District of Columbia
‘Casa Ruby should be dissolved’: report
Court filing by Wanda Alston Foundation paints grim picture
The Wanda Alston Foundation, which a D.C. Superior Court judge named last month as the city’s receiver for the LGBTQ community services center Casa Ruby, issued a preliminary finding in an interim report filed in court on Tuesday, Sept. 13, declaring that “Casa Ruby should be dissolved in an orderly manner pursuant to D.C. Code.”
The seven-page Receiver’s First Interim Report says an ongoing examination of Casa Ruby’s financial records, which it says were in disarray, indicates outstanding liabilities exceeding $2 million.
“Other than an assortment of donated furnishings at the two leased properties, there are no other meaningful assets,” the report says.
It says the Alston Foundation took immediate steps to secure financial records and sensitive documents pertaining to Casa Ruby’s clients and employees that were abandoned in two leased offices in the Dupont Circle area.
“Casa Ruby’s landlords and employees had gone unpaid for some time and both sites were abandoned and appeared to have been ransacked,” the report says. “The documents which remained were in complete disarray and would require time to collect, organize, and analyze,” it says.
“Eighty percent of the critical records and files at 1635 Connecticut Avenue [N.W.] have been secured and removed,” the report says, enabling the receiver to vacate the property prior to an eviction underway by the landlord.
“However, additional time may be required to go through the records and files at 2033 Connecticut Avenue,” according to the report, which says may require the court to order a temporary stop on the pending eviction at that property.
Superior Court Judge Danya A. Dayson issued an order on Aug. 12 naming the Alston Foundation as the Casa Ruby receiver at the recommendation of the Office of the D.C. Attorney General. The AG’s office stated in court filings that Casa Ruby and its founder and longtime executive director, Ruby Corado, had violated the city’s Nonprofit Corporations Act by failing to account for the expenditure funds provided by D.C. government grants and private donors.
The judge’s order came one day after she approved the AG office’s request that Casa Ruby be placed under receivership and two weeks after the judge approved the AG’s request that all of Casa Ruby’s bank and credit card accounts be frozen.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said his office’s action put forward in a civil lawsuit against Casa Ruby came after he opened an investigation that found the LGBTQ community services center had failed to pay landlords more than $1 million in back rent and could no longer pay the salaries of its employees, forcing the organization to cease most of its operations before a full shutdown in late July.
The receiver’s report filed in court on Monday says in its capacity as receiver, the Alston Foundation attempted to contact Ruby Corado for any additional documents or information related to Casa Ruby’s finances, but Corado did not respond to an email message requesting the information.
“The Receiver did reach out to the D.C. Attorney General’s Office to advise them of potential criminal misconduct that it had uncovered and to make arrangements for the transfer of items deemed to have a significant potential evidentiary value,” the report says. “The details of those discussions and arrangements are omitted from this report in the interest of protecting anticipated ongoing criminal investigations,” it says.
The Alston Foundation, a longstanding LGBTQ organization, has provided housing and support services for D.C. homeless and at-risk LGBTQ youth since its founding in 2008.
In her Aug. 12 order naming the Alston Foundation as the Casa Ruby receiver, Judge Dayson directed the Alston Foundation to submit a preliminary status report by Sept. 13 on its findings on whether Casa Ruby had or could obtain the financial resources to resume operating as an organization supporting LGBTQ people in need, such as emergency housing and immigrant related services, or whether it should be dissolved in an orderly manner.
The judge also asked that the report assess whether the Casa Ruby board of directors “should be reconstituted” following allegations by the D.C. Attorney General’s office that the board for years failed to provide legally required oversight of Casa Ruby’s finances and actions by Ruby Corado.
“Casa Ruby’s Board of Directors failed to provide any meaningful oversight and Casa Ruby should be dissolved in an orderly manner pursuant to D.C. Code 29-412.23,” the Alston Foundation interim report states.
Alston Foundation Executive Director June Crenshaw and its Board of Directors chairperson, Darrin Glymph, couldn’t immediately be reached to determine whether they might reconsider the recommendation of dissolving Casa Ruby as an organization if new members could be recruited to serve on the Casa Ruby board.
The judge, who is expected to make the final decision on the fate of Casa Ruby, called all parties in the case, including Ruby Corado, to appear in court or appear virtually through a phone or video hookup on Sept. 29 for a status hearing.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vita Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vita Rangel, she/ her [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
District of Columbia
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
Protest Pizza owners say community has expressed support
Gay activist Randy Downs said he and his business and life partner Ricky Bennett are grateful for the support they have received from the Dupont Circle community after they released a video showing a suspect breaking into their recently opened pizza shop and taking money from a cash register shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21.
The surveillance video shows a man wearing black clothing with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of Protest Pizza, located at 1633 ½ P St., N.W. The video, which Downs and Bennett provided to D.C. police, also shows the suspect climbing over the bar to get to a cash register, which he opened to take out cash.
A D.C. police report obtained by the Washington Blade lists the incident as a Burglary in the Second Degree and says the owners reported “approximately $78 in cash” was taken from the cash register. The report says the incident is not listed as a suspected hate crime.
Downs told the Washington Blade that after he and Bennett reported the break-in and theft on social media, they received an overwhelming showing of support from neighbors and others, including business owners, from across the nation.
“The break-in was upsetting, but it is not what will define Protest Pizza,” Downs said. “What defines us is how quickly people showed up,” he told the Blade. “One person came looking for a cash register; our community saw a gathering place worth protecting. The response reminded us that Protest’s real value was never in the register.”
Downs said he and Bennett, who live around the corner on the section of 17th Street, N.W., near several other bars and restaurants, including the gay bar JRs are located, opened Protest Pizza in November 2025.
“Ricky and I built Protest Pizza as a positive, welcoming, queer owned neighborhood restaurant and bar — a space for protest and joy,” he said.
A D.C. police spokesperson said police offer a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect responsible for the type of burglary and theft that occurred at Protest Pizza. Police say anyone with information to help solve this type of crime should call the police tipline at 202-727-9099.
District of Columbia
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Annual ceremony held at conclusion of Trans Pride DC
The 2026 SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in D.C. on Saturday. The ceremony was held at the conclusion of the day-long Trans Pride DC: Encore.
Honorees included D.C. Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs Deputy Director Vida Rangel; the LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, Inc.; and Connor Keuntje, CLP, CLPC.
Trans Pride DC: Encore was held throughout Saturday with several workshop sessions and a virtual conversation with actress and advocate Dominique Jackson.
The annual Engendered Spirit Awards were renamed the “SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards” in honor of SaVanna Wanzer, founder of D.C. Trans Pride. Wanzer died on April 24 of this year.
Speakers at the ceremony included Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Bianca Sprague, executive director of D.C. Trans Pride.
“The intent behind this award and honoring members of our communities, organizations, and allies, is to really elevate all of the work that they’re doing to provide resources, tools, learning opportunities and connections: centering trans folks, gender non-conforming, and gender diverse individuals,” Sprague said.
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