Dinah on Settling Herself Down

"I have been around kids my whole life, so I knew that being a bus attendant was the right job for me. I used to do manager stuff over at Blockbuster Video, but I needed a change. Three years ago, I went in and applied to work with the school buses. I never thought about being a driver. I knew that I wanted to sit in the back and be around the kids. It is a little bit of a step down from what I was doing before, but that's okay. I really enjoy my job. 

"I grew up in D.C. and went to school in Montgomery County. I never rode school buses as a kid, only public buses, so this was all new to me when I started. Every day, the bus driver and I go and pick up kids around Maryland and D.C. A lot of the kids who take my bus have special needs, either physical or mental. I am there to help the kids get on-and-off the bus and make sure that they behave while they are on the bus. Sometimes, I interact with the kids while we are riding, but you have to be careful and keep your boundaries, so that they understand who is the boss.

"They really trained us for everything before I started. Turns out that everything that they said was the truth. I have never had really difficult kids, but I can't speak for everybody. Being here is also nice because there is a good work force. Sometimes we might argue, but that happens any where. In the end, we are like a family.

"If I keep working hard, I can move up to a management position and oversee the bus yard or be a timekeeper. Thing is that I want to go get my college degree so that I can be a teacher. After I graduated high school, I jumped from job-to-job trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I thought about college, but like a lot of people, I was young and wanted to party. But I settled myself down. Since I had my daughter, Mahira, I really settled myself down. I have to say that my work now has a lot of influence on me wanting to be a teacher and get ahead."

David and John on Coming into the City

David - "I'm 17. I live in Montgomery Country, Maryland, but hang out in D.C. all of the time. As a kid, I came in with my parents to see the museums and stuff. When I got older, I started coming into the city on my own to hang out. I am a hip-hop dancer and play guitar in a rock band, so I perform here a lot. Coming from the suburbs, I really like spending time here because of the diversity of people and things to do. Sometimes I wish that I lived here. Even though it is kind of dirty in some places, that adds to the character. 

"There is so much going on here and I like that you can walk or take the metro everywhere. I think that social development and interaction is really important for kids, so the city is a great place to learn how to deal with all kinds of people. In the suburbs, it's not really like that. It is nice and clean, but a lot of the people there are kind of the same. When I am older, I would love to live in the city with my family. The only issue is making enough money to send my kids to good schools."

John - "I'm 18. I love the suburbs and don't think that I could survive living in the city. I like the open spaces and that everything is so accessible. I come in a lot to dance and hang out, but I like going back home at the end of the day. City kids always seem like they have more stuff to do, but they are all cramped up in apartments. Us suburban kids have more space, but we stay at home a lot and play video games because we can't walk anywhere. I am definitely going to raise my kids in the suburbs. It is really safe there and nothing bad can pretty much happens." 

David, left, and John, right, are members of the Ajnin Precizion dance crew. 

Cedric on His Way of Running

"I am a young 57. I was born in D.C. General Hospital in 1952. My family history goes way back in D.C. I was raised in Georgetown and came through the Catholic schools as a three-sport athlete. I played basketball, baseball and football. After high school, I got a football scholarship to play defensive back at the Community College of Baltimore. While I was there, I was recruited to play for the University of Pittsburgh. At the time, my high-school sweetheart was having one of my first babies, so I decided not to go. I dream about that missed opportunity all of the time. Tony Dorsett was there at the time, and I would have won a national championship. It would have changed my whole life had I made that move. I am not mad, though, because I am still happy with what I have accomplished. I've been married for 30 years. I have six kids and four grandkids. I am blessed by my family. Everybody has a destiny, and I think that this was my destiny.

"When I didn't go to the University of Pittsburgh, I came back to D.C. to be a bus driver. Ever since I was younger, I had always wanted to drive a bus. I used to see the bus drivers looking all cool and talking to the ladies, and wanted to be just like them. Four months later, I was driving a bus for the southeast division of Metro. I was always good at my job because I am a people person and an excellent driver. I tell you, my driving is smooth. I have driven every route in the city. I did 25 years for Metro and now I have done 12 years driving the mobile lounges at Dulles Airport.

"A friend at Metro got me into running. Before, I was all about playing sports: tennis, basketball, and touch football. I started running with him in 1975 and said, 'This ain't so bad.' Since then, running has changed my life. Because I knew all the bus drivers, I would race the buses from my place on H Street, Northeast, to the White House. I was crushing them. Running forward, I can beat anyone. In 1984, I said, 'Why not start running backwards?' I started doing the spinning thing while I run to work on my endurance. I wanted to make my body stronger. And I am blessed with incredible peripheral vision, so I always know what is around me. When I am on a run, you will always see me moving. I will run in place or spin around the intersections or in the middle of traffic to keep from stopping.

"A lot of people don't know me, but they recognize me because of how I run. See, I am very vocal. I listen to whatever is rocking on the radio and will yell out, "HOOT! HOOT!" to my bus driver friends and the cabbies. Some people have even stopped me and told that I am an inspiration to them. Because of me, some people started exercising. I tell you, I really feel blessed.

"When I first started running, my wife used to say, 'Why you gotta run all the time?' Now, if I don't run, she thinks something is wrong with me. Just like waking up in the morning and washing my face, running is a part of my life. The only reason that I will ever stop is because God wants me to. Until then, I will keep running the same route every other day. I go straight down H Street, past the White House to 20th Street, and come back the same way."

Carol on Showing the Beauty of D.C.

"I am 60 years young. I have been living in Northeast for about 50-some years. I left once to go to Newark, New Jersey and stayed gone for eight years. I came back because I could not live no place else but D.C. The people in New Jersey were fine and everything, but there wasn't a sense of closeness. If I walk down the street and look at you and say, "Good morning,' what would your reply to me be? In New Jersey, they don't know. You say good morning and they don't say nothing. Here in Washington, even the winos say good morning to you.

"Today, I am taking my granddaughter, my great niece, and the two girls I take care of out on a stroll. These girls have no connection to D.C. because no one has taught them anything about this city. What they know about this city is that if you hear gun shots, you hit the floor. But there is so much beauty here, especially on H Street, that I am trying to show them. Back in the 60's, H Street was a beautiful place to walk and go shopping. On Sundays, parents would stroll up and down the street after church. After the riots, it all changed. 

"As I look around, our black children need help. There are a lot of bright, young black kids out here, but there is not a lot out there for them. All they need is something to do and somewhere to go, so that they can be proud of themselves. I am so proud that my granddaughter wants to be a doctor and my great niece wants to be a lawyer. But no one talks about that - what black children want to be. They talk about what they do that is not right. Like I said, there are a lot of positive black children out there. We need to help them for a change. 

"I would like to get a hold of the people passing laws and just shake 'em. Some of those people have no knowledge of what life is really like in the inner city of Washington, D.C. They just pass these laws. I mean, laws are fine, but if they are not working year-after-year, why are you keeping them? Some of them are as silly as silly can be. Look at what is going on with H Street. Why are you going to put in a streetcar? We already have buses and cabs. Instead of putting in this nonsense, build some schools. Streetcars were on H St. when I was a little girl. You decided to tear them down once already. Now, you want them back? This is silly nonsense. If you want to develop this area, develop the schools and help our children.

"When I went to school, you could play in peace. There was no cussing and fighting going on like you have today. You didn't have children running for their lives. I lost my son to these streets. He was a professional boxer and had been accepted to the University of Maryland. He got caught up with the wrong crowd. You know, the day he died, I had a bad feeling. Mothers can sense things. I remember driving to work and seeing an ambulance pass. I said, 'Lord, someone just lost their baby.' It turns out that it was my son in the ambulance. He had been shot. I was working as a nurse at the time, so they let me see my boy at the hospital. He was shot in the head and up and down his arm. I knew my baby was gone. People say that this is part of life on the streets, but I won't accept that. See, I believe in God. My son did not belong to me, but to God. I guess God wanted to take him back. I accept that, but I will never accept the violence in my community."

From left to right, Precious, Dominique, Oluwaferanmi, Leondria, and Carol. 

Skip on a Different City

"I came to Washington. D.C. as a student at Georgetown University in the fall of 1968. At that time, Washington was a very different city. There were virtually no cars in the city on the weekends, and my classmates and I would walk from Georgetown up to Capitol Hill and barely encounter anyone. In those days, there was no security and all areas of the Capitol, including the subterranean chambers and hallways, were all open. We would spend hours walking around those areas and admiring the beautiful frescos and marble floors. Back then, the Capitol was truly open to all people. That period of D.C. has some very precious memories for me. It is a pity that we have to live in such fearful times, and we can't have access to government buildings like we used to. 


"Another thing that I notice is the changing role of the suburbs. When I first lived here, the suburbs were very small and there was definitely a feeling of Washington as a self-contained place. People used to live and work in the city. Now, I think there is more of a mentality that one can work in the District and live out in Maryland or Virginia and feel less of a connection to D.C. I have known people who only know how to get from their suburban home to their office and don't know how to get anywhere else in the city if their life depended on it. I think that is sad as this is such a great city."

Melissa on Bus Drivers

"Public transportation has been a big part of my life for 12 years now. Since college, I’ve always relied on public transportation. Now, I work in Silver Spring and live in Adams Morgan. So, not having a car, I’m relying on my feet and on public transportation to get around. One thing that I’ve really appreciated about D.C. is the incredible metro rail and bus system. I think they run efficiently, especially compared to Boston where I was living before D.C.

"The friendliness of bus drivers here is something that many of us don't acknowledge. The bus drivers in DC - it’s like they’re friends with you! It’s pretty amazing. There’s been a lot of times where I’m on the bus and I’ll get into really long, in-depth conversations with my drivers. A couple of my drivers I haven't seen in a while and I really start to miss them. It is funny the relationships that you have in life. As a commuter, your bus driver is as much a part of your life as anyone else. At the same time, with a bus driver there is that inconsistency as you won't always have the same driver. But when you do, it is like running into a friend.

"It’s very easy as a commuter to not acknowledge the people whose job it is to take us around. Many of us only acknowledge these people when the bus doesn't come or is late. Otherwise, we don't really acknowledge the role that bus and metro drivers play in our lives and how reliant we are on them to function and get us where we need to go. And what a responsibility it is! Unfortunately, because of a couple of accidents lately, that has been more of a conversation, but we put our lives in their hands everyday. We do it without seat belts and they still get us where we need to go safely and on time! And in this city, I find that they do it with a really great attitude.

"There is a guy who drives the S2 or S4 bus. He is the sweetest man. He knows everybody by name and he will greet you like he is your best friend. There is this one mother and young daughter who I see on the bus who always get off past Spring St and 16th Street. The whole way, the bus driver talks to the little girl. 'Are you excited about school today? Did you read a book last night? Did you like it? What are you going to be learning at school today?' He really engages this girl the whole time and when she gets off the bus and says goodbye to him, it is like his own granddaughter is leaving. He blows her kisses and she blows him kisses while she walks across the street. That is just a nice way to start your day. I've never seen that from a bus driver anywhere else."

Assistant Secretary Dan Tangherlini on Focusing on Outcomes

“I grew up in Auburn, Massachusetts. In 1991, I came to D.C. after graduate school as a Presidential Management Intern with the Office of Management and Budget. I thought that I would work here for a few years and then go back to Massachusetts. The longer I stayed, though, the more deeply routed I became. I met my wife here. We bought and renovated a house on Capitol Hill. We started a family here. Any notion of leaving got increasingly distant with time.

“Somewhere along the way, I got interested in this city itself and how to make it better. When Anthony Williams was appointed Chief Financial Officer for Washington, I was offered an opportunity to be a detailee in his office from my position in the U.S. Department of Transportation. When Mr. Williams became mayor, he asked if I would serve as CFO of the Police Department. Chief Ramsey had just come in from Chicago. There seemed to be so many exciting things going on at that time. With the Police Department, we were working on issues no less important than the safety of the citizens living in the nation’s capital. Still, I had no intention of staying with the city for longer than a few years. But, from the Police Department, I went to the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT), then Metro, and then became the City Administrator and Deputy Mayor. Now, I am back in the federal government as Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Management, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Performance Officer.

“One of the great stories from my time in the city is of the Circulator bus. Someone once described me as the father of the Circulator. I think that is an unfair description. There were so many people who had been working on this idea for a long time. There was the Museum Bus that cropped up in the 80’s then died, and the Blue Bus started by Ginger Latham, and the Georgetown Bid. The Blue Bus connected Georgetown and Dupont Circle. I mean, can you imagine two cooler destinations to go to and from? What was fascinating was that the bus served primarily workers in Georgetown. For them, the bus was a huge bonus because parking in Georgetown can be a nightmare and the transit connections can be unreliable. I used to joke that the bus schedule is a list of times that the bus will not come. This shuttle made it easy for people to get to work. The Blue Bus made it clear that there was a market for similar bus routes.

“At DDOT, we shifted our mentality from roads and moving goods and people to connecting places. The Circulator fit beautifully into that and Mayor Williams was a huge supporter of the idea, as were Councilmembers Jack Evans, Tommy Wells, Jim Graham, and others. Councilmember Carol Schwartz gave me a year to make it work. We found these beautiful Van Hool buses with big windows and three doors in Oakland that the city didn’t have the money to operate. We found some cash from an old settlement related to when trolley prices went from 5 to 10 cents and a bunch of riders sued and won the old assets of the Capital Transit Company. That money had been put in a bank and was sitting there for about 30 years. The only thing that money could be used for was bus service in the District of Columbia. We used that $11 million to buy 29 buses. “The Circulator was what we called the project. We had focus groups to name the bus and tried things like the Go D.C., or D See, or one route would be Zip and the other Zap. Overwhelmingly, much to the horror of the brand people we brought in, people voted for the Circulator. They said, ‘But it is so bureaucratic.’ But, this is Washington and the answers people gave for why they liked the name Circulator was that it described what it does.

“People who had never ridden buses before were riding the Circulator. Polls showed that people liked that it came frequently and started and ended in places that people recognized. It was a model of what bus service could be. Since then, Metro went on to build some of their express routes and bring on much cooler-looking bus equipment. They also started NextBus to inform people about bus schedules, so people would have more faith in the bus system. Finding those ideas that are already sitting there like the Circulator and implementing them and finding ways of making things that people take for granted more interesting, those are the projects that I love working on.

“My time in the city was one adventure after another. The great thing about the city is that you need to deliver services every day. There is an old joke in municipal governance that a mayor runs for office every day because someone’s garbage needs to get picked up or someone needs to respond to a 911 call. That really focuses you and shows you that it is all about the outcomes and service delivery to the taxpayer. Trying to bring some of that focus to outcomes and the need for speed is what I am trying to bring to the federal government now.

"While I work for the Treasury, I will always stay connected with D.C. I still have so many friends who work for the city. People still stop me all the time to ask what I think about this and that. I just can’t not share my views. My life is here. My family is here. There is no way I could remove myself from D.C. life short of moving to Alaska. Even if I did that, I think that people would still call me there to see what I think about things happening here.”

Christylez on Rising Through Education

"I've been in D.C. all my life, man. I grew up on the South Side, in the Southeast quadrant. I moved to Northwest two years ago. It is a whole 'nother world over here. I tell you, it's dope living over here. The thing that makes Northwest so nice is that there is more diversity here than on the South Side. You run into Embassy people and there are more outlets to express yourself creatively. And don't get me started on the public transportation! I spent all day waiting for buses over there. Stuff stops running at times and there is no Circulator or express route near where I grew up.

"Even though I am here, I spent a lot of my time going back to the South Side. I want to bring what I learn here back there. I taught creative writing in the schools for four years on the South Side. It was dope. I'm happy I didn't have to teach formal writing because that would have been hell. I mean, I got to mix hip-hop into creative writing and use other cultural references to make it easier for kids to open up and talk about their own lives. I think that an unstructured forum is the best way to get kids talking about their lives. For me, writing and hip hop is all about bridging gaps. See, I could connect to these kids who were in similar situations to me coming up. Over time, some of the variables in the equation change, but it is the same old story of growing up in the ghetto. You always got to watch your back and do your best to rise through education.

"A lot of people don't realize that on the South Side there is going to be more crime because that it is where most of the low income housing options are. So, when you bring all these poor people together, you end up creating ghettos just like the ghettos in Nazi Germany. In this case, these are economic ghettos where people who can't afford housing are all rounded up together. Come on, you can't just put all of these people together and have them eliminate each other. I mean, if they don't kill each other then the lack of healthy food options will. I mean, Murry's Steak House, you ain't gonna never see one of those in Tenleytown or Georgetown. Only poor areas get Murry's as they are the worst freaking grocery stores. The food is, nah man, it's all genetically modified stuff and just bad for you. As you look around at a lot of these people, their health is declining and they all suffer the same health issues over time. Education is the thing that will break us out of these cycles."

Christylez is a progressive hip-hop artist. Check out his work here.