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On this unseasonably warm day, Shallal cheerfully crisscrossed the two-mile stretch of Martin Luther King Jr.
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#Busboy and poets anacostia plus#
Of the Democratic mayoral candidates in this race (there are seven plus the incumbent), perhaps only Shallal can move so fluidly among the city’s different and often disconnected communities - its native residents, the majority of whom are African-American the transplants who hail from every state to work for the federal government or in the political industry and those who come from all over the world to staff embassies and international organizations. It is also where Shallal’s campaign headquarters are located. Many people who live on the other side of the Anacostia River - a seemingly nontraversable barrier - had never been to the neighborhood. I’m an artist, and it saved my life,” he told them before returning to his stump speech criticizing the widening gap between Washington’s wealthy and poor in terms of income, education, literacy and health care.īefore noon he was on the other side of town, marching in the annual Peace Walk through Southeast, an area left out of the development boom that has transformed D.C. “Artists are the foundation of civilization. Shallal spoke to both groups at the same time, borrowing two needles to knit a few stitches - saying his grandmother in Baghdad taught him how - and greeting the Egyptians in their (and his) native Arabic. performing “Les Miserables” in translation. Onstage in the room reserved for readings, meetings, organizing and performances and under portraits of the Dalai Lama, Mohandas Gandhi and King, Shallal welcomed an eclectic crowd that included volunteers knitting for low-income and homeless children and an Egyptian musical troupe touring the U.S. institution when Shallal opened it in 2005. Half an hour later and around the corner, he was back at Busboys and Poets, the bookstore and restaurant that became an instant D.C. It’s a community that Shallal has long been part of as a local muralist and activist, even though he is not African-American. Day, mayoral candidate Andy Shallal, 58, posed for a photograph in front of the Lincoln Theater, one of the last remnants of Washington’s historical “Black Broadway,” with some of the city’s progressive black artists. On the morning of Martin Luther King Jr.