What this site is all about

The Cleveland Park Citizens Association, in one form or another, has promoted the Cleveland Park area of Washington, DC since 1919. By 2009 the organization had become ingrown and was representing only the views of that small section of the residents that opposed change simply because it was different. Although it claimed over 400 members, rarely more that 40 turned out to vote and only a handful did all of the work.

So, in the Spring of 2009, a number of neighbors decided to revitalize the group and about 75 pledged to work to transform it to be more open and inclusive and joined the organization. More that 200 have joined as part of this recruitment drive.

The response of the group that ran the CPCA was to cancel the elections mandated by the constitution for the first Saturday in June. These elections were rescheduled 16 weeks later for September 29, 2009. The original group of reformers nominated candidates on a Reform Slate. This web site serves as one of the forums to explain the platform and start to grapple with the issues the new officers will have to deal with. It will give you an insight about how we planned to modernize the CPCA if we had been elected. Instead, we lost to the Unity Team that was backed by the 'old guard'.

However, in the process we doubled the size of the CPCA and the Unity Team adopted much of our platform. Time will tell if they implement it. So far, reconciliation and uniting the organization is not going well with the winners determined to hang on to all vestiges of power.

-Gabe Fineman
5 October 2009