When you get into a DC cab, you will be understandably disappointed to find neither Mr. T nor Paul Rodriguez chauffeuring you around the Chocolate City. (Sorry, the 80s are over—Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins don’t work at the Georgetown Häagen-Dazs anymore either… deal with it.) What you will find are some of the most politically savvy cabbies in the nation—guys who seem to have either escaped some evil authoritarian regime or worked for one until it fell. These guys don’t care about the weather, they don’t make Bobby McFerrin-inspired small talk, and they don’t care if you don’t wanna talk about politics. In DC cabs, you talk politics.
VICE: How did you become so interested in politics?
SAMSON WORKU: What are you thinking about the future of American politics?
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PATRICK GAFFA:
Why don’t you tell them about the politics of your country?
I would if I had somebody to discuss it with here, but there’s no one.
What brought you to the US?
I came for school purposes. Psychology.
Do you perform psychoanalysis on your passengers?
Yes. But I don’t tell them.
What do you think of the Bush legacy?
Nothing. Totally nothing.
AFTAB AHMED: No jobs for chemists in DC? So what’s the current hot topic? TONY PONTE, IRAN
VICE: I really want to go to Iran, but they don’t seem to want me.
TONY PONTE: Why did you leave? So you don’t think Mayor Adrian Fenty should run for president? What do you think about US-Iran relations? Their embassy here has been boarded up since ’79. So you don’t think Bush did a good job with that? Worse than Ahmadinejad? SIMACHEW DESTA, ETHIOPIA
VICE: So you’ve been in the States since 1981. What brought you here?
SIMACHEW DESTA: So what do you think about the state of the union? There’s freedom, but it seems the American government is on a nationalization kick. And then you’ve got Obama the Marxist…
