Rest in Peace USMC PFC Dan Bullock; youngest Vietnam KIA at age 15
Washington Syndicate
God bless the dead.
God bless United States Marine Corps PFC Dan Bullock of Brooklyn, NY who is gone but not forgotten.
Bullock was born December 21, 1953 in Goldsboro, North Carolina. His mother passed when he was 11; and he moved with his father and younger sister to Brooklyn, New York. He dreamed of becoming a pilot, or police officer, or U.S. Marine.
When he was 14 years old he altered the date on his birth certificate to show he was born Dec. 21, 1949, processed through the recruiting station, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on Sep. 18, 1968.
As a member of Platoon 3039 in Parris Island, he graduated from boot camp on Dec. 10, 1968. He arrived in Vietnam on May 8, 1969 and was assigned as a rifleman in Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. He was stationed at An Hoa Combat Base in Quang Nam Province.
He was killed instantly by small arms fire on June 7, 1969, during a North Vietnamese Army night attack. He was 15 years old.
The story of Dan Bullock is known by few, but important to all. A friend of PFC Bullock’s has petitioned Congress, the Commandant of the USMC, and the President to award the Medal of Honor, posthumously. School lessons are being taught across the country around advocacy for recognition of PFC Bullock’s love of country. The Syndicate supports these efforts.
The New York City Council in 2003 renamed a section of Lee Avenue, where Bullock had lived while in Brooklyn, in his honor.
More from flickr, Virtual Wall, US Militaria Forum, Find a Grave.
Montgomery Couty renames Rockville Library to Rockville Memorial Library
This morning the Rockville Library will be renamed the Rockville Memorial Library.
The Syndicate knows that behind the scenes there has been vigorous debate between “unempathetic” and soul-less state and county officials and the patriotic Montgomery County families of those who have lost one of their own in the War on Terror. We applaud that folks could work to get this done. It is the right thing to do. Truly.
The Gazette had a lead story about the superhuman and supermom Nicki Bunting this week. It brought me to tears on the red line Thursday morning. Last fall, I ran in Bubba’s Belly Run and was fortunate enough to write about Brian “Bubba” Bunting who gave his last full measure of devotion to his country on the battlefields of Afghanistan. We miss you and won’t ever forget you.
Wearing the cloth of our country is a sacrifice and a committment to country that can’t ever be taken for granted by those who have not or do not wear the cloth; this includes The Syndicate. We don’t take our freedom for granted and neither should anyone, ever.
On November 10, 2009, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett signed a proclamation declaring that the name of the library be changed to honor “those who have given their lives defending the principles of freedom [during every major military conflict since the County was created in 1776] and will be deserving of the highest gratitude and honor by the people of Montgomery County.”
“It is fitting that this magnificent library stand in name and purpose as a tribute to the memory of the brave women and men from Montgomery County who gave their lives so that we and future generations may enjoy the benefits of such a facility,” said Leggett who is a Vietnam veteran, having commanded U.S. and South Vietnamese troops in field combat during his tour of duty in 1968-69.
Throughout May, the Rockville Memorial Library is displaying memorabilia loaned by local families who have lost loved ones in major military conflicts.
The branch also will have a Remembrance Book that customers may sign with thoughts/memories, while signage will mark the displays and indicate collections of library materials dealing with military history and other issues relating to veterans’ service.
The memorial items may be seen in the display cases on the first floor of the library located at 21 Maryland Ave., Rockville. Hours are Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
James Carville tells Obama, “We’re about to die down here!”
James Carville went off this morning. However, we must always keep in mind that “it” is still, and always will be, George Bush’s fault.
Stay away from Jamaica for the moment…Bumbaclaat
Most of us are familiar with the late 90′s movie Belly, but how many of us are really familiar with how interwoven politics and drugs are in Jamaica?
News out today is that nearly 30 have been killed in Kingston as Jamaican state police have been searching for Shower Posse leader Dudus Coke to extradite him to the US. The island country is in a declared state of emergency.
A great article from the Christian Science Monitor about the history of politics and drugs in Jamaica HERE.
Many in the city remember when Jamaican gangs were running the streets of DC. For those that don’t continue reading…
Drug Dealer Tells Hill Hearing He Made $ 1,000 a DayThe Washington Post April 21, 1988, Thursday, Final EditionCopyright 1988 The Washington Post
SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A10
LENGTH: 562 words
HEADLINE: Drug Dealer Tells Hill Hearing He Made $ 1,000 a Day
BYLINE: Eric Pianin, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
As a dealer, “Brother X” flourished in the violent, seamy underworld of the Washington area’s illegal drug trade.He made $ 1,000 or more a day selling crack and the hallucinogen PCP from “base houses” — the public housing units of welfare recipients whom he befriended or paid off.
Two local police officers who used drugs occasionally tipped him off to impending raids, he said. He dealt with the feared Jamaican drug gangs, and knew of Jamaican-inspired executions performed for drugs or $ 1,000 in cash.
In testimony yesterday before a joint congressional hearing on Washington area drug trafficking, the 26-year-old convicted drug dealer, testifying from behind an opaque glass screen, described a world of big profits and high living seemingly impervious to police crackdowns and government initiatives.
The testimony was the highlight of a daylong hearing by the House District of Columbia Committee and the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control into the epidemic of violent drug trafficking in the area, a major factor in many of the 100 homicides in the District this year.
“The murder rate in Washington is rivaling that of the Wild West days of Dodge City,” Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the select committee, said in a prepared statement. “The entire metro Washington area has been identified as one of the worst in the country regarding the drug problem.”
A new Rand Corp. study placed the Washington area at or near the top of most other metropolitan areas in the abuse of cocaine, PCP and heroin, based on 1986 data. The study noted that Washington’s suburbs, as well as the city, suffer a severe drug abuse problem.
“Rarely a day goes by that does not begin or end with the death of a child, a teenager, or a young adult as the result of the violence that is associated with drugs,” said Del. Walter E. Fauntroy (D-D.C.), co-chairman of the hearing.
The testimony by Brother X added fuel to allegations that a major police operation set for Feb. 22, 1986, may have failed because of leaks from D.C. police.
Operation Caribbean Cruise was expected to result in the arrests of hundreds of Jamaican drug dealers and seizures of large caches of automatic weapons and illegal drugs. A federal grand jury is investigating whether some District police officers warned the drug dealers that they were targets of Caribbean Cruise.
Brother X, who got major cocaine supplies from Jamaican gang members, testified that he knew “a couple of officers who have used drugs” who told him when the police were about to launch a raid. He declined to identify the officers.
Assistant Chief Isaac M. Fulwood Jr. said it would be inappropriate to comment on the allegations made at the hearing because the federal probe of alleged leaks is continuing.
Brother X, whose name was withheld to protect him, was convicted of drug and firearms violations and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Edward F. Mitchell, president of the Potomac Electric Power Co. and chairman of the Rand drug task force, said the long-term solution is drug treatment and education programs to stem the demand.
D.C. Mayor Marion Barry and Rangel disagreed, insisting that the Reagan administration must do more to stem the influx of illegal drugs from Central and South America.
“We must work to cut off the head of this snake at the source,” Barry said.
“Barry Farm: Past & Present” premiers at HSW June 5th
In a scene from the documentary “Barry Farm: Past and Present” filmmaker Tendani Mpulubusi El asks a young man in the Barry Farm community if he is familiar with Howard University. The young man affirms he knows the campus located off Georgia Avenue NW is “uptown” and, with a small smile says, “There be some girls up there. That’s what I know.”
The Barry Farm community and Howard University are, in fact, linked by more than a 15 minute ride on the Metro’s green line; they are linked by a common history being brought to life in a new documentary, “Barry Farm: Past and Present”, that makes its world premier June 5th at the Historical Society of Washington.
Barry Farm History:
HSW Matthew Brady circa 1854
Potomac City, Howardstown, and Hillsdale were all past names for an area of the city now known in the vernacular as “The Farms.”
To put the film together Mpulubusi El, supported by a D.C. Community Heritage Project grant, went back to when the Anacostan Indians lived in present-day Barry Farm. Archaeological evidence discovered during the Anacostia Metro station construction provided insights into the area’s earliest inhabitants.
Courtesy Smithsonian
The Barry Farm community was originally part of, white farmers, David and Julia Barry’s Farm which extended from the Anacostia River to what is now known as Garfield Heights. In 1867, Union General Oliver Howard, then Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, utilized federal money to purchase the 375-acre site. The lots were then sold for $125-$300 per acre to families of freed slaves and refuges from the Civil War, creating the first African-American homeownership community in the city.
One of the stories brought to life in the film is the story of Solomon G. Brown, the first African American to work for the Smithsonian Institution, who lived on Elvans Road. Born a free man in Washington in 1829, he worked at the Smithsonian from 1852 to his retirement in 1906, at the age of 77. Over his 54 years of service to the Smithsonian, he held numerous positions of influence in the community.
He was a trustee of Wilberforce University, and was elected to three consecutive one-year terms, 1871 – 1874, as a member of the House of Delegates under the Territorial Government of the District of Columbia.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the Alexandria Branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began to separate the original community from the Anacostia River and Poplar Point. By mid-century, the land between the tracks and the river had been converted to military bases, and following Ward War II, Interstate 295’s construction further isolated the neighborhood from the waterfront.
In 1954, the Redevelopment Land Agency acquired much of the remaining land and built public housing for displaced residents coming from the Southwest urban renewal and other areas of the city. That public housing remains today as an amalgamation of the 624 low-income units between Barry Farm and Park Chester, off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
One of the most powerful scenes in the documentary is when nearly two dozen students from Howard University travel to the Barry Farm recreation center to have a meeting and conversation with their peers from the Barry Farm community.
Noted local historian CR Gibbs is seen in the film reflecting on the unique historic connections, “It also speaks to how closely linked together Barry Farm and Howard University were – they share a common history. The relationship between Barry Farm and Howard University – obviously founded by the same man – it is strange. It is troubling that Howard University, today, is not more closely involved in the Barry Farm community.”
The opportunity for Howard to get involved in present-day Barry Farms is closing, ever so slowly.
In November 2005, in conjunction with the Barry Farm Advisory Committee, the city began a public process to create a revitalization plan for the southeast community; known as its New Communities Initiative. The plan, which spans more than a decade, would change present day Barry Farm and the neighboring Park Chester.
In late December 2006, the DC Council approved the Barry Farm/Park Chester/Wade Road Community Revitalization Plan consistent with the New Communities Initiative, the eventual goal being to revitalize the public and low income housing developments and its neighborhood into a mixed-income, mixed-use community, according to the Deputy Mayor for Economic Planning and Development.
“The New Communities engagement is not effective. People either don’t know this is going to happen or they know it is coming and they don’t care,” says Mpulubusi El.
The Filmmaker:
At 19, after graduating high school and briefly attending Guilford College in Greensboro North Carolina Tendani Mpulubusi El found himself homeless and being increasingly pulled into the temptation and allure of street life.
With a collection of friends attending local universities he was able to stay in college dormitories; rent-free. At the University of Maryland he would spend hours on end in the library researching and studying business, marketing, history, and politics.
Looking for direction, a cousin of his worked for the Earth Conservation Corps (ECC) and he was recruited to join the AmeriCorps Program. The ECC began in 1989 as an outgrowth of a White House domestic policy initiative, and in 1992 the Hollywood environmentalist Bob Nixon took over and invested his own money. Nixon, who produced “Gorillas in the Mist”, integrated multi-media arts education into ECC’s curriculum.
It was with the ECC that Mpulubsi El was first exposed to the transformative power of film. The self-described, “historic preservationist” has come a long way from then until now, but he is by no means a newcomer to the local arts scene. He currently serves as the Ward 8 Commissioner on the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) and is an active multi-disciplinary artist with multiple public works featured throughout the city.
Mpulubusi El, who has worked at DCTV and interned at National Geographic, said as he discovered elements of the neighborhood’s history, doing research at places like the Martin Luther King Jr. Library’s Washingtoniana Division, he would ask his peers if they were familiar with the history of where they live. More often common knowledge concerned the criminal justice system, not the neighborhood’s history.
The Future:
Wash Syndicate
As Mpulubusi El uses the June 5th screening to promote an awareness of his film and the history of the Barry Farm community, Cultural Tourism DC is in the active process of generating its Anacostia Heritage Trail.
Jane Freundel Levey, Director of Heritage Programs, says the heritage trail will consist of 15 – 18 signs placed throughout Anacostia that taken together create a self-guided tour.
Through a process that mixes long-time and more recent residents, community members work hand-in-hand with professional historians. Their next meeting will be held later this summer and completion of the heritage trail is estimated to take 18 months.
“Anytime there is an obvious transition going on people become interested in history. This is what has been happening in Washington,” says Levey, “Our first heritage trail was on U Street NW. We began the process in the early 1990’s. As people see change happening, they want to know what came before, and what they might lose.”
By hosting the world premier of “Barry Farm: Past and Present” the Historical Society of Washington (HSW), founded in 1894 and located in the Carnegie Building at 801 K Street NW, is helping to create new audiences for people interested in the city’s history says Dottie Green, Director of Public Programs and Education.
He caught her attention at an event the DCCAH held at the HSW where he mentioned a film he was working on.
Ms. Green approached him and they spoke about screening the film at the HSW and making it an interactive presentation where the audience would be encouraged to share their own personal stories giving the event an added dimension according to Ms. Green.
Wash Syndicate
“Our mission is not only to serve as an archive for DC history, but also to make Washington’s history a relevant part of contemporary life,” says Ms. Green, “Tendani has recorded a very rich part of DC’s history and his film is a creative documentation of this important history.”
Mpulubusi El sees the June 5th screening of his film as the first step in many more to take which will include submission to a wide range of film festivals and exploring local broadcast opportunities.
Oriole Bird knocks down Teddy in President’s foot race; Nats beat O’s 7-6
Thanks to Nats 320 for the video.
Yesterday the Natinals beat the Orioles 7-6 at Nationals Park despite Adam Jones 5th home run of the year — an inside the park version– when the Natinals Nyjer Morgan misplayed a ball that layed at his feet yet he threw his glove in disgust. Left fielder Josh Willingham, who hit a 2-run homer, ran to center and retrieved the ball but he got there too late to prevent Jones from scoring. It was the second inside the park homer hit against the Nats in two days – both on misplays by Morgan. When Morgan came to at-bat in the bottom of that inning the crowd of more than 30,000 gave him welcome boos.
It was the Orioles first inside the park homer since David Newhan at Boston on July 21, 2004.
Bike to Work Day Sets New Record with Over 9,200 Registrants; at least one bike left on the green line
Wash Syndicate
Yesterday’s Bike To Work Day was such a success that somebody left their bike abandoned on the green line.
Bike To Work Day DC was celebrated by the fleet footed Mayor Fenty who bicycled into work with the co-chairman of the Congressional Bike Caucus, Representative Earl Blumenauer, a democrat from Oregon and bow-tied. According to GGW, there was also an announcement that DC and Arlington would collaborate in their efforts to improve the region’s SmartBike System
“This event has grown tremendously over the years and has helped catapult the popularity of bicycling as a reliable and viable commuting option. Just five years ago there were 4,700 participants at 17 locations throughout the National Capital region. This year over 9,200 bicyclists registered at 35 pit stops,” said Dave Robertson, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
From DC.Streetsblog here, Washington Area Bicyclist Association here.
DC Archives_Section 8 Mob “Repercussions” & “No Love”
Members of the home team remember Section 8 Mob long before any Quince Orchard graduate was being heralded as the epitome of the DC hip-hip scene and then labeled a homophobe.
The Mob paid homage to their ‘hood by filming one of their first videos coming up out of the Benning Road Metro station.
In May 1999, Section 8 Mob mobbed and released Guilty By Association on Tommy Boy Records and in 2003 released a film by the same name which starred the intrusive Morgan Freeman.
Section 8 Mob is represented in “Diamonds in the Raw,” a book about local hip-hop. More about local hip-hop history HERE and here.
Fenty seen in the southside streets; Gray supporters pack townhall @ Kelly Miller
Last evening Yvette Alexander held her 3rd annual Ward 7 Townhall Community Meeting and Crime Summit with 6th District MPD, 6D Citizen Advisory Council, and Superior Court of the District of Columbia Community Courts. Tyrone Parker was seen in attendance along with Police Chief Lanier.
There were two senior citizens welcoming visitors to Kelly Miller and asking them to sign a petition in support of Gray. Lapel stickers were available alongside campaign literature. There were no signs of Fenty or his trademark Green.
Meanwhile around 5:00pm, Thursday, 5/20 Mayor Fenty was observed by The Syndicate in the 1400 block of Alabama Avenue SE.
Washington Syndicate
DC License Plates of the Day_”CHRIST” & “TNKUGOD”
Amen.
Wash SYndicate
Wash SYndicate
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