On September 19th, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced it had reached a tentative agreement on terms for a new contract with telecommunications giant Verizon Communications. This agreement, if it becomes official, would preserve job security and retirement security for 34,000 workers. Some 11,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are covered under similar agreements.

At the same time, CWA announced a tentative agreement between Verizon Wireless and 70 technicians who maintain New York City cell sites. Throughout contract negotiations, DC Jobs with Justice, its coalition members, and community volunteers kept close watch and kept pressure on Verizon to make this deal.

Last year, DC Jobs with Justice and its allies picketed and leafleted alongside CWA local groups 2108 and 2336.  Together, we ended the year singing Christmas carols in front of Verizon Wireless stores.  DC Jobs with Justice even teamed up with the Puppet Underground organization, enacting dynamic street theater action in front of one of the Verizon Wireless stores.

At the beginning of this year, ONE DC joined with our allies to send delegations to wireless stores to deliver community support letters. We soon learned that the Verizon board member Clarence Otis was board member of a Darden restaurant. With this knowledge, we joined with Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) and coalition partners to deliver community support letters and actions in front of

Darden restaurants.

The 2011-2012 Avodah fellows for DC joined us in a creative action, using puppets in front of Verizon board member Rodney Slater's office at Patton Boggs. We even got a glimpse of Mr. Slater when he was leaving the office. Our allies from the community organization Positive Force gave us the opportunity to have a table at a fundraising concert giving out information about the Verizon contract fight.

This was a tough and long battle for DC Jobs with Justice, but our coalition partners, community allies, and friends in the struggle continually encouraged and supported them and ONE DC.  Thanks again for all of your support.

Local transgender rights group DC Trans Coalition (DCTC) is now working with ONE DC to ensure that the forthcoming Marriott Marquis Hotel (located next to the DC Convention Center) will fulfill its promise to employ approximately 500 DC residents. Members of both DCTC and ONE DC contributed questions for Marriott International's Director of Talent Acquisition. Answers to these questions would help ONE DC, DCTC, and other groups discern the best ways to get traditionally underemployed DC residents into hotel jobs with living wages, benefits, protections, and transferrable skills.

"The transgender community, as elsewhere in DC, has terrifyingly high rates of unemployment," notes Andy Bowen, a member of DCTC. "By working with ONE DC and Marriott at the start of employment recruitment, we aim to get highly skilled if underemployed transgender residents into well-paying jobs. If Marriott hires trans residents, it will empower a hard-working population and bring greater justice to the District, which is one of the best two-for-one deals possible."

For the past several months, ONE DC and its members have been shaping the Right to Live and Work in DC campaign. According to the New Convention Center Hotel Omnibus Financing and Development Act of 2006, DC residents who successfully complete the hotel training program will be given first consideration for positions at the Marriott Marquis hotel slated for construction at the former Convention Center site. Per the legislation, ONE DC also has a seaton the Headquarters Hotel Committee alongside John Boardman, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 25 and Fred Kramer of Marriott. ONE DC is specifically tasked with identifying potential recruits for Marriott's job training and placement programs in close coordination with other Committee members.

ONE DC is proud to facilitate placement of DC residents into jobs, but this is also an opportunity to raise consciousness in the community about work as a human rights concern. The legislation specifies that DC residents will be given first consideration for jobs in the new Marriott; more so, ONE DC believes that all DC residents have a human right to a good job that pays a living wage. We want to use the Right to Live and Work in DC campaign to:

• illustrate the disparity in employment levels between wards in our city;
• highlight the structural nature of persistently high unemployment in Wards 5, 6, 7, and 8;
• dismantle the stereotypes and discriminatory practices that perpetuate the problem of high unemployment, particularly for District residents of color; and
• build power so that we DC residents can demand and realize our human right to good, sustainable jobs.

There is a lot of work to be done! We need to prepare an outreach strategy, conduct extensive research into hospitality industry hiring practices, continue to build relationships with Marriott, and identify and reach out to DC residents in the community who are ready to work -- both on an individual basis and through popular education workshops. ONE DC's mission is not only to place DC residents into jobs at the Marriott Marquis but also to build consciousness around workers' rights and human rights and to hold Marriott responsible to the agreed-upon legislation. ONE DC intends to tailor our work so that the recruits it recommends will be the best possible candidates for positions at the hotel and will have the institutional skills and support to remain in those positions for the long term.

If you are interested in participating in any aspect of this campaign, or if you are an unemployed or underemployed DC resident who is ready to work, please contact ONE DC. We cannot make the change happen for you -- you are the change, and we need you!

Keon Shim from LiUNA participated in the ONE DC worker rights and jobs campaign in February.  He encouraged ONE DC members to participate in the CityCenter rally and protest against Clark Construction and the company's poor record on hiring local residents. Reverend N'ya Finley spoke on behalf of ONE DC and its commitment to living wage jobs and workplace democracy in DC.

Peter Tucker also reported the following on the on the campaign meeting, on theFightBack.org:

"We live in this city. Many of us are born in this city. It's only fair that we have an opportunity to work and feed our families," Pastor Patrick Walker, President of the Missionary Baptist Ministers' Conference of Washington, D.C., told a gathering at Greater New Hope Baptist Church on Thursday.

Pastor Walker's remarks came just minutes before he and other clergy members led a one-block march to the site of the $950 million CityCenter project in downtown D.C. at 10th and H Streets, NW. Protesters, most of them native Washingtonians, shut down the entrances to the 10-acre construction site, chanting, "Clark Construction's got to go!"

I moved to DC from California believing the myth that DC is a "chocolate city." This myth was one of the many reasons I chose to move to DC; in California we do not have any chocolate cities. Friends and family who live in or are from DC had warned me that gentrification was pushing many of the residents out. I thought, therefore, that gentrification was in the beginning stages and that I could be involved in work to resist and struggle with residents who were being pushed out of their neighborhoods.

I had a clear sense of direction for the organizing work I imagined myself doing, which gave me a naïve security. But when I   got off the plane and spent my first day in Columbia Heights, it hit me: it seemed like the gentrification of DC neighborhoods had   started and finished during my plane ride from California.

This was not a chocolate city, and the city was determined to rebrand itself as a Mecca for more affluent, lighter-skinned residents.

I cannot accurately describe the shock I felt.  For a few weeks, I was. I wondered why I was here; my sense of direction was completely lost. But thinking about Frantz Fanon's belief that that resistance can free a black person from their "despair and inaction," I joined up with the group All African People's Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP).

As a group, we participated in the Occupy DC movement at McPherson Square. I showed up with a sign that said "Gentrification = Occupation." While my sign made many Occupy participants angry, it also connected me with N'ya. From that day forward, I began building a relationship with N'ya.

When he invited me to the Black Friday workshop at ONE DC, I had to be there. Knowing N'ya, I knew ONE   DC would be an organization that had racial and economic justice in its heart. Even better, I heard the discussion and saw how ONE DC

was aware of the contradictions embedded in their organizing as a nonprofit. From there I knew I wanted   to become a member. I am also interested in helping create a broader coalition of black organizations throughout DC that can speak to the lived realities of our people. Thank you for letting me be a part of your work.

ONE DC members & friends celebrated the first full calendar year of the organization’s existence at the Annual Celebration January 19^th at the historic Panorama Room of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Southeast. Over 250 justice workers filled the hall to break bread, take stock of the year’s victories and prepare for another year of powerful community organizing. At the dinner, ONE DC staff and the Board of Directors introduced the group’s first dues-paying, formal membership structure, now many months in the making. We were fortunate to welcome residents of all four quadrants and eight wards, including a sizable contingent from Barry Farms/Parkchester down the road, led by the youth leaders of Facilitating Leadership in Youth, who were recognized for their work to prevent the displacement of public housing residents.

RJP resident leaders from across the District came out to Maya Angelou Public Charter School to explore their training needs and interview potential job training partners. Thank you to everyone who made the event a success!

Shaw Education for Action (SEA) celebrated the first cycle of its hotel job training program this March. Despite a slow hospitality season that limited hotel participation in the program, 25% of the eligible candidates in the program are now employed by local hotels.