Meet the candidates for an At-Large seat on the D.C. Council

Dyana Forester says she first understood D.C.’s inequity when she started commuting from her home in Southeast to her high school in Northwest. “That's when I first realized the disparity in the city, and as a child, I was angry and uncomfortable about it,” said Forester, 46, who grew up in a working class family.

At 18, Forester became a mom, and her drive to give her daughter a different life eventually sparked her career as a community organizer. At Teaching for Change, a social justice educational organization, she advocated for community school funding and to get parent coordinators into schools to enhance parental engagement. Later, she worked for the D.C. chapter of Jobs with Justice to demand Walmart pay workers a living wage — which Forester says ultimately didn’t succeed. But when she became the political and community affairs director for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UCFW) Local 400, she worked on successful legislation to increase the minimum wage and implement paid family leave in D.C.

Labor has been a running theme in Forester’s career (she’s won the endorsement of some unions, too). After working at UFCW for four years, she was elected as president to the AFL-CIO’s Metropolitan Washington Council. Today, she’s the senior director of labor relations to Maryland Governor Wes Moore.

“This is my opportunity to actually know what it's like on the inside of government to not just legislate change, but to implement it,” says Forester of her decision to take the role, which focuses on coordinating support for workers in Maryland. 

Forester acknowledged that the next council is going to face serious challenges. “We are going to be in a tough place, and we're going to have to balance our budgets,” says Forester. “But we have to balance it in a way that's to D.C. values, and puts working families and people that are struggling to stay here and call D.C. home first.”

As a former commissioner at D.C. Housing Authority, housing is a major priority for Forester. She’s interested in workforce housing for teachers, firefighters, bus drivers, and police officers. And like other candidates, she wants more affordable housing — but pushed back on building faster as the first priority. “I think the intent is right, but … is this the right solution for the problem that we want to fix? And the fix is, how do we create more for affordable housing for families?”

Forester says if she were to win, her goal isn’t to be a councilmember forever. But it was her experience as a working class single mom that pushed her to run in the first place. “I don't want to be talked about as data,” says Forester. “I want to be there representing what it means when we make cuts to childcare, when we say that we can't afford healthcare,” says Forester. “I'm representing what's missing.”

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