D.C. Dumping Ground

Maybe someone can explain Terrance Calhoun to me. I'd prefer that he do it himself, but he won't return my calls. I simply want to know what inspired him to use Marshall Heights, a low-income community in Southeast Washington, as a dumping ground.

Calhoun is Topic A today, thanks to a news report by Tom Sherwood of WRC-TV (Channel 4) that captured a man illegally dumping tons of construction debris in the 4900 block of C Street SE. Sherwood found that the mounds of trash had been hauled from downtown D.C. space leased to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Calhoun, the trash hauler, was eventually nabbed by Anita Chavis and Paul Kurgan of the Joint Department of Public Works and D.C. Police Department Environmental Crimes Unit. Kudos to them. Residents also did their part by blowing the whistle on the dumper.

Under questioning, Calhoun confessed to felony illegal dumping, according to a release from the D.C. Department of Public Works. But he owes the community more than an admission of guilt. He's got to explain himself.

A little context may be in order.

The 4900 block of C Street SE may sound familiar. It was the subject of a recent column ["A Tour the Mayor Should Take," July 28] about a street that contains some of the most ghastly and repulsive abandoned buildings in the nation's capital. What's worse, those massive, disfigured structures with their burned-out windows and garbage-strewn surroundings are right across the street from the J. C. Nalle Elementary School.

The abandoned buildings have been hovering over Nalle since 1997. The city has done nothing about them, despite pleas from the school staff, community groups and residents. Not only do those shells stand as a silent testament to official neglect (they fall under the jurisdiction of the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs -- an absentee landlord's best friend), they are also a daily safety hazard to the school's children. But downtown big shots apparently have other things on their minds.

Which may help explain why Terrance Calhoun, unlicensed trash hauler and owner of Metropolitan Waste Inc., chose to dump his solid waste at that site.

But it doesn't help me understand why Calhoun, who lives in Southeast D.C. himself, would choose to export loads of rubble from 601 Pennsylvania Avenue NW at the base of Capitol Hill to virtually the doorsteps of a schoolhouse full of children. Or why he would contribute to the ugliness of an area where boys and girls spend the day trying their best to learn under conditions most suburban officials would never tolerate?

How could Calhoun degrade the neighborhood this way? Where's his respect for those black children and their families? For Mr. Calhoun, an African American himself, it is the question of the hour.

I thought of Calhoun as African Americans were down in Durban bloviating about racism, slavery and colonialism and what must be done to atone for sins of years past. (That is, of course, when they weren't trying to simultaneously run with the rabbits and bay like the hounds on anti-Israeli language.)

But race was their chief preoccupation. After all, as they argued, the nation has been unfairly enriched by an inhumane system that enslaved our ancestors and denied generations of taxpaying African Americans their full rights and benefits of citizenship.

The message, in short: Damage has been done, hurt must be faced, and wounds need soothing. For that demeaning history, those centuries of human degradation, for the racism that tramples on human equality and dignity, we are owed something -- an admission of guilt, an apology, expression of regret, monetary compensation. We have, they contend, something coming.

It is an argument eloquently advanced by economist Richard F. America, to be taken seriously. Racism and discrimination have taken a heavy toll on generations of African Americans past and present.

So is there a moral debt? On my balance sheet, yes. Will it be honored in my lifetime? Does a chicken have lips? I won't stoop to ask for payment anyway.

Do I care? Not nearly as much as I am concerned about how people at the low end of the economic totem pole -- and those on the receiving end of racism, religious intolerance and bigotry based on gender, sexual preference and national origin -- treat each other.

Which gets me back to brother Calhoun.

What are we to make of a man who despoils his own community, who thumbs his nose at the well-being of children, who sets out to fill his own pockets by dumping on his neighbors?

How should we regard a "brother" who, through his disrespect for the homes and living conditions of those around him, displays a disdain that in form and character matches that of the most callous and indifferent outsider.

Now, when you get right down to it, those questions aren't limited to Terrance Calhoun, are they?

They raise issues that the conference in Durban can't answer, concerns that we as a community must face squarely ourselves if we expect to move forward. . . . Don't they?

That's why I wish Calhoun would return my calls.