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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE » FALL 2013 » ISSUE 014

ONE WOMAN'S STRUGGLE WITH LIFE AND LOSS IN THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE

LIKE THE EAGLE IN FLIGHT

+ POLICING FOR PROFIT+ WHERE'S GO-GO GOING?+ TRANSFORMATIONS AT THE ANACOSTIA MUSEUM

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE » FALL 2013 » ISSUE 014

SUPPORT // AFFILIATIONSGENERATION PROGRESSAWOL is published with support from Generation Progress / Center for Ameri-

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p. 14

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Lori McCue

MANAGING EDITOR: Claire Dapkiewicz

ART DIRECTOR: Ellyse Stauffer

WEB EDITOR: Alexa Marie Kelly

EDITORIAL:STAFF EDITORS: Jess Anderson, Allison Butler, Pamela Huber, Linda Nyakundi

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Casey Chiappetta, Rhys Leahy

WRITERS: Haley Hawkins, Jimmy Hoover, Pamela Huber, Chloe Johnson,

Alexa Marie Kelly, Brigitta Kinadi, Maya Kosover, Michael Mansheim, Lori

McCue, Jane Morice, Linda Nyakundi, Nadine Rotundo, Lexie Tyson

ART:ART ASSISTANT: Kade Freeman

DESIGNERS: Kade Freeman, Ye Lim Lee

ILLUSTRATION & PHOTOGRAPHY: Tyler Berg, Kade Freeman, Rain

Freeman, Evan Mills

LIKE A STORY? HATE A STORY? Want to join AWOL? Write to us: [email protected]

FIND US ONLINE:BLOG: www.awolau.org

TWITTER: @awolAU

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/awolAU

MISSION:

AWOL is a progressive magazine run by American University

students in Washington, DC. Founded in the spring of 2008

with support from Generation Progress, we are a recognized

publication of American University.

We exist to ignite campus discussion of social, cultural and

political issues, and serve as an outpost for students to explore

solutions to local and global problems. We hope to build

bridges between American University and the world around it,

ultimately making our campus more inquiring, egalitarian and

socially engaged.

AWOL is not affiliated with any political party or ideology.

Our stories have an angle, which is different from having an

agenda; our reporting is impartial and fair, but our analysis is

critical and argumentative.

“Ensuring accuracy and respect in reporting about transgender people shouldn't be such a difficult hurdle to clear. A journalists craft is dedi-cated to details—to disregard gen-der identity is to neglect the facts of the story.” - Lori McCue, p. 17

Illustration by Ellyse Stauffer

03 THE ATLAS AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD HOLDING UP H ST. by Brigitta Kinadi

An artistic revival on H St.

04 WHEN YOUR PROPERTY DOES THE TIME POLICING FOR PROFIT by Pamela Huber

Civil asset forfeiture in DC and around the nation

08 DC'S NATIVE SOUND WHERE'S GO-GO GOING? by Michael Mansheim and Jane Morice

The past, present and future of DC's very own music genre

10 REAL FOOD AND WAGES IN TDR FUNDING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU

by Haley Hawkins

Bon voyage to Bon Appétit

12 LIFE AND LOSS IN THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE LIKE THE EAGLE IN FLIGHT by Jimmy Hoover

A local activist tells her story

15 WILL DC FINALLY GROW UP? PHOTO ESSAY: DC AT ITS HEIGHT by Evan Mills

A look at DC's height restriction laws

17 WHY CAN'T THE MEDIA ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY?

SAY MY NAME by Lori McCue

The politics of pronouns

19 LIVING BELOW THE MINIMUM WAGE THE BARE MINIMUM

by Linda Nyakundi

Forcing large retailers to pay

20 ART, CREATION AND CULTURE: PHOTO ESSAY: U ST. AND THE DISTRICT

by Tyler Berg

A view from the street

23 PROFESSOR PROFILEFARHANG ERFANI

by Alexa Marie Kelly

The philosophy professor talks identity,Iranian film and his DC bakery

25 TRANSFORMATIONS AT THE ANACOSTIA MUSEUM A HIDDEN HISTORY LESSON

by Chloe Johnson

The little Smithsonian that could

26 TOP TEN INSIGHTSFROM AN ANACOSTIA CEMETERY WORKER by Maya Kosover

Lessons from the graveyard shift

20

08

19 23

03

3

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINEAMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

As dusk creeps into the H Street corridor, the Art Deco marquee of the

Atlas Performing Arts Center lights up in beaming blue and white. The

street comes alive with conversation, and chattering Washingtonians

crowd into bar patios.

The historic Atlas marquee, which towers over the row of colorful low-

slung buildings, is the unmistakable centerpiece of the street.

The Atlas’s large physical presence reflects on its cultural footprint on

the H Street corridor. In 2006, the former movie theater reopened as a

60,000 square foot performing arts facility. Its rebirth marked the begin-

ning of the area’s recovery from the 1968 riots following Martin Luther

King Jr.’s assassination. For many residents, the presence of the Atlas par-

allels the revival of the H Street corridor.

“The Atlas played a huge part in the redevelopment of H Street be-

cause it actually brought people to the area,” said David Simmons, who

works at the Atlas and has lived in the neighborhood for over 10 years.

“The only restaurants that existed when I first moved here [were] a Pop-

eye’s and a dingy little Chinese take-out place with Plexiglas. No one

used to come here.”

The Atlas Theater was one of four movie theaters on H Street when

the area was a thriving commercial district in the 1930s. It was forced to

close in 1978 following years of decline. When it closed, the building was

abandoned and eventually boarded up and covered with graffiti.

In 2002, Jane Lang and Paul Sprenger, lawyers interested in the arts

and community development, purchased the theater. Four years later,

the Atlas Performing Arts Center opened.

“When Jane Lang was first brought here, she took one look and said, ‘No

way.’ It was too big, too messy and, with conditions of the neighborhood

back then, it was too hard,” said Jen DeMayo, director of community at

the Atlas Performing Arts Center. “But after thinking it over, she woke up

the next morning and realized that the theater could be the catalyst for

the revitalization of H Street.”

DeMayo, who has lived in the area since 1999, says that reopening the

Atlas Theater was a pivotal moment. For residents who grew impatient

with the city’s development plans for H Street, the Atlas “was a promise

that was actually kept.”

“At the time, there was a lot of talk of new projects, but the Atlas was

one of the very few that was actually completed,” DeMayo said. “People

take pride in that. And when we started seeing local families bringing

their children here for our programs, it was obvious that the neighbor-

hood was willing to invest in Atlas.

Many young people from outside the neighborhood see H Street as a

vibrant nightlife destination, a hip alternative to Adams Morgan and U

Street. What most don’t realize is that H Street is also a residential area,

and many longtime residents and even some newcomers raise their chil-

dren in the neighborhood.

“It’s important to us that Atlas offers opportunities for children here to

be exposed to the arts very early on in their lives,” DeMayo said.

The Atlas targets families with programs like “Theater for the Very

Young,” which offers theater arts education for children ages 5-8. Anoth-

er popular program is “Boogie Babes,” which brings children’s musicians

to the Atlas Performing Arts Center every Friday.

American Youth Chorus, the youth branch of the Congressional Cho-

rus, is also based in the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Established in

2008, the American Youth Chorus has more than 80 members from ages

8-14. The chorus was founded on the belief that all children, regardless

of their socio-economic background, should have the opportunity to re-

ceive musical education.

“Families pay tuition based on household income, and the chorus of-

fers full scholarships for some children,” said Simmons, who is also the

artistic director of both the Congressional Chorus and American Youth

Chorus.

The American Youth Chorus rehearses at Atlas twice a week, bringing

in a flood of children in school uniforms and bright polo shirts on Tues-

day and Thursday evenings. Since its creation five years ago, the chorus

has performed in the White House, the Kennedy Center and the Library

of Congress.

“A few years ago, we performed at Hillary Clinton’s Christmas party,”

Simmons said. “Some of the kids that performed lived in public housing

in Southeast DC. These kids were now in the Secretary of State’s diplo-

matic reception with ambassadors from all over the world. That night,

they got to see a world that most people would never see.”

THE ATLAS AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD

HOLDING UP H ST. By Brigitta Kinadi

Photo courtesy of the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

The three-block stretch around the theater is commonly known as

the Atlas District.

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » FALL 2013 4

WHEN YOUR PROPERTY DOES THE TIME

POLICING FOR PROFITBy Pamela Huber // Infographic by Ellyse Stauffer

Saturday, June 1, 2012: It is 3:30 am at the Takoma Park IHOP, and

a sleek white Dodge Challenger pulls into the parking lot. A black

streak stretches from the car’s trunk over the roof and down to

the hood, blending with the tinted windshield like lacquered armor.

The driver, DC firefighter Keith Chung, pulls into a handicapped

spot and exits the vehicle.

The restaurant's security camera captures the ensuing action

in grainy detail. After a few minutes, DC police officers approach

Chung’s car, and one writes him a ticket for improperly parking.

When Chung returns, he finds the ticket, opens his car door and

drops the paper on the ground as he slides into the driver’s seat.

The police officers approach the car, and, according to the police

report, Chung refuses to produce his license or exit his vehicle, all

the while shouting expletives at the officers. The officers charge

Chung with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, possessing an open

container of alcohol, willfully disobeying an officer and littering.

DC’s Public Defender Services stated in court testimony that, “of-

ficers claimed to find a firearm on the person of one of the pas-

sengers in Mr. Chung’s vehicle” and that “Mr. Chung was initially

arrested for being present in a motor vehicle containing a firearm,

but he was not charged in connection with the incident.”

Metropolitan Police Department officers seized Chung’s car the

same day as the arrest. On June 2, Chung sought the return of his

car, and instead discovered DC’s complicated laws on civil asset

forfeiture.

***

Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize property,

money, cars and homes without convicting or even accusing the

owner of a crime, on the basis of the property’s alleged connec-

tions to illegal activities. Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, which

requires a property owner be charged and convicted of a crime

before law enforcement can permanently seize the property, civil

asset forfeiture circumvents due process by charging the property

itself, rather than the owner, with a crime. And while criminal as-

set forfeiture requires substantial evidence of assets’ connection to

illegal activity, civil asset forfeiture in DC only requires officers to

offer a “probable cause” for a connection to illegal activity.

Darpana Sheth is an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a non-

profit public interest law firm aimed at protecting constitutional

rights.

“[Civil asset forfeiture] is one of the strongest threats to private

Parents in the neighborhood appreciate that the chorus gives their

children a creative outlet.

“The chorus is great because it’s not your typical babysitter after-

school activity,” said Mary Masters, mother of an 11-year-old girl in the

youth chorus. “It gives them a chance to develop their artistic sides,

and also builds confidence and character.

Like many longtime residents, Masters believes that the reopen-

ing of the Atlas Theater has made great contributions to the revival

of the H Street corridor. Today, H Street is lined with an eclectic mix of

bars and restaurants, like a Mexican restaurant with a miniature golf

course, a gastropub that specializes in mussels and a sushi bar that

offers karaoke and bingo on weeknights.

The three-block stretch surrounding the former movie theater is

now commonly known as the Atlas District.

“Atlas is a jewel in the H Street and Capitol Hill area,” Masters said.•

NEWSWIREBrigitta Kinadi is a senior studying journalism and international studies.

“The Atlas played a huge part in the redevelopment of H Street because it actually brought people to the area.”

A BATTLE OF RITE AND WRONG

A jury of 13 Methodist clergymen in Lebanon, PA, suspended their pastor, the Reverend Frank Schaefer, of his duties for

30 days for conducting the wedding of his son to another man six years ago.

Schaefer, pastor at the Zion United Methodist Church of Iona, was charged with conducting a same-sex ceremony and violat-ing the church’s discipline, according to the Lebanon Daily News. If he violates the terms of his suspension and officiates a same-sex marriage or violates any portion of the Methodists’ Book of Dis-ciples in the thirty-day time frame, he faces a more serious conse-quence: loss of his title and status as pastor.

New York Magazine reports that despite the controversy his ac-tions have created, Schaefer is unrepentant and doubtful that he will be able to adhere to the mandate set out in his sentence.

“If a gay couple asks me [to officiate their wedding] in the next thirty days and they qualify, yes, I would do it,” Schaefer said dur-ing his trial.

“We as a church and as individuals need to stop judging people,” he added. “We need to stop treating them as second-class citizens.”

-Jess Anderson

5


property rights in the country today, and it’s also an affront to due

process and the rule of law,” Sheth said.

Civil asset forfeiture frequently violates the Constitution's

Fourth and 14th Amendments. The Fourth Amendment guards

against unreasonable searches and seizures and requires that war-

rants for seizures be based on probable cause. The 14th Amend-

ment protects due process, which ensures states respect all of a

person’s legal rights, including the rights to receive notice of le-

gal actions or charges, grieve or complain against those actions or

charges in court, and appeal that court’s decision.

Continuing this bizarre inversion of due process, most state laws

do not require police to prove property’s connection to illegal activ-

ities, but rather make the owner prove its innocence. Owners must

pay hefty penal sums, or “bonds” simply to challenge a seizure and

postpone forfeiture. According to IJ directors Dick M. Carpenter II

and Lee McGrath in their report, “Rotten Reporting in the Peach

State,” “to the rational property owner, the value of the property

seized often simply isn’t worth the cost to reclaim it.”

William Claiborne is an attorney at law who has filed a class ac-

tion lawsuit against the DC's government on behalf of 19 plaintiffs

who have had their cars or money seized for forfeiture or investiga-

tive purposes. Claiborne’s lawsuit focuses on the District’s failure

to supply proper notice to property owners of the seizure.

“They don’t give you anything at the point of seizure that tells

you where to go or what to do,” Claiborne said. “The law says if

you take somebody’s property, you’ve got to give notice that says,

‘We’ve taken your property, we’re gonna have a hearing, you have a

right to come to the hearing and be heard.’ Well, they never have a

hearing because they don’t actually give you notice.”

It can take the government years to take a forfeiture case to

court. In the meantime, owners cannot access their seized property,

which severely disrupts their everyday lives, jobs and well-being.

These hearings allow owners to contest their property’s seizure

and keep their property while awaiting a forfeiture trial. The hear-

ings are necessary for several reasons.

“If you’re an innocent owner, [a hearing] gives you an opportunity

to get your car right back,” Claiborne said. “And even if you’re guilty

of the offense, at least you get a right to drive your car around until

there’s a final determination, because it’s very unfair to just snatch

somebody’s car and hold it without a trial.”

DC law requires owners to pay a bond between $250 and $2,500

just to request a hearing to challenge the seizure of a vehicle—in

Chung’s case, $2,075. Paying the bond does not insure Chung will

get his car back. It simply grants him a hearing to request a prelim-

inary injunction, which will let him continue to use his car before

the forfeiture case goes to trial.

***

Forbes contributor Stephen Dunn, a tax expert and attorney who

specializes in civil asset forfeiture, explains in his article “Noth-

ing Civil About Asset Forfeiture” that the legal processes leading to

a preliminary injunction can stretch on for weeks or months. DC

lines up with federal law under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform

Act of 2000. CAFRA requires the government, within 60 days of seiz-

ing property, to send written notice of the seizure to the owner.

The owner has 35 days to file a claim for the property. Then the

government has 90 days to charge the owner with a crime or file a

civil forfeiture lawsuit. If it does neither it must return the seized

property. Overall, the process can take over 6 months, but some

have experienced longer cases.

It took DC resident Frederick Simms 11 months simply to request

a preliminary injunction to have his car returned while awaiting a

hearing on whether the forfeiture would hold up in court; the hear-

ing occured two months later. Overall, Simms, 26, couldn’t use his

car for more than a year.

MPD seized Simms’s car without a warrant on May 29, 2011 be-

cause police claimed to have found a firearm in it. Simms was ac-

quitted of all related charges in DC’s Superior Court in December

2011. But his car remained in an impound lot.

Simms’s public defenders state in their motion for prelimi-

nary injunction, received May 1, 2012, that “the police have kept

Mr. Simms’s car without providing Mr. Simms any opportunity to

contest the initial seizure and subsequent retention of his vehicle

pending any forfeiture proceedings.”

The resulting hearing occurred on July 6; Judge Emmet Sullivan

returned Simms’s car, stating that “the District’s failure to provide

Mr. Simms with a post-seizure hearing to challenge the deprivation

of his vehicle pending the conclusion of civil forfeiture proceedings

violates his constitutionally-protected due process rights.”

In the year without his car, Simms spent $40 a day on public

transportation to travel to a $12-an-hour paying job. He could not

drive his daughter to daycare or run errands with his fiancée.

“This whole situation has been a huge burden on my entire life,”

Simms says in his testimony. “It has been costly, time consuming,

and embarrassing.”

“They strip income from people who are least situated to get it back, from the most vulnerable members of soci-ety tthat have the least ability to fight back.”

$866,8092010

2008$563,621

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA’S PROFITS FROM CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE

2012 $670,749

Source: Institute for Justice


The District’s failure to offer Simms the opportunity to contest

his car’s seizure joins a long list of injustices enabled by civil as-

set forfeiture: the government requiring a bond payment to hold

a hearing for such an opportunity; police failing to provide proper

notice of seizures; seizures requiring only probable cause of an

asset’s connection to a crime; property’s “guilty until proven in-

nocent” status; and courts placing the burden of proof on owners

rather than the government.

Police frequently seize an innocent owner’s property because

someone else connected it to a crime; the system’s set-up prevents

innocent owners from easily getting their property back.

***

The Reagan Administration created civil asset forfeiture to com-

bat the war on drugs. By seizing property and money immediately,

law enforcement prevents drug lords and money launderers cfrom

continuing to use those assets in criminal activities while awaiting

trial. This limited their power and strengthened the government’s

case against them.

“It is clear from the legislative history of CAFRA that Congress

intended to limit civil forfeitures to alleged structuring connected

with an underlying offense of drug trafficking or money launder-

ing,” Dunn writes in his article.

And it worked. Instituted under the Comprehensive Crime

Control Act of 1984, civil asset forfeiture helped bust major drug

dealers and white collar criminals. Federal agents studied struc-

turing—manipulating the transfer of money and assets so as to

intentionally avoid IRS flags to divert suspicion—to find corruption

within corporations.

Once courts forfeit assets, the government can pocket seized

cash and auction off property, cars and real estate for profit.

“In most of these states as well as at the federal level, these laws

give law enforcement agencies a direct financial incentive to seize

property because most of the proceeds from forfeiture… [goes] di-

rectly back to the law enforcement agencies,” Sheth said.

This statute allow for the ideal war-on-drugs campaign: law en-

forcement can seize drugs, drug money and tools of distribution

(including transportation) with only probable cause as evidence.

The drugs not only exit the market, but can be used as evidence in

court cases, and the profits from the seized drug lords goes towards

fighting more drug lords. This is rare.

The victims of forfeiture abuse are not drug kingpins, but most

frequently the poor and needy unable to pay their own legal fees.

Since civil asset forfeiture does not allow for a right to an attorney,

the indigent cannot afford to fight back against unjust property

seizures.

“The whole system is rigged to what I call an ‘income-stripping

device,’” Claiborne said. “They strip income from people who are

least situated to get it back…. from the most vulnerable members

of society that have the least ability to fight back.”

Claiborne says citizens are often pulled over for simple traffic

violations. The criminal offenses then connected with seized prop-

erty vary, but frequently will be related to drug possession or sup-

posed money laundering related to the drug trade.

The Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Urban

Affairs reports that between 2009 and 2011, wards with higher Af-

rican American populations witnessed higher arrest rates overall,

and arrest rates related to drug crimes.

Claiborne said that a cop “can stop anybody he wants to” and

that the arrest rates and subsequent seizures are “very unfair.”

“The day they start doing this over at George Washington or

Georgetown, hey let me know, I won’t say it’s unfairly aimed at the

most vulnerable members of society,” he said.

***

The Institute for Justice reports that the District has raked in

millions in the past decade through forfeiture.

“Under current DC laws there are no reporting requirements and

so there’s little transparency about how the District is actually

engaging in forfeiture and in how much they’re profiting from it,”

Sheth said.

Even though reports vary as a result, we know that the District

forfeiture program floods MPD with millions of dollars annually.

From 2010 to 2012, DC seized 339 vehicles, as well as money from

over 8,500 individuals, for a total profit of over 4.8 million dollars.

And through a loophole called the equitable sharing program, the

District has received another $8.2 million since 2000.

“[The equitable sharing program] allows state and local law en-

forcement to circumvent their own stricter local laws in order to

receive a bounty of 80 percent of forfeiture proceeds simply be re-

ferring forfeitures to the federal government,” Sheth said

PDS has filed a lawsuit against MPD on behalf of approximately

375 car owners like Chung and Simms. The lawsuit is currently

stilled in the court system due to negotiations between PDS and

MPD. The negotiations resulted in MPD promising to limit its use

of civil asset forfeiture pending the hashing out of legislation on

forfeiture reform.

***

Councilmember Mary M. Cheh, a democrat from Ward 3, intro-

duced a bill, both in 2012 and again in 2013, aimed at reforming

civil asset forfeiture laws in the District. PDS supports Bill 20-48,

the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2013. DC Attorney General

Irvin B. Nathan supports Bill 20-419, the Civil Forfeiture Procedures

Amendment Act of 2013, which was introduced by DC’s Executive

branch in response to B20-48.

A working group is negotiating and compromising between the

two bills in an effort to create legislation that can be passed be-

fore the December recess. Sheth is working with the group to bring

“There's little transparency about how the Dis-

trict is actually engaging in forfeiture and how

much they're profiting from it.”

7


PHOTO

about meaningful change that would improve IJ’s current grading

of DC’s forfeiture laws: “F.”

B20-48 would shorten the time period between seizure and an

owner’s ability to apply for an injunction and would require law

enforcement officials have “clear and convincing evidence” to seize

assets. It would also switch responsibility from owners proving

their property’s innocence to the District proving the property’s

guilt. Finally, it would place profits from forfeiture in the District’s

general fund rather than just MPD’s budget.

The working group has agreed that Simms’s case has proven the

need for prompt hearings following seizure, but the exact number

of days between seizure and the hearing are still up for negotiation.

The group has also agreed to transfer forfeiture proceeds to DC’s

general fund, although the equitable sharing loophole is still up

for debate.

Attorney General Nathan argues in his testimony against B20-48

that transferring forfeiture profits away from MPD would have dev-

astating effects, including potentially leading to a suspension from

the federal equitable sharing fund. Oregon and Utah’s share in the

program were suspended when they enacted laws that took forfei-

ture profits from law enforcement and put them into general funds.

Sarah Stillman, a writer for the New Yorker, approves of allocating

forfeiture proceeds to general funds, citing evidence from a na-

tional analysis of individual state laws. She writes in her article

"Taken" that “States that place seized funds in a neutral account,

like Maine, Missouri... North Dakota, and Vermont, have generally

avoided major forfeiture-abuse scandals. Problems seem to arise in

states—such as Texas, Georgia, and Virginia—with few restrictions

on how police can use the proceeds. Scandals, too, emerge from

the federal Equitable Sharing program, which allows local police to

skirt state restrictions on the use of funds.”

Transferring profits to the general fund would hopefully reduce

unfair seizures fueled by financial gain. “Right now, the police are

the ones to make the call about whether they seize, they’re the

one’s that make the call about whether to forfeit, and they’re the

ones that make the call about whether the property should be for-

feited, plus they get to keep the money,” Claiborne said. “So you

have the same agency doing everything and that’s as pure policing-

for-profit as you can get.”

As for the switch in the quality of the evidence required by police,

Attorney General Nathan says that “Enacting this Bill would create

a bizarre double standard under which forfeitures governed by DC

law, which typically concern lower value property, would be more

difficult to prove than forfeitures governed by federal law, which

typically concern higher value property.”

Sheth responds to this quote: “I’m not sure that that makes

sense….Right now... essentially, you have an officer on the street

who thinks, ‘Ok, this property might be involved in a crime’ and it’s

really just that determination of probable cause that can subject

it to forfeiture.”

While the working group might disagree on the nitty gritty de-

tails, meaningful reform does look imminent.

***

Police released Chung’s car in July of 2012 after a preliminary

injunction was granted. For two months he had carried 100 pounds

of firefighting gear every day on public transportation, waking up

at 4:00 a.m., rather than his usual 7:00 a.m., in order to reach dif-

ferent stations around the city. He struggled with supporting his

extended family that relied on him for trips to the grocery store,

school and medical appointments. He had to turn down a part-

time job in Baltimore because he could not get there, although he

desperately needed the extra money to pay $600 a month in loans

on the car he could not use.

He was never charged with a crime. •

NEWSWIRE

BREEDING PIZZLY BEARS

The pizzly bear: half polar bear, half grizzly bear. It’s like a creature from some post-apocalyptic land—a hybrid of two

animals forced to breed by an evolving, warmed-up world. But it didn’t take the end of days to find one. Global warming has caused massive summer ice melts that force polar bears far-ther south every year in search of stable hunting grounds. And as development in Canada pushes grizzly bears north, the two cousin species interbreed. According to Christine Dell'Amore of National Geographic, wild pizzly hybrids were spotted in 2006 and 2010, and scientists fear that sightings will only increase with time. An increase in hybrid breeding could mean a loss of polar biodiversity, as pure-blooded polar bears breed with other hybrids or grizzly bears and eventually become extinct as a distinct species. Scientists fear that many aquatic mammals, including different species of endangered whales, may begin cross-breeding as well as Arctic ice barriers melt away; and, since hybrids are not protected under the endangered species act, nothing stops hunters from mounting heads of these rare wonders above their fireplaces. The endangered polar bear has long stood as an icon of the consequences of global warming, and many seem resigned to let the species disappear. However, south-bound polars and pizzlies mean potentially higher rates of polar bear attacks. Additionally, given the fact that grizzlies will maul prey and leave it to die, and polar bears are more unpredictable and have been known to attack humans without provocation, it is possible that these hybrids could behave un-predictably towards humans. At the most extreme, they may even maul people for fun: a reason enough to care about some

melting ice. -Pamela Huber

Pamela Huber is a sophomore studying literature. She is a staff editor for AWOL.


DC'S NATIVE SOUND

WHERE'S GO-GO GOING?By Jane Morice and Michael Mansheim

The spotlights shine on women in tight black outfits and high heels

belting contemporary hits to an enthusiastic crowd. The all-female

band backing them grooves to the beat. The audience loves every sec-

ond of it—people are on their feet clapping, dancing and smiling from

ear-to-ear.

This isn’t a show at the 9:30 Club, however, or any other main-

stream concert venue in the DC area. It’s a performance by all-female

go-go group Be’la Dona at the “Crank & Groove: A Go-Go Love Story”

event held at the historic Atlas Theatre over the weekend of Sept. 13.

Arranged by Speakeasy DC, the event was the place for go-go perform-

ers, experts and aficionados to share their go-go stories.

Nina Mercer, a playwright and professor at Medgar Evers College,

shared her go-go story at Crank & Groove. Mercer grew up heavily in-

volved in the go-go community. Her father semi-managed the popular

band Experience Unlimited and was a legal representative for local

musicians and record labels. Nina eventually became a dancer for

the band as a teenager and provided choreography. Go-go allowed her

to perform often, and by 16 she was able to choreograph dances for

music videos and feature films. A summer job through a youth em-

ployment program dancing and bringing performance to parks in all

four quadrants of DC gave her the opportunity to perform and craft

her skills as a professional artist.

“My love for the music and the culture expanded beyond profes-

sional expression,” Mercer said. “My [fellow dancers] and I would go

out and that would give us confidence.”

Go-go is a musical phenomenon. While anyone in the world with

an internet connection can discover new music every day, go-go has

remained a sort of well-kept secret within the DC-Maryland-Virginia

area’s black community.

Go-go music can be compared stylistically to funk, with heavy

emphasis on bass and drums. The genre is also notable for its West

African-influenced call-and-response vocals. But the most distinct el-

ement of go-go is the pocket—a steady drumline that is consistent

throughout the entire song. The pocket keeps the song in line; the

other instruments, particularly the bass, follow the pocket.

The go-go pocket is constantly evolving, but it must stay consis-

tent throughout a particular song. According to well-known go-go

musician Christylez Bacon, who presented his go-go story at Crank &

Groove, “If you’re not in the pocket, you might as well be invisible. If

you’re not in the pocket, you aren’t in the go-go.” Patrick “Go-Go Gro-

ver” Washington, another presenter at “Crank & Groove,”described the

pocket as “the space in between the drums we all live in.”

Go-go originated as a response to disco, and could even be consid-

ered a response to the hip-hop and rap culture that has dominated

airwaves across the country and the world. Yet traditional go-go mu-

sic hasn’t infiltrated mainstream radio airwaves, making it unique to

DC. It is a cornerstone of the city's culture despite changes in the

music industry and its trends.

The singular example of go-go’s potential to infiltrate the main-

stream hip-hop culture is Wale, a rapper and DMV native. Raised in

Prince George’s County, Maryland, Wale (born Olubowale Victor Akin-

timehin) was involved in the go-go community before he transitioned

into his career as a rapper. His music is influenced by go-go, and select

songs have distinct go-go elements. Wale gained local fame in the

“While anyone in the world with an internet

connection can discover new music every day,

go-go has remained a sort of well-kept secret

within the DMV area's black community.”

mid-2000s with his song “Dig Dug,” a tribute to the late percussionist

Ronald “Dig Dug” Dixon from the go-go band The Northeast Groovers.

The song was hugely popular among locals, gaining airtime on radio

stations and subsequently catching the attention of British producer

Mark Ronson. Working with Ronson garnered him industry attention,

and Wale was able to sign with Interscope records in the late 2000s to

release his first album, Attention Deficit in 2009. The album included

a straight go-go song called “Pretty Girls.” Natalie Hopkinson, a writer

for The Washington Post and The Root who wrote her doctoral disserta-

tion on the culture surrounding go-go, certainly considers Wale to be

a member of the go-go culture.

“[Pretty Girls] was on the radio and topped the charts for a long time,

and he really didn’t do a lot to it to change it to make it a hit for his

album,” Hopkinson says. “It was a go-go song. And then he’s embraced

the culture in a way that other hip-hop artists haven’t.”

Wale’s second major-label album, Ambition, was his first on hip-hop

mogul Rick Ross’s label Maybach Music Group. Compared to his first

studio album, Ambition all but abandons go-go influences, like the

inclusion of a pocket. Out of 17 songs on the album, only three have

Photo courtesy of Alexander Morozov

Be'la Dona performs at Crank and Groove.

9


management—knew that the “go-go report” existed. But they weren't

surprised. Quoted in the City Paper’s story, Ben Adda, go-go band TCB’s

manager, said that he felt targeted by MPD. The go-go report’s contin-

ued existence, well after the violence surrounding go-gos has greatly

diminished, is a strong indicator of MPD’s wariness of go-go and the

individuals involved in the go-go community.

To this day, select music venues in DC refuse to allow go-gos, and

some have been shut down by law enforcement injunctions. Hopkin-

son said she knows of at least one case in which the Petworth neigh-

borhood commission denied a new music venue its liquor license un-

less it banned go-go.

an inkling of any go-go inspiration; these include the opening song

“Don’t Hold Your Applause” and “Sabotage.” By distancing himself from

his go-go roots, it is possible that Wale was simply making a main-

stream rap album with his new label.

Yet his third album, The Gifted, released in June 2013, has recogniz-

able go-go influence, particularly in the songs “Clappers” and “Love-

Hate Thing.” “Clappers,” for example, suggests a pocket, yet the beat

does not carry through the song. Furthermore, at the end of the song,

Wale repeats the phrase “Rest in peace to Chuck,” a shoutout to the

late musician and go-go star Chuck Brown.

Brown’s death in May 2012 sparked a noticeable resurgence in the

DMV’s interest in go-go music. Brown, affectionately known as the

“Godfather of Go-Go,” truly transformed the genre from a stray off-

shoot of funk music into a genre and culture all its own.

Go-go music has evolved since Brown, fueling a debate over the

music between “old heads” and “new heads.” So-called “old heads” be-

lieve traditional go-go styles and venues must be preserved and per-

formed for posterity. Any of Chuck Brown’s songs, especially hits like

“Bustin’ Loose” and “Block Party,” exemplify the sound “old heads” are

trying to preserve.

The “new heads,” which include the youth fueling the present and

future of go-go, have created quicker and more “hardcore” styles of

go-go, including the subgenre “bounce beat.” Bounce beat has a faster

tempo, with a heavier base and greater use of vulgar language. One

of the more popular bounce beat bands, TCB, has “made over” current

hip-hop songs, keeping the lyrics but transforming the accompani-

ment to include a pocket.

Although traditional go-go music is unique to DC, one group from

Reston, Virginia has shown signs of infiltrating the mainstream. RDG-

LDGRN (pronounced Red Gold Green) has been touring nationwide

and plans to make international appearances with a genre they call

“indie go-go.”

The group’s style, according to its Facebook page, “takes hip-hop

infused punk and indie rock to create something refreshingly unique.”

While RDGLDGRN has had some success connecting with listeners

outside the DMV area, the band said in an email that “the only people

that recognize the go-go influence in our music are the people who

have heard go-go at least once before. No one else knows what they're

hearing, they just know they like it.” After all, the music is not tradi-

tional or “pure” go-go—it contains rock and hip-hop elements that

give it a greater chance of reaching an audience outside the DMV area.

Though go-go has always been considered an open community for

expression in DC, its past is rocky. Indeed, as an “underground” genre

that hasn’t penetrated music scenes outside the DMV, the violence

and drug culture that surrounds non-commercial music was high-

ly concentrated. Mass numbers of drug-fueled fights and casualties

around the go-go scene led to heightened police presence that per-

sists to this day.

In 2010, the Washington City Paper published a story detailing DC

Metro Police Department's biweekly “go-go report,” collected by its

“hush-hush” intelligence branch. This report details where known go-

go shows are going to occur, which bands are playing, and what time

the shows are slated to start and finish. At the time of that story’s

publication, hardly anyone—particularly go-go musicians and their

Go-go was always—and continues to be—an industry, with spe-

cialized designers, artists, promoters and musicians benefitting from

packed shows every night of the week. For many African-Americans

living in DC, especially during the “Chocolate City” era, go-go pro-

vided opportunities for expression and employment that didn’t exist

elsewhere. In the 1980s, when mass incarceration was on the rise

and there was a distinct lack of economic opportunity and mobility

in the DMV, go-go enjoyed popularity as an apolitical musical escape

mechanism. Perhaps go-go never achieved widespread popularity

because it was born of problems too DC-centric to foster growth

outside the community.

Many forces are poised against go-go culture: gentrification and the

changing culture of the neighborhood schools where many musicians

and artists met and grew up, and the backlash against violence as-

sociated with go-go.

There are, however, some bright spots in go-go’s future. Hopkinson

noted that shows are still packed every night.

“Maybe they might hide for a while, and they might change the

name—in some places they call it this and other places they call it

that—but they’re very old, and go-go is one of those things, the whole

thing is not a new invention,” she said.

Mercer said she’s positive about the future of go-go as a genre and

as a community.

“Kids aren’t letting it go, and it continues to be the signature of DC,

but we have to make it happen,” Mercer said. “It takes a whole com-

munity of people to say that we aren’t letting this go.” •

“Kids aren't letting it go, and [go-go] contin-

ues to be the signature of DC, but we have to

make it happen. It takes a whole community of

people to say that we aren't letting this go.”

Jane Morice is a junior studying journalism and Michael Mansheim is a

junior in the School of International Service.


REAL FOOD AND WAGES IN TDR

FUNDING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU By Haley Hawkins

Christine Hamlett-Williams grew up on a farm in North Carolina

and was raised knowing that fresh food is good food. It’s better for

your health and your taste buds, or, as she puts it, “frozen and pro-

cessed—that’s not real food.”

This ideology led Hamlett-Williams and other AU campus din-

ing employees to become activists in the Real Food Real Jobs cam-

paign in 2012. The campaign combines advocacy for fresh, local-

ly-grown food with an interest in fair employment practices in the

food service industry.

These two issues go hand in hand. According the US Bureau of

Labor Statistics, food service workers account for more than 15

percent of the US labor force, yet 86 percent do not make a wage

high enough to maintain a normal standard of living and face high

levels of food insecurity––meaning they may not know how they

will get their next meal. According to a 2012 report by the Food

Chain Workers Alliance, more than 13 percent of food service work-

ers are on food stamps, which is almost double the rate for workers

of all other US industries combined.

In DC, the living wage is a topic sizzling with debate. According

to The Economist, the District has an unemployment rate of 8.7 per-

cent, higher than the national average of 6.9 percent.

In June, DC lawmakers approved a measure called the Large Re-

tailers Accountability Act that would force large companies in the

area to pay a 50 percent premium over the city’s minimum wage,

meaning they would have to pay employees a baseline wage equal to

150 percent of the District minimum wage. Wal-Mart was one these

companies, and the corporation threatened to withdraw its plans for

retail locations in DC.

Mayor Grey has since vetoed this measure. The emergence of this

type of legislation, however, validates campaigns like Real Food Real

Jobs that advocate for a living wage and fair working conditions.

“We’re fighting for a fair wage,” Hamlett-Williams said. “Because

if you get barely paid, you go home and you can’t even cook your

children the quality of food [you] have at work, because you’ve got

to buy something cheap.”

Last year, students and workers combined forces to improve

working conditions. Samantha Ruggirello, a member of AU’s Stu-

dent Worker Alliance, attested that conditions were poor under

AU’s former contract company, Bon Appétit.

“[There were] large amounts of disrespect,” Ruggirello said. “There

would be people who would be told to do three peoples’ jobs when

they only had one.”

In one instance, campus dining employee Kevin Nelson, who now

works at Elevation Burger on campus, faced severe repercussions of

unfair employment practices under Bon Appétit.

Nelson, who worked in the Terrace Dining Room last year, was

forced to work through his company-mandated break one day. Af-

terward, he asked his supervisor for permission to take food home

since he hadn’t had time to eat. His supervisor granted him permis-

sion, and Nelson took food home. Bon Appétit subsequently fired

him for theft.

After remarkable student upheaval, including signs and chalked

messages on the sidewalk asking “Where’s Kevin?" Bon Appétit re-

hired Nelson within a matter of weeks.

As a result of these injustices, AU campus dining employees,

with the help of the union Unite Here, came together last year to

develop a contract protecting worker’s rights—a contract ratified

by Bon Appétit.

“Being part of this contract renegotiation will hopefully make all

of us more aware of our rights,” Nelson wrote in an article on Unite

Here’s website. “Hopefully, we can use this force and momentum to

carry this movement forward.”

The new contract carried over to this year when food service com-

pany Aramark became the official food provider of the university.

“Our employees at AU are represented by a union and covered by a

collective bargaining agreement,” said Adam Fox, marketing manag-

er for AU Dining. “We follow all terms and conditions of that agree-

ment, which includes clear provisions for how to address sustain-

ability and employment issues.”

Officially, Aramark has hired back every employee from last year,

including Hamlett-Williams, who has worked at AU for over 30 years.

“I’ve seen food service change dramatically since I’ve been here,”

Hamlett-Williams said. “From food being made from scratch to be-

ing processed.”

Jon Berger, the mid-atlantic regional coordinator for Real Food

Challenge, an organization which mobilizes students to advocate

for healthy and fair food service, echoed this point.

“There has been a general shift from fresh to processed, frozen

foods,” Berger said. “This also means that food service workers be-

come replaceable.”

In response to this trend, Aramark boasts goals of sustainability

and local food sourcing.

“Eighty six percent of food service workers do

not make a living wage and face high levels of

food insecurity—they may not know how they

will get their next meal.”

11

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

NEWSWIRE

COVERING ABUSE RECOVERY

Even before the new Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare)

took effect on Oct. 1, it was a hotly debated topic. What often

remains unsaid, however, is how this law will affect domestic vi-

olence survivors. In eight states and the District domestic abuse

can be considered a pre-existing condition: a health condition

that a person had or has received treatment for before buying

a new health insurance plan. These can include cancer, asthma

and, in some places, prior experience with domestic violence.

A pre-existing condition could cause insurance companies to

charge the individual more, or even not to insure them.

Not much data is available on exactly how many insurance

companies would deny someone under these conditions. In

most cases, their underwriting requirements were kept con-

cealed. However, the fact that the possibility existed was enough

to make people afraid to report the abuse they suffered for fear

of losing their health insurance.

Angered by this, many senators, notably Sen. Patty Murray,

pushed for legislation in 2009 that would protect these survi-

vors. Their attempts ranged from bills that said domestic vio-

lence could not be considered a pre-existing condition to ones

that prohibited any use of pre-existing conditions when creating

an insurance plan. These efforts proved unsuccessful, and come

2013 there was no legislation in these states or D.C. that would

penalize the practice.

The Affordable Care Act not only prohibits insurers from with-

holding coverage based on any pre-existing conditions, but also

explicitly dictates that evidence of prior domestic abuse cannot

be considered a pre-existing medical condition. This provision,

which will begin Jan. 1, 2014, will certainly have a cost effect, and

which has led to a great deal of controversy. Many organizations,

such as Planned Parenthood, have countered by emphasizing

the benefits the law will have for survivors of domestic violence.

Obamacare also stipulates that most health care plans pro-

vide screening and counseling services for domestic violence

victims. Along with other routine questions, doctors will ask pa-

tients about domestic violence and if they are being abused. If

patients disclose that they are in such a situation, doctors will

explain that what they are going through is abuse and provide

resources for patients. This practice has been around since be-

fore the act, but was not widespread. These screenings, though,

can be crucial in providing a safe place for victims.

Critics of the ACA note that this provision focuses on women,

but men can also be victims of domestic violence. The effective-

ness of the act’s domestic violence provisions, however, are yet

to be seen. -Lexie Tyson

“Many of our partner institutions are defining sustainable food and

developing purchasing policies according to what is most important

to their campus community,” Fox said.

“Here at AU, we work with a number of local, regional and nation-

al growers, producers and distributors," Fox continued. "We aim to

source as much food as we can locally, within a 250 mile radius and

within the region when available.”

So are they living up to their promises? Hamlett-Williams said

it’s too early to tell for sure, but she has seen some improvements,

especially when it comes to voicing her opinions.

“I can speak up,” she said. “If I see something wrong, I speak up.”

“All of us work for money, for a pay-check, but I'm not here just for a paycheck. I love my job. I enjoy it. I look at [the students] as my grand-children.”

To allow all AU dining employees this freedom, employees have

already begun meeting with Aramark management to demand

contract adherence, with support from students and faculty.

On Oct. 24, Anthony Johnson, an AU dining employee and activist

with the Real Food Real Jobs Campaign, spoke briefly at this year’s

Food Day, an annual celebration of grassroots organizations advo-

cating for fresh, local-grown food and fair food service practices.

“We want to live up to our working potential,” Johnson said. “And

we want to provide good food for the students because we really

care about you guys.”

Like Hamlett-Williams, he believes employee autonomy is the

foundation of a good work environment.

One of the most interesting aspects of the movement last year

was the communication among campus dining employees, stu-

dents and faculty. The AU community rallied behind dining em-

ployees, which is meaningful because students interact with the

workers every day.

“All of us work for money, for a paycheck, but I’m not here just

for a paycheck,” Hamlett-Williams said. “I love my job. I enjoy it. I

look at [the students] as my grandchildren, and I would not want

to send my grandchildren off to college and [have] that college say

one thing and do another.” •

Haley Hawkins is a freshman studying journalism.


“I KEPT GOING”It was the middle of the night when she left San Salvador, that

stained Salvadoran city she called home. Daysi Perla watched the

fading lights of the Parque Libertad, site of the Massacre of 1977. The

images of soldiers descending on the crowd would never leave her.

The cries of women and children at the foot of the El Rosario Church

begging to be let in by the friars would stay with her always.

As the bus trundled on through the dust-caked road, making its

way north into Mexico, Perla thought of her son. Francisco Perla was

eight years old in 1990, the year his mother left for the United States.

Born two years after the Salvadoran Civil War broke out, he learned

about the world through the lens of violence and danger. She would

not let him come with her. He was sent to live with his grandmother

in La Union.

“I never wanted to put my child in danger,” Perla says. “I didn't want

to show him any of this.”

Perla arrived in Mexico City days later. Hawkers and peddlers

swarmed the streets. She soon found that unlike Hondurans or Gua-

temalans, she and other Salvadorans could pass for Mexicans from

Veracruz due to their similar accents, called “jaracho.”

But her luck didn’t last. Just moments before she was to board her

bus to the border, a man approached her at a public telephone, shout-

ing indiscernible questions. She waved him off, and he left. When she

looked down at her hand, Perla realized the bus ticket she had been

holding was gone.

It was May in Mexico City, and the sun beat down in the Federal

District, by far the biggest city she had seen. She was alone.

Her trip would get more arduous but she found inspiration elsewhere.

"I have faith in God and in good people,” Perla said. “And I met someone

who told me I could stay in their house. They gave me a bed. They gave

me food. I worked there for a little while, and afterwards, I kept going."

Eventually she found herself on a different bus, but her destination

was the same: the United States. When the bus finally stopped, a man

toward the front ordered everyone out and told them to run. She can't

recall the images from that night, or even when she crossed the bor-

der, just the heavy falling of breath in the desert night. Somewhere in

south Texas, they reached a bus station.

…

In the center conference room of the Central American Resource

Center of Washington, DC, a Columbia Heights nonprofit, Perla wears

the years with a quiet smile. Before her sits a stack of fliers and a call

list. Perla began volunteering for CARECEN shortly after arriving in

the city in the early 1990s. For the past few days in October she’s been

rallying the local community for the immigration reform march set to

take place the following week on the National Mall. But by the fourth

day of the government shutdown, the event’s organizers are on high

alert. Around the country, news agencies are breaking stories about

closed monuments and the wrath of visitors. The Mall is a ghost town.

…

Three months after emigrating, in September 1990, she found a job

as a nanny for a well-to-do Chevy Chase family. The pregnant wife

was due before the end of the year and needed help that her work-

ing husband couldn't provide. Perla stayed with the family for eight

years, through the birth of another baby girl and the children’s days

in elementary school. She cooked for them and bathed them, even

taught them Spanish.

ONE WOMAN’S STRUGGLE WITH LIFE AND LOSS IN THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE

LIKE THE EAGLE IN FLIGHTWords and Photos by Jimmy Hoover

13


"I took care of them like they were my children,” she remembers.

But they weren't hers. Her child came to her once a month, materi-

alized on a post-card with the pencil scratchings of a young boy, or a

distant voice crackling through the phone. She remembers the ache:

"It was really hard when I couldn’t come, and he would tell me, 'Mom-

my, it's Christmas and you're not with me. Mommy, it’s Mother's Day

and you're not with me. Mommy, I don't remember what you look like.’"

Years after arriving, she risked everything and returned to El Sal-

vador to tend to her sick mother in La Union, the fishing port city

where her family lived. But what she thought would be an emotional

homecoming, a filial reunion, ended in a bitter realization. Francisco

now stood at equal height with Daysi. His frame was bigger than that

of the small child she had cradled under her bed when government

forces besieged San Salvador for three days, and she had to shield

him from stray bullets. Now, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. He resisted

her touch, the 2,000 miles still present even as she stood within arms

length of him. Perla flew back to Washington, wrought with grief.

"I'm paying a very big price to be here," she told herself in the days

after her return. "I'm losing my child."

***

By 1998, it was time to leave the family that employed her. The girls

were older and no longer needed her. But again, she felt the pang of

departure, of leaving.

"It wasn't the way I wanted it to be, but it was necessary. I spoke with

the oldest and asked for her forgiveness. Their entire lives were with

me, and all of a sudden I wasn't there,” she said.

After bouncing around jobs in the kitchens of different Washington

businesses, Perla graduated from Carlos Rosario charter school with

a certification in culinary arts. She went to work for Teen Bridges, a

program of the Latin American Youth Center, where she remains to-

day, teaching basic life skills such as cooking and grocery shopping

to underprivileged and formerly abused adolescents of the District's

child welfare agency. But she still volunteers for CARECEN when she

finds the time.

A DREAM DEFERREDIn April of this year, not far from Perla’s 14th Street apartment, a

group of senators gathered on Capitol Hill to "hash out" a solution to

the crisis of 11.7 million undocumented immigrants and backlogged

visa queues. The so-called "Gang of Eight" drafted an immigration re-

form act that would grant those 11 million the opportunity, or "path-

way" to American citizenship.

Marcy Campos, the director of the Center for Community Engage-

ment and Service at American University, and professor of a course

called "The Latino Community of the DC Metropolitan Area,” de-

scribed the recent hubbub surrounding the debate.

"It's the timing; it's the demographics; it's Obama, and it's also all

the organizations that are playing an active role in organizing,” Cam-

pos says. “There's a lot more unity, there's a lot more activism."

The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Mod-

ernization Act would make nearly impossible the 1990 trip Perla took

across the border. The Act calls for the installation of 350 new miles

of fencing, armed security personnel and new towers—all at a $46

billion price tag. But it would also bring the immigration quotas for

visas up to date and do away with the cap on numbers from certain

countries like El Salvador.

To the dismay of millions, the bill is languishing in the House of Rep-

resentatives, where the once fiery debate for reform has been seques-

tered by a swath of political issues, from the use of chemical weapons

in Syria to, most recently, the shutdown of the federal government.

Campos, who says that back in the spring she couldn’t go a day

without reading about the debate, says the once-bubbling media at-

tention has fizzled.

"A lot of things have happened in between then, and it's slowed

down a lot," she says.

Kristen Williamson, a spokeswoman for the Federation of Ameri-

can Immigration Reform, a political non-profit organization, oppos-

es the bill. She said giving a pathway to citizenship to the country's

nearly 12 million undocumented residents would be giving amnesty

to criminal behavior.

"At a time when our country is facing unemployment and underem-

ployment, we think that Congressmen and women should be focusing

on Americans and not illegal and legal immigrants,” Williamson says.

Williamson supports systemic reform, but her suggestion for

change is a different beast. Even though President Obama set a record

when he deported 1.5 million undocumented immigrants in his first

term, Williamson still decries what she considers the failure of "inte-

rior enforcement."

She supports the increase of programs like Secure Communities

that mandate the collaboration of local and federal law enforcement

agencies with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the deporta-

tion enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland Security.

Williamson said FAIR would also like to see a nationwide implemen-

tation of the E-Verify program, which is designed to weed out undocu-

mented immigrants from the workplace.

Williamson said that visas and other legal avenues for immigrants

should be reduced as well. Once the incoming numbers are lowered,

CARECEN members protest at the October 8 immigration reform march on

the National Mall.


she said that sending people back to their countries after their sta-

tuses expire is the next step. She suggests "biometrics:" a strategy em-

braced by various House Republicans that calls for fingerprinting and

database indexing to track all legal newcomers to the country.

"The most important aspect of entry-exit is the exit portion," she says.

WAITING ON WASHINGTONPerla believes that in some ways, it is her duty to rally support for

the upcoming march.

“I think it's important that while the Congressmen are fighting, the

Latin American community takes to the streets, so that they know we

are here and we aren't leaving,” she explains.

She also has personal impetus for wanting change on the immigra-

tion front: she's waited for Francisco for 23 years.

In 1990, Perla applied for Temporary Protected Status, a new provi-

sion of the Immigration and Nationality Act that guaranteed amnesty

for immigrants hailing from war-torn and disaster-struck regions.

When Temporary Protected Status ended for Salvadorans in 1992 dur-

ing the Clinton administration, so did her son's hope for residency.

Grandfathered into the system, Perla was granted asylum in 1996 un-

der the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. By

the time she finally got her green card in 2003, her son was no longer

a minor, and thus a low priority for the US Citizenship and Immigra-

tion Services.

“I'm still waiting to find out if my son will get his residency status…

He has always been waiting, to come legally,’’ she says. “He has never

wanted to come the way the majority of them come to this country.

He never wanted that.”

A PRICE TOO HIGHThough safeguarding American jobs for Americans is an impera-

tive, all too often tax-paying workers are estranged from their fami-

lies as a result of dated policy.

After he turned 21, Francisco Perla idled in the backwaters of the

immigration pool. Now 31, his best chance at coming to the United

States is through employer-based preference, a tightly bound system

where supply at the current quota rate has no chance, nor intention,

of meeting demand.

The US quota for H1 visas, or visas for high skilled workers, capped

out after five days last fiscal year. H2B visas, for which Francisco is

eligible, have had similar outcomes in four of the last ten years. But

the nonagricultural workers covered by H2B visas face an interesting

challenge. Not only must an American employer sponsor them, but

the sponsor must also prove that "there are not enough U.S. work-

ers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary

work.” Fewer than 4,000 applications were certified in 2012.

The years have taken their toll on Perla and her son. Francisco, now

a husband, father and ornithologist for a reforesting organization, has

put immigrating to the U.S on the back burner.

"He's not going to come stay. He's coming to get his residency and

leave," Perla says, her voice weary.

“I know that I have a very fragile relationship with my son,” she adds

sadly. “I failed being with him, seeing him grow… This is the price I've

paid. He doesn't know me and I don't know him."

A MARCH IN OCTOBERTuesday, Oct. 8: the day of the immigration march. Earlier that

week, the Obama administration had announced it would open the

occasion. Perla takes the 11:15 a.m. bus to 12th street and Inde-

pendence Avenue. She walks past rows of American elm trees, past

bearded men wielding signs equating immigrants with sin and to-

ward a collage of flags, colors and smiling faces. In the otherwise

quiet morning on the National Mall, chants swell in Spanish and

English, breaking the morning air.

In her CARECEN shirt, she scans the crowd. All around her are the

logos and signs of organizations. But the CARECEN shirts distributed

one week before are nowhere to be found. The clock strikes noon and

Nancy Pelosi takes the stage, a miniscule figure under the “Camino

Americano” banner.

“The blood of immigrants runs through all our veins,” Pelosi shouts

into the microphone, stoking cheers and whistles from the crowd.

Perla makes her way past TV reporters and cameramen, toward the

left side of the stage. Still, no one.

But then, just as Pelosi descends in time for a photo-op, and as

the host announces the next band, she spots them: a small group of

white shirts with bright orange letters behind the jumbotron. There in

the middle, a sign reads “CARECEN.” She sees the smiling faces of the

center’s staffers, volunteers, and community members. As the Mexi-

can band, Los Tigres del Norte, bellow their famous ballad “De Paisano

a Paisano,” she joins them.

“While the Congressmen are fighting, the Latin American community takes to the streets so they know we are here.”

Como el águila en vuelo

Como la fiera en celo

Desafiando fronteras

Defendiendo el honor

He pasado la vida

Explorando otras tierras

Para darles a mis hijos

Un mañana mejor.

Like the eagle in flight

Like the beast in heat

Defying borders

Defending honor,

I’ve spent my life

Exploring new lands

To give to my sons,

A better tomorrow. •

Jimmy Hoover is a senior studying spanish and journalism.

15


WILL DC FINALLY GROW UP?THE DISTRICT AT ITS HEIGHT By Evan Mills


At 169 meters, the Washington Monument is by far the tallest structure in the District of Columbia. It is the first thing visitors see driving north on I-395 into Washington and it's clearly visible from al-most anywhere in the city. It is a symbol and a landmark of our capital city. It dominates our horizon.

Passed in 1910, the Height of Buildings Act created a limit of 130 feet on all buildings in the District. Allegedly the law was created to reinforce Thomas Jefferson's vision of the nation's capital as "an American Paris," with low slung buildings.

Ever-present construction frames the Capitol Dome.


The specific laws are dense, but the fact remains that no building in DC is anywhere near as tall as the Washington Monument, and most are dwarfed even by the Capitol Dome. Endless blocks of rowhouses and low lying art deco apartments line the narrow streets and give Washington its distinct character. The building height restriction has shaped the layout of this city and gives DC a very unique and low profile.

As housing costs continue to soar and rent becomes more and more impossible for average citizens to meet, the height restriction becomes increasingly contested. The question remains: Has the time come to open the door for upward growth in Washington?

Evan Mills is a sophomore studying film and media arts.

The monument dominates the downtown DC skyline and remains lit as offices close up for the evening.

17


WHY CAN’T JOURNALISM ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY?

SAY MY NAMEBy Lori McCue // Infographic by Kade Freeman


Twenty-year-old Ascher Thomas asks that you use plural gender pro-

nouns to refer to them. And today, they’re so angry. Their slight frame

shifts in their seat as they pull their hands out of the pockets of their

loose fitting jeans, tucking their feet, clad in fashionably over-sized

sneakers, under the couch. Thomas fidgets with their short braided hair,

visibly struggling to get their thoughts out. They can barely articulate

their rage at the situation of Private Chelsea Manning, the army whis-

tleblower vilified by the media after her announcement in August that

she is transgender. Though her gender was assigned male at birth, she

identifies as female.

“No one gets to say, ‘Oh, since you’re not a real girl yet, I don’t have to

change how I refer to you, because you still look like a man,’” Thomas

says, referring to news outlets, such as CNN, that have continued to call

the private “Bradley Manning.” The network says that its policy is to use

masculine pronouns because Manning “has not yet taken any steps

toward gender transition through surgery or hormone replacement,”

according to Emanuella Grinberg’s article entitled “Chelsea or Bradley

Manning: Addressing Transgender People.”

Manning announced her gender identity just one day after being sen-

tenced to 35 years in federal prison for espionage, theft and computer

fraud for leaking Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield documents. News or-

ganizations were divided on how to refer to Manning in the days that

followed: the Huffington Post began using female gender pronouns in

all of its coverage immediately, while NPR waited a day after Manning’s

announcement to use the name Chelsea.

A 2011 survey conducted by the Williams Institute in California re-

veals that there are 700,000 Americans who identify as transgender. This

growing community has forced the media to evaluate how it terms and

names these subjects, whose gender identities may not be apparent.

And while transgender characters have appeared more frequently

in entertainment programming—such as transgender actress Laverne

Cox’s character in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black and Alex

Newell as the transgender character Unique on Glee—many say the me-

dia’s refusal to acknowledge Manning’s preferred gender identity dimin-

ishes the growing visibility of the transgender community.

“You’re speaking over others whose voices need to be heard,” Thomas

says, “and you’re just being a jerk.”

Some of the coverage of Manning since her coming out has been in-

sensitive at the very least. FOX News Channel’s morning show, Fox &

Friends, for example, teased an Aug. 27 segment about Manning with the

Aerosmith song “Dude Looks Like a Lady.” xoJane’s social justice editor s.e.

smith (whose name is stylized using lowercase letters) says the response

to Manning is proof that transphobia is alive and well in journalism.

“People internalize the message that it’s acceptable to treat trans

women like this: to call people the wrong name or deliberately use

the wrong pronoun,” smith says. “In the more immediate sense as

a tribute to our transphobic society, they enable things like harass-

ment and sexual assault of trans women in their gender identities.”

smith identifies as genderqueer, and uses the personal pronoun

“ou.” In July, the blog Gawker picked up a story smith wrote about

cultural appropriation of yoga and misgendered the author by using

feminine pronouns in its post, “Should Atheists Be Allowed to Do

Yoga?” When xoJane’s media team reached out to correct the error,

Gawker published their emails below the blog post with a sarcastic,

“Okay.” In a July 10 Slate article titled, tellingly, “What is a ‘Preferred

Gender Pronoun,’ and Is It Always Obnoxious?” J. Bryan Lowder com-

mented, “There is something self-defeating about expecting the

world to essentially read and sign a disclaimer before engaging with

you, especially when the situation is impersonal.”

But a growing segment of youth seems to agree that this gesture

of common courtesy is important for this more malleable definition

of gender. In a June 2012 survey of 10,000 LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 17

conducted by the Human Rights Campaign, respondents were asked

to identify as male, female or transgender, or to fill in their alterna-

tive gender. As reported by Ruth Tam in The Washington Post, 1,000

chose transgender, and about 600 wrote in an array of alternative

responses, from “gender neutral” to “gender fluid.”

Fluid gender identity may be gaining mainstream acceptance

among young people, but to the rest of the country, transgender

identities might be a new idea. smith says journalists have a special

responsibility to be accurate with their reporting of these communi-

ties.

“Media and pop culture are often the primary introduction to the

very concept of ‘transness,’ and oftentimes the information is pre-

sented irresponsibly,” smith says.

Complicating the issue is the fact that Chelsea Manning—a

woman recently convicted of committing crimes against the United

States—presents a problematic standard bearer for the transgender

community. Sarah McBride, special assistant for LGBT progress at

“People internalize the message that it's acceptable

to treat trans women like this: to call people the

wrong name or deliberately use the wrong pronoun.”


the Center for American Progress and a transgender woman, cau-

tions against making judgment calls against these two different

parts of Manning’s identity.

“I think this gives us an opportunity to show that trans people are

just as complicated as non-transgender people,” McBride says. “The

moment that we allow a person’s actions to warrant disrespectful

treatment and the removal of their identity, we acknowledge that

everyone’s identity is therefore entirely contingent on their actions,

and you remove that person’s agency and the agency of the entire

trans community.”

Angie Chuang is a former race and ethnicity reporter at the Orego-

nian and a journalism professor at American University. She says the

current confusion over how to term the transgender community is

not unlike older debates on terminology for ethnic communities.

“In general, mainstream journalism does not adapt well to things

that are new and unfamiliar,” Chuang says. “Unfortunately national

news media has not had a lot of experience writing about transgen-

der people. This is a very new thing—especially compared with other

groups that the news media has struggled with representing.”

Indeed, evidence exists that transgender people have been around

for as long as cisgender people (those whose gender identity corre-

sponds to the gender they were assigned at birth). Use of preferred

gender pronouns grew more widespread in the 1990s when writers

like Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble and Kate Bornstein in

her book Gender Outlaw problematized the assumption of universal

or inherent genders.

Regardless, many journalists seem to agree that the media is not

ready to embrace nontraditional gender pronouns yet. It may be some

time before s.e. smith’s preferred “ou” and Ascher Thomas’s “they”

find their way into journalism. smith says it has to do with a sort of

trauma cisgender people feel when asked to confirm their gender.

“They’re offended at the idea that someone doesn’t want to make

assumptions based on gender,” smith says. “Many cisgender people

are made uncomfortable with the fact that trans people exist, and

they want to live in a world where gender is uncomplicated. Obvi-

ously in a world where gender is multi-faceted, on a spectrum, that’s

not going to be the case. So the result is people tend to lash out.”

Ensuring accuracy and respect in reporting about transgender

people and those who identify outside the gender binary shouldn't

Sensitive reporting about transgender people and those who iden-

tify outside the gender binary is the first step toward removing the

stigma associated with these groups. Chuang says the second step is

bringing these communities into the newsroom.

“I think having some more ‘out’ transgender journalists will help,”

Chuang says. “It would also be nice if there was somebody who had

firsthand knowledge, [so] when you’re faced with these kind of ques-

tions so you could say, ‘I’m struggling with this whole pronoun thing,

can you help me out?’”

Thomas admits that fluid gender identity is a hard concept for

some people to comprehend. They grow quiet, gesturing with their

hands as though literally trying to grasp their thoughts.

“There’s not always a way to convey what [gender] you want other

people to perceive, because what you convey might not match up

with what they see,” Thomas says finally. “But the most important

thing is that no one but me gets to decide if I’m taking the appropri-

ate steps in my gender expression.” •

be such a difficult hurdle to clear; it simply requires the journalist

to remain attentive during the interview process. A journalist’s craft

is dedicated to details—to disregard gender identity is to neglect the

facts of the story.

“Ideally, every journalist would check by directly asking a subject’s

correct gender pronouns,” smith says. “Especially when preparing any

kind of story on a subject that relates to trans activism, journalists

have a particular obligation to be careful, because they’re more likely

to be working in a community where nontraditional pronouns are

much more common.”

“I think [Chelsea Manning] gives us an op-

portunity to show that trans people are just as

complicated as non-transgender people.”

Lori McCue is a senior studying journalism. She is editor-in-chief of AWOL.

35%problematic

-good portrayal

12%considered fair, accurate, groundbreaking

40%cast as “victim”

21%

20%

cast as villian/killer

cast as sex workers

transgender character on broadcasttransgender character on cabletransgender character on streaming1

in the 2013-2014 television season, there was...

Source: GLAAD

of 102 epipsodes of television featuring transgendered characters between 2002-2012TRANSGENDER VISIBILITY IN SCRIPTED MEDIA

54%containednegative

representations

61%of episodes used anti-transgender

language

19


This past September marked the end of The Large Retailers Account-

ability Act of 2013, known alternatively as both DC’s living-wage bill and

the “Wal-Mart Bill.” The bill, passed by an 8-to-5 vote, was an attempt by

the DC City Council to raise DC’s minimum wage from $8.25 to $12.50 for

large retailers like Walmart and Target

The legislation named “large companies” as those with at least one

billion dollars in revenue and stores at least 75,000 square feet in size.

However, some saw the bill as a specific attack on Wal-Mart’s imminent

plans to open stores in the District, and Mayor Gray vetoed the bill.

“The bill is not a true living-wage bill because it would raise the minimum

wage only for a small fraction of the District’s workforce,” Gray explained

in a letter written to the council following his veto.

His sentiments mirrored those of Walmart spokesman Steven Restivo,

who repeatedly spoke out against the LRAA as ineffective public policy.

In a letter to the editor of Georgetown’s The Hoya, Restivo wrote, “the leg-

islation does not create a level playing field and imposes arbitrary costs

on only a handful of businesses in DC That’s bad public policy.” Wal-Mart

waged a strong campaign against the bill, creating the advocacy group

Don’t Block DC Progress to petition for support. After the council passed

the bill, the company even went as far as halting plans to open three

stores in the District. The Mayor’s veto set back into motion the com-

pany’s plans to expand into DC.

But what Mayor Gray failed to realize by defeating this bill is that it

offered a rare opportunity to endorse and enforce a policy that requires

large corporations—including big box stores like Wal-Mart—to treat its

workers in an ethical manner by paying them a fair wage to live on.

Timothy Noah, journalist and author of The Great Divergence: America’s

Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It, has spent years cov-

ering ever-increasing income inequality in the United States and cites

the lack of upward mobility for low wage workers as key component

of this growing divide. He says that the decline of the labor movement

is partly to blame for the inaction or lack of momentum in raising the

minimum wage, considering the movement's significant historic role in

improving the lives of workers.

Over the years, critics of raising the minimum wage to meet a more

“living wage” standard have argued that it eliminates low wage jobs when

small businesses cut costs by firing employees. This claim, however, is

an unreliable. In its attempt to raise the minimum wage, the Large Re-

tailers Accountability Act tried to bypass any mention of small business-

es and direct the legislation at those unduly benefitting from a depressed

minimum wage—big corporations.

This was not the first time Wal-Mart waged a minimum wage battle

with a major city. In 2006, the corporation similarly threatened to aban-

don plans to build stores in Chicago when the city council voted to force

big retail companies to pay employees $10 an hour with benefits. Former

Mayor Richard Daley stepped in and vetoed the measure. As of this year,

Wal-Mart has nine stores in Chicago.

The fact that Wal-Mart has repeatedly found itself in this position is

indicative of a larger economic struggle: low-wage workers propel large

corporations to sky-high profits while earning barely enough to survive.

As a result, efforts by public officials have shifted from merely raising

the minimum wage to attempts to force large retailers who employ the

majority of America’ s lowest paid workers to raise wages.

A look at the numbers only emphasizes the importance of holding

corporations like Wal-Mart accountable. A report by the National Em-

ployment Law Project found that 66% of low-wage workers are em-

ployed, not by small businesses, but rather by large corporations in a

strong financial position.

In fact, with a workforce of 1.4 million people, Wal-Mart is the larg-

est low-wage employer in the nation, just beating out McDonald's and

Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC. That workforce

helped deliver $469 billion in revenue for the company in fiscal year

2013. These high profits are made by a highly productive and effective

low wage workforce, which is why the legislation was an essential step

in making sure that the exploitation of workers by large corporations is

not protected by the minimum wage.

LIVING BELOW A LIVING WAGE

THE BARE MINIMUM By Linda Nyakundi // Illustration by Ellyse Stauffer

Large corporate detractors argue that increases in the minimum wage

would force businesses to cut their payrolls and reduce employment

opportunities. Wal-Mart employees currently earn on average $8.81

per hour—28 percent less than those who work for other large retailers.

Compare this amount to its rival retail chain Costco, which on average

pays its employees $21.96, yet somehow still manages to make a profit.

The myth that requiring Wal-Mart to pay $12.50 would hurt its bottom

line is nonsensical.

Established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the minimum

wage was meant to ensure the welfare of workers with a baseline wage

“Just paying rent, putting groceries on the table,

paying for quality daycare for their kids is a

virtual impossibility for a parent earning the

minimum wage in the DC region.”


of 25 cents. Since its inception the minimum wage rate has been raised

22 times, but in that time it has failed to keep up with the cost of liv-

ing. While the minimum wage rose from $1.60 to $7.25 between 1968

and 2009, its real purchasing power decreased due to inflation. When

adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage fell from $10.70 to $7.90.

As a result, minimum wage has become less of a tool to ensure the

welfare of workers and more of a means for enforcing and maintaining

greater income inequality. What once strived to serve as a “living wage,”

it has become nothing but a guarantee of the bare minimum.

At the moment, the only city to have made some noticeable strides is

San Francisco, with the highest mandated minimum wage in the coun-

try ($10.55). This is illustrative of where the minimum wage debate has

been stuck—at the super localized level.

In his State of the Union speech earlier this year, President Obama

claimed that the minimum wage should be increased and indexed to

the cost of living. Additionally, Senator Tom Harkin and Representative

George Miller have introduced legislation to establish a new minimum

wage of $10.10, a number in line with a study by the Center for Ameri-

can Progress that advocates a minimum wage of one half of the average

income.

NEWSWIRE

THERAPY ANIMALS IN DC

Humans and animals share a unique relationship of mutual companionship, making pet therapy and service animals

extremely effective. The psychological component of animal therapy provides benefits most standard therapies do not offer. Patients of all ages are reaping the benefits of therapy animals' intelligence and ability to empathize. According to Psychology Today, having pets make an individual healthier in general. Pet owners are at lower risk of heart at-tack, and on average live longer than people without pets. Dog owners also tend to walk farther, improving mental wellness, blood pressure and more. And as pet lovers can attest, animals just make us happier: A study conducted by the University of Missouri-Columbia found that petting a dog can release a number of hormones that are responsible for positive feelings, including serotonin, prolactin, and oxytocin. Today, many different animals are being used for pet therapy. While dogs, cats and horses were traditionally chosen, birds, fish, and even dolphins have been used as well. These different animals are used in a variety of settings, including hospitals, nursing homes, schools, farms, and even college campuses. Here in Washington, DC, we have some organizations that offer pet therapy locally.

The Children's Inn on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the home of Viola, a yellow Labrador Retriever that lives at the Children’s Inn and provides pet therapy to the patients and families. Viola, better known as Vi, is a retired Seeing Eye dog that joined the team of doctors in 2008, after passing the Delta Certification test for Certified Animal-Assistant Therapy Dogs. Vi was donated by Mars, Inc., along with a lifetime supply of dog food and veterinary care expenses, allowing her to continue to lift the spirits of children receiving treatments at the Inn. As well as offering comfort and companionship, these therapeutic approaches can teach les-sons in responsibility and friendship. Animals can even alert high risk individuals living alone of impending seizures or dia-betic related problems.

Another local establishment exploring new kinds of animal therapy is the Northern Virginia Therapeutic Riding Program in Clifton, Virginia. NVTRP works with a team of trained ther-apists and horses and specializes in hippotherapy, a form of physical and speech therapy guided by horses. Horses have unique personalities, allowing the therapist to choose the per-fect horse to fit the patient’s needs and objectives. A pony will best allow the therapist to utilize a hands-on-patient approach to work on balance and spatial awareness. A stubborn horse can teach an individual crucial lessons in patience. A gentle horse can provide a patient with improved self image and com-municative skills.

Raising public awareness is crucial to continue to promote funding for these important therapies. There is endless evi-dence of the value of pet related therapies and the benefits they can provide for many diverse populations and disorders.

-Nadine Rotundo

Linda Nyakundi is a senior studying political science.

She is a staff editor for AWOL.

“Low-wage workers propel large cor-porations to sky-high profits while earning barely enough to survive.”

Karla Walter, associate director of the American Worker Project at the

Center for American Progress, thinks large retailers have the power to raise

wage and benefit standards in D.C. and across the nation and must do so.

“Its extremely important that large retail employers pay family-sup-

porting wages and benefits,” Walter says. “Currently, many retail workers

struggle to afford even the basics. Just paying rent, putting groceries on

the table, paying for quality daycare for their kids is a virtual impossibil-

ity for a parent earning the minimum wage in the DC region.”

This refusal to pay a living wage has placed quite the burden on work-

ers and even public programs. A report by the House Committee on Edu-

cation and the Workforce found that workers at a single 300-employee

Walmart Supercenter store rely on almost $1 million in public benefits.

The report found that workers at a Wisconsin Walmart had to turn to

state welfare programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance

Program, school lunch programs, and Section 8 housing and others due

to low wages and benefits.

The current state of the minimum wage further punishes hard-work-

ing Americans as they put in many hours but receive little returns—all

while the major low-wage employers enjoy record profits. Conditions

such as these are why legislation like the LRAA is not arbitrary but nec-

essary in ensuring that workers can not only survive but also thrive. •

21


ART, CREATION, AND CULTURE:U ST. AND THE DISTRICT By Tyler Berg

The U Street Historic District has widely been considered the center of DC's music and art scene as far back as the 1920s. The area extending from 9th St. to 18th St. and Florida Avenue has acted as a breeding ground for creation and individualism in Washington for decades. Looking through the eyes of local artists gives context to the impact the jazz and street art movements continue to have on the District of Columbia.

A mural in the U Street metro station celebrates the DC jazz scene.



Tyler Berg is a freshman studying journalism.

Insightful words of Le Corbusier

stand out on Florida Avenue,

near the U Street historic district.

23


PROFESSOR PROFILE

FARHANG ERFANIBy Alexa Marie Kelly // Photo by Rain Freeman

Professor Farhang Erfani teaches philosophy at American University. Born and

raised in Iran, Erfani and his family fled the country during the Iranian Revolu-

tion, forced out as exiles. They lived in France before moving to the US to open a

French bakery, Le Caprice DC in Columbia Heights. Erfani studies and teaches

about the philosophy of Iranian film. He explains that because of the country’s

“barbaric” censorship, women cannot be touched on-screen. Since laws regarding

children are less restrictive, Iranian directors often rely on child actors to portray

complicated situations.

So do you have a particular example from a film that has sparked these kind of discussions?

The one that we use at the beginning of the semester is called Children

of Heaven, and it’s about a brother and sister who end up sharing one

pair of shoes because they lost one, and they actually schedule in a way

that one wears the pair of shoes then comes home, the other one gets

to wear it. Even though it’s a brother and sister they become a proxy of

a husband and wife practically, that have to organize their lives around

conditions that exist in order to make life work. A lot of it in film theory,

or philosophy of film, is about is the situation believable? For you to start

saying, 'I’m putting myself in their shoes.' There is a gap there with the

children. You don’t get to say, ‘Oh yeah, when I was eight I did that too.'

So it forces you to force yourself to identify with them because you know

what they’re trying to do. So it’s more than suspension of disbelief. But it

challenges the commonplace assumption that in order for identification

to work, that you need to have something that’s readily recognizable as

‘normal.’ Well this is evidently not the case. As in, the assumption that in

order for you to believe it, you say, ‘I’m kind of like this.’ You have to put

yourself in their shoes. And I picked that in part because literally...

There are shoes...

That’s right.

What was it like, growing up and leaving [Iran]?

The way I left...I was about nine, so it’s been a while. Some of my

first memories are of the Iranian Revolution and being on my father’s

shoulders, just seeing the sea of people and seeing the society turn up-

side down. My parents were lawyers, and they refused to practice the

Islamic law that they found unfair, so they were disbarred and eventu-

ally became dissidents and exiled. Like all other exiles, they were literally

shooting at us as we were fleeing the country. When you leave on those

terms, there’s always a sense that you can’t look back. Iran always stays



there for me because it’s a not a sense that I left that behind. We were

forced out.

So you consider yourself part of that second wave (of immigrants)?

I would be in a sense because I was not kicked out as an adult but

as a child. So it’s different, but my consciousness was shaped by that

experience. My parents will only say they’re Iranian. At best, I would

say Iranian American, but without the hyphen. The hyphen has a

fusion that I don’t sense. A gluing together of the two.

What about French, do you consider yourself French at all?

I have citizenship, but no. France is always part of me in a sense.

The French language very much is part of me. I read it daily. It was

a country where I spent about a third of my life, so it’s important to

me. In France, they have what they call the law of assimilation. They

have no hyphens. You are purely French. Regardless of what you do,

they remind you that you’re not it. So the forms of racism and dis-

crimination were overwhelming. Here you just take it as a fact of

life, and you deal with it. There it was crushing. Because there was

no real future.

What sort of things did you face there?

Oh all kinds of discrimination, but the issue was actually the fu-

ture. As in, I could have never become a university professor there.

Or almost impossible.

Tell me a little about your bakery.

Actually it goes with the same identity issue. The bakery was a

family dream nearly two decades in the making. At the end of high

school, when I came to the US, the idea was they would follow not

long after. My brother came to the US; my sister then moved, but

[my parents] still weren’t done in France. They had a tiny little busi-

ness. It wasn’t a bakery, and my mother always liked being a baker.

She was always a good amateur one so she started training there.

What was their business?

Just a small retail shop in northeast France, and by the time they

could sell it and come here, it turned out to be 2009. It was 14 years

after I came. It was supposed to be almost immediately after I came.

Even when it came to looking for jobs after grad school, I only looked

for big cities, not only for my own sake but because I knew sooner

or later this bakery would come, and I needed to be in a place where

it could support a bakery of this kind, and DC was perfect for it in

some ways. When they came, it took another two years before the

opening, and it’s, you know, it’s been I want to say just as hard as I

expected but harder. It’s wonderful because it’s home. I didn’t see

them except for visits for many many years, and then now they live

a block away, and I get to see them daily.

Do you bake?

Thankfully, no. It’s better for the bakery if I don’t, and there are

enough other tasks at which I’m better suited than baking.

Such as?

All the dealing with the world outside the kitchen. Starting from

building the website, being there to deal with vendors, anything that

it takes. And just helping like going to do the big wholesale shopping

to going to lift the 50 pound bags of flour. Because if it’s not me my

father does it, and during the school year he does most of it, cause I

don’t have as much time.

My students come there all the time.There’s a long standing tradi-

tion of philosophy in cafes. The French like that. That part of France

I like.

I like students. This is what I love about AU most. I would never

trade this student body for anything else I ever had.

Why are we the best?

I would say these students may not be at times on paper the most

interesting, but they are always the most interested students I’ve ever

seen. The issue is not, who are you already? Because that’s why you’re

in college, you got to form that. What I found amazing about AU is that

they are interested in everything. So if you pitch it right, they will go

as far as possible. There have been times when I thought, okay, they

are just going to start throwing books at me because it’s too hard. But I

kept raising the bar, and I’m floored by how students follow everything.

For me in a sense philosophy saved my life because when I was a

refugee, I was so confused. I grew up on Erfani Street. That’s how privi-

leged we were. Going from there to being a refugee and lost in camps,

it’s a long journey. When everybody was in absolute agony and pain of

exile, my parents asked questions, and we didn’t have answers but they

kept asking questions, and asking questions even though there are no

answers. A lot of other people I grew up with, other very intelligent

people my age, or who would be my age, many of them didn’t survive

the experience, and I recognize that I am unusually lucky for a refugee.

Days that I teach I wear black, not as in mourning, but as a remem-

brance of all the other ones who were as smart if not smarter than me

but didn’t make it. So it humbles me. It sort of brings me back to the

obligation or I survived it. I got so lucky. It is the cliché that the journey

matters, not the destination, but for me it was truly the space that al-

lowed me to work through not knowing who I am anymore.

I never think of it as, “This is abstract and not practical.” It was the

most practical thing for me in the world. It saved my life. In Iran, it is

considered one of the highest pursuits. Here it’s sometimes been dis-

missed. I don’t get it. •

“I would say [I'm] Iranian American, but without the hyphen. The hyphen has a fusion that I don't sense. A gluing together of the two.”

Alexa Marie Kelly is a sophomore stuying public communication. She is

AWOL's web editor.

25


Across the Anacostia River lies the least-

known Smithsonian museum. For years, this

small, isolated museum was one of the only

branches of the Smithsonian dedicated to

the African American experience. Since its

founding in 1967, the Anacostia Museum and

Center for African American History and Cul-

ture has been unique.

Then, in 2003, the federal government

broke ground on a much bigger venture—the

National Museum of African American His-

tory and Culture. The project soon began

amassing new collections, exhibits and a

multi-million dollar facility on the National

Mall. The Smithsonian suddenly had two

very similar branches.

"They couldn't have two museums with the

same mission," Anacostia Museum Director

Camille Akeju said. So, in 2007, Anacostia’s

museum changed its name to something

significantly less ambitious: The Anacos-

tia Community Museum. Ever since, it has

turned its gaze inward.

The museum's driving force also shrank in

a thematic sense: It is no longer the "Center"

for black history and culture. Now the mu-

seum seeks to tell urban and African Ameri-

can stories, "from a community perspective,"

according to Akeju.

The museum’s director, however, remains

optimistic about the new direction.

"It's not often that a museum gets to rein-

vent itself," Akeju said. "We have to stay true

to the community we're housed in." The mu-

seum’s revamped mission seeks to connect

the issues facing Anacostia with issues in

urban areas worldwide.

Most recently, the museum connected

with the community through its exhibition

"Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waterways and

Civic Engagement." The exhibition mainly

focused on the Anacostia River, tracing the

ways that surrounding communities have

"used and abused" its resources, Akeju said.

In connecting the local community to the

outside world, the exhibition also mentions

similar issues of pollution in rivers around

the world. Pittsburgh, London and Shanghai

are all included.

“These are contemporary issues that reso-

nate through the world,” Akeju said. “It lets

people know that other communities are go-

ing through the same thing.”

The ACM is the only museum in the Smith-

sonian system that runs year-round elemen-

tary education programs. In conjunction

with its last exhibition, the program took lo-

cal elementary and middle schoolers to clean

up the Anacostia riverbed and learn about

environmental science. For its next exhibi-

tion on beadwork in South Africa, children

will focus on the arts. The museum also runs

various preservation programs, including an

ongoing project to record the oral histories of

surrounding residents.

And yet for all these services, it sometimes

seems as though the value of the ACM is ig-

nored. Akeju said resources, space and staff

are all tight.

“[The ACM] has a lot of potential that isn’t

being used,” said Kathryn Gillon, an AU stu-

dent and former ACM intern.

Gillon believes that some of these prob-

lems stem from the museum’s location: “It’s

just really inaccessible.”

The museum is a 15 minute drive from the

nearest metro station, or about a half hour

walk. Additionally, it is nestled among houses,

in a site that Akeju calls “beautiful,” but not

as practical as, say, the National Mall.

Furthermore, the resources available to

visitors are not widely advertised, Gillon said.

“There’s a free shuttle from the Mall on week-

ends,” Gillon said. “Nobody knows about it.”

In this way, despite its best efforts, the mu-

seum reflects the most unfortunate aspects

of its neighborhood. The ACM suffers from

the same lack of services and infrastructure

as Anacostia itself. Transportation in the area

is so scarce that visitors can have a hard time

catching a cab to or from the museum.

“There’s no economic incentive to go over

the [Anacostia] river because drivers think

they won’t get a fare back,” Akeju said. “It’s

ridiculous; plenty of people in Southeast

would like to take a cab, but they can’t be-

cause there are never any around.”

Gillon agreed that while the museum does

provide a lot of resources, “a lot can be done

to make it better.”

“What we need to do is re-brand ourselves

and then get the word out,” Akeju said.

But the process won’t be easy. Money is

tight. Akeju explained that the museum re-

quires “about two or three big donors that

really believe in the mission of the museum.”

ACM’s new mission provides a chance for

it to rise to the prominence of other Smithso-

nian institutions. The museum sits far from

the center of the city, the Mall and the soon-

to-be-opened NMAAHC. For now, it will con-

tinue to serve its neighborhood, but in the

future its influence may grow.

“There is such an opportunity for this mu-

seum,” Akeju said. •

TRANSFORMATIONS AT THE ANACOSTIA MUSEUM

A HIDDEN HISTORY LESSONBy Chloe Johnson // Photo by Rain Freeman

Chloe Johnson is a sophomore studying journalism.

The architecture of the Anacostia Community Museum is inspired by the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and African kente cloth.


John Shackelford has been the supervisor at Ohev Sholom Cemetery for

15 years. The 73-year-old Anacostia native mostly ignored my questions

about his experiences at the cemetery and instead chose to enlighten me—a

20-something aspiring journalist who apparently need some guidance—with

life advice.

1. Living a “street life” ain’t so glamorous.

“Living the street life supposedly teaches you how to ‘do people.’

Look around: All you’ll be doing is time.”

2. Be honest. Always.

“An exciting truth will always go farther than an exciting lie.”

3. History is not dead. Appreciate it.

“There are a lot of books on Anacostia that might tickle your funny

bone… There’s a lot of history out here in Southeast, and a lot of these

youngsters don’t know nothing.”

4. Any time you can get a family together, it’s a blessing.

“Every time my family gets together for the holidays, we roll in with

a rented bus and everything.”

5. Don’t settle for jobs in construction, landscaping or janitorial services.

“Any young person take a job like this… well, there’s something he

can do better. And if he does come around, Imma work the hell out

of him.”

6. Think about being an accountant.

“If you find out you’re not cut out for [journalism], think about being

an accountant.”

7. Have kids, and have them now.

“Right now as a young [person], you do you and start gettin’ to the

spot. But pretty soon you’re gonna have to start raising your kids –

you gotta do your eight hours at work and come home.”

8. Don’t sacrifice your love off the game for more money.

“These guys makin’ all this money, they don’t seem to be playin.’ I

mean, really playin.’ They’ve got no heart in the game and it’s not

about winning anymore. Now, it’s about come the 15th or the 30th of

the month, they have a check waitin’ in the bank.”

9. You need three kinds of education: school, religion and home upbringing.

“No education, ain’t nothing left for you.”

10. Ghosts aren’t real, but spirits are.

(After Shackelford's 15 years of working in a cemetery, I had to ask.)

“A ghost is something you can see in your awakened life, some im-

age coming out of some mud hole in the ground. I haven’t seen one

of those yet. But a spirit – that’s something you feel. Kinda like what

we’re doing now. You feel a spirit when you can relate to somebody.” •

TOP 10 INSIGHTS FOR 20-SOMETHINGS

FROM AN ANACOSTIAN CEMETERY WORKERWords and Photo by Maya Kosover

Cemetery Supervisor John Shackelford on site at Ohev Sholom Cemetery

Maya Kosover is a senior studying print journalism

27

DC AT ITS HEIGHTPHOTO ESSAY P. 15

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