Plans for reshaping the structure of the city’s government already have begun to come forward, and with them the inevitable noisy debate.

But veterans of the city’s social and political struggles say the problem isn’t just a flawed government structure – it’s the growing number of city residents who feel little ownership of the system and little stake in its decisions.

"People in this city are disillusioned with politics as a way of making life better," said fourth-generation Washingtonian James Berry. "People downtown make decisions and don’t really consult us. The residents don’t even see themselves as part of the equation."

Nursing the city back to health means helping residents overcome disappointment, disgust and frustration, and bringing back some of the confidence that filled the city 25 years ago.

"When the District first got home rule, people thought this was going to be a city in which African-Americans had a chance to show the world what we’re made of," said Howard Croft, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia. "People talked about D.C. as the mecca for the most talented African-Americans in the country. That’s how things began – with magnificent intentions."

Now, the once-proud residents of Washington feel disappointed, embarrassed and betrayed, said Earl Simmons, director of communications for Blacks in Government. People who once believed they could change the world now feel powerless. He said black city residents feel like they’ve been had.

"We feel we were set up to fail," he said.

Some claim the city’s troubles were fostered purposely by racist politicians with a vested interest in seeing the city’s black leadership fail. Others say the issue is a lot more complex.

Those who helped engineer the historic home rule charter of 1974 and who guided the city through the turbulent decades that followed point to a lethal combination of forces: the centuries-old power stuggle with Congress, a lack of homegrown politicians, voter apathy, corruption and a city rigidly divided by class and race.

"We inherited a defective budgetary structure," said former city official Dwight Cropp, now a professor at George Washington University. "Combine that with…an increasingly corrupt and inactive government, a downturn in the economy and the crack epidemic. What developed was a general culture of incompetence and inefficiency and corruption, and it’s still there."

In recent years, it seemed, at least on paper, that District residents didn’t care, because they didn’t vote. During a voter registration drive in 1992, Berry took an informal survey to discover why so few residents had registered. The main reason, he found, was they didn’t know who was running.

"The only name they knew was Marion Barry, because through his tenure here, he had touched the people," Berry said. "Their votes have been based on charismatic qualities rather than on delivery of services."

Lack of participation came in part from the short history of democracy, he said.

"Our experience in the electoral process is extremely limited," Berry said. "We’ve only had three elected mayors in this city. I could not vote for anyone other than the President of the United States until I was 25. We are still building a critical mass of people invested in self-government."

By the same token, few of the city’s political leaders have been locals.

"We never developed a group of proactive energetic politicians," said Berry, chairman of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5C. "The culture here was not conductive to it. William Lightfoot, John Ray Marion Barry, Dwight Cropp – with the exception of Charlene Drew Jarvis, they all came from somewhere else."

Many older residents, especially those who were active in the civil rights movement and the long struggle for home rule, are still active in civic life. But younger residents, particularly in poor neighborhoods, have tuned out. Most of the city’s Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are over 55 years old.

"The over-50 crowd, the ones who raised hell in the ‘60s, who were activists, I’m not sure we did a good job of passing that activism to another generation," Simmons said.

Even limited existing vehicles for public participation seem dysfunctional.

"Most of the ANCs are failed institutions," said Thomas Downs, a former city administrator. "There are too many of them and they have no real power. You’re elected because you’re the only one on the ballot."

Among a handful of active ANCs are many others plagued by high vacancies, poor attendance and an inability to make quorum. A city training program for ANC commissioners was quietly dropped two years ago.

But there is little outcry over the lack of democracy in the nation’s capital. At a rally at the Senate in May to demand the return of home rule, fewer than 50 people showed up.

"I wish I could say people are inflamed, but there really is no fire," Simmons said. "A lot of people are just trying to maintain their jobs and take care of their families. The average citizen isn’t going to picket."

But beneath the apparent calm, resentment is growing – particularly among city workers, Simmons warned.

"The more District employees see an outsider who has not been elected try to tell them what to do, the more resentment builds. Congress has not taken that resentment seriously. But every day, it just piles up, like falling leaves."

Eventually, city employees feel so bad that they have no incentive to do their jobs well, he said. Instead, they adopt a strategy of passive resistance.

"You fight it in small ways, but you don’t rock the boat."

City employees find themselves caught in a system which they know doesn’t work but on which they depend for survival. Rather than bite the hand that fed, they tended for the most part to keep quiet.

"What really took hold in the black community is the idea that the government will take care of you," said Cropp, who is black. "People became dependent on government employment. We developed a culture of dependence, a victim mentality."

That sense of powerlessness becomes self-fulfilling, he said. It eventually locks people out of the decision-making process.

"You are expected to be a participant, not a victim," Downs said. "That’s how we fail ourselves. It prevents you from picking up the pieces and starting over. The ultimate failure of democracy is when folks start acting like democracy doesn’t matter."

Bit it is always difficult to convince people to participate in a system they believe was rigged against them from the start.

U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., chairman of the House subcommittee on oversight of the District and one of the chief architects of the control board legislation, agreed that District residents are hampered by a sense of victimization -–a feeling fostered by local elected officials whose rallying cry is against the "mean-spirited Republican Congress."

District residents ought to stop "whining" and start participating, Davis said.

"Twenty percent voter turnout isn’t going to cut it," he said.

Davis said he favors abolishing the control board as soon as possible, but acknowledges that simply balancing its budget for three consecutive years will probably not be enough to convince Congress to return some form of home rule.

"The city wasn’t going to straighten itself out," he said. "And ultimately the Constitution says Congress is in charge. I want to see a drop in crime, better delivery of services, someone with a vision for this city."

City residents say they want exactly the same thing, but add that stripping power from the elected mayor, city council and school board simply added insult to injury.

"Yes, there need to be changes here in the District but let me vote on the changes," said Della Booker-Tanner, a Ward 8 community leader, grandmother and lifetime District resident.

She said many residents who once were active in civic life are not only discouraged but disgusted.

"Even a little child knows when you say, ‘Here, you can’t do that. Let me do that for you,’ that he is being insulted."

And though that sense of insult cuts across demographic lines, the city still seems fragmented.

"There is a great gulf between me and the people controlling this city," Berry said. "The Washington they live in isn’t the Washington I live in. There are people who have never been to Southeast who comment with seeming authority on how terrible things are there."

While scholars see centuries-old patterns of failure in the history of the nation’s capital, relatively few residents realize that the District’s problems long predate the dynasty of Mayor Marion Barry Jr. Or even the advent of home rule. Washington now struggles through its fourth cycle of federal control since the Civil War.

Downs traces the roots of the difficult relationship between the city and the federal government back to 1790, when Congress moved the young nation’s capital from Philadelphia to 10 square miles of undeveloped swamp along the banks of the Potomac River.

The move was spurred in part by a near-riot by angry Revolutionary war veterans in 1783 who surrounded Constitution Hall, lobbing rocks at Congress and demanding their past-due war bonuses.

"Congress was cowering behind their desks with the shutters closed, sending messages for help," Downs said. "They vowed they would never again be in a place they did not absolutely control. I doubt it will ever change."

But Congress’s obsession with micromanaging the District is not the root cause of the city’s problems, Downs said. "Most of this is self-inflicted."

And although national and international attention focused on the personal conduct of the mayor, the District’s problems aren’t about Marion Barry, said Downs, who served in D.C. government under Barry.

The root, he said, is a far more subtle complex of attitudes that have led outsiders to point fingers, residents to lose interest, managers to throw their hands up in disgust and despair.

It wasn’t always this way. Downs remembers when D.C. residents could get a driver’s license renewed in 10 minutes, when the DCRA won national awards and the Department of Public Works repaved 30 miles of road every year.

So what happened?

"Over 30 years in District government, there was a gradual relaxation of standards," Cropp said. "When I taught in D.C. public schools in the 1960s, teachers perceived themselves as professionals. You dressed as a professional. The supervisors came around and observed you. We took pride in volunteering as a coach and not demanding to be paid for it. In later years we did away with the requirement for national teachers exam, and the expectations started to go down. We got to the point where we didn’t expect these poor black kids to learn."

Somehow, nobody noticed.

"Everybody misunderstood what was happening to the District government," Downs said. "We were rapidly going into the tank financially. It is hard to find anyone who was paying attention. Who noticed they stopped filling potholes or removing dead trees? When did the press cover that?"

Throughout the 1980s, programs shrank, Downs said. There was no training, no equipment, no investment in new technologies. City employees started to bail out.

"I saw 100 top-flight dedicated professional managers leave disappointed and disillusioned," Downs said. "It takes a generation to recover."

Meanwhile, private business networks, closed to most ordinary citizens, sprung up to fill the void. The building boom of the 1980s made millionaires of a few local developers and drew investors from around the globe.

"The dirty little secret we all know is that the real power is not in the city," Croft said. "Certain groups have always been able to bypass the District government and get what they want."

The city now stands at a crossroads, Downs said. There is much more at stake than simply who is next in the mayor'’ office. The real question is, are the recent mild improvements in city services Band-Aids imposed by outsiders or have there been real, fundamental changes to the culture? Has self-government been encouraged? Will the city be able to cruise proudly on its own when the training wheels are taken off?

"The control board will be gone during the tenure of this next mayor," Downs said. "Then what? We won’t have the control board to kick around, and all the stuff we let happen will be capable of happening again."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator