Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Meet Washington D.C.'s "civic agent" Chris Otten, who believes in legal activism, not just journalism, to protect poor people
I am sometimes criticized for physical inertia and
leaving the resistance and activism (and protests) to others, claiming to be a “citizen
journalist”.
No so with “civic agent” Chris Otten, who files
appeals and litigation to halt the gentrification of poorer sections of
Washington, DC.
The Washington Post has a story by Paul Schwartzman
today, here. The story was shared by a Facebook friend,
Dave Edmondson, who had been the editor of “The Quill” in the early 1990s, for
Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL), a group among whom Rick
Sincere (now in Charlottesville) may be the best known today. I’m going to interrupt my own post right here
and share a guest post on Rick’s blog by a US Congressman. Anyway, I became the editor of Quill and then
went on to my books and bogs.
Otten, who looks fairly youthful but scruffy in the
picture (white), has tutored poor children (compare that to my own substitute
teaching experience in the middle 2000’s) and run for office under the Green
Party. The article says he drives a
20-year-old car (the maintenance would be more expensive than a new one, maybe)
and lives in subsidized housing in Adams Morgan.
I see gentrification all over Washington, now on U
Street, and in Northeast. Where do the
poor people, driven out by the high rents (unless there are enough subsidized
units) go? PG County?
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