As outlined in an order that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) circulated last week, D.C. government agencies will likely start furloughs and facility closures in response to a $1.1 billion Fiscal Year 2025 budget cut that House leadership has yet to rectify.
With the House still in recess, and City Administrator Kevin Donahue scheduled to submit recommendations later this week, Bowser set out to dispel any notion that certain D.C. government employees, based on length of service or education, would be more at risk of job loss than others.
“I can assure our employees that they will be treated fairly according to all of our policies and procedures,” Bowser said on Monday. “I want to emphasize to them that this is not something that D.C. government has done wrong or is not a case where we don’t have the money to pay for their services or other services. But, we have a situation where we need a fix to prevent the type of summer where we don’t have the overtime that we like to ensure, that we have the number of police that we need not just for our own policing but for a summer of national events that we need.”
By Monday, Bowser’s office had not yet received waivers from District agencies attempting to circumvent the D.C. government hiring and spending freeze. She confirmed that conversations between her staff and House leadership are ongoing, all as part of what she described as an effort to restore the Fiscal Year 2025 budget before summer.
“I don’t ever want to think about ‘Oh I can’t do that because I can’t pay the police overtime,’” Bowser continued on Monday as she spoke about different resources that are under threat with the passage of the continuing resolution that decimated D.C.’s budget. “When you’re sitting in my seat, you want to be able to deploy when you need to deploy.”
A D.C. Emancipation Day for Reflection, More So than Celebration
The latest threat to budget autonomy that District officials face come just months after D.C. council members, past and present, celebrated 50 years of the District’s home rule. It also comes on the heels of ongoing efforts by congressional Republicans to strip D.C. of home rule, and further place it under the control of Congress, and the second Trump administration that’s adamant about beautifying federal land.
With concerns of financial security and functionality looming in D.C., community activists, leaders and concerned constituents are fighting back against the forces jeopardizing D.C. home rule, federal and local government employment, and the well-being of the District’s most marginalized residents.
On D.C. Emancipation Day—just one day after Bowser implemented the government-wide spending and hiring freeze— members of the Free DC coalition hosted “DC Emancipation Day Speak Out: Standing Together to Fight the Power” at Metropolitan AME Church in Northwest.
This holiday event, coordinated by Joni Eisenburg and Frankie Seabron of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, and sponsored by WPFW 89.3 FM, Anacostia Coordinating Council, and The Washington Informer among others, centered on informing, inspiring and giving marching orders to a packed house of D.C. residents organizing against hyper-conservative forces in the U.S. government.
Guests included returning citizens advocate Rhozier T. “Roach” Brown and Ron Hampton, a retired D.C. police officer and outspoken critic of mass incarceration.
After an ancestral roll call by Washington Informer Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes, a musical selection by Ayanna Gregory, and a D.C. Emancipation Day history lesson from C.R. Gibbs, hundreds of attendees listened to a panel featuring: activist Ty Hobson-Powell; Free D.C. co-founder and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams executive director Nee Nee Taylor; Paul Osadebe of the Federal Unionist Network; Sam Epps, president of the Metropolitan Washington Council at the AFL-CIO; and the Rev. Tony Lee, senior pastor at Community Of Hope AME Church in Temple Hills, Maryland.
Washington Informer reporter Sam P.K. Collins moderated the panel.
Panelists spent much of their time reflecting on ongoing effects of federal government layoffs on the D.C. metropolitan region. They also reflected on Gibbs’ lecture, connecting D.C.’s history of chattel slavery to the hurdles that Black people continue to face in the nation’s capital.
Lee, who’s collaborating around a May 1 picket line for restaurant and federal government employees, as well as the launch of Solidarity City at Union Station, emphasized the need for operational unity among local institutions and groups of various racial and ethnic backgrounds.
“We’re gonna have to fight this in a lot of different ways, but the operative word is fight,” Lee said on April 16. “We’ve got to figure out how to organize in such a way that institutionally and organizationally, we’re shaping the safety net to take care of our people, to get through the season, and get through this storm.”
The Community of Hope pastor and Harriet’s Wildest Dreams executive director went on to emphasize the necessity of youth engagement. Taylor, at one point, expressed concern about what would become of young people from Wards 7 and 8 who, according to her, couldn’t access fully operational recreation centers in their community during spring break.
“With unemployment reaps crime, with crime comes enslavement,” said Taylor, a critic of Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin. “It’s up to us to be non-compliant and fight back.”
During the D.C. Emancipation Day program, Taylor shared that Harriet’s Wildest Dreams will bail Black mothers out of jail on Mother’s Day as part of its year-round Free Black Mamas DMV campaign. She highlighted that program as part of an action plan that compels residents to become more reliant on each other.
“Mutual aid saves lives,” Taylor said. “Building your community block by block, neighbor by neighbor is how we keep each other safe. And if we don’t have what you need, build it.”
Epps acknowledged Black labor as the foundation of U.S. history, while Osadebe challenged guests at Metropolitan AME Church to think about the “crime and social dysfunction” bound to ensue without an approved local budget.
“What they’re gonna replace services and quality and justice with is force, violence, just need,” Osadebe said. “You will be entirely at the mercy of people who don’t care about your life at all. We have the opportunity to organize here across every divide. This is a life-and-death situation.”
After the panel, Hobson-Powell spoke about what is no longer the elephant in the room for many— overtly racist congressmen and women who are imposing colonial rule on what was known as one of the U.S.’ most prominent and economically vibrant chocolate cities.
“The idea that all of that can be done because we’re beholden to people who are from states far removed from Washington D.C., and the realities of Washingtonians, is something that you have to stand up against,” Hobson-Powell told The Informer. “We’re gonna have to make a lot of crucial, critical decisions about programs, about how to keep a city functioning for over 700,000 Washingtonians. That is something that we can’t take lightly.”
In speaking about how to push back against the infringement on D.C. sovereignty, Hobson-Powell, a Washingtonian of African-American and Caribbean ancestry, took inspiration from the past.
“We’re the legacy of people that were sitting by candlelight to read, daring to rebel, daring to fight against the first traditions of their time, even when death was a penalty on the other side of that,” he said. “If we can channel the things that keep us from our happy ending, let’s also channel that generational strength that’s been passed down.”
Fear of the Unknown: A Local Leader Gives Words of Encouragement
For several weeks, Dr. Adeoye “Oye” Owolewa (D), D.C.’s shadow representative in Congress, counted among those who converged on Capitol Hill to drum up congressional leaders’ support of the legislation that restores $1.1 billion in local funds that have already been approved for Fiscal Year 2025.
Since then, House Republicans have passed legislation triggering steep federal cuts to Medicaid, which nearly half of D.C. residents depend on for healthcare access. Such a development, he said, proves the most relevant for community members who recently celebrated the launch of a state-of-the-art hospital on St. Elizabeths East Campus.
In the aftermath of a car accident that nearly took his life, Owolewa, a Ward 8 resident, had to drive several miles away from his neighborhood for physical therapy and other specialized services that he couldn’t access in his community.
That’s why, while speaking with his fellow audience members at Metropolitan AME Church, Owolewa questioned how Ward 8 residents in similar situations would be able to receive the care they need with distance, and now Medicaid coverage, being impediments.
“This is gonna get worse, [but] lean into each other,” Owolewa said, commending the informative platform that made the evening possible. “If our elected officials are too afraid to speak out, and afraid of Trump, then we have to speak for those who are voiceless.”