Beltway Area Indymedia

(Audio: 7 min 28 seconds, including interviews with a Temple Courts resident and a Ward 4 resident)

Thousands of DC residents marched on April 16 to demand that DC residents get a vote in Congress. At this event, however,Mayor Fenty got an unpleasant suprise from residents of the besieged Temple Courts community, and from opponents of his school takeover plan.

At the opening rally by the District Building, residents of Temple Courts demanded that Fenty deliver on the promise the city had made that they be allowed to stay in their community instead of being evicted for redevelopment.

At the end of Mayor William's administration, Temple Courts residents managed to extract from Williams a promise that the complex would be renovated in such a way that everyone would move into newly constructed homes BEFORE their old homes were demolished. Fenty has scrapped that promise and is offering VOUCHERS similar to Section 8 vouchers instead. With a multi-year waiting list for those landlords willing to accept vouchers, residents fear this will leave residents homeless!

As the March got under way, another group aggrieved by Fenty's broken promises took action. Supporters of Save Our Schools managed to get one of their banners into the lead position of the entire march! Fenty responded by having his supporters or bodyguards form an arm-locked wedge and push through the crowd, back to the front. School takeover opponents responded by flanking the march and returning to the lead position.

After a few nasty shoving marches(one of which nearly trampled my bike!), Fenty gave up and allowed the Save Our Schools banner to remain out front. Chants of "We Deserve a Vote" got chants of "One the School Takeover" added to them.

Nobody was opposed to Fenty's objective in staging this parade-in fact, Eleanor Holmes Norton made the excellent point that nobody has a right to send DC residents to die in a war they had not vote on!

The issue is that this same logic should apply as well to the school takeover, passed without any input from Ward 4 or Ward 7. In addition, residents of Temple Courts and other communities threatened with expulsion by the "New Communities" initiative might not be able to vote for DC's member of the House if they do not hyave houses and thus addresses of their own.

One resident of Ward 4(interview is last part of audio) agreed that the entire event was more astroturf than grass roots, with the mayor's bureaucrats making up a large part of the crowd.