Over the course of two days, staff photographer Darrow Montgomery and I sat in a room on the second floor of the Hill Center in Southeast. We waited as 10 of the coolest people in D.C. wandered through the Old Naval Hospital and eventually found our pop-up photo studio. While Darrow snapped their photos, they would talk a bit about who they are and what they do—giving us a little taste of the accomplishments, personalities, and stories you’re about to read.
This year, you’ll meet a multitalented artist, a dogged and prolific reporter, an outspoken police employee, a once-reluctant runner, a Jerusalem native, a woman doing her damnedest to keep punk rock alive in D.C., and others.
This is our 11th People Issue. It’s consistently one of our favorite annual projects. It allows us to take a break from the churn of the news cycle, step back, and show some love to the people who do the same for their communities and for our city. Because people make this place, and these are some who shine. —Mitch Ryals
Photographs by Darrow Montgomery, taken Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 at John Philip Sousa Hall. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. A big thank you to the Hill Center DC for loaning us the space to complete this project.
Keyonna Jones
The Artist
Born and raised in Southeast, 35-year-old Keyonna Jones contains multitudes. She studied broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, received two Edward R. Murrow Awards during her time working as a news producer at WNEW 99.1, and was one of the seven artists commissioned in 2020 to paint the Black Lives Matter Plaza mural downtown. Oh, and she’s also a photographer, a painter, a fashion designer, and a tattoo artist. But out of all of her identities, being the executive director of the Congress Heights Arts and Culture Center has been one of the most important. Jones founded the Center in 2015, and since then it has served as a place for local and international artists to showcase their work, attend classes, and participate in workshops. —Dorvall Bedford
Tell us about the Congress Heights Arts and Culture Center. What is its purpose?
To me, it is a house of legacy—it’s come down through my family. But for the community, it’s a safe space. Sometimes on the eastern side of the river, we just deal with a lot of things that the rest of the city doesn’t have to deal with. We are a community that has been forgotten about and underserved. And there aren’t always words that can express how we feel.
Art saved my life. Being born and raised in Southeast and not having a space for artistic expression, I grew up as a creative but didn’t know that until I got out of Southeast. I kind of just felt like I was a weirdo. And so I always say that whatever I want for myself, I want for my community, which means a safe space of expression. We are an art gallery that supports Black and Brown artists. We provide classes, workshops, and rental space for the community. We also have offices for small businesses and a fully functioning kitchen for the community to do what they need to.
You said Southeast has been forgotten. In what ways would you say the community is underserved?
East of the river historically has lacked resources. Till this day, we are still a food desert. We’re the last to be developed but the first to be gentrified.
I had the opportunity to go to school across the bridge growing up. On the long bus rides home, I was able to see what the rest of the city had that we didn’t. I think that’s a reason why I want the Center to act as a middleman for resources, making sure that we can provide our residents with what they need. It’s not only just about art—we have wellness classes, and we bring in professionals and people from the city with resources that our community can connect to, because otherwise they won’t know about it.
Why do this all in the form of an art gallery?
Like I said, art saved my life. For a good portion of my life, I wasn’t being authentically myself. I was told very young that being Black and being a woman and being gay would be problematic for how I showed up in this world. And so I made a conscious decision to be somebody I thought that the world would accept. And by doing that, for so long, I really dug myself into a hole.
Art helped me start my journey of healing. I got the strength enough to go to therapy and learn to accept myself. I feel like that’s what art does for people. It doesn’t discriminate, and you can be from any background and any age. At the Center I like to say we support ages 5 to 105, because art is for everybody. And it’s just a universal language that I think is an incredible tool to use for healing.
Why are you interested in specifically highlighting artists of color at the Center?
I feel like, especially for local Black artists, being an artist is really hard. It’s not an easy gig. So it’s important to create space for other artists like me, because artists are the ones that start revolutions. Artists are innovators and create change. They help heal the community, and it’s important for me to create a space for other healers. Hopefully the Center can be a place for our artists to thrive and eventually literally change the world. As corny as that may sound, I really believe in that.
What makes Southeast special to you?
We just have a lot of flavor, there’s no other way to explain it. When I was creating the brand Soufside Creative, I didn’t want to make it “Soufside Creative D.C.” because I feel like when you’re here, you just know you’re somewhere else. There’s just a swag and a demeanor and a bossiness about us.
I think that same bossiness is what creates the misunderstanding about who we are—it’s seen as aggression and people have this fear of us. But we are some of the most thoughtful people. We are a people who are free, very communal, and very protective of who we are. We have our guard up because we feel like we have to protect ourselves—and we should. This community is special beyond words.
Bshara Nassar
The Storyteller
Bshara Nassar is the founder and director of the Museum of the Palestinian People, a small museum tucked away from D.C.’s many massive Smithsonians, on 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan. Nassar came to the United States to get his master’s in conflict transformation from Virginia’s Eastern Mennonite University. After graduating in 2014, he founded the traveling Nakba Museum Project, which would later be developed into MPP. He works with artists and contributors to curate exhibits that help to educate locals and visitors on what’s happening in Palestine from a Palestinian perspective. —Camila Bailey
Tell us about where you grew up.
I was born in Jerusalem, and I grew up in Bethlehem on a farm that’s been in my family for over 100 years. Palestine has been through many different empires, occupations, mandates, and the history of my family has been that land. In 1991, the Israeli government declared that they wanted to build a settlement on that farm. So my family has been in Israeli courts to try and reclaim the land. Seeing my family struggle through the courts while still inviting others to come and learn about the situation and the farm … my whole life has been seeing my family struggle, so I wanted to keep that legacy alive.
Is that what sparked the idea for the museum?
When I first came to D.C. in 2011, I did what everyone does visiting the city. I started going to museums, galleries, memorials … and I learned so much. But I felt lost because I couldn’t find a place where Palestinian and Palestinian American stories are told. So that’s where I got the idea.
I started from nothing really, but as I was trying to figure out how to start this thing, I met with a Palestinian artist from a refugee camp in Bethlehem who was visiting, and I asked him what the project should focus on, and he said, “Art, because art has a way of opening people’s hearts and minds.” Especially with the Palestinian issue, which can be so divisive, artwork has a way of disarming people and communicating the message in a nonconfrontational way.
Were you surprised that there wasn’t already a Palestinian museum in D.C.?
I wasn’t surprised. I think the narrative, especially in the media, has been focused on depicting Palestinians either as violent or victims. Through the museum, we wanted to create a way to say, “Look, Palestinians are humans. We have a rich culture and history that dates back thousands of years. And, we’re a part of the United States. We have Palestinian Americans who are accomplished as chefs, artists, teachers, representatives in Congress.” It’s important to share these stories.
You mentioned the situation in Palestine can be a divisive issue. How does the museum navigate this?
The museum opened in 2019, after beginning as a traveling exhibit. But since October, we’ve had big crowds coming in to learn and ask questions. For us Palestinians, this issue didn’t start on Oct. 7. It started in 1948 and before 1948. We’re here to educate people. We’re not trying to make any political statements; we just want to show them the Palestinian perspective.
How does the current situation in Palestine affect the museum’s mission?
When things started to unfold in Gaza, many people came to grieve with us and stand in solidarity. We had a tour where everyone was crying just hearing what people are going through. Creating spaces for grief is so important. There’s a lot of trauma, and it’s important that we can get together to share it.
Sam P.K. Collins
The Reporter
At a time when local D.C. journalists have been dropping like flies, Sam P.K. Collins has emerged as one of the most prolific reporters left on the Wilson Building beat. What’s more, he’s become the preeminent voice reporting on communities east of the river during his roughly 12 years at the Washington Informer, a family-owned institution in the Black press for the past six decades. Collins got his start in the national media, including internships at NPR and NBC, but as a Brightwood Park native and George Washington University graduate, he has always had a soft spot for District news. The son of Liberian immigrants has also turned his eye to international affairs on occasion, striving to connect District residents to the broader African diaspora via several reporting trips abroad and a book on his personal journey published in 2021. —Alex Koma
What brought you to the Informer?
I knew I wanted to be a journalist since the eighth grade when my father directed me toward it. At GW, I was an intern on NPR’s Weekend Edition on the production team, but my ultimate goal was to go into radio as a talent, not as a producer. And they told me that the easiest way to get out from behind the production table, it’s a stack of bylines. That’s when I met Denise Rolark Barnes, the publisher, through one of my faculty advisers and I got to the Informer. And after that, I never went back to NPR, nor did I have any intention of doing so. It was a turning point, an awakening in my African consciousness, in terms of just really being cognizant of who I am.
How so?
It was really just reconciling the conflict that I had been a first-generation American, born a D.C. resident, and reconciling those elements of my identity, having come out of GW seeing the class schisms and seeing the misconceptions that classmates had about D.C. folks. I was always in this identity crisis, going into certain media environments where certain news voices were preferred over others, where I’m certain that certain editors did not appreciate certain news stories because of the cultural misalignment, you know, what they might call microaggressions. So I spent the past 12 years of my career learning about myself. And being at the Informer, you come across people, with D.C. being a cool place, you see that overlap between local, federal, and international. You come across a lot of people who may not seem like newsmakers, but they’re newsmakers in their own special way.
How have you tried to bring your identity to your work?
Every element of D.C. culture has an African side of it. And even with our separation from the continent, we are still African by heritage, despite efforts to balkanize us. So all of my efforts are to show people the similarities in our experiences, showing that we’re all from the same place, we all have a common destiny. And that destiny is tied up in whether neocolonialism will cease to exist. And we have to understand who truly holds power. Why is it that, despite leadership changes, African countries or even majority Black neighborhoods in the Americas never seem to overcome certain hurdles? It’s all tied back to neocolonialism. I try to show bits and pieces of that through these stories because people understand things best when they see it through the prism of their everyday life.
Why stay in local journalism to accomplish this when the industry is under such pressure? What keeps you going?
It’s like a dopamine rush. When I’m writing the stories and I’m balancing things and juggling things, it can get a little frustrating. But that dopamine hit, when I see something that I wrote in the paper, I see people discussing it, I see it leading to some realization that somebody had about a situation, it makes it all worth it. So I do see myself staying in the industry for quite a long time. But I see myself teaching as well. I do that in some capacity now, and in that spirit of Marcus Garvey, I want to keep doing that, just building institutions and passing down knowledge and being very intentional about who’s learning what I’ve got to give.
Lisa Burton
The Black and Blue Mom
Lisa Burton is a mom of three, a former sworn police officer, a current civilian employee at the Metropolitan Police Department, and the leader of the D.C. chapter of Moms of Black Boys United. MOBB United, as it’s known, is dedicated to changing the perceptions of Black men and boys and advocating for policies to improve how they are treated by police. The organization also offers support to parents who have lost their sons to violence. Burton is also one of several Black women who are suing MPD over allegations of race and gender discrimination. —Mitch Ryals
You spent decades in law enforcement. How did you initially get involved with MOBB United?
In 2019, when I had the opportunity to facilitate a roundtable at the [University of the District of Columbia] law school, that’s when I met Valerie Castile (mother of Philando Castile, whose death at the hands of police in Minnesota led to MOBB’s founding). Hearing her story, from her mouth to my ears, it was just heartbreaking. It was really her influence and her mentoring that convinced me.
You were working as an agent in MPD’s internal affairs division at that time, and you’ve been outspoken about the challenges you’ve faced working there. Did you ever have doubts about continuing to work there?
I really was at a point where I didn’t want to be on the blue side anymore. I was really looking like, is this what I’ve dedicated my life to? There were a lot of things that bothered me inside that unit. We were saying one thing, but we weren’t doing it. And I’m not saying that the ideal wasn’t there to do it. I think [former Chief Peter] Newsham and [former] Chief [Robert] Contee’s vision was there to do it. But we have so much work to do, to root out some of these biases, implicit biases, and microaggressions, and just racist comments and misogynistic things. There’s a lot going on.
Ms. Castile said, “Baby, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” I laughed, and she said, “No, I’m serious. You have to stay.”
Why did you want to work in internal affairs in the first place? [IAD is the division responsible for investigating uses of force and allegations of official misconduct.]
I came to IAD with a whole bunch of law enforcement experience, but I was coming as a civilian and as a mom. The reason I wanted to do it was because I am a mom. I just felt like someone needed to be in there to say, “Hey, no, you need to look at it from this perspective.”
They hired three civilian agents in internal affairs to try and turn the corner of not just having sworn investigators because there was a lot of distrust: blue investigating blue, and that was historic. And they did everything they could possibly do to keep me out of the use-of-force cases. Most of the time when there was a shooting, they would find a way to send me back to the office, and it became obvious.
You’ve been an outspoken critic of the department—signing on to a lawsuit and calling out a co-worker for telling a racist joke—all while keeping your job. Has there been any fallout?
They allowed him [John Hendrick] to retire, and then come back and run the Force Investigations Team [responsible for investigating officers’ uses of force]. I think that’s where the frustration comes in. The hammer of discipline and accountability seems to be heavier on people of color, the Black and Brown folks.
He got to stay, but the one who saw something and said something [Burton] was pushed out. Now I’m in the Firearms Registration Branch.
Do you think MPD’s new chief, Pamela Smith, will bring the changes you’re looking for?
I’m happy that there is a new chief. I also wonder: Is this a result of all of the women that filed those lawsuits? Is this a Band-Aid? Because that doesn’t resolve it or take away what happened to the rest of us. I guess we’ve got to wait and see what happens. [Smith was hired in 2022 as MPD’s chief equity officer after Burton and several other women sued the department.]
Have you talked to Chief Smith at all? Do you know her?
I do know her because when she came on the job, her third day on the job, I met with her as the chief equity officer. And I have met with her to talk about Moms of Black Boys. She was telling me she wanted to get behind the program.
How did that go?
Well, I mean, she said the right things. But after she was sworn [in as chief], I noticed a shift.
How so?
Just the common courtesy of when you walk past and you say, “Hey, how you doing?” There’s none of that. She would speak. Don’t get me wrong. But it was not the same.
Can you elaborate?
I was standing at the elevator talking to another manager. We had called the elevator, and out comes the chief with her new driver. We look up, and I say, “Good morning, chief,” and she says, “Good morning,” but it was kind of curt. I just thought, you know, it was a terrible night, I think we had some shootings. So I didn’t take it personal. Because what she’s up against, it’s terrible.
It’s a big job.
It is a big job. And so I started toward the elevator with the other manager, and she walked in before we did, and as he and I were about to step in, she turned and did this (Burton holds out her hand to demonstrate), and told us to take the next one; she needed to be alone. I was shocked. That had never, ever happened to me.
Was that the chief big-timing you?
For me, it felt like she was, like, poppin’ the collar: “You can wait.” She has a back elevator she could take that’s not going to put her in the crosshairs with us. I’ve ridden on the elevator alone with Chief Contee after we filed the lawsuit. He didn’t care.
So I emailed her. I told her she offended me, and I felt marginalized … I told her exactly how I felt about it.
Did she respond?
She replied, and she apologized, and said that was not her intent, that she needed to have a private conversation with her driver, and she would chat with me soon. I just thought it was a weird behavior for someone who came in as a chief equity officer because you would think that the forefront of your mind is about making people feel included. But my point is, you can’t just talk it, you’ve got to walk it.
Being a mom is another major part of your identity. Do you ever talk to your kids on how to interact with the police?
Oh yeah. All the time. My little one [14], I make it a joke. My older one, he’s 24, he thinks he knows it all. But both of them I’ve had the conversation with. Avery, he’s the youngest, I always tell him if anything happens, and you start to get questioned, you say, “Call my mom, call my parents.” And if that doesn’t work, just say, “Lawyer.”
But with my older son, who drives, I’m always telling him, “Don’t come over to Virginia.” I tell him that, like don’t come over here because he looks like a target. He’s 6-foot-5, he got tattoos on his face, got the hair, and he gets stopped when he comes over. Like, he got stopped for his light or signal or something dumb, pretextual type things. But I’ve told him to comply, just do what they say. And get a badge number for me. Because I want him to come home.
Dieter Lehmann Morales
The Negotiator
When COVID-19 struck in 2020, Dieter Morales was working a job at a law firm that he didn’t particularly enjoy. He wondered why he’d come to D.C. in the first place. Fast-forward three years, and he’s suddenly at the heart of the city’s civic life as a political organizer, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Columbia Heights, and a member of the Washington Teachers’ Union’s bargaining team that’s currently fighting for a new contract. It’s a head-spinning turn of events for Morales, who moved to D.C. after struggling to find a job out of grad school and has become one of the most prominent Latinx figures in local politics in just a few short years. He’s also sought to straddle D.C.’s rising left flank and its more conventional political organizations. He got his start organizing with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America before transitioning into more established union politics ahead of a bruising battle with D.C. Public Schools over another deal for teachers. —Alex Koma
What made you want to become a teacher?
My dream was always to work at the United Nations, to be a diplomat for our country or something like that, and that’s what I went to school for in New York. But I couldn’t find a job, and a friend’s law firm was hiring, so I just took it so that I could have an address in D.C. and try to find something better here. But the pandemic was a very transformative time for me. I really took the time to assess where I want to go in life and where I was going. I really didn’t like the job that I was working at because I was working for the enrichment of corporate lawyers. I was just a cog in the machine. I didn’t feel like I was giving back. That was when I really started applying to DCPS. My mom was a teacher, and it was always an idea I’d considered. It took a while to get my certification and find a job, but now I’m a 10th grade history teacher at the Columbia Heights Education campus. It really ties everything together. I get to work in the same neighborhood that I live in. And I represent the same neighborhood that I live in.
You jumped into union organizing within just two years of working at DCPS. With a lot of negotiating on the horizon, how did you manage that?
I was honestly surprised that they asked me to be on the contract team, given that I felt like I was still wet behind the ears. But I had some experience in organizing from my time with DSA, and I felt like I could provide my fresh, more newbie perspective here and provide fresh eyes. I’ve tried to be raising larger issues that are not just stereotypically sorted with schools, like, climate change is real, and we really do have an opportunity here to take initiative and not be reactionary. And we’ve got to start preparing ourselves for that right here in D.C. We got to make sure that the school buildings themselves are prepped and ready for that and that our kids are getting an education and that they know why this matters, why it’s important to them, why they will need certain skills to go out into the real world once they graduate to be able to tackle these these problems. And maybe once we get this new contract done with all this included, we can use this to push for other legislation across the District to go hand in hand with it.
There’s been a tremendous amount of discussion about the number of kids who are committing crimes and are victims of crime in the city. What needs to change?
Crime is at the top of a lot of people’s minds, but we can’t be so reactionary and so siloed in our thinking that we think that we can only resolve public safety or crime issues by locking people up or putting more money into the police. It takes a village to solve these issues. And we’re a small community here in the District of Columbia. And I think we often forget that, and education is a huge part of that. If we tackle education and fund education adequately, we can go a long way to making people feel safer. I don’t want to say education will be the magic bullet that will solve the issue—we also have to look at transportation and housing and affordability and all these other things that are tied together, but education is at the nexus of all of that.
D.C. has never had a Latinx councilmember, even as the city’s demographics have changed, particularly in neighborhoods like yours. Do you think that’ll ever change? What’s the state of political representation for your community these days?
I think it’s a matter of time. We took a big step in that direction when we passed the noncitizen voting act in D.C., empowering groups who are traditionally disenfranchised due to their immigration status. I was born in Mexico City, and I didn’t become a citizen until six years ago. I was just a witness to democracy for a long time, so I know what it feels like. When I talk to street vendors or other folks in the Latino community here, they are very much aware of what’s going on around the District. They would love to have their voices heard. It’s just really going to take the work of places like the D.C. Latino Caucus and others to build up that leadership. We’re trying to bring together all the people in D.C. government who identify as Latino and give them the leadership training and skills and capabilities that they need. I think Latinos have kind of been lagging behind in that effort, but here in D.C., we’re in a good spot to really take that on and make it a priority for us going forward.
Karen Ann Daniels
The Director
Storytelling has always been Karen Ann Daniels’ end goal, but it took a while for the self-described ’90s kid, who sang in high school, acted in college, and always loved film, to find her medium. Since 2021, Daniels has held dual positions at Folger Theatre: artistic director and director of programming. She came to D.C. from San Diego (where she was the associate director of Old Globe theater’s arts engagement department) by way of New York, where she led Public Theater’s Mobile Unit and helped launch a theater program in correctional facilities. But the longtime student of William Shakespeare received no less than 18 messages about Folger’s search for a new artistic director. —Sarah Marloff
What is most appealing to you about your position at Folger?
What’s crystallized in my mind is this idea: What is a cultural institution? Why does it exist? Why is it important to have? Most exist with a mission that has something to do with giving access to everybody, preserving their collection for all … and most of them don’t actually do it.
I care about these [institutions]. I think they have value. Do I always agree with what that value is or should be? Maybe not. But we can all agree it has value. That’s the place I come in and say, “Let’s make good on our promises to actually bring real value to people whose land you’re sitting on, whose neighborhood you’re taking up space in.” Frankly, the Folger hasn’t made good on it in 92 years. But this was an institution that decided they were going to stop and reframe who they are.
If you ask people what is D.C.? D.C. was Chocolate City. It’s still Chocolate City, demographically. Yet, people ignore it. There is culture here. There is art here. So how do we bring those things together?
Why does Shakespeare’s work continue to resonate and connect with so many different types of people?
I always think of him as—other than slavery—our original import.
But what he was in his time was radical, fun—[he] really gathered people. He was the popular television—he was Dallas. And he’s wicked. As he gets older, he plays with that more, he gets more political. … It’s embedded in our system culturally, but it is the poetry of it, the language. It’s something we’ve all been able to get legitimized by.
Wisely, on [Folger’s director Michael Witmore] part, he understands and sees that the value in the humanities has significantly diminished, and that speaks to who we are now and where we’re going. We don’t, in our culture, focus on those intangibles. The humanities and the arts are part of the intangibles that make us who we are, that pull us together, make us agree on what democracy looks like. That’s what theater does. That’s what Shakespeare does…. That’s the thing I’m here for.
So how do you bridge those community gaps?
Most people want to have access…. It’s not that they don’t want it. It’s that they think “we” don’t want them. And some of that’s true—the fear is, “then you’re gonna ruin the thing I love.” [Because] they want everyone to love it the way they love it. That’s not realistic.
Second, though we build a bigger building, the real work is figuring out what people want. Where are they hanging out? Where are they building culture? How do they want to come in and be part of what’s going on here? Are we willing to allow their opinions, their wants, their needs to impact what we do, and what we care about so that there can be a mutual exchange.
Because doing this is how we make room for other stories?
That’s part of it: To be able to interpret it in our own time and find value and meaning for it in our own lives. That’s not to diminish the history or how you like it: I like my eggs sunny-side up; you like yours scrambled.
Shakespeare teaches us how to tell stories. I think he’s so much more useful than just to recreate over and over. It depends on what’s happening in our time, in our neighborhoods, what’s on the map of who we are. We want to be able to play and have fun with it, but also expand on it, stretch it, evolve it.
Sidney Hui
The Thrifter
Sidney Hui is quick to admit it: “I’m a people pleaser.” It’s part of what has made the Philadelphia native so successful—both in her online vintage store Disco Loft, and the clothing swap series that stemmed from the digital shop. Hui has been thrifting in the area since her freshman year at the University of Maryland. After graduating in 2016, she moved into an Adams Morgan apartment that served as the catalyst for Disco Loft. In 2020, quarantining in the 1,000-square-foot home, her then roommate remarked, “You own a lot of stuff,” Hui recalls. “She was like, ‘You don’t even drink, why do you own three sets of martini glasses?’” She suggested Hui sell some items on her Instagram page, and Disco Loft was born. —Camila Bailey
How did you initially get into thrifting?
It was just something my parents introduced me to. My parents are really great at saving money, and I think that was their drive at the beginning. I never thought much about it. I was just never taught that items had to be new. Fast fashion wasn’t really talked about when I was younger, but with a greater awareness about the industry and sustainable shopping, it’s definitely become more environmentally driven.
Where did you get the idea for the clothing swaps?
I kept seeing this type of event pop up in Brooklyn, and it seemed like such an amazing vibe. Disco Loft had grown enough to the point that I just decided to host one to see what would happen. I collaborated with another vintage seller [in April 2022]. We didn’t do RSVPs, we didn’t do any graphics, I just posted on Instagram. We were going in blind, and we had probably 50 people come by. We went from doing one every season to doing one every other month because the demand has increased so much.
And you’re doing preregistrations now. Have you ever had to cap the swaps?
We don’t cap it ever, especially since it’s at a public park. The highest registration we had was around 1,000 in our August [2023] swap. In total, we had roughly 1,300 people come out.
That’s huge. Does everyone bring items to swap?
We definitely haven’t had any issues with the amount of stuff. We’ll have a group that comes by and just takes clothes, and we have so many items we’re happy to open it up to everyone. We’ve ended up with 150 trash bags’ worth of unclaimed clothes before.
I’m overwhelmed just thinking about this. Do you ever get stressed out at these events?
More and more people are looking at these swaps as a social event so it’s pretty casual. I think at some swaps you’re almost bartering and trading, but this is really a drop-your-stuff-and-look-around event. You have people trying things on behind benches, and others shouting compliments; when it’s good weather, people bring picnics to hang out at the park afterward. The swaps are mostly about bringing people together in an unofficial way for [vendors] that also ties in elements of community and sustainable fashion. It’s so nice to see people in this setting and just hang. Plus, I get to find some really cool pieces and see other people’s [thrifting] successes. It really brings me joy.
Do you have to be an extrovert to get into the thrifting space?
Not at all. I have vintage seller friends who are definitely not extroverted and prefer not to engage with customers at events, or some who run their whole business online. It’s however you want to experience it.
How do you like to experience it?
It gives me the perfect space to be a people pleaser. I get to pay attention to how to make these experiences enjoyable for others, and I’ve met so many people through thrifting. I want people to feel comfortable talking to me. I don’t want there to be a barrier of vendor-customer. I want this to feel like being part of the community.
Matt Green
The Captain
Matt Green is many things—a graphic designer, an artist, a DJ—but runner wasn’t always on that list. As a high school wrestler in Hyattsville, running was a way to cut weight. But he grew to appreciate it more during his time at North Carolina A&T State University. After graduating in 2009, he returned to D.C., ready to join the buzzy new creative community he saw taking shape. He jumped right in, launching his own clothing brand, and later co-founding District Running Collective where he is now a Lead Captain. Not your average run club, DRC is a collective whose goal extends beyond PRs and twice-weekly runs. They boast an attendance of up to 150. —Camila Bailey
How did you get the idea to start DRC?
DRC started on my 26th birthday with a midnight 5K on H Street [Northeast] called Midnight on Mars. My Instagram handle is @marsgreen. I already had a big HBCU following, and I had people who were supporting the clothing brand. We had seen a lot of things happening in the national running community so we wanted to test it out.
When you hosted that first run, did you have a vision for what the running group could be?
At the time, I was going through a health journey, just trying to get into shape. It was definitely not the goal to start something this big. But seeing how people responded, it was sort of an aha moment of, “Oh, I think we got something here.”
How did you decide how you wanted to build out DRC?
It’s the run club versus run crew distinguisher: A running crew is made up of people who might not necessarily look like runners and aren’t just signing up to train. Our motto is “if you don’t run, you cheer,” so we have cheer squads coming out for every race. DRC grew on the concept of: Support people and they’ll support you.
We really based DRC around community needs. We established a paid membership option pretty early on for those who really wanted to buy into what DRC is about. You started to see relationships develop between people that showed it was bigger than running, so we began identifying things to develop this experience: seminars for first-time homebuyers and yoga sessions. We developed community service initiatives and hands-on programs with organizations DRC members are invested in.
When you started DRC, did you think there was space in the city for these “runners who don’t look like runners”?
We’re still trying to find a space to exist in the city’s running culture and have that conversation of “what does a runner look like?” I think we were at the forefront, being a community of color and helping others find the importance of running and the importance of just moving, period.
What inspired you when shaping DRC and its mission?
What you see in a lot of cities with the [major races] are groups just looking to represent their city and to give visiting runners an authentic experience. We want to create that same initiative here to try and showcase the District and what these different parts of D.C. actually look like.
Trails are great, but we take pride in running through the city. We want people to see us out there. You’re not going to get that if you’re just on the trails. When we’re doing the cheer squads, when we’re running out on the street, folks actually get to see that this is us and see this big community—this community of color—and they get to see us run.
Is D.C. becoming a big running city like Boston or New York City?
I have hope. We started our own race in 2020, District 19, to create our own spin on a D.C. race. It began as a socially distanced race during the pandemic when we wanted a way to show our support and raise awareness about the social injustices happening at the time. The race gave us the platform to do that in our own way. [Every year since], we’ve continued to take a cause that we feel is important and build a race around it. It’s a resistance race.
Natalia Otero
The Survivors’ Advocate
Natalia Otero co-founded DC SAFE 18 years ago to address the District’s lack of a 24/7 service provider for domestic violence survivors. “Domestic violence is not convenient,” she says. It happens at night and on weekends. A child witness of DV and a survivor, Otero is passionate about this work; she ignored the people who said SAFE wouldn’t succeed and instead helped build an accessible safety net for survivors. Armed with pagers and volunteers, SAFE had 65 calls their first year. In 2022, they answered 41,000 calls. SAFE has come a long way, and the work is ongoing. —Sarah Marloff
COVID had a huge impact on domestic violence survivors. Where are we today in the fallout?
Thankfully, the numbers have stabilized. At the beginning of COVID, we kept seeing those numbers go up and up and up. [Now] people are able to get the services they need without a lot of stress.
A couple of the things do concern me, however: the lethality. If you think about those indicators [extreme isolation, increased issues of mental health, substance abuse, job loss] as creating more excessive violence, those were the things happening in these families during COVID.
It has created a situation where we’re really concerned about the level of violence continuing to happen, along with the number of homicides. We haven’t seen anything like this since the early 2000s. In the decade preceding [COVID], we only lost three clients that were part of our Lethality Assessment Program. I think we’re up to eight—three just this year.
The other issue is that the majority of our clients are living under the poverty level. Clients that were just a hair from having significant fiscal disturbances are still suffering. We’re seeing a lot more of our clients coming in with chronic homeless issues or chronic employment issues, things that are very difficult and take many years to get resolved.
Does the lethality assessment refer to the fact that SAFE specifically focuses on high-risk clients? And what does that mean?
We try to determine what’s happening in the relationship and what are the behaviors of the person doing the harm, so that we can determine what percentage of our population is at higher risk for severe injury and/or homicide. We’re not turning people away, but for the majority of the population there are things that can indicate to the person doing harm that the stakes are too high and they’ll stop. For a smaller percentage of clients, that person is not going to stop.
Of the 12,000 survivors we saw last year—it’s usually around 1,500 a year that are assessed as high risk.
To some degree, we were thinking about domestic violence backward for a very long time: “What can the survivor do [to] keep themselves safe? Why do they stay?” But the devastating, honest truth is that domestic violence is, at its core, a power dynamic issue. It’s our responsibility as an organization to be able to give [high risk clients] a tailored and very different set of resources in order for them to get out safely.
What services does SAFE provide?
The number one thing we provide is information. Our advocates are trained on all sorts of systems and local legislation to help a survivor understand what the landscape is.
The other thing we offer is crisis services… It could be anything from an emergency stay in our apartment-style units within an hour of an incident, to a simple lock change or a ride to your sister’s house. Really anything that helps you be safe for the next 24 hours.
The next thing we offer is a more holistic, coordinated response. Once we get through the immediate urgency, the next question is, “who of our 42 partners can help you?”
We also think about the systems reform piece. We feel very strongly, and I feel personally very strongly, about the fact that our clients are telling us their experiences on the worst day of their life, most of the time. We have to honor that by being thoughtful about their needs, what they’re saying needs to change, and trying to advocate within the different systems of the city to make sure that their rights are being respected. That they’re actually being able to receive the services they’re entitled to without too much red tape.
Would you like to add anything?
I will say that we know more and have more resources and more amazing advocates than we give ourselves credit for. If we really did want to make a big dent, we have the resources to do it. It’s just a matter of political commitment to doing better by survivors. I think it’s possible.
Christine Lilyea
The Stage Maker
In the five years since Christine Lilyea bought Slash Run, the Petworth music venue meets burger joint, from Jackie Greenbaum, she hasn’t had much time to contemplate what she’s done for the local music—and burger—scene. Though there’s no shortage of music venues in D.C., few cater to rock ’n’ roll as much as Lilyea’s spots. She has two now, which is one of the reasons she hasn’t had much downtime: She opened her second venue, Brookland’s the Runaway, in March 2022. —Sarah Marloff
How did you come to own two music venues in D.C.?
I came here as a musician [in 1999]. I was signed to an indie label in New York City. Then I stopped playing music, got married, and became a stay-at-home mom. It was awesome. But then I was getting back into music [managing a new venue for a local restaurant group] when Greenbaum offered me a job to book at Slash Run. She came up to me one day and was like, “I don’t know how to run a music venue, and I don’t really want to, do you want to buy Slash Run?”
I was like, “I don’t have any money, but yes, I do.” I figured out a way and ended up buying Slash Run in 2018.
Damn, how did you come up with the money?
My father helped me purchase it. He was diagnosed with ALS and knew his time was limited and said, “This will probably be the last thing I will be able to do for you.” So he loaned me the money for Slash Run. I’m very grateful for that. He died months after—in 2018.
When did the Runaway come into the picture?
Then 2020 and the pandemic hit, but we just kept pushing. I told my staff, “If you don’t want to work, I understand—you’ll always have a job here.” They all stayed and we came out of it. Part of me always wanted to open another bar and the opportunity to have the Runaway, and its two floors, presented itself. There are no partners. It’s really just me and my employees—they’re my rock. I’m very lucky.
We got the lease in August, and I opened in March 2022.
What does running and owning two venues entail?
I’m just always putting out fires. That’s what it really is. What does it look like? Putting out fires all day long. Things break, and I gotta be there.
Both spots capture D.C.’s punk-rock roots, which aren’t always visible to the naked eye anymore.
I have to agree. That’s exactly what I was going for. The coolest place, to me, still and always will be the Black Cat. I admire them so much. But I wanted to own one. I wanted a rock ’n’ roll bar in the city. And then I wanted two.
What are your hopes for the venues in 2024?
You’re probably seeing how a lot of places are closing—it’s like one every week. So us surviving the pandemic, and then opening this really cool place—to be honest, it has not been easy. We’re kind of just trying to survive at this point. Prices of everything are going up. With the Runaway, we’re trying to make it mostly a bar now, less food, more of a music venue. That way we don’t have to disappoint people with raising prices. I’m just hoping that whatever changes we make, it helps us because it’s hard out there for everybody right now.
[But] we want to be around, we want to stay, and we want to keep putting on cool bands. A lot of bands don’t have this opportunity. With all these bigger venues around, we want to keep an affordable place for them to play.