Overflow from the mall
Rarely does anything that happens on the mall make it up to my side of Shaw. Rallies, protests, whatever seem to invade the Red line, Foggy Bottom, Dupont, and downtown. However yesterday there was a protest on the mall regarding immigration. I didn't know this when I tried to get around a huge mob of Latinos at PG Plaza metro. On the heading back into the city I noticed that the Latino population was significantly higher than usual. Almost every stop between PG and Shaw/Howard had some sizable clump of Latinos. Notably confused clumps that did not comprehend that which is WMATA, which really isn't the most visitor friendly (confusing signage, grumpy employees) transit system. Normally where there were loud obnoxious and annoying teens, instead there where groups of Spanish speakers. This was a bit odd. I wasn't sure what to make of it.Then later at a meeting at a downtown teashop I was told about the rally down at the mall and that Union Station was a madhouse. This new information explained the upsurge, but usually, to me anyways, what goes on at the mall doesn't come up to Shaw. But there they were looking at street signs, metro maps, looking lost in Shaw. Now one could ask that maybe I never noticed other groups with actions on the mall venturing up before. Well for one, the Green line (to me) has a higher portion of African Americans riding it as it goes through historically black neighborhoods and PG County twice. So if there is an upsurge of a non-black demographic one would notice.
Well once some signage from a pro-choice? pro-life? rally made it to the Shaw/Howard trash can..... Maybe this is a sign that out of town visitors are moving through and stopping in Shaw more?
posted by Mari @ 8.3.06
1 Comments:
I'm noticing alot more latinos as you go west from about 7th to 16th. I think there is growing latino community from around Mass, between these corridors, heading east & north. Maybe alot of the folks combined the protest with some neighborhood scouting.
Speaking of the neighborhood, have you noticed the Monique has resumed construction? It's growing like a weed, & will soon hide the "house that crack built".
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