1| July 2008 Washington Office OCCASIONAL PAPER Southeast Washington Misery and Change in the Shadow of the Capitol by Markus Franz and Knut Panknin We lock the doors of our car from the inside as we cross the Anacostia River going eastward. We are now in a suppo­sedly no-go area for whites. A district with 77,000 inhabitants (over 90% black) of which even a black policeman tells us he would not enter unarmed at night. This is a district where more than 3.000 people have been murdered since 1960. Where in one summer evening in 2007, four different shoo­tings led to eight victims within two hours. This is a district of which a former criminal says,“When we see teenagers, we cross the street. That is how scared we are of our kids.” Only every second resident has a job. Every third lives below the poverty line. Two out of three children grow up without their father. Nowhere else in the city are there as many high school dropouts(34%) and as many overweight people(71%, 33% of them obese). We are in the capital of the richest coun­try in the world: Washington, DC. However, this is a place where tourists and even most Congressmen never venture. Even some of the city’s street maps do not clearly detail this district. We find ourselves in the infamous Ward 8 district in Southeast DC, one and a half miles from the Capitol. The 8 th Ward leads nearly in every negative statistic of Washington’s eight districts. Ward 7, which neighbors the 8 th Ward, follows a close second. Originally, we had planned to write a report on the forgotten people and the misery that exists in the shadow of the Capi­tol. Three months and countless rides across the Anacostia River later, during which nothing bad ever happened to us, we are coming to the conclusion: We are a few years too late ➟