The Washington Post - 19.08.2019

MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B

Montgomery’s chapter of Show-

ing Up for Racial Justice, dis-

missed the county’s efforts so far

as “a PR stunt,” pointing out that

no concrete changes have

emerged since the Montgomery

County Council passed its racial

equity resolution in 2018.

Council President Nancy Na-

varro (D-District 4), the driving

force behind the resolution,

countered that officials chose to

spend the initial months fielding

ideas from residents.

“We have hundreds of years of

structural issues to work

through,” Navarro said. “The

timeline is very specific, and we

are on target.”

In the fall, the council plans to

introduce legislation that will call

for, among other things, the crea-

tion of an equity office similar to

Fairfax’s and a requirement for

future legislation to include a

statement that details potential

implications on racial inequities.

County Executive Marc Elrich

(D) said he anticipates more re-

sistance will emerge as the bill is

considered.

“You can’t wait for people to be

ready for this,” Elrich said. “We

don’t have the luxury of waiting

for everybody to get there.”

McDuffie is also planning to

introduce racial equity legisla-

tion in the District this fall. Like

other government officials, he

sees the biggest challenge as fig-

uring out which measures actual-

ly work.

“People believe there’s going to

be a favorable impact, and I

believe that too,” said Bonner-

Tompkins, the legislative analyst

in Montgomery. “But if we’re be-

ing honest, there is no evidence

yet to bear that out.”

[email protected]

investigate biases in student dis-

cipline records will bring “in-

creased violence” to classrooms.

The state education commission-

er called Kersten’s arguments

“flat-out racist.”

In New York, Deroy Murdock, a

contributing editor for National

Review, wrote that a $23 million

effort to provide implicit bias

training for 125,000 city schools

employees was wasteful, adding

that the money should have been

used to hire more teachers.

And in Montgomery, some par-

ents say proposals aimed at ad-

dressing racial inequity in

schools, such as redrawing at-

tendance boundaries or offering

honors classes for all students,

are too extreme. Aleksandra Roh-

de, a retired Army lawyer, said

changing boundaries will end up

“dumbing down” all schools and

is unfair to residents who can

afford to live near the highest-

performing schools.

“When people buy into a neigh-

borhood, they’ve invested mon-

ey,” Rohde said. “And when you

take away boundaries, you’re tell-

ing people that you’re taking

away that money.”

Such criticism, and the slow

pace of change so far, has left

advocates like Bennett feeling

frustrated. A former aide to D.C.

Council members Brandon T.

Todd (D-Ward 4) and Kenyan R.

McDuffie (D-Ward 5), she began

working for the Consumer Health

Foundation in 2018.

“It’s all good to talk about

[inequity], but nobody wants to

shift resources,” said Bennett,

who is African American. “The

moment you start shifting re-

sources, it starts to feel to white

people like oppression.”

Laurel Hoa, co-founder of

particularly when initiatives go

beyond training to policy changes

and resource reallocation. For

example, he said, some hiring

managers resisted his office’s ef-

forts to broaden government re-

cruitment beyond a few recog-

nized institutions and graduate

schools.

“We have particular pipelines

that have existed for jobs,” he

said. “And when you try to dis-

mantle that... some people see it

as a loss.”

In 2013, Seattle’s school board

introduced “racial equity teams”

as part of a five-year plan to tackle

a chronic achievement gap. The

plan expired without making a

significant impact, critics say. Re-

cent research from Stanford Uni-

versity found that from 2016 to

2017, the gap in test scores be-

tween black and white students

in Seattle actually increased; in a

self-released scorecard for the

2017-2018 school year, the district

said it failed to meet three out of

four racial equity targets.

In the D.C. area, Fairfax is the

furthest along. After the county

joined the Alliance in 2015, lead-

ers launched “One Fairfax,” which

mandates the consideration of

equity in policymaking. In 2018,

they hired Chief Equity Officer

Karla Bruce and equipped her

with two policy advisers and a

budget of more than $480,000.

Fairfax has not set outcome

deadlines for its equity work,

Bruce said, instead focusing on

helping agencies incorporate eq-

uity considerations into decision-

making.

Equity efforts have also

sparked explicit backlash in some

places, including Minnesota,

where conservative writer Kath-

erine Kersten wrote that a push to

lative analyst at Montgomery’s

Office of Legislative Oversight

and a lead researcher in the

county’s equity efforts.

The county’s Department of

Health and Human Services

launched its own racial equity

working group a decade ago. It

took three years to agree on what

racial equity meant, and several

more to communicate the defini-

tion to staff, said Betty Lam, the

chief of the department’s office of

community affairs.

Two years ago, the department

began evaluating senior manag-

ers and supervisors on how active

they have been in learning about

racial equity and incorporating it

into their work. It is the only

department-wide initiative so far,

Lam said. Smaller efforts, such as

redistributing a $36,000 grant

for hepatitis B treatment to better

serve Asian American residents,

took weeks of meetings to ensure

community buy-in.

“It’s nice to throw that word,

‘equity,’ around, but what does it

mean?” said Uma Ahluwalia, who

led the department until 2018. “It

took us years, to be honest with

you, just to teach ourselves the

language.”

From conversation to action

King County, the most popu-

lous county in Washington state,

passed an Equity and Social Jus-

tice ordinance in 2010. Today, its

equity office operates with nine

full-time staff and a biennial

budget of $4 million.

Director Matias Valenzuela

said there has been tangible prog-

ress, including a change in school

suspension policies that he says

has led to fewer youths in jail.

But he also said internal push-

back has stymied some efforts,

Democratic strongholds — con-
front mounting evidence of racial
disparities and attempt to distin-
guish themselves from what they
see as the racially divisive policies
of the Trump administration.
From Washington state to the
suburbs of the nation’s capital,
officials are diving into unchart-
ed territory, experts say, with
little clarity on how their efforts
will translate into policy or
whether they will effectively
bridge gaps in income and educa-
tion.
In Seattle, where its city coun-
cil has spent millions supporting
racial equity programs in public
schools, the achievement gap be-
tween black and white students
has persisted, and in some areas,
worsened. In Virginia’s Fairfax
County, leaders appointed a chief
equity officer and trained “equity
leads” in each department, but
have yet to adopt significant pol-
icy changes.
“I couldn’t say which jurisdic-
tion is doing better than the
other, because every jurisdiction
is fumbling,” said Temi Bennett,
director of policy and communi-
cation at the nonprofit Consumer
Health Foundation, which is
working on equity initiatives
with policymakers in Montgom-
ery and the District. “I can tell you
this: no one has any idea what
they’re doing.”
“And how could they?” Bennett
continued. “It’s never been done
before.”

Finding the right language

The Government Alliance on
Race and Equity has seen paid
membership double annually
since it started work four years
ago, peaking this year at 162
jurisdictions, said co-director Ju-
lie Nelson.
Fairfax joined as a core mem-
ber in 2015, paying $10,000 in
annual dues. Montgomery and
Alexandria followed suit this
year, while the D.C. Council re-
cently became an associate mem-
ber.
The Alliance says the first step
to achieving equity is to normal-
ize conversations on race, which
involves teaching government of-
ficials and their constituents to
embrace terms like “systemic rac-
ism” and “implicit biases.”
At Montgomery’s community
conversation in June, a middle-
aged Latino immigrant argued
that all people of color in the
county were impacted by racially
biased systems; beside him, an
African American couple origi-
nally from Mississippi disagreed.
They had worked hard to af-
ford the life that they had now,
they said, and they believed oth-
ers should too. Besides, they add-
ed, Montgomery was the most
racially equitable place they had
ever seen.
“This is part of the squishiness
of equity — everyone has their
own point of view,” said Elaine
Bonner Tompkins, a senior legis-

EQUITY FROM B

pedestrians with a bouncing,

bungee-corded guitarist who

spews flames from the end of

his electric guitar — you’d have

to... Well, you couldn’t,” said

Flynn Grace, CTO — chief

Thunderdome officer — of

Mutant, the start-up that placed

400 “Mad Max: Fury Road” Doof

Wagons on the streets of

Washington.

“But now you can simply use

the Mutant app to locate the

nearest ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

Doof Wagon,” Grace said. “We’ve

brought a little bit of

Armageddon to the nation’s

capital.”

Actually, a lot of people

welcomed the “Mad Max: Fury

Road” Doof Wagons because the

flamethrowers could be used to

torch all the hovercrafts and

steamrollers that were parked

haphazardly around town.

The scooters, of course, had a

tendency to burst into flame on

their own.

Sitting on the dockless

of the bay

I’m joking! But I do wonder how

future historians will make

sense of our march toward peak

dockless vehicle. How did we

end up here? I have a theory.

Remember Heelys, those kids’

shoes with wheels in their soles?

They came onto the market

around the year 2000. The fad

caught on and soon every punk

10-year-old was wheeling this

way and that, threatening to

knock you over at the mall.

Those kids are now 29, and

they’re the ones riding scooters

on the sidewalk.

[email protected]

Twitter: @johnkelly

 For previous columns, visit

washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.

have been blown into the bushes

by the tremendous gusts the

Skim hovercraft fans generate,

but our next update will include

‘Hover Helper’ technology that

should address that,” Wisp said.

It didn’t. But people weren’t

thinking much about the

hovercraft once the “Mad Max:

Fury Road” Doof Wagons began

popping up. They were replicas

of the over-the-top vehicle from

the 2015 post-apocalyptic action

film starring Charlize Theron

and Tom Hardy.

“In the past, if you wanted to

scream around town in an eight-

wheeled, amplifier-encrusted,

smoke-belching, metal

juggernaut — threatening

amphibious personal transport,”

said Dylan Wisp, Skim’s CFO —

chief flotation officer. “A scooter

or moped is fine for the street

but what if you want to go on

the street and in the water —

and then back on the street?

With our Skim app, users can

find the nearest hovercraft and

be quickly floating on a cushion

of air without the time-

consuming hassle that has

dogged traditional hovercraft

procurement.”

Rock Creek, the Tidal Basin

and the Reflecting Pool were

soon clogged with half-

submerged hovercraft, but the

main problem was on land.

“We know some bystanders

to rolling things flat as a

pancake in no time.”

Some cyclists complained

that the bright orange Flat

steamrollers — which weigh

7,000 pounds and feature twin

roller drums — were blocking

bike lanes, crushing pets and

demolishing fire hydrants, but

Willow promised that the next

refresh of the app would feature

a reminder that users should

“flatten responsibly.”

To be honest, most people

forgot about the steamrollers

once the hovercraft came to

town, thanks to a start-up called

Skim.

“We want to revolutionize the

world of on-demand

First came e-
bikes, then
scooters. Now the
District is adding
mopeds to the
mix of
micromobility
services available
in the nation’s
capital.
The motor-
driven cycles are the latest
entrant into the city’s app-based
transportation market, and they
probably won’t be the last this
year. D.C. transportation
officials say they’re open to
testing whatever happens to be
the next big thing in
transportation technology.
— Luz Lazo, The Washington
Post, Aug. 10, 2019
Looking back, it seems funny
that everybody thought the
dockless electric mopeds would
be the straw that broke the app-
based, vehicle-sharing camel’s
back, coming as they did after
the dockless scooters, dockless
bikes and the car-share cars: the
Zipcars and the Car2Gos.
(Cars2Go?)
Surely, people thought, the
streets of Washington could take
no more. But the marketplace
abhors a vacuum and only a few
weeks after the rental mopeds
debuted, they were joined by the
dockless steamrollers, courtesy
of a macromobility start-up
called Flat.
“We want to revolutionize the
world of steamroller rental,”
said Devin Willow, Flat’s CEO
— compression envisioning
officer. “Is there a huge demand
for steamrollers? No, but when
you want a steamroller, you
want it fast. And with our Flat
app, customers can locate,
unlock and rent a steamroller in
minutes — and be on their way

Forget mopeds. Soon D.C. will have steamrollers only an app away.

John
Kelly's
Washington

THE DISTRICT

1 dead, 2 injured after

fire in Northwest

A man injured in a fire in

Northwest Washington on

Sunday morning has died,

authorities said.

A child was critically injured,

and a woman sustained injuries

that weren’t life-threatening in

the fire, according to D.C. Fire

Department officials.

The department received a call

around 9:40 a.m. about a fire in

the basement of a two-story home

in the 700 block of Kennedy

Street NW and reports of children

trapped inside.

Upon arrival, firefighters found

the fire in the basement and first

floor. Crews did an extensive

search and found one child and a

man, both in critical condition,

according to the department.

Firefighters removed them from

the building and transported

them to a hospital, where D.C.

police said the man was later

pronounced dead.

The cause of the fire remains

under investigation.

— Laurel Demkovich

MARYLAND

Man dies in custody

of Pr. George’s police

A 38-year-old man who was

picked up by Prince George’s

County police Sunday, after he

was found knocking on doors

wearing only underwear and

socks, died in custody, Chief Hank

Stawinski said.

Stawinski held an afternoon

news conference to announce the

death and surrounding

circumstances. He said a ride-

hailing driver traveling near the

1400 block of Kings Manor Drive

in Bowie called 911 around 5:

a.m., saying he had observed a

naked man walking from house to

house, knocking on doors.

The man, later identified as

Kevin Antonio Jessie, appeared to

be intoxicated, Stawinski said.

Jessie, who lived in the

neighborhood, approached a

home, rang the doorbell and

began speaking with the

homeowner via a video system.

The homeowner called police to

do a welfare check, describing

Jessie as incoherent.

Police officers arrived and

began questioning Jessie, who

was wearing only underwear and

socks. Stawinski said that during

questioning, Jessie became more

agitated, so officers handcuffed

him. He was placed in an

ambulance, where questioning

continued. After about 20

minutes, Jessie’s condition

worsened, and he began

experiencing medical distress, at

which point paramedics asked

officers to remove the handcuffs,

Stawinski said.

Officers took off the handcuffs,

and paramedics continued to

evaluate Jessie. However, his

condition worsened, and

paramedics began CPR,

Stawinski said.

Jessie died on the scene, he

said. The cause of death is unclear

at this time, as is whether he was

under the influence of any

substance, Stawinski said. An

autopsy is expected to be

performed Monday.

— Laurel Demkovich

LOCAL DIGEST

Results from Aug. 18

DISTRICT

Mid-Day Lucky Numbers: 3-6-

Mid-Day DC-4: 8-3-8-

Mid-Day DC-5: 8-9-5-3-

Lucky Numbers (Sat.): 4-3-

Lucky Numbers (Sun.): 8-3-

DC-4 (Sat.): 0-9-7-

DC-4 (Sun.): 8-3-3-

DC-5 (Sat.): 0-1-7-0-

DC-5 (Sun.): 1-4-7-0-

MARYLAND

Mid-Day Pick 3: 4-4-

Mid-Day Pick 4: 9-2-2-

Night/Pick 3 (Sat.): 7-1-

Pick 3 (Sun.): 4-4-

Pick 4 (Sat.): 7-8-4-

Pick 4 (Sun.): 5-4-5-

Match 5 (Sat.): 15-17-31-34-38 *

Match 5 (Sun.): 2-14-20-38-39 *

5 Card Cash: 5H-AS-8D-AD-3D

VIRGINIA

Day/Pick-3: 9-1-

Pick-4: 5-9-4-

Cash-5: 8-10-16-25-

Night/Pick-3 (Sat.): 7-5-

Pick-3 (Sun.): 0-2-

Pick-4 (Sat.): 6-4-0-

Pick-4 (Sun.): 1-9-8-

Cash-5 (Sat.): 11-15-20-29-

Cash-5 (Sun.): 2-11-16-24-

Bank a Million: 7-8-15-27-28-38 *

MULTI-STATE GAMES

Powerball: 18-21-24-30-60 **

Power Play: 3x

*Bonus Ball **Powerball

For late drawings and other results, check

washingtonpost.com/local/lottery

LOTTERIES

Area jurisdictions face obstacles as they push for racial equity

MARK KAUZLARICH/BLOOMBERG NEWS

After the arrival of app-based bike, scooter and car rentals, mopeds have joined the list of

transportation options in the area, via the company Revel. John Kelly wonders: What will come next?

CRYSTAL PARK/OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION

Montgomery County residents take part in a group discussion on racial equity in March. The County Council passed a racial equity

resolution last year, but some residents have criticized the body for failing to implement concrete changes since then.