Getting to Know the DC Council Vol 3: Mary Cheh and the Transportation Committee + Duende District
Welcome to another Thursday my Runners,
Are you ready to do some activism?
Have I mentioned I’m obsessed with Magic Mike XXL? I will fight you.
This week I am continuing my ongoing series on DC’s Councilmembers with Councilmember Cheh of Ward 3. You can read my profiles on Charles Allen of Ward 6, and at-large Councilmember Anita Bonds on the blog.
I also have a special treat for you: an interview with my friend Angela Spring, who is trying to build an intersectional bookstore in DC. Read about her mission and how you can support it in Topic 1.
Small Immediate Acts of Resistance
That are never calling your Senator or Representative
- Make your weekly calls for Paid Family Leave and the DC Budget. Last week (and the week before…I am going to keep doing it!) I asked you guys to sign up to make calls alongside Jews United for Justice every Friday in April and May for Paid Family Leave, and every Thursday in April and May for other budget priorities like fair housing. Don’t forget to make your calls this week! They only take a minute and if you look at those JUFJ pages, they provide the script for you. This week we are calling Chariman Mendelson and asking him not to cut the estate tax in DC, and rather to use the money from that tax cut to fund Paid Family Leave or to put more money into Fair Housing grants. The tax cuts would raise the threshold on inherited estates that pay taxes from $3 million to $5 million, so now those poor, unfortunate $4 million estate owners won’t have to pay taxes anymore…meanwhile DC schools are getting budget cuts. Call the Chariman and urge him to fund priorities for people other than DC’s wealthiest residents.
- Sign up to help local DC workers strike on May Day. Several DC advocacy groups are organizing a general strike on May 1. DC Jobs with Justice has created Solidarity Squad for people to stay tuned into to worker’s rights and other social justice issues in DC, and they are looking for volunteers to help make signs, escort striking workers the day of the protest, and more. Fill out their volunteer form or just spread the word about May Day.
- Donate money for Rob Quist in Montana and/or John Ossoff in Georgia. This week, John Ossoff, running to fill Tom Price’s vacated House of Representatives seat in Georgia’s 6th district, narrowly missed getting the 50% of the vote he needed to avoid a runoff election for the seat. Despite his impressive margin of victory — 48% of the vote while the top Republican challenger for around 17% — he is still going to need all of our efforts to win in June. Make no mistake, the entire weight of the Republican establishment is going to fight tooth and nail for this seat, so we can’t back down. Donate to John Ossoff, but I wouldn’t recommend phone banking. He has gotten some bad press for having too many volunteers from out of state. And, have you heard of Rob Quist, a Democrat who is running in Montana who actually has a shot at winning?? Well, now you have. Donate to him here. If you can’t donate, at the very least don’t let take your eyes off of these races.
Topic 1: Duende District Bookstore
My good friend Angela Spring, former floor manager at Politics and Prose bookstore in DC, is trying to open a bookstore of her own. Angela is Latinx, and both the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants, and she has a dream of opening an intersectional bookstore that is run by people of color from the ground up, and that caters to writers and readers of color. Creating spaces for people of color in this political climate is a radical and difficult thing to do. I think a lot of us on the left have been feeling isolated and depressed since November, so I think it’s really important that inclusive and welcoming spaces like this exist in DC.
Angela’s store, which is currently in pop-up form at Artomatic in Arlington through May 6, is called Duende District, and their mission is to create a truly intersectional bookstore in the community. There is currently a Kickstarter for Duende District to open more pop-ups while Angela looks for a physical location. Angela and Duende District have already been featured in the Huffington Post and Bustle, just to name a couple of their press successes.
I interviewed Angela, the founder, owner, and idea lady behind Duende District about her mission and goals for her bookstore. I hope you enjoy her perspective on inclusive spaces as political resistance, and maybe you can give her Kickstarter campaign a few dollars or visit her at Artomatic. You can also follow Duende District on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, for updates on their progress.
Can you tell us the general idea and motivation behind Duende District.
The concept and vision for Duende District is very simple — it is a bookstore owned and operated by a majority people of color who will curate and create a gorgeous, warm, welcoming space and experience for everyone to participate in.
The motivation came from the deep need for more bookstore owners of color (I’m Latinx and the daughter/granddaughter of Central and Latin American immigrants) and professionals of color, who are few and far between in the book industry, to rise into senior positions that we do not usually occupy.
We are creating a beautiful, interactive conversation and space and inviting all people to come in and start truly healing together.
Can you tell my readers a little bit about your family’s experience being immigrants, and what about that experience has been really relevant to your mission of starting Duende District?
My mother and grandmother immigrated from Panama to New York City in 1959 because my grandmother was a single mother and couldn’t make enough working in the canal to stay close to my mother or support them both. When they came to America, my mother was nine years old and spoke only Spanish and went to a Catholic school where the nuns smacked her with a ruler anytime she spoke English.
So she taught herself to speak English by reading books. It is my mother who has always cultivated my love of reading since I was a child. She had bookshelves upon bookshelves in our house and my parents took me and my brothers to bookstores every week. Both my parents came from very poor backgrounds (my father is the son of a West Virginian coal miner) but both had mothers who knew the value of education and did everything they could to help their children succeed.
Still, when my mother was completing her doctorate in grad school in West Virginia, her dissertation adviser refused to sign off on her work because he didn’t think a Hispanic woman should have a PhD. My father fought for her at the school but he could — he was a white man in the medical school. What if he hadn’t been there? I know my mother would have fought but she didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer. What do you do when you’re faced with that situation? That’s just one of many stories she, and others in the immigrant community, have.
Though I identify as Latinx, I am biracial, have pale skin and I grew up in an upper middle-class lifestyle. I have white privilege. But I am aware of it (more now than ever before) and mine and my family’s experiences shape who I am. I’ve seen and experienced how unconsciously easy it is to deny someone a seat at a table due to the conditioning of their privilege.
Duende District is about consciously acknowledging that disparity and recalibrating the power, making empowering people of color to create a space and conversation for us all the mission. That’s real inclusivity and intersectionality.
Your mission with Duende District is to create an intersectional space for readers in DC. Were you inspired to move faster with your goal of opening a bookstore because of recent political events? Do you see opening this bookstore as a political act or as part of the resistance movement in some way, and if so how?
Well, the 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent choices many people in our country made at the expense of so many has been a huge factor. I will say this — everything is political now. We are fighting for our lives. Many of us, especially the black and African-American communities, have been fighting for our lives since birth. That’s how deadly serious this is. Building Duende District is part of my resistance effort because I know it will touch, enrich and empower many who need it.
I think many of us are coming to the realization that it’s time to create new spaces, which will then help the spaces that already exist become stronger and more inclusive. We look at who’s in the White House, these white men hoarding the majority of world’s wealth and trying to take even more for themselves, including many of our basic rights and any progress we’ve made.
Well, they can’t have it. I say this a lot: creation is the most effective weapon against destruction. This affects all of us and if you’re reading this wonderful newsletter, then you’re already fighting back and understand the power of combining all our voices and efforts in every sphere.
That’s what Duende District is and what we can do together.
I know you’re still in the early stages, but what are your plans, besides featuring authors of color, for making Duende part of a larger community of inclusivity?
Early days, but productive. We’ve already partnered with organizations like 826DC and we are going everywhere in the DMV! The virtue of being mobile and intersectional is we get to have unlimited conversations and relationships with community organizations, programs, authors/illustrators, schools, businesses and individuals.
A bricks-and-mortar bookstore has a lot of overhead and makes little money just on the value of moving books as units. But that’s the traditional model of building a bookstore and it’s time to move on. If we want to figure out what a truly inclusive bookstore space is, then we need to enter into a new phase of how we build bookstores altogether. What better place to do that than in our nation’s capital?
What are some books you are excited to be featuring right now?
I’m excited about them all! But I always put Daisy Hernandez’s memoir about growing up in an immigrant Latino household, A Cup of Water Under My Bed, in people’s hands. For fiction, I love The Mothers, by Brit Bennett, and poetry Donika Kelly’s Bestiary.
What are some things people can do right now to support your mission? This can either be Duende District specifically, or if you’d like to plug other diverse businesses, authors, or programs, feel free to do so.
The biggest thing right now is to help support my Kickstarter campaign to go fully mobile in the DMV, whether it’s pledging yourself or doing a few personal asks for others to pledge. If we can exceed my $9,000 goal, then we’ll have some money to put into the bricks-and-mortar store and prove to potential investors that this intersectional business model is a success! Here’s the link: kck.st/2piYhqE
The next big thing you can do is: talk to me! I think a bookstore only truly succeeds when it is made up of many voices, both inside and out. So if you know someone I should talk to, or have ideas, or want Duende District to do a pop-up in your neighborhood, please let me know. Anyone can email me at duendedistrict@gmail.com. And you can visit our very first pop-up venture at Artomatic on the 3rd floor, Wed-Sun through May 6!
Topic 2: Mary Cheh, Ward 3, and the Committee on Transportation and the Environment
Mary Cheh, the Councilmember for Ward 3, has been on the DC Council since 2007.
I guess you’ll never know….Okay you caught me. that’s Doctor Pulaski from
The Next Generation on top. Can’t fool you guys!
If you recall my discussion on DC Police Chief Peter Newsham from a few weeks ago, and the scandal of the DC Police Department tying up hundreds of peaceful protesters, it might interest you to know that Mary Cheh served as special council to the Judiciary Committee’s investigation into that incident, and helped write the report that led to eventual police department reform in the handling of protesters. Councilmember Cheh has also headed five major investigations while on the DC Council, including the investigation into the electronic voting machine failures in DC in 2008. Some of her notable legislation includes the Healthy Schools Act of 2010, which made breakfast free to all DC Public School and public charter school students in the District; and the Omnibus Election Reform Act of 2009, which allows young adults who willd be 18 by the time the next election rolls around to pre-register to vote. Councilmember Cheh is also a tenured professor at George Washington University School of Law.
Ward 3 in encompasses the American University/Tenleytown neighborhoods, as well as Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park, and Woodley Park.
According to 2010 demographic data, Ward 3 is about 83.5% white (for comparison, Ward 5, where I live, was about 16.5% white at the same time, thought I’m sure that has increased in the intervening years). The median income in Ward 3 is almost $175,000 a year, well above the current median income for DC overall, which is around $93,300.
Councilmember Cheh is currently the chair of the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, which includes DC DMV’s, the Department of Parks and Recreation…
…the Department of Public Works, and things like the Streetcar Project. Did you know that Mayor Bowser included another $280 million for the streetcar project in her FY18 budget? Does that sound like something you would support, given that Paid Family Leave, many fair housing projects, and other DC initiatives remain unfunded or underfunded? Well you might want to call Councilmember Cheh to let her know. This would also be the committee to call about money for WMATA — whether you think it’s too much or too little — and any environmental issues, obviously, such as DC’s water quality, to carbon emissions, to environmental impact studies. The other members of the Transportation Committee are Jack Evans of Ward 2, Kenyan McDuffie of Ward 5, Brandon Todd of Ward 4, and Charles Allen of Ward 6.
I asked Councilmember Cheh some questions about DC’s current political climate and she was kind enough to answer them for me below.
Question 1: What, in your mind, is the issue most under threat here in DC from the current administration and why? This can be anything from a specific law you think Congress may try to overturn, to a broad topic like DC’s budget.
The greatest threat would be challenges to the District’s right to self-governance. We’ve seen these challenges in the past with attacks on the District’s laws concerning marijuana, women’s reproductive health, needle exchange programs, and now with the Death with Dignity Act, and a republican Congress and White House have never been better situated to interfere in local affairs. Death with Dignity appears to be the first item with the new administration on the chopping block and, no matter what one’s opinions are on that bill, if the challenge to nullify it is successful then it will provide a blueprint for attacking any of the District’s laws and progressive initiatives.
Question 2: As a member of the Council, what are your priorities for DC in the coming months? Again, these can be specific legislation or just broad goals.
The Council is in the midst of the performance oversight season and will then address the District’s budget. The immediate goal is to properly conduct oversight and the evaluation of our agencies’ performance (the public is welcome to testify and help identify areas of excellence and needs for improvement). In addition to introductions, other legislative goals at the beginning of the new Council Period include reintroducing and advocating for previous bills that either did not receive a hearing or move through the legislative process in the last two years.
Question 3: If you could tell the residents of DC to do one thing — either support one cause, take one action, join one group, etc — to help advance progressive causes in DC and/or keep DC independent, what would it be? (You could actually list a couple of things here if you’d like.)
Residents should prepare to participate in local efforts to defend the District. That may include any of the Hands Off DC events or working groups, attending rallies and protests, calling the offices of Congressmen (such as the effort to call Rep. Jason Chaffetz), and –perhaps most importantly, reach out to friends and family members in other states to have them participate as well. District residents can assemble, call, and protest Congressional meddling all they want, but ultimately members of Congress will be most responsive to their own constituency. We need unity across the country for the last colony, and we need others to take a stand for us, with us.
You can reply to this newsletter or email me at theforerunnerletter@gmail.com with your thoughts, criticisms, or ideas. Let me know if you did any of the things I recommended or found anything useful or informative. I ❤ feedback! Check out my Medium page if you’d prefer a blogged version of this newsletter or would like to read any of my previous issues. Last week’s letter was on At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds and Syria.
Follow me on Twitter at @speaknojessica. And definitely get your friends to subscribe to The ForeRunner at http://tinyletter.com/theforerunner because where else will you get someone randomly assigning the personalities of Star Trek characters to DC’s elected officials? As always, I end with a dog pic to cheer you up and DC Events for this week all the way at the bottom.
In solidarity,
JM
Event link round up (local to DC unless otherwise noted):
April 8–23: For those not in DC, Congress is on a two week recess and the Indivisible Guide and MoveOn.org are hosting another Resistance Recess. Attend a townhall. You got this.
April 20: Movement for Black Lives General Assembly hosted by Black Lives Matter DC
April 20: Clashing Identities: The Power of Intersectional Feminism, hosted by WIN (the Women’s Information Network)
April 21: Rally to Tell the Department of Education to Enforce Title IX, during the day, hosted by Know Your Title IX
April 22 (nationwide): The March for Science, hosted by Science
April 22: United for Action: South Asian Americans March for Justice, hosted by South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)
April 23 (Fairfax, VA): 2017 NOVA Summit: How Progressives Win, hosted by Northern Virginia Democrats, RSVP required
April 23: Picnic to fund #PaidLeave4DC, hosted by Jews United for Justice, RSVP required
April 23: Teach-In on Climate Change hosted by Politics and Prose Bookstore
April 23 (Bethesda, Maryland): Launching Communities United Against Hate — Montgomery County, hosted by Jews United for Justice and several local MoCo groups, RSVP required
April 24 (Rockville, MD): Rally to Preserve MoCo’s Social Safety Net, hosted by Jews United for Justice and Nonprofit Montgomery, RSVP required
April 25: Know Your Rights: Workshop for Federal Employees, hosted by Indivisible MoCo and Indivisible NW DC. RSVP required
