RECIPIENT OF THE DC BLACK MBA ASSOCIATION 2023 LEGACY AWARD March 2024 Health, Wellness & Nutrition Supplement
Women’s Wellness:
The Importance of Nutrition, Prioritizing Healthy Eating Habits
Serving Our Community in the DMV
Vol 59 No 22... March 14 - 20, 2024
WI March Health Supplement Center Section
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Activists Storm Wilson Building in Demand of Cease-fire Resolution Local Palestinian Turns to Council for Action After Losing More than 20 Family Members in Gaza By Sam P.K. Collins WI Staff Writer
5 Protestors outside the John A. Wilson Building in Washington, D.C. speak out against the threat to Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) protections on March 12. (Ja’Mon Jackson/The Washington Informer)
Since last October, when Israel ramped up its offensive against Palestinians, D.C. resident Moataz Salim lost more than 20 family members living in Gaza, including a cousin killed in an airstrike in January along with her husband and children. Salim, 26, counted among those who marched through the John A. Wilson Building on Tuesday afternoon to demand that the D.C. Council passes a resolution in support of a cease-fire in Gaza. Once inside the Wilson Building,
TOPA Under Siege, Tenant Advocates Say
By Sam P.K. Collins WI Staff Writer
The Bowser administration officially launched the Housing in Downtown program with a hardhat tour at the Elle, what will soon be the District’s first office- to-residential conversion in the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. Once completed, the Elle, which is the former Peace Corps headquarters on 20th and L streets in Northwest,
will have 163 residential units. Due to this project’s inclusion in the District’s tax abatement program, some of those units will be available to tenants earning below the the Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area’s average median income. However, this office-to-residential conversion wouldn’t be protected under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), a nearly 40-year District law that allows tenants first dibs at the purchase of their apartment building when their landlord wants to make a sale. “The Tenant Opportunity to Pur-
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he and more than 50 people interrupted a Committee of the Whole hearing taking place in the council chambers and approached D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) on the dais. The group, which also included the Rev. Graylan Hagler, Nee Nee Taylor of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Jacqueline Luqman of Black Alliance for Peace, the Rev. Anthony Motley, and Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal, unsuccessfully attempted on two occasions to engage council members participating in an active shooter response training on the fourth floor.
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Parents Sue OSSE for Adequate Transportation
Lawsuit Alleges Violation of IDEA, American with Disabilities Act, and Human Rights Laws By Sam P.K. Collins WI Staff Writer
5Five parents and The Arc of the United States are working with lawyers to sue the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in order to improve the transportation system for students with disabilities. (WI File Photo)
A current federal-class action lawsuit alleges that the District’s state education agency denied students with disabilities equal access to their education by failing to provide them with safe and reliable transportation to and from school. For more than a year, parents have taken to social media and participated in D.C. Council and State
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