DC hardcore, gentrification and punk urbanism

This article examines the narratives that enabled and legitimized the gentrification of several neighbourhoods of Washington DC during the 1980s. What links each of the neighbourhoods (Georgetown, Mt. Pleasant, Adams Morgan, sections of the U Street/Shaw neighbourhood and parts of Penn Quarter) is that all experienced gentrification after the arrival of punk communities to their spaces in the early 1980s. I argue that DC punk urbanism is tied to a process through which middle- and upper-class suburban youth valorize neighbourhoods marked by urban decay and disinvestment, occupy those spaces without putting themselves into relation with already existing subaltern urbanisms and subsequently replace the neighbourhood fabrics of the residents who formerly lived there with their own.

Michelin Is Coming to Town: Organizational Responses to Status Shocks

What happens in the aftermath of the introduction of a new status ranking? In this study, we exploit the unique empirical opportunity generated by the release of the first edition of the Michelin Guide for Washington, DC, in the fall of 2016. We build on prior work on rankings as insecurity-inducing devices by suggesting that newly awarded high-status actors modify their self-presentation attributes to fit with what they believe audiences expect from the elite. Our results show that, depending on their standing prior to Michelin’s entry, restaurants acted upon different attributes of their self-presentation. Restaurants with high prior standing emphasized attributes that channeled authenticity and exclusivity, which may imply that their Michelin designation triggered operational changes. Actors with low prior standing, on the other hand, acted on descriptive attributes that did not necessarily imply operational changes and could be easily manipulated to signal their belonging among the elite. We contribute to research on status and conformity by disentangling the sources and types of conformity behaviors that newly awarded high-status actors deploy. This paper was accepted by Lamar Pierce, organizations.

Hobo Economicus

The central implication of maximising behaviour amid competition is that rates of return tend toward equality. We test that implication in a market whose participants have the traits that behavioural economics suggests should make it hardest to find evidence of maximisation: the market for panhandling at Metrorail stations in Washington, DC. We find that stations with more panhandling opportunities attract more panhandlers and that cross-station differences in hourly panhandling receipts are statistically indistinguishable from zero. Panhandling rates of return thus tend toward equality. Extreme ‘behavioural’ traits do not prevent maximisation in this market.

Contraband Hospital, Freedmen’s Hospital, and Alexander Augusta

The tens of thousands of enslaved Blacks liberated by union forces during the American Civil War were considered seized property and thus were referred to as contraband. As wartime refugees they sought protection in federal military installations, popularly known as contraband camps, located throughout the occupied South. One of the largest was Camp Baker in the rural northwestern sector of Washington, DC, where about 40,000 persons were sheltered. To provide basic medical care, the military outfitted, in 1863, an infirmary called the Contraband Hospital, later renamed Freedmen’s Hospital. From its founding in 1867 the medical department of Howard University was attached to Freemen’s Hospital, which in 1975 was renamed the Howard University Hospital, the two institutions establishing a long partnership of medical education and hospital care that continues to the present day.

Helping Communities Confront Extremism

False claims disseminated on social media by extremists can convince ordinary people not just to sit in their armchairs and rage at the violence of one side or another but to leave their homes either to riot at the Capitol in Washington, DC, for example, or to sneak over international borders in order to join the so-called “Islamic State.” Governments' softer counterextremist policies may focus on messaging but tend to overlook the specific claims aimed at those vulnerable to radicalisation. Furthermore, general lack of trust in officialdom can undermine its messaging or even serve to bolster the extremist “us and them” narrative. This chapter suggests that, by harnessing their specialist information literacy knowledge and skills, librarians can build on their positive social capital and assume an active role in developing in their users the critical thinking and awareness necessary to identify and expose misleading extremist propaganda, thereby helping to make their local communities safer.

Youth-Led Action Research

In this chapter, the authors provide a case study and autoethnographic account of a youth-led, social justice-oriented, community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) project in Washington, DC. After providing background of action research, university-community partnerships, and the context of the partnership, the authors describe the three phases of the collaborative project that took place from Fall 2019 to Spring 2021. During this time, in the midst of a global pandemic, high school and college students, with support from teachers, implemented a mixed methods CBPAR project on making Black Lives Matter in schools. This chapter describes the steps taken and the lessons learned, with the intent of assisting the reader in potentially implementing something similar in their community or at their university.

Suboptimal uptake, retention, and adherence of daily oral PrEP among people with OUD receiving HCV treatment

Introduction Daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with tenofovir/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) prevents HIV among people who inject drugs (PWID). Despite rising HIV incidence and injection drug use, PrEP use remains low and there is limited research about uptake, adherence, and retention among PWID. Methods The ANCHOR investigation evaluated a community-based care model collocating hepatitis C (HCV) treatment, medication for opioid use disorder (OUD), and PrEP in individuals in Washington, DC-Baltimore. PrEP counseling was conducted from HCV treatment Day 0 until Week 24. Subjects could start any time during this window, were followed for 48 weeks, and were assessed for adherence by self-report and dried bloodspot TDF analysis. Results 198 participants were enrolled, of whom 185 (93%) were HIV-negative. Twenty-nine individuals (15.7% of HIV-negative cohort) initiated PrEP. 116 participants (62.7%) met 2014 CDC PrEP criteria due to IDU (82, 44.3%), sex (9, 4.9%), or both practices (25, 13.5%). Providers recommended PrEP to 94 individuals (50.8%), and recommendation was associated with PrEP uptake. Median treatment duration was 104 days (IQR 28, 276), with 8 participants retained through Week 48. Adherence was variable over time by self-report and declined by TDF analysis. No HIV seroconversions occurred. Conclusions This cohort of people with HCV and OUD experienced low uptake of PrEP despite the majority meeting CDC criteria. High rates of disruption and discontinuation, compounded by variable adherence, made TDF/FTC a suboptimal prevention strategy. Emerging modalities like long-acting formulations may address these barriers, but PWID have been excluded from their development to date.