WASHPO: Black professionals leading the charge of gentrification across Anacostia

Go HERE to read the full Washington Post article and go HERE to check out the photo gallery. As these articles tend to go this one really captured my experience living and working in Ward 8 without all the pandering and accusations. Who knew it could be done?!

Great to see my neighbors, friends, and some former "I Am Ward 8" nominees:  Charles, Courtney, Sariane, and Amber getting the recognition they so deserve! Each of them give so much all of themselves to make Ward 8 and East of the River a better place for us all.  I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Rebecca but I am definitely looking forward to it.  She sounds wonderful. Be sure to follow Rebecca's blog, The House That Hope Built, that chronicles her journey building a new house in the heart of Anacostia.

Ward 8 is definitely "a neighborhood of doers" and I am so proud of all of them all: new and old, black and white, middle-class and poor.  So many selfless people giving all they have -- and then some-- just because they believe.

That is some real "ride or die" stuff and I can always roll with that.

Excerpt:

‘A neighborhood of doers’ 

On a recent sticky summer day, the skies opened and Courtney Davis rushed into the new Anacostia Library, once a crowded and crumbling building, now a gleaming two-story glass-and-steel structure with teenagers surfing the Internet on flat-screen computers and rows of self-help books, graphic novels and summer reading classics on display. 

Davis recently published “A is for Anacostia,” the first children’s book to depict daily life in the neighborhood. It’s a labor of love — an attempt to boost the pride of the area’s young people, who are often portrayed negatively as residents of Southeast. 

Jerry Craft’s illustrations show the kids “with permed and natural hairstyles like cornrows, braids, twists and puffs,” Davis said. “It was something deliberate. We wanted [the kids] wearing caps, crew shirts, hoodies — and they reflect the different skin tones of black folks.”