Who is Hear Mount Pleasant and why was it started?
Hear Mount Pleasant was founded by a group of Mount Pleasant residents to promote culture, music and art in the neighborhood. We believe that more people need a voice in decisions that impact the neighborhood's cultural, civic and commercial life. We'd like to open up more opportunities for the many talented, creative people who live in and around Mount Pleasant to build a more vibrant, safe and peaceful neighborhood for all of us.

Can anyone join Hear Mount Pleasant?
Hear Mount Pleasant is open to people who live in and around Mount Pleasant. Please visit our website, hearmountpleasant.org to learn about upcoming meetings and how to get involved.

What is Hear Mount Pleasant currently working on?
Hear Mount Pleasant has launched a grassroots campaign to overturn the ban on live music and dancing in Mount Pleasant's bars and restaurants.

Why is live music and dancing forbidden at Mount Pleasant restaurants?
Over the last decade, Mount Pleasant restaurants gave up their ability to host live music and dancing to avert protests against their liquor license applications by the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance (MPNA), a local civic association. The MPNA demanded that all liquor license applicants forego offering live music and dancing. In in exchange for withdrawing its opposition to their license applications. The MPNA negotiated these agreements without informing or seeking feedback from most Mount Pleasant residents. The restrictions on live music and dancing are now part of every Mount Pleasant restaurant's liquor license, effectively making it illegal to dance or perform in any of these establishments.

Why does Mount Pleasant need live music and dancing?
Mount Pleasant has a long and rich musical tradition. A huge array of musicians, poets and artists have lived and practiced here and gained inspiration from life in the neighborhood. Bands and musicians as diverse as members of the punk band Fugazi, Charlie Waller (founder of the seminal bluegrass band The Country Gentlemen), "hillbilly" (country) musician Jimmy Dean and even Bo Diddley have called Mount Pleasant home.

The Crosstown Lounge (where Haydee's is now) was a popular destination for live country music back in the late 1940s and 1950s. Even the Raven occasionally hosted country bands. As tastes changed, the Crosstown and the Oasis (where Lamont Video is now) began showcasing rock n' roll bands, including the legendary Link Wray. Young people from all over the DC area knew Mount Pleasant Street as a great place to dance to the best live music the region had to offer.

In the 1980s and 1990s, mariachis roamed among the neighborhood restaurants. Trolleys (where the Marx Café is now located) hosted neighborhood jam sessions for local blues musicians. Don Juans opened its doors to a local community group for Cabaret del Barrios where local residents shared their talents with their neighbors. For many residents, these types of events were part of the fabric of Mount Pleasant community life and helped make our neighborhood special and unique within Washington, DC. We believe it's possible to bring back these opportunities to our commercial district while still respecting the concerns of Mount Pleasant residents - especially those of people living closest to the commercial strip.

But what about noise and disorder? Aren't you just giving free rein to businesses to trample the rights and quiet of neighbors?
Hear Mount Pleasant members are residents. Several of our founding members live on, or just off, the main commercial strip and many are homeowners. Some of us have lived here for decades some for a few years. We care about the concerns residents have about the impact of the neighborhood's commercial strip on their quality of life. Far from giving free rein to local businesses, Hear Mount Pleasant is developing a strong mechanism for businesses and residents to collaborate and solve problems together. We believe that this approach is a far more effective method for resolving the inevitable conflicts between businesses and residents than the current one of imposing a blanket ban on activities so many residents value.

How will Hear Mount Pleasant hold businesses accountable to residents' concerns?
Hear Mount Pleasant has developed a new voluntary agreement that allows live music but also holds businesses accountable around issues like noise, trash and order.

The voluntary agreement developed by Hear Mount Pleasant also provides for an ongoing process through which businesses and residents can resolve problems. After the music ban is lifted a Hear Mount Pleasant committee will meet with businesses monthly to make sure that residents' concerns are being met. These meetings will be open to all residents of Mount Pleasant.

Some people say that allowing live music and dancing will just turn Mount Pleasant into another Adams Morgan - is that true?
No. This isn't about turning Mount Pleasant into something it's not. The character, size, geography and commercial spaces in Mount Pleasant are completely different from Adams Morgan. Not only does Adams Morgan have ten times as many liquor licensed bars and restaurants, it is located on a crossroads between many neighborhoods. Also, Adams Morgan is home to many commercial spaces with capacities many times larger than Mount Pleasant's largest establishments.

We want there to be more opportunities for neighbors to share cultural experiences beyond consuming drinks and food in our neighborhood businesses.

We want to build a more vibrant, vital cultural life on the commercial corridor that gives Mount Pleasant residents an opportunity to participate in the rich musical cultural life we have in our neighborhood.

The MPNA developed voluntary agreements in the name of community. Therefore, don't the existing voluntary agreements give our "community" a voice in quality of life issues?
No, they don't. In Mount Pleasant, the current voluntary agreement process has robbed all but the MPNA's leaders of a voice and a forum to participate in decision-making that impacts them. DC's voluntary agreement process aspires to give residents a voice, a line that is repeated often by their proponents. In reality they give as few as five people the ability to impose restrictions that impact thousands of people, without any obligation to seek feedback from or even inform the wider community.

By using the voluntary agreement process, isn't Hear Mount Pleasant just doing the same thing as the MPNA – only representing a different set of interests?

Mount Pleasant, like most city neighborhoods, encompasses a huge range of overlapping and sometimes competing communities with different aspirations, hopes and concerns. Hear Mount Pleasant does not pretend to represent every one of the neighborhood's diverse residents. However it is deeply committed to opening the debate about live music to as many residents as care to join in. We are committed to making the new voluntary agreement process transparent and accessible to all with the intended result that it will be as truly representative of the neighborhood's desires and concerns as is possible. We recognize that representing residents in an agreement with businesses entails a significant responsibility and will require extensive outreach. We are committed to reaching out to our neighbors, and making sure they know about Hear Mount Pleasant's new voluntary agreement and, most importantly, have a chance to provide input either through our open meetings, through email comments on our model voluntary agreement or through conversations with members at the many community building events we have planned. Our meetings and events are well advertised and open to all. More than fifty residents attended our kick off event at Haydees Restaurant and already hundreds of residents have signed onto the petition supporting the new voluntary agreement. In addition to the movie nights, happy hours and house parties we have planned look for Hear Mount Pleasant members doing street outreach in Lamont Park and door knocking throughout Mount Pleasant.

Any more questions? Concerns? Hopes?
Write us at Hearmtp at gmail dot com

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