Reply to WaPo editorial calls out “machinations… of the council’s far left wing” in trying to stop Goulet

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Never met the man, but could it be that that was top of his mind because he gets an earful in Foxhall on those buildings at Q? It was the #1 topic for months for the prospective constituency. Until the schools. So I’m not jumping to any conclusions

But on the schools. Why so much pushback? Who doesn’t want a school? This is like another Safeway. What’s with this neighborhood?! Don’t they have plane noise to worry about?[/quote]

Do you really want to go down that rabbit hole? But you ask an honest question and so I'll do my best to give you an honest answer.

There are probably not more than a dozen or so people who are leading the charge to oppose the schools. More in thr community are opposed, but this is based on misinformation spread by those original dozen.

The original dozen are largely white, elderly, and upper middle class. They have lived in the neighborhood for decades and view it as an enclave for white upper middle class people. They do not like the idea of their neighborhood changing, both because they romanticize the past and are threatened by notions of de-gentrification.

That is what the opposition to the schools is about. It has nothing to do with a park. Before the current proposal was put forth, the same people very publicly opposed a campaign that would have transferred the public building back to DCPS so that it could be used as a park. They were very explicit that the reason they did this us because they were scared that the park could be used as a public high school.

The original dozen could give a damn about the public elementary school. What they don't want is a public high school. They look at the Wilson / J-R high school and how rowdy they think the kids are and say they don't want that in their neighborhood. They are very explicit about that.

If you ask them, what they want (and what Goulet is falsely promising them) is for the old GDS site to be used as an elementary school and the high school to be moved somewhere else other than their neighborhood. Once MacArthur HS actually opens, much of the opposition to Foxhall ES will go away because they don't really care about it or the park.

It's base NIMBYism, but it's also tied in with whats going on in the apartments off Q street. They see the changes there and think that having a high school will accelerate those changes. That is, the neighborhood is being de-gentrified. To them, that's an existential threat to their way of life.[/quote]

I live on the apartments on Q and Macarthur.    There are 2 apartments that are receiving vouchers.  The cops were coming there daily.
As of the last few months things have calmed down.

NOBODY wants crime on Macarthur 
[/quote]

Agree that nobody wants crime. But is a new elementary school at Foxhall going to lead to crime? Do you ever go a couple of miles up MacArthur to Key Elementary? Are the mean streets around it a hotbed of lawlessness?[/quote]

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