After several months of preparing and brainstorming names, we’re pleased to introduce our new blog from the nation’s capital: J Street.

What’s the name mean? Well, if you walk north from the Mall, Washington DC’s streets ascend in alphabetical order. That is, until you get to I street, which is followed somewhat mysteriously by K Street, the (in)famous address of Washington’s ruling lobbyist class. Legend has it that District planner Pierre-Charles L’enfant omitted J Street out of contempt for Supreme Court Justice and proto-abolitionist John Jay.

The real reason probably had more to do with typography than ideology, but the missing J street is a fitting metaphor for all the things that should be in the nation’s capital but aren’t: voices that are marginalized or ignored, ideas deemed too radical or politically unpopular to garner note, movements that are elided or dismissed.

That’s what we cover here in the magazine’s Washington bureau. I’ll be posting here regularly along with my Washington-based colleague Te-Ping Chen. We’ll be adding more contributors in the future, so add us to your RSS reader or just check back often.