By Chris DeRosa
Note: The person-to-person activities described in this article have been suspended to ensure health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. The volunteers’ research, paperwork and electronic organization continue.
Opinion
Ed Talk is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.
People assert “social engineering” to oppose ideas to increase the socioeconomic diversity within our schools or neighborhoods. Where has this indignant outcry been as Arlington County policies “socially engineered” us into the segregated neighborhoods and schools we have today?
There’s a growing movement in America comprised of people with wildly diverse views from across the political and cultural spectrum. They’re coming together over dinner to respectfully debate the most contentious issues of our time. And as you might imagine, the Washington, D.C.-area is ground zero for this movement.
While there are more than a dozen organizations engaged in these civil dialogue events, the two most active groups in the D.C.-area are “Make America Dinner Again” and “Better Angels,” both of which host events in the area. I am both the Northern Virginia coordinator for Make America Dinner Again (MADA) and a semi-regular attendee to Better Angels events.
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Today we’re continuing a series of articles to highlight the local businesses that advertise with ARLnow.com.
The coronavirus outbreak will bring significant hardship to many local businesses in Arlington, so we wanted to take an opportunity to recognize the advertisers who support us, in hopes that our readers support them.
Last month I led a conversation in Loudoun County to determine how a group of committed women activists could best serve our community.
One of the attendees shared her experiences of a teacher mishandling a racial situation involving her son. The next day I received an email from the Arlington NAACP asking for more details from Arlington Public Schools (APS) on the “current policy and procedures for staff, students, and families to report acts of discrimination and bigotry.”
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of joining the board of the Alliance for Housing Solutions (AHS).
The Alliance advocates for affordable housing in Arlington that meet the needs of all income levels and stages of life. This includes both committed affordable housing developments that are income restricted for low-income residents and market-oriented solutions such as ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) that will provide unsubsidized lower-cost housing.
Over the weekend, in the midst of a pandemic, some local restaurants and bars were surprisingly crowded.
With sports leagues, recreational programs, major events, schools and many other facets of everyday life suspended or cancelled, in an effort to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, the sight of revelers crowding D.C. area bars and restaurants prompted some outrage on social media.
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(Updated at 2:15 p.m.) Tax and budget season is upon us. County Manager Mark Schwartz has released a recommended budget of $1.396 billion, including increased tax revenues from increased assessments and increased county expenditures.
While I will not go into specifics of this year’s budget, I would like to begin a dialogue about systemic changes that the County Board should consider in the long-run about how we levy taxes.
Despite over five years of multiple contacts with County government, residents in the Arlington Forest and Bluemont neighborhoods are justifiably frustrated by the County’s lack of progress in protecting pedestrians crossing Carlin Springs Road.
The County has failed these neighborhoods in two respects. First, it has failed to take the decisive actions needed to protect pedestrians at several dangerous intersections. Second, it has failed to give sufficient weight to the views and knowledge of neighborhood associations and residents who offered highly relevant on-the-ground observations, surveys, and data.
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Last fall, Virginia voters gave Democrats total control of all levers of power in Richmond.
Delegate Alfonso Lopez had bragged that they could complete the work of a lifetime in “two afternoons.” It turns out that it took the new majority a little longer than that to tackle their agenda. In fact they had to take the unusual step of extending their session by a day to get their work done.
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(Updated at 9:55 a.m.) Coronavirus has arrived in Arlington, with a local resident and a worker in Crystal City testing positive for the disease. And the fourth and fifth case in Virginia were subsequently confirmed in Fairfax and Spotsylvania County.
While this is obviously big news, given the impacts the disease is having on both the economy and the health of those who contract it, let’s for a minute allow for some optimism: the stock market is back up this morning, perhaps the authorities will be able to contain the outbreak before it gets much worse, and just maybe COVID-19 will not prove to be as deadly as originally feared.
By Wesley Joe and Carly Lenhoff
Public conversations about juvenile justice can quickly escalate into pitched battles. They involve some of the highest stakes: fateful decisions about the future of children. Unfortunately, these conversations often devolve into unproductive conflict. While some disagreements are inevitable and healthy, many become needlessly mired in unproductive disputes over basic facts. Arlington Public Schools (APS) can reduce some of this deliberative drag by collecting and sharing more data, and by making its existing data more accessible.