Voters Wonder, 'Whose City Is It Going to Be?'
At Washington Interfaith Network Forum, Candidates Listen to Residents' List of Concerns

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 25, 2006

By the time the all-male gospel group has cooled down and the big-screen projectors have fired up, more than 800 souls brought together by the Washington Interfaith Network have taken their seats in the historic sanctuary of Asbury United Methodist Church.

They look toward the pulpit and see three men and two women who want to be Washington's next mayor.

And what do the candidates see?

A stained-glass portrait of Jesus as the shepherd. A lighted cross. An enormous scorecard with their names written on it, awaiting their commitments to affordable housing and better neighborhoods. And there, in the fourth row from the back, is Hilda Venson of Ward 1, who thinks the city's not working right. "There's crime, disrespect for everybody."

That young woman sitting on the right is 22-year-old Christine Wilson of Brightwood; she worries that she'll never be able to afford a house in the city she loves. "Even if I'm making six figures, the house will be seven figures. . . . I'm never going to catch up."

And the couple in the front row? That's Kim Adler, 38, and her husband, Aaron Knight, who moved from Virginia 10 years ago and have lived the last six in a house they bought in Adams Morgan. She's like a lot of people who think that Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has brought the city a long way but that not everyone has been lifted up.

"The city needs to be more inclusive," she says. "Williams improved a lot of things. A lot of places that were scary to live in the past are safer. But people can't afford to live where they want to live. I wish someone would tell me how to strike the right balance."

She gestures toward the candidates. "If someone could tell me, they'd have my vote right now."

* * *

D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp, council members Adrian M. Fenty (Ward 4) and Vincent B. Orange Sr. (Ward 5), lobbyist Michael A. Brown and retired Verizon executive Marie Johns might as well be a singing group for all the time they have spent together attending mayoral candidate forums. There have been at least 10 such events for the major Democratic mayoral candidates just this month.

But the extravaganza put together by the Washington Interfaith Network earlier this week, drawing parishioners even from Virginia and Maryland, is a different creature altogether. Candidates don't bring an agenda; they come to endorse an agenda. The candidates are there to impress, yes, but more than that they are there to be impressed.

A roll call of churches lists how many "leaders" each congregation has in the house and how many precinct workers it will supply in the fall. When it's over, organizers update the banner at the front of the church that touts their political muscle: That's 400 -- not 300 -- precinct workers who'll hit the streets.

In a ceremony solemn and meticulously scripted, the candidates are asked whether they will support WIN's specific goals of about $1 billion invested in affordable housing, neighborhood improvements and youth programs. By the end of the evening, that scorecard will record yes to everything.

There's nothing in the program to allow questions from the audience, although the people in the pews have plenty. But in a sense, they are all variations of the question the Rev. Joseph W. Daniels of Emory United Methodist Church posed to start the evening:

"Whose city is it going to be?''

* * *

That's something that Tracy Warren thinks about. Warren, 45, has lived in the city for 15 years and owns a home in Brookland. "I want to make sure the prosperity of the city is shared by all residents," she says, pacing the back of the church with a restless toddler.

"I'm looking for somebody who can speak to the common good. I'm very concerned that longtime residents are being forced out."

She might be speaking for Amanda Giron, 69, of Ward 1, part of the contingent from Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Columbia Heights, a native of Guatemala who has lived here for 33 years, working now in food services at the gleaming new Bell Multicultural High School.

"When I came to this country, it was very cheap to live," she says. "Now it is very expensive. It is very hard to live in Washington if you don't have much money."

Kimberly Taylor, 40, a nurse who lives in Ward 1 with her truck driver husband and three kids, knows about that.

"I see the new buildings going up at 14th and Park Road, and I see the people who live in buildings that are being converted to condos," she says. "You have to buy or get out. I don't think they are going to be there for those grand openings."

Up in the horseshoe-shaped balcony is Suzanne Snyder, 50, of Ward 6 who, when asked what she wants from the candidates, answers, "I want an awful lot."

Her biggest concern is "affordable housing for people I see getting pushed out and living on the street. It's distressing for them and distressing for the people who walk by. My little boy used to ask, 'What are all those blankets over there, Mommy?' I would say those aren't blankets, it's someone's home."

"My biggest concern is the disparity," says Valerie Shade, 51, of Anacostia, who is here with the congregants of Hughes Memorial United Methodist Church. "This city is becoming a city of haves and have-nots. We're losing a sense of community."

Amin Muslim, 50, of Ward 7 says the city has not prepared its workers to take advantage of the current boom times.

"Gentrification is supported by construction, and our children aren't being prepared for those jobs -- steamfitters who make $30 an hour or plumbers. There is no vocational training," he says. "The misnomer is that we need to be preparing our kids for college; not everyone is college bound. We set them up for failure, and then they drop out."

The state of the schools and the support for the city's young, especially those who are poor, is on the minds of many in the mostly middle-age audience.

Benjamin Contee, 66, is a retired mail carrier who lives in Anacostia. He's looking for a mayor who will provide programs for the young people "who feel lost."

"It's sickening to see these young men walking around with nothing to do," he says.

Deirdre Jordan, 49, of Ward 8 has lived her life in the District and worries about her son, a fourth-grader at W.D. Patterson Elementary School. "This is a brand new school, Patterson, and I'm concerned there is not proper funding to maintain it," she says. "My son is in a class of 27 students and one teacher and no aide."

* * *

Lisa Dunson, 43, a former police officer from Virginia, also lives in Ward 8. Young men gather at all hours outside her apartment building. "They have no place to go and nothing to do," she says. "Sometimes the police come to watch them and then simply move on.

"I was praying recently when I heard gunshots. It didn't even faze me. I just got lower on the floor; I was already on my knees."

Dunson adds, "I still love this city, and I will not leave it."

That explains why she and hundreds of others are here. "You can look in a person's eyes and see if they are sincere," says Addie Cooke, 74, of Fort Stanton.

Like many in the crowd, she's not sure whom she will support; WIN does not endorse candidates. Fenty and Cropp lead in private polls, and most people mention their names before the forum.

But few seem solid in supporting a candidate, and some say afterward that Johns, Orange and Brown deserve a second look. It is hard to differentiate when almost everyone agrees.

"Everybody sort of said the same thing," says Brandon Sitzmann, who lives next door to Asbury United Methodist Church and came over when he saw all the commotion. "I was kind of wishing someone would have said no" to WIN's request for funding.

Unlike in some past city elections, voters don't seem to long for an outsider or attach any specific negatives to incumbency. "I want someone politically astute," says Carol Arledge, who is "over 55" and lives in Ward 5. "I don't want someone we have to train."

And despite their worries that the city has many problems, there is a stubborn streak of optimism.

Jim Wood, 68, lives in the Hawthorne neighborhood in Ward 4. Put him in the booster category. "We love living in this city. We used to wonder where we were going to retire. We're not going anywhere," he says.

Neither is Elizabeth Desan, hard to miss in her red jacket, seated in the balcony with the group from St. Alban's Episcopal Church. She's concerned about the inequities in the city and, at an age long past child-rearing rearing, still worried about the city's schools.

"I've been optimistic for 80 years," she says. "So I'll continue to be. I love this city."

There's one last admonition for the candidates from the Rev. Christine Wiley, a fiery speaker from Covenant Baptist Church: "Don't try to figure out if there's money left over to do the things we want you to do. Take the money from the top."

The candidates see the crowd rise as one, chanting, "Take the money from the top! Take the money from the top!" And then congregants and candidates alike are swaying to a hymn that almost everyone seems to know, "We Have Come This Far by Faith."

Staff writers Michelle Boorstein, Marcia Slacum Greene, Lori Montgomery, David Nakamura, Elissa Silverman, Nikita Stewart and Yolanda Woodlee contributed to this report.