ABCDE METRO sunday, september 12, 2010
POSTLOCAL.com 65, 9 a.m. 68, noon 71, 5 p.m. 66, 9 p.m.
Obituaries Madeleine Rizik Cury, 89, worked in her father’s boutique, Rizik’s, which still caters to Washington’s elite. C7
Redskins fans unite Share your advice on making the most of nighttime Redskins games with other fans and get advice on how to get to FedEx. Go to
PostLocal.com.
Continuing Height’s legacy POLITICS
Last-minute campaigning Candidates sharpen their messages in the final days of voting in the D.C. mayoral primary, and Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. faces a wild-card opponent in the Maryland gubernatorial primary. C5
JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON
‘Houseboat’ deluge Column prompts readers to share their memories of the filming of the 1958 Cary Grant-Sophia Loren movie. C3
Montgomery County council spending
comes back to haunt RIVALS SEIZE OPPORTUNITY
But appetite for social services large
by Michael Laris A history of go-go spending by in-
media. The group was determined to go on with the event, said spokeswoman Flo McAfee, quoting Height: “Families continue, regardless.” Tributes to Height were present in ways small and large. Many women dressed in purple, Height’s favorite color, for a prayer breakfast at which Al Sharpton spoke. Former Labor secretary Alexis Herman was on hand to sign copies of “Living for a Purpose,” the newly released book Height was working on when she died. Herman wrote the introduction. It focuses on the importance of community service.
S
Obama-friendly merchandise once sold briskly at area souvenir shops. But with his popularity down, customers go for ‘Don’t Tread on Me.’
Not buying him, or his T-shirts
by Rick Rojas
Not that long ago, President Obama was more than a president wading through two wars and a bad economy. He was Superman, clutching a basketball in mid-air and about to slam-dunk, on a sparkly T-shirt available in Union Station for $14.99. Amedallion of his face was airbrushed
onto T-shirts, swinging on a gold chain next to another medallion with the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. His family por-
trait was emblazoned on not-quite-micro- wave-safe dinner plates, and his essence was somehow captured for a cologne. (Of course, the same was done with Michelle Obama for women.) He was everywhere. In the worst of the recession, Obama was creating jobs and spurring consumer activity — and all it required were vendors and Web sites hawking stuff that could somehow be tangential to him and his moment in his- tory.
obama continued on C12 TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
aturday was a bittersweet day for the National Council of Negro Women, which held its 25th annual Black Family Reunion Celebration on the Mall. It was the first without the event’s founder, Dorothy Height, who died in April. Height started the reunion to counter negative images of black families in the
cumbents on the Montgomery County council has given a fat target to oppo- nents in the Sept. 14 primary. Over their terms in office, they’ve boosted spending — and repeatedly hiked taxes to keep up. Sensing opportunity, Democratic chal- lengers have embraced the rhetoric of fis- cal prudence the way old-timey Holly- wood politicians might embrace an ador- able baby. Warning that “the piggy bank is emp-
ty,” challenger Becky Wagner slammed the county’s “unchecked spending and piecemeal approach of tax increases.” Economist Jane de Winter accused coun- cil members of being “disconnected” from looming crashes in the housing and stock market and blamed fiscal troubles on decisions that “were not forward- looking.” Ilaya Hopkins gave incumbent Roger Berliner an “F” on her report card for “fiscal responsibility.” But Montgomery’s years of generous
government spending have often gone toward feeding a voracious appetite among the community at large — and, at times, the challengers themselves. Some have repeatedly come calling to the council for money to underwrite a series of causes, from anti-poverty programs to the schools, complicating their cam- paign critiques. “We are tapping every resource and
race continued on C4 Money matters
Spending heats up as 13 Democratic candidates vie for three spots on the ticket to represent Bethesda and Chevy Chase in Maryland’s General Assembly. C4
Silver Spring sign bandit gives mixed signals
by Annys Shin A couple of months ago, Kathy Jentz
awoke to find that someone had up- rooted signs supporting three political candidates from the corner of her yard in Silver Spring. Two signs were missing, and the third had been left in the street. Since Jentz lives at the busy intersection of Fenton Street and Philadelphia Av- enue, near Montgomery College, she chalked it up to a clumsy biker or a way- ward drunk. She replaced the signs. “I realize now, those were the warning
shots,” Jentz said. The warning shots of the Silver Spring sign vigilante. A few weeks later, Jentz came home to
find one of her new signs torn and tossed into the bushes. She replaced it the next day.
Some weeks after that, in early August, her signs were ripped out again, only this time, the perpetrator also left a copy of the county’s sign regulations. Unbeknown to Jentz, during the same period, a pattern of unsolicited sign weeding and anonymous missives was repeated at least a dozen other addresses around East Silver Spring and North Ta- koma Park, with many homes hit more than once. Neighbors began trading stories and comparing notes. A call to the county permitting office made clear that the missives and sign-pulling were not the work of any government official. The number of incidents pointed to only one conclusion: A political sign bandit was on the loose.
On the list of public safety priorities, yanking yard signs ranks lower than the car break-ins and burglaries that pepper the neighborhood crime blotter. And with primary elections coming Tuesday, some amount of stealing or defacing of campaign signs is normal. But the vigi-
signs continued on C4 C DC MD VA S
“It’s a beautiful place. . . . It will tie people around here together.” — Michael Stevens, executive director of the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District
ROBERT McCARTNEY
Win one — no, win many for the D.C. area!
t’s so difficult uniting the Washington region. The suburbs don’t get along with the city (or one another). Blacks and whites are at odds over the mayoral election in the District. Longtime residents hate newcomers when they stand mindlessly on the left side of Metro escalators and block those wishing to walk.
I Only one cause can bring us all
together. Only one institution can set hearts racing from Leesburg to Upper Marlboro, from Gaithersburg to Woodbridge. You know where I’m going with this. The Redskins.
Oh, how we need them to excel this
year. Oh, how expectations have risen. New coach (overdue). New general
manager (way overdue). New quarterback (too bad he’s injury-prone). The letdown is going to be something ugly if the team doesn’t improve dramatically from last year’s humiliating 4-12 season. They don’t need to make the playoffs, although that’d be nice. But they need to be respectable and offer promise for the future. For the uninitiated (i.e., clueless), the Redskins’ season begins Sunday evening
mccartney continued on C3 JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Pedestrians walk over a bridge that makes up the centerpiece of the 5.5-acre Yards Park during the grand opening this weekend. The park is located between the Navy Yard and Nationals Park along the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington.
Riverfront park finally taking shape
Boardwalk leads the way, with skating rink and apartment complex to follow
by Derek Kravitz
After years of recession-related mis- steps and false starts, the first public spaces along the Capitol Riverfront near Nationals Park are slowly taking shape, as developers and the District move cau- tiously to fill the Southeast waterfront’s long-vacant lots.
The city-owned Yards Park, a six-acre boardwalk stretching to the Anacostia River, is celebrating its grand opening this weekend. Designed to accommodate as many as 6,000 people for festivals and public events, the park features a curving bridge over the Anacostia, a 60-foot light tower, a waterfall, a dog run and a quar- ter-mile-long walkway leading up to the Navy Yard. “It’s a beautiful place, one we hope can become a gathering spot for work pic- nics, music festivals, weddings,” said Mi- chael Stevens, executive director of the nonprofit Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District, as he walked near
a set of contoured benches overlooking the water. “It will tie people around here together.” Canal Park, a flashy three-block public space with a waterfall and ice skating rink at Second and M streets SE, broke ground late last month and is expected to be completed next year. And two years after suspending work on a $60 million, 170-unit apartment complex a few blocks east of the ballpark, the developer, Forest City Washington, is restarting construction this month on the Foundry Lofts.
riverfront continued on C7
RONALD W. WALTERS, 72
Scholar led early sit-in at lunch counter
by Matt Schudel Ronald W. Walters, one of the coun-
try’s leading scholars of the politics of race, who was a longtime professor at Howard University and the University of Maryland, died Friday of cancer at Sub- urban Hospital in Bethesda. He was 72. Dr. Walters was both an academic and an activist, ce- menting his creden- tials with his early in- volvement in the civil rights movement. In 1958, in his home town of Wichita, he led what many histo- rians consider the na-
Walters was born in Kansas.
tion’s first lunch-counter sit-in protest. Later, he became a close adviser to Jesse L. Jackson as one of the principal archi- tects of Jackson’s two failed presidential campaigns.
“Ron was one of the legendary forces in the civil rights movement of the last 50 years,” Jackson said Saturday. Dr. Walters also helped develop the in-
tellectual framework of the Congres- sional Black Caucus in the 1970s. Some of his political ideas, such as compre- hensive health care and a proposed two- state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, were viewed as radical. A quar- ter-century later, they are part of the in- tellectual mainstream.
walters continued on C8
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