Sunday, December 24, 2000
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Washington Journal:
Hope Rises in Real-Life Washington
by Francis X. Clines
Muddling beyond the winter solstice, this city has an extra edge of hope beyond the ritualemotions of the holiday, for not only Santa but George W. Bush is coming to town.
The president-elect (or -select, in the view of griping Democrats who plan to protest theinauguration) is already stirring the familiar mix of optimism and wariness from the ordinary,
uncelebrated residents who live at this city's heart yet remain outside the bubble of capital
power. "Tell the education president to call me; I have ideas for him," said Nancy Schwalb, awriter and volunteer teacher fighting to see her creative writing workshop survive in thebudget-strapped public schools of the vast area of humbler, workaday Washington known
dismissively as East of the River.
This is the working-class, poverty-lashed region just across the Anacostia from the seat ofnational power. It is ignored in the press releases of ambitious incumbents, but it thrives andglistens with life. It seems an ideal laboratory environment that goes untapped by the legions ofsocial planners and political strategists ever theorizing their fresh goods -- solutions for thepeople's problems -- that trundle handsomely packaged from think-tank factories west of theriver in the city's expense-account sector.
"Political epochs grew wild, as in distance," wrote one of Ms. Schwalb's 13-year-old student
poets, imagining the nation's solstice mood from her outlook across the Anacostia in thethreadbare but doughty Charles Hart Middle School. "A full rotation of the view until America
goes blind."
At Hart, the school budget left teachers paying for the holiday party pizza out of their own
pockets. Ms. Schwalb had to forgo the space heater for her chilled classroom because it shortedout the school's dated wiring, which still lags behind the high-tech education promises of thesuccessful campaigners across the river.
There is some hope for the incoming president west of the river, too, at Stevens ElementarySchool. This is a drab, historic school opened 114 years ago for the children of emancipatedslaves. It still operates dynamically on 21st Street, a few doors north of the K Street power
corridor of lawyers and lobbyists. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, one of the many
nonprofit agencies updating their agendas for the new president, has put Stevens on its
national list of most endangered schools. The real estate boom from a federal government that

is as go-go as it is gridlocked is threatening to swallow the Stevens school from its prime site,trust officials warn.
"Certainly we hope Mr. Bush will serve as a real catalyst for education and all the resources
needed for it," said Gloria Henderson, the principal at Stevens, which enjoyed a blip of fame ageneration ago when Amy Carter attended as part of President Jimmy Carter's unusual attempt
to be closer to real-life Washington. "Stevens is the neighborhood school of the White House,
and what better place for Mr. Bush to start on his own promise than at Stevens," she said of thecity's disastrously frayed school infrastructure. "Mr. Bush's mother visited once, so I expect hewill."
But the failure here of noblesse oblige gestures is an old neighborhood story. This season
people were shocked when a would-be philanthropist failed in his headlined promise to financecollege scholarships for 60 inner-city students. The city rallied to a Capraesque ending when a
new donor emerged in time for Christmas.
For Washingtonians east of the river, the capital core with its endless political ballyhoo is a
Potemkin village; their expectation level beyond the bubble is decidedly wary. President
Clinton, the great neighborhood hope of eight years ago, turned out to have virtually nointeraction with the ordinary people. "Clinton proved to be our rich uncle," said Mark Plotkin, aperennial civic goad and journalist for WAMU, a public radio station. "He opened the federal
wallet for the city's cause, but I wish he had opened his mouth and his heart as much."
Mr. Plotkin expects far less from President-elect Bush. "Bush will be our one-man depression,"
he contended.
Accordingly, Mr. Plotkin was up to his usual zealot's mischief this week, hectoring theadministration at an 11th-hour press briefing to say whether Mr. Clinton, who grandly endorsed
statehood for the district, would leave Mr. Bush, who decidedly does not, a presidential
limousine festooned with the city's rebellious new license plate. It complains of "Taxation
Without Representation" to underline the fact that residents pay $2 billion in taxes but have no
voting representation in Congress.
To Mr. Plotkin's shock, the administration matched his appetite for mischief and said the plate
would be bolted on. He hopes this leaves the incoming Bush team the Scroogelike choice ofremoving it in favor of the old "Celebrate & Discover" plate that statehood proponents finddispiriting.
So goes the life of symbolism west of the river. Across the Anacostia River, Ms. Schwalb's
holiday worry is that the student poet who wrote of political epochs growing wild has been
missing her classes at the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop to baby-sit for younger siblings.
"Her mom works the late shift at Popeye's, for minimum wage," Ms. Schwalb said. "So if Mr.
Bush is not going to leave any kids behind, as he promised so often in the campaign, he could
raise the minimum wage for her mom. And he should see for himself how D.C. schools
desperately need repairs."

Every four years, candidates campaign against the Beltway culture as something alien from reallife in the America beyond. But there is plenty of real life here, too, and Ms. Schwalb said shewould be shocked to see any of the latest victors cross the river to see the prosaic truth.
"The schools need to have some money thrown at them," Ms. Schwalb said. "It's the only way;they're suffering that much."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Gloria Henderson outside Stevens Elementary School in Washington, where
she is the principal. (Justin Lane for The New York Times)

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