The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is back in Washington DC, from June 24th to July 4th, but you won’t find it on the National Mall. It’s gone vitual, like everything else during this pandemic. Here’s the schedule. You can’t go to the food concessions this year, but they’ve promised a gift shop.
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On Monday, federal police forces used tear gas and rubber bullets to remove peaceful protesters from Washington’s Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. What was the protest about? Police brutality.
The police, from a variety of federal agencies, used force and munitions against a nonviolent 1st Amendent protest so that President Donald Trump could pose for photographs in front of historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, holding a Bible.
The District of Columbia recieved few of the medical supplies requested from the federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile:
“The District got none of the hospital ventilators, safety goggles and hand sanitizer it asked for and received less than one percent of a requested 663,760 gloves and 1,132,478 respirator masks that officials requested.”
“D.C. City Administrator Rashad M. Young told D.C. Council members and the mayor’s office during a telephone call that he did a ‘readout’ Tuesday ‘of what we asked for and what we got, and it was pretty much nothing from them.’”
— “Federal government gave D.C. a fraction of what it sought to fight coronavirus,” Antonio Olivo, Jenna Portnoy and Fenit Nirappil, Washington Post
Despite the best efforts of a holdout Tea Party loon, Congress finally passed a $2 Trillion stimulus package last week, the first step in shoring up the U.S. in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this federal response, each state government will receive at least $1.25 billion. The District of Columbia will receive $500,000.
Since DC is regarded as a state when it comes to federal grants, highway funding, education dollars and food assistance, many here feel that someone in the Administration or GOP leadership actively and intentionally shafted the District when the bill was crafted in the Senate.
The District’s population — 702,455 people — is greater than that of two states, Wyoming and Vermont. Unlike U.S. territories, DC residents pay federal taxes, the most in federal taxes per capita than any other state. The coronavirus relief bill originated in the GOP-controlled Senate, and DC has no senators, so here we are. There’s a reason DC license plates read “Taxation Without Representation.”
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine and the District Department of Energy and Environment have filed a lawsuit claiming Greyhound buses regularly disregard the District’s three-minute idling limit, polluting the air and endangering the health of workers, riders, and DC residents and visitors. The suit against the bus company is based on a DDOE study conducted at the Union Station bus deck, and the DA seeks reimbursement for investigation costs and $216,000 in penalties.
Washington DC is filled with idling intercity, charter, tourist, and commuter buses every day, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
More:
“D.C. sues Greyhound over buses idling at Union Station,” Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post
Tuesday was Bagel Day at the software development center, and I favored Bagels & Baguettes near Stanton Park. There was a line when I got there, around 8:30 AM. The shop was near the Senate office buildings and the Heritage Foundation, so there was a TV tuned to CNN to keep news-obsessed customers occupied.
By the time I got my two dozen hot bagels, the damnedest thing was on that television. An airplane had crashed into a World Trade Center tower in New York, and the building was on fire. It was September 11, 2001.
I went to the office break room and put out the bagels, cream cheese, and smoked salmon. I guess I was making coffee when the second plane hit the other tower. I figured people still had to eat.
On April 16, 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed an act freeing the 3000 enslaved people in the District of Columbia. This was nine months before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the Confederate states, many of whom actually remained in bondage until the the war’s end in 1865, and 20 months before ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which definitively outlawed slavery everywhere in the United States.
Understandably, April 16th is a holiday in the District of Columbia, District Emancipation Day, celebrated with speeches, concerts, fireworks and parades. There’s a bit of rain on that parade, though, if you take a closer look at history. That 1862 act was called the Compensated Emancipation Act, and it authorized payments to DC slaveowners rather than liberation of enslaved people on moral grounds. It even sought to promote emigration of former slaves outside the borders of the United States.
In any case, black Washingtonians had their freedom. That’s definitely worth celebrating.
More:
“When Slaveowners Got Reparations,” Tera W. Hunter, New York Times
Related:
“Georgetown students vote in favor of reparations for enslaved people,” Susan Svrluga, Washington Post
“Hello Mr. New Year,” recorded in 1958 by the The Coolbreezers, of Washington ,DC: Joe Reuth, Richard Steward, Bob Armstrong, William Primrose, Earl J. Williams, Sonny Williams. Like many African American harmony groups, the ensemble originally sang Gospel music. The Coolbreezers recorded for Bale Records, a short-lived venture of long-time DC R&B empresaria Bea Williams, sister of two group members.
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