WASHINGTON POST 03/27/13 By Michael Shank and Allyson Mitchell With DC Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s call this month for educational equity across the District’s divide, there is a great opportunity to address one driver of this inequity: the high school truancy and chronic absenteeism, especially for students who attend schools east […]
WASHINGTON POST 03/13/13 By Michael Shank The District of Columbia’s poverty problem received much-needed attention recently with this paper’s reporting on how DC General has become a home for hundreds of homeless parents and children. The over-crowded and abandoned hospital-turned-homeless shelter has become a testament to DC benevolence, ushering in […]
WASHINGTON POST 02/27/13 By Michael Shank Anacostia’s main fitness center on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue closed this month due to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, and the community is now left wanting in the gym’s absence. D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) had moved to […]
WASHINGTON POST 02/22/13 By Michael Shank At the corner of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Ave, in Anacostia, a totem pole will rise from a plain patch of vacant ground this spring. It may seem odd that a Native American totem pole was the piece of public […]
Huffington Post 02/22/2013 By Michael Shank In downtown Anacostia, on the corner of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King, Jr. Ave, there are spotlights already pointing to, and waiting for, a totem pole. It is scheduled to arrive this spring. It may seem odd that a Native American totem […]
Huffington Post 02/13/2013 By Michael Shank When it comes to forecasting the educational future of District youth, especially for those living in low-income communities, there are some impressive words and initiatives being thrown around by past and present city leadership. Whether it’s Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s “Raise D.C.,” a recently […]
WASHINGTON POST 02/11/13 By Michael Shank When it comes to forecasting the educational future of District youth, especially for those living in low-income communities, there are some impressive words and initiatives being thrown around by past and present city leadership. Whether it’s Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s “Raise D.C.,” a recently […]
WASHINGTON POST 02/06/13 By Michael Shank This month marks one year since my next-door neighbors in Anacostia moved out. They didn’t want to leave. They left because they couldn’t afford it. It was a single mother and her 15-year-old son, and for the purposes of confidentiality, I’ll call them Roz […]
WASHINGTON POST 02/04/13 By Michael Shank As Martin Luther King Jr. Day was celebrated last month with community service ads and intimations in President Obama’s inauguration speech, I wondered, as I do every year, how the nation can commemorate a leader so disingenuously. We will likely do the same during […]
Huffington Post 12/06/2012 By Michael Shank and Lindsay Schubiner The greatest legacy of Marion Barry, as city council member of the District of Columbia, could’ve been his latest ex-offender bill, which was shot down this week by fellow Democrat on the council Phil Mendelson. Chairman Mendelson, using procedural tactics, never […]