At 16, I found my voice testifying at a public hearing

This summer, GGWash has been fortunate to host four interns in college and high school, all of whom have worked closely with our policy team. Working with them has been a full-circle moment for me as this Monday, July 22, is exactly twenty years since I first testified at a public hearing. (Another entry for the ongoing series on what a dork I was.)

I was 16, about to be a senior at Blake High School in Montgomery County, and the soundtrack for that summer was almost exclusively emo bands: Something Corporate, Dashboard Confessional, The Format, and so on. Like a lot of kids who found this music, I didn’t have a ton of friends or much self-confidence. My mom was constantly bugging me to stand up straight because I hunched over, trying to take up as little space as possible. But for the first time I connected to something, and not only were these bands everywhere at the time, but after reading the book Nothing Feels Good, I learned that this scene had local roots. I was inspired to get out of my house and go find my people.

The catch: I didn’t have a license or any money. So I was stuck at home in White Oak unless my friend who lived a few miles away took his scooter down this six-lane highway to visit me, or alone in my room mixing it up on BeyondDC, Dan Malouff’s message board that was basically GGWash before GGWash existed. Here I started to find that community of people who saw the world the same way I did. I had read about Kentlands, and I wanted to create more places like that where someone my age could get around without a car. This was the same summer that big-D Downtown Silver Spring opened, and despite living in a place that was literally designed to be boring, my friends and I suddenly had a place to hang out and walk around, so long as we got a ride.

Meanwhile, I heard the adults around me organizing against a housing development proposed for a vacant lot I’d walk past on the way to the school bus, a meadow wrapped with an old wire fence and some big, gnarly walnut trees. I figured if more people lived here it might be easier to get things we could walk to, like a coffee shop or a place to hear bands, or at least more frequent bus service. My family had also moved a lot growing up—five times by the time I was 11, when my parents bought the house we lived in after years of saving and searching, finally getting out of our old, unsafe apartment building. It felt wrong that other people should dictate who could or couldn’t live in our neighborhood.

This was me finding my voice and, I hoped, my people: talking to my neighbors on their sofas, at block parties, and in the park, about why they shouldn’t oppose building new homes in our neighborhood. Unlike on BeyondDC, these people did not agree with me, but each time I struck up a conversation with one it felt a little easier.

On the evening of July 22, 2004, the hearing room at the Montgomery County Planning Board in Silver Spring was packed. The commissioners had had a long day dealing with housing boom-era problems: a report on growing traffic congestion, big 800-home subdivisions at the edge of the county, new rules blocking more big subdivisions at the edge of the county. But these folks were here to speak out against a proposal for just 14 homes on Musgrove Road. And me, testifying in support.

A few days later I wrote in my journal about it. “The neighborhood was against the project because it would deluge them with traffic, destroy their quality of life, and ruin their street with the introduction of sidewalks,” I said. “They came to yell…I was there to support the project.”

“So I went, and I was nervous. I was sixteen and here I am testifying in front of the County Planning board, faced with overwhelming opposition from the community…I had my little speech typed up and I wore a collared shirt to look older.”

They called us up three at a time, and as I walked up to the dais, people patted me on the back and cheered me on. I explained how my parents had spent years saving and searching for a house and how if we don’t build these houses here, they’ll just go somewhere else, so they should build more homes here and make it easier to walk as well. When I got up from speaking and turned around, they all had daggers in their eyes. I was looking for my people, but instead I’d just made a bunch of people mad at me.

And…it wasn’t that bad. What could they possibly do to me? I thought.

I went back to school that fall a little more sure of myself. I started performing at open mikes—my trademark song was Dashboard’s “Hands Down”—and got used to being in front of crowds who didn’t hate me. In a convoluted way, it’s how I came out. Soon after that, I started making friends who liked the same music as me and going to house shows and concerts. Two years later, in the summer of 2006, I started the blog that would launch my career. Eventually, I’d make friends who liked the same music as me and wanted to build more houses.

Three years after I testified at the planning board, my little brother took a picture of me pointing at a big hole in the vacant lot I used to walk by. The development would have 12 homes instead of 14, a concession to the neighbors, but it was getting built. I had proof that I could make my corner of the world a little better.

It’s a trip to think this was two decades ago, but now more than ever I feel obligated to pay it forward. There are lots of kids who, like me that summer, wanted to feel like a part of something bigger than themselves. This community gave that to me, and hopefully I can give that to the next generation as well.

Also, I made a playlist of my summer 2004 jams. It’ll change your life, I swear.