THE OCCUPATION OF WASHINGTON D. C., A VIEW
“ FROM THE HOOD”
By COURTLAND MILLOY
WASHINGTON – On a recent Saturday morning, a contingent of the District of Columbia’ s National Guard joined residents in Southeast Washington for a neighborhood cleanup. Within a couple of hours, their combined efforts had netted more than 40 large bags of trash collected from roadsides, sidewalks and vacant lots.
The residents who had toiled alongside the soldiers were grateful.
“ I live and work in the community and I think it’ s nice of them to come in and help us,” said Brittany Outlaw, who runs a nonprofit afterschool program for at-risk children.
On August 11, President Donald Trump, who has renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War, ordered more than 2,000 National Guard troops into the streets of Washington. He took this action, Trump said,“ to rescue our nation’ s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”
Washington is 43 percent Black and heavily Democratic. Only 7 percent of the city’ s electorate cast their ballot for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Ironically, most of the troops that Trump sent into this city came from Republican-led Southern states where Confederate images and symbols are infused in state flags, government buildings and statues on public lands.
A poll by the Washington Post-Schar School found that an overwhelming majority of Washington residents – 79 percent – disapproved of Trump’ s actions. Violent crime was already at a 30-year low before Trump usurped the police powers of Washington’ s elected government.
According to the poll, most Washington residents said they felt safe or very safe in their neighborhoods, contrary to Trump’ s claim that they were living in a city under siege by crime.
But it is fair to say that parts of this city are not very safe, and could use some sprucing up. Southeast Washington, also known as Ward 8, with a 30 percent poverty rate and a 9.8 percent unemployment rate, has more than its share of these places.
Photos courtesy of Courtland Milloy
And residents working to improve those communities say they can use all the help they can get.
Marcus Hunt, the civilian director of Washington’ s National Guard, sent a letter on September 8, to neighborhood organizations throughout the city offering to have Guardsmen help with beautification projects. He was responding to a letter written a week earlier and endorsed by 93 of the city’ s Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners( ANC) that opposed the deployment.
“ What’ s happening in D. C. is a warning to the rest of the country,” the ANC letter read.“ The president has already deployed the National Guard against local wishes in other jurisdictions. The precedent that allows a president to override local control of policing, budgeting, and governance based on a subjective‘ emergency’ declaration should alarm every mayor, city council, and taxpayer in America.”
Two Democratic governors, J. B. Pritzker, of Illinois, and Gavin Newsom, of California, have warned that Trump, a Republican, might try to use the soldiers he has only sent into cities run by Democrats to disrupt upcoming elections.
After the National Guard was ordered into The District, Hunt, who is a third generation Washingtonian, began attending neighborhood
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