ON JOBS:   The working class, including enslaved Africans and their descendants both before and after enslavement, other minorities and poor whites has produced everything in this powerful country.   We must ensure that public policy initiatives recognize this contribution as an outcome of the policies.  I support raising the minimum wage to a living wage with paid sick, personal and vacation leave and that payment of overtime for all employees working beyond the 8-hour day be mandatory.  I also support six months of fully paid parental leave for all employees (men and/or women) either giving birth or adopting one or more children.  Additionally I will work vigorously to ensure creation and support for infrastructures that produce green jobs. All workers work to support themselves and their families and the wages they earn and the conditions under which they work must support them in that goal.  Unlike others, I will not tie workers’ health care and insurance to their employment, but will work to secure their entitlement to healthcare whether they are employed or not.  As a state, I will ensure that the 60% of non-residents who work here daily but do not pay taxes here will do so.  I will fight to bring jobs and/or job-producing industries to the District to relieve our unemployment crisis.  I will support legislation to shift policy from incarceration to employment, entitled “Jobs not Jails!”

ON HEALTH CARE:   The struggle for universal health care has been underway in this country for a century or more, long supported by unions and other worker organizations.  I worked with CongressmanJohn Conyers in the past, organizing a conference in support of H.R. 676, Medicaid for All, bringing together Unions, Physicians for a National Health Plan, Gray Panthers, and many others to discuss strategy to secure this benefit.  Though this battle was lost in the past, I will work for and support universal single-payer health care where all residents are entitled to health care without regard to pre-existing conditions by the provider of their choice, care that is fully paid by the federal government, without any requirement to obtain or maintain insurance.

ON UNIONS:  Unions provide workers/employees with an entity to support their entitlement to safe working conditions, fair bargaining with employers, and further support the maintenance of safe and healthful workplaces which benefits both workers and employers.  I will work for and support ensuring all workers’ rights to unionize in their own interests and further require all employers to recognize and support that right without interference; and close loopholes allowing employers to ship/outsource jobs overseas.

ON EDUCATION: Free public education is a legacy to this country emerging from an alliance between ex-sharecroppers and ex-slaves in South Carolina committed to securing education for their children with the understanding that it was the surest vehicle for securing the best future possible for them; it has been under attack ever since, most recently through charter schools and other privatizing schemes.  I support fully funded public education that speaks to the needs of our society for all residents, from birth to death, securing a commitment from them to give back to their communities, i.e., as carpenters, teachers, transportation specialists, etc., offering incentives and other benefits.  I will work to ensure that our public education system, from high school to college, is directly tailored to the skill needs of our community, and that our children will be trained to be disciplined, responsible, concerned, committed contributors to our society.

ON HOUSING:  Ever since there was “no room at the inn” in the time of historical Jesus, there has been conflict between tenants and landlords.  While this is a capitalist economy that idolizes the importance of profit, this government has the responsibility to provide for the ‘least of these.’   I support policy for the full funding of public housing and its maintenance including returning billions that have been federally diverted from public housing for more than two decades, with requirements that residents pay no more than 30% of their income in rent; attend housing maintenance classes, be allowed to contribute their services at market scale in partial payment of their rent, and not be penalized for criminal history.  Recognizing that the housing boom and bust has left many of our nation’s residents victims of predatory lenders, under threat of foreclosure and otherwise unable to recognize their dream of homeownerships, I support legislating for an immediate moratorium on foreclosures while plans to support threatened homeowners’ transition are developed, curtailing questionable lending practices at any level, e.g., eliminating adjustable rate mortgages or balloon payments, etc., and imposing criminal penalties for institutions having participated in predatory lending at any level, resulting in loss of residents’ homes and dreams; and support the call for a D.C. municipal bank to replace the predatory lenders and better enable productive banking practices and policies.

ON SOCIAL WELFARE POLICY:   In 1986, President Clinton led the effort to “end welfare as we know it” and converted the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), ending the federal entitlement to income assistance and relegating welfare support to the states.  Welfare benefits often fail to reach the level of a State’s own determination of what income a family requires to live in the state, while also often not recognizing education as work, though it is well-documented that education plays the most critical role in preventing a person/family from falling into poverty.  I am a founding board member of the National Welfare Rights Union, NWRU, an organization of, by and for poor people in the United States building a social movement committed to ending poverty and ensuring a better world for our children and ourselves, dedicated to unity among low-income, public assistance recipients, and the unemployed.  I support the NWRU 8 Position Points to Dismantle Poverty in the U.S., which include A Guaranteed Annual Income; Universal Health Care with a Single Payer; Nationalization of Child Care; of Education including the Head Start Program; of Utilities; of Housing; and of Public Mass Transit; and Troop Withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan and no new deployments, thereby reducing the social costs of war. These policies will not only help this nation achieve its promise to poor and low-income people, it will free up the resources to truly make this country one of the people, by the people and for the people that can afford to act in their own interests.

ON PENSIONS & SOCIAL SECURITY:  We must provide for our residents and workers in the winter of their lives, much as we do provide for them in their dawn.  We have addressed children in the sections calling for nationalizing childcare, education, head start and healthcare.  We must also ensure that provisions are made for our retirees and seniors.  I support full funding for Social Security with the addition of expanding the collection of taxes on incomes over $96,000, as well as a fully funded pension system. I will work for legislation to ensure these provisions that will also seek to reclaim the surplus value lost through labor negotiations peculiar to our economic system, ending poverty among women and children.

ON TAXES: We currently have a tax system where major corporations and the rich do not pay their fair share, where workers pay more in taxes than their corporate employers.  I support a progressive tax system that includes allowing Bush tax cuts on the rich to expire, supporting a middle class tax cut, eliminating taxes on our poorest residents, and taking corporate money out of elections with a system of public financing.

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What would happen to the public housing units as collateral if the property is foreclosed on?  Suppose the private owner cannot pay the money back?  If it is a private entity owning the property, tenants will lose their rights currently enjoyed under law; especially their right to organize and have any substantive input in the future of the property.  Also, when a tenant lives in a PETRA property for two years, he/she can get a voucher to move anywhere they want into HUD-designated ‘opportunity neighborhoods’, thereby allowing them to jump over the thousands of people on the waiting list for either public housing units or vouchers – which today number about 26,000 people in DC alone.  But with the current state of the economy and double-digit inflation accompanied by double-digit unemployment on the horizon, the situation that created this problem will persist.

Housing advocates urge the government to put money into public housing as it has previously committed to but has not, which Tingling-Clemmons supports, that the $30 billlion which the federal government has withheld be immediately put back into public housing, and that tenant control be immediately reinstated.   Currently, the government puts 80% of its housing supports into supporting higher-income sectors in the form or abatements, tax credits, mortgage income deductions versus 20% to the low income population.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters had introduced promising legislation to preserve public housing, including:  a one to one replacement for any Public Housing unit torn down; allowing Public Housing Authorities to go to the public finance market with units insured by the Federal government; and proposes home-care training for Public Housing tenants.

‘Housing is a Right,’ declared Tingling-Clemmons, further stating, “We should stop the policy and practice of denying people public housing, jobs and training opportunities based on their criminal convictions and/or records (i.e., Ban the Box!), and Public Housing tenants should never pay more than 25% of their income for rent.  He is also demanding an end to predatory lending practices and more federal support to keep people in their homes and support for first-time buyers, to be paid for by increasing taxes on persons earning over $250,000 per year; and by ending U.S. support for wars, thus returning badly needed revenue to housing, job creation, education and health care for all.  When any of these human needs is affected, it has an impact on all the others.

We did a great deal of political work together in opposition to apartheid and in support of Africa; hunger and homelessness, anti-war, and employment for people of color.  We shared a love for and appreciation of people of color and a common determination to struggle against their plight.  We became friends in the early 1970s that ended with his death in the late 1990s after he had become an expatriate and moved to Guinea.  This picture was taken at Crampton Auditorium when he was last in the United States, raising funds to support his fight against the cancer that ultimately claimed his life.

Both numbers say that there is a serious problem with democracy in this country.  It is well known that students who do well in school do well because of parents who understand and support education of our young people.  It is also true that learning is a life-long process.

As a Delegate I will push for policies that would end this often hidden scourge on the society by increasing educational opportunities for both our children and their parents, which would address what I call an issue of national security – poverty.   ”Famous Amos”, standing with me in the photo, became a philanthropist making millions off of his cookies sold worldwide, and devoted much of his riches to literacy and education efforts.  He was especially sensitive to the issue of literacy, having struggled with illiteracy personally in his early life as he was becoming a success, and he funded many efforts to support expansion of literacy programs, and he read regularly on public television programs emphasizing the importance of literacy with his own story.   We shared both our passion for literacy and contact information after his keynote address.

I and Michele are founding members of the National Welfare Rights Union board and have been in the forefront of the fight to secure just treatment and income levels that enable families on welfare to “thrive, and not just survive.”  As delegate, I will work with local advocates to support raising basic benefits for the first time in 20 years for DC families on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), which replaced AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), more commonly known as welfare.  In Congress, I will seek to ensure that families receiving TANF will be able to have their educational efforts count as work, to better enable them to move off the program, with its lifetime limitations for support.

When Dick Gregory heard about the nightly vigils at Peace Park (Lafayette Park, across from the White House) that entire week, he came down to join the protestors stating, “this is the most important expression of solidarity that I have heard about on this critical issue!”

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The struggle for housing has all but intensified in the more recent times when it forced the U.S. to first produce public housing and its ugly history of segregation.  Although the problem of housing has been seen with race as key, it has always been class that is key.  In the 1960s and 70s, Jesse Gray, founding director of the National Tenant Organization, helped organize a series of tenant-led strikes in New York City to attain affordable housing.  Even in Washington D.C., in the mid-1980s, Mitch Snyder of the Community for Creative Non-Violence helped lead the struggle for legislation making shelter a right.  The National Union of the Homeless in the late 1980s spearheaded organizing in Philadelphia that inspired Skylight Productions to produce the film “Takeover” documenting their housing takeovers organized around the country on May Day in 1990.

Lorraine Hansberry’s stellar play, “A Raisin in the Sun” dramatized the struggle for housing for a typical working class Black family.  The race riots of the early 1900s – Oklahoma, Rosewood, Chicago, East St. Louis, all pointed to the struggle for that cherished yet denied commodity and how the housing market has been regulated in the United States.  One of the first reactions of the Klan, with the leadership of the rich and those who control the housing market, was to burn the housing of the community seeking to exercise its right, followed by running out of town leaders, teachers, and/or business owners.  These assaults on the working class’ need and demand for housing was to create and implement “redlining,” a discriminatory practice codified and maintained by the Federal Government.

The housing takeover campaigns – sometimes called “squatting” and broadly implemented with some success by such national organizations as ACORN and  the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign led by Cheri Honkala – have lessons to offer.  In order to successfully carry out squatting or takeovers, the organizers began with:

• FIRST informing the community of the group’s intentions and getting the affected community’s support of the action;
• Building an ethos and understanding that housing is a right and the working class has the right to find and secure shelter for its families;
• Spreading these ideas to communities across the U.S. that housing, as well as utilities and other necessary services, should be nationalized as a way of eliminating the inhumane way the capitalist system deals with the needs of the people who make (create) everything.

A luta continua, Rick Tingling-Clemmons

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aferster@railstotrails.org

www.andreafersterlaw.com

July 23, 2010

Hon. Adrian Fenty, Mayor

District of Columbia

One Judiciary Square, N.W

Washington, D.C. 20001

Dear Mayor Fenty:

I am writing on behalf of the Committee to Save Our Libraries, in response to the press release issued by the D.C. Public Library dated April 2, 2007, announcing the decision to proceed with demolition of the Benning Neighborhood Library, located at 3935 Benning Road, N.E.   According to the press release, demolition is scheduled to begin in May 2007.  The purpose of this letter is to advise you that Advisory Neighborhood Commission (“ANC”) 7D has not received the notice or opportunity to comment on the planned demolition and reconstruction of this library required by the ANC Act,  D.C. Code §§ 1-207.38(d); 1-309.10(b).

As you know, the ANC Act requires that the affected ANC as well as the ANC Commissioner representing the affected Single Member District be given 30-days written notice of all “district government actions or proposed actions, including  . . . (2) the intent to change the use of property owned or leased by or behalf of the government.”   D.C. Code § 1-309.10(b).    The decision to demolish the Benning Neighborhood Library, which was closed in 2004, is plainly a permanent change in the use of property owned by the government and subject to this notice requirement.  This notice requirement applies to all “independent agencies, boards, and commissions,” including the D.C. Public Library and the Board of Library Trustees.

The courts have emphasized the importance of this statutorily-required notice to ANCs in ensuring that the ANC is able to perform its statutory function of providing advice on proposed district government actions.  Kopff v. District of Columbia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, 381 A.2d 1372 (D.C. 1977).  This statutory function includes having the ANC’s “issues and concerns” be accorded “great weight” in a written agency decision on the proposed action.  “The written rationale of the decision shall articulate with particularity and precision the reasons why the [ANC] does or does not offer persuasive advice under the circumstances. In so doing, the government entity must articulate specific findings and conclusions with respect to each issue and concern raised by the [ANC]. “  D.C. Code § 1-309.10(d)(3)(A) and (B).

It is self-evident that, in order for the ANC to be accorded a meaningful opportunity to provide its views and receive the statutorily-required “great weight,” notice of the proposed action must be provided before the decision to take the action is made.   Here, however, there is no evidence that the D.C. Public Library or the Board of Library Trustees provided the ANC with a formal opportunity to comment prior to making a final decision to demolish the current Benning Road Neighborhood Library in favor of a newly-constructed library.

Minutes from meetings of the Board of Library Trustees provide no indication that any real consideration was given to the alternative of retaining and expanding the current library, which currently provides 18,000 square feet, and whose structure allows for the future addition of a second story over a portion of the original building.  According to the Hess Construction Design/Build Report dated July 2004, the new library will have only 14,000 square feet – even less space than the current one-story library – a size that precludes that library from serving many of the functions that are important to the community, including as a safe space for school children and senior citizens.

Until the issuance of the aforementioned press release in April 2007, the ANC was not aware that this decision had been made to completely demolish the Benning Neighborhood Library and construct a new library.  Instead, the sole efforts at public involvement involved the distribution of flyers soliciting general public input on “library issues and concerns,” and allowing some select community members to participate in “focus groups” and “stakeholders” meetings on the subject of public-private development opportunities.  None of these actions is a substitute for the required notice to the ANC and formal opportunity to comment at a meaningful point in the decision-making process.  To be meaningful, notice to the ANC must be provided before the government irrevocably takes proposed action to change the use of government-owned property.  There can be no doubt that demolition of the Benning Neighborhood Library constitutes irrevocable action.

On March 19, 2007, Mr. Rick Tingling-Clemmons, elected commissioner of ANC 7D05 (the affected ANC single member district), wrote to Ms. Ginnie Cooper, Chief Librarian, to express the ANC’s desire to retain and renovate the current Benning Library structure, as well as his concerns about the lack of notice and an opportunity to comment on key decisions respecting the library in violation of the ANC Act,  D.C. Code §§ 1-207.38(d); 1-309.10(b), 1-309.10(d)(3). Despite being directly placed on notice of the ANC’s concerns, the notice to proceed with demolition of the library was apparently issued by the D.C. Public Library on March 26, 2007.

It is clear that ANC 7D has been deprived of both its statutory right to notice of the final decision to demolish the Benning Neighborhood Library, and to have its comments be considered and accorded the statutorily-required “great weight.”  At this point, the ANC has been deprived of any ability to perform its statutory functions.  This violation can be cured only by formally rescinding the notice to proceed with demolition, and re-opening the decision-making process.  Only in this manner can the ANC be provided with notice of the proposed action (as opposed to post hoc notice of a fait accomplis) that allows the ANC a meaningful opportunity to perform its statutory function.  Final action cannot be taken until the D.C. Public Library responds to the ANC’s issues and concerns and accords them with the statutorily-required “great weight.”

Given that activities preparatory to demolition of the Benning Neighborhood Library are apparently now underway, please be advised that, unless the notice to proceed is rescinded immediately, residents of ANC 7D intend to take legal action to secure judicial review of the decision to demolish the library.  In the context of such an action, we will also seek immediate injunctive relief to preserve the status quo while the issues raised herein are being adjudicated.

In light of the foregoing, I request a response at your earliest convenience.  I can be reached at (202) 974-5142.

Sincerely,

Andrea C. Ferster

Counsel for Community to Save Our Libraries (C-SOL)

cc:  Ginnie Cooper, Chief Librarian

D.C. Public Library

John Hill, Chairman, DC Public Library Commission, and Federal City Council

Council C

Greetings friends, comrades, fellow justice-fighters and peace-lovers.  This letter is being submitted in my absence from this important conference that commemorates one of the most heinous, brutal and barbaric attacks at that time known to humankind – that was the dropping of the A and H bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, ushering in a new era.  Social and political views affecting how people all over the world changed the ways we all look at how we will deal with problems faced by freedom- and justice-lovers the world over.  The U.S. government has moved to become the world’s most feared country, because they saw what happened to Japan’s own imperialist effort.  The beginning of the new world order was taking its first steps as a so-called superpower… meaning “I’ve got the bomb so beware… or you will be next!!”  The USSR, as it was known then, developed its own bomb – followed by France, then China, Israel, Pakistan, India and South Africa (though not necessarily in that chronological order – nor are they the only ones) – and for more than 40 years the so-called “Cold War” held the world hostage with threats and counter threats of world annihilation.  The right wing in the U.S. invented a word for it – Armageddon.  These same right wing forces the world over have been operating as fascist states –fascism, where government and business work together.  During this period, some of the worst atrocities of Imperialism happened to so many countries that even the United Nations, founded on principes of equality for all, became a victim – with special countries that operate as plutocracies at home holding veto power over the will of the World, forcing people to go without justice.  There have been many years without a world war, yet many countries all over the world have been bullied and/or actually bombed into the stone age, i.e., Afghanistan, Iraq and others, all because they had something the Nuclear Boys wanted; and attacked to take their stuff!  Now, those of us who want peace are working tirelessly to get rid of the bomb, but none of the craziness started with the contraire – it all started with an imperialist aim and fight – in short, war.

The above-mentioned just barely touched upon the logical conclusion, that “Peace is not just the absence of war, but the presence of Justice”.  What does this mean?  Real justice, i.e., housing, food, jobs, education, medical services, all social, economic and political justice and equality – Real justice relates to all countries and their people.  This might mean looking at some giant corporations – the World Bank, IMF, even the WTO and their practices for starters; All other organizations that oversee nuclear and ‘fair trade’ including the IAEA, as well as NAFTA and GATT – any organization with fiduciary responsibility.  This will not happen until a good portion of this/our world governments or its people demand justice for all.  Even questions of global warming, hunger, the commodification of water, AIDS and genocides of any group of people can be helped by such a movement to stand for justice and against imperialism.

This can, must and will be the direction of the next few generations once we first identify the problems of thinking and not weapons.  Because it is ideas that control what we do; and it is not what we do it is who we are.  People are basically good, even the bad ones; but even they can be convinced to use diplomacy driven by justice and not by fear.  Fear comes from not knowing.  We know that justice takes away the need to win freedom by fighting.  It is the need for justice that drives the necessity for class warfare.  This is not easy when the experience of humankind over several thousand years has been to fight for freedom and, in some instances that thinking will continue for a few hundreds more.

But we who want peace must understand and believe that peace is a product of a just world and not one at war.  By helping victims of bullies to survive and bring justice to their cause is the only recipe for peace.  These ideas are driven by feelings of love and respect for all humankind; also, a recognition of the beauty of the diversity that lives in all of us.  We must eliminate that suffering of our brothers and sisters, today with the rise of worldwide gas and food prices, plus families losing their homes and savings and investments, by understanding the potential and the mission has to be much greater than to rid of world of bombs.  The struggle to support Article 9 embodies the larger goal before us.  Our task is to rid the world of bad ideas, i.e., “because I told myself that I am special and you are inferior; I have the right to treat you anyway I please…”   This is, and has always been a bad idea.  What about “Do unto others as you would have them do to you,” an idea that is found in every major religion.  This is the road to No More Nagasakis and Hiroshimas and the many others.  Remember, Nuclear, from mining to the bomb, kills.  And, finally, Peace is more than the absence of war – it is the presence of justice.

By Rick Tingling-Clemmons, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Anti-War Coalition, Washington, DC