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D.C.



  • Sarah Jane Shoenfeld on Mapping segregation in D.C.

    For the past several years, Mapping Segregation in Washington DC has been documenting the historic role of real estate developers, citizens associations (white homeowner groups), and the courts in segregating the city.



  • Lincoln Memorial vandalized

    The Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. was vandalized overnight.According to NBCWashington, green paint was splattered inside the chamber of the memorial, on Lincoln and on the floor around it.The monument will be closed while National Park Service crews clean up the mess, The Associated Press reported.There's no word yet on who desecrated the monument or what their motive was for doing so....



  • May is Jewish American Heritage Month

    What do Bob Dylan, J.D Salinger, Harrison Ford, Jon Stewart, Barbara Walters, Barbara Hersey, and Leonard Nimoy all have in common, aside from being awesome? They're all Jewish Americans. May is Jewish American Heritage Month, and this year's theme is American Jews in entertainment.(With apologies to William Shatner, who was born in Canada, and judging by his acting he's probably not kosher anyway.) Jewish American Heritage Month was established by presidential decree in 2006, after lobbying efforts by the Jewish Museum of Florida, the South Florida Jewish community, Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter (Fittingly, Manischewitz is one of the major corporate sponsors.)



  • Bulgarian street-naming request in DC stirs broader debate over country’s role in Holocaust

    WASHINGTON — A request by the Bulgarian Embassy to name a Washington intersection after a favorite native son — a man credited with helping save the country’s Jewish population from deportation — has gotten tangled up in a broader debate about whether the nation is accurately accounting for the actions of its leaders during the Holocaust.A tense exchange between the embassy and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has played out behind the scenes as the D.C. Council prepares to consider honoring Dimitar Peshev this month. The debate underscores not only the complexities of Holocaust history but also the difficulty countries can face reconciling the heroic deeds of an individual during World War II with the record of a nation as a whole. It also comes as historians and Jewish organizations continue encouraging nations to take unvarnished stock of their actions in Nazi-era Europe....



  • Hail Columbia! The federal government’s relentless expansion has made Washington, D.C., America’s real Second City.

    The Washington, D.C., region has long been considered recession-proof, thanks to the remorseless expansion of the federal government in good times and bad. Yet it’s only now—as D.C. positively booms while most of the country remains in economic doldrums—that the scale of Washington’s prosperity is becoming clear. Over the past decade, the D.C. area has made stunning economic and demographic progress. Meanwhile, America’s current and former Second Cities, population-wise—Los Angeles and Chicago—are battered and fading in significance. Though Washington still isn’t their match in terms of population, it’s gaining on them in terms of economic power and national importance....