Dining

Supporting Black Owned Vegan Eateries Across the U.S.

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Significant changes need to occur to move towards an anti-racist society. One small, but impactful, step we all can take is to support Black owned businesses. According to a study by the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research, Black owned businesses have not only had a more difficult time accessing capital, but they have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Washington Post noted the “number of working Black business owners fell 40 percent amid coronavirus.” As many small, Black owned businesses are struggling, it’s important to seek out and support them now and in the future. Numerous Black owned plant-based restaurants exist throughout the country.

Columns

VALDETARO | Let D.C. (Yes, D.C.) Vote

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Growing up just outside of Washington, D.C., I had ample interaction with the federal government. My dad worked for a government contractor, the parents and neighbors of friends were government employees and officials of all levels of importance and, most importantly, the daily mass migration of federal workers from their jobs often left me stuck on gridlocked roads between about 4:30 and 7:00 p.m. To this day, when I meet somebody from outside the area I grew up in, I introduce myself as being from D.C., because it often feels like I am just as much a part of what happens in D.C. as are those who actually live there. In every way but one, this is categorically false; the speed with which I take back this claim when I mistakenly make it to an actual resident of the District is evidence enough of that. And yet, I, along with every other resident of Virginia, Maryland and the other 48 states in the union, have one thing that those who live in the capital do not: representation in the government that sits there. Residents of D.C. have no voting representation in Congress, despite taking in those which the rest of the country seems to collectively loathe and then having to be under more direct control of those 535 people than any other municipality.