Local Analysis

WASHINGTON POST 04/10/13 By Michael Shank and Lindsay Schubiner On Wednesday, thousands of immigrants, documented and undocumented, will gather in Washington, D.C. to rally for comprehensive immigration reform, hoping to tip the scales of Congressional bipartisan support. The city’s Mayor Vince C. Gray (D), if he chooses, will have an […]

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 […]

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 […]

WASHINGTON POST 12/05/12 By Michael Shank and Lindsay Schubiner D.C. Council member Marion Barry’s ex-offender bill, which is on the city’s legislative hopper and addresses discrimination by granting employment protections, is needed not only in the District but also across America.  It is needed for an estimated 65 million Americans, […]

WASHINGTON POST 11/14/12 By Michael Shank Of the two rivers that cup our nation’s capital — the Potomac and the Anacostia— the latter of the two is, perhaps, the most apt reflection of where America is at socio-economically. The Anacostia River, the Anglicized namesake of which was first officially recorded […]