child’s subconscious. In Adaptation, Kaufman writes himself into the screenplay, and is so full of self-loathing that he creates a fictional, more charming twin. These films are ostensibly comedies, and yet these heady ideas have a dark edge to them. It was only a matter of time before Kaufman would make something frightening, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things is indeed a disturbing film about the limits of self. Kaufman embraces more genre tropes than his usual work, although the frequent discursions can test our patience.

Kaufman uses rhythm and repetition to create a sense of unease. The long opening stretch involves Jake (Jesse Plemons) driving his unnamed girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) in the snow, and the sound of the windshield wipers start to create tension. They are on their way to visit Jake’s parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), who are eager to meet their son’s girlfriend for the first time. A blizzard descends on the remote farmhouse where Jake’s parents live, and amid awkward pleasantries, his girlfriend worries they cannot beat the storm on the drive home. But then all the characters enter a nightmarish purgatory state, one where all sense of time is lost and there is no hope for escape.

At first, the horror is like the world’s most uncomfortable comedy of manners. Jake’s mother and father attempt to be welcoming, but they speak and move like they’re slightly unhinged. If Jake was confident and charming on the drive to the house, he reverts to a childlike state once he gets there. There is no real narrative logic to how this plays, except what we see is a literal version of how the characters imagine themselves. Kaufman correctly realizes that our warped sense of self and our loved ones can be scary enough, so there is no need for any monsters or ghosts.

Ending Things has the shaggy, drab quality that is familiar to Kaufman’s other films. This one is closest to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both in terms of dream logic and the muted winter tones (fans of Eternal Sunshine will recognize a direct homage in a repeated shot). But what keeps the drama lively, even a protracted scene where the girlfriend recites poetry, is the specificity of the dialogue. These characters are smart, neurotic, and well-versed in a wide variety of topics. They debate philosophy, physics, and art, even movies. There is a scene, for example, where Jake and his girlfriend argue over the merits of the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence. The more you know about the topics discussed, the more you will understand what is really happening, and it is to Kaufman’s credit that he expects us to keep up.

The trouble is that Kaufman toes the line between unease and outright annoyance. He takes the source material, a novel by Iain Reid, and inserts his own unpleasant particularities.

A little bit of silence would go a long way, but soon there are multiple stretches where seemingly nothing happens. Most psychological horror has the good sense to keep things moving, eking out information so we are curious about what happens next, except Kaufman would rather drag things out. This creates ennui in the characters, the girlfriend in particular, and that transfers to the viewer. All the characters have a strange mix of charm and exaggeration, so at least their inability to communicate is a showcase for tightly-crafted performances.

There is a shift in I’m Thinking of Ending Things where our sense of the characters profoundly changes. While it is not as pronounced as in the source material, Kaufman offers enough clues to grasp what Jake and his girlfriend mean to each other. There is poignancy to the final stretches where our point of view shifts, but you may not care about the specifics of who occupies what mental prison. Charlie Kaufman is unlike any other filmmaker, and he has created yet another film that is difficult to pin down and wrap your head around. It will certainly leave a long-lasting impression, albeit not in a way that everyone will appreciate.

—Alan Zilberman

RESULTS COMING SEPT. 17!

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is streaming Friday on Netflix. washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 13

ARTS

Memorial Days Frank Gehry designed a new Eisenhower Memorial near the National Mall.

T h e D w ight D. Eisenhow er Memorial—the eighth presidential memorial in Washington, D.C.—will officially open to the public on Sept. 17, nestled in what used to be a parking lot across the street from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

It was designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry as his first public monument. Gehry served in the United States Army’s 3rd Infantry Division during World War II; Eisenhower was the general of that unit. Gehry said in a video interview on the Eisenhower Memorial website that the sense of brotherhood he felt with the president swayed him to take on the project.

The 4-acre site consists of green space, sitting areas, three sculptural scenes, thematic images, and excerpts from Eisenhower’s speeches carved into stone. A 450-foot long and 60-foot high metal tapestry hanging on a cable net system separates the memorial from the U.S. Department of Education building immediately behind it. The woven artwork is a nod to Eisenhower leading troops to victory in World War II: It displays a serene, hand-drawn image of the Normandy beaches at peacetime.

The tapestry is lit from the bottom so it is luminescent at night.

One group of sculptures reimagines a famous photo of a pivotal moment in Eisenhower’s role

Photos courtesy of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission

By Jennifer Anne Mitchell Contributing Writer

General Eisenhower Grouping as Supreme Allied Commander, when he spoke with soldiers on the eve of D-Day, before sending them into a battle in which many of them would die.

“The moment is so tense, I didn’t want anything to be light here,” noted the memorial’s sculptor Sergey Eylanbekov in the memorial’s video interview about the project. He says he created symbolism in the artwork by intentionally exaggerating elements, like hands, “to give a sense of weight.”

Another sculpture installation portrays Eisenhower at work as the 34th president, an

Memorial Aerial

14 september 4, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

office he held for two terms, from 1953 to 1961.

“If you drive on the interstate highway system, if you use your mobile phone today or you watch satellite TV, you can thank Eisenhower,” explains Victoria Tigwell, the deputy executive director of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission.

“Because he started all of those things.”

Though his record is not perfect—some argue he could have done more for civil rights and made better assessments during World War II— Eisenhower is widely considered to be one of our greatest presidents. Gallup lists him 12 times as “Most Admired Man.” The memorial website notes pivotal moments in Eisenhower’s life, like serving as the Supreme Commander of NATO to provide security during the Cold War, sending the first U.S. satellite into space, and intervening to stop school segregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. It also includes artifacts from history, like a digitized portion of his farewell address, with handwritten notes, in which Eisenhower warned against the influence of the military– industrial complex.

A third sculpture depicts Eisenhower in his youth, gazing to the center of the memorial, which shows scenes of what would happen later in his life. He came from a family of modest means. The Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas, where he grew up, catalogs information about his life on a campus that includes his childhood home. According to the Eisenhower Memorial’s digital interactive timeline of events, the young man who would become president worked at a creamery after graduating high school to put his brother through

college. Eisenhower later attended the United States Military Academy, and his childhood nickname “Ike” stuck with him through adulthood.

The Eisenhower Memorial’s tapestry artist Tomas Osinski, who frequently collaborates with Gehry, says he relates to Eisenhower’s humble beginnings.

“I came to the United States from Poland in 1981, and I escaped from communists,” he says.

“Only in this country is something like that possible. That someone who arrives with a suitcase and nothing else can be a part of such a great [thing].”

Osinski designed and built innovative metal welding machines to create the tapestry, and he says it took 18 months, with multiple machines working almost all day and two shifts of crews operating them, to produce 600 panels of material.

The entire memorial is made of more than 50 pieces of stone, stainless steel, and bronze, and is built to last for 100 years.

Eylanbekov sculpts in Pietrasanta, Italy, and uses a traditional, handmade method that he says is thousands of years old. “Michelangelo lived in this town,” he said in his video interview. “[The statue] ‘David’ is carved from this marble.”

This stalwart site is a stark contrast to the turbulent times in which it was completed. The Eisenhower Memorial’s unveiling comes during a summer in which numerous monuments around the world were defaced or removed following the killing of George Floyd. It comes in the midst of a global pandemic, with more than

ARTS ARTS

Here, We Go-Go

Young Eisenhower 180,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States, many layers of unrest and uncertainty in our country, and cries for leadership.

That contrast is arguably part of the memorial’s symbolic beauty.

“The whole purpose of it was to create a sacred space within this funny lawn,” Gehry said in the video.

The Eisenhower Memorial Commission held its first meeting on April 5, 2001 (with Eisenhower’s grandson David Eisenhower in attendance). The completion of this project has been about 20 years in the making. Former Sen. Bob Dole is among the commissioners.

Committee members include numerous members of the Eisenhower family and political figures like former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Gen. Colin Powell; former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama; former Vice President Al Gore; plus Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks, who starred in Saving Private Ryan as an army captain leading troops during the invasion of Normandy.

“You get so down in the details you forget what a monumental thing it is,” Tigwell says.

The Eisenhower Memorial joins seven other presidential memorials in the District: the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Theodore Roosevelt Island, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and President’s Park at the White House.

The original dedication was planned on May 8, the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, but was delayed due to the pandemic. The official dedication ceremony on Sept. 17 is invitation-only to comply with guidelines on public gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19. Face masks that say “I Like Ike” will be handed out to those who are in attendance. The program will be livestreamed on Facebook. Audio tours with soundbites from history are available on the commission’s website along with educational resources, including lesson plans for students in grades 7 to 12, making the message of the memorial widely available.

“I would hope it would give people courage,” Gehry said. “I found a person who would never give up.”

By Alona Wartofsky Contributing Writer In the recent documentary Basketball County: In the Water, Suitland’s own Kevin Durant talks about how go-go’s distinctive beat shaped the way that he and other basketball stars from Prince George’s County move through the game. “Go-go is the music that played before games in the summertime, and it’s a rhythm and tempo we play with,” he said. “Style and flair have always been part of our games. Showcasing our ball handling and scoring, that’s always been an integral part of our brand of basketball. Go-go created this separation from every other region in the country.”

During the ’80s, Scott Van Pelt and the rest of Sandy Spring’s Sherwood High School basketball team also listened to D.C.’s homegrown funk.

“Go-go music was absolutely the sound and the rhythm of that game,” says Van Pelt. “It was always on, when we were riding the bus to school and when we played in the gym. Whether it was Trouble Funk or Experience Unlimited or Rare Essence, that was just the soundtrack of playing sports in an area that was thankfully multicultural and multiracial and exposed us to a lot of different things.”

“Especially for basketball, if you hear that beat and you’re in a layup line, you’re feeling like you could go rip the rim out of the backboard,” adds Van Pelt.

Unlike Durant and the other players featured in Basketball County, Van Pelt did not end up playing professionally; instead, he talks about basketball and other sports for ESPN’s nightly SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt. Late last year, he made the decision to move the show from the cable station’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, to Washington, D.C. Planning the program’s local debut, he says, “I was thinking what can we do to give the show a feel or look that says D.C.? I immediately thought, go-go music.”

Work on the new intro began shortly after Van Pelt mentioned in an interview that he would love to have Trouble Funk record his new theme music. Word got to bandleader “Big Tony” Fisher, who reached out to Van Pelt.

“I was surprised to find out how much he knows about go-go and Trouble Funk in particular,” says Big Tony. “He had a pretty good idea of what he was looking for, a go-go pocket along

Courtesy of Trouble Funk

How Trouble Funk ended up recording new go-go theme music for SportsCenter

Trouble Funk with the original theme hook that they had for years. He wanted me to put something around it and do it go-go style.”

The result is an instrumental breakdown that draws on the band’s signature introduction for two of its ’80s classics, “The Beat” and “Trouble Funk Express.” Last week, when Van Pelt debuted his new D.C. area studio, he also introduced his new musical intro, saying, “Let’s go! As the legendary sound of go-go royalty Trouble Funk brings us on the air, the only appropriate way to say hello as we begin from Washington, D.C.” Big Tony could not have been happier. “It

“Go-go is starting to get the recognition that is way, way, way overdue. Moving forward, we can get more recognition from tourists, just like New Orleans and any other place that has its own musical sound.” made me feel really proud to just be a part of this whole go-go movement,” he says. “So many people watching this show all over the world, and the fact that he wanted to brand his new show in D.C., that’s a big up. He proudly wants to represent the DMV, and to hear Scott give us our props, I was like, ‘Wow, he said that shit.’”

Go-go has continued to gain visibility in the past year as the #DontMuteDC and Long Live GoGo movements have raised the music’s profile. Earlier this year, the city government responded to weeks of musical protests against gentrification’s marginalization

of both the city’s African American residents and their beloved go-go culture by designating the genre the official music of the District of Columbia.

“Go-go is starting to get the recognition that is way, way, way overdue,” Big Tony says. “Moving forward, we can get more recognition from tourists, just like New Orleans and any other place that has its own musical sound.”

Domo “Youngman” Lee, a drummer and producer currently with Project 71 and the WHAT?! Band, played drums on the SportsCenter intro.

“Having go-go on the national program on ESPN? You’re looking at a prime-time sports channel with a go-go beat,” he says. “And not only that, it’s go-go music by one of the most sampled go-go bands in history. So now we have Trouble Funk on ESPN, Rare Essence is about to put out a song with Snoop Dogg, and the go-go livestreams that are going on now during the pandemic are making go-go more accessible to the outside world.”

As a teenager, Van Pelt did not attend any of the weekly go-go shows in the D.C. area, but he and his Montgomery County friends did make their way to a few of the concert festivals, including the Back to School Boogies at the old RFK Stadium. Decades later, he is still a go-go fan, treasuring an ancient Trouble Funk cassette tape he hasn’t listened to for a long time.

“It’s not even white any more; it’s yellow,” Van Pelt says. “It’s got ‘Let’s Get Small’ and ‘Drop the Bomb.’”

Those two tracks and Trouble Funk’s “Don’t Touch That Stereo” top Van Pelt’s list of favorite go-go songs, and he is psyched to help go-go find a larger audience. Last month, when he heard the new SportsCenter intro’s final mix, Van Pelt couldn’t believe his good fortune.

“It was impossible to process that that’s a real thing,” he says. “If you told my 18-year-old self this would happen, my 18-year-old self would have a very difficult time processing how this could possibly be. But here we are.”

washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 15

CITY LIGHTS City Lights

Kelly Wahl’s “Vegan Taxidermy”

City Lights

20th Annual Yellow Barn Instructor Exhibition Now in its 20th year, Glen Echo Park’s Yellow Barn Studio’s annual instructor exhibit spotlights the talent and versatility of its art teachers. Despite the variety, the exhibit feels anything but miscellaneous. The works are studies and expressions of craft and passion, each displaying the instructor’s personal style and expertise. On a virtual walkabout of the gallery, you’ll find Mariana Kastrinakis’ “Our Humanity,” a careful collage of hand-embellished papers in swampy colors overlaying a darkened, unidentifiable silhouette. The reflective hues seem to suggest that the figure could be anyone; aren’t we all the quilted combination of our experiences? Cast your eyes next on the more corporeal figures of Maud Taber-Thomas’ “A Matter of Perspective.” Monochromatic square tiling frames the sweet familial scene. The sun-faded hues reach back in time, and the world atlas lingering above the musical couple suggests a fragile sense of temporality. Equally pensive is Marcia Klioze’s “Cinderella,” a heartbreaking yet resilient portrait of a woman considering her fortune. She appears worn with life but dons a hopeful daisy yellow dress, tattered only at its edges. A peony slipper winks from below her seat, as if to promise, “One day.” Gavin Glakas’ “Austin” evokes the same sense of loneliness as a retro auto shop quivers under the gaze of a tangerine setting sun. And in brighter endings, Vian Borchert’s abstract “BlueWaves” evokes some wide expanse and fascinating unknown in oceanic, cerulean hues. The exhibition is available at glenechopark.org. Free.

—Emma Francois

to Spanish Florida. With a banner that read “Liberty,” they advanced through the state, gaining as many as 70 new recruits and attacking plantations before the uprising was brutally suppressed by local militia units. Step Afrika! takes a deeper look at the impact of the Stono Rebellion, especially its role in African American music, culture, and dance. In response to the insurrection, the colonial government of South Carolina passed the Negro Act of 1740, which forbid enslaved Africans from moving abroad, earning money, assembling, writing, and, as Step Afrika! notes, practicing their right to use traditional drums. Yet African Americans never stopped making music and expressing themselves, and eventually their percussive expression developed into art forms like tap, hambone, and stepping. Step Afrika! seeks to honor this act of radical freedom and resistance in Stono, which will be followed by a live panel discussion on how the Stono Rebellion impacts the present day. The performance begins at 8 p.m. on Sept. 9 on YouTube and Facebook Live.

Registration is available at eventbrite.com. Free. —Tristan Jung

City Lights

Intro to Block Printing

City Lights What if instead of staring at your blank walls while working from home, you could look into the eerie eyes of a taxidermied animal? You can, kind of, thanks to a new event from the DC Public Library. Taxidermy, the practice of preserving an animal’s body via mounting or stuffing, has come a long way from its beginnings. Ancient Egyptians pioneered embalming techniques, often burying cats, dogs, and oxen along with royalty. In the centuries since, artists have shifted to view taxidermy as a form of art, rather than simply a means of preservation. Modernday practitioners tackle a much longer list of animals and work to emphasize realism in their finished products. But as animal enthusiasts and activists grow in number, a new wave is cresting in taxidermy. So-called “vegan taxidermy” or “faux taxidermy” aims to provide the same look and feel, but without the real animals. The tongue-in-cheek trend has created consumer interest in semi-realistic mounted heads, which allow individuals to pay homage to a lodge-decor staple while respecting animals.

Washington, D.C., artist Kelly Wahl takes vegan taxidermy to the next level, using materials like paper, paint, and cardboard to create mounted heads with an out-of-the-box touch. Although a hunter is unlikely to find a giraffe with multiple gold ear piercings out in the wild, that crafty giraffe could find a home on your apartment walls. The event begins at 1 p.m. on Sept. 5. Registration is available at dclibrary.org. Free.

—Sarah Smith 16 september 4, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Stono

The 1739 Stono Rebellion was the largest slave insurrection during British colonial rule in North America, but has been virtually ignored save for a few documentaries and passing references in textbooks. Step Afrika!, a nonprofit dance company based in D.C. and focused on step dancing, brings the story to life with Stono, a feature-length performance that will premiere virtually on Sept. 9, the rebellion’s 281st anniversary. Step Afrika! celebrates the Stono Rebellion as one of the first cries for true liberty from colonial rule in North America, predating the American Revolution by 36 years. Twenty enslaved Africans gathered at the Stono River in South Carolina with plans to march south

Many of us have taken up new hobbies to pass the time during quarantine, like puzzling, gardening, and baking. Now, you can hone your creative skills with Shop Made in DC’s virtual art classes. The Intro to Block Printing class will introduce you to the ancient art of block printing, which is the process of carving a pattern, text, or image into a wooden block and stamping it onto a surface. Block printing was used widely in East Asia as a method of printing words and designs on textiles, with the earliest surviving example dating back to 220 A.D. By the early 20th

century, block printing evolved into the linocut technique, in which a sheet of linoleum mounted to a wooden block is etched with a knife or v-shaped chisel, inked with a roller called a brayer, and stamped onto fabric or paper. During the mid-20th century, modern European artists Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse utilized this method of printmaking in some of their own works.

During Shop Made in DC’s virtual class, you can try this technique yourself on a zippered canvas pouch, which they’ll mail to you, along with the wooden blocks, linoleum cutter, paint, and brayer. The class begins at 6 p.m. on Sept. 10. Register by Sept.

2 to receive your supplies in advance. Registration is available at shopmadeindc.com. $25 plus $30 for supplies.

—Casey Embert

City Lights

I Am...

mid-August. The cub, who zookeepers have yet to inspect up close, has some big paws to fill. It will likely be the last cub for 22-year-old Mei Xiang, who previously gave birth to giant pandas Tai Shan, Bao Bao, and Bei Bei. Beyond that, Mei Xiang and fellow Smithsonian National Zoo resident Tian Tian are quite special. Giant pandas are considered vulnerable, and zookeepers have long relied on breeding programs to combat this. As Mei Xiang advanced in age, zoo staff attempted to facilitate one last pregnancy, artificially inseminating her with frozen semen from Tian Tian. Ultrasounds in mid-August confirmed the presence of a fetus, and the cub was born just a few days later. The process may seem a little technical, but the end result is super cute. While zookeepers wait to approach the cub and inspect it, they—and the rest of the world—can admire Mei Xiang and her baby via webcam. Following typical panda behaviors, Mei Xiang is spending time in a small den, close by her cub’s side.

If you catch her sleeping, the zoo has handily archived clips of the cub’s first days, including some of its first vocalizations.

Everything about the panda cam is simply pure joy. Plus, if it’s a little too pink for your liking right now, the baby will only get cuter in the coming months. The panda cam is available at nationalzoo.si.edu. Free.

—Sarah Smith

City Lights Among the many masterpieces in the National Museum of African Art’s exhibit I Am… is “Esther,” the first haute couture gown in the museum’s collection. The shimmering golden bodice illuminates war-torn scenes of diamond extraction, which are detailed along the skirt. The striking dichotomy unearths the “riches and potential of the African continent” and the exploitations it’s endured, historically and in the present. In the words of artist Patience Torlowei, “‘Esther’ is much more than a dress. She is a force.” This rings as true for the costume as for all of the works in the exhibit, which embraces a multitude of feminist narratives. I Am... draws upon a variety of artistic techniques, from video to pottery, to encapsulate its inclusive vision. In sculpture, Batoul S’Himi emblazoned an aluminum pressure cooker with a map of the world, wittily imprinting the globe onto a familiar emblem of the kitchen, the heart of the home and the (traditional) home of the woman.

The fiery color reaffirms the urgent need to turn up the heat when it comes to women’s representation across our global systems. And on the subject of deserving—and demanding— to be seen, visual activist Zanele Muholi has spent the last decade photographing Black lesbians, working primarily in South Africa. Muholi’s arresting portrait of Pam Dlungwana, set against a backdrop of cool repetition, is simultaneously intimate and defiant, confident and piercing. The exhibition is available at africa.si.edu. Free.

—Emma Francois

City Lights

DC Gurly Show Presents: Quarantine Hoedown

Mapping the Gay Guides

City Lights

Panda Cam

Giant panda Mei Xiang gave animal lovers around the world something to celebrate when she gave birth to a cub in

site, you can see where the guide marked locales like affirming churches, gay bars, and cruising zones. The Damron guides aren’t a comprehensive look at queer life; they were written for and by affluent White men. As a result, they leave out the spaces frequented by trans people, lesbians, and Black people, to name a few, but as the project says, they “offer insight, however incomplete, into the queer world of the past.” Most of the places mentioned over the 15-year span of the project no longer exist, but some do, like Annie’s Paramount Steak House, which is honored on the site as a “forever listing.” In 1998, City Paper profiled Annie Katinas, the restaurant’s namesake.

How’d the restaurant become so popular among gay people?

She told writer Brett Anderson, “We don’t advertise as a gay restaurant. A majority of our clientele is gay because they come here, they feel comfortable, and they can be who they are.”

The project is available at mappingthegayguides.org. Free.

—Emma Sarappo

D.C. is a city with a rich gay geography. There are multiple organizations dedicated to mapping the queer community’s historic sites here, but as of early this year, a new project turned an attentive eye to the history of gay space in the city. Mapping the Gay Guides, an academic research initiative, examines the Bob Damron Address Books—travel guides for gay men—that were published between 1965 and 1980. The Damron books cover the entire U.S., but there are a wealth of entries in and around D.C.; after the initial batch of data from the South was released in February, our city was the next release. On the interactive

In need of something spicier than the hot sauce you’ve been pouring on your takeout dinner just to feel something? What about a queer burlesque show? On Sept. 10, DC Gurly Show will host their first virtual country burlesque show, the Quarantine Hoedown, spicing up Zoom with glitz, glam, and talent. DCGS, the District’s oldest queer burlesque troupe, could be found pre-pandemic thrilling audiences in places like Dupont Circle’s Bier Baron Tavern and erstwhile Columbia Heights bar The Pinch. Founded in 2005, DCGS began with the goal of creating a space for performers of all colors, sizes, orientations, and body types to showcase their talents and perform acts that diverge from heteronormative conventions in burlesque. In just 15 years, DCGS says they have become the largest troupe in the city, and COVID-19 doesn’t appear to be dulling their shine. The Quarantine Hoedown will feature performers from both the area and across the nation, and of course, all those sparkly costumes that can only be improved by being taken off. To be blunt, it’s time that quarantine got a wee bit more sultry and a whole lot sexier. The DCGS Hoedown is just what we need. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 10.

Registration is available at eventbrite.com. $5–$10.

—Ryley Graham washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 17

DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

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I’ve been married for 30 years to the same man.

I have dealt with his tantrums, his screaming, and his fits. He’s always had anger management issues. He strangled me once a few months after our son was born and never did it again. I would have left otherwise. He’s had relationships with other women but always swore it was just online.

Then, a few years back, I got into an online relationship with someone. I never actually met this person, just as my husband claimed he’d never met the women he was talking to online. I had opened up to this person about our troubles and I talked about my husband’s anger issues and some other private things. This person encouraged me to have an affair but I kept putting him off. Finally, I told him I did it, I had an affair, it was great, etc. It wasn’t true but it seemed like that’s what he wanted to hear. About thirty minutes after I told him, I got a call from my husband! This person had sent it all to him! All of our conversations, everything, every detail. My husband flipped out but we worked it out and moved on.

Then a few months ago, right at the start of the pandemic, I found out that my husband has been speaking to other women. I also found out that he’s been meeting other women in hotel rooms in other cities, and all this time I believed him about never meeting with anyone in person! He claims he has erectile dysfunction, but it was clear from the messages I saw that he is having sex with these other women. So he’s somehow fucking other women despite the erectile dysfunction that prevents him from fucking me?!?

I’m beside myself because over 30 years we built a life together and now I don’t know what my future is going to look like because of this. I can’t provide for myself monetarily. I still work full time but if I lose this job or retire, Dan, I will have nothing. And we both have medical issues. I don’t want a divorce because a secure future for both of us really does hinge on us remaining together. I know for a fact that he’s still seeing these women while forbidding me from having even online conversations—to say nothing of relations—with another man. Neither of us can make it on our own. I don’t know what to do. Why wouldn’t he want an open relationship?

—Divorce Invites Serious Consequences Or Real Distress Your husband doesn’t want an open relationship, DISCORD, because he doesn’t want you to have the same freedom he does. And while he doesn’t want to be sexual with you for reasons that have nothing to do with erectile dysfunction, he doesn’t want you seeking sexual attention, much less sexual fulfillment, in the arms or inboxes of other men. Which means your husband sees you not as a human being like him, i.e., a person with needs and feelings and agency, but more like a car he keeps in his garage and refuses to drive and won’t let anyone else take for a spin.

You’re not a car, of course, and you’re not his property. You were also faithful to him even as he cheated on you—even after he assaulted you—and you stayed in this marriage despite being deprived of sex and other forms of intimacy. But even if you guys had been fucking on a daily basis for the last 30 years, DISCORD, even if your husband wasn’t an abusive asshole with

18 september 4, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

anger issues, you would still have every right to indulge in sexual fantasies that don’t involve your husband and every right to explore those fantasies on your own time. Partnered or not, monogamous or not, we are all entitled to a zone of erotic autonomy.

You say divorce isn’t a viable option for you, DISCORD, so I’m gonna recommend a different d-word: detach. Make peace with your circumstances and the best of your living situation.

Don’t go searching for evidence that your husband is cheating on you, just accept that he is.

Don’t feel the need to confront him about his fucking hypocrisy, just accept that he’s a huge fucking hypocrite. And then, DISCORD, just like your husband, go and do whatever and whoever you want. You don’t need his permission to seek attention elsewhere. And if being honest about the attention you get elsewhere upsets your husband—if being honest about swapping dirty texts with other men makes your husband and your home life unbearable—then don’t be honest about it. Just as he made an effort to be discreet in order to hide the scale of his cheating

“Don’t go searching for evidence that your husband is cheating on you, just accept that he is. Don’t feel the need to confront him about his fucking hypocrisy, just accept that he’s a huge fucking hypocrite.” and his hypocrisy from you, DISCORD, you can be discreet in order to avoid conflict and drama.

Get back online, DISCORD, go make a new friend. And just because that last guy turned out to be a sadistic asshole who drew you out in order to blow up your life, that doesn’t mean the next guy you meet online is going to be a sadistic or vindictive asshole. Billions of people get online to chat with strangers every day and millions of people share explicit fantasies with strangers every day. While revenge porn is definitely a thing—and definitely a crime— it’s almost always jilted IRL lovers who lash out the way that asshole did. If it was even remotely common for people to be exposed to their spouses the way you were exposed to yours, DISCORD, if it happened even .01 percent of the time, we would hear about it constantly. We

don’t because it isn’t.

But to be on the safe side, DISCORD, you might want to keep it anonymous. Don’t share your real info with someone you only want to swap hot fantasies with and never intend to meet in person. And when your husband is being an asshole or just generally getting on your nerves, DISCORD, you can fantasize about the statistical likelihood that you will outlive your husband by many years. Because orgasms aren’t the only sweet release.

—Dan Savage I just read your advice for CATMAN, the person who asked if there was a name for his specific and newfound fetish: He wants to marry a submissive bisexual guy and then pick up and dominate submissive women together with his guy. As I read it, I wondered if this is a sexual fantasy or is it a fetish?

Then I wondered what the difference is between a fantasy and a fetish. Is there one? Does it matter?

—Knowingly Investigating Newly Kinky Yearnings What CATMAN described—what CATMAN was looking for—was a relationship. He was fantasizing about his perfect partner and wondering if he was out there somewhere. Since literally everyone does that, KINKY, I wouldn’t describe fantasizing about a perfect partner or partners as a fetish or a kink. Vanilla or mildly kinky or wildly kinky, we all want that perfect match, i.e., a person or people whose sexual desires and/ or relationship goals parallel our own. And a lucky few manage to find someone who comes really close.

People don’t just fantasize about sex, of course; people fantasize about dream jobs, dream vacations, dream weddings. (Wedding fantasies aren’t about who you’re marrying but how you’re marrying them, e.g., a destination wedding, a traditional wedding, a non-traditional wedding, etc.). But when it comes to sex, KINKY, fantasies are best understood as scenarios or situations that incorporate important elements of a person’s sexual desires—desires that may involve kinks or fetishes or may not. Think of fantasies as sexy little movies we screen for ourselves in our heads and kinks or fetishes as optional plot points and/or props.

The natural follow-up question: What’s the difference between a kink and a fetish then?

While people often use those terms interchangeably, KINKY, they mean different things.

Dr. Justin Lehmiller recently unpacked the difference on Sex & Psychology at lehmiller.com: “Kink is a very broad concept that encompasses pretty much any form of sexual expression that falls outside of the mainstream. This includes the eroticization of intense sensations (such as mixing pleasure and pain), playing with power differentials, deriving pleasure from inanimate objects, role playing, and more ... [whereas] fetishes involve heightened attraction to certain objects (like boots and shoes) and/or body parts beyond the genitals (like feet and armpits).”

So, all fetishes are kinks, but not all kinks are fetishes. I hope that clears things up!

—DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net

CLASSIFIEDS Legal MUNDO VERDE PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Staff Professional Development Staff Professional Development. MVPCS is seeking proposals for professional development support on a variety of topics. Please contact Elle Carne at ecarne@mundoverdepcs.org for full RFP details. All bids are due via email on September 14 at 3pm. Note that the contract may not be effective until reviewed and approved by the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board.

THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSING AUTHORITY REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP) SOLICITATION NO.: 00272020 MELVO RAD GENERAL CONTRACTOR The District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA) requires professional General Contractor for the rehabilitation of five (5) bundled DCHAowned properties that comprise the MELVO Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) Project.

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Please contact me at 2028171935 for any information PUBLIC NOTICE – CRAN_ RWSH_DCDTN_285 AT&T Mobility, LLC is proposing to construct a 36’ pole at 292 M St SW, Washington DC. Public comments regarding the potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30-days from the date of this publication to: Amanda Sabol – CBRE, 201 Tresser Boulevard, Suite 201, Stamford, CT 06901,

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PUBLIC NOTICE – CRAN_ RWSH_DCDTN_422B AT&T Mobility, LLC is proposing to construct a 35’ pole at 95 M St SW, Washington DC. Public comments regarding the potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30-days from the date of this publication to: Maggie Klejbuk – CBRE, 201 Tresser Boulevard, Suite 201, Stamford, CT 06901, whiteplainsculturalresources@cbre.com or (914) 267-6637.

WASHINGTON LATIN PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Issued: 9/04/2020 The Washington Latin Public Charter School solicits expressions of interest in the form of proposals with references from a qualified vendor for: * Psychological Services – including scheduling, materials, testing, reporting, recommendations, goals and objectives, and administrative duties.

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SW DC Disaster Preparedness & Resiliency Building Festival” to highlight Emergency Preparedness and Community Resilience on September 24th 12- 4pm and 25TH, 9-12 pm Before the Covid-19 pandemic changed all of our lives, we planned to hold the Festival in conjunction with the SW Farmers’ Market. Now it’s a….. you guessed it, -- a Zoom event.

We have stimulating workshops with nationally recognized experts who discuss COVID -19, Food Security, Financial First Aid and Climate Change in The District. Please see the program for details.

As a reminder SW Strong! is a SW-based Emergency Preparedness Task Force that, together with several other Task Forces, makes up the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly. We are committed to promoting individual, family and community emergency

preparedness and resilience in SW Washington D.C. We accomplish this through organizing emergency preparedness and community resilience literature drives, community exercises, focus groups, children activities, and several informal presentations on a wide variety of disaster preparedness, response, recovery and community resilience topics, that includes the complex issue of climate change.

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HELLO EVERYONE: Please join us. Our community group SW Strong! is virtually hosting “Weather the Storm: the

washingtoncitypaper.com september 4, 2020 19

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