Q&A with Ward 4 candidate Janeese Lewis George

Part of our Ward 4 voters guide

What made you decide to run for this position?

“Seeing the lack of leadership from our council member in the ward and the lack of advocacy for working families and working people in our ward.

“For me, It goes back to 2016: I ended up having to take leave to care for my father who got sick. … [It’s] the case for so many: having to care for our children, care for spouses, and care for our parents and deserving to have a living wage while doing so. … It was so crucial to me to be able to give my story and advocate to our council member as to why we wanted him to support Paid Family Leave. And despite our advocacy efforts, he still decided to vote against Paid Family Leave in 2016. You can imagine I was really upset with him regarding that. …

“Through my personal experience, having dealt with real-life issues happening here in our ward and seeing the lack of advocacy from our council member, I decided to leave my job at the attorney general’s office and run for office.”

What differentiates you from the others in the race?

“I have real-life experience really dealing with the issues that face our ward, and I have a unique opportunity to do that.

“I want to be beholden to the residents of Ward 4 in this city and no one else. I think we start that by how you fund your campaign and how you finance your campaign. I’m really proud to be the only Fair Elections candidate in this Ward 4 race. I’m proud that we were able to make Fair Elections a reality for our city and moving forward in making sure that we have leadership with integrity and accountability.”

What do you hope to accomplish in this position if elected?

“I think my experience as a waitress is just as important as my experience as an [assistant] attorney general because I know what it’s like to be a working person and to be able to make ends meet. … I came out of college and worked as a City Year Corps member, served students, came out and actually worked in the attorney general’s office helping [to] solve problems. I’m able to claim both my real-life experiences as a DC native and a Ward 4 native and bring my work experience — and both of those are going to allow me to be an advocate and a leader and help find solutions for the problems we face in our ward.”

What are the top three issues you would focus on if elected?

“The three main areas I really want to see some change in would be in housing, education and public safety.

“When it comes to housing, I would like to see us expand rent control. … The status quo thing to do would be to just extend it for another 10 years and renew what we have, but I think we have an opportunity to create more affordable housing by extending our rent control to buildings built before 2005. …

“When it comes to education, I would immediately want to reassess the way we do our funding of schools. … I think it’s highly important that we recognize that if it’s just based on enrollment, it doesn’t take into account the social equity issues that come into play. … As we move forward post-COVID-19, how we solve our education problems and equity problems is going to get even more serious, so we can’t afford high teacher turnover or administrative turnover at this time. …

“Right now [in terms of public safety], we’ve had some problems in our ward so I want to expand the violence interruption program into Ward 4. In our Petworth area and Brightwood area, we’ve seen a crime uptick, and we need to interrupt the crime with solutions that work.”