Blog / Advocacy

Things are not getting worse, they are just getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil. -Adrienne Maree Brown

America is in crisis, and more visibly so than it has been in at least a generation.

The DC Language Access Act of 2004 was groundbreaking legislation that was intended to ensure the rights of DC’s diverse community to access government services. This law already requires DC government agencies to provide interpretation–in all languages–for limited and non-English proficient (LEP/NEP) individuals that seek to access services, and in some cases government agencies must provide written translations as well.

On October 1st, Bread for the City clients, community members, and allies rallied outside DC General and DC Jail to demand that DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and the District’s City Council invest more in housing than they do in police and prisons. In its current FY17 budget, DC is spending about $700 million on jails and police, compared to only $235 million on housing programs – a 3:1 ratio.

An economic recovery is supposed to help more and more people the longer it lasts — but that’s not happening in DC. Our economy has been rebounding since 2010, and median income has risen sharply following a nationwide trend. Yet this growth has not reduced poverty. Over 110,000 DC residents lived in poverty in 2015, according to new Census figures — that’s 18,500 more than in 2007.

The following is the testimony of community organizer, Terri Acker at a District of Columbia Housing Authority Commissioners meeting on September 14, 2016.

Hello, my name is Terri Acker and I have been a resident of subsidized housing for the majority of my adult life and I have raised 5 daughters here in the city. I am here to testify today and be the bearer of news to the residents from my experience and facts.

Last weekend marked the 20th anniversary of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reform, and the Department of Human Services has begun to convene a working group and to craft a TANF extension policy.

This video, created by DC TANF families, and put together by Samantha Davis and Sequnely Gray, shows the strength, values, and resilience of families receiving assistance.

Bread for the City supports fixing the TANF time limit because children should always have their basic needs met.

Please watch, enjoy and share!

Bread for the City Community,

Over the past month our country has been battered by tragedies in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas. These shootings remind us of two difficult truths: wishing we lived in a post-racial society doesn’t make it so, and the issue of race and all of its complexities will challenge us for years to come.

In response to these recent tragedies, several Bread staff members met to discuss the trauma of the shootings – both of police officers and those at the hands of police officers. In these discussions, we sought to address one central question: What does all of this chaos and pain mean for our work in social justice?

Hello my People! Let’s talk Juneteenth…

An internationally recognized day of observance, Juneteenth (June 19th, abbreviated), commemorates the day that presumably the last slaves in America were freed with the reading of The Emancipation by General Gordon Granger to enslaved residents of Galveston, Texas in 1865. Some historical texts have also noted that Juneteenth was originally known as the “Day of Jubilee” or “Jubilee Day”.