While the nonprofit complex pulls out the stops to stem the Council bleeding the people of DC even more, the smokescreen from the “dumpster fire” “debacle” “sh*tshow” of a DC Council budget vote on Tuesday July 21 has worked.
The fog of class war has the Council Chair saying things like it would be tantalizing to cut immigration services, emergency rent support, and other human services to make up for a stupid move to tax small publications in the District (The Ad Tax).
Playing both the perpetrator and now the self-proclaimed hero, CM Mendelson says he can eliminate the ad tax on small publications by moving some money around from the capital budget, cutting mental health services, and some other piddly wrangling. If this all seems a bit hexing, and wrong, it is.
What a slick move, a smokescreen. First, this “debacle” has got the advocacy community to scramble their bases to beg the Council not to cut $18M more in services to real DC people instead of bringing on fire from the people demanding that the overall first budget vote be completely trashed and we start over. See FBC breakdown of the first Council vote on July 7th below:
The DC budget vote as shown above, even if the recent threats of 18M in cuts is reversed, is an absolute atrocity and in fact criminal to the working people of the District during a pandemic. There are no cuts to the Metropolitan Police Department budget for example!
Second, this confusing creepy clown show led by the Chairman during DC’s FY2021 budget process has allowed all Councilmembers, even the so-called progressives on the dais to deflect away from the broader call of the people to take the capitalists boot off working families necks by defunding MPD, raising taxes on the rich, and moving monies from proposed luxury projects to projects that could really help people now in the pandemic such as from the proposed McMillan Park giveaway to the long-stalled reopening of Crummell School for those families who are struggling in Ivy City.
That is, Councilmembers can avoid dealing with the obvious huge gaps in human service funding by tweeting out memes and rhetoric about a “dumspter fire” and receive rounds of applause by advocates who in turn move back from stronger positions to the passive prone begging not to hurt the our people further.
Result: the Council, yet again, escapes accountability as to how really horrid that first budget vote is and the continued harm that DC’s budget will bring onto the most vulnerable in the District, especially now during pandemic.
Meanwhile, with all the content that the so-called urbanists pull off with the help of developer contributions, the budget vote is as important as one retweet of a DCist report. David Alpert is far from concerned about what this budget means for DC’s communities of color.
Conclusion: Its all perplexing but a skillful clumsy show put on by the Chair, Phil Mendelson and sheepish Council colleagues. The Chairman however is in the driver seat, commanding control over the city and outcomes for all its people in perpetrating an oppressive racist corporate agenda to crush Black families and communities of color and working residents of the District of Columbia.
To see this agenda and the people who pull the puppet strings, click the following links:
- DC Federal City Council
- Washington DC Economic Partnership
- DC BID
- Metro Washington Council of Governments
By: Chris Otten, DC4RD, co-facilitator
