The Washington Post - 22.08.2019

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/REGIONAL EZ SU B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

Need Richard Nixon’s

number? Or some coal?

Gloves mended? Here’s a

1944 D.C. phone book. B3

THE DISTRICT

Giant panda Bei Bei turns

4 today. He will have a

final birthday bash in D.C.

before moving to China. B3

OBITUARIES

Richard J. Ernst served

30 years as president of

Northern Virginia

78 Community College. B6

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89

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93

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86

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

High today at

approx. 4 p.m.

93

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Precip: 40%

Wind: WSW

6-12 mph

BY GREGORY S. SCHNEIDER

richmond — The national

gun-control group Everytown

for Gun Safety is beginning a

digital advertising blitz in sub-

urban swing districts in Vir-

ginia’s pivotal fall elections, tar-

geting Republican lawmakers in

Northern Virginia, Richmond

and Hampton Roads.

The Everytown for Gun Safety

Action Fund has launched

$135,000 worth of online ads to

kick off a promised $2.5 million

in spending this year in Virginia,

which the group views as a prov-

ing ground for the gun-control

issue ahead of next year’s presi-

dential election.

“Everytown has launched our

most robust electoral program

ever for Virginia, and we have one

simple goal: Hold gun lobby law-

makers accountable for their

choices,” John Feinblatt, presi-

dent of Everytown for Gun Safety,

said via email. The strategy high-

lights the route that Democrats

feel they can take to win control

of the legislature this fall, when

all 140 seats are up for election. In

an off-off year, with no presiden-

tial or gubernatorial races on the

ticket to drive turnout, Demo-

crats have to stir up voter interest

in close suburban districts that

have been trending blue.

If gun control can help accom-

plish that, it’s a strong indication

to national Democrats for how to

SEE GUNS ON B8

Everytown

targets Va.

GOP ahead

of election

BY PETER JAMISON,

ROBERT MCCARTNEY

AND FENIT NIRAPPIL

Pressure is mounting on the

District’s second voting Metro

board representative to resign

after allegations that he leaned

on the agency’s staff and took

other steps to conceal an ethics

violation by D.C. Council member

and former board member Jack

Evans (D-Ward 2).

Corbett Price, a health-care

executive and political donor to

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), was

appointed by Bowser to one of

two principal spots representing

the District on the powerful re-

gional transit board. The second

was occupied until recently by

Evans, who stepped down as

board chairman in June.

Evans’s resignation followed

an agency investigation that

found that he failed to disclose a

conflict of interest arising from

his private consulting work for

the District’s largest parking

company. Records of the probe

obtained by The Washington Post

last week said that both Evans

and Price — in addition to falsely

stating that Evans was cleared of

wrongdoing — badgered Metro’s

general counsel and maneuvered

in other ways to prevent the

findings from becoming public.

Those allegations may have

been a tipping point for some

council members.

“It’s beyond unprofessional

and improper. I think it’s dis-

graceful,” said council member

Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who

chairs the committee on trans-

portation and the environment.

“There’s one thing I really dislike,

SEE PRICE ON B2

Metro

board

member

scrutinized

BY FENIT NIRAPPIL

The administration of D.C.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has

enacted emergency regulations

that would stop a planned federal

shelter for unaccompanied mi-

grant children in Northwest

Washington.

The emergency rules prohibit

the city’s child welfare agency

from licensing facilities housing

more than 15 residents.

That would block a 200-bed

shelter that a federal contractor is

trying to open in the Takoma

neighborhood, part of the Trump

administration’s efforts to ad-

dress a surge of minors appre-

hended at the U.S.-Mexico border

without a parent.

Immigration advocates and

several local elected officials are

opposed to the D.C. shelter, saying

children should not be ware-

housed. The mayor said last week

that she would not accept such

facilities.

The U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services defended

the treatment of children in its

care and said they have their own

beds and access to meals, legal

services, recreation and classes.

“We treat the children in our

care with dignity and respect, and

deliver services to them in a com-

passionate and organized man-

ner while we work expeditiously

to unify each one with a suitable

sponsor,” the press office at the

agency’s Administration for Chil-

dren and Families said in a state-

ment last week.

The agency awarded a

$20.5 million contract in August

to Maryland-based Dynamic

Service Solutions to operate the

D.C. shelter for children ages 12 to

SEE SHELTER ON B5

D.C. blocks

U.S. facility

for migrant

children

BY PETER HERMANN

AND LAUREL DEMKOVICH

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser is

asking federal prosecutors to

launch a criminal investigation

into Sunday’s fire that killed two

people, including a child, at a

rowhouse crowded with Ethio-

pian immigrants and lacking ap-

proval for rental units.

The announcement of the

stepped-up inquiry came hours

after a 9-year-old boy was re-

moved from life support and died

at a hospital. A 40-year-old man

died the day of the fire.

The request could lead to add-

ed resources for the complex in-

vestigation into how the fire start-

ed and the building’s conditions.

Regulatory officials said the row-

house at 708 Kennedy St. NW had

been occupied by tenants who

described a building partitioned

into a dozen tiny rooms with

shared bathrooms and kitchens.

Officials said that there were no

working smoke detectors and

that bars covered windows and

doors.

“I’m heartbroken that people

felt like they were in a trap,” Bows-

er told reporters. “They want to

live in this country and make their

way and help their families, and

they were taken advantage of.

This message is to property own-

ers and landlords: We are very

SEE FIRE ON B4

Mayor asks

for federal

aid in probe

of D.C. fire

For displaced D.C. families, a transportation struggle

Before a month’s

worth of rain fell

in the nation’s

capital in a single

hour, flooding her

apartment and

destroying most

of her family’s

belongings,

Christina Gaddis had a home

that offered a washer and dryer

and one other important

comfort: She could walk her two

young sons to their elementary

school.

Now, she and her children live

in a hotel on New York Avenue

that houses other homeless

families, and she is dreading the

commute that starts Monday,

the first day of school.

To get to Smothers

Elementary School in Northeast

Washington, she and her sons, 4-

year-old Kenneth and 5-year-old

Emanuel, will have to cross two

busy roads and take three buses.

They will do that again, in

reverse, to get home. The

3.8-mile trip, she says, will take

an hour and a half each way,

assuming traffic is normal.

“It’s very, very daunting,”

Gaddis, 31, told me as she made

her way from the bus stop this

week. She reminded her sons to

“stay on the inside” of the

sidewalk.

“It stresses the parents out,”

she said. “All of us.”

The staff of the Homeless

Children’s Playtime Project,

which serves children housed by

the city at the Quality Inn and

the Days Inn on New York

Avenue, recently held focus

groups and conducted a survey

of parents at the hotels. They

found two primary concerns.

The obvious one: housing. The

less obvious one: transportation.

Mothers and fathers spoke

about their struggles to get their

children to and from school and

how that has resulted in

tardiness and truancy.

One mother confessed to

spending about $400 a month

on Uber rides to get her

daughter to school and herself to

work.

An unemployed father

described how his 8-year-old son

had missed school the previous

year because of the area’s lack of

Metro access and how he was

nervous that the same pattern

would emerge this year.

“How can we expect them to

do well in school if they can’t get

to school?” Jamila Larson, the

executive director of the

Playtime Project, said of the

children at the hotels. At last

count, 270 homeless families

SEE VARGAS ON B4

Theresa

Vargas

BY CORTLYNN STARK

N

ative Americans aren’t of-

ten depicted as equals in art

throughout the U.S. Capi-

tol, a building that is at the

heart of representative de-

mocracy and the notion that all Amer-

icans share the same rights.

But developers of a new app are

hoping to change that narrative.

The Guide to Indigenous DC app,

which now has more than 600 down-

loads, takes users on a nine-mile self-

guided tour of 17 city sites connected

to Native American history.

Created by George Washington

University’s AT&T Center for Indig-

enous Politics and Policy, it’s designed

for visitors to Washington as well as

an educational tool for teachers

across the country.

“We hear about Founding Fathers,

construction of the White House and

all of these institutions that we call

American,” said Elizabeth Rule, assis-

tant director of the center. “And often-

times native people are left out of that

narrative. So I hope that the app and

the information there will re-center

native people in that telling. Ameri-

can history is Native American history

and vice versa.”

The tour starts at the U.S. Marine

Corps War Memorial and discusses

Ira Hayes, a Pima Native American

who helped in the iconic raising of the

U.S. flag on Iwo Jima.

The 16 other stops include the Kick-

ing Bear and Buffalo sculptures on the

Dumbarton Bridge, the National Mu-

seum of the American Indian and the

statues of native leaders in the Capitol

Visitor Center. The tribal delegates

SEE NATIVE ON B2

PHOTOS BY BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

Correcting the District’s

indigenous narrative

App guides tourists, locals

through a history lesson

hidden in plain sight

COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: One of four buffalo sculptures at the Dumbarton Bridge on the edge of

Georgetown. One of the Liberty and Freedom totem poles — dedicated by the Lummi Nation after the 9/11 attacks

— in the Congressional Cemetery, which is also home to the grave of Choctaw Chief Pushmataha.

Gun-control group’s ads

aim to help Democrats in

suburban swing districts

DEATH OF CHILD

RAISES TOLL TO TWO

Victim's family: ‘We’re

not going to let this go’