Montgomery County Councilmember and current U.S. Senate candidate Will Jawando has made dubious, thoroughly misleading claims about his ancestral history in the past, whether through speeches at official county government African-American history events or via his office’s official e-mails to constituents. We’ve documented several of these instances at CleanSlateMoCo.com, using the Councilmember’s own words and text. In the “fact-checking” business, these would have to register four or five “pinocchios”. These statements using the words “our” and “we” in trying to tie Mr. Jawando’s history and upbringing to foundational black Americans in MoCo and beyond simply isn’t true, no matter the spin.
Now, as he is running for U.S. Senate in Maryland, the Councilmember is trying to cast himself as a “true, blue progressive” and community organizer in a race where he is going to be thoroughly out-fundraised and out-spent on virtue-signaling messaging by political heavy hitters (and very rich limousine liberals, like Congressman David Trone) in Maryland. CM Jawando will no doubt now tack hard left on economic policy and top-down mandates in this primary run to try and be “different”, as we’ve seen via this excellent recap on his legislative “legacy” here in MoCo.
But as far as his prior experiences being a “community” or labor organizer, still another dubious claim on history has come to light regarding CM Jawando’s advocacy at DC’s Catholic University, where Mr. Jawando played basketball and then went to law school.
In this September, 2021 article for Bethesda Beat (MoCo360 Media now) by Steve Roberts, CM Jawando claims he fought to start an NAACP chapter at Catholic University to simply “help the workers” – the janitors, gardeners, and more. You know, the “working class” people Will Jawando’s political party in Maryland (Democrats) aim to “help” by raising the regressive gasoline, sales, cell phone, internet, energy and rain taxes on.
Back to the piece:
I was curious about this claim – that the NAACP chapter at Catholic University was simply started by an ambitious young Will Jawando in order to “help the workers” – predominantly black Americans he claimed are from the surrounding NE neighborhood. So I did some brief digging.
Simply put: I found no such evidence that the NAACP chapter, under young Will Jawando, did anything to assist food or janitorial workers at Catholic University to get higher pay or more indirect compensation. Jawando’s own words from the time do not support this rationale for why the NAACP chapter was started at the university.
In October 2004, The Washington Post reported on “In Shift, CU Allows NAACP Chapter” in an update to a prior story in its Metro section of the newspaper.
“I’m happy that it was finally allowed, better late than never,” Jawando said. “Now, hopefully, we can do civil rights advocacy, work on political action, register people to vote and make students aware of the issues that are important to minorities.”
Jawando said the NAACP chapter also hopes to do some work to help improve D.C. schools.
Nowhere did young Jawando mention that his new NAACP chapter would be “helping the workers” of Catholic University in that statement. In fact, three years prior, efforts that predated Jawando were already underway to organize janitors and get them more pay. National Public Radio (NPR) reported:
David Rabin reports on a union organizing campaign at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. The Justice for Janitors movement has succeeded in winning pay raises for janitors in several large cities. Now Catholic University’s janitors are about to decide whether they want to join the organization.
And now, in July, 2023 we see the following at Black Catholic Messenger’s website (and note, there is zero mention of the words “Jawando” or “NAACP” in this post):
Once again, a very dubious, potentially misleading claim about his personal history and local activism is being made by the Councilmember and unfortunately, local media (then and now) do not bat an eye or investigate the claims being made. It warrants further scrutiny of other stories the CM has told, particularly in his book.
This continues a troubling trend for CM Jawando. Is he copying President Biden’s repeated pattern of exaggerations and outright falsehoods?
More to come.
