Get to know DC Council at-large candidate Greg Jackson

Gregory Jackson is the President of the Rocket Foundation, Adviser to Community Justice Action Fund, and Partner of Safer Futures Consulting Firm. Prior to these roles, Jackson served as the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Special Assistant to President Joe Biden, where he oversaw efforts to implement federal law, identify new executive actions, expand partnerships, and improve services for those traumatized by gun violence. In this role, Gregory oversaw the execution of 54 executive actions, the implementation of the first law on gun violence in 30 years, and secured $242 billion in federal resources to address gun violence.

A gun violence survivor himself, Jackson has been a leading voice, policymaker, and activist on gun violence prevention for Black and Brown communities for over a decade. Previously, he served as Executive Director of the Community Justice Action Fund, which advances policies to address gun violence in these communities. Prior to this work, he worked locally advancing public safety efforts as the youngest cabinet member under the Mayor of D.C., serving as Director of Community Relations.

Making D.C. Safer From Crime and Violence

Investing In Our Youth, Both Education and Recreation

Making D.C. Affordable By Addressing The High Cost of Living

When serving the White House, I created the “Safer States” Agenda with 15 policy proposals that were succesfully passed in 31 states. I would start with adapting those policy recommendations to address the crisis in DC. This means focus on investing in evidence based violence prevention strategies that have shown promise across the country, including expanding cognitive behavioral programs, strengthening youth mental health, strengthening community violence intervention, increasing victim services and expanding mentorship programs for those most vulnerable or at risk to violence.

Secondly, I would focus on better investing in strengthening our upstream accountability efforts to keep illegal firearms off our streets and out of the hands of the most vulnerable, including strengthening crime intelligence, investigative resources to improve case clearance rates and regional efforts to disrupt the iron pipeline of illegal guns coming up from Virginia or down from Maryland.

Lastly, I would focus on addressing the root causes of violence starting with neighborhoods most impacted by violent crime. We must aggressively get to the source and make transformative change.

We must ensure that youth are safe no matter where they are in the District. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent youth homicides are start reminders that keeping youth at home doesn’t mean they are safe from violence. My strategy would be to invest in targeting accountability for those most at risk to crime, while investing in safe spaces for youth to gather across all 8 wards. This means investing late night hours for DPR programming, investing in out of school programming, providing targeted wrap around services for families and empowering our youth to inform our youth engagement strategies by creating a Youth Network for Safety and investing in a Youth Safety Fund led by youth. We must also ensure we spare no expense in investing in our education resources, to ensure we better prepare our future generations for the real world.

I would ensure that we prioritize funding our schools, with an emphasis on family teacher engagement, supporting our teachers, maintenance of our facilities and targeted resources for youth most in need. I would also like to declare chronic absenteeism as a District emergency to better prioritize resources, coordination and policy recommendations to improve the attendance of our youth. Additionally, I hope to create a “WeRead D.C.” Literacy Framework to identify, track and improve literacy rates across all public school in the District, including resources such as high impact tutoring to boost those most in need. Lastly, I would work to advance efforts to better prepare our youth for the real world by investing in programs both in and out of the classrooms. The greatest city in the country should offer the greatest educational opportunity for our future generations.

I believe the largest driver of our District’s affordability crisis is the high cost of living. I would focus on increasing supply, providing more financing options for residents to own homes, targeted resources or reliefs to better preserve homes for our elder residents and lastly provide more opportunities for smaller housing providers to supply short, medium and long term rental opportunities.

After serving as the Director of the Mayors Office of Community Relations & Services, I witnessed first hand how challenges with service delivery can create major disruptions to the quality of life for our neighbors. As Council-member I would lean on my learned experiences in that role to help push agencies to be more proactive in predictable challenges such as potholes, trash removal, vacant property abatement, rat abatement, grass cutting and even weather events. I think a major opportunity is also to not only improve 311 services, but better empower and engage 311 reporters to provide insights into stronger service delivery and improving community engagement to provide more transparency around service breakdowns. Lastly, my approach would be to also better engage with our agency staff and work to ensure that they are well paid, respected, supported and appreciated for the critical service they deliver to keep our complex District moving.

I think we should prioritize healthcare, education, housing and social services for our most vulnerable residents. We also need to look closely at which programs are providing the most impactful resources and serving the most D.C. RESIDENTS as important to prioritize. I also think we should look at how do we minimize bureaucracy in our already large DC government and focus on service delivery when making cuts. Lastly, I strongly believe the District can do a much better job GENERATING revenue, as oppose to the typical posture of taxing or cutting to address our budget challenges.

The D.C. Council should serve as a bridge between residents and Congress. After successfully passing a bipartisan law in Congress, I have built numerous relationships, coalitions and tactics to effectively advance policy that will be critical for D.C. Council. We need a Council that is equipped to protect home rule, protect our budget, but also effective at moving new ideas and policies through Congress. I am the only candidate endorsed by multiple Members of Congress and I aim to build on the relationships I’ve established through advocacy and my time at the White House, when elected to D.C. Council. Congress has been hungry to better partner with D.C. Council, but we simply have not had enough members in Council with the relationships to build a meaningful relationship in recent history.

I would primarily focus on efficient and reliable transportation options across all 8 wards. Recent budget cuts have created major disruptions in public transit from Ward 8 to Ward 3 and I aim to help resolve these challenges first and foremost. With our current economic state, affordable transit and accessibility will be key to ensure every resident has an opportunity to thrive. Lastly, we need to rethink our traffic calming strategy to focus more on safety and harm prevention, not just how many tickets we can write or revenue we can gain from traffic cameras. Traffic calming will require more innovative and thoughtful policies, resources and strategies to shift behavior proactively, not just reactively fine violators.

Community engagement is a major priority for my campaign and that will continue in my time at Council. I would focus on weekly neighborhood walks, regular town halls and building a network of liasion across all 8 wards to provide consistent insights into policy, development and resource needs across the District.

I think this is a pivotal relationship to nurture especially around aligned priorities and the overall budget process. I aim to build a proactive constructive relationship with whomever is elected to Mayor.

As a survivor of gun violence, I know first hand how critical response times are, as it was life or death for me personally. We must continue to invest in our first responders, not only in equipment but reliable personnel and efficiency.

I think transparency is key and as a Councilmember, it’s important that we strengthen relationships between our leaders and the community. Ethics and accountability requires transparency and insights from those who keep us accountable and I see residents as the most important monitors of those.

When I served at the White House, my job was to address the crisis of gun violence across the entire nation and as the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations & Services, I oversaw constituent concerns in all 8 wards.

I think an effective candidate must have relationships, a pulse and information points for every neighborhood. I aim to do that systemically by having weekly neighborhood walks, regular town hall meetings, establishing strong community partnerships and identifying liaisons by Ward to best inform me on the day to day happenings. I also think it’s important for At-Large members to tackle issues that impact residents ACROSS wards and be equipped to solve District-wide challenges, while supporting Ward specific candidates on more neighborhood or street specific issues.

Celebrating with family or co-workers over chicken wings at Stan’s!

I’m a lifelong Commanders fan and former football running back!