- Courtland Milloy
- Local Columnist
His eyesight is still good, but his insights are even better.
“It saddens me to say it, but this is the worst city government I’ve
ever witnessed,” Southeast Washington resident Benjamin E. Thomas Jr.
says.
At age 91, Benjamin E. Thomas Jr.
has been watching the antics of the people running the District longer
than some current officeholders have been alive. He served 15 years as a
member of an Advisory Neighborhood Commission, waged a 10-year fight to
get a traffic light in his Southeast Washington neighborhood and is
said to be the oldest neighborhood watch block captain in the city.
Asked recently about the state of the District heading into
next Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral and D.C. Council primaries, he spoke
with the frankness of a senior citizen who has seen it all.
“It saddens me to say it, but this is the worst city government I’ve ever witnessed,” Thomas said.
He wasn’t just talking about the two-year federal investigation of D.C. government corruption,
which has netted 20 convictions, sent three council members to jail and
left a cloud of suspicion over Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s reelection bid.
There’s
another scandal, perhaps even worse than the one dominating recent
headlines: a city flush with cash catering to its most privileged
residents while treating the most vulnerable — children and elderly
alike — with contempt.
“When we won home rule and the right to
elect our own leaders back in the 1970s, the goal was to build a city
where everybody was treated with dignity and respect,” Thomas said. “I
don’t know when all that began to change, but nowadays it looks like we
are building a city for buildings. People getting pushed out to make
room for buildings. Buildings going up, but nobody from the city getting
jobs. All these buildings and they’re putting homeless people in
recreation centers.”
You’d think that a recently launched effort
by Gray (D), called the “Age-Friendly City” campaign, would have
tempered Thomas’s harsh judgment. The plan calls for making the District
safer and more socially inclusive for seniors by 2017.
Volunteers
started last week canvassing streets, block by block, and compiling
reports on what improvements need to be made. Gray joined one of the
groups Saturday for a brief walk in the Deanwood neighborhood, where the
most obvious hazards were said to be cracked sidewalks.Thomas
was not impressed. He and his neighbors have been complaining about
crime, abandoned cars, illegal dumping and other age-unfriendly acts for
years.
The same day that Gray made his cursory neighborhood tour,
Thomas showed me around the nearby Benning Ridge neighborhood, where he
has lived since 1958.
“That’s one of the recreation centers where they house the homeless,” he pointed out. “Can you imagine herding human beings into a place like that? Making everybody sleep on mats? It’s shameful.”
A
few blocks away, he pointed at a house and said, “That’s where a woman
was watching television upstairs and did not hear the burglars
downstairs.” The woman, a senior citizen who lives alone, plays bridge
with his wife. D.C. police eventually showed up but the burglars were long gone. The fear, on the other hand, lingers.
Making
matters worse, there is a huge, dying tree leaning toward the woman’s
house. One just like it had fallen and severely damaged the house next
door to hers. “She has been trying for three years to get the city to
cut it down,” Thomas said.
As we drove on, Thomas pointed to where
the air-conditioning compressor had been stolen from outside a house.
All that remained was a concrete foundation and severed hoses protruding
from a wall. The resident was an elderly man who lived alone. He had
gone without heat during much of the winter.
“The third one stolen in this neighborhood that I know of,” Thomas said.
The
tires from a neighbors’ car had been stolen. “They came out to go to
church and no wheels,” Thomas said. “That’s why I try to park under the
streetlight.”
On a street that runs alongside Fort Dupont Park,
Thomas showed me the charred ground where an abandoned car had been set
on fire. There have also been two fatal shootings in the neighborhood.
“We
used to be able to leave our doors unlocked at night,” said Thomas, who
worked as a Pullman porter and retired after 30 years with the Coast
Guard. “We never dreamed that we would end up being scared to live in
our house.”
Nowadays, almost everyone locks themselves in at
night. Many of Thomas’s neighbors rely on security bars on windows and
doors, making their homes look like prisons.
It is unlikely that
the city’s “age-friendly” canvassing will pick up on such despair, let
along result in senior citizens living out their golden years in peace.
On
Tuesday, Gray sweetened his appeal for the senior vote by signing into
law a property tax relief bill just for them. The measure had been
sponsored by council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who is also
seeking reelection.
No doubt the new law would make it less
expensive for some seniors to stay in the city. But who wants to stay in
a house where dead trees are threatening to kill you? Where burglars
don’t just steal your belongings but whatever peace of mind you have
left?
“You can tell when an election is coming up,” Thomas said.
“First come the promises, then come the buses to take us to the polls.”
After
that, he’ll be surprised if a politician even mentions “age-friendly
city” again. Or that he’ll be alive to see it if one of them actually
kept his or her word.
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