Thousands Pour Into DC Streets To Protest Trump

And Dom was there!

Photos by Dominic Gwinn

Thousands of people filled the streets of Washington DC on Saturday to protest the Trump administration's use of federal agents and National Guard troops to carry out routine policing operations. People marched two miles down 16th Street from Meridian Hill/Malcolm X park, past LaFayette Square in front of the White House, and to Freedom Square. Residents along the route came out of their homes to cheer, and in some instances, join. As the march passed Foundry United Methodist Church, the church’s bells began to ring ceaselessly in solidarity.

That's the news lede. People came, they marched and yelled, and come Monday morning, the situation seems to have only gotten more bleak. As people in the occupied federal city took to the streets, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and mobilize federal agents and National Guard soldiers from conservative/red states like Texas, and send them to overwhelmingly Democratic/blue cities, like Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Boston and Portland.

Photos by Dominic Gwinn

For the terminally online, one might think DC hasn't been fighting the rising tides of fascism. They look at DC. Mayor Muriel Bowser's capitulation to the administration as being brought to heel, but this ignores the reality of the city's predicament: Congress and the president could simply unseat the mayor, abolish the city council, and take complete control of the city. There's obscene and false accusations that the city itself hasn't been out protesting almost every single day, that residents don't tell federal agents and national guardsmen to fuck off, quit their jobs go back home.

Privately, some of the guardsmen wandering the National Mall aimlessly will tell you they want nothing more than to go home. They'll acknowledge the mission is bullshit, that tje crime wave alleged by blithering rightwing punditry never existed. But they signed their contract and they're locked in, at least until the 30-day deployment order runs out.

Photos by Dominic Gwinn

There are some individuals and groups, like Veterans for Peace, making it known that soldiers and agents can disobey illegal orders. Some do shifts at the FLARE camp, a 24/7 protest and vigil in Columbus Park, just outside Union Station's main doors. They'll confront soldiers, offering pamphlets with information and phone numbers, and tell stories about their own affair(s) with Uncle Sam's Big Green Weenie.

The rumor that the city isn't fighting back is a lie. Every Saturday, protesters have been gathering in increasingly larger numbers. There are small groups of journalists and activists who fan out across the city to document federal agents harassing residents. DC-based groups, like Long Live GoGo (a storied DC-based genre of music) have seen massive crowds on U Street (AKA Black Broadway). Even RevCom, a ridiculously incompetent cult (that goes by many names across the US, such as "Revolutionary Communist" or "Refuse Fascism"), has seen groundswells of activists large enough to obfuscate its message. Everyone is fighting for one thing: a free DC

While it may have moved on from the daily headlines, the trickle-down effect from the DOGE purge is now spreading beyond Federal Triangle and Foggy Bottom. Bars and restaurants, which were just starting to recover from COVID-related losses, like behavioral changes, are again seeing empty seats and understaffed kitchens. “For sale” signs are cropping up on upscale row houses in Hill East, landlords for overpriced condos in the Navy Yard are offering several months of free rent, and many working class people are fleeing to neighboring Maryland, where Governor Wes Moore has pushed back against the administration's threats and shitposting.

So when people turn out to march by the thousands, it's not because they are all “paid protesters” with nothing better to do on a Saturday. It's because people aren't simply laying down so some fucked-over guardsman in a tattered uniform and peeling boots from Wiggins, Mississippi, or Wheeling, West Virginia, can stomp on their neck. They're making it known that this is wrong, that this is not normal, that they won't tolerate their constitutionally granted rights and freedoms being stripped away.

Photos by Dominic Gwinn