Anthony Muhammad runs for D.C. city council seat

By Richard B. Muhammad | Last updated: Apr 7, 2015 - 7:59:01 PM

Anthony Muhammad says gentrification is a real problem for Ward 8 residents.

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - When voters go to polls April 28 to decide who will represent Ward 8 in the District of Columbia among their choices will be Anthony Muhammad, who has been an elected official, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and a plain-spoken advocate for Black people and those locked out, locked up and left behind.

Ward 8 is holding the special election to determine a successor for the legendary Marion Barry, who represented the ward for 16 years, and was a powerful and popular Black mayor.

Mr. Muhammad, who was a Barry ally for years, is a D.C. native.

“I have been a longtime political person in Ward 8, I have been an elected advisory neighborhood commissioner for over 24 years,” said Muhammad, who serves Ward 8 in the hyper-local elected position. He has also served on the city’s taxi commission and run his own businesses as a taxi driver and a barber.

Commitment to service, leadership, speaking truth to power and preserving the last bastion for Black people in Washington, D.C., the last place with a Black majority in the city, are what drive Mr. Muhammad. A member of the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Mosque No. 4 in the District, he has taught for years in prisons as part of the Nation’s Mid-Atlantic Prison Reform Ministry as well.

“Landmarks and anything important to Blacks is being erased from Washington as if we were never here,” Mr. Muhammad said. “Everywhere Black life was in the majority of the city is no more.”

Bread and butter issues are the focus of Mr. Muhammad’s campaign as Ward 8 is seeing major change but suffers from violence and has perhaps the highest poverty rates in the city. He favors adjusting the area’s median income downward, saying poor people in D.C. increasingly can’t afford housing. The area median income, an index used to determine things like price levels for housing affordability, includes the higher incomes of counties in nearby Maryland, Mr. Muhammad noted.

The average income in Ward 8 is about $22,000, which is poverty level in one of the most expensive cities in the country, Mr. Muhammad said.

Fears of gentrification and pricing Black folks out of Ward 8 and a locale once known as “Chocolate City” because of its majority Black population are real, he added.

Mr. Muhammad believes the high number of abandoned and blighted properties in the ward should be sold to residents who qualify for construction loans for $1. Under the late Mayor Barry, this strategy was used over the entire city, he said. “Real ownership. Real stake. A house I bought for $1 is now worth more than a dollar and I can get a loan to rehab it,” he said.

As an advisory neighborhood commissioner, Mr. Muhammad said he has crafted community benefits agreements for the ward and there are at least 18 multi-million dollar projects on the board for the area.

Other issues Mr. Muhammad points to are employment, education, health and public safety. He wants to see a trauma center in Ward 8, would push healthier eating and healthy lifestyles for residents and students and promote entrepreneurship. He favors having larger developers and builders support small builders with issues like bonding and insurance to help small businesses grow.

ANC commissioners deal with “a wide range of policies and programs affecting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, liquor licenses, zoning, economic development, police protection, sanitation and trash collection, and the District’s annual budget.”

You have to love Black people to serve Black people says Ward 8 candidate Anthony Muhammad. Photos: Hassan Muhammad

“In each of these areas, the intent of the ANC legislation is to ensure input from an advisory board that is made up of the residents of the neighborhoods that are directly affected by government action. The ANCs are the body of government with the closest official ties to the people in a neighborhood,” according to the commission website.

Other candidates in the special election include Jauhar Abraham, Stuart Anderson, Marion C. Barry, Sheila Bunn, Greta Fuller, Eugene D. Kinlow, LaRuby May, Sandra Seegars, Keita Vanterpool, Leonard Watson, Sr., Trayon White and Natalie Williams.

At a recent forum, Mr. Muhammad spoke strongly about the need to fully represent residents and blasted the police department for disturbing accounts of officers pimping and abusing young girls.

Mr. Muhammad, who is married and has children and grandchildren, was touched by tragedy in 2010 with the death of two sons killed in an automobile crash. It was also a shock to the Nation and many in the D.C. area when Mr. Muhammad’s sons, Khalifah Muhammad, 18, and Idris, 20, perished in the car accident.

That tragedy hasn’t derailed Anthony Muhammad who says there is a basic reality with what it takes to serve Ward 8: “To do it, you have to love Black people, the hardest job given to any man,” he said. The job may be hard, but it’s a job this longtime fighter for justice loves. For more information, Mr. Muhammad can be contacted at [email protected]. Early voting starts April 13 and runs through April 25.

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