Photo by Lloyd Wolf.

With crisis comes opportunity — a lesson that 31-year-old District resident Danny Harris learned a few years ago, as he stood in line at Whole Foods after having spent time overseas for his government job.

“Coming back from one of the trips, I realized that it was the first time I had a culture shock that had nothing to do with place, but was all about connections,” Danny told me as we sat in a coffee shop in Mt. Pleasant last week.

“I felt like when I was away,” Danny continued, “I had these amazing interactions every day with locals, and I would come back here and be at the Whole Foods surrounded by people who were exactly like me. They had grown up in similar environments, they had gone to similar schools, they came here for the same reasons, they lived in the same neighborhoods, and they liked the same types of music. We all had gym bags and iPhones and we were walking around buying overpriced produce, and yet we never interacted.”

“I felt very much like I moved here to be part of this Washington that wanted to make change, and I could very easily spend my days thinking about what was happening in the Middle East — and yet I didn’t know the name of the middle school down the street from my place, I didn’t know the name of the crossing guard who I saw every morning, I didn’t know of the serious issues that were taking place not just in Southeast, but in my own neighborhood,” he admitted.

“I ended up having, I don’t know, a panic attack that took place at that Whole Foods.”

And such began a quest to document the District, one resident at a time. Since that evening in mid-2009, Danny has published daily interviews on People’s District, a blog in which he gives voice to the very people and problems that he once pledged ignorance of. Danny doesn’t inject any of himself into the stories of the people he meets, but rather, allows their voices and experiences to draw out the city’s rich, and often overlooked, texture. More than a blog, People’s District is an oral history of the District in the making.