A handshake is worth 50 votes, Lyndon B. Johnson liked to say, and on Monday, Washington’s outgoing mayor seemed intent on spending every one she had left. Muriel Bowser, who announced last year she would not seek a fourth term, began her final year in office with a public safety walk through Ward 8’s Fairlawn neighborhood, a community long weighed down by chronic concerns and persistent neglect.
Bowser moved along Minnesota Avenue SE near Boone Elementary School shaking hands, greeting residents calling her name, and listening with careful attention as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners and neighbors laid out their worries. Flanked by Interim D.C. Police Chief Jeffrey Carroll, Council member Trayon White, staffers, and Ward 8 residents, the mayor’s expression shifted from polite warmth to visible concern as the conversation turned toward the realities on the ground.
“It was a look of shock,” said Commissioner Andrea Davis, who represents Anacostia and Fairlawn. “She couldn’t believe it was so deplorable over here.”
Davis said she hoped Bowser would see what residents see daily: a surge in drug use, prostitution, homelessness and a dire lack of job training opportunities. She pointed to the park by Boone Elementary as a magnet for substance use, in part, she argued, because the harm-reduction nonprofit HIPS distributes clean needles, condoms and food there rather than in wealthier neighborhoods. Bowser disagreed with the reasoning but acknowledged, “I don’t have enough data to tell her she’s wrong.”
Residents echoed Davis’ concerns. Terry Brown, a lifelong Washingtonian, said drug use today feels even more visible than in the city’s notorious past. “You didn’t have people smoking crack in the park in broad daylight,” he said. “Here, they smoke crack in the park broad daylight.”
Bowser acknowledged open drug markets, prostitution and poorly managed housing as urgent issues, but said solutions will require both government resources and community responsibility. “We’re accountable to the people who hired us to do these jobs,” she told reporters. “And we get results.”
Though critics remain wary, Davis believed Bowser’s reaction was sincere. “Ward 8 is part of D.C., and this is her legacy,” she said. “I believe she truly wants to make this community better.”
