Update on Development Project on 3200
Block of Rhode Island Avenue – Last month the Mayor and Council
voted to move ahead with working with
Streetsense and the Neighborhood Design
Company (their partner) in developing the 3200 Block of Rhode Island Avenue
(former funeral home, Bass Parking Lot and Thrifty Car Rental lot). The
Mayor and Council spent some time preparing a Land Disposition Agreement that
contains the conditions the City wants in the sale agreement of the City-owned
properties (e.g. sale price, environmental quality of project, parking, time
lines, etc.). The City Attorney and City
Manager are now preparing to negotiate with the developers over the agreement
and hopefully early next month an agreement will be hammered out and the
project can move ahead. The developer’s
time line as stated at the Council meeting was to have the project completed in
2015.
Meanwhile we have heard that there are a few different
people interested in developing the 3300 Block of Rhode Island Avenue (Singer
Building, Pawn Shop, ‘Circle Cafe’ Building) and the County Redevelopment
Authority has put out an RFP (request for proposal) for the former Northeast
Plumbing Supply building on 38th and Rhode Island Avenue. It is a good sign that developers are now
interested in investing in this area.
Mount Rainier-Gateway 5K Run Set for
Saturday April 27th – Our area now has a number of recreational
runners. There is even a Brentwood-Mount
Rainier Facebook Group. The Youth and
Recreational Committee has decided to sponsor a 5K run which will run on a
Saturday morning in late April. There will also be a 1 Mile walk/run for those
who are not up for a 5K run. We hope to
attract runners from around the area to our City and try and make this an
annual event. We need some volunteers
(for registration, handing out water on the route, and making sure people don’t
get lost) so please e-mail if you’d like to volunteer or participate in the
run.
Double Poles – An Increasing Eyesore
in Our City –
While I appreciate the upgrading that
PEPCO is doing in our City, I am getting
increasingly aggravated over the fact that when PEPCO puts in a new light pole
(sometimes to have the wires go higher than some of our trees) they don’t
remove the old pole. So now instead of
having one pole in a limited sidewalk area we have two poles. PEPCO says that Verizon and Comcast have to
link their wires to the new poles before the old poles can be removed. I have started contacting the utilities, the
regulatory authorities and our state representatives about this problem. If you see a double pole in your area that
you’d like to have removed, send me an email with the address and the pole
number and I’ll add it to my list of poles which I am compiling for PEPCO,
Verizon, and Comcast.
I am also
trying to get Verizon and Comcast to clean up all the loose wires they have
lying on the ground. The wires are
supposed to be tied up neatly after they wire a house for cable/telephone service. If you know of a place where there are loose
wires, let me know about this.
Community Services Task Force – How we can help our neighbors in need? That is the main purpose of a Task Force set
up by the Mayor and Council. There are
times in the past when I and others have wanted to have a vehicle in our City
to assist our neighbors who are in need because of damage from a storm, fire or
flood. There are people who have asked
me how to obtain assistance. I have not in the past known the answers to these
questions, though I know there are organizations who offer assistance. This task force will help to identify
organizations that have resources and programs for people in need and will work
with the City staff in communicating to the residents how to obtain this help
and how residents can assist their neighbors in time of need. The Task Force will make recommendations to
the Council by September 2013. We’re
looking for residents to be members of this task force. If you’re interested please let me know.
Union Market in Northeast DC http://unionmarketdc.com – Another great quality of life
improvement for living in our area. The
totally renovated market is at 1309 5th Street NE across from
Gallaudet University and a ten-minute drive from downtown Mount
Rainier. I have become a regular customer. They are now open Wed-Fri
11 to 8 and Sat
& Sun 8 to 8. Here is a list of some of the vendors:
All Things
Olive
Almaala
Farms
Buffalo
& Bergen
Cordial
Curbside
Cupcakes
DC
Empanadas
Harvey’s
Market
Lyon
Bakery
Oh!
Pickles
Peregrine
Espresso
Rappahannock
Oysters Co.
Red
Apron Butchery
Righteous
Cheese
Salt
& Sundry
TaKorean
Trickling
Springs Creamery
City Reviewing Emergency Preparedness
Plan – The Council
has appointed a Committee to review the City’s Emergency Operations Plan. This plan directs city staff in case of an
emergency created by a natural event (hurricane, snow storm, flood, earthquake)
or human-created event (hostage situation, terrorist incident). What are the evacuation plans? How do we
communicate with residents without internet?
What staff is needed to be available?
Where should they be placed? If
you would like to help with this review, the next meeting is set for Monday February
4th at 6 PM at the Mount Rainier Police Department.
MR Home Tour Scheduled for Sunday May
5th: We’ve rescheduled the home tour for May 5th. It will be from 1 to 5 PM. We have a number of homes scheduled for the
tour but are always looking for more. If you’re willing to let your neighbors
see what you’ve done in your home, let me know.
If you’re just willing to help out and make the Home Tour a success, we
could use some more volunteers.
Save the Dates:
March 16, 2013 – Electronic Recycling, Public Works
Garage 3715 Wells Avenue, Mount Rainier, MD 9am-1pm contact Ruth Sandy {confirm
that this is her name (throughout)} at rsandy@mountrainiermd.org;
Saturday, May 18, 2013 Annual Mount Rainier Day Festival Rhode
Island Avenue– parade begins at 11:00 am; Vendor booths,
performances/entertainment, basketball tournament and kids play corner commence
at 12Noon. Contact jlomax@mountrainiermd. org; county/state/local officials should be
invited {This needs to be edited}
Saturday June 15,
2013 Electronic Recycling,
Public Works Garage 3715 Wells Avenue, Mount Rainier, MD 9am-1pm contact Ruth
Sany atrsandy@mountrainiermd.org
Tuesday, August 6,
2013 - National Night
Out, 6-9 pm Location TBD contact Chief Michael Scott at mscott@ mountrainierpd.org; county/state/local officials should be invited{ditto
throughout}
Saturday September 21,
2013 - Electronic Recycling,
Public Works Garage 3715 Wells Avenue, Mount Rainier, MD 9am-1pm contact Ruth
Sandy at rsandy@mountrainiermd.org
Saturday, December 7,
2013 – Annual Craft
Fair – Joe’s Movement Emporium 10 am – 6pm contact jtarlau@cwa-unioni.org ; county/state/local officials should be invited
Saturday, December 21,
2013 - Electronic Recycling,
Public Works Garage 3715 Wells Avenue, Mount Rainier, MD 9am-1pm contact Ruth
Sandy at rsandy@mountrainiermd.org
Lawrence Guyot - Lawrence Guyot, a Mount Rainier
resident and civil rights leader, passed away last month. I’m pasting in the obituary from the New York
Times because he was someone we should all know about:
Lawrence Guyot, Civil Rights Activist
Who Bore the Fight’s Scars, Dies at 73
By DOUGLAS
MARTIN
Lawrence
Guyot, who in the early 1960s endured savage beatings as a young civil rights
worker in Mississippi fighting laws and practices that kept blacks from
registering to vote, died Thursday at his home in Mount Rainier, Md. He was 73.
His
daughter, Julie Guyot-Diangone, confirmed his death, which she said came after
Mr. Guyot had suffered several heart attacks, lost a kidney and became
diabetic.
Mr. Guyot
(GHEE-ott) was repeatedly challenged, jailed and beaten as he helped lead
fellow members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and student
volunteers from around the nation in organizing Mississippi blacks to vote. In
many of the state’s counties, no blacks were registered.
“He further
pressed the campaign for greater black participation in politics by serving as
chairman of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, formed to
supplant the all-white state Democratic Party. It lost its challenge to the
established Mississippi party at the Democratic National Convention in 1964,
but its efforts are seen as paving the way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A famous
moment in the civil rights movement occurred after Fannie Lou Hamer and two
other civil rights workers were arrested for entering an area of a bus station
reserved for whites in Winona, Miss., in June 1963. Mr. Guyot went to Winona to
bail them out of jail. When he asked questions about their rough treatment,
nine police officers beat him with the butts of guns, made him strip naked and
threatened to burn his genitals. The abuse went on for four hours until a
doctor advised the officers to stop.
Mr. Guyot
was taken to a cell and beaten some more. The cell door was left open to the
outside, with a knife lying just beyond. The guards’ apparent idea was to
entice him to try to escape, but he saw two men lurking outside and stayed in
his cell. “I didn’t fall for that one,” he is quoted as saying in “My Soul Is
Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South” (1977), by
Howell Raines.
Mr. Guyot
was released after Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist, was
assassinated in Jackson, Miss., on June 12. Mr. Guyot thought that the
authorities feared the effects of another assassination of a civil rights
worker when national attention was focused on Mississippi.
Later in
1963, Mr. Guyot was imprisoned at the infamous Mississippi penitentiary
Parchman Farm. He was beaten, and went on a 17-day hunger strike. He lost 100
pounds. “It was a question of defiance,” he said in an interview with NPR in
2011. “We were not going to let them have complete control over us.”
In a recent
interview with The Afro-American Newspapers, Timothy Jenkins, an educator who
worked with Mr. Guyot in the 1960s said: “He is significant because he knew
there is a price more ultimate than death. It is disgrace.”
“Lawrence
Thomas Guyot Jr. was born in Pass Christian, Miss., on July 17, 1939. His
father was a contractor. Mr. Guyot attended Tougaloo College in Tougaloo,
Miss., a historically black college that had some white faculty members and
welcomed white students. He graduated with a degree in chemistry and biology in
1963.
While in
college, he became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
and traveled around the state conducting civil rights workshops and doing other
organizing. He and his colleagues concentrated on voter registration, not
desegregation. When he took someone to the courthouse to register, he was often
followed by two cars of whites.
Mr. Guyot
was haunted by a 1964 conversation he had with Michael Schwerner, the civil
rights worker who would be murdered that year along with his fellow workers
Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. As Mr. Schwerner was preparing to drive to
Mississippi from a training session in Ohio, he asked Mr. Guyot if it was safe
to go. Mr. Guyot said yes, and always felt responsible for what happened later.
I told him to go because I thought there was so much publicity that nothing could happen,” Mr. Guyot said in an interview with The Sun Herald of Biloxi, Miss. “I was absolutely wrong.”
In 1968,
while in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic convention, Mr. Guyot went to
a doctor after falling ill. The doctor told him that he had heart trouble and
was overweight, and that if he went back to the civil rights struggle in
Mississippi he had perhaps two months to live. Instead he went to Rutgers
School of Law and, after graduating in 1971, moved to Washington, where he did
legal work for city agencies and was an informal adviser to Mayor Marion Barry,
a fellow native Mississippian.
In addition
to his daughter, Mr. Guyot is survived by his wife of 47 years, the former
Monica Klein; his son, Lawrence III; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Guyot
favored same-sex marriage when it was illegal everywhere in the United States,
noting that he had married a white woman when that was illegal in some states.
He often gave inspirational speeches on the meaning of the civil rights
movement.
There is
nothing like having risked your life with people over something immensely important
to you,” he said in 2004. “As Churchill said, there’s nothing more exhilarating
than to have been shot at — and missed.
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