The Washington Post - USA (2020-12-02)

BY OVETTA WIGGINS

KLMNO

METRO

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/REGIONAL EZ RE B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

A new book remembers

the Foggy Bottom Gang’s

bootlegging, bookmaking

Warring brothers. B3

THE DISTRICT

D.C. Central Kitchen plans

to relocate to a riverfront

development in 2022 to

expand its programs. B5

OBITUARIES

Read about the lives of

residents of the D.C. area

at washingtonpost.com/

37 ° 45 ° 47 ° 41 ° obituaries.

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 2 p.m.

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10-20 mph

BY FENIT NIRAPPIL

Cashless restaurants and re-

tailers would no longer be able to

operate in the nation’s capital un-

der legislation approved Tuesday

by the D.C. Council, one of several

business measures advanced

ahead of a year-end deadline.

After heated debate, lawmak-

ers also backed measures requir-

ing employers to reinstate work-

ers who lost jobs during the coro-

navirus pandemic and allowing

company insiders who report tax

fraud to get a share of the re-

claimed taxes.

The legislation on cashless

businesses, first proposed in 2018

by council member David Grosso

(I-At Large), is part of a growing

resistance against a movement

that critics says shuts out people

without bank accounts as well as

undocumented immigrants.

San Francisco, New York City

and Philadelphia have recently

started requiring retailers to take

cash payments, as do the states of

SEE COUNCIL ON B3

Ban on

no-cash

retail

advances

D.C. TARGETS RULE

AS DISCRIMINATORY

Also wants those idled by

pandemic rehired first

Courtland

Milloy

He is away. His column will resume

when he returns.

BY OVETTA WIGGINS

AND ERIN COX

Maryland announced steps

Tuesday to address a looming

shortage of hospital beds and an

even more grave shortage of doc-

tors and nurses to staff them as

the Washington region braces for

a winter coronavirus surge.

The state has 1,583 people in

hospitals being treated for the

virus, the most since early May.

The rising number comes as pub-

lic health experts are sounding

the alarm that the situation is

expected to get worse during the

winter months.

“It’s a scary situation for every-

body involved,” Maryland Gov.

Larry Hogan (R) said at a Tuesday

news conference. “We do see in

the next few days us hitting a

critical point.”

SEE REGION ON B2

Md. moves

to increase

hospital

capacity

New cases in region

Through 5 p.m. Tuesday, 5,126 new

coronavirus cases were reported in

the District, Maryland and Virginia,

bringing the total number of cases

to 462,883.

D.C. MD. VA.

+133 +2, 76 5+2,2 28

21,685 201,135 240,063

Coronavirus-related deaths

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday:

D.C. MD.* VA.

+5 +32 +31

6854 ,6734,093

* Includes probable covid-19 deaths

over, Mulhern breathed a sigh of relief. No one

else on the team had contracted the virus.

The young player, who was asymptomatic,

was one of 39 people connected to youth sports

in Anne Arundel County who tested positive

for the virus this fall, infections that triggered

quarantine orders for 8 04 athletes and

c oaches.

With the number of cases spiking across the

region, county o fficials decided in November to

suspend y outh sports, a step that is being taken

more frequently as a second wave of the coro-

SEE SPORTS ON B2

Mike Mulhern, a commissioner with the

South County Youth Association Bulldogs in

Maryland, got the dreaded phone call last

month, a week before football season ended.

One of his young p layers h ad tested p ositive for

the coronavirus.

“My first reaction? It was fear,” he said.

“Obviously I’m thinking about whether it was

widespread. Do we all have it?”

The team and its coaches were told to quar-

antine. Contact tracers in Anne Arundel Coun-

ty r eached out to families every day to check on

possible symptoms. When the quarantine was

Tough calls on youth sports

After telling more than 800 athletes

and coaches to quarantine,

a Md. county halted its games.

Restrictions vary across the area, so

some teams have traveled elsewhere.

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Terrence Byrd, coach of the Maryland Heat Youth Football team, talks to his players during practice last month on a field behind Carl Sandburg

Middle School in Alexandria. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the team had to “field shop” and has played games in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

part of the lived historical experi-

ence.... S he was important for

Theresa. She should be important

for us as well.”

In mid-November, Williams

carved out a spot — an act of hope

that over time and with the labor

of others, the baby’s identity

might one day be revealed.

That infant girl, one tiny dot in

the vast constellation of Africans

swept into the transatlantic slave

trade, is included in a massive

project aimed at illuminating the

lives of the 12.5 million Africans,

and their descendants, sold into

bondage across four continents.

SEE DATABASE ON B4

ing runaway Africans. One men-

tioned a mother, Sancha, escaping

with her two sons — Luis, 9, and

Tiburcio, 4 — in 1855. The other

referenced a young woman, The-

resa, who fled with her nursing

daughter in 1842.

Ta sked with entering his find-

ings into what has become part of

a groundbreaking new public

slavery database, Williams was

unsure about what to do. Should

he create a separate line for the

baby, even without a name?

“From one database perspec-

tive, I could have erased her” from

the record, Williams said. And yet,

even anonymous, the baby “was

BY SYDNEY TRENT

Daryle Williams was emotion-

ally torn, pushing the decision

right up against deadline. As a

history professor at t he University

of Maryland, Williams had been

researching the slave trade in

19th-century Brazil when he came

upon two newspaper ads featur-

Names, not numbers: Massive slavery database effort debuts

Unprecedented project

looks to illuminate lives

of enslaved individuals

JAMES GIBSON/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

An 1862 stereograph of enslaved people a t a plantation in Virginia.

“We cannot right the wrongs of the present without a fuller and

deeper knowledge of the slave past,” Henry Louis Gates Jr. said.

BY JUSTIN GEORGE,

LORI ARATANI

AND MEAGAN FLYNN

From coast to coast, transit

agencies are planning for layoffs

and pared-down service as the

coronavirus pandemic decimates

budgets and a federal stimulus

package remains stalled in Con-

gress.

In New York, the nation’s larg-

est transit system is preparing to

cut subway service by 40 percent

while it considers a nearly $3 bil-

lion loan from the Federal Re-

serve. Boston is proposing to

eliminate ferry service and short-

en hours of operation on its rail

system.

And in the nation’s capital,

Metro on Monday announced

plans to eliminate weekend rail

service to bridge a nearly

$500 million gap in next year’s

operating budget — equivalent to

one-quarter of what the transit

agency typically spends annually

to run the system.

The stark vision of the Wash-

ington region operating without

weekend Metro service for the

first time since launching 44

years ago jolted residents, as well

as lawmakers who have spent

months debating the need and

scope of a possible second coro-

navirus relief package.

“It would be stupidity on ste-

roids if Congress left for Christ-

mas without doing an interim

package as a bridge,” said Sen.

Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), citing

Metro’s plight while he pushed

for a breakthrough during stimu-

lus discussions.

Transit agencies have been

warning for months about enor-

mous deficits, but as they begin

announcing proposed cuts, tran-

sit leaders say, people are realiz-

ing how intertwined public trans-

portation is with their local econ-

omies and lives.

In New York, where the rate of

ridership losses during the pan-

demic has far exceeded what the

system lost during the Great De-

pression, the Metropolitan Trans-

portation Authority is proposing

cutting 40 to 50 percent of service

on the subway, bus and commut-

er rail, and laying off more than

9,300 workers.

The effects would reverberate

outside the transit system and

result in about 450,000 regional

job losses and a $65 billion cut to

the region’s gross domestic prod-

uct, according to a New York

University study.

“This is a once-in- 100 -years fis-

cal tsunami that the MTA and our

counterpart transit agencies

across the country, including in

Washington, D.C., are facing,”

MTA chief executive Patrick J.

Foye said. “This is not a negotiat-

ing tactic. It’s not a stunt. It is

kind of grim reality.”

In San Francisco, where the

Bay Area Rapid Transit System

faces a $200 million shortfall

through July 2022, the agency has

unveiled an incentive program

for retirement-eligible employees

in hopes of avoiding layoffs

among its 4,200-member work-

force.

The system was among the first

in the country to announce serv-

SEE TRANSIT ON B6

Planned transit cuts in Congress’s backyard echoed nationwide

Reverberating effects will

include job losses outside

agencies, leaders warn