Interview: Sydelle Moore

Today I have an interview with commissioner Sydelle Moore of 5D05. She won a closely contested election in November and was reelected for a second term. Last month, the ANC voted to make her Chair. We spoke on the phone last week, and touched on some topics I'll be writing more about soon, including the zoning change she championed for Carver-Langston. 

We also talked about vaccine distribution. I'll be revisiting this, but I wanted to publish Moore's comments now. For context, D.C. is now an example in national news of how Black and Latino elders are receiving fewer vaccinations than white residents. Our own Councilmember was quoted in the New York Times: “We want people regardless of their race and geography to be vaccinated, but I think the priority should be getting it to the people who are contracting Covid at the highest rates and dying from it,” said Kenyan McDuffie. Below, you'll see a reference to zip codes, which refers to the new priority system put in place by DC Health.

How long have you lived in D.C. and how long have you lived in the ANC? What street do you live on or which general area of the neighborhood do you live in?

I've been here maybe about 15 years, and I have lived in the ANC area for probably about a decade. I live on 20th Street.

What are your pronouns (she/hers for example) and how do you describe your race or ethnicity?

I am black and use she and her.

Why did you want to run again and continue to be an ANC Commissioner?

I think a lot of the things that I wanted to work on still just aren't done yet. You know a lot of things are sort of long term changes. You know, culture changes for the ANC, and for the community. Trying to make people feel like they have real ownership over the things that are happening around them and that they have an opportunity to make input, isn't something that, after years of not being listened to and not being included, would happen overnight or even over the course of a single ANC term. So I think continuing to work on outreach in the community is important. Continuing to try to foster an environment where people are collaborative with each other, listen to each other, and try to come up with the best possible solutions to the challenges that we're dealing with.

What are your top priorities for this term? What areas do you plan to focus on?

I would say community outreach, public safety and everything that goes with that, and trash. I think those are the big three for me. And I really think coming through with the outreach is important because there will be other challenges in the future. But I think if you are a strong community where people are are communicating with each other, people stay involved rather than just getting involved on a particular issue. I think that the decision-making around any variety of community activities will be a lot better.

What are your long-term hopes for your SMD, and for the whole ANC?

Well I hope that we continue to see major improvements in terms of public safety. I want to make sure that people feel comfortable going outside, interacting with their neighbor. The city at large is seeing a huge increase in shootings. We're seeing a downturn. And so I want that to continue. And hopefully, be a model for other parts of the city. I think that's a major thing for me. And then I want to continue to try to promote in any way possible, an environment of cleanliness, so that people can go outside and really enjoy their homes and we're not contributing litter.

What do you hope to achieve as Chair this term, what do you think that will allow you to do?

One major thing that we've got to get on top of as a commission is just making as much of our paperwork available as possible. So some transparency around the things that we are improving. We've done a lot better, just leaps and bounds better in terms of just basic organization, having functional meetings, getting things accomplished. But now we've got to get to a point where, okay we're doing all of this work. You have to make it easy for people in the community to access. So, making sure that all of this is documented on the website, in a way that's easy for people to search. Because right now it's there, but if you don't know exactly what you're looking for, trying to search for it on our website is a challenge. So making some improvements there. 

And really I think COVID has changed things. So community outreach is much more challenging than it was before. It was already a challenge and now it's just much more challenging. And we need that infrastructure in place, because our community is just one of the hardest hit in terms of COVID, and then we are lagging, in terms of people having access to vaccine appointments. And so we've got to try to find a way to do our part to make sure that people are getting access to the vaccine.

What else could we be doing? We're in a priority zip code, but what else can we be doing to make sure people are signing up for the vaccine?

So, I think a few things. We found out about being a priority area the day before. So if you're starting appointments at 9am, that gives me no time, just none, as the ANC, to walk around and leave flyers and say, here's information in a variety of languages that I know people in the neighborhood speak, about how they can, at 9am tomorrow, call in for a vaccine, if they're not already online and aware of that. 

So I think, going forward, the federal government wasn't giving D.C. government enough notice. D.C. government in turn wasn't able to give the ANCs enough notice. Hopefully going forward, we'll continue to be focused on priority communities. And then we'll have enough notice to actually do something with that, so that people are getting offline information about how they can register for vaccine appointments.