Maintain and expand programs that ensure that DC is truly "One City" for all who live here, regardless of background and country of origin.
One of the things that makes DC so unique and special is that it is home to professionals, workers and students from all around the world. In order to ensure that our region's immigrant population not only survive, but thrive and thus make our communities and district an even better place to live and work in, we must continue to have programs that welcome and support these new and potentially new Americans. However, in the past few years, programs such as the Office of Latino Affairs have been cut. We need to make sure that authorities do everything in their power to ensure that everyone, regardless of their race, ethnicity or country of origin, feel welcomed here and have the opportunities to lead safe and prosperous lives.
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Mariah commented
One way to make foreigners feel welcome is to offer FREE classes to English-speaking people. I have been looking for a free Spanish to English class for 4 years and haven't found it, yet there are all kinds of free English to Spanish classes. Also, the public signs on the Metro buses and kiosks and bus stops should ALWAYS be in English AND Spanish. I resent living in the USA and not understanding a pubic sign because it's only in one language and not even the mother language of this country. Even the signs in Chinatown are in Chinese AND English !
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Robert Kesten commented
One way of doing this successfully is to make DC a Human Rights City with a functioning Human Rights Corps. The Corps ensures that every citizen and resident of the city knows and takes ownership of their human rights and the HR City brings business, government and civil society together in an assembly, NO ONE can be denied participation. In this way a HR City is more democratic than a democracy. With business, government and civil society around the same table as equals...it becomes possible to make this one city, the municipality, business and civil society reforms their policies to conform with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a foundation and framework to ensure equality without discrimination. This would be in human resource development, education, healthcare and all other facets of city life. It has been done in other parts of the world, why not here?