Opinions
Media portrayal of Trayon White does him no justice
Washington Post’s unfair coverage ignores record of good deeds
D.C. Council member Trayon White (D-Ward 8) (Photo via Facebook)
Over the past few weeks, there has been immense focus on Ward 8 Council member Trayon White’s comments in a Facebook video that the Rothschilds are manipulating the weather. Once The Washington Post discovered the video, it began running articles with headlines that White said “Jews control the weather,” which he never said. The distinction between saying “Rothschilds” versus saying “Jews” is important because The Post went from merely reporting facts to ascribing intent to White’s statements.
Media outlets worldwide then picked up the story. White did not know that his statement about the Rothschilds could be construed as targeting Jews as a group. To reach that conclusion, he would have needed to know that conspiracies about the Rothschilds are long-running anti-Semitic themes, which he and numerous others, including local Jewish leaders, acknowledge that he did not know.
Upon hearing of the history of Rothschilds conspiracy theories and the impact that they have on the Jewish community, White sincerely apologized, and met with his Jewish Council colleagues and Jewish community leaders, including Rabbi Batya Glazer. The Jewish leaders he met with believed his apology was sincere and expressed a willingness to work with him. White then attended Passover Seder with his Council colleague Elissa Silverman, who is Jewish, and D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine. After that, he attended a guided tour of the Holocaust Museum, set up by the Jewish Community Relations Council.
In response to criticism about White’s tour of the Holocaust Museum, after another Washington Post article, Jews United for Justice, a D.C.-based progressive organization, noted in a statement that, “We have spoken with several people who were present for the museum visit, including a Jewish leader, who say the Post article isn’t an accurate picture. They describe Trayon as sincere in his desire to learn, and that the vast gaps in knowledge and understanding between Black and Jewish communities became evident again and again during the tour.”
These are not the actions of someone who is anti-Semitic and not interested in learning more about Jewish history. White admits in a Facebook Live video that he was “ignorant” about Jewish history and never learned about the Holocaust in school, so disparaging him for asking sincere questions is counter-productive and serves no one. It’s also insensitive and elitist, as many people learn best by asking questions and engaging in dialogue. White should not have been derided by a Washington Post reporter for asking questions in a sincere attempt to learn about a topic that is new to him.
Jews United for Justice’s statement further said that, “Councilmember White closed his Council office to ensure that the entire staff would be present for the museum visit. This in itself shows the depth of his seriousness.” Nonetheless, he was criticized for “leaving early” when he walked away from the group to explore the museum on his own, which he said he did to avoid the uninvited reporter who was following him.
Last week, The Washington Post wrote an article about a $500 donation that White made to the Nation of Islam back in January because local members, who provide much-needed community support in Ward 8, asked him. The donation was made before Louis Farrakhan made anti-Semitic and homophobic comments at a February event that has garnered recent attention. The donation was also made months before the Rothschilds comment was made, so it has no bearing on the sincerity of White’s outreach efforts with the Jewish community. However, the media just became aware of the donation when White filed his April campaign finance report, so a donation that was made months prior to his attempts to make amends with the Jewish community is being used to assert that his efforts are not heartfelt.
Trayon White was born and raised in Ward 8, the District’s poorest ward. Markita Bryant, 31, a youth activist and paralegal, grew up with Trayon in Southeast and went to college with him. The media coverage of White particularly bothers her because “that’s not who Trayon is. If he feels that he hurt or offended someone, he internalizes it, acknowledges it and works on it. He takes in criticism and he will improve himself.”
“He sacrifices a lot to serve the community, including food and sleep,” she said. “He has literally given a neighborhood child the shoes off his feet at a community event when the child’s shoes were stolen.” Bryant further noted, “Trayon’s brilliant because he takes the time to sit there and understand the information in front of them. If he’s not learning, he’s helping others. That’s why he graduated with a 3.7 from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He’s the biggest listener and he’s so patient. He works his butt off for the people.”
Star Bennett, 28, is a transgender woman and one of the founders of Check It, a former LGBT gang turned entrepreneurs. When discussing White’s openness to all people, Bennett said, “Trayon was always cool and very respectful. He never had a problem with me being transgender. He’s always smiling every time he sees me.” Bennett mentioned that White was at the grand opening for the Check It Enterprises store in Ward 8. “He always comes and supports us.”
Wendy Glenn, 50, a community engagement specialist and longtime ward 8 resident, said, “Councilmember White has gone out and galvanized a group of marginalized folks. He’s given the youth something to aspire to. They know that he came from meager beginnings and now represents everyone. He is a young man that has grown up in the same way as they have, and he hasn’t let that stop him.”
Glenn, who has known White since he was a teenager, was “impressed with him as a teen and more impressed with him on the Council. I saw his growth,” she said. “I had a group of LGBTQ youth that did modeling at Barry Farm Rec Center and he was very supportive of them.”
Glenn described the recent media coverage of White as a “false depiction. It’s sensational journalism. To know Trayon is to know him in love. He’s a church boy. He has shown no level of hate. He hates injustice in any form.”
(Editor’s note: The author and Trayon White were previously colleagues at the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, Community Outreach.)
Lateefah Williams is an attorney and a former president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the District’s largest LGBT political organization.
Renee Good. Alex Pretti.
During this last year, I wondered who would be the first U.S. citizen to be shot by our government. It was not a matter of if, but when. Always.
And now we know.
I thought it would be soldiers. But the masked men got there first. Because when you mix guns and protests, guns inevitably go off. The powers that be always knew it, hoped for it, and wanted it to happen.
Why? Because masked men and guns instill fear. And that’s the point. Ask yourself when’s the last time you saw masked men and guns in our cities, or anywhere for that matter. I always thought that men masked men with guns robbed banks. I was wrong.
Masked men want to rob us of our dignity as human beings. Of our assurance in the calmness and contentment of our communities. They want to rob us of our trust in our institutions, and our faith in each other. And truly they want to rob us of the happiness and joy that we all constantly yearn to find in our lives.
But our only collective ability as a nation to push back is our protests. Peaceful protests. As Renee and Alex did.
But peaceful protests? Because they are the perfect power to shame the cowardice of those that believe guns and force are the only true authority. Fortunately, our last hope and fiercest ally is our Constitution, which gives us the power — and the right — to protest.
How much more peaceful can you get when you hear Renee Good’s last words, “I’m not mad at you, Dude.” I may be mad at the system, the government, the powers of unknown people pulling the strings but not you personally. “Dude.” Peaceful to the last word.
Yet, what becomes lost in the frantic pace of hair-trigger news cycles, of officials declaring impetuous damnations alongside johnny-on-the spot podcasters spouting their split-second opinions are the two human beings who have lost their lives.
How habituated we’ve become as we instantly devour their instant obituaries. The sum of their lives declared in less than 10 seconds of cellphone video. They haven’t just lost their lives. They’ve lost all of their lives. And now we watch over and over again as their death is re-revealed, re-churned, re-evaluated, and re-consumed. In that endless repetition, we forget the meaning of life itself.
We must remember that Renee and Alex believed in their communities, in the purpose of their work, in the happiness of their loves and lives, and in the dignity and curiosity of life itself. They were singular individuals who did not deserve to die at the end of a gun barrel for any reason, ever.
How fitting that Renee was a poet. Sometimes in confronting the massiveness of loss in our lives, we look to our poetry and our psalms, our hymns and our lullabies, to find a moment of solace in our communal grief, and to remember Renee and Alex, for what they gave us in life.
Yet, at this moment, I cannot escape the reality of what was taken from them so soon, so violently and so forever. They were exceptionally courageous and normal people, and for that reason, I must remember them through a poem to explain to me, and others, the unexplainable.
I dream of this not happening.
I dream this day and night.
For none of this is real.
And none of this is right.
I dream of these sons and daughters
who now will not go home,
and dream of their mothers and fathers,
who now must stand alone.
I dream of all the flowers that they will never hold —
the kisses never shared again, the secrets to not be told.
I dream of all the sunsets that for them will never set,
I dream of all the love they gave and now they must forget.
I dream of all their dinners
with wine to never spill,
or books to read, or bread to break
or babies to be held.
I dream of each one still reaching
in the middle of the night,
for a hand that needs another
to stop a nightmare’s flight.
I dream of them not dreaming,
which I could never do,
for how can you not dream a dream
that never will come true.
I dream of this not happening.
I dream this day and night.
For none of this is real
And none of this is right.
Carew Papritz is the award-winning author of “The Legacy Letters,” who inspires kids to read through his “I Love to Read” and the “First-Ever Book Signing” YouTube series.
Opinions
Gay Treasury Secretary’s silence on LGBTQ issues shows he is scum
Scott Bessent is a betrayal to the community
We all know the felon in the White House is basically a POS. He is an evil, deranged, excuse for a man, out only for himself. But what is just as sad for me is the members of the LGBTQ community serving in his administration who are willing to stand by silently, while he screws the community in so many ways. The leader, with his silence on these issues, is the highest ranking “out” gay ever appointed to the Cabinet; the current secretary of the treasury, the scum who goes by the name, Scott Bessent.
Bessent has an interesting background based on his Wikipedia page. He is from South Carolina and is what I would call obscenely wealthy. According to his financial assets disclosure to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Bessent’s net worth was at least $521 million as of Dec. 28, 2024; his actual net worth is speculated to be around $600 million. He married John Freeman, a former New York City prosecutor, in 2011. They have two children, born through surrogacy. I often wonder why guys like Bessent conveniently forget how much they owe to the activists in the LGBTQ community who fought for the right for them to marry and have those children. Two additional interesting points in the Wikipedia post are Bessent reportedly has a close friendship with Donald Trump’s brother Robert, whose ex-wife, Blaine Trump, is the godmother of his daughter. The other is disgraced member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Jenrette, is his uncle.
Bessent has stood silent during all the administrations attacks on the LGBTQ community. What does he fear? This administration has kicked members of the trans community out of the military. Those who bravely risked their lives for our country. The administration’s policies attacking them has literally put their lives in danger. This administration supports removing books about the LGBTQ community from libraries, and at one point even removed information from the Pentagon website on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, thinking it might refer to a gay person. It was actually named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Col. Paul Tibbets. That is how dumb they are. Bessent stood silent during WorldPride while countries around the world told their LGBTQ citizens to avoid coming to the United States, as it wouldn’t be safe for them, because of the felon’s policies.
Now the administration has desecrated the one national monument saluting the LGBTQ community, Stonewall, in New York City, by ordering the removal of the rainbow flag. The monument honors the people who get credit for beginning the fight for equality that now allows Bessent, and his husband and children, to live their lives to the fullest. That was before this administration he serves came into office. I hope his children will grow up understanding how disgusting their father’s lack of action was. That they learn the history of the LGBTQ community and understand the guts it took for a college student Zach Wahls, now running for the U.S. Senate from Iowa, to speak out for his “two moms” in the Iowa State Legislature in 2011, defending their right to marry.
Bessent is sadly representative of the slew of gays in the administration, all remaining silent on the attacks on the community. They are mostly members of the Log Cabin Republicans who have given up on their principles, if they ever had any, to be subservient to the felon, and the fascists around him, all for a job.
There are so many like them who supported the felon in the last election. Some who believed in Project 2025, others who didn’t bother to read it. Many continue to stand with him, with the sycophants in the Congress, and the incompetents and fascists in the administration, as they work to destroy our country and end the democracy that has served us so well for 250 years. To keep out all immigrants from a nation of immigrants. They all seem to forget it was immigrants who built our country, who fought against a king, and won. These sycophants now support the man who wants to be king. Who openly says, “I am president I can do anything only based on my own morality,” which history clearly shows us he has none.
I believe we will survive these horrendous times in American history. We have fought a king before and won. We have kept our country alive and thriving through a civil war. We the people will defeat the felon and his minions, along with the likes of those who stood by silently like Scott Bessent. They seem to forget “Silence = Death.”
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
Unconventional love: Or, fuck it, let’s choose each other again
On Valentine’s Day, the kind of connection worth celebrating
There’s a moment at the end of “Love Jones” — the greatest Black love movie of the 21st century — when Darius stands in the rain, stripped of bravado, stripped of pride, stripped of all the cleverness that once protected him.
“I want us to be together again,” he says. “For as long as we can be.”
Not forever. Not happily ever after. Just again. And for as long as we can. That line alone dismantles the fairy tale.
“Love Jones” earns its place in the canon not because it is flawless, but because it is honest. It gave us Black love without sanitizing it. Black intellect without pretension. Black romance without guarantees. It told the truth: that love between two whole people is often clumsy, ego-driven, tender, frustrating, intoxicating—and still worth choosing.
That same emotional truth lives at the end of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” my favorite movie of all time. Joel and Clementine, having erased each other, accidentally fall back into love. When they finally listen to the tapes that reveal exactly how badly they hurt one another, Clementine does something radical: she tells the truth.
“I’m not perfect,” she says. “I’ll get bored. I’ll feel trapped. That’s what happens with me.”
She doesn’t ask Joel to deny reality. She invites him into it. Joel’s response isn’t poetic. It isn’t eloquent. It’s not even particularly brave. He shrugs.
“Ok.”
That “OK” is one of the most honest declarations of love ever written. Because it says: I hear you. I see the ending. I know the risk. And I’m choosing you anyway.
Both films are saying the same thing in different languages. Nina and Darius. Clementine and Joel. Artists and thinkers. Romantics who hurt each other not because they don’t care — but because they do. Deeply. Imperfectly. Humanly.
They argue. They retreat. They miscommunicate. They choose pride over vulnerability and distance over repair. Love doesn’t fail because they’re careless — it fails because love is not clean.
What makes “Love Jones” the greatest Black love movie of the 21st century is that it refuses to lie about this. It doesn’t sell permanence. It sells presence. It doesn’t promise destiny. It offers choice.
And at the end — just like “Eternal Sunshine” — the choice is made again, this time with eyes wide open.
When Nina asks, “How do we do this?” Darius doesn’t pretend to know.
“I don’t know.”
That’s the point.
Love isn’t a blueprint. It’s an agreement to walk forward without one.
I recently asked my partner if he believed in soul mates. He said no—without hesitation. When he asked me, I told him I believe you can have more than one soul mate, romantic or platonic. That a soul mate isn’t someone who saves you — it’s someone whose soul recognizes yours at a particular moment in time.
He paused. Then said, “OK. With those caveats, I believe.”
That felt like a Joel shrug. A grown one.
We’ve been sold a version of love that collapses under scrutiny. Fairy tales promised permanence without effort. Celebrity marriages promised aspiration without truth. And then reality — messy, public, human—stepped in. Will and Jada didn’t kill love for me. They clarified it.
No relationship is perfect. No love is untouched by disappointment. No bond survives without negotiation, humility, and repair. What matters isn’t whether love lasts forever. What matters is whether, when confronted with truth, you still say yes.
“Love Jones” ends in the rain. “Eternal Sunshine” ends in a hallway. No swelling orchestras. No guarantees. Just two people standing at the edge of uncertainty saying: Fuck it. I love you. Let’s do it again.
That’s not naïve love. That’s courageous love.
And on Valentine’s Day — of all days — that’s the kind worth celebrating.
Randal C. Smith is a Chicago-based attorney and writer focusing on labor and employment law, civil rights, and administrative governance.
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