When the Smoke Cleared by Kyla Sommers

Author:Kyla Sommers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press

10

“We Want to Rebuild.… What Do You Want?”

COMMUNITY CONTROL AND RECONSTRUCTION

WALTER E. WASHINGTON WAS IN HOSTILE TERRITORY. HE HAD come to testify before the House DC Committee on two bills that had been written by conservative politicians in response to the April rebellions. Washington opposed both bills. First, HR 16948 would mandate that the DC government pay for the cleanup of private businesses after the uprisings.1 Second, a thinly veiled attempt to curtail future civil rights protests, HR 16941, would require monetary bonds from those seeking a parade or protest permit in Washington, DC. In other words, groups that wanted to hold a protest would have to pay a deposit to get a permit to hold the protest legally. Under this system, government officials would be able to demand unattainably high bond prices to effectually ban an undesired protest or demonstration. The bills rebuked Mayor Washington and his government in two ways: one asserted that the District had done such a poor job handling the uprisings that it should be held financially responsible for business owners’ cleanup expenses; the other suggested that the federal government had so little faith in the city’s ability to manage protests that Congress would effectively prevent demonstrations from occurring in the first place.

The witnesses preceding Mayor Washington depicted the capital as a city held hostage by protesters and criminals with a government that was unwilling and unable to protect its inhabitants. American citizens had lost their “right” to visit the capital and walk its streets.2 As Washington testified, he challenged the lawmakers’ critical appraisal of DC and urged them to encourage, rather than rebuke, the capital and its people in the aftermath of the rebellions:

I believe the time has come when the Nation’s Capital should really be the place that all people of the Nation look to.… I think it is necessary to react to some of the statements [by members of Congress], not emotionally, but sincerely, because I believe in this theme, and I believe in the city. I believe in the people. We are going to protect them. And we are going to do this if just given a decent opportunity to do so.3

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