About
Historical Foundation of the W8CED
The history of Washington’s “East of the River” (EOTR) communities, largely Ward 7 and Ward 8, exemplifies the social cost of racial separation and inequality. The predominantly Black wards that define EOTR culture are largely separated from the capital’s economic opportunity and political clout.
Ward 8 has flourished over time. Its historic Anacostia neighborhood was one of Washington’s first suburbs. Landmarks like Cedar Hill, home of Frederick Douglass, and the community of Barry Farm attest to an earlier grandeur, while the Congress Heights neighborhood supports its largest commercial area, spread along Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X avenues. Ward 8’s streets and homes have given the world iconic music, a wealth of Black artists, activists and entrepreneurs who continue to represent and reinvent the community. This cultural legacy is curated by its own branch of the Smithsonian ─ the Anacostia Community Museum.
Yet the centuries of isolation and disinvestment have left Ward 8 with poverty, high unemployment, poorly resourced schools, a lack of access to quality healthcare and even a dearth of grocery stores. Too many of its residents ─ especially the elderly ─ are dependent on government programs, while Ward 8 youth struggle to close the opportunity gap with their mostly white counterparts across the river. And, like other intentionally marginalized communities, Ward 8 struggles with gentrification that enriches the already affluent and displaces lower-income residents from their long-established homes and neighborhoods.
Separate Worlds, Immense Challenges
Yet these achievements are too often overshadowed by the failures of a local economy mired in poverty, high unemployment, poorly resourced schools, a lack of access to quality healthcare and even a dearth of grocery stores. Too many of its residents ─ especially the elderly ─ are dependent on government programs for sustenance, while Ward 8 youth struggle to close the opportunity gap with their mostly white counterparts across the river. And, like other intentionally marginalized communities, Ward 8 is not immune to the creeping gentrification that enriches the already affluent and displaces lower-income residents from their long-established homes and neighborhoods. Even the positive economic impact of outside corporate development tends to employ nonresident professionals more so than create career paths and pipelines for local workers whose success can empower and enrich their own community.
From St. Elizabeth’s to Now
In recent years, the most glaring example of promise followed by disappointment was the 2008 master plan to consolidate the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the former St. Elizabeth’s Hospital campus on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
Touted as the largest federal property development since the construction of the Pentagon, the plan was to relocate some 14,000 positions from the most senior staff offices within the DHS constituent agencies to one campus, providing a significant economic boost to Ward 8. However, more than a decade later, only about one-tenth of the intended 14,000 positions have transferred.
Historically, planning for Ward 8 has been driven by outside experts focused on the community’s problems, not its strengths, and done in silos that ignored the critical connections between issues like health, jobs, transportation, education and housing. W8CED is turning that failed model on its head to develop a plan that is resident-driven and comprehensive. It will leverage the community’s assets to build community wealth, improve quality of life and make Ward 8 an engine of economic growth in D.C. ─ and a model for communities nationwide that have been historically and systemically marginalized.
Voice of the Residents
Past economic development efforts, driven by outside “experts” have failed to mitigate the threats facing Ward 8 families and businesses. The most recent of these failures was the 2008 plan to consolidate the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the former St. Elizabeth’s Hospital campus on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
W8CED’s bottom-up, community-driven approach was born of a conviction that it’s well past time to abandon this failed model. It’s time to trust Ward 8 residents, who have more at stake than anyone, to set priorities and enact an economic future of opportunity and growth
Bridging Silos: Roots of the W8CED Planning Process
In 2017, when W8CED founder and facilitator Mustafa Abdul-Salaam was organizing seniors to get involved in community development efforts, a crisis struck the EOTR health care system: the city’s sole remaining public hospital closed its maternity ward, leaving D.C. without a hospital birthing center east of the Capitol. This came just before the D.C. Health Department released its 2018 Health Equity Report, which documented a 20+-year difference in life expectancy between the neighborhood surrounding St. Elizabeth’s and the city’s neighborhoods on the northwest side. The Ward 8 Senior CED committee played a critical role in advocating for a planning process aimed at addressing health and other issues of concern to community residents.
In response, a collaboration was launched in December 2018 by the W8 Senior CED committee, DC PACT (Positive Accountable Community Transformation), United Planning Organization, Martha’s Table and the D.C. Office of Health Equity that would strive to enhance the well-being of community members, bypass silos and bridge gaps. Throughout 2019 and 2020, meetings were held at various community locations to build interest in this model, led by an initial nine-member steering committee formed in November 2019; this committee subsequently grew to 18 members by June 2020. Not soon after, the group obtained support from the Bainum Family Foundation to begin resourcing a process that would realize this vision.
Getting the W8CED plan off the ground in 2021 required a grass-roots effort to engage the EOTR communities whose needs and voices would drive the plan over the long term. Ultimately, consensus information was sharpened to focus on key areas of community need, the expertise and data of W8CED partners, and the voices of ward residents. Those six areas, each represented by a W8CED subcommittee, are:
- Economic Justice
- Education, Workforce Development And Employment
- Family Support
- Health And Safety
- Housing Justice
- Sustainable Development
Ward 8 Digital Collective
A New Model for Community Transformation
One of the most important pillars of the Ward 8 Community Economic Development planning process is that it has been resident-led from day one, by design. The results of months of community-driven visioning, outreach, engagement with neighbors across Ward 8, and data collection to review and organize into core priorities and principles, have been conducted at the grassroots level. This approach has credibility within our communities because it reflects the lived experience of Ward 8 residents, local businesses, service providers and local institutions.
One priority identified during our resident engagement activities was the need for a comprehensive communication network – one that connects residents to each other and critical information in the community. Residents wanted this network to prevent the duplication and fragmentation across service delivery and communication that exists now.
With the plan’s completion, Ward 8 residents have turned their attention to the development of a nonprofit “digital collective” aimed at maintaining the resident engagement begun through the planning process. In essence, this cooperative is an innovative bottom-up, community-driven approach designed to support Ward 8 residents in building the community they deserve and pushing leaders for change.
More of an art than a science, the Ward 8 Digital Cooperative is structured around relationship building. Already-established connections among residents, community leaders and local government officials, local business owners and services providers will be expanded to empower those whose voices previously weren’t heard and to open the minds of those who thought they knew the solutions.
This will serve as a digital ecosystem and networked community infrastructure, representing pioneering innovation where technology supports a movement where the government, residents, service providers, corporations, non-profits, businesses, institutions and development agencies can co-exist and co-create transformative ways for the community to function as a whole.
Synergistic Energy
There’s a sense of excitement and hope filling the air in Ward 8, built from the aspirations of those who settled this area generations ago, passed on from forebearers who struggled to maintain community through countless struggles, to the residents and organizations today sacrificing and partnering to make lasting change.
The foundation is strong. It’s time to build and thrive period.