Last Wednesday was a terrible, rotten, no-good, amazing day at the Festival Center. In other words, it was a typical Wednesday.
It all started with an early morning action at Mayor Bowser’s house waking her up to let her know about the horrors she is helping to create for so many residents of DC from the budget she has sent to the DC Council that increases funding for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) while drastically cutting so many vital services that actually help create public safety. The action started at 5 am and I had to wake up before 4 am to get there. I was surrounded by some of the most amazing and creative activists I have ever known and they led us in a powerful action to both lament the harm caused to so many DC residents and to alert Mayor Bowser and her neighbors in Northwest DC to the plight facing vulnerable people in DC. We stayed until the police literally chased us away. It was a powerful way to start the day!
I then went to the office to finish writing my testimony as later that morning I testified in front of the Public Safety Committee about how the Mayor’s budget actually impedes public safety by increasing the MPD budget by 15%. I passionately argued against giving more money to MPD for a number of reasons. Why give MPD more money when crime is at record lows and the department has vacancies that it has not been able to fill for years? One of the “vital staff” they want to add is a 25th person to their public relations department! Do we really think adding a 25th person to an already bloated department will result in actual public safety? Or will adding more people to the public relations team just reduce the already minimal amount of transparency from this police department that is never held in check by the DC Council?
The Mayor and some on the Council want to give tens of millions of dollars more to MPD when last year MPD failed to make arrests in 60% of non-fatal shootings and over half the robberies reported to them. All of this despite an invasion of federal agents, the national guard, and significantly increased overtime pay. Why is DC pouring more money into such a failed program? For the rest of us, we have to actually perform in our jobs to earn more funds. Why shouldn’t the police?
DC can save $40 million – which will go a looooong way to covering the important life-saving services currently being cut – by eliminating MPD’s bloated overtime budget. It has been the overtime budget that has been used in 2025 and 2026 for the police to work in collaboration with ICE to harm and terrorize DC communities. This means instead of supporting and uplifting DC’s vulnerable populations, DC taxpayers have been paying to terrorize our own people. This is simply madness.
Now, we are only at 11 am so there is still a lot of time left in the day! I make my way back to the Festival Center and along the way a guy nearly runs me off the road and so the shell to my passenger side rearview mirror gets ripped off, but I eventually arrive safe and sound. Now I need a new rearview mirror!
I then spend about an hour moving 100 pound bags in my car to dump into the trash (long story for another post!) and as I am doing it I jump another car that is broken down for a family who speaks little English but who was deeply thankful. However, as I am leaving I mistakenly rub the side of my tire against the curb and so by the time I arrive back at the Festival Center I have a flat tire! I get that changed, come inside, where some folks have been waiting (patiently) for me to give them a tour!
I make my rounds around the building and say hello to the amazing people who work here all the while hearing about the amazing things they are working on. So much happens at the Festival Center every day and while I don’t know all of it, I love hearing about the things people are up to. It is so life-giving.
By this time, I have been going 100 miles an hour all day it feels like and so I spend 5 minutes in the chapel reflecting on the day and thanking God for the people in our building and praying our actions that day at the Mayor’s house and in City Hall will make some kind of difference. But now it’s email time though I only have enough time to attend to 25 of the more than 500 emails that are waiting on me.
By this time it is close to 5 pm and so we begin to prepare for the evening event. Wednesday night we hosted our 2nd candidate’s forum; this one for the Ward 1 Council seat. There are five people running and so we expected a decent-sized crowd, but we easily ended up with around 150 people in the room and the air was electric! One thing I can say is that this is not the year to run to the right! What I mean is that people are hungry for change. Residents are hungry for their elected leaders to ensure affordability and the chance for ALL people to be able to live with opportunities. People want to know there is accountability for agencies like ICE and the police and they want their elected leaders to work for them and not corporate interests.
Right now, that is not happening and the more we give money to failed programs like the MPD, the less money we have to increase money for the underfunded Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or to fully fund the Access to Justice program which provides over 40,000 DC residents to quality legal representation in civil matters, or to prevent more cuts in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or to fully fund the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund, which allows important energy upgrades to low-income families, or to fully fund DC Paid Family Leave program, or to do so much more!
Just cutting the MPD’s overtime pay can pay for all of this that is listed above and more!
I ended my day around 8 pm and went home exhausted. I was bummed about my rearview mirror and my tire, but pumped that everyday I get to participate in what I understand is God’s desire for real and lasting change in Washington DC. The values we live by at the Festival Center center on hospitality, justice, and faith. Living out of these values always moves us towards solidarity and that happened on Wednesday in the streets, in City Hall, and even in our building.
It was a rotten day, a transformative day, a horrible day, and an amazing day all at the same time.
In other words, it was another Wednesday.
