Each of the nine candidates running for the Democratic at-large D.C. Council seat continues to make their case to District voters about their ability to address several issues, including those that involve federal interference in local affairs.
Meanwhile, as the race to replace outgoing D.C. Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At-large) rages, Clark Construction and ZGF Architects are carrying out a project that, once completed, will place the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) right in Ward 8.
“Long story short, the planned ICE headquarters that’s coming to St. Elizabeths West Campus is continuing to move forward,” said U.S. Shadow Rep. Dr. Oye Owolewa, a pharmacist, Ward 8 resident and D.C. Council Democratic at-large candidate. “Despite all the protesting in Ward 1, all the demonstrations in Ward 2, we somehow still have this going on in Ward 8 and no one was really talking about it.”
Upon learning the plans for the new DHS building earlier this year, Owolewa joined other community members in acts of nonviolent resistance against ZGF Architects and Clark Construction, two companies that are receiving funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to design and build the facility, respectively. In March, he led more than a dozen protesters in a march along Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue after the Free DC mayoral forum.
With another action scheduled for mid-April, Owolewa has his sights set engaging the D.C. Council through a resolution that calls on ZGF Architects and Clark Construction to break its contract with the federal government on this project. He said he’ll work with the ANCs in Ward 8 and across the city in advancing this cause.
“Ward 8 can no longer afford to be on its own island figuring itself out. We all are in this together, whether it’s this DHS situation or even the hospital situation at Cedar Hill,” Owolewa, a former advisory neighborhood commissioner, told The Informer. “We’re all one city, and when we have issues that aren’t addressed, in one part, they’re all affected. My goal is for people to be aware of this, to activate it, for this to mobilize this, and to hopefully move Clark Construction and ZGM off of this project.”
Clark Construction and ZGF Architects didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested nearly 20,000 people in the D.C. metropolitan area. Per Reuters, ICE, which currently has agents posted at airports in support of Transportation and Security Administration personnel, has used tips from federal airport security to make a portion of those arrests.
In the aftermath of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser preservation of the Metropolitan Police Department’s post-surge relationship with federal law enforcement, federal officers have been involved in three use-of-force incidents with District residents, once of which turned deadly. The D.C. Council recently overrode Bowser’s veto of legislation that D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D-At large) advanced to mandate the inclusion of federal officer identifying information in MPD incident reports.
Days later, as the D.C. Council and community members mull how to control mass gatherings of teens in commercial areas, Owolewa counts among those alarmed by what can happen with a federal law enforcement building in the heart of Congress Heights. If elected, his priorities include: rebuffing the Trump administration’s infringement on Home Rule; government accountability, and the development of a “community first” public safety strategy.
Such approaches, he said, addresses the perils of federal overreach, like what will be exacerbated once DHS moves to Congress Heights.
“You’re talking about folks who don’t have cultural competency,” Owolewa said, “who don’t even live in D.C. Someone who may have guns…approaching someone they think is 18, but they might be 14 or 15 years old. That’s not safe for Ward 8 residents.”
Mother and Veteran Organizer D’yana Forester Blazes a Trail
By the time Bonds announced she wouldn’t run for re-election last November, she already had challengers in Owolewa, former staffer Leniqua’dominique Jenkins, and D.C. Democratic Party leader Candace Tiana Nelson.
The field has since expanded to include: former Bonds staffer Kevin B. Chavous, gun violence prevention organizer Greg Jackson, education leader Lisa Raymond, former elementary and middle school principal Dwight Davis, business owner Fred Hill, and longtime organizer D’yana Forester.
Forester, who’s Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s senior director of labor relations, said she brings to the table experience uniting various groups around policy outcomes. The most recent instance, she noted, took place amid the federal government shutdown, and more recently, the congressional budget impasse that’s currently leaving Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees without pay.
“The District has not responded to the number of federal workers that are forced to go to work and are not being paid,” Forester told The Informer as she spoke about her efforts in Annapolis. “We put supports in place for TSA workers in Maryland. A lot of that is guided by me bringing together workers that are directly impacted and then informing what policies we put in place and what supports that are needed.”
Forester, a native Washingtonian of African-American and Mexican heritage, has more-than-two decades of organizing experience. She’s fought for a variety of causes, including school choice, the launch and funding of community schools, community benefits agreements for Wal-Mart and other development projects, minimum wage increase and paid family leave.
As an advisory neighborhood commissioner and D.C. Housing Authority board member, Forester pushed for transparency in affairs affecting residents and stood against development projects that threatened to jeopardize housing affordability. In her capacity as president of the Washington Metropolitan Labor Council AFL-CIO, she represented her comrades in their demands for the safe return to in-person learning, provision of personal protective equipment and creation of COVID-era safety standards for government workers not classified as first responders.
Forester said she can produce a similar outcome for District residents as a council member.
“We need someone in the at-large seat who can bring people together despite their differences, without a political agenda,” Forester told The Informer. “How do we actually do what’s right at this very moment, not to make headlines and not get elected to another office? How do we do what’s right and what’s needed right now for the people that are hurting the most?”
As of April 6, she has secured endorsements from United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400, American Federation of Government Employees District 14, United Association of Apprenticeships Plumbers & Gasfitters of Local 5, United Association of Apprenticeships Steamfitters Local 602, Mid-Atlantic Pipe Trades Association, and the Washington Teachers Union.
If elected, Forester’s priorities include: housing affordability, fair wages, investments in violence prevention, equal access to a quality education, and government accountability and transparency. Months after the Trump administration decimated the federal government workforce and unleashed ICE on immigrant communities, Forester is also articulating a vision to center small business owners and D.C.’s diverse workforce as engines of economic development.
“Contractors can’t get their workforce to come to work because they’re afraid. How do we work together to address that?,” Forester said. “There are a number of interests that if we can see both sides of it.”
Part of helping small business owners, Forester said, is also preventing what she called “gotcha moments.”
“The one thing I’ve heard consistently from small business owners is actually having regulations that are easier and [having] a one-stop shop where somebody actually helps them get through the regulatory process,” Forester told The Informer. “They feel like the government is a place where if something that they didn’t understand a regulation, that’s a way to penalize them. Where’s the support for the small businesses that are struggling? We need to invest more resources.”
As it relates to access to quality education, Forester counts among those who herald community schools as the great equalizer for families living in marginalized communities.
“Let’s determine what we don’t have and what resources that we need to get into this community, and be creative about how that’s funded,” Forester continued. “If we work in a high poverty neighborhood with single moms or teenage moms, how do we get a daycare facility in that school, but then also get training services? It’s strategically directing our resources to invest in the neighborhood with a focus on our children.”
A Ward 7 mother of two and grandmother, Forester said that her passion for organizing started at the age of 18. That’s when she graduated from what was then Woodrow Wilson Senior High School as the mother of a 6-month-old. By that time, she saw inequity while on long commutes between Southeast and Upper Northwest.
Amid health care funding challenges and staffing issues at Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center, Forester says her experiences puts her in solidarity with a crucial constituency.
“My particular experience resonates with 26% of the women that are the head of households in the District of Columbia that are currently not represented in the decision-making body of D.C.,” Forester said. “We raise 66% of the children that are living in poverty. What is our common interest? One, to fund health care, right? I may want it to be more affordable for me, but people in Ward 3 or Ward 5, they just don’t want to be waiting in the emergency rooms for hours.”
Kevin B. Chavous: A Son of Ward 7 With Council Experience
Since jumping into the Democratic at-large race on Jan. 13, Chavous has traversed the District, attending community meetings and candidate forums. That’s where he’s touted his experience, the latest of which was four years as Bonds’ committee and policy director.
He said he can leverage that know-how to District residents’ benefit if elected.
“We need people who can join the council in January 2027 and be ready on Day One,” Chavous told The Informer. “I understand the legislative process. I understand how to move bills through committee and through the full council. I’ll be able to deliver results because I know how to write legislation and I have relationships in the Wilson Building that will allow me to get legislation passed.”
Long before working with Bonds, Chavous, son of former Ward 7 D.C. Councilmember Kevin P. Chavous, worked at Housing Counseling Services and AARP where he respectively advocated for low-income tenants and helped elders facing foreclosure. In the years leading up to his electoral bid, Chavous served as president of D.C. Young Democrats and a board member of the United Planning Organization.
He’s currently a member of the D.C. Democratic State Committee and the District’s national committeeman on the Democratic National Committee.
In his role as director of the council’s Committee on Housing, Chavous engaged key players in the local housing ecosystem about housing finance and rental issues. When Bonds took over the council’s Committee on Executive Administration and Labor, Chavous often conferred with various agencies, including the Executive Office of the Mayor, D.C. Board of Elections, D.C. Department of Employment Services, Workforce Investment Council, and the Department of Aging.
Chavous told The Informer that, as committee director, he’s often leaned on his legal training to tackle complex problems. He noted that he stands above other candidates for no reason other than his ability to carry out more of the mundane parts of the job.
“We have a lot of different thorny issues that require sort of an analytical approach, and the willingness and the interest to really read reports, read the laws, read the studies that support the laws,” Chavous said. “By the end of the day, the council members are legislators, and they are tasked with drafting and voting on laws that impact the way we live.”
Chavous’ platform focuses on: public safety, affordable housing, early childhood education, workforce readiness, senior support, and government operations. Though he commended the council for its work on public safety and housing, Chavous said he wants to help the legislative body better manage finances and help D.C. residents who, despite not qualifying for government-funded services, still struggle to make ends meet.
“I’m not criticizing the fact that we are taking care of the unhoused population, but there should be some resources available for those who are in the middle,” Chavous told The Informer. “There has not been enough attention to people in the middle, because it’s the people in the middle who oftentimes are working the hardest, they’re paying their taxes, they’re contributing to the city and our coffers, but feel as though there’s nothing being done for them.”
Meeting that need, Chavous said, requires “bridge services.”
“Not quite wraparound services that last for a longer time, but these bridge services that are temporary that can help people get that little boost they need to start their career or to get themselves going,” he told The Informer. “My focus will be on trying to tweak some of the programs we have or some of the funding that we have in order to provide that boost to the working people and working families who want to stay in D.C. but just need some support from the government.”
Though he acknowledged legislation as the primary method of effecting change, Chavous noted that the most detail-oriented lawmakers can find the funds needed to meet residents’ needs.
“In D.C., we have to fund things over the financial plan because we’re required to have that balanced budget by Congress,” Chavous told The Informer. “There are vacant positions that we have to put the money in. If it’s a high-level position, that could be $500,000 that is allocated but never spent, or if it is spent, we don’t really know how it’s spent in the agency.”
With the next Democratic at-large council member to jump in not long before performance oversight season, and budget deliberations soon after, Chavous said he has the experience to manage time effectively and bring his goals to fruition.
“We do a lot of things well,” Chavous said, “but when you’ve got $22 billion, a size of a budget that’s bigger than 10 states right now for 750,000 people, we’ve got to better understand how that money is being spent and is it being spent effectively. It takes a lot of work, it takes dedication, and I’m dedicated to do it.”
Candace Tiana Nelson: An At-Large Candidate Focused on Oversight and Unity
Nelson, a policy analyst and civic leader, said she has the experience and wherewithal to unite a council of various political ideologies. As far as she’s concerned, the council, and other branches of local government for that matter, would’ve benefitted from her insight at the beginning of President Donald J. Trump’s second term.
“If we had that unity and a unified approach to how we fight, that could have been extremely helpful,” Nelson, head of the D.C. Democratic Black Caucus, told The Informer. “I really do love how residents stood up, and went down to Congress to advocate. The more we do that, it’s better for us because [Congress] can see we’re actually human beings here that pay our taxes, serve in the military, and follow the law.”
For two decades, Nelson, a native of Winchester, Virginia, has immersed herself in the D.C. government. Her experiences include her recommendation of what’s now the D.C. Mayor’s Office on African American Affairs. As a staff member in the D.C. Mayor’s Office on Women’s Policy and Initiatives, Nelson helped establish a relationship with WorkSmart Systems to assist women in salary negotiations.
Other feats include a stint at D.C. Department of Health Care Finance, where Nelson managed a $110 million contract for the creation of the public benefits portal known as District Direct.
If elected, Nelson will utilize lessons learned at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, stints as chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4A and Ward 4 Democrats, and more recently her stewardship of the “Reimagining the Future of Georgia Avenue” advisory group.
“That is the way to do it— just being accessible,” Nelson told The Informer. “Accessible leadership and being collaborative. That’s what I believe in.”
Earlier this year, the advisory group released a report that provided an overview of community feedback gathered throughout much of last year. The document touched on: blighted property enforcement, local business support, and public safety coordination, among other topics.
Nelson said her role required her, in part, to collect survey data and verbal input from constituencies of various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
“To do the work, you have to be humble enough to know that you’re not always right, but curious enough to understand the reasoning and the thoughts of folks who are on the other side,” she told The Informer. “Once you reach that common ground, you can squash the [beef] and move on to a new meal. I look forward to being able to do that work on the council.”
Nelson’s campaign platform focuses on good governance, protecting and expanding home rule, quality affordable housing, education, and workers’ protections. In speaking about housing, Nelson told The Informer that she would aim to protect this human right through: expansion of rent stabilization, strengthening the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, increasing funding for housing programs, supporting homeowners, and holding DC Housing Authority accountable.
For Nelson, accountability is where the rubber meets the road.
“When we focus on government agencies, and truly look at their performance plans,” Nelson said, “look at their key performance indicators (KPI), see where they have unmet KPI, and focusing on that, then having that inform the next part, which is your budget, and ensuring that we are funding programs that work, and we are not funding things that do not work.”
Nelson told The Informer that, under her leadership, the council and its constituents will hold D.C. government agencies accountable in real time. She expressed a desire to create a “civic tech platform” through which residents track bills, propose amendments and engage in public comment more easily.
She also hinted at the launch of a front-facing platform that measures KPIs.
“I’ve worked on dashboards at a couple of different agencies and had details at the Department of Human Services [and] at the Department of Employment Services,” Nelson said, “taking their key performance indicators and putting them in dashboards. Those dashboards should be made public so that if the public wants to see, they should be able to see. That helps with accountability.”
As part of an effort to further connect D.C. residents to the council, Nelson said she will take her cues from the late Ward 1 D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham, who she saw in action while working as an analyst at what was then D.C. General Hospital.
“Back then…we had hearings in D.C. General where people could come down from their rooms, testify, go back home,” Nelson said. “Making the hearings more accessible, even changing the hours. You could have a hearing from 7 to 11, or even having hearings on Saturdays, from 10 to 2, or all day on a Saturday, or however it may be. But I think that helps to bring government to the people.”
Greg Jackson: A Gun Violence Prevention Guru Eyes a Return to Local Government
As dozens of bills infringing on District laws make their way through Congress, Greg Jackson continues to position himself as the Democratic at-large D.C. Council candidate ready to bridge the gap between council chambers and the Capitol Rotunda.
“A lot of that relationship building can happen now, recognizing that the folks on Pennsylvania Avenue, the folks on Capitol Hill are our neighbors too,” Jackson told The Informer. “As a council member, that would be a huge priority: to continue to build relationships and make sure that [Congress] is a priority group of stakeholders that understand, support, and can help us protect some of the key resources and policies that make the District great.”
Jackson, a Congress Heights resident who formerly served as special assistant to President Joe Biden on gun violence prevention, launched his electoral bid during the earlier part of February with a focus on community safety, housing affordability and educational resources.
As a Biden administration official, Jackson developed and implemented 54 executive actions, coordinated federal responses to mass shootings, and facilitated the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. He said that experience highlighted the need for local transparency and accountability for how the District handles federal gun violence prevention funds.
“When I was in the White House, we had an actual $1 billion that was moved down the school systems to help fund the programs to prevent violence,” Jackson said. “When I spoke with teachers here in D.C., they were unaware. Come to find out, a lot of those dollars were absorbed into overhead when they were literally programmed or designed to go to programs to prevent violence.”
If he wins the June 16 primary, Jackson would return to the same government where he served as director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations and Services, and carried out community engagement for D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation. In those roles, he addressed thousands of constituent concerns and launched FitDC.
In speaking about his experience, Jackson said he saw firsthand the perils of responding to problems rather than anticipating and preventing them.
“Our employment services division shouldn’t operate like a hospital,” Jackson said. “We should have goals and metrics of how we are getting to communities and neighborhoods that are struggling with employment. With all the services that we have, how do we get our small business administration proactively engaging businesses with goals and metrics?”
Jackson’s gun violence prevention strategies center on: holding gun traffickers accountable and adopting a public health approach similar to what Baltimore, Boston, Detroit and Miami adopted. He told The Informer that all the District needs is a chance to flourish in this arena. He said it’s inspired, not only by his work at the federal level, but his 2012 near-death experience and loss of several young people he’s had under his wing as anti-violence organizers.
“These are the kids who organized their own stop the violence rallies,” Jackson said as he spoke about the “Young Kings.” “We marched through every neighborhood that they lived in and, and chanted ‘stop the violence’ and ‘spread the love’”
With the D.C. Police Union and other parties expressing skepticism about the effectiveness of violence interruption, Jackson counts among those who argue that the District should pour more into those resources.
“Our ecosystem here is really young. We’ve seen some pretty dark spots and how things have been organized, but it doesn’t mean that the strategies don’t work,” Jackson told The Informer. “We’ve seen every city that has adopted cognitive behavioral therapy, street outreach, and hospital intervention see tremendous reductions, but it can’t be investments alone. We need a city that’s… also working with the organizations through training, oversight and accountability.”
Jackson said it will take all hands on deck.
“We still have a ways to go on implementing hospital-based strategies, victim support and cognitive behavioral therapy, all of which we know can prevent violence,” he said. “Looking beyond the community-based work, our law enforcement approach has to be focused on more than surveillance than patrol.”
