By Aria Brent
AFRO Staff Writer
abrent@afro.com
In just four short years, Councilmember Janeese Lewis George has brought a great amount of change to the Ward 4 community. Although she represents a small community, the impact she’s making is being felt all across the Washington, D.C. area. Within the last year George has become best known for the work she’s done to raise the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits throughout the District, however, she’s up for reelection this year and the young council member has a lot more plans for helping her community.
George was elected into her position in 2020 and was officially sworn in January 2021, however, her passion for politics and community activism is something she’s been pursuing since her adolescence. George was born and raised in Ward 4 and she’s a proud graduate of School Without Walls High School. Throughout her youth she participated in a series of youth-based programs that prepared her for her current career in politics.
“I’ve been active and involved in politics my whole life. When I was younger, I was a really big student activist. I served as a student representative on the D.C. Board of Education. I was a Ward 4 representative on the D.C. Youth Advisory Council, and served as D.C.’s YMCA youth mayor when I was younger,” George recalled.
As a Ward 4 native, George said she has a great understanding of what her community needs and as a councilmember she knows exactly how to provide the citizens she serves with the proper resources to help them thrive.
Noting that Ward 4 has the highest population of Latino and Eastern African residents in the D.C. area, for example, George discussed some of the challenges she’s overcome while serving a community that has a language barrier. She explained to the AFRO that she’s working to increase the neighborhoods’ safety by creating legislation that assures food, housing and the overall security of the community is solid. In addition, she’s also provided her community with resources that boost education and access to jobs.
“I have the largest Latino population, and the largest Ethiopian and Eritrean population and oftentimes landlords will use language barriers and they use the threat of immigration status to provide poor housing to those tenants. Community safety is also extremely important and right now it’s the number one issue. We’ve seen an increase in homicides and robberies and neighbors aren’t feeling safe. My approach has involved focusing resources where they’re needed most,” she said. “I made every agency provide resources to the neighborhood. I was able to bring the violence interrupter program to the neighborhood and I’ve been able to use the attorney general’s office as well to crack down on nuisance properties and businesses who were also not being good partners to that neighborhood.”
She continued, “I had job fairs in the neighborhood offering anybody a job. I made it so that we could put a library on Kennedy street to provide a resource that could help people apply for jobs, help young people have a place to go to do homework, to have air conditioning and to have internet and WiFi–things that people think are luxuries but they are not.”
Those who know her best spoke with the AFRO about some of her strongest qualities, noting her to be focused on results and hands-on when it comes to community involvement.
“Her greatest strength would be how result-oriented she is. She finds ways to get problems solved whereas other people just articulate them. She is great at articulating them but also coming up with plans to get the problems fixed,” said James Lewis, brother of Councilmember George. “I want her to continue to focus on the results and putting concrete plans into positions and bills in place that help the community.”
As an example of George’s efficacy, supporters point to the major role she played in getting legislation created to raise the SNAP benefits throughout the city. The hometown hero shared how vital this legislation was and how it’s going to continue to help D.C. residents for years to come.
“One-fifth of D.C. residents struggle with hunger right now and those are disproportionately people of color and seniors. When we were talking about raising the wage for SNAP benefits, it was our job as a council to write the budget and to find this money and we had to get creative,” George said. “We did the budget and we had to allocate all the funds in the budget. We always end up having excess revenue and I asked if I could write an amendment that said ‘If we have extra revenue this is where the adverse $30 million should go’ and I was able to create an amendment that says if we have these excess dollars they must go to funding this SNAP benefit.”
The lawmaker is currently amidst her campaign for reelection and she shared how excited she is to continue the work she’s been doing for the last four years and what she plans to address if elected to serve for another four years.
George shared, “My second term is about leaving this ward better than I found it with more opportunities, more resources, and everyone being able to feel safe and thrive in this city. People can anticipate that I’m going to continue to deliver for our ward and I’m going to continue to be a warrior for Ward 4 in every sense of the word.”
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