With DC’s political landscape shifting, PACA is organizing to ensure Black communities control their own institutions.

The political landscape in Washington, D.C., is ever shifting. Late last year Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that she would not be seeking reelection for a fourth term, leaving a mayoral vacancy in DC for the first time in over a decade. DC Councilmembers are experiencing a shake-up with At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds stepping away from a bid for reelection and the resignation of At-Large Council member Kenyan McDuffie, as he plans to run for mayor.. 

As the city inches toward an active election campaign season, Black and working class communities in D.C. hold little power over their institutions of health, education, and safety. Pan-African Community Action (PACA) is actualizing power over community health needs in DC’s Wards 7 and 8 through the People’s Pan-African Wellness Front, which launched in late February and has received local media coverage. This survival program, providing free medical supplies, glucose and blood pressure testing, and preventive health information, is one component of organizing toward long-term self-determination and holistic community control.

As an additional component, PACA has launched a new campaign to build independent, community-based power: the platform Community Control DC.

PREAMBLE

This platform is rooted in a simple reality: power—not access, representation, or reform—shapes the conditions of our lives.

Black and working-class communities in Southeast DC have long been governed through surveillance, displacement, criminalization, and exclusion, while decisions about our safety, health, land, and resources are made by institutions that do not answer to us.

Pan-African Community Action advances this platform as a framework for collective self-determination. We reject the idea that justice will come from better management of an unjust system. Instead, we organize to build independent, community-controlled power capable of meeting our needs, defending our people, and reshaping the conditions that produce structural harm and systematic exploitation.

These 12 demands are not symbolic. They establish enforceable standards for legitimacy and accountability. Our objective is not inclusion within existing structures, but the construction of durable, community-governed alternatives rooted in democratic control by those most directly impacted.

This platform focuses first on Southeast DC, where Black working-class communities have experienced sustained patterns of displacement, policing, and disinvestment. The governance structures proposed here are intended to serve as models that can expand across the District.

WHAT COMMUNITY CONTROL MEANS

Community control means that residents must be organized to directly govern the institutions and resources that shape their lives.

Under this framework:

• Residents deliberate and vote through Neighborhood Assemblies
• Delegates selected from these assemblies administer programs through Community Councils
• Budget allocations and policy decisions made through these processes carry binding authority

Community control is not advisory participation. It is the exercise of democratic governing power by the people most directly affected by public decisions

COMMUNITY GOVERNANCE STRATEGY

Neighborhood Assemblies

Neighborhood Assemblies are open democratic gatherings of residents within defined communities.

Assemblies allow residents to:

• Deliberate on community priorities
• Develop proposals
• Vote on participatory budgeting decisions
• Nominate or select community council members

Assemblies serve as the foundation of democratic community governance. Participation in Neighborhood Assemblies shall be open to residents age 16 and older regardless of citizenship status, housing status, or formal voter registration.

Community Councils

Community Councils consist of delegates selected through Neighborhood Assemblies. These councils:

• Administer programs
• Oversee community institutions
• Implement assembly decisions
• Manage participatory budget implementation

Community Councils remain fully accountable to Neighborhood Assemblies. Members may be recalled through assembly vote and must regularly report to the communities they serve.

Participatory Budgeting Authorities

Participatory budgeting allows residents to directly allocate public resources. Participatory budgeting processes include:

• Proposal development through assemblies
• Resident voting on funding priorities
• Transparent implementation by community councils

Allocations approved through these processes must be treated as binding budget decisions. 

PRINCIPLE OF COMMUNITY SAFETY

Community safety must be built through prevention, health, and collective care rather than punishment. Community controlled safety forces are empowered by the democratic decision making and priorities established by community councils and neighborhood assemblies. These safety forces should prioritize:

• Community crisis response teams
• Mental-health support
• Harm-reduction services
• Violence interruption initiatives
• Youth programs and educational opportunities

Safety emerges from stable housing, strong communities, accessible public resources and popular education—not from surveillance or incarceration.

THE COMMUNITY CONTROL PLATFORM

1. The Youth Shall Govern Youth Resources

End Youth Criminalization and Establish Youth Governing Power

End all forms of youth criminalization and transfer governing authority over youth resources to youth and residents.

Repeal all:

• Juvenile curfews
• Truancy enforcement mechanisms
• Civil or administrative penalties that criminalize Black youth under the guise of public order.

Youth may not be re-criminalized through schools, courts, diversion programs, or civil systems.

All funds previously dedicated to youth criminal enforcement shall be permanently redirected into a Youth Self-Determination Fund, established by binding law and governed by a democratically accountable, community-led body. This body must include a youth-led caucus with veto power and hold final, non-advisory authority over spending, hiring, and programmatic priorities, operating fully outside the control of MPD, prosecutors, mayoral agencies, or school police.

2. Our Communities Shall Have Community Control Over Policing and Public Safety End Police Expansion and Replace Carceral Systems with Community Safety

Dismantle policing, incarceration, and court systems used to control, punish, and displace Black and working-class communities. All police and public safety must be put under community control. Mandate binding reductions to the Metropolitan Police Department budget through annual reallocations toward community-governed health, housing, and public safety alternatives.

Halt all MPD expansion and permanently remove police from nonviolent community matters, including:

• Mental-health and substance-use response
• Traffic enforcement
• School discipline
• Responses to houselessness
• Noise complaints
• Welfare checks
• Nonviolent disputes.

These functions shall instead be administered through community-governed response systems, including unarmed crisis response teams, public health outreach workers, violence interruption programs, restorative justice coordinators in schools, and trained civilian responders accountable to neighborhood assemblies and community councils. Public safety resources must prioritize prevention, care, and community stability rather than surveillance, arrest, and incarceration.

Cancel the planned $463 million Southeast DC jail and prohibit all new jail, detention, or carceral infrastructure. All funds allocated for policing, jail construction, or carceral expansion shall be redirected through binding participatory budgeting processes under community control.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the Office of the Attorney General, and the DC Superior Court—including Landlord and Tenant Court—may not be used to criminalize poverty, youth, survival, or political activity through:

• Bail
• Pretrial detention
• Coercive pleas
• Eviction mills
• Fines, fees, or court-driven debt.

Courts and prosecutors may not function as default mechanisms for addressing unmet social needs, which must instead be met through community-controlled, non-carceral alternatives.

3. Our Communities Shall Not Be Subject to Surveillance or Military Control End Surveillance, Federal Collaboration, and Local Militarization

Dismantle surveillance regimes and end collaboration with federal and military policing forces.

Ban predictive policing, facial-recognition technologies in public or commercial spaces, and mass data-sharing systems used to surveil Black communities. Terminate existing surveillance contracts and require binding community approval—with veto power—over any future data collection, surveillance technology, or data-center construction affecting residents.

End participation in the 1033 Program, all military-police exchanges, collaboration with ICE and federal law-enforcement agencies, and eliminate National Guard deployments within the District.

4. The People Shall Control Public Resources

Make Participatory Budgeting Binding and Non-Reversible

Mandate binding participatory budgeting administered through Neighborhood Assemblies over significant and clearly defined portions of DC’s operating and capital budgets affecting Southeast DC, ensuring that residents directly determine how public resources impacting their communities are allocated.

Community-approved allocations shall carry the full force of law.

The Mayor, CFO, and all District agencies are prohibited from revising, delaying, or overturning adopted allocations. Any interference must trigger automatic public disclosure, corrective action, and enforceable community remedies, including the suspension or reallocation of funds.

5. Health Systems Shall Serve the Community

Build Community-Governed Health and Wellness Infrastructure

Transfer control of health and wellness resources to community-governed institutions in Southeast DC.

Establish and fund permanent, community-governed health and wellness institutions overseen by democratically accountable community councils with final authority over staffing, services, and priorities. These institutions shall provide:

• Preventive care
• Primary and specialty medical care
• Mental-health services
• Substance-use treatment and harm-reduction services
• Dental care
• Access to healthy food
• Free Narcan distribution and training
• Community health and political education

No hospital system, insurer, or government agency may override or subordinate community decision-making.

6. The Land Shall Belong to the Community

Remove Land from Speculation and Ensure Housing Stability

End land speculation and place land under permanent resident control.

Transfer public land in Southeast DC—including vacant, surplus, and tax-foreclosed properties—into resident-controlled land governance structures such as community land trusts and social housing that permanently remove land from the speculative market.

Halt land dispositions, tax abatements, and public subsidies that enable displacement or private speculation without binding community control and restrict market-rate development in neighborhoods with poverty rates above 20 percent.

7. No One Shall Be Punished for Being Unhoused

End Punitive Enforcement against Unhoused Residents and Guarantee Access to Permanent Housing.

Prohibit encampment clearings, arrests, fines, and property seizures targeting unhoused residents. No displacement may occur without immediate access to safe, permanent, non-carceral housing.

Redirect resources toward non-police outreach, permanent supportive housing, public restrooms and changing facilities, and community-based harm-reduction models that respect autonomy and dignity.

8. Environmental Decisions Shall Be Made by the Community Democratize Environmental, Utility, and Infrastructure Systems

End environmental racism and place environmental and infrastructure decision-making under community control.

Energy, water, broadband, sanitation, and related infrastructure shall be treated as public goods governed through binding community oversight. Privatization, speculative investment, and regressive rate structures must be prohibited.

Residents shall hold final authority over:

• Environmental testing
• Public disclosure
• Remediation priorities
• Climate-resilience planning
• Infrastructure investment
• Land reuse

No polluting facilities or hazardous infrastructure may be sited in Southeast DC without binding community approval.

9. Transportation Shall Be Free and Accessible

Guarantee Free and Accessible Public Transportation

Make public transportation free, expanded, and universally accessible.

Implement fare-free bus service as passed in 2022 and expand bus and Metro rail service to provide frequent, reliable, and 24-hour routes across the District. Transportation access shall not be conditioned on income, immigration status, or housing status.

10. Our Communities Shall Not Be Complicit in War and Empire

End DC’s Complicity in Militarism, Imperialism, and Global Repression

Withdraw from all federal militarization programs and prohibit the use of District resources to support overseas military operations, weapons production, surveillance infrastructure, or security firms tied to war, occupation, or repression.

Refuse participation in foreign-intervention infrastructure—including AFRICOM and all U.S. military command structures—and affirm solidarity with peoples resisting imperial domination, including Palestinians under occupation and communities targeted by sanctions. The District shall commit publicly to expanding and maintaining Zones of Peace globally.

11. Education Shall Be Community-Controlled and Free

Build Community-Controlled Education, Free Community College, and Job Training

Guarantee free, community-controlled education and job training in Southeast DC.

Provide free community college, job training, literacy, digital-literacy, and political-education programs governed by democratically accountable community boards with final authority over resources and priorities.

12. Workers Shall Have Power Over Their Labor Build 

Worker Power and Collective Control

End labor exploitation and place publicly funded work under worker and community control.

All District-funded agencies, projects, and contractors must guarantee living wages, safe working conditions, predictable schedules, and protection for organizing and collective action. No public funds may support employers engaged in wage theft, misclassification, or union-busting.

COMMUNITY POLITICAL EDUCATION

Building democratic community governance requires ongoing political education.

Community-controlled institutions should support programs that deepen residents’ understanding of local governance, economic systems, and collective organizing strategies.

ENFORCEMENT

Any institution, agency, official, or candidate claiming alignment with this platform must demonstrate compliance through binding agreements, public reporting, and enforceable community oversight.

The community bodies called for in this platform retain the authority to suspend funding, reallocate resources, withdraw recognition, disrupt implementation, and publicly designate non-compliant officials or institutions as acting in opposition to this platform.

Sign on to Endorse this Platform