Opinion

Every year, the annual flu season brings new concerns about how to protect everyone but particularly those in the most vulnerable communities. This year, however, cold and flu season brings a particular challenge as the novel coronavirus…

Food insecurity. You’ve heard the phrase before. It invokes an image of John Walsh with some kind of safety device that could be attached to the entrance of a pantry or a cupboard door. Right? What does it mean, really? The…

Robert Vinson Brannum recently called the job of being a DC advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 5 “thankless. You have developers and other folks deluge your mailbox. “You have to be able to go up against seasoned developer…

Jack Evans resigned his post as Ward 2 DC Council member in January in advance of being formally expelled, and he was soundly defeated when he circled back in the June Democratic primary, seeking to reclaim his previously discarded seat.…

Many of the voters expected to crush post offices and voting centers this fall are focused primarily on defeating President Donald J. Trump. He has been an indisputable failure. (Photo by Ed Jones Jr.) Here in the District, the…

What if I told you that there's a simple step you can take that will strongly affect every part of your family and community for the next 10 years and will only take 10 minutes to complete? Could I count you in? Ayana Bias is the…

The DC Council has decided to permit the controversial Medicaid managed care contract recently submitted by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration to move forward. That decision comes one week after information presented during a public…

At a time when DC residents are joining people around the country to demand less punitive policing and more community-driven solutions, it may be surprising that a Black man incarcerated since the age of 16 would argue for the construction…

The excuses were pitiful. Shameful even. A 911 center's director and staff tried to convince everyone nothing was wrong with dispatchers taking four minutes to process a call for a house fire with people trapped. The director told one…

When DC elected officials passed the 2014 government-contracting law giving preference points to small, disadvantaged businesses and other companies that obtain certification from the Department of Small and Local Business Development…

Our electricity bill is outrageous. It is a financial burden, but it is also a shameful monthly reminder of the damage that one family is blithely doing to the planet. The house is now airtight, over-insulated, shuttered and shaded.…

It is early evening in the midst of a historic time: a pandemic paired with a long-overdue push for racial justice. We are sitting in a beautiful Northwest DC public playground. The swingset, the climbing hill and the nearby benches are…

Some top executives in DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration appear to be suffering from amnesia. Maybe it’s the stress of dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic and public health emergency. How else to explain why they are…

Mayor Muriel Bowser’s designation of the street in the front of the White House as Black Lives Matter Plaza, accompanied by street art emblazoning the slogan on 16th Street NW, marked an eventful, tumultuous and contentious time in the…

We recently commemorated the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Having spent the past 30 years working to ensure the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo are inclusive and welcoming to all, I am…

In the middle of a deadly global health pandemic, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration has decided to shake up the city’s system for delivering health care to poor residents who are on Medicaid. Many of them are people of color and are…

The DC Council Committee on Government Operations, chaired by Ward 4’s Brandon Todd, recently gave preliminary approval to the Racial Equity Achieves Real Change Amendment Act of 2020. The legislation, now known as the REACH Act, was the…

When the novel coronavirus pandemic sent the District into a public health emergency, thousands of DC residents (87% of them Black) were at significant risk of contracting or dying of COVID-19 — because they had no homes. This inequity is…

It was billed as the DC Council’s 32nd legislative session of the current two-year term. Far from routine, however, it was a spectacle of reckless budgeting and poor policymaking punctuated by incivility and unprofessional behavior. …

Here in our nation’s capital, we are proud that our local policymakers are leading the fight against climate change, but we must also recognize that our commitments to reduce climate pollution require follow-through. The CleanEnergy DC…