Do Something: The week of December 18, 2023

Weekly, Regional Policy Director Dan Reed and DC Policy Director Alex Baca will share with you an action you can take in the immediate future that has the potential, sometimes great and sometimes small, to increase the number of homes in our region, decrease the trips people take by car, make all of it safer, and not screw people over in the process. This week, Alex and Dan share their thoughts on the holidays.

If you have any questions, email dreed@ggwash.org about Maryland and Virginia Do Somethings, and abaca@ggwash.org about Washington, DC, Do Somethings—or, about whatever you want to talk about.

Alex

I’ve been thinking about how I want this winter break to feel. GGWash’s office closes between Christmas and New Year’s, and I would like to avoid scrolling on my phone, on my couch—as much as the cat would probably love the unmitigated loafing—as much as possible.

I think what I want is quietude. This is a not-unsurprising sentiment for the end of a year, but it’s one that feels especially salient right now: There’s a near-deafening thunder of the local-government equivalent of schlemiel vibes—misguided finger-pointing about crime, prognostications about what sports actually mean to our economy, the low spark of downtown panic—floating above the work I do. I tend to be relatively positive about conflict, and my instinctive response to vibes like these is to throw myself into the discourse, or steep myself in the universe of rhetoric around it. Witness: Me, on my day off last Friday, at an unnamed Gallery Place bar that’s been moody in the press, drinking a local IPA, furiously scribbling notes in the margins of a Clarence Stone essay, feeling really good and extremely hype on spending my free time this way.

Partially, that’s because this is not my first crime panic, or stadium fight, or hovering specter of decline, and I feel, often, that I’ve stayed ready to be ready to manage the sometimes legitimate and sometimes bloviating buffeting of political winds around urban governance. I didn’t start my career 15 years ago fact-checking council meetings and neighborhood listservs and Dave McKenna columns at Washington City Paper to not know the District’s contemporary context and history, nor did I move to San Francisco during its 2014 fever pitch to pretend as if it ever had a golden age, nor did I live and work and write about it all in Cleveland, Ohio, to not have at least some experience mediating my big feelings about a place through my involvement in some of its institutions. Likewise, it’s probably not the first time you, GGWash readers, have been in your city during a particularly aggressive spin cycle, whether as an observer or a direct participant.

I can’t speak for all of you but, for me, the chasms presented by, say, WMATA’s budget deficit, or an evil-billionaire type taking his toys to the next tax abatement, ultimately just…make me glad to be home. If I’m going to be mad about misguided public spending on private entities, or about how to revitalize a downtown, I want to be mad here—and, well, mad here I am.

It feels a little perverse and a little bit sycophantic to gush about how much I love Washington, DC, during a tumultuous time for it. But I do mean to equate madness with the quietude that I feel is so attractive. There isn’t one without the other; binaries are useful as poles, but not as definitions—which is why I wrote here, on November 20, about how I find it worthwhile to be thankful for people on their own merit.

Today, I want to share a coda to that. I got got at my own party, on Thanksgiving day, by my mother, who gave a really beautiful toast that made me cry, about how my chosen family are equal to her, and my dad, and how happy she was for us all to be together. I squeezed my partner’s hand, and put my head on Dan’s shoulder, and, as I recall it, my dining room erupted in cheers and clinks, and I felt a happiness that I have learned can only come from an alignment of the people you love with the place you love. Your family is where you find them, and home is where we are today.

I don’t take my family, my home, or the District for granted, and that is the quietude in which I want to find strength and guidance as 2023 comes to a close. Next year, when a manufactured scarcity of money and resources and confidence will take top billing, we are going to need it. —AB

Dan

The Christmas story is sad. Mary and Joseph have to travel far from home for some bureaucratic errand, getting counted in the census. They’re young and she’s pregnant; Joseph knows it’s not his, and had considered leaving her. When they finally get to Bethlehem, there’s nowhere to stay and they’re stuck sleeping in a manger with animals. The shepherds–poor, itinerant, watching their sheep overnight so they’re not stolen–are terrified when an angel appears in the dark to say the child of God is born. Everyone comes together to witness the newborn child in the manger, and I imagine it’s cold, damp, and stinky. Yet only because of these circumstances can they fully appreciate the miracle before them.

Why am I telling you this? I’m queer, and holidays for me–whether with my mom’s Caribbean family in DC or my dad’s family in rural North Carolina–usually mean choosing between being your complete self or being with people you care about, at the cost of constant anxiety, self-censoring, or looking the other way when somebody makes a bad joke. At best it’s lonely, and at worst it’s unsafe. Still every year, going back to when I was 9 and my parents divorced and my mom surprised me with the Lego train I’d always wanted, I keep a lookout for joy.

Last year, I went to see my dad’s family for the first time in six years—the last time was after the bathroom ban, and Laura Jane Grace burning her birth certificate on stage in protest, and hearing opinions from my relatives about how trans people were only out to make trouble. I don’t feel safe being out down there, but even still I missed them, so I decided it was worth it. Even here, in a town of little over 2,000 people, things have changed: a Chick-Fil-A opening; new highways being built and widened; more political signs and flags than I ever remembered; murmurs about a relative who might have been at the Capitol on January 6.

But my godcousins are 14 and 16 now, and they’re excited to tell me about movies and learning to drive and maybe going off to college. You have to go to Main Street, the older one says, it’s all lit up like a Hallmark movie. That evening I drive over there with my brother and indeed there are blocks of garlands and lights and a photo op with fake snow and a vintage truck. It’s also still: the shops are closed for the night or forever, and there are only a few people. Occasionally a car rolls through. It is pretty, and I stand in the middle of the empty street to take it in.

This year I’ll be home, and looking forward to seeing friends and loved ones who take me as I am. On Christmas, I’ll take my dog to see the lights at the Bishop’s House, then go home to watch the Peanuts Christmas special, Tangerine—a Christmas movie because it’s set on Christmas Eve—maybe Gigi the Christmas Snake again, and he’ll fall asleep with his big head in my lap. As Jack Gilbert says, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.” I’m trying.

Whatever you’re doing this week, you can Do Something by taking in joy when you find it, and by checking in on the people you love. Make sure they know someone is thinking of them and loves them just as they are, no matter what. We could all use a reminder sometimes. See you in the new year!

Your support of GGWash enables us, Dan and Alex, to do our jobs. Our jobs are knowing how development and planning works in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. If it’s appropriate to take action to advance our goals, which we hope you share, we can let you know what will have the most impact, and how to do it well. You can make a financial contribution to GGWash here.