Grassroots Alexandria May update
Jonathan Krall
Oops! A little late this month...
Grassroots Alexandria May update
This is an update following our monthly action meeting on May 6.
1. Steering committee
- For May, the GrA Reading Group finished up its discussion of Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, discussing the chapter entitled Grenada Revisited: An Interim Report. For June, we will read the introduction to Just Action, by Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein
- With Tenants and Workers United and the NoVA Branch of the DSA, we held a candidate forum on Thursday May 2. It went well, with most candidates participating. We have a report on the event, with all questions and answers, posted on our web site.
2. Education
- At our May meeting, we discussed the gathering of historical data on student suspensions.
3. Healthcare: Medicare For All Project
- The Medicare For All project was a success and we will be taking down the healthcare issue area page soon.
- We are working on a write-up of the process and methods used to obtain this positive result.
4. Housing: Housing Equity Project
- On April 30, we met with members of the DMV chapter of African Communities Together. A key issue is that we do not have effective ways to hold predatory landlords accountable. ACT has asked individual members of city council to write to problem landlords, with limited success. If the city had a quantitative “scorecard” for evaluating landlords, that might help.
While we have many goals in common, it helps to be on the same page. For example, based on this conversation, it would be appropriate for GrA to advocate for greater amounts of deeply affordable “working class” housing in the ongoing Alexandria West planning process.
- At our TWU/GrA/DSA May 2 candidate forum, we asked multiple housing-related questions, including the idea of additional dedicated taxes for deeply-affordable housing, the ARISE program and a local housing voucher program.
5. Alexandria Human Rights
- We remain committed to immigrant rights and opposed to ICE deportations. In our joint TWU/GrA/DSA candidate forum, we included this yes/no question: “Are you willing to leverage the city council budget to encourage the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office to eliminate their voluntary cooperation with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE?”
- On April 24, Alexandria’s city council recognized National Arab American Heritage Month. Grassroots Alexandria volunteer Zeina Azzam and former Grassroots Alexandria volunteer Abdel Elnoubi successfully brought this request to City Council.
- At our May meeting we discussed how we can move forward to engage with City Council on the topic of Palestine Human Rights and divestment from Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. Alexandria has a significant middle eastern population that does not always feel heard.
- According to the Washington Post, candidates Aguirre, Chapman, Elnoubi, Greene, Lewis, Peterson, and Scherer are in favor of a Gaza ceasefire resolution.
6. Transportation Equity
- In coordination with our allies in the Coalition for Smarter Growth we encouraged public support for increased Metro support from the Virginia Assembly. Lower post-pandemic Metrorail ridership punched a significant ($750M) hole in the Metro budget. Increased contributions from Maryland, DC and Virginia were not enough. To avoid a “death spiral” (fae increase > less riders > fare increase > less riders …), Metro plans a modest fare increase and reallocation of funding from maintenance to operations. We’ve been down this neglected-maintenance path before. It wasn’t pretty.
- As campaign season marches on, we remain focused on transportation equity, particularly free DASH transit service, which has contributed to record-breaking ridership. At our TWU/GrA/DSA May 2 candidate forum, we asked one open-ended question, “Successful transportation depends on people safely biking and walking from home to a transit stop. What would you do to improve safe biking and walking?” and one yes/no question: “In September 2021, Alexandria eliminated fare collection on all DASH buses. This generated record ridership. Do you support continuing fare free DASH service?” To the latter question, all candidates present responded “yes.”