Anonymous wrote:I am sure that when DC its its first white mayor, in decades, none of the anti-Bowsers will have anything to complain about. The same DC government employees will be perofirming the exact same duties they perform now. The schools will be the same. The parks will be the same. The developers will give money to their candidate of choice. Clark, Douglas, W-T are going to do what they do. With more and more residents of DC relocated from the eurocentric racially homogenous regions of flyover country, the south, and NE, it is completely understandable that there is considerable hostility toward Mayor Bowser. The idea that she has done little or is corrupt is language that whites have been using for centuries to describe African-Americans. It is a mindset that is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of many white Americans that short of athletics and entertainment, Blacks have marginal added value to American society. For example, take how some whites denigrate Benjamin Banneker HS. The students at Banneker are enrolled in either IB, or AP tracks, work hard, and earn large number of scholarships each year. Nevertheless, you will have some white adults who, paid for ACT/SAT tutoring, kumon, or some other private tutoring for their child only to have them score negligibly higher than Banneker students, who did not receive private tutoring, on the ACT or SAT. Yet these same white adults will have the temerity to state that Banneker is below average. The more I type this, the more I am coming to realize that white supremacy is a mental defect. It would really be great if the anti-Bowser folks would just openly admit that there is nothing an African American could do to ever earn your respect. Admitting that sentiment would not only make you a racist, it would also make you honest. I can respect an honest racist because at least we can have dialogue. It is the dishonest, microagressing racist that I don't respect.

Anonymous wrote:
I’ve lived in D.C. for 20 years, in wards 2, 1, 4, and 3. City services have never really seemed better or worse to me because of who my councilmember was. The constituent service funds are used for things like paying rent or utility bills (or, in the case of Jack Evans, buying sports tickets). What specific things that the city does do you think your councilmember is in charge of for your ward? They may be the person you complain to when services aren’t being performed the way you want — because they obviously have more clout with, say, DPW than you do — but the government isn’t run ward by ward as a little fiefdom.

Anonymous wrote:This board leans quite far left. She’s a moderate Democrat. I wouldn’t assume that dislike on this board translates more broadly.

Anonymous wrote:Painting that big BLM mural on the street while continuing to think stop-and-frisk is a good idea is Peak Bowser: she's all about grand gestures that are basically meaningless.

Look at Vision Zero, which she unveiled with a big press conference and then basically forgot about until a few weeks ago when she lowered the speed limit (another grand, meaningless gesture, as there's zero chance the lower speed limit will be enforced).

Look at the plan to build homeless shelters in each ward. She squandered the chance for any sort of goodwill by initially handing out contracts that were almost absurdly beneficial for her major developer donors. The Council had to rein her in:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/homeless-shelter-plan-could-be-profitable-for-bowsers-backers/2016/03/16/cbab0e76-eadc-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html

With Todd and Evans gone from the Council, she basically has zero support left there. Todd's loss, particularly, is a bad sign for Bowser's hopes of another term. People are sick of her. She'll get a minor bump from standing up to Trump but when this all dies down it'll be back to normal.

Anonymous wrote:
Ward 4 is fairly moderate but voted out mini-Bowser by 12%. There are a lot of good and reasonable ideas coming from the left.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sure that when DC its its first white mayor, in decades, none of the anti-Bowsers will have anything to complain about. The same DC government employees will be perofirming the exact same duties they perform now. The schools will be the same. The parks will be the same. The developers will give money to their candidate of choice. Clark, Douglas, W-T are going to do what they do. With more and more residents of DC relocated from the eurocentric racially homogenous regions of flyover country, the south, and NE, it is completely understandable that there is considerable hostility toward Mayor Bowser. The idea that she has done little or is corrupt is language that whites have been using for centuries to describe African-Americans. It is a mindset that is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of many white Americans that short of athletics and entertainment, Blacks have marginal added value to American society. For example, take how some whites denigrate Benjamin Banneker HS. The students at Banneker are enrolled in either IB, or AP tracks, work hard, and earn large number of scholarships each year. Nevertheless, you will have some white adults who, paid for ACT/SAT tutoring, kumon, or some other private tutoring for their child only to have them score negligibly higher than Banneker students, who did not receive private tutoring, on the ACT or SAT. Yet these same white adults will have the temerity to state that Banneker is below average. The more I type this, the more I am coming to realize that white supremacy is a mental defect. It would really be great if the anti-Bowser folks would just openly admit that there is nothing an African American could do to ever earn your respect. Admitting that sentiment would not only make you a racist, it would also make you honest. I can respect an honest racist because at least we can have dialogue. It is the dishonest, microagressing racist that I don't respect.

Do you even live here? Or are you writing a thesis paper from far away?

The like/dislike of Mayor Bowser crosses racial lines. Some Black people strongly dislike her. Check out the local BLM group.

And plenty of white people dislike white politicians. Look at how white moderates treat Councilmember Nadeau (she's very progressive and white since you probably don't know that).

Good luck with your thesis, but try doing some more research first.

"Even her own people dislike her, like BLM, who represent every Black person in the diaspora." Classic white thing to say. Are you even from here, or did you just move here for St. Paul?

Anonymous wrote:DC received COVID stimulus funds on par with Puerto Rico. Not sure if Bowser and/or Norton are responsible for that but who does the lobbying for DC on such issues?

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Anonymous wrote:Most of the anti-Bowser sentiment on here boils down to the fact that she's talking about increasing density in Ward 3 (though so far, not actually done much to make it happen). If not for that, no one on DCUM would care much about her either way.

Some of us live in Ward 4 and experienced her poor stewardship firsthand.

She wasn't the mayor of Ward 4, so you really experienced Vince Gray or Adrian Fenty's poor stewardship.

That's not really how it works. We got previews to poor leadership of Fenty before he was mayor AND Bowser before she was mayor. Trust that we "experienced" them firsthand.

That is exactly how it works. The D.C. Council is a representative body, not an executive one.

Hardly! Council-members are in charge of constituent services. Are you arguing that council people cannot be poor at constituent services? Or poor stewards of public funds, e.g., by embezzling or misusing constituent services funds? Do you even live in DC?

They do constituent service work like any lawmaker anywhere, but they're hardly in charge of everything that goes on in their ward (and the constituent service funds, which are basically slush funds, are tiny compared to government spending in general — about $1 million, total, citywide, from 2012 to 2018). Most services you get from the city government are executive functions. You think Brandon Todd's office has been out there collecting your trash now that he's the Ward 4 councilmember instead of Bowser?

You are hilarious. How is the weather in North Kensington? Burke?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sure that when DC its its first white mayor, in decades, none of the anti-Bowsers will have anything to complain about. The same DC government employees will be perofirming the exact same duties they perform now. The schools will be the same. The parks will be the same. The developers will give money to their candidate of choice. Clark, Douglas, W-T are going to do what they do. With more and more residents of DC relocated from the eurocentric racially homogenous regions of flyover country, the south, and NE, it is completely understandable that there is considerable hostility toward Mayor Bowser. The idea that she has done little or is corrupt is language that whites have been using for centuries to describe African-Americans. It is a mindset that is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of many white Americans that short of athletics and entertainment, Blacks have marginal added value to American society. For example, take how some whites denigrate Benjamin Banneker HS. The students at Banneker are enrolled in either IB, or AP tracks, work hard, and earn large number of scholarships each year. Nevertheless, you will have some white adults who, paid for ACT/SAT tutoring, kumon, or some other private tutoring for their child only to have them score negligibly higher than Banneker students, who did not receive private tutoring, on the ACT or SAT. Yet these same white adults will have the temerity to state that Banneker is below average. The more I type this, the more I am coming to realize that white supremacy is a mental defect. It would really be great if the anti-Bowser folks would just openly admit that there is nothing an African American could do to ever earn your respect. Admitting that sentiment would not only make you a racist, it would also make you honest. I can respect an honest racist because at least we can have dialogue. It is the dishonest, microagressing racist that I don't respect.

Do you even live here? Or are you writing a thesis paper from far away?

The like/dislike of Mayor Bowser crosses racial lines. Some Black people strongly dislike her. Check out the local BLM group.

And plenty of white people dislike white politicians. Look at how white moderates treat Councilmember Nadeau (she's very progressive and white since you probably don't know that).

Good luck with your thesis, but try doing some more research first.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Most of the anti-Bowser sentiment on here boils down to the fact that she's talking about increasing density in Ward 3 (though so far, not actually done much to make it happen). If not for that, no one on DCUM would care much about her either way.

Some of us live in Ward 4 and experienced her poor stewardship firsthand.

She wasn't the mayor of Ward 4, so you really experienced Vince Gray or Adrian Fenty's poor stewardship.

That's not really how it works. We got previews to poor leadership of Fenty before he was mayor AND Bowser before she was mayor. Trust that we "experienced" them firsthand.

That is exactly how it works. The D.C. Council is a representative body, not an executive one.

Hardly! Council-members are in charge of constituent services. Are you arguing that council people cannot be poor at constituent services? Or poor stewards of public funds, e.g., by embezzling or misusing constituent services funds? Do you even live in DC?

They do constituent service work like any lawmaker anywhere, but they're hardly in charge of everything that goes on in their ward (and the constituent service funds, which are basically slush funds, are tiny compared to government spending in general — about $1 million, total, citywide, from 2012 to 2018). Most services you get from the city government are executive functions. You think Brandon Todd's office has been out there collecting your trash now that he's the Ward 4 councilmember instead of Bowser?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of the anti-Bowser sentiment on here boils down to the fact that she's talking about increasing density in Ward 3 (though so far, not actually done much to make it happen). If not for that, no one on DCUM would care much about her either way.

Some of us live in Ward 4 and experienced her poor stewardship firsthand.

She wasn't the mayor of Ward 4, so you really experienced Vince Gray or Adrian Fenty's poor stewardship.

That's not really how it works. We got previews to poor leadership of Fenty before he was mayor AND Bowser before she was mayor. Trust that we "experienced" them firsthand.

That is exactly how it works. The D.C. Council is a representative body, not an executive one.

Hardly! Council-members are in charge of constituent services. Are you arguing that council people cannot be poor at constituent services? Or poor stewards of public funds, e.g., by embezzling or misusing constituent services funds? Do you even live in DC?

Anonymous wrote:I am sure that when DC its its first white mayor, in decades, none of the anti-Bowsers will have anything to complain about. The same DC government employees will be perofirming the exact same duties they perform now. The schools will be the same. The parks will be the same. The developers will give money to their candidate of choice. Clark, Douglas, W-T are going to do what they do. With more and more residents of DC relocated from the eurocentric racially homogenous regions of flyover country, the south, and NE, it is completely understandable that there is considerable hostility toward Mayor Bowser. The idea that she has done little or is corrupt is language that whites have been using for centuries to describe African-Americans. It is a mindset that is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of many white Americans that short of athletics and entertainment, Blacks have marginal added value to American society. For example, take how some whites denigrate Benjamin Banneker HS. The students at Banneker are enrolled in either IB, or AP tracks, work hard, and earn large number of scholarships each year. Nevertheless, you will have some white adults who, paid for ACT/SAT tutoring, kumon, or some other private tutoring for their child only to have them score negligibly higher than Banneker students, who did not receive private tutoring, on the ACT or SAT. Yet these same white adults will have the temerity to state that Banneker is below average. The more I type this, the more I am coming to realize that white supremacy is a mental defect. It would really be great if the anti-Bowser folks would just openly admit that there is nothing an African American could do to ever earn your respect. Admitting that sentiment would not only make you a racist, it would also make you honest. I can respect an honest racist because at least we can have dialogue. It is the dishonest, microagressing racist that I don't respect.