meridianhillpark

     On January 24, 1990 a group of concerned District residents embarked on a mission of danger, determination, and courage. They were going to walk through Meridian Hill Park after dark. There were nine of them for the safety of numbers. None of them had even entered the area at night, but this was a special occasion. They intended to reclaim that park, their park, for the people.
     Meridian Hill Park, a grassy field striped by cement walk ways and surrounded by park benches and statues on the sidewalks of 15th, 16th, W, and Florida Avenues, Northwest, got its name because Thomas Jefferson once had the notion of making this site the center of the world -- the Prime Meridian. With that colonial esteem long gone, it had become overrun by crime and fear in recent decades. Many maps of the city made in that era failed to even note the presence of the park, and if the tourists' guides ever mentioned it at all they only said that the area should be avoided as people made their way through the city. "Even the muggers were staying away because it had become so bad," commented Steve Coleman, one of those nine activists who made their way through the park that night.
     Steve Coleman had recently felt the pains of the area's violence when a teenage boy was shot to death, and died in the arms of his housemate. Coleman, who had moved from his home in New York City to come to Washington and work toward making business a priority over military in the Federal government, knew about traditional, democratic activism. But, this situation called for a different type of action. Coleman saw the need for "direct action." He explains, "I got tired of people complaining about the neighborhood being bad because of other people and I realized that we have some power of our own, and that we didn't need to simply rely on representative government to take
care of it for us." So, this group decided to rely only on each other, to take care of themselves.
     To work towards this goal, a small group of people founded an organization called Washington Parks and People. Steve Coleman, one of the founders, currently works as one of two paid employees of the organization. He holds the title of Executive Director. "Our purpose is to reconnect people to the land, specifically public land, in inner-city Washington and to rebuild community." He believes that the state of the park at that time was a violation of an ancient connection of people to land, and that Parks and People's mission to restore that connection is natural. But the organization was built on the belief that the damage was reparable.
      Parks and People, as the name suggests, planned to take their energy to the streets. If it was going to build community, it was going to have to involve community. "We are asking a lot of people. We are asking that we all be active citizens," explains Coleman. But, this task proves less difficult than might be imagined. "The idea that parks are bad because no one cares is a myth," Coleman goes on. "Community comes together like that," he says, sharply snapping his fingers to illustrate his statement. All they need is to see that there is a vehicle to carry their efforts and caring. As soon as the public knows about the organization, a lot of people want to help. And, this interest was the base for their plan to reclaim their park.
     With this attitude, those nine people set out through one of Washington's most dangerous parks, at night. They wore bright fluorescent orange hats with what they thought was "cool street writing" that read "RAM" - an acronym for Residents of Adams Morgan, one of the nearby neighborhoods. The kids who saw them before the patrol called them pumpkin heads. The hats gave a glow that made them visible from great distances in the night time darkness.
      They patrolled to build a sense of community. They had three self-imposed rules. First, the patrol had to have a multiracial representation, because Meridian Hill very
clearly had a multiracial population. Second, they could carry no weapons, not even anything that could be perceived as a weapon -- no large flashlights, no dogs, nothing that could give them an image of having anything but community building intentions. Their final, and perhaps most powerful rule, was they had to say hello to everyone they came across, no matter what that person's image or what impression they made from that person.
      They entered the park that night not knowing what to expect. They immediately found its condition of neglect, highlighted by rampant graffiti and huge amounts of broken glass and garbage, to be emphasized at night by the fact that more than half of the park's lights were out. This only added to the eerieness of the fact that upon first observation the park appeared to be entirely deserted. It was not until they had begun their patrol that they found there were two other individuals in the park. Even though the patrol itself was nine people strong, they still timidly huddled together as they remembered that third "stupid rule" as Coleman recalls thinking of it at the time.
     To stay true to their objectives, they did approach the first of the two individuals.
After they explained their mission to the man, he extended a hand. And as one of the members of the patrol accepted it, a relationship sprung into life. They found out that this man was Reverend Morris Samuel, a long time regular of the park. Many years ago he had courted his wife under a cherry tree that still stood in the park, and he was in the park when the riots of 1967 broke out just a few blocks away. "He had," explains Coleman, "become mayor of the park."
      The second man in the park that night was Howard Coleman, no relation to Steve. Howard Coleman proved to be a little bit more difficult for the patrol to get to know. But, over time they found out that he had grown up in Southwest Washington DC, and had
been evicted from his home by the effects of Urban Renewal. He had been a drug addict, was illiterate, and at times on the brink of homelessness. But tears welled up in his eyes as he told of his fondness for the park and how much it hurt him to see what had become of it in recent years.
      Despite the difference in the men's backgrounds, each proved to be a greatly helpful advocate of the park in the last decade. Reverend Samuel helped Steve Coleman found Friends of Meridian Hill, the parent organization of Washington Parks and People. He later became Chairperson of the organization. Howard Coleman worked with police to catch criminals in the area of the park, and get them off the street. He was once the Volunteer of the Year for the District of Columbia Parks Services for his efforts in cleaning up the park.
     These efforts have not gone in vain. On any given day you can find people in Meridian Hill Park right up to, and sometime past, sunset. On the afternoon of March 8, 2000, roughly one decade after the park reached the violent point that spurred Steve Coleman and others into action, several neighborhood residents play game of touch football in the park. Families with young children take in the sunshine and warmth of the early spring. A few people jog by. In a couple of hours, as darkness settles over the city, the people will stray from the park. But, they will not do it out of fear. They will do it because they will no longer have a reason to actually be in the park. This is the problem that now faces Washington Parks and People -- how to bring people back to the park.
      Coleman believes that on a beautiful spring day such as that, there should be five hundred people in the park. The boldness of this dream is accentuated by the fact that about two dozen people are actually in the park. He reports that the park is entirely safe, even after dark. He says drug dealing and violence are virtually nonexistent in the park. After dark it is well lit, and the garbage and litter that he found on his patrol in 1990 is much less predominant. But, he still thinks there is something missing. The land is now
safe, but the people aren't there. Even with the newfound safety of Meridian Hill Park, the mission of Washington Parks and People remains -- to rebuild that ancient connection between the land and the people of Washington, D.C. by restoring the public's trust and bringing people back to the park.

Back to Current Affairs page

Ryan's Writings main page