During its April 21 additional legislative meeting, the D.C. Council inched closer to making permanent the mayor’s emergency curfew declaration powers, as well as the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) ability to designate curfew zones.
The council, however, postponed its vote on an emergency curfew bill for the second time, in part due to an inability to rally nine votes. D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) said such an outcome calls into question whether some of her fellow council members really value a balanced approach.
“When I hear my colleagues talk about the additional supports we need to provide for our kids, I say, I absolutely agree, but let’s move forward with those bills,” said Pinto, who has introduced bills aimed at youth enrichment. “Those bills are sitting in their committees [because of] the same members voting ‘no’ on the emergency bill today. So, I worry about the rhetoric around needing to do more, but then the inaction of actually doing more.”
Over the next two weeks, as the Trump administration keeps a close eye on local affairs, Pinto will work to garner the support needed for passage of the emergency curfew legislation. While she’s invited opposing council members to collaborate around a solution, Pinto acknowledges what she described as mounting public pressure to not approve the emergency bill.
“They, like me, hear from young people who say there are other needs that we have,” Pinto told The Informer. “There’s clearly a big gap right now with the services that a lot of our young people are receiving, whether that’s in mental health care, whether that’s access to transportation, to after-school time programming.”
Even so, Pinto remains firm that the onus is, partially, on community-based organizations to take advantage of grant dollars made available through the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and the Family Destination Fund.
“We need to do more to make sure that teachers and our school professionals have the supports they need to invest in our young people and make sure that they have the supports they need,” she said. “But it also requires coming to the table and proposing some new ideas or partnerships as well.”
As Youth Curfew Discussion Continues, a Ward 6 D.C. Council Challenger Facilitates Programming
Last week, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser reinstated a 15-day youth curfew, just days after the expiration of twice-approved emergency curfew legislation, and a daytime shooting in Kenilworth that claimed the lives of 14-year-old Mhilo Young and 12-year-old Tyale Coates.
In an April 20 letter to the council, Bowser denounced “the baseless claim” about the lack of youth activities, all before identifying the curfew law as a tool in curbing gun violence and armed robberies.
“Although the Metropolitan Police Department has used various methods to address this conduct, including enhanced enforcement of disturbance of peace offenses, the tools available are limited,” Bowser said in her letter. “The District needs flexibility in its juvenile curfew to allow the chief of police to protect the safety of juveniles and the public so we can more nimbly address significant safety concerns.”
Well before the council’s first reading approval of what’s known as the Juvenile Curfew Amendment Act, Gloria Ann Nauden, a creative executive and community economic development specialist who’s challenging D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) in the June 16 primary, called for equitable, data-driven implementation of the youth curfew.
“We need to make sure that it’s clearly enforced across all neighborhoods,” Nauden said. “If it’s citywide, and it’s timed, I think that’s a good idea. Then, of course, requiring…that we have this regular reporting [of if] incidents [are] actually going down.”
Between April 11 and April 18, while District students were out of school, Nauden hosted Spring Break Community Service Week in collaboration with Lauren Harris, a teacher at Richard Wright Public Charter School.
During that week, the duo connected young people with community members and local businesses while providing community service opportunities and teaching them about civic engagement. By next year, when the winner of Ward 6 D.C. Council Democratic primary takes their oath of office, this program will gear up for another spring break iteration, by then which Nauden said she will be able to fight for its public funding and expansion, if elected.
“The model already exists inside of the youth employment program for the summer,” Nauden told The Informer. “It can…get clunky for the private sector, so how can we streamline it so that it makes it easier for the private sector who said…they would do more [programs] like this?”
Last fall, Nauden launched her candidacy for the Ward 6 seat after a mass gathering of teens on Halloween night garnered national media attention. She lamented what she called Allen’s lack of engagement with Ward 6 organizers and program coordinators working beyond the confines of Capitol Hill.
She said such inaction translates into lack of legislative action.
“I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but it is really that simple,” she told The Informer. “And these are the kinds of things kids expect [for] legislation to have an impact on them.”
Allen, in his third term as Ward 6 D.C. council member, rebuffed notions that he doesn’t provide equal attention to his constituents.
“It’s the type of work that we do in all four quadrants,” Allen told The Informer. “It’s every day. It’s everywhere. I do that whether it’s the ANC meetings I was in last night down in Southwest, whether it’s the office hours that you hold, whether it’s the farmer’s markets, whether it’s the youth groups. It’s an engagement every day of the week, frankly, in all parts of the ward.”
On the afternoon of April 21, Allen and D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), along with Councilmembers Pinto, Doni Crawford (I-At large), Wendell Felder (D-Ward 7), Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3), Christina Henderson (D-At large), and Anita Bonds (D-At large), voted in support of postponing the vote on the Ward 2 representative’s emergency bill.
The council is now scheduled to take on the emergency legislation during its May 5 legislative meeting.
Another agenda item on that day will be the second reading of the Juvenile Curfew Amendment Act, which Allen, Mendelson, Crawford, Felder, Pinto, Frumin, Henderson, and Bonds voted in favor of during the council’s recent additional legislative meeting.
Allen, who sits on the council’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety with Pinto, Bonds, Felder, and Crawford, spoke favorably of Crawford’s amendment in the nature of a substitute (ANS). Several days prior, the judiciary and public safety committee approved the committee print of the permanent curfew bill in Crawford and Allen’s absence.
“I wasn’t happy with the bill as it was, but also [D.C. Councilmember Pinto] scheduled [the meeting] at a time I couldn’t make it,” Allen told The Informer. “I don’t think I would have supported it if I had gotten there.”
Crawford’s ANS, which she crafted in collaboration with Pinto and the Bowser administration, included provisions that, among other things: consolidate the mayor and police chief’s curfew making powers; prohibit business improvement districts and mainstreets organizations from requesting curfew zones; and strengthen curfew notice requirements.
Days after video footage surfaced of local police officers pulling two girls off of bikes near a Metro station, the ANS also emphasizes that young people can’t be stopped or dispersed for reasons not in violation of the curfew law. It also requires city-organized youth programming when curfew zones are in effect.
In his remarks on the dais, Allen said that such efforts should have come to fruition long ago.
“When pushed, we have seen DPR [D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation] put together meaningful and positive experiences,” Allen said on April 21, “I can note that around Greenleaf Rec[reation] Center and Randall Rec[reation] Center, the activities taking place inside were largely very positive. I think there’s a lot of lessons learned about what happened when the events ended and a lot of lessons learned that DPR can continue to work on.”
In the aftermath of his unsuccessful efforts to expand DPR recreation center hours to weekends, Allen called for local officials to do more in the realm of youth enrichment.
“This city has been lacking with imagination and creativity to reach the very people it’s concerned about,” Allen said. “I think Councilmember Crawford’s amendment changes this [by requiring] the city to provide and promote alternatives whenever they want to be able to use this tool.”
Looking Back: A Spring Break with Gloria Ann Nauden
During spring break, nearly two dozen young people from Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Richard Wright Public Charter School and KIPP DC College Preparatory participated in Spring Break Community Service Week.
Activities included civic engagement lessons at Southwest Library, creating shirts and stickers at Artivism in Northwest, and poetry recitation at Politics & Prose at the Wharf. Students also learned about ranked-choice voting, crafted vision boards, visited the Peterbug Shoe Repair Academy, and weighed in on public policy during a teen summit hosted by former Metropolitan Police Chief Diane Grooms at an MPD command center at the Wharf.
Though the youth either accumulated community service hours or received compensation, Nauden said they received much more, especially when they canvassed on behalf of her campaign.
“You could just see them flowing with people that were really their neighbors now receiving the information from them,” Nauden said. “Now they’re stopping, and actually intersecting with it. You started seeing groups of people from the communities that they were not otherwise connected to having whole conversations.”
Ramone Evans, a Ward 6 resident and student at Richard Wright Public Charter School, said he honed his journalism skills while taking photos on the campaign trail with Nauden. He also recounted visiting Politics & Prose at the Wharf and exploring more of his community.
“I learned more about the struggles of Ward 6 and everybody’s problems right now,” Ramone said. “Some people said that there was the overpopulation of rats, a need for more affordability around at the Wharf, and [they talked] about curfews.”
Though he stands in support of a youth curfew, Ramone said he wants adults to better understand the District youth perspective.
“Often, we’re assumed to be less smart because of our age or our color,” Ramone, a junior, told The Informer. “My vision is that the District can give us better housing, and give us better opportunities for community service hours like this program did. Just more opportunities to help people.”
Nathan Gezahegne, a sophomore at Richard Wright Public Charter School, told The Informer that he’s developed more of an interest in how events unfolding in the John A. Wilson Building connect to his life.
“I wasn’t that really into politics so I got a better understanding,” Nathan said.
Also of significance to Nathan was what he called Nauden’s empathy for young people in search of age-relevant activities.
“I appreciate how the adults were actually trying to do something for spring break,” Nathan told The Informer. “If it wasn’t for this program, I’d probably just be at home.”
On June 16, Allen will defend his seat against Nauden and litigator Michael Murphy in the Democratic primary. This election, as well as others this season, will be the first time that D.C. Board of Elections implements ranked-choice voting.
Ward 6, located in the middle of the District, is the only ward that includes portions of each quadrant. Neighborhoods include Capitol Hill, along with parts of Downtown D.C, Penn Quarter, and Gallery Place-Chinatown, Southwest Waterfront, the Wharf, Capitol Riverfront, and Buzzard Point.
Of special note to Nauden is that Ward 6, which is home to office buildings, major retail and restaurants, hotels, museums, and federal buildings, is also chock full of apartment buildings. She said renters are a constituency, specifically in NoMa [North of Massachusetts Avenue], Lincoln Park, and Greenleaf Garden Apartments, that she wants to organize around in the coming weeks.
“What I’m hearing from new Washingtonians that dwell in these apartments,” Nauden said, “is that they would love a sense of connectivity into the tissue of what is D.C. So I’m listening and creating opportunities, not just to meet and greet me, but [for them to] meet and greet one another.”
For Nauden, quelling “teen takeovers,” and other quality of life issues specific to Ward 6, requires the aggregation of various viewpoints.
“I just don’t think he has a solution because he’s not part of the community in that way,” Nauden said about Allen. “His core voters are Capitol Hill proper. They are the core. They are the wealthiest of the ward.”
Allen, who survived a recall effort two years ago, said he begs to differ.
“I’m somebody who looks at things with a ‘both-and’ rather than an ‘either-or’ lens,” he told The Informer. “It’s super easy in politics just to kind of go into a corner and yell at the other side. It’s a lot harder to go stand in the middle and work collaboratively and bring people together. That’s what I’ve done, and that’s the way I’ve led, which is why you see us being able to deliver so many wins across Ward 6 and bring so many people along with us.”
