I just received a note a couple days ago from Ashley Lawson over at Miriam’s Kitchen — an email sent to volunteers at their Washington, DC, soup kitchen for homeless men and women; however, there’s some good general information and interesting stuff for anyone who may be interested in the  current state of homelessness in DC, in America, and some examples of organizations and kitchens that are working every day to help — and the people, like me, who love them:

Guest Facts — So far this year (from January – May), volunteers  have helped to serve a total of 29,515 healthy, homemade meals to our guests.  We truly can’t thank you enough for your incredible donation of time and energy.  Each of you make a huge difference in the lives of our guests.

As you may know, many of our guests sleep on the streets every night and many are battling severe mental health problems.  The warm smiles and conversations you share with our guests are just as important to their survival as the nutritious meals you help to prepare.

In January, we administered a survey of our guests, and would like to share 3 facts with you:

• The average length of homelessness of our guests is 5.5 years
• The age groups of our guests: 18-29: 8%; 30-49: 39%; 50-61: 45%; 62+: 8%
• At the time of the survey, 25% of our guests slept on the street

If you would like a full review of the survey, you may view it here.

What Miriam’s Kitchen Needs — Interested in helping to serve our guests beyond your volunteer shift?  Please consider hosting a donation drive to benefit our guests!  Our top needs for the kitchen and our guests: ground coffee, small bottles of lotion, razors and deodorant.

Since I wanted to give you more context, I grabbed this from the Miriam’s Kitchen website, www.miriamskitchen.org:

How to Help and How to Volunteer –

We are volunteer-driven. Just ask our 1,200 volunteers! This amazing group of volunteers put in more than 12,500 hours of service for Miriam’s Kitchen in 2008–the equivalent of having six additional full-time staff members!

We are always open to ideas for ways that community members can get involved, but here are a few ways you can help:

• Help Serve Breakfast — Breakfast volunteers arrive at 6 am and spend the next two hours chopping vegetables, flipping pancakes, baking biscuits and washing dishes.
• Help Serve Lunch — Lunch volunteers join us on Wednesdays from 11:30 am-2 pm and help prepare lunch, serve drinks and distribute door prizes to our guests.
• Help Serve Dinner — Dinner volunteers are needed every week night from 4-6:30 pm to help prepare and serve healthy meals to our guests.
• Help Prepare Dinner — Volunteers are needed on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12-2 pm to help prepare recipes for our dinner service.
• Help Our Case Managers — Volunteers are needed to help sort clothes, hand out toiletries and interact with our guests every weekday morning and evening.
• Host a Clothing or Toiletry Drive — We rely on in-kind donations to provide our guests with clean clothing and new toiletries. Organizing a clothing or toiletry drive in your office, church, community center or neighborhood is an easy way to provide assistance to our guests. Please click here to our wish list.

Donate! — donate online!

• With a $25 donation, you will provide the food for a healthy, homemade breakfast for 25 homeless men and women.
• With a $50 donation, you will provide transportation to doctor appointments and job interviews to 40 homeless men and women.
• With a $100 donation, you will provide art supplies for our Miriam’s Studio’s Art Therapy class.
• With a $500 donation, you will provide one day of case management services to 80 of our guests.
• With a $1,000 donation, you will provide a healthy, homemade meal (breakfast or dinner) to all of our guests for one day!
• With a $2,500 donation, you will provide healthy meals and comprehensive case management services to all of our guests for one morning!
• With a $12,500 donation, you will provide a week’s worth of meals and services to nearly 1,000 homeless men and women.

Donate online!

My friends organized a birthday picnic for me at Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill

Posted via email from Chris Abraham

Metro has been Verizon’s bitch for as long as I have known.  I wonder if the following means that the DC WMATA is opening up the cell phone network to other networks — let me know if that is what it means.

There’s been talk of this for a while, but WMATA announced a little more of a timeline today: Twenty of the busiest stations will have cell phone service by the end of this year, and the entire system will have it by 2012.

While I certainly have no interest in listening to a train full of people shout to be heard over the tunnel noise, I look forward to actually being able to text and use Twitter from the train- many has been the time when the people I’ve been on my way to meet have tried to reach me, only to be thwarted by the Metro Cone of Silence. (Via We Love DC)

I have an AT&T and a T-Mobile handy right now and neither of them are Twitter-worthy when on the Metro, which is a drag.  I got completely used to being able to use my phone in any way I pleased while running around Berlin and the rest of Germany is the U-Bahn, deep under ground, in the S-Bahn, deep into the suburbs, and on the I.C.E. train hither and thither.

So, what’s the news here in Washington, DC?

Zach Goldfarb wrote a great post over at the Washington Post and popped me an email to see if I had any comment on it. I did! The article was posted on Friday last and is called TechPost: Washington’s Twin Tech Towns. My comment starts right below the following video:

I attended the Spank party for Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk because I wanted to hang out with Robert and Gary.

I really must remind the reader that this is what the gathering was, a small get-together that mushroomed into a big event.

Unlike the Pulver Breakfasts or PodCamps, this gathering started as the ultimate cult-of-personality fest — even I popped there to meet THE Robert Scoble — and to meet folks I have known online, on Twitter, on Facebook, and in the blogosphere, for almost ten years!

Then it became an amazing schmooze-fest! I not only got to meet the Scobleizer and Mr. Wine Library TV but I met a dozen people I had only known virtually online!

I am very pleased to see things like this happen spontaneously in DC. It was fun, playful, generous, and I got to connect to people I had met a couple weeks prior at Geoff Livingston’s BlogPotomac such as the amazing and enthusiastic Shana Glickfield.

I must rush to mention that there were very few PR and marketing folks. There was the lovely Rachelle Lacroix from Fleishman-Hillard and a couple others — this was a group of people who were hard core geeks and nerds and programmers and developers and all the most choice horse meat in the world of entrepreneurs and programmers.

I may have read the crowd wrong, but we were all there for an audience with A-list blogger Robert Scoble and A-list video blogger, Gary Vaynerchuk.

I am still giddy that Gary Vaynerchuk recognized me from across the room and that Robert Scoble bragged to his friends that we had finally met after knowing each other online for close to 8 years.

I hope there are more of these!

Chris Abraham, Abraham Harrison
http://www.chrisabraham.com

Kyle and Meg at Bistro Lepic, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Power couple, Kyle Poole and Meg Clifford, enfianced, joined the gathering last night. Actually, they were the centerpiece. Thanks, guys, for dinner, too, at Chez Poole. This is a rare photo of Kyle not doing Monkey Face.

Amtrak Acela First Class, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Since my day trip to NYC included two nights at two porn hotels, I spoiled myself on the way back to DC and jumped the last seat in the Acela: first class. Lots of room, lots of attention, lots of service, and lots of stints of burning up the tracks at 175+ miles-per-hour. Kind of rockstar and something I will do all the time when the funds allow or I marry rich.

Yes, I do work all the time. Yes, I do live in Berlin but I have been stuck in DC through the beginning of February (until right after the Super Bowl) for business reasons. However, that doesn’t mean that I am all work, no play. I really enjoyed a dinner party I attended last night on the Hill.

Thank you, Professor Meredith Hindley, for hosting such a lovely little dinner party with some of the brightest lights in Washington and the world. Lasagne, salad, fresh bread, vegetables, and lots and lots of prosecco.

I have had too many Big Slices and Jumbo Slices for my own good, generally after a night of drinking up in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC.  Well, I always assumed the Jumbo Slice was a variation but it is an official regional pizza style! Huzzah! At least according to A List of Regional Pizza Styles via digg

While this one sounds like it’s merely a style based on size, I’ve seen arguments for it in the comments (here and here) and over on Boing Boing.

While I’m not sure it’s going to be a widely recognized style, It’s in the interest of Slice readers to know about it, even if it, so …

Yes, the jumbo slice of D.C. is mainly known for its size. There are many competing places offering this style. The link to the article below tells about the development of the jumbo slice, the competing claims of who has the “First Oldest Original Jumbo Slice,” a laboratory-based nutritional analysis, and the fact that people only eat it when they are drunk.

Jumbo Slice Lore of D.C. [Washington City Paper]

Here’s the Washington City Paper Article (and, it is totally exactly like this):

When bars close on a Saturday night in Adams Morgan, cops usually can gauge the impending mayhem by the length of the line at Pizza Mart.

On a night in mid-October, the unruly column forms in front of the pizzeria right on cue, at 2:45 a.m., just after most bartenders have shouted their last call. Never mind that it’s the first cold weekend of the season, or that the nightlife district along 18th Street NW seems filled to only half-capacity tonight. Just about everyone on the strip has come here to bump elbows and jostle himself one step closer to a single slice. It’s so tight that served customers have to make their exit with their slices over their heads, negotiating them like clumsy waiters.

Amid the catcalls and the laughter come the night’s first genuine fighting words.

“You bitch!”

And the rejoinder: “You ho!”

The crowd forms a circle. A formidable young woman in a blue tank top lunges at her braided foe, and the pair go tumbling onto a sidewalk strewn with greasy paper plates and leftover pizza crusts. Some patrons break out of the line altogether to get a better view, and ecstatic men shout whatever catfight clichés pop into their heads.

“Rip her shirt off!” screeches an overjoyed meathead, his right hand pumping the air in a fist, his left forearm cradling a slice of pizza.

As the swaying throng bumps up against cars parked along the sidewalk, a man in a teal Mitsubishi decides it’s time to get his sporty ride out of harm’s way. He is blocked by revelers who are hanging out in the street. First, he nudges the riffraff with his front bumper. Then, unwisely, he decides to lay on his horn. Someone cocks a slice of pizza back to his shoulder and hurls it, like a circus clown in a pie fight, clipping the rear wheel well on the driver’s side. The driver brakes hard, thinks better of it, and then moves along.

Back on the sidewalk, a volunteer referee has managed to tear the women apart. But the circle hasn’t broken up just yet; now two dudes are swapping unintelligible insults and throwing wild haymakers. It’s not even 3 a.m.

There are two easy ways to find yourself in the middle of an early-morning slugfest at Pizza Mart: Hit on someone else’s significant other, or try to cut in line for pizza.

After all, owner Chris Chishti’s crew isn’t serving up just any kind of slice. His renowned “jumbo slice,” a greasy slab that requires two paper plates to handle, runs nearly a foot-and-a-half long, and weighs in just shy of a pound. Novices at the counter often have to ask how to go about eating such a beast. As any jumbo-slice veteran will tell them, you just fold it like the morning newspaper and go to work.

In the five or so years Chishti’s been dishing out his trademark, it’s become a staple for late-night bargoers who are looking to coat their stomachs before the long cab ride back to the ’burbs. As for the Tijuana-cockfight atmosphere, one can’t help but notice that the excess commotion merely reflects the excess of Chishti’s slices.

But they weren’t always so monstrous. In fact, when the Pakistan native opened his modest carryout in 1997, he had no intention of stretching his pies far beyond their initial 18-inch diameter. That is, until one of his neophyte cooks left behind a mangled dough ball after a busy night in 1999.

When Chishti strolled into his shop the next morning, he figured the misshapen mound was unusable. But then he took a fresh dough ball from another tray. “What I did, I took that dough ball and put it with the other dough ball,” says the mustachioed Chishti, clapping together his cupped hands to illustrate the epiphany. He kneaded the oversized ball, dropped it on a baking screen, and sent it through his conveyer oven dressed with cheese and sauce.

What came out the other end was jumbo indeed, and its creator saw no reason to stop there: “I said, ‘Let’s go bigger.’”

Three different pizza shops on the main drag of 18th Street now serve the city’s famous jumbo slice. Each proprietor asserts his own form of jumbo-slice originality:

•Chishti, owner of Pizza Mart: “I’m a pizza maker. I was calling mine the jumbo slice. Then he went over there and starting calling his the jumbo slice.” “He” refers to Jawed Khan, owner of Pizza Napoli.

•Khan: “We came in with the biggest slice.”

•John Nasir, owner of Pizza Boli’s: “I don’t know how you can ‘invent’ something….Maybe [Chishti] took the idea from one of our stores.”

As the first cook on the block, Chishti stakes the only legitimate claim. He was the first pizza maker on the block to widen his pie beyond 20 inches, and he also bestowed the now-famous moniker on his peculiar slice. But his brainchild has been hijacked over the years—by his former pizza associates, no less—so the genial Chishti gets a bit prickly over the issue of jumbo-slice legitimacy.

“You don’t need a coat and a tie to make pizzas,” says Chishti, arguing that his competitors are businessmen rather than cooks. He says a secret recipe for his jumbo slice accounts for a taste superior to the other pizzas on 18th Street. “I’ve been doing this for 23 years—that’s my experience.”

The most visible spat unfolded last year, when Nasir, owner of the 75-store Pizza Boli’s chain and a former business partner of Chishti’s, greenlighted one of his franchises to open just three doors up the street from Pizza Mart. The franchisee, Kerry Guneri, made the jumbo slice his featured product. He and Chishti quickly found themselves in the middle of a neon-sign war:

•March 2003: Guneri opens his Pizza Boli’s. He installs a neon “Jumbo Slice” sign in the window on the southern side of his store. It’s facing the Pizza Mart, where Chishti’s window holds a mere plastic “Jumbo Slice” sign.

•July 2003: Guneri compounds the insult by installing two additional neon signs. These read “Original Jumbo Slice.” Chishti decides to respond the very same day Guneri’s new signs go up. He calls Xin Guan Signs near Chinatown, Guneri’s supplier, and orders a neon sign that reads “Real Original Jumbo Slice.”

•July 2003: Guneri tells the Washington City Paper (“Pie Fight,” 7/25/03) he’s through installing the neon signs, which cost about $700 apiece. “This place is lit up like a whorehouse as it is,” he says.

•August 2003: Chishti installs a final neon sign, designed by one of his regular customers on a piece of scrap paper. It reads “First Oldest Original Jumbo Slice.”

Anyone who bothers to parse the vying shops’ respective strings of adjectives surely would see that Chishti invented the jumbo slice. But what escaped both proprietors was the fact that nobody cares. In reality, many self-proclaimed jumbo fans couldn’t tell you whether they’d eaten a slice from Pizza Mart or Pizza Boli’s the night before. It’s like trying to remember whether you stopped at an Arby’s or a Hardee’s on a road trip.

When Khan, once an employee of Chishti’s, opened up the rival Pizza Napoli just down the street from Pizza Mart in late 1999, he knew the game wasn’t about creating a special sauce or even serving a marginally better pizza. It was about making a bigger slice.

“They had an 18-inch pie and then went to a 22-inch,” Khan says of Pizza Mart. “[But] we came in here and started with a 30-inch. That was the biggest.” Chishti disputes that Khan’s pie was ever larger, but the point is clear: Size trumps everything else.

In spite of Chishti’s talk of a secret recipe for his jumbo slice, the customer demands only that his belly be full in the end. The gluttony imperative was lost on Bill Thomas, owner of the Blue Room club on 18th Street, and proprietor of the now-defunct Kung Fu Pizza, which once occupied a portion of the same building. When he opened his kitschy, martial-arts-themed pizzeria in 2000, Thomas and his team had spent months working on recipes for gourmet pies, even experimenting with spring water in their dough.

“We actually thought quality would sell, and we were stupid,” says Thomas. Kung Fu Pizza shut its doors after a four-month run. The eatery stayed open late and attracted a small following from the wait staffs of surrounding bars, but the Adams Morgan party crowd never took to the Asian finger food and modestly sized pizza. “At the end of the day, it was all about the big slice,” he says.

When your slice’s supremacy is predicated entirely on size, the only way to improve it is to make it larger. So Chishti has expanded the diameter of his pie at least five times since he opened, finally arriving at the 32-incher he cooks today.

The pies on 18th Street have stopped expanding only because there’s no larger pizza oven on the market. Khan has considered buying an oven designed primarily for large cakes; Chishti, who’s already upgraded his oven once, has started cheating with the one he has, sending his pies over the burners stretched in one dimension. This method results in slightly larger, if oval, pizzas.

Such evolution has made the slices unwieldy—and not just for the customer. Both Chishti and Khan grew their slices right out of the delivery business. Chishti decided years ago that he wouldn’t even try to bring his No. 1 product to your front door. “You put it in the box and send it, by the time it gets to the customer it’s soggy,” he says. “We don’t want that to happen to our jumbo.”

Khan, however, was more determined. He ordered custom cardboard boxes that measured nearly 3 feet across, just so he could deliver the entire jumbo pie in its original form, rather than stack the slices on top of one another in a single box. When the boxes buckled under the sheer weight of the pies, sending all the grease to the center, he looked into heavy-duty cardboard boxes that cost three times as much as the pizza itself. He even special-ordered an insulated, jumbo-size delivery sheath; it could have doubled as a toddler’s sleeping bag.

But in the end, most of his drivers couldn’t even fit the pies into their cars.

Khan had to scrap the delivery venture after just a year. Which was fine with him, because all the action comes in off the street.

Like any overhead-conscious carryout proprietor in D.C., Chishti likes to keep the inside of his business spare. The eatery includes a handful of stools and a pair of steel counters, but there are no chairs and no tables. No customer bathrooms. No artwork. And certainly no nutritional-information charts.

Even though your average clubhopper loves to crack a joke about fat content as she paints her face with tomato sauce on 18th Street, she doesn’t really want to know just how much energy is stored in that jumbo slice.

The Washington City Paper sent three cheese jumbo slices, one from each of the jumbo-pizza makers, to the ABC Research Corp., a food-testing laboratory in Gainesville, Fla. Calculated on the basis of the lab’s calories-per-gram analysis, the single slices from both Pizza Mart and Pizza Boli’s soared over the 1,000-calorie threshold.

Pizza Boli’s trounced the field with a whopping 1,309 calories, and Pizza Mart settled for silver with a respectable 1,117. That’s roughly equivalent to two Big Macs, or, for active women and most men, about half the calories the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends for an entire day’s intake, let alone as a Friday-evening nightcap. By comparison, Pizza Napoli’s slice made for light fare at a modest 917 calories, but it weighed significantly less than the competitors’.

None of the slices necessarily jibe with today’s low-carbohydrate diet fad, either. Each sample stored more than 115 grams of carbs alone, including the comparably dainty slice from Pizza Napoli, which had a disproportionately high carb rate. The slice from Pizza Boli’s again led the pack in fat content; its roughly 53 grams just edges out Pizza Mart’s 47.

The growth of the jumbo slice may have been foiled by the undersized ovens, but not before it became the city’s lone culinary icon, the District’s own take on the supersize phenomenon. It was an unlikely turn, given that the jumbo slice has nothing to do with America’s growing waistline. That petite, Bally’s-going little tart who comes pinballing out of the club, dying to get her hands on a slice of pizza that could probably be wrapped around her torso—she’s not the same woman buying the latest meal deal at McDonald’s four times a week.

No, the jumbo slice sprang from the very same beast that sustains it: drunkenness. Any jumbo-slice owner will tell you that the majority of his weekly sales are made over the course of about eight hours on the weekend.

“Sometimes people throw a slice on you,” says an exasperated Chishti, who tries to clock in exclusively during the daylight hours now. “They’re drunk, they fight with each other, they argue… Sometimes you’re serving pizza to guys who are so drunk they’re hard to handle.” In a painful show of irony, Chishti was once the target of a flying jumbo slice, hurled by a loaded patron who said the pizza was too large to eat.

There’s an old joke that says everybody’s eaten a jumbo slice but nobody remembers it. The joke gets told quite often, mainly because it’s true. Most people, when they consider the sheer size and uncontrollable grease, can’t stomach the thought of eating a jumbo slice during the day. Drop an open napkin on a jumbo slice and it disappears.

The sober and sensible tend to stay clear of the big slice and, for that matter, the 18th Street pizzerias altogether. Over the course of a weekday lunch hour in Adams Morgan, the staff at Pizza Mart might sell just a few slices. But once the bars close and everybody’s sauced, the jumbo becomes the centerpiece of 18th Street’s pre-dawn circus. And priced at $4 or less, it’s a perfectly affordable, even expendable, toy. That’s why so many slices wind up in the street, on top of cars, and, often, in people’s faces. It’s an insane spectacle for a neighborhood where many people still beg for change each day.

“The funny thing is, now people know about them,” says Adams Morgan resident Mindy Moretti, baffled by the jumbo’s popularity. “You see people taking pictures of other people eating them. They’re almost a…tourist attraction.”

And like any tourist magnet, these slices require their own police protection. Officers Andrew Zabavsky and Dustin Roeder, two D.C. bike cops assigned to Adams Morgan, have made the area in front of Pizza Mart something of a default post during their weekend-night shifts. Most cops would rather handle parking complaints all night than work a strip full of obnoxious, drunken brawlers, but Zabavsky and Roeder have staked it out as their beat. Riding mountain bikes, they spend much of their night dodging drunks who stagger out into the street.

“Most of the fights tend to gravitate around the pizza joints,” says Zabavsky. “Some days it’s off the hook, one after another after another.” It doesn’t matter where a scuffle has its roots—out in the street, inside a club, or way back in childhood—the fuse often gets lit in the jumbo-slice line. Roeder talks about the pizza servers as if they have the most treacherous job in town: “With the bars, at least they can send a bouncer out to flag us down for help. But the pizza guys, they’re pinned in back there.”

The cops have collared many bruisers on 18th Street, but it’s often the less violent jumbo-slice incidents that stick out in their minds. “Craziest thing I ever saw with the jumbo slice,” starts Zabavsky: “This guy up near McDonald’s drops his slice right on the ground—cheese-down and everything. He picks it right up and starts eating it like nothing happened. He’s smiling.”

On a Friday night, the sauce on your Pizza Mart jumbo slice comes out of what’s commonly referred to as a “garbage can.” There’s nothing necessarily unsanitary about this storage method; it merely indicates the massive amount of pizza that will be moved in a single night.

The volume of cheese is similarly industrial. On a Friday afternoon in mid-October, Pizza Mart receives a shipment of roughly 900 pounds of a mozzarella-provolone mix. That’s nearly half a ton.

“And I’ll probably be back on Monday,” sighs 55-year-old Thomas Carroll, a deliveryman for Nino’s Pizza Dough, sweating as he schleps the 30 boxes with a handtruck. Asked if that’s an extraordinary amount of cheese, Carroll laughs. “You see all them boxes?” he asks, gesturing to about 1,500 stacked and bundled pizza boxes on his truck, each destined to hold just a single slice. “Those are for [Pizza Mart], too.” Of the 40 or so regular deliveries Carroll makes, only a Maryland pizzeria takes in more product than Pizza Mart. And right behind Pizza Mart on the list is the Naval Academy.

Inside the Pizza Mart kitchen, there are no chef hats, no high-flung dough, and no handlebar mustaches. The rush-hour spectacle is more a lesson in ergonomics than in Italian culinary tradition. This is where, on a busy weekend night, an assembly line of cooks will manufacture upward of 800 pounds of pizza in a matter of hours. There’s nothing romantic about the process:

One guy takes a gooey dough ball off a plastic tray. Tonight there are about 80 dough balls ready to go for the late-night blitz. He kneads and stretches the dough to its 32-inch diameter, drops it on a screen, and passes it to the next cook.

This guy dresses the dough. He ladles his sauce from the plastic can with what looks to be a family-size salad bowl, and he sprinkles mozzarella-provolone mix from packages pulled from 30-pound boxes. When the pie’s ready, it makes its slow crawl through the oven on a conveyer belt, out the other side to the last cook.

This guy cuts the pie, places the slices onto aluminum-foil-covered plates, and drops them onto a metal tray with a thud. He needs to fold the bottom third of each slice back onto its upper portion just to make sure it stays on the plate. “Sometimes, during the day, they’ll say, ‘Oh, I don’t want this. You folded it. That’s no good,’” says Munir Butt, working the register on a Friday night. “But not right now.”

Finally, the slices go under the heat lamp. From start to finish, the journey lasts less than 10 minutes. Pies ride on through the oven, shoulder to shoulder, throughout the night.

Out front, three workers serve the slices and man the register. They’ll handle the slices with metal tongs, in order to keep the grease off their hands and clothes, and they’ll bang the counter with their tongs when they’re ready for the next customer. They work three, four, sometimes five people deep in the line, just to keep up with the 2 a.m. rush. A tiny fraction of the slices—maybe 2 percent—are so mutilated that they don’t make the cut. Of the slices they do serve, some look as if they’ve been sat on. Regardless, every slice will be pounced on.

“The pizza guys really have cultivated this post-nocturnal feeding frenzy,” says Scott Bennett, owner of the newly opened Amsterdam Falafelshop on 18th Street. “The way I see it, when the tide comes in, all boats float. God bless the pizza guys.”

But no one in tonight’s kitchen, nor its owner, will be getting rich off the jumbo slice. In favorable weather, a jumbo joint might sell anywhere between 600 and 1,000 slices on a strong weekend night; priced between $3.50 and $4 a pop, that might bring in somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000 in an evening. But after covering rent, ingredients, and the pay for seven staffers or more on the busy shifts, the owners will be left with pocket change on each slice.

So if you can’t pack more weekends into a year, you may as well pack more pizzerias into the city. Nasir, for one, says he may be serving his big boy out of a new Pizza Boli’s on U Street NW by the end of this month. Khan has already started dishing his own monstrosity out of his kebab house, also on U Street.

But Khan sees no reason to contain the jumbo slice within the District. Early next year, he expects to open a pizzeria in Florida. After researching locales in South Beach and Key West, he says he’s just about settled on the City Walk area of Orlando.

“It will be all about the jumbo,” he promises.

The mess left behind after the weekend pizza craze has put the jumbo slice and its purveyors at the very top of the Adams Morgan NIMBY list. Moretti, a member of the local advisory neighborhood commission, says an uncanny wind tunnel carries greasy paper plates up 18th Street, across Columbia Road, and all the way to her Adams Mill Road apartment building on gusty weekend mornings.

“Several of us have joked about going and collecting all the paper plates, putting them in a trash can, finding out where the [pizzeria] owners live, and dumping them in their yards,” says Moretti.

When bars and clubs become a nuisance, residents can force owners into line by threatening to withhold their support for a liquor-license renewal. But when it comes to the pizza joints, none of which serve liquor, the residents hold no bureaucratic aces up their sleeves. Essentially, the pizza places reap all the benefits of a nightlife business without being held to the same standards. “We can hold up against bars because of the [alcoholic-beverage] commission,” says Bryan Weaver, also a neighborhood commissioner. “But there’s no Shitty Sauce Commission where we can go and say, ‘Hey, these guys are making bad pizza.’”

The commission has supported a neighborhood liquor-license moratorium since it was introduced in 2000. Some members, resigned to fielding cheese-and-crust complaints at each monthly meeting, say they would be willing to place a similar moratorium on the jumbo, if only it were possible.

“Our hands are tied as far as the big slice goes,” says Moretti.

The public-health implications of the jumbo are on full display on a recent Sunday. In the hours before dawn, the mess on the sidewalk in front of Pizza Mart forces squeamish passers-by onto their tiptoes, hopping from one small patch of visible concrete to the next. Greasy plates and pizza boxes, too many to count, blanket the sidewalk. Maimed slices sit on top of cars and inside flowerpots. Fat pigeons peck their way through tomato sauce and cheese.

The inside of Pizza Mart looks the same as the outside, only no pigeons. At 4:30 a.m., cashier Butt shuts off the neon, locks the front door, and mouths an apology through the window to a few tardy stragglers hoping to get a slice.

The last jumbo customer of the night, now satiated, looks over both shoulders before dropping his empty pizza box between two cars parked at the curb. What’s one more bit of cardboard added to the mess? He takes a final sip from his soda, leans over, and places the empty cup on top of the box.

On the sidewalk, a bored bouncer gets his kicks by shining a flashlight on the rats that have come out to feast on more pizza than they can handle. These rats live a good life, and this is their prime feeding hour—a short window of time after the heavy foot traffic has died down but before the sprawling slices have been scooped up. Aside from the bouncer, their only company is a lonely sot dry-heaving beside a parking meter, his chin covered in spittle.

Butt says a homeless guy agreed to clean up the storefront after close tonight for 10 bucks, but by 5 a.m. it looks as if he’s a no-show. As usual, this morning’s pizza detail will fall to just one man: Anwar Tate, a 29-year-old Department of Public Works employee, who works his way up 18th Street every Saturday and Sunday morning armed with a metal rake, a heavy-duty shovel, and a ride-on vacuum. Tate’s chipper today, and he’ll need to be. He’s got only two hours to knock off the entire block before Adams Morgan’s early risers come out expecting a pizza-free street.

“You try to get it off the sidewalk as quick as you can,” he says, handling the slices with either the shovel or his gloved hands. “It’s just part of the job.”

There’s plenty of pizza refuse beyond Tate’s jurisdiction. Slices have been flung into the yards of residents along Euclid Street NW and throughout Adams Morgan. Paper plates and napkins dot a path all the way over the Duke Ellington Bridge and up to the Woodley Park Metro station, over half a mile away. And because plenty of slices found their way into cabs, surely some of the 800 jumbos dished out at Pizza Mart have traveled over the Potomac into Virginia by now.

Butt says Pizza Mart, despite brisk business, didn’t have a single fight last night. But when he turned his back for just a second during the blitz, some asshole made off with the tip jar. It was only $15 or $20, to be split among the staff at close. “Not much,” he acknowledges. “But you work hard for it.”CP

My Class at American University, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Last night, the class was over-booked and Meredith was an amazing prof. I did well enough to get and keep everyone’s attention and we ended up in a fantastic dialogue about legitimacy of online writing (it is emergent and not conferred, decided upon by the readership body and not by a publishing masthead). I really enjoyed being the guest lecturer at American University on the topic of blogging and social media in the context of History in the Digital Age. Check out the class’ blog, History in the Digital Age @ AU. I love doing this sort of lecturing so please ask me. I have lectured at Columbia University and American University thus far and look forward to expanding my experience. Thanks to the generosity of Professor Meredith Hindley.  I had quite a lovely night.

Lincoln Memorial and Winter Trees, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Drove by the Lincoln on the way home from the Hill (to Arlington) and grabbed this Wintery photo of the Lincoln Memorial with my Nokia N95. Was a “shooting while driving” photo so please forgive the composition.

Tour Bus and the Lincoln Memorial, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

On the way home from the Hill (picking up wash-and-fold laundry) I took a detour through Haines Point and then buzzed by the Lincoln and tool this photo of the Lincoln Memorial and an angry tour bus.

Late Night Menu at Tunnicliff’s, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

Yes, I have been spending way too much time at Tunnicliff’s Tavern. Meeting buddies like Ollie and Andrew. Used to spend even more time. Sometimes really late, taking advantage of this hallowed Late Night Menu. Amen.

A Beer at Tunnicliff’s Tavern, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

After did a rare in-person pitch I stopped for a beer at good ‘ole Tunnicliff’s Tavern, an Eastern Market tradition.

11/01/2008, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.

I am still in Washington, DC, and have been able to spend some really lovely time with my chums here in the District, including one of my favorite couples ever (top-five of all time), Minh Le and Aimee Oberndorfer. They’re engaged and they shared margaritas with me at La Lomita Dos on the Hill.

Lots of people have so many great questions about the 2007 Energy Bill coming up and what the NET coalition is doing to push through an aggressive energy bill that would push CAFE standards for cars to 35 mpg by 2020 and the percentage of electricity in the US provided by renewable sources of electricity to 15% by 2020. Please sign the petition. Learn more about CAFE standards from Click and Clack, the guys from Car Talk, Tom and Ray Magliozzi. Also, see how much this matters, especially to students who will be inheriting the future of the planet during their Lobby Day during which students took to the Hill and lobbied the House and the Senate. (Via Memes.org and Chris Abraham Online)

1. What exactly is this 2007 Energy Bill that I have been reading about lately?
The 2007 Energy Bill is an important piece of legislation awaiting ratification in Congress. It includes several elements that would crub the mount of energy used in the US and reduce dependence on foreign oil. Two main issues in this energy bill would be an increase in standards to 15% renewable electricity by 2020. This would entail more alternate energy source such as wind and solar power. One of the more debated elements of the bill is the 35 mpg by 2020 fuel efficiency standard. Which would mean that all cars and light trucks would need to reach this capacity by 2020.

2. What is the difference between a couple of mpg in cars over the next 15 years?
Although the drop in the standard that the auto alliance is demanding 32 mpg by 2022 does not seem like a lot but it adds up if you look at the numbers the Union of Concerned Scientists calculated (published in “Energy Bill Must Guarantee Real Oil Savings” ,Sept,.2007). The barrels of oil saved per day with the auto lobby proposal would be 500,000 versus 1.2 million which would be saved with the Senate’s 35 mpg by 2020 standard. What does this mean for the American consumer? The savings would be $11 billion with the lower standards and $25 Billion with the Senate’s.

3. Why should I find this important to my family?
This is important to every American family who wants to see the world we live in maintained a beautiful place. New alternative energy sources would mean less dependence on fossil fuels drastically lowering the amount of pollution emitted every day. This bill is aimed at helping the entire planet and if America finally steps up to the plate and passes this energy bill it could set the example for other rapidly industrializing countries. This would ensure a brighter future for families around the world.

4. What is the most effective way to communicate my opinion to congress?
The National Coalition for the Environment has set up a petition allowing every American citizen a quick and easy way to let their voice be heard by their representatives. It is conveniently available online at http://www.energybill2007.org/.

5. How does Power Shift 2007 relate to the energy bill? If it does.
Power Shift 2007 was a student lobbying initiative that reached out to Congress in person on Monday November 5th as well as organizing other events to raise environmental awareness. They were on the Hill on November 5th speaking to Congress about the importance of creating strong environmental policy and endorsed several environmentally friendly bills including the 2007 energy bill. Check out Lobby Day, http://www.smnr.us/lobbyday

Here’s some pretty cool advanced stuff that is happening on the Hill this weekend in support of Energy Bill 2007, http://www.energybill2007.org, My coalition is running a display ad at the Capitol South metro station in Washington, DC, (see photos below) as well as a huge student lobbying effort about global warming and the Energy Bill (http://powershift07.org/lobby) going on right now and through Monday (see talking points below). This big event is called Power Shift Day 07 and you’re welcome to explore the web site and also check out the talking points, either in HTML or as the original PDF (Via Memes.org, SMNR, Chris Abraham Online, and Power Shift 07)

Display Ads at the Capitol South Metro Station

Power Shift 2007 Lobby Day Talking Points (PDF)

Dear Lobby Day Participants:

Thank you for your very important decision to participate in the Power Shift 2007 Lobby Day, the single largest lobby day on climate change ever! As you head to Capitol Hill this Monday you will be making history, and sending a very strong message to Congress that it’s time they listen up and get to work!

The strongest thing we are brining to capitol hill on Monday is ourselves. We have compelling stories to tell, and the ability to passionately articulate the urgent action we need our federal government to take to address the issue of global warming.

In this packet you will find a number of materials that we hope you find helpful as you prepare for your lobby visits. We’ve included a listing of all scheduled meetings with Senators, Representatives, and their Staff, a list of voting records to help you see where your members stand, and a sample lobby ask.

A few very important notes about the lobby ask itself. We as the Energy Action Coalition do not currently feel that there is any legislation that goes far enough to solve the global warming crisis. We have attempted to illustrate which current bills help us go in the right direction and what measures should be taken to get them to a better place than they are right now. The 1Sky ask that appears in the beginning of the document has been voted and agreed upon by the Energy Action Coalition – it represents a bold policy platform that takes us where we absolutely need to go. Its important to note that the rest of the ask we’ve outlined has not been voted on or supported by the Energy Action Coalition, but instead represents the input and advice of many leaders who have experience working on global warming legislation.

Go in and speak from your heart. Tell the members of Congress what matters to you, use these documents as much as you feel comfortable and know that there is no wrong position to advocate for as long as it’s what you believe.

Ask questions of the staff we have available, ask your peers, do your own research, and enjoy the fact that you are making history. It’s our job to hold our members of Congress accountable – they work for the American people, and as the leaders of the youth climate movement, we have to make sure they hear us loud and clear.

Good luck!

The Power Shift 2007 Team

Power Shift 2007
Lobby Day Talking Points

Introduction:
My name is _________. I go to school or live in _________. I’ve been fighting global warming at my school or in my community by _________.

Problem:
We are here today as students and voters of your district. We represent thousands more, back on our campuses that are deeply concerned about global warming. We are here to talk to you about the extreme urgency we see around global warming, and most importantly we are here to discuss the bold solutions that you must support in order to halt global warming and work towards a clean, efficient and just energy future for our generation and generations to come. The stakes are incredibly high for us; we are already seeing the effects of global warming all around the world, particularly in the most vulnerable communities that have done the least to cause the problem. TALK ABOUT LOCAL IMPACT HERE.

Leading scientists say that we’re nearing a “tipping point” where if we don’t make immediate and significant reductions to our global warming emissions, we run the risk of causing catastrophic changes to our country and the world. Fortunately, we have the ability and technology available to make changes that will dramatically cut global warming pollution and make a just transition to a clean energy economy. We need your leadership to help move us as quickly as we possibly can to implement these changes.

Platform:
We’re part of the bold new 1 Sky Campaign, and we want to talk first with you about our policy platform and then about specific pieces of legislation. The 1 Sky platform presents three priorities for what it takes to address global warming.

1. Green Jobs Now
Create 5 million new jobs through a Clean Energy Corps to conserve 20% of our energy by 2015. A sweeping national mobilization for efficient buildings and transit systems, healthy communities, and energy independence would create pathways out of poverty and service opportunities for millions of Americans that want to join the fight against global warming.

2. Cut Carbon 80% by 2050: Start by reducing emissions at least 30% by 2020
This is consistent with what the European Union has committed to do. We need to lead, not follow, in addressing one of the most pressing issues of our generation. 100% of any pollution allowances generated from a cap on emissions must be auctioned from Day 1.

3. No New Coal
Reprogram fossil fuel and highway investments for clean energy and smart transportation choices. Start with a firm moratorium on new coal plants.

These principles are BOLD, but our future is on the line and we need a serious response.

SUPPLEMENT: SUGGESTIONS ON EXISTING LEGISLATION

Note: These are suggestions, but are not an officially passed position by the Energy Action Coalition. We recommend choosing only a few things to talk about, and you should interject any positions not listed that you feel are important for the members to hear.

HOUSE AND SENATE: The Energy Bill
The most immediate thing you can do to help curb global warming pollution is to pass a very strong Energy Bill. For us, the bill must include:

• A minimum 35 mpg by 2020 fuel efficiency standard similar to the legislation that passed the Senate. We have the technology to go much farther, and urge you to support a significantly higher MPG standard.
• A Renewable Electricity Standard (RPS) similar to the legislation that passed the House that will require utilities to get at least 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources like wind and solar power by 2020. The RPS eligible resources should not include nuclear, municipal solid waste, or other non-organic waste and resources. 24 states have passed similar standards, and it is time for Congress to act.
• The inclusion of the Green Jobs Act of 2007 H.R. 2847
• Absolutely NO subsidies for Liquid Coal or Nuclear Energy.

These items must be included for the Energy Bill to be a down payment on the emissions reductions we need and put us on the path toward a new energy future.

ASK: Will you support a final Energy Bill that includes these policies?

HOUSE: For members NOT on the Waxman Safe Climate Act
We are here today to ask you to cosponsor the Safe Climate Act (HR 1590), a bill introduced by Representative Waxman that provides a comprehensive, science-based solution to global warming. The Safe Climate Act is the strongest global warming legislation in the House, because it contains four elements that must be in any realistic attempt to stop global warming:

• A national cap on global warming pollution that produces real reductions from today’s
  levels within a decade and reaches 80% reductions by 2050.
• A strong national renewable electricity standard by 2020. 15% Minimum.
• Strong standards to reduce global warming emissions from cars and SUVs.
• A national energy efficiency standard to cut down on our wasteful use of energy.

The Safe Climate Act aims to keep emissions below the critical tipping point. It would put in place the emission limits that the science shows are needed to avoid dangerous global warming.

Here’s how the bill works: it would freeze U.S. emissions in 2010 and then gradually reduce them by roughly 2% per year through 2020. We can make these reductions by using cleaner energy technologies that we already have such as hybrid cars and solar and wind power. After 2020, the bill cuts emissions by roughly 5% per year, as more advanced technologies, such as zero-energy buildings and biofuels from waste materials, become widely available.

To help achieve the emission reductions, the bill calls for a greater reliance on clean, renewable energy sources, improved energy efficiency, and cleaner cars.

ASK: Will you co-sponsor the Safe Climate Act?

HOUSE: Co-Sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act (H.R. 2169)
We also ask you to reverse the rule change in the Clean Water Protection Act that altered the longstanding definition of "fill material" to include mining waste. This rule change was implemented in 2002 by the Army Corps of Engineers under the direction of the Bush administration and without congressional approval. This rule change accelerated the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and the destruction of more than 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams.

ASK: WILL YOU REVERSE THE RULE CHANGE TO THE CWPA?

SENATE: For members not on the Sanders-Boxer Global Warming Reduction Act
The recently released Warner-Lieberman Bill does not take us far enough in the essential areas necessary to solve global warming. We are here to ask you to cosponsor the Global Warming Reduction Act, a bill introduced by Senators Sanders and Boxer that provides a comprehensive, science-based solution to global warming. This is the strongest bill in the Senate because it contains four elements that must be in any realistic attempt to stop global warming:

• A national cap on global warming pollution that produces real reductions from today’s levels within a decade and reaches 80% reductions by 2050. We support at 30% reduction by 2020 to get on track with the EU commitments.
• A strong national renewable electricity standard. Minimum 15% by 2020.
• Strong standards to reduce global warming emissions from cars and SUVs.
• A national energy efficiency standard to cut down on our wasteful use of energy. The Global Warming Reduction Act aims to keep emissions below the critical tipping point. It would put in place the emission limits that the science shows are needed to avoid dangerous global warming.

Here’s how the bill works: it would freeze U.S. emissions in 2010 and then gradually reduce them by roughly 2% per year through 2020. We can make these reductions by using cleaner energy technologies that we already have such as hybrid cars and solar and wind power. After 2020, the bill cuts emissions by roughly 5% per year, as more advanced technologies, such as zero-energy buildings and biofuels from waste materials, become widely available. To help achieve the emission reductions, the bill calls for a greater reliance on clean, renewable energy sources, improved energy efficiency, and cleaner cars.

ASK: Will you co-sponsor the Global Warming Reduction Act?

HOUSE AND SENATE: For Supporters of Waxman and Sanders-Boxer
I want to thank you for co-sponsoring the Safe Climate Act (House) or the Global Warming Reduction Act (Senate). This bill does what the science says we need to do to stop the worst effects of global warming, and we appreciate your support for it.

Now I want to ask you to sign our statement calling for auctioning the pollution allowances in any cap-and-trade system. We are calling on federal lawmakers to limit global warming emissions to the levels demanded by the science and to auction all pollution allowances in any cap-and-trade program.

• The atmosphere as a common resource and no one has a “right” to pollute. Many of the most egregious polluters have spent years lobbying against any action on global warming – - they should not get additional consideration for transition beyond the phase-in of the cap. 100 percent of pollution allowances should be auctioned from Day 1.
• The distribution of free allowances to polluters has caused windfall profits under the European trading system. Worse, they have not resulted in desired carbon emissions reductions. By auctioning pollution allowances, we prevent the accumulation of billions of dollars in windfall profits by polluters, and instead put those revenues to work on behalf of the public.
• Polluters should pay from day 1, and the proceeds should be invested to develop clean technologies and green job training programs, ease the burden on low-income Americans for higher energy costs, help workers suffering economic displacement, and provide physical protection for those in harm’s way from global warming.

ASK: Will you sign the statement calling for auctioning the pollution allowances in any cap-and-trade system?

IN CLOSING: As our leader in Congress, we look to you to do everything you can to support strong, immediate global warming solutions. Please accept these adoption papers. We will follow up with you to see how you’re progressing on these asks. Thank you for meeting with us.

FOLLOW-UP PLAN: For students meeting with staff: Ask for an in-district meeting with the Representative. For students meeting with their Congressperson: invite then to speak on the issue of global warming at their University. Remember that Focus the Nation is coming up on January 31, 2008 – a perfect opportunity!

DON’T FORGET TO FILL OUT YOUR LOBBY EVALUATION FORM!

Effective Grassroots Lobbying Meetings

1. Know your goals and roles going in. What do you want to get out of the meeting? Who starts the meeting off? Who will speak and when?
2. Who you are matters. Tell your story. Why do you care and why are you moved to act?
3. Deliver a clear message. Your message on climate change shouldn’t just be a list of bulleted policy points, but should address why the member of Congress or staff should care and act.
4. Demonstrate your power. The Millennial Generation is 50 million strong. We’re 1/4 of the potential electorate right now and will be 1/3 by 2015. We’re more active and more aware than any generation since the baby boomers. We’re not going away. And we vote.
5. Politely control the conversation. Remember what you came for. Politicians/staff often control conversations with small talk, talking about things other than the issue at hand, or asking questions they know you can’t answer. Stay focused on your goal and diplomatically move the conversation where you want it to go.
   1. Make a hard ask. “Can we count on you to support the principles of the 1Sky platform?”
   2. Shut up and listen. If you don’t make them respond, you’ll never know where they stand.
   3. Be strategic in your response: Thank supporters and help turn them into champions. If you can, give undecideds the information they need to become supporters or commit to get them something if you don’t know it. Neutralize the opposition if possible, but don’t waste too much time trying to argue with them.
6. Thank them for taking the time to meet, regardless of their position.

General Grassroots Lobbying Tips

1. Do: stay positive, talk in the public interest, view this as an educational process, and take the long view (no permanent enemies, no permanent friends).
2. Don’t: whine, threaten, bluff, misrepresent the facts, malign the opposition, personalize differences of opinion, or burn bridges.
3. Saying “I don’t know” is not a crime. It’s always OK to say that you don’t know but will follow up with the answer they’re looking for. You don’t have to be a policy expert to be effective.
4. Remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’re not going to get everything you want out of this meeting. It’s the beginning of a critical relationship that will ultimately move them over time.
5. Follow up with any information you promise or commitments you make.

More Tips for Making Your Lobby Meetings Memorable

1. Hats Off to Green Jobs
Be sure to get a green hard hat on Monday morning before your lobby day visit or at the rally at noon. Wear it into your lobby meetings to remind your Congressperson about all of the opportunities that real solutions to global warming will bring. Ask them if they’d like to keep the green hard hat to demonstrate their support for creating a new Clean Energy Corps.

2. Adopt Your Congressperson
What better way to let Congress know that you care about them than to adopt them? At the end of your lobby meeting, give your representative adoption papers and let them know that you’ll be in touch soon to help them grow and mature into a Congressperson that will vote yes to bold and comprehensive climate legislation. Make sure to invite them to a Focus the Nation event at your school or in your community on January 31st, 2008.

3. Capture the Moment
Bring a small video camera or borrow one of the Flip digital camcorders we’ll have on hand for the day. At the end of your meeting, turn on the camera and ask your representative to commit to the 1 Sky platform on camera. Capture their response on film. Make sure you follow the detailed instructions that come with the flip camera.

4. So, Can I Give You a Call Sometime?
Before you leave the lobby meeting, take out your cell phone and ask your representative or the staff member for their number. Then, when you get back to school, spend an afternoon tabling with your cell phone. When people stop by your table, ask them to call their representatives to tell them that students demand solutions to global warming.

LOBBY DAY FAQ

NOTE: If you have any lobby day questions at any time, call our staff line at 877-328-1633.

What is a “lobby day,” anyway?
The Power Shift 2007 Lobby Day is your chance to meet your elected officials face-to-face and give them a piece of your mind on climate change. You and hundreds of your peers, representing all 50 states and hundreds of congressional districts, will go to Capitol Hill to demand bold change directly from your leaders and their staff, so they are held accountable to the demands of our generation.

What’s the timeline?
The earliest lobby meetings are scheduled for 10:00am, and you’ll want to show up a half-hour in advance outside your lobby meeting locations whenever possible (refer to your Master Schedule for your meeting times and locations, and then the Capitol Complex map for office building locations).

Where should I be when I’m not going to a meeting?
The Power Shift Rally Point for Monday is on the West Lawn of the Capitol Building. If you find yourself between meetings or without any more to attend, come back to the West Lawn where everyone else will be, so we can maintain a show of numbers and have everyone together for our rally at noon.

How many meetings am I going to?
Your top priority is to attend meetings for your state’s 2 Senators and your district’s Representative; that means you all have 3 meetings to go to! Refer to the Master Schedule included in this packet for those times and locations.

Can I go to a meeting for a state or district I’m not from?
Yes. In order to have the largest possible impact on our elected officials, you are highly encouraged to attend as many meetings as you can. The first priority should be to focus on your own representatives, but if you have the free time, definitely tag along with other groups on their lobby visits.

What should I wear?
Whatever you want. Some of you will want to dress to impress, while some of you will want to walk into meetings in t-shirts and sandals. Don’t let a dress code get in the way of your making an impact with what you say to your representatives. We’re all one big team, and when we deliver our message, that’s what counts.

What should I do if I have questions or run into any problems?
Feeling lost? Just remember to get back to the Capitol West Lawn, where our lobby support team will be able to help put you back on track.

DIRECTIONS TO THE U.S. CAPITOL WEST LAWN

BY FOOT: the United States Capitol is bordered by Constitution Avenue to the North, Independence Avenue to the South, and First Streets East and West. The Capitol WEST LAWN where we will hold our

RALLY AT NOON on Monday is directly in front of (east) of First Street NW, at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue from the north or Maryland Avenue from the south.

BY METRO: Metro maps can be found at www.wmata.com or in any metro station. The closest metro stops to the Capitol by distance are Federal Center SW and Capitol South (ORANGE LINE) and Judiciary Square and Union Station (RED LINE). If you are coming from the Northwest or West, take the Red Line to Glenmont or the Orange Line to New Carollton, respectively. If you are coming from the Northeast or East, take the Red Line to Shady Grove or the Orange Line to Vienna, respectively. If you are coming from points South, take the Blue, Yellow, or Green Line to L’Enfant Plaza metro station and transfer as appropriate or walk from there.

BY CAR: Please keep in mind that there is very little public parking available near the Capitol. Metered street parking is found along the Mall to the West of the Capitol. The nearest public parking facility is in Union Station, to the North of the Capitol. For more parking info, see below.

UNION STATION BUS PARKING

Union Station, located just a five minute’s walk from the Capitol West Lawn, has parking available for buses. There are 50-60 bus parking spaces available at Union Station on a first-come, first-serve basis. The rates for this type of parking are $20 from 7AM-7PM and $10 from 7PM-7AM. Because of the limited parking space available, Union Station strongly recommends that you make a reservation for a bus parking space, which costs $50 for a 24-hour period (7AM-7AM).

UNION STATION GARAGE PARKING

In Station Parking: There is a parking garage with about 1500 spaces adjacent to Union Station. The garage is entered from the front of Union Station by going up a ramp near the right-front corner of the station just as you pull off Columbus circle and approach the drop-off area. This garage is at least $5.00 per hour and $22.00 a day, but is the most convenient and safest to the station. The garage does take several major credit cards if you are parking your car for an overnight trip, you should park on the top level of the parking garage. The top level is the long term parking section.

NOTE: Don’t leave your parking ticket in your car! Besides the fact that your car is safer if you don’t leave your ticket in it, most station merchants will validate your station garage parking ticket such that you can get the first two hours (two hours is the maximum total discount) of your stay in the station parking garage for just two dollars! Just ask the merchant when you make a purchase or visit the Information desk!

5 OTHER CLOSEST GARAGE

LOCATIONS:
122 C St NW
Washington, DC 20001

425 3rd St SW
Washington, DC 20024

409 3rd St SW
Washington, DC 20024

400 N Capitol St NW
Washington, DC 20001

500 New Jersey Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001

The truth is clear: people cause global warming and people must begin immediately to fix it.

The 1Sky Campaign is a newly-formed, science-based education and advocacy initiative uniting Americans in all 50 states behind a clear vision and simple platform for solutions to climate change that match the scale of the challenge. 1Sky is mobilizing Americans to create the political will needed to pass stronger policies that deliver real solutions to global warming and to strengthen those policies in the next decade and beyond.

The 1Sky Vision:

Green Jobs Now:
5 million green jobs reducing energy consumption 20% by 2015, including the creation of a Clean Energy Corps.

Cut Carbon 80% by 2050
Freeze climate pollution levels now and cut them at least 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.

No New Coal:
A moratorium on new coal-fired power plants.
Invest in clean energy technology.

Partners:

1Sky is mobilizing and partnering with Americans across the country and across sectors, bringing together hundreds of businesses, faith-based organizations, student coalitions, environmental advocates, and many others to build a sustained, proactive, nationwide movement dedicated to addressing climate change.

Endorsements for 1Sky have come from such disparate sources as: Reverend Sally Bingham, Director, Regeneration Project; Rocky Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City; James Hansen, NASA Scientist; Energy Action Coalition; Step It Up; National Wildlife Federation; Interfaith Power & Light; Natural Resources Defense Club; Sierra Club; US PIRG; Greenpeace; League of Conservation Voters; U.S. Climate Action Network, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Green for All, and many additional local, state, and regional groups.

For more information, visit www.1SkyCampaign.org.

THE CALL FOR A NATIONAL CLEAN ENERGY CORPS

Millions of Americans wish to serve in the fight against global warming, but lack organized opportunities to do so. Millions of others seek pathways out of poverty or better employment in the clean energy economy, but lack the needed skills and connections to employers. We propose a national Clean Energy Corps (CEC) to meet both needs while significantly reducing national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CEC would be a combined service, training, and employment effort, concentrated in cities and neglected communities, to combat climate disruption and demonstrate the equity and employment promise of the clean energy economy. CEC would engage in diverse actions but prominently include efforts to improve the energy efficiency of buildings — the source of two-fifths of national energy consumption and GHG emissions. Such improvements can pay for themselves through their resulting energy savings, making this part of CEC’s program largely self-financing. It will generate enormous demand for new jobs in communities that need them.

CEC’s integrated approach to climate mitigation builds support for that effort by demonstrating its immediate benefit to our communities and offering all citizens opportunities for meaningful service to it. We call for a $200 billion federal investment in the effort over the next decade. This investment will pay for itself in direct energy savings, increased worker productivity, reduced social service and health costs, and reduced GHG emissions.

• $10 billion for enhanced national environmental service. Americans are convinced of the threat of global warming and overwhelmingly support national service. CEC would expand national service opportunities — within AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America — to combat climate change. The $10 billion new commitment, ramped up over the course of the decade, would effectively double federal support for national service.
• $50 billion for state and local green jobs development. Low-income and working-class Americans need training and other assistance to gain jobs in the clean energy economy. The Green Jobs Act of 2007 H.R. 2847 is a first step toward recognizing this. CEC would go further, with $5 billion available annually — on a match basis with states and block grants to our cash-strapped cities — for regional and community green jobs workforce development. At least half this new investment should go toward job preparation, matching, and retention efforts for the unemployed or poor.
• $140 billion for a revolving loan fund for building efficiency. Efficiency is the cleanest and cheapest way to meet our energy needs, and building energy efficiency offers enormous opportunities for energy savings and good green jobs. We propose a federal revolving loan fund to help capitalize this work. Supplemented with other public dollars from states and cities, and used throughout to leverage private capital investment, the fund would be paid for through realized energy savings.

CEC Working Group (institutional affiliations for identification purposes only)—Jeremy Hays (Apollo Alliance), Bracken Hendricks (Center for American Progress Action Fund), Van Jones (Ella Baker Center for Human Rights/Green for All), Ian Kim (Ella Baker Center), Billy Parish (Energy Action Coalition), Sally Prouty (The Corps Network), Joel Rogers (UW-Madison/COWS/Center for State Innovation), Gene Sofer (Susquehanna Group), Lisbeth Shepherd (Innovations in Civic Participation), Susan Stroud (Innovations in Civic Participation). For more information, contact Lisbeth Shepherd: 510.910.6900, lisbethshepherd@yahoo.com.

LOBBY DAY EVALUTATION

Thank you for participating in the largest youth lobby day on climate change ever! YOU have made history today. But this is only the beginning – we need to keep the momentum going and keep track of where our politicians stand on securing our future. Please fill out this form as best as you can FOR EACH OFFICE YOU VISITED, and return it to Power Shift Staff on the Capitol West Lawn OR email it to lobby@powershift07.org.

NAME OF PERSON(S) YOU MET WITH:

YOUR NAME & CONTACT INFORMATION:

How did the representative or staffer you met with react to the following parts of the 1Sky platform: 1) Green Jobs 2) Energy Conservation / Emissions Cuts 3) No New Coal?

How did they respond to your ask on the Energy Bill? Specifically, the 35mpg standard? The RES standard? The Green Jobs Act? The no subsidies for coal or nuclear?

If you visited a Senate office, did the Senator/staff agree to co-sponsor the Sanders-Boxer Global Warming Reduction Act? And if you visited a House office, did they agree to cosponsor the Waxman Safe Climate Act? What did they say they have done / would do?

Did the representative/staff support 100% auctioning of pollution permits under any capand- trade system? If not, what did they say they would do?

Please describe the rest of your discussion in as much detail as possible. Don’t leave anything out – the slightest point can be very important to holding members accountable!

Photos of the Display Ad at the Capitol South Metro Station

Other Image Sizes: 100 px, 200px. 300px, 400px, 500px, Full Resolution

Other Image Sizes: 100 px, 200px. 300px, 400px, 500px, Full Resolution

Below are 4 photos of the bags of candy and the fact sheet, The Spooky Truth, that members of the Pew Campaign for Fuel Efficiency are delivering to Members of Congress on Halloween. This isn’t going to happen until Wednesday, Halloween, October 31st! Here’s a heads up well before these will hit offices. This is part of the larger fight to keep the Energy Bill strong, www.energybill2007.org! Please check out The Spooky Truth Fact Sheet as well. Also, check out the letter that Tom and Ray from Car Talk wrote and signed to Members of Congress in support of aggressive CAFE Standards in the energy bill (also in PDF). If you want full-sized images of the below bags, please check out more photos here. Via SMPR and Memes.org

The Spooky Truth "trick or treat" bags — more photos here:

Here’s the transcript of The Spooky Truth informations — here are some more versions:

The Spooky Truth

In June, the Senate passed a strong, bipartisan compromise to raise mileage for cars and light trucks to an average of 35mpg by 2020. This is hte first Congressional increase in fuel efficiency in 30 years, and yet the auto industry is pushing a proposal which would weaken and delay the Senate compromise. Their "tricky" proposal would only require 32 mpg by 2022 and actually cap American innovation on mileage improvements at 35mpg. The spooky truth is that just a few years and a few miles do matter when it comes to making a difference for America. In 2020:

Barrels of Oil Saved Per Day:
– 500,000 Auto Lobby Proposal
– 1.2 Million Senate Fuel Economy Compromise
Consumer Savings at the Pump:
– $11 Billion Auto Lobby Proposal
– $25 Billion Senate Fuel Economy Compromise
Emissions Reductions
– 85mmt CO2 Auto Lobby Proposal
– 206 mmt CO2 Senate Fuel Economy Compromise

* Data from the Uniion of Converened Scientists, "Energy Bill Must Guarantee Real Oil Savings" Sept. 2007.

The Auto Lobby Proposal is a Trick, Not a Treat

Please sign the petition in support of an aggressive energy bill over at http://www.energybill2007.org

Thumbnails of the Tom and Ray "Car Talk" letter to Congress (larger size here) and PDF

Here’s the transcript of the Tom and Ray "Car Talk" letter — here are bigger pictures:

Tom and Ray Magliozzi
Box 3500 Harvard Square
Cambridge MA 02238

Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
United States House of Representatives
Washington DC 20515

Oct. 25, 2007

To Members of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming

You are about to make a crucial decision that may be a turning point for our country. As you consider how high to raise our nation’s CAFÉ standards, you are undoubtedly coming under a barrage of lobbying from various parties. Including us! The obvious question is, who do you believe?

On the one hand, you have people like Ed Markey, who’s been trying to increase fuel economy for as long as we can remember. Admittedly, he’s from Massachusetts. And yes, we’ve seen his haircut.

On the other hand, you have the automotive industry (i.e. car salesmen), whose ratings for honesty are below even those of Congress in public opinion surveys. Let’s remember why:

In 1972, Ford President Lee Iacocca, told you that if the “EPA does not suspend the catalytic converter rule, it will cause Ford to shut down.” Hm. That wasn’t exactly right on the money, was it?

A couple of years later, car makers were back in front of you guys, squealing over proposed new fuel economy standards. Chrysler Vice President of Engineering, Alan Loofborrow, predicted that imposing fuel economy standards might “outlaw a number of engine lines and car models including most full-size sedans and station wagons. It would restrict the industry to producing subcompact size cars—or even smaller ones—within five years.” That thing got a Hemi, Alan?

As the industry triple-teamed Congress to keep America from improving fuel economy, a Ford Executive let fly this whooper: If CAFÉ became law, the move could result “in a Ford product line consisting either of all sub-Pinto sized vehicles…” Ask the man who drives an Expedition if that ever came to pass.

The onslaught of “we can’t…it’ll ruin us… you’re denying Americans a choice of vehicles” begins every time we the people—through our elected representatives—try to bring the auto industry, kicking and screaming into the modern era. And every time, their predictions of motorized-skateboard futures have failed to materialize. Let us repeat that, because the historical record bears it out to a tee. Every single time they’ve resisted safety, environmental, or fuel economy regulations, auto industry predictions have turned out, in retrospect, to be fear-mongering bull-feathers.

Isn’t it time we (you) stop falling for this 50 year-long line of baloney?
The truth is, significantly higher average fuel economy can be achieved. In fact it’s already being achieved. And if we don’t push our own auto industry to set world class standards, they’ll be beaten again by the Japanese, the Koreans, and maybe even the Chinese, who will do it with or without U.S. Congressional action.

There are technologies aplenty that already exist that could be used to meet much higher CAFE standards.

• Hybrid-electric vehicles. Hybrids offer, in many cases, a 50% increase in mileage over gasoline versions of the same vehicles. GM just introduced a hybrid Chevy Tahoe, that reportedly gets better city mileage than a Toyota Camry.
• Clean diesel engines. With new, clean diesel fuel now mandated in America, expect a surge of clean diesel engines in the next three to five years that get 25% better fuel economy than their gasoline counterparts.
• Diesel-electric hybrids. Combine the advantages of hybrids with more efficient diesel engines.
• Turbo chargers and super chargers. These force additional air into cylinders to wring more power out of available fuel.
• Cylinder deactivation. Cylinders that are not needed at any given moment, are deactivated, and instantaneously reactivated as soon as the driver demands additional power. Widely available now.
• Plug-in, series hybrids. Now on the drawing boards, plug-in hybrids allow drivers to charge up overnight, when the electric grid is underused, and they’ll handle most commutes without ever firing up their internal combustion engines.
• Automatic stop-start technology. At least one energy analyst we spoke to believes that this simple technology, in and of itself, could result in a 10% decrease in fuel use. It’s already used in hybrid vehicles, foreign and domestic, and is on its way in more vehicles in the next couple of years.
• Higher voltage electrical systems. These save fuel by allowing energy draining systems, such as power steering, and air conditioning, to be run electrically, instead of by draining power from the engine and using fuel.
• Regenerative braking. Captures energy otherwise lost when the car slows down to give further boost to onboard battery systems.
• Safe, lightweight materials. Lightweight steel, aluminum and carbon fiber panels reduce weight, allowing a smaller, more efficient engine to propel a car just as fast on less fuel.
• Better transmissions. Six speed automatic transmissions, widely available now from Ford and others, increase fuel economy by 5% and offer smoother acceleration. Mercedes has seven speeds. Lexus has eight. Nissan has CVTs—continuously variable transmissions. All of these improve mileage AND performance.
• Common rail fuel injection. Now standard on modern diesels, this same high pressure fuel delivery technology is beginning to be used to increase fuel economy in gasoline engines, too.
• All wheel drive systems that use electric motors at the non-driven wheels, like on the Lexus RX350 hybrid, eliminate heavy, gas-wasting differentials and drive train components on cars designed to go in the snow.
• More appropriately sized and weighted cars. When we’re facing a future of global oil wars and economy-killing gasoline prices, perhaps having single commuters drive 5,000 pound SUVs is something we’ll just have to learn to live without. And modern computer electronics, such as stability control, can now ameliorate any driving dynamic issues that result from lack of mass.
• More appropriately powered cars. In 1964, the most powerful, over-the-top Mustang muscle car you could buy came with an optional, four-barrel, 271 horsepower engine. Today, that’s what comes standard on the highest rated minivans. 275 horsepower. To take your kid to nursery school? What does this say about our national priorities? Do we really want to send our kids to fight and die in the desert so that can go 0-60 in eight seconds instead of ten seconds?

The truth is, we could achieve a CAFE standard of 35 miles per gallon in five years if we made it a priority. Every one of the above technologies is either available now or is well along in the pipeline. There’s nothing “pie in the sky” here that hasn’t been thought of or invented yet.

Look what American industry did in World War II. Look what we did with the space program. It’s time to make energy independence just as high a priority. And it starts with you guys (and gals), our representatives. Don’t buy the “can’t do” bull this time.

Not only can it be done, but by increasing CAFÉ standards dramatically, you’ll be helping the American automotive industry compete—by forcing them to synchronize their priorities with those of the American people, and the populations of other countries where they will be increasingly marketing their cars.

It’s the job of private enterprise to design and sell products. But it’s the job of Congress to set our national priorities. Trust us, the car companies won’t go out of business because America insists that they build the world’s best, most efficient cars. We urge you to set the bar high for American ingenuity. We have no doubt out car industry will make the grade—to the benefit of all Americans.

Sincerely,

Tom and Ray Magliozzi

This Fall there will be an important Energy Bill up for vote by Congress, a Bill that will take relatively aggressive steps towards reducing our reliance on foreign oil and foreign governments while increasing our dependence on renewable energy, such as wind power and solar power. Please sign the petition to help give your member of Congress a little incentive to pass the more aggressive version of the Energy Bill legislation, undiluted by the auto or the oil industry and their lobbyists. The following post was written by Lorna Li over at her blog. Via Chris Abraham Online and Memes.org.

Why CAFE and RES Matter for 2007 New Energy Bill

Currently, Congress is debating, behind closed doors, the adoption of 2 provisions to the 2007 Energy Bill that can greatly impact our ability to make America more energy independent, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce pollution, save consumers money, create jobs and spark economic growth.

The first is the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) Standard of 35 mpg for cars and trucks by 2020. The second is the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES), which calls for 15% of the nation’s electricity to be generated by renewable resources by 2020.

Why support the Renewable Electricity Standard?According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, renewable energy solutions are both sustainable environmentally and economically. The RES provision has the potential to jump-start new clean energy economy and create tens of thousands of new, good-paying jobs in things like wind and solar manufacturing and installation. For this reason, it has the strong support of the United Steelworkers.

RES will create thousands of megawatts of new clean renewable electricity generation, decreasing the amount of natural gas we use—lowering prices for consumers on their home heating bills and also benefiting industrial users.

Furthermore, RES is doable – two dozen states that have already put their own Renewable Electricity Standard into place. In fact, many states have moved to establish standards of 30 percent or more—demonstrating that the 15 percent plan proposed in this bill is an achievable compromise that all states can meet.

Why is supporting the 35 mpg CAFE standard important?

Supporting the 35 mpg CAFE standard will help us curb our addition to a fossil-fuel based source that is increasingly expensive, causes pollution, and is also from highly volatile areas such as the Persian Gulf. This dependence is both unstable and unsustainable.

Furthermore, improving CAFE standards to 35 mpg by 2020 – 13 years from now – will give us better gas mileage, thus, more bang for the buck. This way we can keep more money in our wallets, drive cleaner cars, and thus become less dependent on war and pollution causing oil.

According to the UCS study on Clean Vehicles and Fuel Economy, far from destroying auto jobs, CAFE would create 22,300 jobs in the auto industry alone by 2020—and a total of 170,800 jobs by 2020. The CAFE provision would also save consumers nearly $25 billion at the pump in 2020, according to UCS.

Auto-Industry Lies – Et Tu Toyota?

The Big Three automakers and Toyota are lobbying to kill the Senate version and replace it with a loophole-laden compromise called the Hill-Terry bill that calls for 32 to 35 m.p.g. by 2022. Rather than innovate their fleets to become more fuel efficient, they would rather spend $ millions in advertising to convince the public that attaining the 35 mpg standard is bad for consumers and the environment, and that CAFE kills.

While the auto industry has argued for years that fuel-efficiency would compromise public safety due to the need to build smaller, lighter vehicles, according to an October 2007 article in Scientific American, new engine and transmission technologies could enable manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency without significantly cutting vehicle weights.

In spite of the fact that Toyota currently has the technology to make cars that achieve 55 mpg, Toyota’s refusal to step up to the plate and support the 35 mpg CAFE standard has evoked the wrath of environmentalist groups like the NRDC who now question “How Green is Toyota?” That the maker of the Prius could support the Hill-Terry compromise, which according to UCS, would actually cause us to use 700,000 more barrels each day, feels like sheer betrayal.

Is the auto industry genuinely concerned about the economic well-being of American consumers and our ability to get around as cheaply as possible? Hmmm.

In 1922, General Motors dismantled mass transit across the U.S., bought up trolley systems through its subsidiary National City lines, gutted them and tore up all the tracks. GM joined tire manufacturers, construction companies, and oil companies to lobby for Congress for development of a national highway system, which has defined urban development over the last 90 years. It helped that GM’s president Charles Wilson became secretary of defense and Frances DuPont became the federal highway administrator. Thus America became a oil-addicted, nation of drivers.

With Bush and his Big Oil cohorts in power threatening veto, ordinary Americans may be up for another round of seriously getting screwed. Therefore, it’s up to us to take action and DEMAND a clean, energy future NOW.

Take Action and Support a Strong, Clean Energy Bill for 2007

Instead of making the richest companies in the world richer, this energy bill will benefit consumers and working Americans, make us less dependent on foreign oil and better global citizens. Here are simple actions you can take to lobby Congress for a cleaner, greener future:

1. THIS IS IMPORTANT! Sign this petition and pass it on: Energy Bill 2007
2. Meet other clean energy activists online: Energy Bill 2007 Group on Facebook
3. Tell Toyota, “Shame On You” and get your friends to tell Toyota to support 35 mpg now.

By lobbying Congress to adopt strong energy efficiency measures in the 2007 Energy Bill, we can lower emissions and use less energy in the years to come —saving governments, businesses, schools, and consumers money. Energy efficiency is an energy resource just like anything else and is much cheaper than even coal-fired power generation. We must look to energy efficiency as another solution for our energy needs, while at the same time ramping up the amount of electricity we get from renewables. This is our only way we can guarantee a clean, green future for ourselves and future generations.

Technorati Tags: new energy bill, energy bill 2007, cafe, cafe standard, corporate average fuel economy, renewable electricity standard, res, hill-terry, clean tech, fuel efficiency, fuel economy, global warming

I love my big car but I also love American independence more and think that we rely way too much foreign oil and don’t spend nearly enough on energy innovation. Since coal and oil is still plentiful and cheap enough, there isn’t any reason, really, to dump R&D funds into alternative and renewable fuels, energy, and electricity. We need to in-source and work on ways to stop depending so heavily on foreign oil and the whims of kings and their kingdoms.

Congress is working on passing an energy bill that contains two major provisions, one that would up a fuel economy standard to 35 mpg — Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards — and another that would evolve our energy dependence more heavily on renewable electricity to 15% — Renewable Electricity Standards (RES). Together, these would end our Nation’s security-threatening dependence on Middle East oil, stop our money from flowing to terrorists, and keep our dollars at home growing the American economy.

Unfortunately, lobbyists and PACs are working hard to tear the bill apart, rendering it impotent and incremental instead of powerful and transformative.

I am working with a coalition to make sure the energy bill doesn’t get derailed. I need your help in making sure that the final bill makes it through before we get ourselves into even more of a mess. Check out Energy Bill 2007 and sign their petition.

Congress is working on passing an energy bill that contains two major provisions, one that would up a fuel economy standard to 35 mpg and another that would evolve our energy dependence more heavily on renewable electricity to 15%. Together, these would end our Nation’s security-threatening dependence on Middle East oil, stop our money from flowing to terrorists, and keep our dollars at home growing the American economy.

Unfortunately, lobbyists and PACs are working hard to tear the bill apart, rendering it impotent and incremental instead of powerful and transformative.

I dropped my car off at Capitol Hill Auto Service to have my routine service because I have heard such great things about them in the Hill.

They do great work, I am told, and we shall see. I have heard nothing but amazing things, anyway, and they’re less expensive than the dealer.

So, if you have a BMW, an import, or even a domestic car or truck, and you live on or near Capitol Hill, you should call Phillip W Fox, General Manager, 202-543-5155.

Capitol Hill Auto Service is located at 615 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC 20003, and they’re taking care of my car, Günther, a 2001 530i, as we speak.