District of Columbia
Real life drama unfolds at Int’l Overdose Awareness Day event in D.C. park
HIPS staffers render aid to unconscious man on sidewalk
Many of the close to 200 people that turned out on Thursday, Aug. 31, for an International Overdose Awareness Day event at a small park in Northeast D.C. known as Starburst Plaza witnessed officials with the local harm reduction services group HIPS rush to the aid of a man who lost consciousness.
One of the HIPS staffers rendered aid before D.C. Emergency Medical Services Department technicians arrived on a fire truck. The EMS technicians provided further treatment to the man, including placing an oxygen mask on his face, that resulted in his regaining consciousness.
He was taken to a hospital by an ambulance that arrived on the scene a short time later.
HIPS, whose offices and drop-in center are located a few blocks away from where the event took place, was one of its lead organizers. HIPS and about a half dozen other community-based organizations that provide services for drug users and sex workers set up tables and handed out literature on the sidewalk at the site of Starburst Plaza.
Longtime D.C. transgender rights advocate Earline Budd, who works for HIPS, said members of the LGBTQ community, including transgender women of color, have been among those who have lost their lives to opioid overdoses. Budd pointed to large photos displayed at the event of three trans women who died from an opioid overdose within the past year.
“Lives of members of our community are being lost in what is truly an epidemic, and we can no longer ignore this,” Budd said.
Also participating in the event was Devon Trotter, who serves as chair of the HIPS board of directors.
“We hope that today just brings awareness to the epidemic that we have here in this country and in our community – the opioid epidemic,” Trotter said. “We know that drug use isn’t going to stop,” he told the Washington Blade.
“So, we need to ensure that folks get access to support and resources to use their drugs safely, to be able to know what’s in them without fear for their lives,” he said. “A day like today is also important because it brings awareness to those who we have lost and those who are struggling,” said Trotter.
Among the other organizations that collaborated with HIPS and set up tables at the event to distribute literature about opioid overdose prevention were Whitman-Walker Health; the emergency services organization Forensic Nurse Examiners; the drug user support group Revise, Inc.; and the advocacy and support coalition Decrim Poverty D.C.
Also attending the event were members of the D.C. police department’s LGBT Liaison Unit.
L.J. Sislen, one of the officials with Decrim Poverty D.C., said the coalition advocates for support services for drug users and for decriminalization of drug use and possession.
“You can’t get well in a cell,” she said, referring to the frequent arrest and incarceration of people experiencing addiction on charges of illegal drug possession. “We believe that eliminating criminal penalties for drug use is one of the most effective ways for us to address the worsening drug overdose crisis,” Sislen said.
Vito Maggiolo, a spokesperson for the D.C. Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services, said the man treated and placed in the ambulance at the D.C. Overdose Awareness Day event was listed as being in “potentially serious condition.”
But he said under city privacy laws, he is unable to provide further details of the man’s condition or to disclose which hospital he was taken to. Maggiolo said that all firefighters are trained as emergency medical technicians and can provide the same emergency treatment to someone suffering from an illness or other emergency medical condition as the medical technicians assigned to an ambulance.
In a related development, the White House and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra released statements commemorating International Overdose Awareness Day and announced additional federal funding for programs that address opioid addiction and overdose prevention.
“Today, on International Overdose Awareness Day, the Biden-Harris administration is recognizing all those who have lost someone to an overdose,” the White House statement says. “President Biden declared August 27 through September 2 as Overdose Awareness Week to focus the nation’s attention on the devastation caused by illicit fentanyl and other drugs,” says the statement.
“During this week of recognition, we reaffirm our commitment to beating this epidemic – in memory of those we have lost and to protect the lives we can save,” the statement says.
In the separate HHS statement, Becerra outlined recently implemented programs of the Biden administration and HHS that allocate more than $450 million to support the administration’s Unity Agenda efforts to address the overdose problem.
“Drug overdose does not discriminate – rich or poor, Black or white, urban or suburban, drug overdoses reach every corner of our society,” Becerra said. “On this Overdose Awareness Day, we reflect on the toll that substance misuse takes, both in terms of lives lost and immeasurable pain it brings to families and communities,” he said.
(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story reported that a HIPS staffer administered Narcan to the unconscious man. A HIPS spokesperson later told the Blade that Narcan was not administered.)
District of Columbia
Whitman-Walker’s 40th Walk & 5k Run to End HIV set for Sept. 19
Event raises funds for support services for people with HIV
Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s LGBTQ supportive healthcare center and medical clinic, is calling on D.C. residents and supporters to take part in its 40th annual Walk & 5K Run to End HIV scheduled to take place Saturday, Sept. 19.
The event, in which participants choose to walk or run, begins at 8:45 a.m. at the Roller Skating Pavilion at Anacostia Park located at 1500 Anacostia Drive, S.E.
The route, similar to recent years, will take participants from the Skating Pavilion site going west along Anacostia Drive to the Poplar Point parking lot, where there will be a turn around to return along Anacostia Drive to the finish line at the Roller Skating Pavilion, according to Whitman-Walker spokesperson Lisa Amore.
“Held for the past 40 years, the Walk & 5K to End HIV is Whitman-Walker Health’s signature fundraiser that calls on thousands of Washington, D.C. area residents to lace up their shoes and walk or run to support WWH’s mission of providing dependable, high-quality, comprehensive and accessible health care to those living with or affected by HIV/AIDS,” a statement released by Whitman-Walker says.
The statement says that at the completion of the walk and run, a stage program with live entertainment and family activities, including free snacks and drinks, will take place at the Anacostia Park Skating Pavilion from 9:30-11 a.m.
It says a free shuttle bus will be available to take participants from and to the Anacostia Metro station before and after the event takes place.
Among the event’s goals are “mobilizing attendees to walk and donate to sustain independent policy research, as well as raise their voices by contacting elected officials to protect the national commitment to end HIV by 2030,” the statement says. It adds that all donations are fully tax deductible and supporter checks should be made payable to Whitman-Walker Foundation.
Further information and registration for the walk and run can be accessed at www.walktoendHIV.org.
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 32 of the 44 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 – Vida 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) Vida Rangel, she/they [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
1C01 – (Adams Morgan) Howard Bauleke, 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.
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