Board of Directors

Steve Shaff

Stephen Shaff is a community and political organizer, social entrepreneur, and the founder of Community-Vision Partners (C-VP), a community and social solutions Benefit LLC whose mission is to initiate, facilitate and agitate for the Common Good. A significant project of C-VP has been the establishment and development of the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Council (CSBC), a business-led educational and advocacy organization whose mission is to promote and expand sustainable business viability, awareness, and impact within the Chesapeake region (MD, DC and VA). Shaff’s background represents an unusually broad but interrelated series of accomplishments along with a multi-sector network of relationships and contacts. His areas of expertise include inner-city Washington, DC Affordable Housing & Real Estate Development; Community Development and Activism; Green & New Economy Advocacy; Civic & Political Advocacy Leadership and other national movement initiatives.

Steve Shaff

Secretary - People Demanding Action
Executive Director Community Vision Partners
Maryland

Executive Director

Alex Lawson is the executive director of Social Security Works, the convening member of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition— a coalition made up of over 300 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans. Lawson was the first employee of Social Security Works, when he served as the communications director, and has built the organization alongside the founding co-directors into a recognized leader on social insurance. Mr. Lawson is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Mr. Lawson is also the co-owner of We Act Radio an AM radio station and media production company whose studio is located in the historic Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, DC. We Act Radio is a mission driven business that is dedicated to raising up the stories and voices of those historically excluded from the media. We Act Radio is also an innovator in the use of online and social media as well as video livestreaming to cover breaking news and events. Most recently, producing video livestreaming from Ferguson, MO as the #FergusonLive project sponsored by Color of Change.

Alex Lawson

Treasurer - People Demanding Action
Social Security Works
Washington, DC

Rev. Rodney Sadler

Dr. Sadler's work in the community includes terms as a board member of the N.C. Council of Churches, Siegel Avenue Partners, and Mecklenburg Ministries, and currently he serves on the boards of Union Presbyterian Seminary, Loaves and Fishes, the Hispanic Summer Program, and the Charlotte Chapter of the NAACP. His activism includes work with the Community for Creative Non-Violence in D.C., Durham C.A.N., H.E.L.P. Charlotte, and he has worked organizing clergy with and developing theological resources for the Forward Together/Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina. Rev. Sadler is the managing editor of the African American Devotional Bible, associate editor of the Africana Bible, and the author of Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible. He has published articles in Interpretation, Ex Audito, Christian Century, the Criswell Theological Review, and the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and has essays and entries in True to Our Native Land, the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, the Westminster Dictionary of Church History, Light against Darkness, and several other publications. Among his research interests are the intersection of race and Scripture, the impact of our images of Jesus for the perpetuation of racial thought in America, the development of African American biblical interpretation in slave narratives, the enactment of justice in society based on biblical imperatives, and the intersection of religion and politics.

Rev. Rodney Sadler

Co - Chair - People Demanding Action
North Carolina Forward Together/Moral Monday Movem
Radio Host: Politics of Faith - Wednesday @ 11 am

Executive Director and Executive Producer PDA Radio

Andrea Miller is the Executive Director of People Demanding Action, a multi-issue advocacy group. Andrea is both an organizer as well as a digital advocacy expert. She has appeared on the Thom Hartmann show, hosts the Progressive Round Table and is Executive Producer or PDAction Radio. As an IT professional she is also responsible for PDAction's digital strategy and customizes advocacy tools for small to medium size organizations through the Progressive Support Project. She is the former Co-Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, was the Democratic Nominee in 2008 for House of Representatives in the Virginia 4th District. Running on a Medicare for All and clean energy platform, Andrea was endorsed by PDA, California Nurses and The Sierra Club. Prior to running for office, Andrea was a part of Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s presidential campaign, first as Statewide Coordinator for Virginia and subsequently as Regional Coordinator. From 2006 until leading the VA Kucinich camppaign Andrea was MoveOn.org’s Regional Coordinator for Central, Southwest and Hampton Roads areas of Virginia and West Virginia.

Andrea Miller

Board Member and Executive Director
Spotsylvania, VA

President and Executive Director

Since September 2013, Dr. Gabriela D. Lemus has served as the President of Progressive Congress. Dr. Lemus served as Senior Advisor to Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and was Director of the Office of Public Engagement from July 2009 until August 2013. Prior to her appointment, she was the first woman to hold the position of Executive Director at the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) from 2007-2009, and the first woman to chair the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA) from 2008-2009. During her tenure at LCLAA, she helped co-found the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change (NLCCC) and was a Commissioner for the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change (CEAAC). She served 3-year terms on the advisory boards of both the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) from 2005-2008 and the United States Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP) from 2006-2009. In January 2013, she was confirmed by the DC Council to sit on the Board of Trustees of the University of the District of Columbia. From 2000-2007, she served as Director of Policy and Legislation at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) where she launched the LULAC Democracy Initiative - a national Hispanic civic participation campaign and founded Latinos for a Secure Retirement - a national campaign to preserve the Social Security safety net. Dr. Lemus was adjunct professor of international relations and border policy at the University of Memphis, San Diego State University, and the University of San Diego; as well as a Guest Scholar at the University of California, San Diego – Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies. Dr. Lemus has appeared in both English and Spanish language media outlets, including CNN, CNN en Español, C-SPAN, MSNBC, NBC's Hardball, Fox's Neil Cavuto, Univision and NBC-Telemundo among others. She received her doctorate in International Relations from the University of Miami in 1998.

Dr. Gabriela D. Lemus

Co - Chair - People Demanding Action
President and Executive Director
Progressive Congress

Team Leader and Climate Action Radio Host

Russell Greene has been focused on the climate crisis since 1988. He leads the Progressive Democrats of America Stop Global Warming and Environmental Issue Organizing Team, is Advisory Board Chair for iMatter, Kids vs. Global Warming, vice-chair legislation for the California Democratic Party Environmental Caucus and has been an executive in the restaurant industry for over 30 years, with a current focus on the impact of sustainability in business.

Russell Greene

President, People Demanding Action

President & CEO

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, is a minister, community activist and one of the most influential people in Hip Hop political life. He works tirelessly to encourage the Hip Hop generation to utilize its political and social voice.

 A national leader and pacemaker within the green movement, Rev Yearwood has been successfully bridging the gap between communities of color and environmental issue advocacy for the past decade. With a diverse set of celebrity allies, Rev Yearwood raises awareness and action in communities that are often overlooked by traditional environmental campaigns. Rev Yearwood’s innovative climate and clean energy work has garnered the Hip Hop Caucus support from several environmental leaders including former Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, National Wildlife Federation, Earthjustice, Sierra Club and Bill McKibben’s 350.org. Rolling Stone deemed Rev Yearwood one of our country’s “New Green Heroes” and Huffington Post named him one of the top ten change makers in the green movement. He was also named one of the 100 most powerful African Americans by Ebony Magazine in 2010, and was also named to the Source Magazine’s Power 30, Utne Magazine’s 50 Visionaries changing the world, and the Root 100 Young Achievers and Pacesetters. Rev Yearwood is a national leader in engaging young people in electoral activism. He leads the national Respect My Vote! campaign and coalition (www.respectmyvote.com). In the 2012 Elections, numerous celebrity partners have joined the campaign to reach their fan bases, including Respect My Vote! spokesperson 2 Chainz. The Hip Hop Caucus registered and mobilized tens of thousands of young voters to the polls in 2012. In 2008, the Hip Hop Caucus set a world record of registering the most voters in one day: 32,000 people across 16 U.S. cities. This effort was part of the Hip Hop Caucus’ 2008 “Respect My Vote!” campaign with celebrity spokespeople T.I., Keyshia Cole and many other recording artists, athletes, and entertainers. Rev Yearwood entered the world of Hip Hop Politics when he served as the Political and Grassroots Director of Russell Simmons’ Hip Hop Summit Action Network in 2003 and 2004. In 2004 he also was a key architect and implementer of three other voter turnout operations – P. Diddy’s Citizen Change organization which created the “Vote Or Die!” campaign; Jay Z’s “Voice Your Choice” campaign; and, “Hip Hop Voices”, a project at the AFL-CIO. It was in 2004 that he founded the Hip Hop Caucus to bring the power of the Hip Hop Community to Washington, DC. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Rev Yearwood established the award winning Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign where he led a coalition of national and grassroots organizations to advocate for the rights of Katrina survivors. The coalition successfully stopped early rounds of illegal evictions of Katrina survivors from temporary housing, held accountable police and government entities to the injustices committed during the emergency response efforts, supported the United Nations “right to return” policies for internally displaced persons, promoted comprehensive federal recovery legislation, and campaigned against increased violence resulting from lack of schools and jobs in the years after Katrina. Rev Yearwood is a retired U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer. In the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq he began speaking out against such an invasion. He has since remained a vocal activist in opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007 he organized a national pro-peace tour, “Make Hip Hop Not War”, which engaged urban communities in discussions and rallies about our country’s wars abroad and parallels to the structural and physical violence poor urban communities endure here at home. Rev Yearwood is a proud graduate of Howard University School of Divinity and the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), both Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He served as student body president at both institutions. As a student at UDC, he organized massive student protests and sit-ins, shutting down the school for ten days straight, and achieved victory against budget cutbacks. After graduating from UDC he served as the Director of Student Life at a time when the city was attempting to relocate the school, under his leadership the city was forced to rescind its effort to marginalize and move the campus. Rev Yearwood went on to teach at the Center for Social Justice at Georgetown University, before entering the world of Hip Hop politics with Russell Simmons and civil rights activist, Dr. Benjamin Chavis. He has been featured in such media outlets as CNN, MSNBC, BET, Huffington Post, Newsweek, The Nation, MTV, AllHipHop.com, The Source Magazine, Ebony and Jet, Al Jazeera, BBC, C-Span, and Hardball with Chris Mathews and featured in the Washington Post, The New York Times and VIBE magazine. He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. The first in his family to be born in the United States, his parents, aunts, and uncles, are from Trinidad and Tobago. Rev Yearwood currently lives in Washington, DC with his two sons, who are his biggest inspiration to making this world a better place.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood

Board Member
President and CEO
Hip Hop Caucus

Board Member

Marc Carr’s passion for social justice and entrepreneurship has led him to work on civil rights campaigns in the Deep South and organize community forums in the U.S. and West Africa. His professional experience includes heading the sales division of a major international corporation in West Africa, consulting for the United Nations Foundation, and working as a Social Media Analyst for McKinsey & Co. Marc is the Founder of Social Solutions, an organization devoted to crowd-sourcing tech solutions to solve intractable social problems. Social Solutions produces a monthly event series, the Capitol Innovation Forum, and the yearly Social Innovation Festival, along with a podcast series, the Capitol Justice Podcast. Social Solutions also spearheads the Capitol Justice Lab, an initiative to reduce the incarceration rate in the nation’s capital by half in five years. Marc is expecting his Master’s Degree in Social Enterprise in 2016 from the American University School of International Service.

Marc Carr

Board Member
Social Solutions
Washington, DC

Board Member

Lise received her Doctorate in Medicine in 1982 from the University of Paris. After interning at hospitals in Paris and Lome, Togo, she completed her residency in psychiatry at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Board certified in both general and forensic psychiatry, Lise worked as a staff psychiatrist in public mental health centers in Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia. For more than twenty years Lise has maintained a private practice in psychiatry. An Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University and an active member of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, she has worked to educate the public on mental health issues through writing in professional journals, the press and other media outlets. A frequent guest on local and national radio and television, Lise has addressed a range of issues on violence, trauma, and mental illness. Through Physicians for Human Rights, she conducts evaluations of victims of torture seeking asylum in this country and advocates on their behalf. She has served as a consultant to the CIA where she developed psychological assessments of world leaders. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti Lise provided mental health services to those traumatized by the events. In 2005, concerned about the direction the country was taking -- and believing that a background in science and human behavior would strengthen the political process -- she ran for the U.S. Senate seat in Maryland. In September, 2006, she was chosen as one of the first fifty persons to be trained in Nashville by Al Gore to educate the public about global warming. Lise is an expert on climate change and public health, with a particular interest in the psychological impacts of climate change. She frequently writes and speaks about these issues. In collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation and with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation she organized a conference held in March 2009 on the mental health and psychological impacts of climate change. Lise is on the board of The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard School of Public Health, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and the International Transformational Resilience Coalition.

Dr. Lise Van Susteren

Board Member
Moral Action on Climate
Maryland
Saturday, 10 October 2015 00:00

Museum Square And The Fight For Affordable Housing In D.C.: An Explainer

Written by Martin Austenmuhle | WAMU

Affordable housing has been tougher and tougher to come by in D.C. in recent years, and city officials have been taking steps to preserve and create new housing options for low-income residents. But even as those efforts are taking place, many housing advocates admit that they may be coming too late.

Nowhere is that more obvious than Museum Square, a large building in the Mt. Vernon Square neighborhood occupied primarily by Chinese residents. Since last year, they have been fighting the owner of the building over a proposed sale that could leave the residents with nowhere else to live. The owners have offered to sell the building to the tenants, but the tenants claim the price tag is so high that it violates the law that grants them the first option to buy a property being put on the market.

That fight reaches a milestone this week, as a federal contract that helped keep the building affordable expires. Museum Square residents and their advocates will be rallying outside the building this afternoon, pledging to remain in place until legal issues around the sale are clarified.

What are those legal issues? And what have D.C. officials done do help the residents remain? Read on for everything you need to know about Museum Square.

What's Museum Square?

Museum Square is a 302-unit apartment building located at 401 K St. NW, in Mt. Vernon Triangle.

For the past 30 years, all the units have been occupied by low-income tenants who receive rent subsidies through the federal Section 8 program. Under the program, the residents — the overwhelming majority of which are Chinese — pay 30 percent of their income towards rent, and the federal government picks up the rest.

As of this year, monthly rent for most tenants came in under $300, with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development kicking in roughly $1,100. That's far below the median price for a one-bedroom in the neighborhood: $2,350.

What's happening there?

Residents of Museum Square rallying in June. (WAMU/Patrick Madden)

In late 2013, the owner of the building — Parcel One Phase One Associates, a part of Bush Companies of Williamsburg, Virginia — announced that it would not be renewing its Section 8 contract after it expired on Oct. 1, 2014. (This was later extended to Oct. 1, 2015.) It told residents that it intended to demolish the building and replace it with over 800 market-rate apartments and condos, as well as commercial space.

As D.C. law requires, it offered to sell the building to the tenants, but for $250 million — over $800,000 per unit — with a five percent down payment. The residents have said they can't pay that, and risk being evicted.

As The Washington Post has reported, that would represent a significant change for the area — there aren't many Chinese residents left in or around Chinatown, and if Museum Square were demolished there would be even fewer. The building also houses many black residents.

What's the law say?

Under a D.C. law known as the Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), the tenants of any property have the right of first refusal, meaning they can offer to purchase the property by matching a price offered by another buyer. (More on the law here.) If there isn't another buyer — as is the case with Museum Square, since it'll be demolished — the law says they can buy the property "at a price and terms which represent a bona fide offer of sale.”

Of course, as with most legal issues, it comes down to interpretation — what does a "bona fide offer" actually mean?

In a lawsuit filed in January 2015, the tenants said the offer did not comply with the law. Specifically, they argued that the $250 million price tag did not “reflect a rational, fair, and objective value of the Property.” They cited an appraiser who set the market rate of the building — under its current use — at $68 million.

Bush Companies defends the sales price, saying it reflects what the building could be worth if redeveloped. In its response to the lawsuit, it pointed to a similar case in which the Phillips Collection — an art museum in Dupont Circle — purchased an adjoining building for $1.4 million and then offered to sell it to its tenants for $7.8 million two years later.

But in April 2015, a D.C. judge agreed with the tenants. In his ruling, Judge Stuart G. Nash wrote that "it is beyond dispute that the methodology adopted by the defendant was neither designed to, nor did, achieve a reasonable estimate of the property’s current market value." The judge also ordered the company to send letters to all residents rescinding a prior eviction notice.

What have D.C. officials done?

Soon after news broke of the $250 million sales price, D.C. officials jumped into action. Both former D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At Large) and Mayor Vincent Gray introduced separate measures tweaking TOPA so that any sale of this sort would have to be pegged to an independent appraisal of the property.

This year, the Council passed an amended version of Catania's bill. Introduced by Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), the measure allows tenants seeking to purchase a property that would otherwise be demolished or converted to non-residential use to request that an independent appraisal be conducted to determine the market price of the property.

In short, the bill would resolve the debate over what "bona fide" means by letting an appraiser chosen by both parties settle the matter. But it might not prevent Bush Companies from pushing forward on the $250 million sales price.

That's because the law allows the seller to set a price based on what they can do with the property "by right." That means that if Bush Companies can show that a new building can be built at Museum Square without any changes to existing zoning rules for the site, it can set the price based on what may eventually end up there.

So what's happening to the residents?

The Section 8 contract expires tonight at midnight, and Museum Square residents are worried that their rents could skyrocket, forcing them to move.

A June 29 letter from Bush Companies said as much: "Once the contract expires, HUD will no longer approve the monthly rent amount charged and the rent may change from time to time based on market conditions." According to the letter, residents were told to expect their rent to jump from the $300 they've paid to almost $1,500 per month.

But affordable housing advocates say that the letter was a misleading ploy to drive residents from the building. Though the letter did say that residents could be eligible for individual housing vouchers, advocates say that the building's management has been refusing to process them. The advocates also say that the management has stopped residents from organizing.

Residents and advocates plan on rallying outside Museum Square today at 4:30 p.m., where they will declare that they have no intent to move.

What's next?

Housing advocates say that evictions are not a risk yet, but some privately worry that some residents may willingly vacate their apartments over fear or misunderstanding of what their rights are and whether they can afford to continue living in the building. If that happens, they may not have many options in D.C.

"[The residents] had a meeting last week with the Housing Authority, and some of the residents expressed the concern that the units they are locating are over what their voucher calls for. It's not even just close, even far away they're not able to find affordable housing," said Rachel Johnson of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants, speaking on WAMU 88.5's The Kojo Nnamdi Show.

As that portion of the fight continues, another portion remains in the courts.

Bush Companies appealed the April decision against them last month, saying that an independent appraisal requested by the tenants had actually found that the building — if demolished and rebuilt as 800 new units with commercial space — would be worth $253 million. That, it says, proves that it had made a "bona fide" offer to the residents. It also argues that TOPA does not require that the offer be based on the assumption that the property will remain residential.

"The price of $250,000,000 was not an arbitrary number, but rather was a price derived from detailed and extensive calculations made by a company whose general partner has decades of real estate development experience in the metropolitan area," wrote the company's lawyers.

"The analysis of the development value of Museum Square came after 10 years of studying the housing market... and was based on taking into account the more financially beneficial use that could be made of the property," they added.

Until that appeal is heard and a ruling issued, the attempted sale of the building has been put on hold.

Link to original article from WAMU

Read 34100 times Last modified on Saturday, 10 October 2015 11:23

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