DC Political Analyst Tom Sherwood and GW Alum Izy Carney were the featured speakers at the 7th annual Julian Clement Chase Award Ceremony on Thursday Oct 13. The JCC Award recognizes excellent undergraduate research writing about the District of Columbia.
Keynote speaker Tom Sherwood–who served as a print, TV, and radio journalist over his many decades of covering DC– invited a next generation of writers, scholars, and journalists to pay attention to local DC stories. Our nation’s capital, he said, “is the most un-American place in America,” and DC’s 700,000 residents are “second-class citizens,” because Congress can override the local government. Because politicians “use Washington as a punching bag,” Sherwood argued that local research and writing like the JCC Prize is critical.
Izy Carney summarized her archival research project, which demonstrated that the workers in the 1970 DC Sanitation Strike were at the forefront of environmental justice work. Carney argued that the strike was the first time that a city recognized and compensated garbage collectors for the environmental hazards of the work: local and national AFSCME union workers won extra compensation for “dirty work.” Although the strike happened within days of the first national Earth Day celebration, few at the time made the connection between environmentalism and workers’ rights. Carney argues, however, that the 1970 DC Sanitation Strike was the beginning of the environmental justice movement. (“Dirty Work” Pay: Environmental Racism and the 1970 Washington, D.C. Sanitation Strike.")
Honorable mention for the JCC Prize was given to Wyatt Kirschner, who examined FBI surveillance of GWU students in 1969. One of the students he focused on in the project - Nick Greer - returned to GWU for the first time in over 50 years to attend the ceremony. (“45 Hardcore, Ass Bustin’ Radicals” and Three Infiltrators: Students for a Democratic Society at George Washington University and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Efforts Against Them.")
The Julian Clement Chase Prize is named in honor of Sgt. Julian Clement Chase, a native of Washington, D.C., who graduated in 2008 from DC’s Wilson High School. While serving with the United States Marine Corps, he was killed in action at the age of 22 in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. He was set to matriculate as a freshman at GW in the spring of 2013.
Born in Washington, Julian knew and relished his city. His family has established this prize in his honor to recognize others who explore D.C. with the intelligence and exuberance that he did.