Washington, D.C
Union fights for DC Circulator staff as system phase out begins Tuesday
WASHINGTON (7News) — We’ve known that the DC Circulator buses in the District will be gone by the end of the year, but starting Tuesday, 90 bus employees will be laid off.
This is part of the city’s phase-out process to a bus system that has been around for two decades.
Since 2005, it has had an attractive, popular bus system. The DC Circulator bus system had 1.9 million riders last year and nearly 300 employees. About 78 Circulator employees have landed jobs with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), however, they will lose their seniority, and start at lower wages and different shifts.
Union reps have criticized transportation officials over the treatment of the circulator workforce.
READ MORE | Transit workers rally against DC Circulator shutdown, calls for Metro to take over
Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689, one of the unions that represents the workers says it will continue to fight to retain current pay rates. It claims circulator employees had five-year contracts, and job security through 2028. But the mayor abruptly cut Circulator funding from this year’s budget.
Both sides spoke at a recent council transportation committee hearing.
“This has been bungled from the start DDOT never reached out to have any conversations with us, and the mayor’s office appears to have lost my number. However, to address the DDOT director and the mayor directly, let me be clear, we did not want to be here today,” said Matthew Girardi, Political & Communications Director for ATU Local 689.
”Behind me sit anxious parents, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons who have only wanted to do their jobs to the best of their abilities and to provide decent lives to their families. Currently, because there is no plan, the median DC Circulator employee is slated to lose by our estimate $76,062,” Girardi added.
READ MORE | Metro wants to fill gap from impacted DC Circulator routes, extend overnight service
Starting today, Oct. 1, routes will also begin to see changes. ‘
Service to Rosslyn-Dupont Circle will end, altering bus arrival times everywhere else to every 20 minutes instead of every 10 minutes. Late-night service on the Woodley Park-Adams Morgan and Georgetown-Union Station routes are also ending.
”DDOT and WMATA have worked to leverage Metro bus’ extensive network to provide continued bus access for Circulator customers, enhance service to key destinations,” said Sharon Kershbaum, Director of the District Department of Transportation.
“Upon the termination of the Circulator service on December 31, WMATA will provide expanded and supplemental bus service on key alternative routes to address the gaps from the legacy Circulator routes,” Kershbaum said.
For the Rosslyn-Dupont Circle route, D.C. bus route 38-B will now provide extended service between Rosslyn and Farragut Square during peak weekend hours. Metro bus routes 31 and 33 will be merged into a single route along H and I streets Northwest to Union Station.
Jaemi Theatre Company, a new AAPI-led theater company based in Washington, DC, officially launches this spring with its inaugural project, BAAL, a staged reading at the 2026 Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival on Friday, March 6, at 7:30 PM at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.
Founded by Artistic Director Youri Kim and Artistic Associate Juyoung Koh, Jaemi Theatre was born out of a recognition that DC, one of the largest theater markets in the United States, had no company dedicated to centering Asian stories or led by Asian artists. The name “Jaemi” comes from a Korean word meaning “fun,” and in its Sino-Korean form, 在美, means both “to live in America” and “to live in beauty.”
“I kept hearing from companies that it was hard to find Asian actors, and I heard it so often that I started to believe it myself,” said Youri Kim. “But through building community with other AAPI theater artists in the area, I realized the talent was always here. What was missing was the infrastructure to connect us. Jaemi is that infrastructure.”
BAAL, an original work written by Youri Kim (not to be confused with Bertolt Brecht’s 1918 play of the same name), is a body horror drama set in a dystopian city where the air is toxic and birth is outlawed. In the city of Baal, citizens are forced into an impossible choice: terminate or sacrifice a family member. The play uses the language of biological mutation and bodily control to examine how systems of power decide who gets to exist and on what terms, questions that resonate deeply within AAPI and immigrant communities navigating structures that seek to define, contain, and assimilate them. The staged reading features a cast of seven and an original sound design.
BAAL plays as a staged reading Friday, March 6, 2026, at 7:30 PM in Lab Theatre II at the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H St NE, Washington, DC). Tickets ($29.75) are available online.
Looking ahead, Jaemi Theatre plans to host a founding party and fundraiser this fall, and will launch an Asian Writer Play Submission program in the second half of 2026. The program will pair playwrights from selected Asian countries with Asian playwrights based in DC for a workshop development process, building a pipeline that connects diasporic voices across borders.
For more information, visit yourikimdirector.com or follow @jaemitheatre on Instagram.
About Jaemi Theatre Company
Jaemi Theatre is a newly formed AAPI-led performance initiative based in Washington, DC, co-founded by Artistic Director Youri Kim and Artistic Associate Juyoung Koh. “Jaemi” is Korean for “fun” and, in its Sino-Korean form, means “to live in America” and “to live in beauty.” The company creates interdisciplinary performance rooted in diasporic imagination and radical storytelling. Jaemi is a home for the unfinished and the unassimilated, where performance holds contradiction without needing to resolve it.
Sunday, March 1, 2026 6:36AM
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The San Francisco Ballet board has voted to cancel its upcoming performances at the Kennedy Center.
The company is scheduled for a four-day run in Washington D.C. in May.
Petition urges SF Ballet to cancel Kennedy Center tour stop as company opens 2026 season
Last year, Pres. Donald Trump overhauled the Kennedy Center’s board, including naming himself the chairman.
That led several artists to cancel scheduled performances.
A statement from SF Ballet says the group “looks forward to performing for Washington, D.C. audiences in the future.”
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At 97, Veteran Harley Wero wasn’t up for a trip to the nation’s capital, so volunteers from the Western North Dakota honor flight brought the trip to him. Wero, his wife Muriel and their daughter Jennifer got to experience Washington, DC, without ever leaving their home.
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