Above: Dil Belay once supported Adrian Fenty but now he’s all
in for Vince Gray. “We need somebody who listens to us” – Dil

Washington City Paper
Posted by Lydia DePillis
Sep. 9, 2010 at 11:09 am

Back in 2002, Daniel Belayneh started the non-profit Ethiopian Community Services and Development Council because he noticed a clear injustice: Two homeless Ethiopian immigrants had frozen to death in the street, and nobody noticed or cared. When a Hispanic man was found dead under similar circumstances, he says, the tragedy made the newspapers and attracted attention from politicians.

Eight years later, he feels like Ethiopians are receiving the same treatment from the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Belayneh started a homeless shelter for down-on-their-luck African immigrants, but had to shut it down last year after expected city funding didn’t come through. He invited Fenty to attend a ribbon cutting for a new free clinic his organization had started, but the mayor didn’t show up.

Belayneh says ECSDC represents Ethiopians in D.C., helping new immigrants become law-abiding, productive citizens. But he’s never once been able to get so much as a meeting with Fenty. And now, though his organization is formally non-political, he’s ready for someone else to run things at the Wilson Building.

“We need somebody who listens to us now in office, to answer our questions. We don’t need somebody sitting there and ignoring our calls,” Belayneh says, with consternation. “I’m telling you, can you imagine, I live in Washington, I am in charge of 80,000 people in D.C., they deny me access to his office? I’m telling you, it’s just unbelievable!” Read more.