Author: grassrootsadmin

by Jonathan Krall

In July, Bryan Jackson and Elizabeth Jones Valderrama told us about OAR [1] programs to aid returning citizens (for Alexandria, Arlington and Falls Church) and to coordinate court-ordered community service volunteers (for Arlington and Falls Church). OAR works with individuals who were formerly incarcerated. OAR’s evidence-based program keeps recidivism rates low: 11% versus the Virginia average of 23%. One way to reduce recidivism is to keep people away from the trauma if incarceration. In Arlington, thousands are sentenced to court-ordered community service instead of incarceration, connecting citizens to community events instead of isolating and exploiting them. In Alexandria, those numbers are merely in the hundreds. It seems to me that court-mandated community service is under-utilized here in Alexandria. Can we do better?

Action alert: more service and less exploitation
In Grassroots Alexandria we don’t just talk, we act. Please write to the Alexandria City Council and the Alexandria Commonwealth Attorney with the following message: “I am a citizen of Alexandria and I am asking that we expand the use of court-mandated community service in lieu of incarceration. I understand that, relative to nearby communities in Virginia, alternatives to incarceration are under-utilized in Alexandria. I further ask that alternatives to incarceration be applied so that people of color have as much access to these alternatives as white people. Over-incarceration of people of color is not acceptable. With better policies, we will get better results.”
To contact City Council, click here.
To contact the Commonwealth Attorney, click here.

Continue reading “Alternatives to prison: an opportunity in Alexandria”

Response by Virginia Housing Advocates and Allies to VA Money Committees Stripping Governor’s Allocation for the Virginia Housing Trust Fund

February 6, 2019

On Tuesday, the Virginia House Appropriations and Senate Finance Subcommittees released their recommendations for the 2019-2020 biennial budget. These recommendations fail to significantly increase to the Virginia Housing Trust Fund, despite the Governor’s proposal to expand it by $19.5 million over two years. The House recommendations included no increase to the trust fund; the Senate recommendations included $1million – just 5% of the executive proposal – over two years.

In light of the overwhelmingly bi-partisan efforts to provide a $750 million incentive package over 15 years for Amazon, as well as $50 million for Micron, we are outraged that selected members of Virginia’s money committees stripped this critical support for housing for Virginia families. Continue reading “Public Statement on VA Housing Trust Fund”

by Jonathan Krall

This week, the Washington Post published our op-ed about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in Alexandria. We encourage you to visit the Washington Post and read about it. The op-ed includes specific statements and statistics. Below we provide our sources.

Want less text and more action? Sign our petition here. And skip to the bottom of this post for more.

Continue reading “ICE in Alexandria: the data”

by Barbara and Lindsay

On October 3, Tenants and Workers United and Grassroots Alexandria jointly held a candidates forum for the Alexandria City Public School Board. All 16 candidates attended, vying for the 9 seats. We focused on restorative practices, school resource officers and the school-to-prison pipeline. These are the issues that, we feel, are feeding the so-called achievement gap between students of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Our report is posted here.

Please vote on November 6, if not sooner. In person absentee voting has already begun. A video recording of the forum can be found on the Tenants and Workers United Facebook page.

by the Grassroots Alexandria Steering Committee (Zeina, Opal, Lisa, Jonathan)

The joint Tenants and Workers United/Grassroots Alexandria effort to keep ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) out of the Alexandria jail continues. Our volunteers have reached out to our local sheriff, to city council, and to our leaders in Richmond. We have learned that both the Alexandria sheriff and city manager are signatories to the agreement that allows ICE to use our jail to detain undocumented Alexandrians. We have learned that ICE issues warrants without judicial oversight. The public debate has been heated. Some who oppose us have resorted to personal pressure tactics, making disparaging statements about individual Grassroots Alexandria volunteers. In the face of personal attacks, the appropriate course of action is to redouble our efforts, focusing on issues instead of on individuals. The Grassroots Alexandria mission is to teach and practice democracy in Alexandria for the benefit of all Alexandrians, especially the most vulnerable among us. We will not back down. Continue reading “Let’s All Stand Up for Alexandrians”

by Jonathan Krall

A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to speak with a member of Senator Mark Warner’s staff at a Grassroots Alexandria event. Because Senator Warner is famously centrist, I expressed my concern that the political center seems to have disappeared. The old definition of the center, policies supported by centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans, no longer applies to Congress. For reasons they are loathe to share with the public, centrist Republicans are no longer accepted by their party. As a result, the real-world center, the policies supported by a majority of US citizens, desperately needs the support of the only major party likely to support it, the Democrats.

As I see it, a “missing center” issue is not only clearly favored by a majority of US voters, it is also mysteriously considered a non-starter by the mainstream corporate media. Examples are loophole-free universal background checks prior to a gun purchase, an assault weapons ban, strengthening social security instead of continuing to chip away at it, universal healthcare without bankruptcy-inducing surprise billing, and transportation infrastructure for cities, such as subways and light rail. To the best of my knowledge, a majority of US voters favor all of these while the media ignores or pooh-poohs them. Continue reading “The Missing Political Center”

by Jonathan Krall

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine receives too little attention from the mainstream media. At present, typical media reports make it seem as if a few Israeli settlements are encroaching on Palestinian territory. In fact, Israeli settlements blanket the West Bank like McDonald’s franchises. Because roads connecting settlements to each other are controlled by Israel’s military occupation forces, Palestinian communities are cut off from each other.  These roads, like the settlements, are built on expropriated Palestinian land. A separation barrier, also called the apartheid wall, curtails Palestinians’ freedom of movement and negatively affects their fundamental “rights to work, education, medical care, family life, earning a living and an adequate standard of living”. Israeli forces, aided by the USA, routinely bulldoze the homes of Palestinians who resist. Recently, Israel attempted to level an entire Palestinian village.

This alarms me because Israel is demonstrating that ethnic cleansing on a national scale is acceptable to the US mainstream political and social leadership. Because our mainstream media fails to call this out, white nationalists here in the USA, including Trump, are empowered to proceed with their own campaign of ethnic cleansing. Continue reading “The Mainstream Media Needs to Call Out Ethnic Cleansing”

by Jonathan Krall

On May 18, 2018, Grassroots Alexandria, along with Tenants and Workers United and NAACP Alexandria, hosted a city council and mayoral candidate forum at the Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology. Present were mayoral candidates Allison Silberberg and Justin Wilson, along with city council candidates Canek Aguirre, Willie Bailey, Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, John Chapman, Michael Clinkscale (Republican), Kevin Dunne (Republican), Matt Feely, Dak Hardwick, Amy Jackson, Del Pepper, Robert Ray, Mo Seifeldein, Mark Shiffer (Independent), and Paul Smedberg. J. Chris Hubbard was represented by his wife, who was allowed an opening statement only. Unless noted, all candidates are competing in the Democratic Party primary election on June 12. In person absentee voting has already begun.

In addition to opening and closing statements, candidates were given 30 seconds each to answer each of four questions. This was followed by a “lightning round” of seven yes/no questions. Topics included immigration, affordable housing, police reform, education, safer schools, and LGBTQ human rights. The complete set of questions, along with our brief notes on the answers can be found here.

Photo (L-R): Dak Hardwick, Matt Feely, Kevin Dunne, and Michael Clinkscale respond to the idea of introducing armed “resource officers” into elementary schools (photo by Barbara Hale).

A video recording of the forum can be found on the Tenants and Workers United Facebook page.

by Jonathan Krall

I’ve been reading Democracy in Chains, by Nancy MacLean, where she reports that the very basis for civilization, the idea of “a public good,” is under attack. A public good is something, such as the subway or Social Security, that we all pay for. We do this to invest in our nation and as a duty to each other. Opponents of “public goods” have had some success, such as diverting taxpayer money from public to private schools. Because the public keeps fighting back in favor of public goods, opponents are attacking democracy itself.

Medicare is a popular program. Millions of seniors depend on Medicare daily. Yet Paul Ryan successfully pushed a bill through the House of Representatives to replace Medicare with a voucher system (it died in the Senate). Another example is transportation. Instead of investing in high-capacity subways, the current administration is encouraging cities to partner with private companies to build toll roads.

MacLean describes a school of thought, promoted by the late James Buchanan, that public schools, for example, come about because parents, and politicians, use emotional appeals to exploit the rest of us. That is, they are sneakily getting us to pay for the education of other people’s children. Buchanan and his allies wished to abolish public schools (and roads, parks, emergency rooms, etc.), so costs fall only on those who directly benefit. However, Buchanan’s disciples have found that, in a democracy, these draconian ideas fail. Rather than give up, MacLean reports, disciples of extreme privatization are attacking democracy itself.

Continue reading “Fighting for the Public Good”

by Jonathan Krall (Grassroots Alexandria) and Mia Taylor (Tenants and Workers United)

A small group of activists, representing Tenants and Workers United, the Advancement Project, and Grassroots Alexandria, met with representatives from the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office in November, 2017, to better understand the relationship between the Sheriff’s Office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The bad news is that the Sheriff’s Office is voluntarily collaborating with ICE. The good news (or not-as-bad news) is that we can – and must – take straightforward steps to protect all Alexandrians and keep families together. Here is some of what we’ve learned so far and steps you can take to help. Continue reading “ICE and Alexandria: What we’ve learned so far”