17 Dec 2023 4:30 am
He seems like he has a road map to improve the quality of life for people in his district. That should count for something.
Meet the first noncitizen to hold public office in the District (msn.com)
As Abel Amene walks through his neighborhood in Northwest D.C. on a recent afternoon, he stops in front of an abandoned home. The windows are covered with plywood and the yard is a towering tangle of yellow grass and weeds. “This one is not even trying,” he says, expressing his frustration at how houses that could allow more families to move into the neighborhood have been allowed to become blights.
He keeps walking and stops at the intersection of 5th and Kennedy streets. After a shooting several years ago, former D.C. police chief Peter Newsham described that spot as “the most dangerous intersection” in the Fourth District. On the day Abel pauses to take in the scene, police cars sit in front of a carryout on one corner, and the remnants of memorial occupy another. Wax covers the sidewalk around a religious candle labeled “guardian angel." “This could be a 15-minute neighborhood,” Abel says, referring to an urban planning concept in which an area is designed to allow residents to get most of their daily needs met by traveling only a short distance. He explains that the neighborhood needs a grocery store and a library, and that intersection would serve as the perfect location for those. “Putting a public library here would do more to improve public safety than any police. When people ask, ‘How do we improve public safety?’ It’s about land use.”