WASHINGTON – Dozens of people gathered outside of D.C police headquarters on Friday to protest President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s police, vowing to fight his administration’s efforts to intimidate residents by flooding the city with federal law enforcement agents.
“Every day, at eight o’clock, until these terrorists get out of our streets, we want people to go outside your door… just stop and for five minutes, just make noise,” Nee Nee Taylor of Free DC, a campaign focused on protecting D.C.’s right to self-govern, told the crowd, to cheers.
“Making noise is resistance!” Taylor said. “Making noise is freedom!”
It’s day four of Trump’s deployment of federal agents throughout the city to supposedly root out D.C. crime, which is at a 30-year low. Beyond the various types of federal officers patrolling the streets, which so far have led to checkpoints on roads and homeless encampments being cleared out, Trump has seized control of the local police, too.
The president can do this for 30 days under the Home Rule Act. However, D.C.’s attorney general on Friday filed an emergency intervention in court, claiming Trump is unlawfully abusing his authority under this law.
Friday’s protest included a diverse mix of residents furious about what Trump is doing to the city. Families were there, along with retirees and young people. Some people were from other states, too, having driven in to protest what’s happening in D.C., in part because they fear Trump doing the same thing in cities in their states.
Beth, a decades-long D.C. resident, wore finger puppets that were tiny hands with tiny handcuffs on them, along with a homemade sign with a message to Trump: “Keep Your Tiny Hands Off Our City.” A retiree, she said she decided to come out to Friday’s protest because she’s mad about “Trump’s takeover of our city.”
Asked if this is the scariest time she’s been in D.C., she quickly replied, “I don’t want to say scared, because I’m not afraid. I would say, troubling.”
While there were about 150 people at this protest, which relocated from police headquarters to the nearby courthouse where the D.C. attorney general’s case was being heard, Beth said she didn’t understand why more people weren’t protesting. She mentioned having friends in Virginia with whom she discusses the need to take action against what Trump is doing, but they’re mostly complacent.
“I’m hopeful to see so many young people here,” she added.
Several people carried signs with messages like “Keep D.C. Free” and “Blondage Out. ICE Out,” the former term referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi. One attendee held up a large, upside-down U.S. flag, a recognized distress signal, with a message underneath for D.C. police officers: “The Bondi order is unlawful. You are not obligated to follow it.”
Taylor, the organizing director for Free DC, urged people to stay safe while also taking action every single day that Trump is occupying the city.
“Honestly, y’all, we need to resist in a way that’s safe right now,” she told the crowd. “This is a message to our youth: They want you. They want you. So I advise you not to walk in pairs because, you walking in pairs is a crime right now, unfortunately.”
“It’s called walking while being young and Black with a couple of your friends,” Taylor added. “That’s the name of that illegal law.”
Keya Chatterjee, Free DC’s executive director, said the excuses the Trump administration is giving for its “hostile takeover of D.C.” are clearly nonsense.
“So the reason they want to take over D.C. is because authoritarians always want to silence dissent,” Chatterjee said. “Are we going to let them do that?”
“No!” shouted the crowd in response.
Carol, a retiree from upstate New York, drove into D.C. on Thursday to participate in protests happening around the city. She said her late father, who served overseas in the military, would be “turning over in his grave” at the way Trump was militarizing D.C.
“When I was growing up, we were dealing with the Holocaust and all that stuff,” she said, talking about the rise of Nazis in Germany. “I remember that generation and this generation, people said we’d never go back to that again. It’s happening again… We’ve got to stop it now.”
Several D.C. police officers were on the scene, monitoring the event. One officer, who requested anonymity, said he and other officers don’t know who’s in charge of their department at the moment and there’s been no guidance.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on right now,” he said.