☀️Why I’m all in for Janeese Lewis George for Ward 4!☀️
Neighbor,
DC Democratic Primary Election Day is June 4, 2024. As a former citywide candidate and current neighborhood elected official, I’m paying close attention to the races I think will have the most impact on our city and our neighborhoods, including the DC Council seat for Ward 4 ー where I live. I’m proud to support my Councilmember, Janeese Lewis George, in her bid for re-election to continue to serve as the Ward 4 Councilmember.
Janeese embodies values-based leadership. She serves with compassion and a dedication to treating everyone with dignity. I spoke a lot about values-based leadership when I ran for DC Council because elected officials who are driven by their values exhibit clarity of purpose and a dedication to making sustained change over time. Janeese has proven she is just such a values-based leader through her relentless commitments to meeting basic needs like housing, education, and healthcare as rights and treating everyone with dignity. I know she will continue to bring energy, vision, and compassion to our local legislative body.
In the summer of 2021, I heard Janeese provide remarks at a vigil for individuals who had recently died while homeless. I’ve attended many of these vigils, which serve as a stark reminder both that we continue to fail our unhoused neighbors and that people’s lives are literally at stake. Janeese spoke with moral clarity about our duty to work every day to make sure everyone has the dignity of a home. Her remarks moved and inspired me, and they clearly demonstrated the values that motivate her in public service and will continue to drive her throughout her service. And she followed with action ー winning funding for a historic 2,400 housing vouchers.
Janeese leads with moral clarity, and she puts in the work and gets things done. I’ve seen Janeese’s action and persistence as a neighborhood elected official in her Ward, where I work to raise issues and challenges and seek collaborative partners on the DC Council to propose and implement solutions. Here are just a sampling of ways Janeese has tangibly improved DC:
- Janeese shepherded legislation ensuring that every school has a librarian. Year after year, families fight to restore funding to our local schools for essential staff and services. Janeese had the tenacity and foresight to reframe thinking about our schools from budget line items to conceptualizing each school as an ecosystem entitled to needed staff and services. Janeese has continued to view each school as entitled to staff and services, fighting year after year to restore budget cuts in the Mayor’s budget for our local schools.
- Janeese has engaged in novel and intensive oversight of the District Department of General Services ー which maintains our public schools, recreation centers, and playgrounds ー in her role as Chair of the Council’s Committee on Facilities and Family Services. Janeese was in school buildings across DC in July (well before the school year started) for readiness tours to ensure our children return to safe and healthy school environments. And while Janeese is fighting for all our students across DC, she has never lost sight of the important needs in Ward 4, continually pushing for modernization at Whittier Elementary School, which has faced severe building issues for years.
- In my neighborhood in Takoma DC, Janeese has been an ally in working tirelessly to maximize transit-accessible affordable housing. This includes the Takoma Metro development, which will have more than three times as much affordable housing as previous proposals, as well as a permanent publicly-accessible park and plaza, significant pedestrian improvements, and better environmental sustainability, as well as Elm Gardens, a project where tenants exercised their rights under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act to purchase the building and partner with an affordable housing developer for 80 units of affordable housing, including eight permanent supportive housing units for neighbors formerly without homes. Anyone who has followed housing issues in DC, particularly in Takoma, knows that it takes courage with intentional and persistent effort to move these projects forward.
- Janeese worked with our neighborhood Commission to enact legislation making it easier to tow abandoned cars. One of the challenges we have faced in our neighborhood are abandoned and dangerous cars that sit on our neighborhood streets for months and even years, creating safety hazards. Janeese and her staff worked skillfully with our Commission and residents to understand the issue and to implement meaningful changes that respond to resident needs and keep our neighborhoods cleaner and safer.
- One of the top issues we address as neighborhood elected officials is traffic safety, specifically around schools. Janeese came into office in 2020 as a partner in neighborhood-level efforts to make meaningful change and led one of the most important pieces of legislation I’ve come across that has and will continue to improve traffic safety around schools: the Safe Routes to School Act. The legislation requires installation of traffic safety infrastructure around schools, expands school zones, enhances the crossing guard program, and collects needed data to make further improvements. As many of us know, implementation and oversight are essential, and I trust Janeese to continue her dedicated work toward these goals.
- Local journalism ー including essential accountability reporting ー is facing severe threats. WAMU recently shutdown local news site DCist, firing accountability reporters who have broken the news on essential issues like bad actor property owners who rent to voucher holders in a scam to make more money and worsen living conditions, including a bad actor trying to develop a building for exactly this purpose in Takoma DC. Janeese has proposed legislation that meaningfully seeks to reinvigorate our local news infrastructure, which is essential to keeping residents informed on neighborhood and city issues and ensuring accountability.
- Since 2018, I have worked with other neighborhood elected officials to secure funding for our Takoma Main Street, which serves our beloved local small businesses in Takoma DC and Takoma Park, Maryland and previously only received Maryland funding. Janeese took on this effort and won essential funding for the Takoma Main Street that matches funding received from Maryland. She has continually been a partner in supporting our local small businesses.
- At a time when community safety is top of mind and intentional action is needed, Janeese has been dedicated to mechanisms that will meaningfully prevent conflict and keep our children and communities safer. She recently proposed legislation to teach conflict resolution in every DC school. The federal Office of Justice Programs has noted that “conflict resolution education is a critical component of comprehensive, community-based efforts to prevent violence and reduce crime.” And our efforts within the neighborhood, including a meeting focused on community building and community safety for our neighborhood schools, highlight the importance of conflict resolution in our neighborhood schools. Janeese has also succeeded in bringing the effective Cure the Streets violence interruption program to Ward 4 and expanded safe passage services in the neighborhood.
Having served as a neighborhood elected official for nearly six years and having worked with many Councilmembers, it is clear to me that Janeese has the unique skills of understanding neighborhood-level challenges, connecting the dots among those challenges and larger systemic issues, and legislating and exercising persistent oversight to address those challenges.
Janeese is able to understand what’s going on block-by-block within our neighborhoods because she is dedicated to community engagement. She regularly hosts CARE (Community Access, Resource, and Engagement) Days in every Ward 4 neighborhood to engage our community and to bring resources and services directly to neighbors. CARE Days provides a direct opportunity to connect with the Councilmember and her staff, as well as the opportunity to connect with government agencies and access resources and services, from your residence. It often feels like elected officials only knock on my door come election season, but I know Janeese is regularly in my neighborhood, on my block, and at my door.
Even if you don’t live in Ward 4, in DC we only have 13 Councilmembers. That means that every seat has an impact citywide ー especially when it comes to oversight. I’ve been continually impressed with Janeese’s sustained and intentional efforts to make our government work better for ALL our communities.
I’m excited to endorse Janeese Lewis George for a second term as my Ward 4 representative on the DC Council. I hope you will join me in supporting Janeese and making a donation to her campaign. Janeese is participating in the Fair Elections Program, which means her campaign is fueled by small-dollar donations from neighbors like you. I can’t wait to see what she continues to achieve in support of our communities.
With gratitude,
