... A documentary called “Endangered Species,” about a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., known as Anacostia, just a few blocks from Capitol Hill. It is one of the most violent and dangerous neighborhoods in the city, one of those places that give Washington the horrendous distinction of the highest murder rate of any major city in the country. It’s horrendous in other ways too. The Anacostia River that gives the neighborhood its name is one of the most polluted in America; more than a billion gallons of raw sewage end up in it every year.
We went there to report on the Earth Conservation Corps, a project started by one Bob Nixon to recruit neighborhood kids to help clean up the river and community. For their efforts, they earn minimum wage, get health insurance, and are offered a $5,000 scholarship if they go back to school.
The area where they work is practically a war zone. Since the project began an average of one corps member has been murdered almost every year. One was beaten to death. One was raped and killed. Another died when he was caught in the middle of a shooting while riding his bike. Three were shot execution style.
One of the most charismatic of the kids who joined the Corps was named Diamond Teague. He worked so hard the others jokingly called him “Choir Boy.” His work became his passion; he loved it. It gave purpose and meaning to his life to try and clean up his neighborhood and river. But one morning while he was sitting on his front porch someone walked up and shot him in the head.
It’s that kind of place, not far from where the swells of Congress are hosted and toasted by lobbyists for America’s most powerful and privileged interests.
After his death Diamond Teague got the only press of his short life—43 words in the Washington Post:
“A teenager was found fatally shot about 2:05 Thursday in the 2200 block of Prout Place SW, police said. Diamond D. Teague, 19, who lived on the block, was pronounced dead.”
That’s all. That was Diamond Teague’s obit. Not a word about his work for the Earth’s Conservation Corps. Not a word.
It was left to his friends to tell the world about Diamond Teague. One of them explained to us that they wanted people to know that just because a black man gets killed in the Southeast corner of the nation’s capitol, “he’s not just a drug dealer or gang banger…and not just discount him as nobody when he deserves for people to know him and to know his life.”
They made a video—you can see part of it in our documentary. They turned out for his funeral in uniform. They wept and prayed for their fallen friend. And then they went back to work, on a dusty patch of land squeezed between two factories that they envisioned as a park. “We see the bigger picture,” one of Diamond’s friends told us. “All great things have to start in roughness. We’re just at the beginning of something that’s gonna be beautiful.”
They’ve said they would call it the Diamond Teague Memorial Park, in honor of their friend who was trying to save an endangered river and neighborhood but couldn’t save himself.
On that fleck of land, where anything beautiful must be born in roughness, they see “the bigger picture.”
Just blocks away, at opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the White House and the Capitol, the blind lead the blind, on one more march of folly.
We went there to report on the Earth Conservation Corps, a project started by one Bob Nixon to recruit neighborhood kids to help clean up the river and community. For their efforts, they earn minimum wage, get health insurance, and are offered a $5,000 scholarship if they go back to school.
The area where they work is practically a war zone. Since the project began an average of one corps member has been murdered almost every year. One was beaten to death. One was raped and killed. Another died when he was caught in the middle of a shooting while riding his bike. Three were shot execution style.
One of the most charismatic of the kids who joined the Corps was named Diamond Teague. He worked so hard the others jokingly called him “Choir Boy.” His work became his passion; he loved it. It gave purpose and meaning to his life to try and clean up his neighborhood and river. But one morning while he was sitting on his front porch someone walked up and shot him in the head.
It’s that kind of place, not far from where the swells of Congress are hosted and toasted by lobbyists for America’s most powerful and privileged interests.
After his death Diamond Teague got the only press of his short life—43 words in the Washington Post:
“A teenager was found fatally shot about 2:05 Thursday in the 2200 block of Prout Place SW, police said. Diamond D. Teague, 19, who lived on the block, was pronounced dead.”
That’s all. That was Diamond Teague’s obit. Not a word about his work for the Earth’s Conservation Corps. Not a word.
It was left to his friends to tell the world about Diamond Teague. One of them explained to us that they wanted people to know that just because a black man gets killed in the Southeast corner of the nation’s capitol, “he’s not just a drug dealer or gang banger…and not just discount him as nobody when he deserves for people to know him and to know his life.”
They made a video—you can see part of it in our documentary. They turned out for his funeral in uniform. They wept and prayed for their fallen friend. And then they went back to work, on a dusty patch of land squeezed between two factories that they envisioned as a park. “We see the bigger picture,” one of Diamond’s friends told us. “All great things have to start in roughness. We’re just at the beginning of something that’s gonna be beautiful.”
They’ve said they would call it the Diamond Teague Memorial Park, in honor of their friend who was trying to save an endangered river and neighborhood but couldn’t save himself.
On that fleck of land, where anything beautiful must be born in roughness, they see “the bigger picture.”
Just blocks away, at opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the White House and the Capitol, the blind lead the blind, on one more march of folly.
