Campaigns are an important way for FBC Members and constituents to make their voices heard about key social issue priorities. FBC Staff has provided support for these campaigns.
This campaign was launched to include our little ones in decisions that will impact their lives. The youngest DC residents share what they want to see funded in the DC budget via video and drawings.
COVID-19 relief has not reached everyone in need. Excluded workers are undocumented residents, day laborers, sex workers, street vendors, returning citizens and other workers in the informal economy who all have been locked out of unemployment benefits and other cash assistance. This campaign demands action from the DC government.
This campaign petitioned DC Council to vote NO on the proposed budget on July 7, 2020 because it does nothing to hold MPD accountable or move toward a safer DC. Only the complete defunding of MPD and the removal of police from DC schools (by transferring the school security contract from MPD to DCPS) will protect our community from police brutality.
This is a digital campaign that targets DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson to get his attention about the tax dollar priorities that are important to DC constituents for racial equity. Individuals contributed pictures and video testimony, which were shared on Zoom on July 15, 2020 and on social media (tagging Mayor Bowser and the DC Council as well) with hashtags #TaxDay, #MyTaxDollars, #JustRecoveryDC and #TaxTheRich.
The Way Home is a campaign to end chronic homelessness in DC. On any given night, there are 1,500 individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in D.C. – which means they’ve been homeless repeatedly or for years and struggle with a long-term health condition. These are some of our most vulnerable residents. No one should be homeless. No one should be homeless for years.
This is a campaign to condemn the antidemocratic inclusion of the Rent Control Provision in the Budget Support Act in a hearing on November 9, 2020, with residents delivering testimony. Recently, Chairman Mendelson surprised the Council and the public by unilaterally adding a 10-year extension of DC’s broken rent control system to the Budget Support Act. This action short-circuits the democratic process already in motion that would allow the Council to improve rent control while reauthorizing. Reclaim Rent Control rejects this bare-bones reauthorization of our broken rent control system. The current system facilitates the systematic displacement of Black and brown families, contributes to unsustainable housing costs, and empowers landlords at the expense of tenants. Rent control must be reauthorized, but only with significant improvements.
DC spends over $34 million a year to police and criminalize our youth. The police that are killing Black people in the streets and harassing Black youth in the community are the same police that are in DC schools. This campaign petitions for a removal of police from DC public and charter schools; a rejection of the Mayor’s proposed $2.5 Million in the budget for fiscal year 2021 to add more police in schools; an investment in city budget for the expansion of school-based mental health programs, community violence interrupters, educator training in social-emotional learning and transformative justice approaches; and more.
COVID-19 is forcing the country’s economy into a nosedive. Working-class black families are especially vulnerable to evictions as they are laid off from their work. This coalition is about resisting these policies together to demand real relief and demanding that rent and mortgage payments for renters and homeowner be cancelled for the period of the pandemic, with NO NEW DEBT.
