“We refused to be marginalized and displaced. In the beginning winning simply meant standing up and fighting back. No one was going to push us out of our community without a fight.” – Ruth Barnwell President of the Alabama Ave/13^th Street Tenant Coalition.

After almost a decade and multiple lawsuits, the members of the Alabama Ave/13^th Street Coalition have exercised their rights under the District’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, winning a protracted battle for housing justice against Sanford Capital and City Partners LLC. The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless congratulates and is deeply thankful to the Coalition members for their vision and commitment to housing justice in their community.

The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, through our Affordable Housing Initiative, first began working with these community members in 2013. At that time there were horrendous conditions on the property which landlord Sanford Capital refused to fix. The Legal Clinic and the residents alleged that the failure to make these repairs was intentional and that Sanford Capital was attempting to constructively evict the tenants to empty the buildings, making way for their demolition and redevelopment into luxury housing. But these residents refused to be pushed out of their homes.

“Rampant land speculation in the District of Columbia means that developers are incentivized to displace working class residents because unoccupied land is more profitable than land that’s in use as affordable housing. Tens of thousands of Black DC residents have been pushed out under this development approach. The Alabama Ave/13^th Street Tenant Coalition flipped the script in Congress Heights through the members’ tenacity and refusal to be displaced – these DC residents stayed on the land. The tenants knew that if they remained, eventually they would be able to exercise their rights under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA).”  –

Will Merrifield, Affordable Housing Initiative Attorney, Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless

TOPA gives tenants the first opportunity to buy their building if it goes up for sale, or to assign that right to an entity of their choosing. It is a vital tool that allows tenants to push back against these short-sighted and harmful development practices, fight to remain in their own communities, and move forward inclusive development goals that meet the needs of existing residents while promoting growth. In many ways, this case came down to whether the development team was going to be able to displace the residents before they were able to exercise their TOPA rights.

The Coalition’s resolve and vision for broader housing justice in DC culminated in its members exercising their rights under TOPA. The result of this struggle will be the development of 179 new units of affordable housing. This in and of itself is a huge win. However, it is not the only victory that the residents achieved. Their fight exposed how development practices are playing out across DC. It exposed how developers try to deprive tenants of the ability to exercise their TOPA rights, and exposed Sanford Capital as one of the District’s most notorious landlords, which received District subsidies while operating housing in slum conditions. In 2018, Sanford Capital was ordered to pay over one million dollars in restitution to the tenants at their properties, and prohibited from operating subsidized housing in DC for the next seven years.

These outcomes were made possible by a group of residents who refused to be marginalized and pushed out. Not only did they stay and fight, but they won. The Legal Clinic is honored to represent the Coalition and proud of our staff’s passionate and committed lawyering. This hard-fought battle had many fronts: we appeared before the Zoning Commission; the Office of Administrative Hearings to challenge the horrifying conditions on the property; and the DC Superior Court, in partnership with Arnold & Porter, to secure tenants’ TOPA rights.

We are grateful to our donors and supporters for the many contributions that enable the Legal Clinic to do this work. We’re honored to have contributed to this victory along with the Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, pro bono attorneys from Arnold & Porter, and organizers with Housing Counseling Services – their dedication and excellent work makes this outcome possible. We would also like to acknowledge the community members and groups – particularly ONE DC – and fellow tenant associations who marched in the streets, packed courtrooms and supported the tenants throughout their battle. This solidarity helped to sustain the struggle and reach this victory. It is because of all of you that there will be 179 new units of affordable housing in Congress Heights.

We at the Legal Clinic have been inspired by the members of the Alabama Ave/13^th Street Coalition for many years now and are grateful to be entering 2022 energized and galvanized by their example as the work for housing justice continues across the District of Columbia.

The FY22 DC Budget Invests in Housing Justice

On August 3, the DC Council took its final vote on the Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) budget, followed by the final vote on the Budget Support Act on August 10. We are pleased to report that all of the increased investments in housing that we reported here and in the below table made it into the final budget.

*With an investment of $42M through 2025, there should be sufficient funds to support later projects that come online. Therefore, we consider this “ask” fully funded at this time.

These housing investments are large and potentially transformative, and we want to take a moment to talk about their potential impact on affordable housing and homelessness in DC as well as preview some next steps for advocacy. The housing investments in DC’s FY22 budget do not exist in a vacuum — their impact on homelessness in DC will be affected by the eventual end of the eviction moratorium, whether there will be any further federal or local extensions of such moratoria, or whether DC will improve its distribution of eviction prevention resources through STAY DC.

Investments in the creation and preservation of deeply affordable housing

The Housing Production Trust Fund has record high investments, and there is enough money in the matching operating budget to ensure that the fund creates deeply affordable housing over the next few years. DC could make real progress in building affordable housing with these investments. But DC has struggled to meet its legally-required minimums for building housing for the lowest income households for years. With such large amounts of money in the fund this year and next, it is even more critical that the DC Council engages in active, regular oversight of the Department of Housing and Community Development to make sure that 50% of the fund is used to build housing for households earning between 0 and 30% of Area Median Income, as the law requires. This budget also includes $50 million for the purchase and renovation of hotels in order to create deeply affordable housing. We will be monitoring this process and will work to ensure that this investment meets the stated goal.

For the second year in a row, $50 million has been appropriated for the DC Housing Authority’s repair and renovation of public housing. Although DCHA has struggled to spend money swiftly, it has assured policymakers that it has a plan to quickly and effectively use this funding for the properties most in need of repair. During this process, the DC Council must engage in regular oversight to make sure that this funding is used efficiently. As advocates, we will continue to focus our efforts on preventing the displacement of DC residents, and ensuring the preservation of DC’s public housing units.

Investments in housing vouchers that will end homelessness for families and individuals

The most substantial increase comes in the form of housing vouchers for people experiencing homelessness. Roughly 2300 individuals experiencing “chronic homelessness” will be placed in Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) during the FY22 fiscal year. About 1152 homeless families will get vouchers: 535 PSH, 307 Targeted Affordable Housing, and 310 tenant vouchers (from the DCHA waitlist).

For individuals, these investments are almost enough to end homelessness for every individual living in the hotels (PEP-V), the street, and low-barrier shelters. With the recent announcement that the federal government would extend funding for hotels until the end of November, DC now has a cushion of funding to transition people out of hotels and into housing, rather than forcing them back to the street or shelters when federal funding lapses. As for people living in encampments, DC can take a non-punitive, effective approach to clearing encampments—by providing housing to people living on the street. In the shelter system, DC could see much lower numbers, providing a real opportunity to improve the safety and dignity of the shelters. This increase in PSH will not only make unprecedented strides towards ending chronic homelessness but could substantially impact what homeless services look like for individuals.

For families, there is no longer any legitimate budget-based reason to threaten families with termination from Rapid Re-housing. The Department of Human Services (DHS) has not confirmed yet that families are safe from termination, but if DHS chooses to terminate them it won’t be because of funding constraints. Prior to the budget passing, DHS had stated that 1000 families in Rapid Re-housing had been in the program for over 18 months and were at risk of termination for reaching the time limit. DHS stated that they could no longer afford to give extensions to those families, as they had during the public health emergency, and that 580 of the 1000 families would get termination notices in the next few months, effective in the spring. But with enough permanent housing for 1152 families, now there is no budgetary pressure to terminate families from Rapid Re-housing. Instead, DHS can exit families from the program who have reached the time limit in the way that everyone agrees is best—into permanent, affordable housing. Our core concern with Rapid Re-housing—that arbitrary time limits cause harm to the vast majority of families who cannot afford market rate housing—has been resolved by funding enough permanent vouchers to create a secure safety net for families this year. This is the fundamental shift in resources that must happen every year in order for Rapid Re-housing to be a humane, successful program in DC.

DC’s FY22 budget season has concluded with historic investments, but the work continues!

Minimize barriers to create greater access to housing

Of course, all this potential for transformative change hinges on DHS and DCHA moving quickly and landlords renting to participants. For years, the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the coordinated entry system have viewed Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) and Targeted Affordable Housing (TAH) through a lens of scarcity, comparing individuals to each other to determine who is most in need of a housing intervention, i.e. who scores highest on the “vulnerability index.” However, with this many available vouchers in one year, DHS and coordinated entry should develop a more streamlined prioritization process and just provide vouchers to every person who is eligible. (The Budget Support Act requires DHS to issue regulations on who is eligible for TAH (such regulations already exist for PSH) and provides some guidance for how to prioritize families who are eligible for TAH.)

DCHA  is now required, through the Budget Support Act, to lower the barriers to its tenant voucher program, including PSH and TAH. (Unlike its federal voucher program, which must comply with federal regulations, the local voucher program can be modified substantially to improve accessibility and efficiency.) First, DCHA must remove any eligibility requirements that screen out applicants on the basis of criminal convictions  or pending criminal legal matters. Second, DCHA must remove any requirements that screen out or tend to screen out undocumented immigrants. Finally, DCHA must review its verification requirements and allow self-attestation of eligibility factors where the applicant cannot quickly or easily acquire documents. These changes will increase access and efficiency within the voucher programs.

Once someone receives a voucher, the process of finding an apartment can be challenging. There are plenty of vacant units, but there are also plenty of landlords who discriminate against voucher holders or who have unreasonable eligibility criteria. In the last year, DC has made tremendous progress  in removing housing barriers by starting to seal eviction records. However, legislation that prohibits landlords from using sealed eviction records, bolsters tenant protections, and strengthens DC’s voucher discrimination laws remains in the Housing Committee. (You can read about our support for those bills here.) It is unfortunate that a slow legislative process and lack of funding in this budget will prevent thousands of new housing applicants from enjoying those crucial protections. Still, our current Human Rights Act and Fair Criminal Records Screening Act do provide some housing protections. We, along with our legal services colleagues, stand ready to assist any applicant facing discrimination while in search of a home.

The DC budget is a moral document

We are grateful for the advocacy and support of  blog readers and community members – our collective efforts to increase funding for deeply affordable housing and end homelessness were incredibly successful this year. It’s vital to keep this success in context because, as always, our work with the Fair Budget Coalition is rooted in the belief that low-income DC residents have a multitude of interrelated needs. Our clients who need housing also need things like accessible healthcare (i.e. removing Healthcare Alliance barriers) and sufficient income support (i.e. excluded worker payments), among other things. Unfortunately, this budget did not make substantial investments towards meeting those holistic needs, and DC has a lot of work to do to achieve a truly equitable budget. We continue to believe that the DC budget is a moral document.  Dire circumstances, dogged advocacy, and political will combined this year to make our housing goals a reality.  Thousands of DC residents will no longer experience the trauma of homelessness because of this budget. Lives will be saved because of this budget. However, the progress cannot end with this FY22 budget. We must urge our lawmakers to continue to make decisions that prioritize the lives of vulnerable and marginalized DC residents. Through a sustained commitment to reducing harm and supporting resident needs, DC can, one day, become the inclusive city that we envision and know it can be.

On July 20, the DC Council took its first vote on DC’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 budget, and the final vote will be on August 3. With the end of the FY22 budget season on the horizon, we want to check in with our community of readers and update you on how our housing and homelessness priorities have fared in the budget process thus far. But of course, it’s not over until it’s over – it is possible that the numbers we are reporting may change a bit here and there, and it is possible that the Council could make more changes at the August 3 vote.

As we reported here, the Mayor’s budget invested substantially in some areas, like the Housing Production Trust Fund, but fell far short of the need in many others. The Council had a lot of work to do to move DC closer to housing justice in this budget. As Legal Clinic attorney Amber Harding wrote in a commentary for the DC Line two days before the budget vote:

“DC is on the precipice of a homelessness emergency beyond anything we have ever seen, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to turn around. The budget decisions that the DC Council makes in the next few weeks about how much money to invest in homelessness prevention, public housing repairs, and ending homelessness will determine whether we experience a humanitarian nightmare or a just and equitable recovery.”

Over the past few weeks, over 500 people participated in our email action asking the Council to make substantial investments to end homelessness and repair public housing, not to mention the many separate individual emails and phone calls. The DC Council made some small but important increases in housing investments prior to the first vote.

• Councilmember Brianne Nadeau found $1 million for eviction prevention (which the Mayor had cut by $5.5 million).
• Councilmember Robert White dedicated $100,000 for a re-entry housing pilot and $650,000 for public housing repairs.
• Chairman Mendelson found an additional $4.5 million for eviction prevention (bringing the program back up to FY21 levels), $20 million for permanent supportive housing for 775 individuals, and an additional $27.35 million for public housing repairs, bringing the total to $50 million.

But even with those investments, the budget the Council had before it at the first vote on July 20 included no vouchers to take people off the waiting list, no vouchers for homeless families about to fall off the rapid re-housing cliff, and nowhere near enough housing vouchers to house residents currently staying in encampments humanely or ensure that people in hotels are not forced to return to the street or overcrowded shelters when federal funding lapses. In the 12 hours leading up to the Council’s first budget vote, 300 people participated in an email action asking DC councilmembers to vote for a tax increase on high-income earners to dramatically increase funding to end homelessness. The tax increase was the only option left to get the funding to increase housing resources and protect thousands of DC residents experiencing homelessness.

We are inspired by and grateful for the outpouring of community support for this measure – thanks to many of you, DC’s elected leaders heard that support loud and clear. The measure to increase taxes on high-income earners (led by Councilmembers Nadeau, Allen and Lewis George) passed by an 8-5 vote, funding enough vouchers to end homelessness for 2400 individuals and families, as well as ensuring higher wages for childcare workers and expanding DC’s Earned Income Tax Credit, a program that helps out low-wage workers. You can thank the eight Councilmembers who voted “yes” here, or you can use the chart below to reach out to specific members.

It was reported this week that Mayor Bowser wants the Council to “reconsider” the tax increase. But that would mean cutting $100 million in investments—critical investments that further racial and economic justice. We encourage the Council to instead maintain these investments and take heed of Mayor Bowser’s words from just a few weeks before the vote:

“We know that stable housing is a necessary foundation for all things in life – health, education, steady employment, and connection to one’s family and community…We are proud of the progress we’ve made since launching Homeward DC, but there is more work to do. As we recover from the pandemic, we must keep pushing to not only protect our progress, but realize the goal we know is possible: ending long-term homelessness for all people in Washington, DC.”

Below are the investments in affordable housing and homelessness so far in the budget. In these final days of the FY22 budget season we are hoping to see increased investments to meet our full asks in the chart below. We are also asking the Council to find a little money to fund the Cashless Retailers Prohibition Act and Office of Human Rights enforcement of protections like those found in the Eviction Record Sealing Authority Act and the Fair Tenant Screening Act to ensure that housing applicants can enforce tenant screening and anti-discrimination laws.

*With an investment of $42M through 2025, there should be sufficient funds to support later projects that come online. Therefore, we consider this “ask” fully funded at this time.

Editor’s note: The original publication of this post included a version of the above table that contained a typo. It has been updated to reflect the correct amount of funding put forward for public housing repairs by DC Council.

The following is an adaptation of testimony provided by Amber Harding on March 1, 2021 before the DC Council Committee on Human Services,
at the performance oversight hearing on the DC Department of Human Services (DHS). The full testimony can be found here.

2020 was a rough year, without question. But when the world turns upside down, it provides an opportunity to reassess what we may have accepted as true, or right, or just how things are. We at the Legal Clinic want to take this opportunity to lay out some of the lessons we hope DC comes away with regarding homelessness.

Homelessness is preventable—its existence is a political choice.

There has been a fair amount of celebration from the Bowser Administration for how drastically family homelessness (as defined by the number of families in shelters) has decreased this year. The Director of DHS attributed the decrease to the agency’s effort at “system reform,” but the most obvious, substantial driver for the decrease is the eviction moratorium that has been in effect for almost a year, and, relatedly, the moratorium on time limit exits from rapid re-housing. (As the authors of the recent Georgetown eviction study recently concluded: “While the Rapid Rehousing Program aids households to exit shelters more quickly, it may be contributing to eviction rates in the District. More long-term solutions like permanently affordable housing can be more effective at achieving housing stability.”)

When elected leaders choose to stop evictions and rapid re-housing terminations, the results are clear—homelessness decreases. This effect lays bare how decisions in more “typical” years—to allow thousands of evictions to move forward with little relief for renters—create and sustain homelessness.

The lesson: DC must dedicate enough resources to prevent every possible eviction, extend time-limited subsidies, and drastically increase its investment in deeply affordable housing.

Safe, private shelter and housing saves lives.

Our clients have said for years that they get sick in large congregate shelters. We have clients who sleep on the street because they feel safer there or have fewer illnesses. Yet shelters continue to be large communal spaces, and even when Mayor Bowser replaced DC General, she (and the Council) refused to concede that private space is fundamental to safety, dignity, and good health. Instead, families must share bathrooms and living space.

Then the pandemic hit. We were inundated with messaging to social distance, to stay home, to avoid mixing households. But homeless people weren’t given the opportunity to follow health guidelines. They were forced to share bathrooms and dining areas with strangers. Hundreds of homeless people without kids were forced to sleep in rooms with dozens of strangers, sometimes just a few feet away.

The first COVID-19 case in DC was March 7. The first case among people experiencing homelessness was March 31. In just one month, over 200 homeless persons were infected. As of March 15, 523 people experiencing homelessness have contracted COVID-19 and 25 have died. Some people have contracted it more than once. A recent study concluded that the mortality rate for people experiencing homelessness in DC is twice the mortality rate of the general population, and higher than any other city surveyed.

Eventually, DC moved over 600 people who doctors determined to be at high risk of dying of COVID-19 into a hotel program, called the Pandemic Emergency Program for Medically Vulnerable Individuals (PEP-V). Over 600 high risk individuals, though, remain on the waiting list for PEP-V. With the announcement by the Biden Administration that 100% of costs for these hotels would be reimbursed, including retroactive payments, we expected DHS to expand the program. That has not happened. Instead, two more people have died of COVID-19 since that announcement. DC must expand PEP-V immediately to prevent further loss of life, and to accommodate every high-risk person experiencing homelessness.

As much as we support the expansion of PEP-V, though, we do not endorse the position DHS has taken—that PEP-V is not covered by the Homeless Service Reform Act (HSRA), the law that governs homelessness service programs in DC and the legal rights of residents interacting with those programs. Without legislative change confirming that PEP-V is covered by the HSRA, DHS will continue to deny due process rights to PEP-V residents. High risk individuals should not have to jettison their legal rights just to survive the pandemic.

With new federal money coming into DC that allows DC to invest in longer term non congregate shelter spaces, we hope that DC will revisit its plans for new shelters with an eye to creating much smaller and more private spaces for people to be when they become homeless. If DC had had humane shelters, the numbers of homeless people impacted, dozens fatally, by COVID would be far smaller. There is no excuse for continuing to force people to live in such settings.

The lesson: DHS needs to expand PEP-V to meet the full need and bring all sites into compliance with due process. If DHS does not voluntarily come into compliance, the Council needs to amend the emergency authorization for PEP-V to clarify that it is an HSRA-covered program. The Interagency Council on Homelessness needs to explore federal funding opportunities and revisit shelter redesign to maximize the privacy and safety of future shelters.

Update: 11 members of the DC Council sent Mayor Bowser this letter on Friday, March 26, 2021, asking her to expand PEP-V immediately!

4/2 Update: DHS announced it will be opening another hotel for 200 people! That is great, but at least 456 more people will need hotel rooms after that happens. Send the Mayor a quick email to thank her and ask her to keep it up here.

To be humane and anti-racist, programs must be low barrier.

Collecting and submitting documents for verification of eligibility is difficult and can get in the way of receiving lifesaving services.  When the pandemic hit, DC streamlined many of its programs to try to make them lower barrier.  The sky has not fallen. There are no reports of widescale fraud. These changes should be celebrated and maintained post-public health emergency.

Yet emergency shelter for families remains extremely high barrier, perhaps the highest barrier public benefit program in the District. We regularly get calls from families who are turned away from shelter because they can’t provide documentation that they have nowhere to go—a burden imposed on families not by the law, but by DHS. (The burden is actually on DHS to prove that someone has a safe place to go, not on the applicant to prove that they do not have a safe place to go.)

This high-barrier, unlawfully-run, intake system is dangerous to families every day. During a pandemic it is particularly cruel. Just in the last two months, here are some examples—in each case, the family was not placed until a lawyer intervened:

• During a snowstorm, a mom was told she could not go into shelter because she is on her mother’s voucher. She explained that her mother had kicked her out of the apartment and had physically assaulted her, leading to a stay away order.
• A mother was told she could not be placed in shelter until she provided her mother’s lease to show she wasn’t on it, a letter from her uncle’s landlord saying she can’t stay there, and additional names of friends and family members she could potentially stay with. Since she couldn’t get the documents, she was denied shelter.
• A family was denied shelter even after the family they were doubled up with tested positive for COVID-19.
• A mother and her one-year-old child slept in a hallway after being unable to provide an aunt’s lease to prove they were not on it.
• A pregnant woman in her third trimester was denied family shelter because Virginia Williams determined that she could stay in a hypothermia shelter for women.

A little math shows that these stories are not, as DHS often claims, exceptions or one-offs. In its performance oversight responses (question 44, page 66), DHS states that, in FY20, 7463 families applied for shelter through Virginia Williams and 1180 families applied through the hotline, for a total of 8643 applications. Out of those applications, only 807 were deemed eligible and placed in shelter. Although DHS splits the denials up into 1705 referred to the Homeless Prevention Program and 867 found ineligible, a referral to Homelessness Prevention Program is also a denial of shelter and finding of ineligibility. Using these numbers, only 9.3% of applications for family emergency shelter were granted in FY20—a 90.7% denial rate. For FY21, the denial rate has risen to 94.6%– during a period of time that included many hypothermic nights.

High barrier programs are not just harmful—they are also racist. Pernicious, poisonous myths that poor Black people game the system to get public benefits, cannot be trusted to tell the truth, or do not know what is best for themselves or their families form the foundation of DC’s high barrier family shelter intake. If families apply for emergency shelter, it is because they have decided that shelter is safest option for their family. That decision is not an easy one for most families, and DHS should respect that families know what is best for them.

The lesson: DC needs to recommit to a low barrier family shelter intake system during the pandemic and beyond. The HSRA should be amended to allow self-certification for all elements of eligibility. 

External forces impact poverty and housing affordability.

This pandemic has laid bare the core flaw of rapid re-housing: its arbitrary time limit leaves no room for crisis. DHS was, rightfully, quick to decide that it would be unfair and unwise to terminate families when a global pandemic interfered with a family’s ability to increase their income and afford market rent. But the speed and clarity of that decision stands starkly in contrast with their historic refusal to consider a more individualized exit policy for families in the program. The COVID-19 pandemic is not the only factor outside of families’ control. What about the lack of available jobs that pay enough for families to be able to afford rent? Lack of affordable childcare, education, or housing? Centuries of systemic racism?

Individual decisions or motivation are not primary causes of housing instability. Building a program around the myth that families, almost exclusively Black families, need an arbitrary time limit to motivate them to increase their income is racist. Cutting families off from support before they can afford the rent is unjust, pandemic or no, and disproportionately harms Black families. DHS admits in its performance oversight responses that in FY20 that only 17% of families were exited from rapid re-housing because they no longer required assistance. (Question 64, Page 90.)

People who are suffering from housing instability because of the pandemic or co-occurring recession are worthy of support. But so those suffering from housing instability because of a myriad of other external forces, some centuries in the making.

The lesson: DC must do away with arbitrary time limits in programs, including rapid re-housing, and focus on resolving systemic inequities that have led to widescale housing instability and lack of deeply affordable housing.

With a significant infusion of federal dollars, a new understanding of the importance of housing as healthcare, and a commitment by DHS to undergo an analysis of the racial equity impact of its programs, now is the time to take these lessons to heart and make substantial changes to the status quo.

Five ways to advocate now for safer shelter and more permanent housing placements.

1. Send this one-click email action. Thank the Mayor for expanding the hotel program, but ask her to keep expanding PEP-V until every high-risk person is placed, and to invest in deeply affordable housing and reimagining our shelter system.
2. Sign this petition demanding that Mayor Bowser increase non congregate shelter and housing placements to save lives. If you’re part of an organization that wants to sign on, email amber@legalclinic.org. (Check out this post to see all of the organizations already signed on!
3. Contact DC Council. Email your ward Councilmember and all the at-large members to remind them of the lessons 2020 taught us and ask them for their support. (You can find their contact information here.)
4. Take to Twitter. Use the hashtag #WhatHomeDC and tag @MayorBowser, @ZLauraJeanne (DHS Director Zeilinger) and @BrianneKNadeau in your tweets.
5. Spread the word! Share these asks, including the petition, with your friends, family, and social media circle!