Bottoms Up, And Up Yours, To The Martial Takeover Of Washington DC.
They mostly come out at night. And Dom was there!
It’s 5 p.m. and there are National Guard soldiers walking around the Lincoln Memorial right now. Sitting on the steps, I’m watching them pace back and forth in front of the Reflecting Pool.
They look bored. Most of these guys have only been in DC for about a week now. On Sunday, they were issued SIG Sauer M117 pistols and M4 semi-automatic rifles. Some of the guys with M4s have vertical grips on the barrel that allow for increased stability in a firefight. They’re all wearing heavy and uncomfortable tactical vests with armor plates, probably IIIAs.
There were DEA agents and US Marshals here the other day. Unlike the many tourists surrounding us, the agents didn't seem to like having their pictures taken. And if they see a press badge, they’ll start walking away and ignore any questions.
An anonymous Trump administration official at the DOD says the weapons are only to be used “upon reasonable belief of an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.” It’s a DC bullshit-o-sphere way of saying, “self-defense.”
Most of the Guardsmen are very young. I’ve traded old jokes with some of the friendlier guys about staying hydrated and avoiding mosquitoes. Some complain of being tired, and hoping they get time to explore the city on an e-bike or a scooter. They’re supposed to be here through Mid-September, but the president (allegedly) has the authority to extend that order.
“It's pretty dead today,” I muse to a colleague who finally got into town after being on another assignment. There aren't as many Guardsmen hanging around the monuments as there have been over the past two weeks. And there aren't too many reporters either.
“I think [our paper] already got everything we need,” my colleague says, upset they missed this latest episode of the Trump show.
The feds and Guard aren't doing much east of the Anacostia River. That’s where DC has historically had all the same problems as any other city: petty crime, larceny, truancy, domestic abuse, and gun violence.
“[The administration] knows people over there will shoot back,” a colleague joked last weekend.
So they stick DEA agents on the National Mall to keep people — mostly rowdy Black teenagers — from smoking weed. They put National Guard in the Metro stations to intimidate people from climbing over the turnstiles. It's enough of a show for a tourist from Alabama wearing a stretched out T-shirt that says “Freedom” to comment that Donald Trump — a real estate con-man from New York who just mused about being “a dictator” (again) — is doing a great job.
The man waddles his fat ass down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while his wife complains that the temporary ramp that went up under the Biden administration was too long, and there aren't any bathrooms.
The rules for what you can and can’t do anymore seem to change a little bit every day. Under the 1973 Homerule Act, DC has its own laws, and can raise its own taxes. But because DC is a federal territory overseen by Congress, not a state, its autonomy is constantly being overruled and fucked with by hypocritical political animals who constantly bitch about sovereignty.
So when a kid got arrested for smoking a joint in front of a bar on U Street, a popular bar and nightclub area, there was a lot of confusion. Despite decades of congressional fuckery, marijuana has been legal at the local level in DC for years. And even when it wasn’t legal, most DC cops would slap the blunt from your hand, take your stash and tell you to stop being stupid.
As a “crime” in a federal city with real problems, it's not worth the effort. The Washington Metropolitan Police have to take the time to conduct a search and make an arrest, which means taking everything from their pockets, taking off all jewelry, putting that crap in evidence bags, loading the suspect into a squad car or a transport van, processing the suspect and the paperwork at the station … That person has to sit in lock up or get transferred to corrections, which is more money for taxpayers, and more time for the officers. It's just easier to scare a kid with a kick in the ass, take their weed, and call them an idiot.
It happened to me more than a few times while fucking around in an alley before a concert. And that was (at least) 10 years ago.
But there we all were last Friday night, watching some guy get arrested by MPD, and the FBI, and HSI, and the DEA. For smoking a joint. On U Street.
“Y’all know where the actual crimes in DC are, right,” shouted a club bouncer.
“ICE” agents are certainly kidnapping people off the street, but I haven't seen it happen. You'd be hard-pressed to find any journalist who's witnessed a federallyorchestrated kidnapping at all.
And that's by design.
There are convoys of about four or five vehicles with tinted windows that speed around the city, often running stop lights and taking corners recklessly. Usually led by an MPD cruiser or two, the convoys of black cars and SUVs appear out of nowhere to pull over drivers or stop pedestrians and conduct what can only be described as stop & and frisk with a heaping dose of “Papers please!”
Lately they’ve started setting up checkpoints during rush hour in the northern tip of DC, not far from the Home Depot and Lowe’s. Yesterday, they raided an elementary school during drop-off around the Latino-dense Columbia Heights neighborhood. They are reports of delivery drivers being snatched off scooters.
People leave the house, and never come home.
Most of this seems to happen at night, and at lightening speed. Check points last maybe 30 minutes. Random stops only take about five minutes.
One of the primary reasons seems to be that they don’t want any record of this happening. If a group of people surround the scene and start recording with their phones, they start wrapping it up. If there’s a reporter on scene, agents seem to stop what they’re doing and leave immediately.
They recently started taking pictures of protesters and reporters with cellphones. Some of us suspect they’re running us through Clearview or Palantir facial recognition systems.
When one tried to ID me from a few meters away, I rolled my eyes, walked over and handed him my business card through a huff of cigarette smoke.
When I asked my old journalism professor John Fountain if this sounds like Sundown Laws, he wrote back:
“It seems more akin to the old slave patrols or a militarized occupation to enforce, at its worst, a quasi-apartheid and raises the potential of innocents being caught in the crossfire so to speak. I was a kid — age 7 — when National Guardsmen armed with long guns, tanks and in full military gear marched through my neighborhood during the riots in 1968 after Dr. King's assassination when Mayor Daley gave police the order to ‘shoot to kill.’
“Even at that age, it was clear to me that this occupying force was not ‘friendlies’ and that I was potentially one of the enemies.”
...I need more rum.
“ When one tried to ID me from a few meters away, I rolled my eyes, walked over and handed him my business card through a huff of cigarette smoke.”
*STANDING TO APPLAUD*