The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-06)

KLMNO

METRO

SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCAL EZ M2 C

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

For years, a golden sphinx

statue stood guard over

Fort Holabird in Baltimore.

Where is it now? C3

LOCAL OPINIONS

Virg inia can deliver on a

promise of environmental

justice to underserved

communities. C4

OBITUARIES

Walter R. Mears, 87, a

Pulitzer Prize winner, was

featured in a classic book

60 ° 68 ° 74 ° 69 ° on campaign reporters. C8

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

High today at

approx. 3 p.m.

75

°

Precip: 65%

Wind: SW

10-20 mph

BY KATHERINE SHAVER

AND JUSTIN GEORGE

Many workers returning to of-

fices on new hybrid schedules

won’t resume the daily commute,

leaving public transit systems

with significantly fewer of their

most reliable customers: subur-

banites heading downtown, day

after da y, for 9-to-5 jobs.

The uncertain futures of city

subway and bus systems have re-

ceived the most attention amid

changing commuter habits, but

experts say longer-distance trains

and buses that took the biggest hit

during the pandemic remain at an

even higher risk of long-term rid-

ership woes.

Across the country, city transit

lines that serve lower-income rid-

ers without vehicle access or who

work in health care, retail and

other jobs that can’t be done from

afar have retained much of their

pre-pandemic ridership, experts

say. Meanwhile, long-distance

SEE RAIL ON C2

Commuter

rail lines

struggle

to fill seats

AGENCIES LOOK TO

INCENTIVIZE RIDERS

Hybrid work spurs fare,

schedule adjustments

BY GREGORY S. SCHNEIDER

richmond — It was hard to

miss the thread running through

the race-related policies Gov.

Glenn Youngkin purged from the

Virginia education system last

week for being “divisive”: Almost

all featured some version of the

word “equity.”

“Resource equity” — gone.

“Responsibility to advance ra-

cial, social and economic equity”

— gone. “Virginia’s Equity Audit

Tool” — gone. The effort echoed

Youngkin’s push to rename the

state’s Of fice of Diversity, Equity

and Inclusion as the Of fice of

Diversity, Opportunity and In-

clusion, which the General As-

sembly rejected but which the

administration has enacted on

the state website anyway.

Youngkin’s war on the e-word

might seem esoteric, but it repre-

sents one of the sharpest turn-

abouts in state policy since the

Republican took office in Janu-

ary. Equity has been at t he heart

of a racial reckoning in Virginia

government that began with for-

SEE EQUITY ON C5

Youngkin

removes

references

to ‘equity’

When Jamila

Larson saw that a

D.C. police

commander was

calling, she

figured it was

about the meeting

they had

scheduled for the

next morning. They had planned

to talk about the department’s

protocols for missing persons,

an issue that had concerned

Larson after a 14-year-old girl

had run away from a D.C.

homeless shelter and it seemed

officials didn’t care.

But when Larson answered

her phone, she learned the

commander wasn’t calling about

their meeting or that teenager.

He wanted to know if she

knew Relisha Rudd, an 8-year-

old who was missing from that

same shelter.

Larson, who runs the

Homeless Children’s Playtime

Project — an organization that

creates play spaces for kids in

the city who don’t have homes —

says she was asked to send all

the information she had about

Relisha to the police

department. The emails she

exchanged with that police

commander confirm her

account. They show she

provided detailed notes about

Relisha and about a dozen

photos that her staff had taken.

In many of those photos, the

second-grader smiles playfully.

But in one, she looks hauntingly

SEE VARGAS ON C7

E ight years ago, Relisha Rudd went missing from a D.C. shelter

Theresa

Vargas

MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST

O n the second anniversary of Relisha Rudd’s disappearance, the

8-year-old was remembered at the Deanwood Recreation Center.

BY PAUL SCHWARTZMAN AND

MICHAEL BRICE-SADDLER

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s

most persistent critic these days is

neither of her two top challengers

in the June Democratic primary.

Instead, as Bowser seeks reelec-

tion to a third term, she finds

herself wrangling with outgoing

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Ra-

cine, whose disregard for the may-

or — percolating since both took

office seven years ago — threatens

to overshadow the challenger he

has endorsed to beat her, D.C.

Council member Robert C. White

Jr. (D-At Large).

The hostility between Bowser

and Racine (D) was evident at a

news conference she hosted re-

cently to launch an anti-crime ini-

tiative. The mayor was surround-

ed by a phalanx of law enforce-

ment leaders, including D.C. Po-

lice Chief Robert J. Contee III and

U.S. Attorney Matthew Gr aves.

Racine, the city’s top prosecu-

tor, was absent.

“I’ll have to check on that,”

Bowser said when a reporter

SEE RACINE ON C7

Bowser’s sharpest critic for

r eelection isn’t on t he ballot

D.C.’s attorney general

has seized on chances

t o deride mayor’s record

BY ELLIE SILVERMAN,

EMILY DAVIES

AND IAN DUNCAN

IN HAGERSTOWN, MD.

They drove pickup trucks, RVs, 18-wheelers and mini-

vans, some making a 2,500-mile journey from Southern

California. More joined as the convoy passed through

Amarillo, Tex., or rallied at a f arm equipment supplier in

Monrovia, Ind. And others came in Friday, as about 1,000

vehicles converged at a s peedway in Hagerstown, Md.,

under the rallying cry of “freedom.”

The truckers and their supporters are now the closest

they have been to the nation’s capital, where they say they

want to hold lawmakers a ccountable f or the government’s

pandemic responses.

The group ’s next planned steps had been unclear. But

late Saturday night, Brian Brase, an organizer of the

self-described “People’s Convoy ,” said in an interview that

the drivers planned to circle the Capital Beltway twice on

Sunday morning and to escalate that pattern on successive

days.

“We don ’t want to shut D.C. down,” Brase said. “We’re

not anti-vaxxers. We’re not. We just want freedom,

freedom. We want to choose. We just want the choice. So

tomorrow is a basically a show of just how big we are and

how serious we are.” He said it was not clear how long they

planned to remain in the area and described the situation

as “very fluid.”

SEE CONVOY ON C6

‘Freedom Convoy’ spino≠ rouses

groups frustrated by m andates

Caravan of truckers plans to circle the Capital Beltway multiple times starting Sunday but not encroach on D.C.

PHOTOS BY RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST

TOP: The self-titled “People’s Convo y,” which originated from Adelanto, Calif., arrives at

the Hagerstown Speedway on Friday. ABOVE: S upporters cheer on t he arriving convoy of

about 1 ,000 vehicles. At the speedway, crowds chanted anti-President Biden slogans and

displ ayed support for former president Donald Trump.