Because sometimes it’s just about the no parking zone

Here is what is wrong with DC, not with Official Washington, mind you, but DC the city that surrounds the seat of the U.S. government: everything immediately comes down to race even when it’s not.

Like most cities, churches of various Christian flavors sit scattered throughout the city. For decades parishioners at said churches have been allowed to double and triple park, essentially reducing streets to a lane or a lane and a half for traffic passage and blocking residents’ in until services are over in the early afternoon. Now that the character of a lot of these neighborhoods is changing (read: developers have come in and put in overpriced condo buildings that are largely being populated by white buyers in traditionally black neighborhoods), the new residents are pitching a fit.

Naturally, of course, the church-goers are crying racial discrimination. From The Washington Post

The issue has become a contest fraught with racial and class issues, pitting the city’s 600 congregations against homeowners, many of them new to the city, who want the city’s parking laws enforced.

Every Sunday, large numbers of worshipers descend on neighborhoods around Logan Circle, as well as areas from Capitol Hill to Shaw, parking in front of hydrants or walkways or hemming in other cars by double-parking. Police acknowledge that for years they have basically overlooked the practice, particularly when there is no safety violation. But complaints from residents in Logan Circle have placed the issue high on the agenda of the city’s political leaders.

“We want to do something the gentrifiers don’t want us to do: Join together,” Lorraine C. Miller, president of the D.C. chapter of the NAACP, told the churchgoers who gathered around the statue of Civil War Gen. Thomas A. Logan. Members of different congregations cheered when their pastors took their turn at the microphone.

Miller said the parking issue is the “tip of the iceberg of discontent on how decisions are made.”

The Rev. Canon William Barnwell of Washington National Cathedral told the crowd that cracking down on Sunday parking violations would “kill or deeply wound many of our congregations.” And he said the city could turn into a “one-class, one-race, gated community that shuts people out rather than letting them in.”

Many of the speakers said places of worship have long helped their immediate communities through aid for the needy, day care and other services.

…

Logan Circle resident Todd Lovinger, who has been active in calling for greater enforcement of parking regulations, called the mayor’s moratorium announcement “a disgusting cop-out.” He said, “Out-of-town parishioners are getting greater rights than D.C. taxpayers.”

Now…let’s reason this out for a hot second.

• Churches pay no property tax in the District of Columbia, which means the city gets no income from the land on which they sit.
• Condo owners pay property tax on their apartments.
• Fully 75% of the cars you find taking advantage of this parking leniency have non-DC tags on them (which means these folks pay no fees to the government for DMV related matters, no income tax, and no property tax to the city)
• The people complaining are DC residents.

Granted, churches have done good works in their neighborhoods over the decades, and that should count for something, but as neighborhoods change and needs change, how are churches going to contribute to the changing neighborhoods? My guess is that they aren’t. Which means these heart-full church going folk expect privilege while contributing in the most minimal way possible.

And this is about race how?

Of course, the thing that always floors me about discussions of this type, especially when they involve some sort of enforcement by the DC government is that there are exactly three high-ranking DC government officials who are not African-American. So who, exactly, is doing the discriminating?

Read the complete article at Washingtonpost.com