 By Alice Rivlin
The Brookings Institution
Monday, June 21, 2004
Good morning. I am Alice Rivlin. I'm the director of the Greater Washington Research Program at the Brookings Institution and I'm just delighted to welcome you this morning to this forum, a Mayor's Forum on the DC Language Access Act. And I'm particularly glad to welcome my good friend, the Mayor of the District of Columbia, Tony Williams, who I will introduce in a few minutes.
As the name of the act suggests, this event is to highlight the importance of the Language Access Act. You'll hear more details about it in a minute, if you are unfamiliar with it. But the point is to make the District government more accessible to residents with limited English knowledge. And that's a lot of people now, and it's a complicated assignment. It just doesn't mean adding a bit of Spanish to what the District government does, although that's very important. We have multiple languages.
We planned this event in conjunction with the District government, and I think we've pulled together a terrific group of people to talk about the issue. We worked with the Mayor's Office on Latino Affairs and the Mayor's Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, and I think this forum is a great example of what can happen when the research and policy worlds join together to examine policy issues and best practices and what you really need to do to implement a law.
Our first speaker will be Audrey Singer. Audrey's one of my favorite people. She's a very able demographer and she's a very enthusiastic and wonderful colleague, so I am delighted to introduce Audrey. Following Audrey we will hear from Councilmember Jim Graham, who sponsored the Language Access Act. And then as our keynote speaker we will have Mayor Williams, who signed the legislation into law in April. And after Mayor Williams we will have a panel discussion on implementing the law, chaired by Skip McKoy.
Read the complete event transcript. (PDF—128KB)
Event Information
The Brookings Greater Washington Research Program along with several DC offices, held this event to kickoff the implementation of the District's new Language Access Act. Mayor Anthony Williams addressed the forum, and a panel of practitioners from around the region discussed the implications of the new law. Also at this event, Brookings' Audrey Singer and Jill H. Wilson released a new analysis of language use and English-speaking ability in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area entitled "Polyglot Washington: Language Needs and Abilities in the Nation's Capital."
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