Responses of Scott McLarty to
GLAA 1998 Questionnaire for Council Candidates
I am not in favor of home rule, certainly not the limited home rule under which DC operated before Congress imposed the Financial Control Board. I'm in favor of representation in Congress, and statehood for DC.
Under home rule, Council's and the Mayor's actions were subject to the approval of Congressional committees dominated by conservative Republicans, a situation aggravated when Representatives from suburban districts bordering DC were allowed to serve on these committees. Congress members like Reps Davis and Moran vote to benefit their suburban constituencies at great cost to DC residents, and out of their desire to increase the number of freeways into DC (and consequent congestion, suburban sprawl, urban economic drain), to relocate federal agencies in the suburbs, to prohibit DC from collecting reciprocal taxes from Maryland and Virginia because of suburban commuters, etc.
I advise that all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organizations work for statehood as well, for at least one compelling reason: DC will never be allowed to implement its domestic partnership benefits lawpermanently, which Council passed a few years ago, as long as we're under the rule of Congress. Even if a Democratic Congress restores home rule someday, if the Republicans take control again we may lose it again.
Congress has limited our home rule and refused to allow DC representation because Republicans (and some conservative Democrats, I believe) don't want new representatives or senators who would almost certainly be African-American and liberal (as well as pro-gay). Rep. Tom Davis has declared his unwillingness to return limited home rule even after the budget has been balanced for five years, regardless of DC government's "performance," which really means willingness to submit to Congressional mandate:
"The District is likely to remain firmly under the financial control board's thumb well beyond the four-year period first envisioned, officials confirm privately. The District must produce four consecutive balanced budgets before it can escape the control board's rigid oversight. With audits revealing an unexpected surplus for fiscal 1997, many District officials assume that the control board's four-year phaseout clock has already begun ticking. 'Not so,' says Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. 'I think you'll see this get extended,' said Davis, chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing District affairs. Davis, who drafted the 1995 law that created the control board, said unless Congress sees a 'dramatic improvement' in the city's day-to-day management and services, the law will likely be amended to extend the control board's authority indefinitely." ("Control board may not exit in four years" by Thomas C. Hall, in The Washington Business Journal, February 6-12, 1998)
Newt Gingrich has publicly stated his desire to see DC serve as a laboratory "experiment" for conservative Republican policies. The answer to Question 1 must be answered in this context.
Mayors Marion Barry and Sharon Pratt Kelly and our Democratic Party-led City Council gave Congress an immediate excuse for the takeover, through mismanagement, cronyism, ineptitude, and lack of accountability to constituents. As Ward One Council Member, I'd restore accountability by
* enforcement and expansion of sunshine laws (prohibiting secret deals, cronyism, and legalized bribery in government), from the Office of the Mayor down to the ANC level
* working to restore constituent services, especially environmental clean-up. One way to accomplish this is by giving Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) some authority over the Department of Public Works (DPW), a restructuring which would give neighborhoods more autonomy and expand grassroots democracy
* challenging the kind of exploitative speculation by developers and property owners which has allowed neighborhoods to deteriorate (usually to the point at which the developer can step in and impose projects that displace residents and small businesses, recent examples of which include the Shaw Convention Center and possibly the 14th Street corridor); one way to do so would be a split rate property tax penalizing negligent owners; the District itself should inventory and sell off unused buildings in its possession; such strategies would also challenge political cronyism between developers and elected officials
* shifting financial priorities from multi-million-dollar boondoggles like the Convention Center to education (smaller classes and schools, textbooks and other supplies, repairs, competitive teacher salaries, restoration and expansion of funding for UDC), human services (public transit, health clinics, especially AIDS services), and affordable housing (restoration of funding for shelters and the Tenant Assistance Program); supporters of said boondoggles dump thousands of dollars into campaign and party coffers
* supporting independent citizen oversight of the Metropolitan Police Department, and ending "zero tolerance" harassment of young black men, gay people, immigrants, and other easy targets
* outlawing the transfer of funding and failure to use funding allocated to AIDS treatment and prevention; making sure that DC government spend all money allocated to AIDS treatment and prevention, and especially implement programs for underserved populations
Such a platform will not "prove" to Congress that we deserve home rule or representation or statehood. In fact, most Republicans will be hostile to such agenda, preferring, for instance, private prison contracts and vouchers for private schools instead of public education. Congress has also tried to gut funding for ANCs.
We'll only get democracy in DC by other means, perhaps through the two court challenges now being mounted, more likely through a national campaign for democracy for DC, and maybe through direct citizen action in confrontation with Congress (and the President, who signed the Revitalization Act in 1997) like a general strike or shutdown of DC or tax boycott in protest. I'm a veteran of groups like ACT UP, so all of these strategies are valid to me, and none frightens me.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other sexual minorites are often told, sometimes by each other, that we have to "prove" that we deserve our human rights, by modifying our behavior and attitudes. DC citizens are similarly being told we have to "prove" that we merit the same democratic and constitutional rights as other Americans. Both notions are equally abhorrent.
2. The Council has seldom aggressively exercised its oversight powers over the District government. Instead, too often it has been passive and reactive in addressing the mismanagement problems that routinely plague the District government’s administration. What will you do to improve the Council's performance of its oversight responsibilities?
I can answer this in several ways:
* through agenda enumerated in my answer to Question 1, especially through sunshine laws, expansion of the democratic powers (and accountability) of ANCs, and reallocation of funding for multi-million-dollar projects to education and human services.
* by tailoring the office to suit the needs of constituents instead of major campaign contributors, a promise I can keep because as a Green I take no corporate constributions. I plan to enter office owing favors to no one, except, of course, for the people who voted for me. My involvement in both ACT UP and the Green Party have equipped me with the research and investigatory skills for monitoring both government and corporations.
* by making my position on Council a full-time job.
* by hiring someone whose job is follow-up on any service the Ward One Council member's office undertakes.
* by using the office to establish a permanent network of community activists and progressive organizations. Such a network would serve several functions: to monitor DC government closely; to exchange and disseminate information among various activists, organizations, and the public; to lobby other Council members for the public interest when legislation is considered; to bring these individuals and groups to the legislative table in the drafting of laws. Large corporations already enjoy this privilege: consider the 1995 Business Regulatory Reform Commission, stacked with business leaders and no consumer, tenant, or labor representation; the Financial Control Board's hiring of corporate law firm Holland & Knight as policy consultants.
The ultimate solution for many problems of accountability and performance is more democracy within the structure of DC government. That's why I advocate:
* increasing the number of Council members representing each ward.
* having ward Council members elected by cumulative voting: for example, if a ward had five seats on Council, for instance, each voter would get five votes. The voter could divide up those votes among five candidates, or cast all the votes for a single candidate, or give two votes to one candidate and three to another, according to his or her judgement.
* having at-large Council members elected according to party. Every voter would vote for a single party, which would determine the number of at-large members of each party in Council. For instance, if the Green Party received 10% of the vote, it would gain one Council member if there were ten at-large seats.
This would constitute a "Mixed Member" system, as used in Germany, several eastern European countries, and New Zealand. South Africa used a similar proportional representation system when it abolished apartheid and elected an interim legislature. Such a system would ensure that nearly every voter and minority party in DC enjoyed some representation, without imposing cumbersome quotas. It would allow voting blocs and coalitions to form and re-form according to issue and at the will of voters, and encourage people to vote: the number of citizens turning out to vote in countries with PR hovers between 80% and 90%. In the US, we saw a 49% turnout in 1996. We’d benefit from the presence of more political parties, instead of reseating shoo-in cogs in DC’s compromised Democratic Party machine. (Recommended reading: Proportional Representation: The Case for a Better Election System, a pamphlet by Douglas J. Amy, Crescent Street Press, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1997.)
3. Do you support passage and full funding for the new civilian complaint review system to be established by Bill 12-521, the "Citizen Complaint Review Act of 1998"?
Yes. I fully support proposals for an external and independent review system for investigating police misbehavior. I was pleased to see such a review board approved by Council before its 1998 summer recess.
I consider the power of citizen oversight the only effective prevention and corrective in the matter of police corruption, specifically, the recent examples that have nearly discredited the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). I cite specifically the failure of the homicide department to investigate recent cases; "zero-tolerance" harassment arrests to inflate arrest records; and harassment of young black men, immigrants, and gay people.
I agree strongly with the four principles drafted by the DC Citizens Reform Coalition, drafted in a meeting on December 11, 1997, which
* declared a lack of faith in the ability of the Mayor, the City Council, the Control Board, or the "Memorandum of Understanding partners" to investigate corruption, mismanagement, or malfeasance in the MPD
* demanded that an independent citizens' commission be established immediately to investigate corruption and institute reforms in the MPD
* insisted that all whistle blowers, inside or outside of the police department, be protected from retaliation and that all future meetings of the MOU partners be open to the public.
We agree with Mary Jane DeFrank of the ACLU (in "Why Citizens Need to Police the Police," The Washington Post, August 2, 1998), who warns against the inclusion of police representatives on the review board. Their presence in the last board, which was eliminated in 1995, in part caused the backlog of more than 800 cases. Ms DeFrank also warns against the failure to fund such a board adequately: "The District is struggling to balance its budget and too often has been doing the balancing by cutting funding programs for the poor. The lack of funding for the review board is no exception, as the poor are most often the victims of police brutality.... Poor people are at risk from officers with violent or abusive tendencies in part because they are less likely to complain and less likely to sue."
We would add "discriminatory" (i.e., with bias against race, sex, sexuality, age, economic class) to "violent or abusive tendencies," we'd allow the board to investigate cases of poor performance along with more urgent cases, and we support full funding for the board.
4. Do you support Bill 12-612, the *Opened Alcoholic Beverage Containers Amendment Act of 1998* (a.k.a. the *Chardonnay Lady Bill*), that would allow people to drink alcoholic beverages on their own porches without fear of arrest?
Yes. I don't believe in harassing people, even for bad habits. I'm generally opposed to such "zero tolerance" measures, which use the letter of the law to penalize citizens on arbitrary definitions, for instance, of what constitutes a "front porch."
One of the advantages of urban living is that front porches, unlike suburban backyards, contribute to the life of neighborhoods, to the ability of neighbors to socialize, and the promotion of a feeling of community. I don't drink alcohol under any circumstances, but I can appreciate the fact that rational people socialize and relax by grace of chemical catalyst. Cities shouldn't penalize city dwellers for doing something on their porches that suburbanites do in the sheltered luxury of their backyards. Public drunkenness can be addressed by other laws.
5. In an apparent effort to bolster his standing with some segments of the District community, the recently-ousted chief of the Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs, David Watts, instituted a zoning regulation earlier this year barring video stores from deriving more than 15% of their revenue from sexually-oriented videos. Do you agree that this attack on the rights of adult consumers is utterly unwarranted and that there should be no limits on the proportion of video store revenues derived from adult videos?
I agree, but not for precisely the same reasons you state. I've proven myself a foe of censorship: In 1990, as facilitator of Gay & Lesbian March Activists/ACT UP Cincinnati, I was one of the chief organizers of a major protest in front of the Hamilton County Courthouse (I conducted the press conference and emceed) against the prosecution of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and director Dennis Barrie for displaying photography by Robert Mapplethorpe. I critiqued the equally homophobic prosecution of a gay bookstore in Cincinnati for renting a video of Pierpaolo Pasolini's movie Salo: 120 Nights of Sodom in Z Magazine and in my own politics-and-arts newsletter Pink Noise in 1996 and 1997.
But I don't think, for instance, that adult video stores should operate next to elementary schools or in the midst of residential neighborhoods, any more than should liquor stores or enormous convention centers. We should also address questions of violence and sexual exploitation, especially of women, although I don't think censorship -- handing authority over what we watch or read to city or state official -- is a correct or effective way to do so. (See my answer to Question 6 for more on this.)
The chief motivation for the proposed zoning regulation seems to be assuaging people who don't want such stores in their shopping areas (i.e., "NIMBY" activists), especially because of the crime they such businesses draw. I don't believe that the video stores on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle, for instance, have attracted prostitution. The mere sale of adult videos doesn't necessarily lead to criminal activity.
To my knowledge, all of DC's video stores offering adult material along with standard movies are locally owned, either individually or in small chains. (I'm a member at several.) These businesses depend on their adult video rentals to keep them afloat. If they were forced to end such rentals, most would probably lose most business to Blockbuster, a national corporate chain and part of a global media empire (Viacom, I believe), which can easily price the small stores out of the market. It would be like shutting down all locally owned coffee houses for the benefit of Starbuck's, or locally owned drug stores for the benefit of CVS. Blockbuster is notorious for its refusal to stock controversial (nonpornographic) material and even for cutting offending scenes from videos.
Blockbuster drains the DC economy and limits its selection of titles. Just as Cincinnati's anti-porn ordinance gave puritanical crusaders the means to ban the Mapplethorpe photos (and, earlier, Last Tango in Paris and the musical Hair, as well as gay establishments), Watt's zoning proposal would effectively limit the availability of a wide range of art, especially gay artwork, and sink several small DC businesses too.
6. Will you support legislation to authorize and regulate the issuance of liquor licenses to establishments (in designated nonresidential commercial districts) that want to offer nude dancing as entertainment?
Yes, but with certain qualifications.
Liquor licenses should always be regulated by community needs. I have no moral qualms about nude dancing (or prostitution, erotic videos, or other sexually oriented business) per se, and I certainly don't believe the law should abolish one's right to exhibit oneself or to watch someone exhibit him- or herself willingly in a closed setting. The questions I'd ask of such regulations would have to do with public safety and the treatment of people employed as nude dancers, most of whom are women who take such jobs out of financial need.
We should ensure that patrons of such establishments pose no threat to the public or to property in the area of the establishment. But we should also examine such business's employment practices. I'd favor regulations that guarantee nude dancers complete safety from harassment and injury (by patrons, employers, and other employees), pay commensurate with the highly valued service they offer, job security and full benefits (especially health coverage, considering the implications of this line of work, and paid maternity leave), and the right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers. We should also guarantee that dancers are not forced into situations they consider degrading or humiliating to themselves or to women in general.
Nude dancers, like all workers in legal or illegal sexually oriented businesses, take such jobs for many different and disparate reasons, from financial desperation to the sexual thrill of performance. In a situation of potential exploitation, especially sexual exploitation, our first concern should be the protection of the workers themselves. The "right" of patrons to ogle and bar owners to make big money should be a distant second. We should include such protections in all regulations affecting liquor licenses for establishments offering nude dancing.
7. Do you support Initiative 59 (or similar legislation) to legalize the use of medical marijuana when a patient’s doctor recommends it as a means to combat some of the effects of AIDS, cancer, and other diseases?
Yes. Not only do I support Measure 59, but I proposed that the Green Party endorse the effort and assist in its passage, both 59 and its earlier incarnation (Measure 57) last year. I personally collected hundreds of signatures for both 57 and 59, and I exhorted and organized other Greens who joined the effort. (I am the only Ward One candidate who can make this claim.) Wayne Turner, who with the late Steve Michael led the petition drive, will confirm that the DC Greens collected a plurality of the 32,000 signatures that were handed in to the Board of Elections and Ethics on July 6. (17,000 valid signatures are required.) Several Greens who work on my campaign each turned in over a thousand signatures.
I support Measure 59 for several reasons: because of the number of friends with AIDS who have needed medical marijuana, and benefited from it when they used it; because I support universal health care and therefore support medical measures that do not conform to the market demands of medical, pharmaceutical, insurance, and HMO corporations; and because it defies the federal government's failed "Ward On Drugs" which has criminalized a drug demonstrably less harmful than either alcohol (200,000+ deaths per year) or nicotine (400,000+ deaths per year). Marijuana kills under a dozen people a year. Our draconian and irrational drug laws have served only to turn thousands of young people into criminals.
8. The New York State Legislature recently passed legislation saying that: (1) doctors must report the names of people who test positive for HIV to public health officials; and that (2) health workers must attempt to have infected patients identify their sex or drug-use partners and then must notify those partners of possible exposure. Such measures are invariably counter-productive and discourage those most at risk from being tested and treated for HIV. Will you oppose any such legislation in the District?
Yes. I would oppose all legislation that would shift resources from prevention based on education, anonymous testing, outreach, and availability of condoms and clean needles over to mandatory names reporting and other measures that would criminalize people with HIV and compromise their right to privacy, especially when discrimination against people with HIV still exists. I oppose compelling people to divulge information like sexual partners.
I support full anonymity in testing, and the use of confidential tracking methods when necessary. I helped design and coordinated such a system in my work at the REACH program in Cincinnati (1989-1992), which targeted intravenous drug users and their sexual partners who were at risk for HIV.
Authoritarian measures would drive the disease underground, and scare people away from getting necessary treatment and testing -- that's what resulted from hysterical and repressive measures taken against the syphilis epidemic after World War I, and it didn't slow the spread of syphilis. I've opposed and confronted fear-based policies since my ACT UP days, and even appeared on The Jerry Springer Show (back in 1992 when Jerry was more like Phil Donahue) and discussed this very topic.
We're witnessing a trend among state and municipal legislatures to adopt mandatory names reporting laws ("Wave of Laws Aimed at People With HIV," The New York Times, Friday, September 25, 1998). I'd use my office as Council member to fight against legislation of this kind.
9. Do you support an increase in District government funding to combat AIDS in line with the continuing increase in the caseload?
Yes. Not only would I support increased funding from the DC government for AIDS treatment, but I would fight any effort to divert AIDS funding to other agencies. The Barry Administration attempted this; other DC officials and AIDS service providers looked the other way to protect their interests; and ACT UP's Steve Michael exposed it in early 1997 as a member of the review board required by the Ryan White AIDS Care Act. That's why I especially support the idea of an independent board to oversee the administration of such funding.
The money for such increases should come out of the budget surplus, and should also be diverted from ill-conceived multi-million-dollar schemes like the Mount Vernon Convention Center. But I also believe that DC should undertake, over the next decade, implementation of a guaranteed health care system that offers quality care regardless of ability to pay, employment, income, housing status, age, or prior medical condition. We’re in the midst of several health crises. DC has a high infant mortality rate, and African American men in the District suffer an average life span of 62 years, 14 years less than the average for Fairfax County in Virginia. There are disproportionate rates of tuberculosis and certain forms of cancer. We won’t surmount this crisis through band-aid regulation, but through a system not based on corporate profits – which will always exclude people of high risk. (See my enclosed articles from The Washington Peace Letter, Z Magazine, and ACT UP Washington.)
10. Do you support continued District government funding for the needle exchange program to combat the spread of AIDS?
Absolutely. I would pursue the expansion of needle exchange in DC aggressively. I supported ACT UP Washington's efforts to set up needle exchange sites when I was a member, and helped raise money for needle exchange in 1993 and 1994.
From 1989 until 1992, I worked for the Cincinnati Health Department in an AIDS intervention program (REACH) for intravenous drug users and their sexual partners. Cincinnati permitted the over-the-counter sale of syringes, and the HIV infection rate among users remained below 5%, one of lowest for US cities. Because over-the-counter sale of syringes was legal, needle exchange programs were not as urgent in Cincinnati; instead, the program instructed users in the cleaning of needles, the dangers of sharing, and safer sex. Like the program I worked for, DC needle exchange programs should also refer users to counseling and recovery programs -- which also drastically need funding and follow-up resources.
The argument that funding for such programs doesn't exist is specious while we currently enjoy a budget surplus. (The same goes for many other programs, like Tenant Assistance.) Furthermore, the relatively small cost in treatment and prevention offsets much greater costs down the road, such as hospitalization for sick people and incarceration for users and the resulting diminished quality of life in the District for all of us.
Speaking of safer sex, we should also make an effort to distribute condoms widely in DC. When I lived there, every gay bar in Cincinnati had a fishbowl full of condoms. I've never seen that here in DC, which I've come to learn lags behind many "conservative" southern and middle western cities.
The Green Party platform supports both needle exchange and condom distribution.
11. Do you support legal recognition of marriages between partners of the same sex?
I believe that different-sex and same-sex marriage should enjoy the same status under the law.
Ultimately, I believe that people should undertake relationships and establish families according to their own needs and desires and with complete freedom from government intervention, influence, approval, or condemnation. If we can gain universal health care, under which all people are covered regardless of employment, income, housing, age, medical condition, family situation, etc., then the need for domestic partnership benefits becomes moot. Until we can guarantee universal coverage, same-sex marriage deserves legal recognition equal to that of different-sex marriage. I encourage gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and all sexual minorities to work for both goals.
We should however require the state to recognize relationships and expanded definitions of family in matters like inheritance and hospital visitation rights, including within such definitions common residence and personal declarations of relationship. The landmark Minnesota court cases in the 1980s, in which a lesbian couple were divided when Sharon Kowalski's family used legal means to prevent her from seeing her lover Karen Thompson after Ms Kowalski's ability to communicate was impaired in a car accident, attest to this need.
Passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in September, 1996, with pro votes from progressives like Democrat Paul Wellstone and President Clinton's signature, is one of the reasons I joined the Green Party. 1996 Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who insensitively dismissed the issue as "gonadal politics," nevertheless praised the Green Party platform on which he ran, which expressed strong support for same-sex marriage.
(See also my answer to Question 1, in which I exhort gay, lesbian, bi, and trans organizations to work for statehood for DC, because self-governance will secure domestic partnership laws against congressional meddling.)
12. Do you support the current District policy, sanctioned by a court ruling, of allowing adoptions by unmarried couples?
Absolutely, by both hetero- and homosexual couples. Like domestic partnership laws, adoption by unmarried couples remains under Congressional threat until we gain some real democracy. (See my answers to Questions 1 and 11.)
13. Do you support both an increased budget for the Office of Human Rights (OHR) so that its heavy case backlog can be eliminated, and the reestablishment of OHR as an independent, Cabinet-level agency whose Director has direct access to the Mayor?
Yes.
I would especially support expanding anti-discrimination efforts into the public schools, where, according to Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), students who are either homosexual or perceived as homosexual have been increasingly harassed and brutalized. The first step in protecting students should be the appointment of "safe" teachers and counselors, to whom children can confide in complete security and without the threat of judgement or disclosure. Another step might be the founding of anti-bias and anti-violence social clubs for students, dedicated to building bridges among students of different races, sexual orientations, languages, etc. The small investment we make in such programs now will cancel the much greater human and financial cost of alienated students.
I support GLAA's proposal that the Office of Human Rights gain independent Cabinet-level status. Human Rights should be separated from the Minority Business Development Commission, since the promotion of business, even with the necessary goal of improving minority opportunities, can compromise the enforcement of anti-bias protections.
14. Will you support legislation codifying OHR's current practice of granting top priority to discrimination complaints from those afflicted with AIDS or other life-shortening conditions?
Yes, since the current backlog of several years renders this protection useless for some people with HIV and other diseases. Death should not be the resolution to anti-bias cases.
15. Proposals for establishing a system of vouchers for private schools, whether here or elsewhere around the country, would funnel taxpayer dollars to religious schools controlled by denominations that frequently are aggressively homophobic. Will you oppose any legislation authorizing vouchers for religious schools?
Yes. Private school vouchers would open a can of worms similar to the controversy in New York City in the late 1980s, when it was discovered that AIDS facilities run by the Roman Catholic Church and which received city funding encouraged counselors to help their patients repent and overcome their homosexuality, often in deathbed conversions. Some religious schools treat the subject of homosexuality with hostility. They make education a nightmare for many children beginning to realize that they fall outside the accepted norm, and even for many children merely perceived to be gay or insufficiently masculine or feminine. School vouchers would constitute public approval of such persecution.
Private school vouchers would effectively divert needed funding from public education. Setting up a "separate" budget for vouchers sends money to private schools that might have gone to DC's public schools, which need such money badly. Public education is the collective responsibility of DC government and all citizens and should not be "privatized."
I agree with the position of the Wisconsin NAACP and the American Federation of Teachers, whose president, Sandra Feldman, said it was "unconscionable to give public funds to private religious schools for just a few students, when those same tax dollars could be put into proven, public-school programs that would benefit every child in Milwaukee" (The New York Times, June 11, 1998).
"Researchers from Indiana University recently found that Cleveland third graders who 'went private' are performing no better on standardized tests than their public school counterparts -- and parents are spending nearly the equivalent of the vouchers on taxicabs to get to the private schools.... [V]ouchers funded from the public budget go not only to students now in public schools but also to those currently unsubsidized in private or parochial schools. The net effect is to reduce a city’s public school per-pupil expenditures. By thus weakening the public schools vouchers actually diminish educational choice." ("The Voucher Game," The Nation, May 18, 1998).
We strenuously oppose all such efforts to privatize public services and property, especially:
* the Metrobus system, privatization of which would result in a reorganization of routes, fares, and schedules to guarantee maximum profitability, instead of meeting the transportation needs of the public.
* prisons, privatization of which would require that cells be filled with as many inmates as possible in order to ensure profitability to the firms (namely, the Corrections Corporation of America) that would own them. We'd have a new class of people -- private prison investors -- who'd hold a stake in criminalizing as many citizens, especially young people, as possible. The hunger for profit would also compel the firms to reduce the cost of housing inmates, and we'd have more incidents like the murders in the Youngstown prison. The profitability of private prisons, we believe, is the real motive behind passage of the Truth-in-Sentencing Act earlier this year.
* public lands, e.g., Kingman and Heritage Island, which remain under threat of being sold or leased to private developers to be transformed into a "Children's Island" theme park. The most recent proposal promised jobs to (mainly poor African-American) young people who live in DC near the islands, allowing them low-level part-time jobs to serve the (mainly white) suburbanites and tourists who could afford the proposed $15 admission. It's a spectacular example of the plantation attitude towards DC which still infests major developers, urban planners, and their supporters on City Council, whose approval of the plan was fortunately overturned by the Financial Control Board.
The Green Party has spoken out and fought publicly against all the above privatization efforts (especially Children's Island), and sees them as a dangerous and concerted plan to sell off our schools, services, and resources to the corporate sector.
[Enclosed herewith are articles detailing some of my activist background, some original pieces from various publication, and two sample issues of Pink Noise, a newsletter I published 1996-97.]
[signed]
Scott McLarty
Green Party candidate for Ward One Member of the Council of the District of Columbia
1833 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, apt 105
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 518-5624
scottmclarty@yahoo.com
Monday, October 5, 1998
