As noted in Testimony to the Council of the District of Columbia on Thursday, March 12, 2015: “Our 2016 Fully Adjusted Return® forecast for the City suggests a crisis may be coming soon in the August/October (2015) timeframe."
(The testimony can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx3S91AlzNJ4RGF0WTZQd05Ha3M/view?usp=sharing and https://youtu.be/rlr_DomOais below:)
One newspaper recently reported a "growing fear that the District is less safe. This fear resides with the City’s gentrifiers, not its natives, since Black male DC natives have been subject to elevated
murder risk for decades. The truth is that as long as Blacks are the victims, Washington, DC's murder rate has never been a concern for the DC City Council or their masters, the Congress of the United States, our Constitutionally anointed overseers.
Failing to recognize that synthetic drugs, domestic violence, and illegal guns are all factors in the increase in homicides anchors this lack of actual concern to a desire on the part of the Congress and the City Council to score political points on the backs of the DC victims, again, as long as those victims are Black. The lack of concern also shows up in other ways:
· “The D.C. Council gave..$33 million in tax breaks for LivingSocial to keep the growing company in the District ..yet, LivingSocial has no male African-American DC natives in the management ranks.
· The City recently 'sold' the former site of the R.L. Christian Library at 1300 H Street NE to FundRise, another DC firm that operates in a discriminatory manner with respect to employment
and with respect to offering development or investment opportunities to African Americans."
· And, then, there's this: "District officials,,(spent) more than $475,000 during their visit to South by Southwest in March..to convert a restaurant near Austin’s convention center into a
'We DC' lounge and work space during the day, and a party venue for attendees to socialize at night. The rental and food costs alone would be $251,500 over five days." Really? We spent $300 creating a "South by Southeast" conference focused on Black tech talent in Anacostia. (See: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/martin-marion-tech-william-michael-cunningham-am-mba?trk=pulse_spock-articles)
To deal with the crisis the City has proposed sending in the Police, having unveiled a crisis management plan that calls for “deploying more police, expanding police powers of search and seizure, targeting parolees, spending more money on crime-fighting tools such as surveillance cameras, GPS tracking and forensic technology.”
Our most recent DC forecast suggests these “solutions” are not likely to work, since they lack a collaborative nature and confirm that the City will not seek assistance from the whole community. This, in turn, takes us back to where we started: #BlackLivesDontMatterToDC
(The testimony can be found at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx3S91AlzNJ4RGF0WTZQd05Ha3M/view?usp=sharing and https://youtu.be/rlr_DomOais below:)
One newspaper recently reported a "growing fear that the District is less safe. This fear resides with the City’s gentrifiers, not its natives, since Black male DC natives have been subject to elevated
murder risk for decades. The truth is that as long as Blacks are the victims, Washington, DC's murder rate has never been a concern for the DC City Council or their masters, the Congress of the United States, our Constitutionally anointed overseers.
Failing to recognize that synthetic drugs, domestic violence, and illegal guns are all factors in the increase in homicides anchors this lack of actual concern to a desire on the part of the Congress and the City Council to score political points on the backs of the DC victims, again, as long as those victims are Black. The lack of concern also shows up in other ways:
· “The D.C. Council gave..$33 million in tax breaks for LivingSocial to keep the growing company in the District ..yet, LivingSocial has no male African-American DC natives in the management ranks.
· The City recently 'sold' the former site of the R.L. Christian Library at 1300 H Street NE to FundRise, another DC firm that operates in a discriminatory manner with respect to employment
and with respect to offering development or investment opportunities to African Americans."
· And, then, there's this: "District officials,,(spent) more than $475,000 during their visit to South by Southwest in March..to convert a restaurant near Austin’s convention center into a
'We DC' lounge and work space during the day, and a party venue for attendees to socialize at night. The rental and food costs alone would be $251,500 over five days." Really? We spent $300 creating a "South by Southeast" conference focused on Black tech talent in Anacostia. (See: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/martin-marion-tech-william-michael-cunningham-am-mba?trk=pulse_spock-articles)
To deal with the crisis the City has proposed sending in the Police, having unveiled a crisis management plan that calls for “deploying more police, expanding police powers of search and seizure, targeting parolees, spending more money on crime-fighting tools such as surveillance cameras, GPS tracking and forensic technology.”
Our most recent DC forecast suggests these “solutions” are not likely to work, since they lack a collaborative nature and confirm that the City will not seek assistance from the whole community. This, in turn, takes us back to where we started: #BlackLivesDontMatterToDC