JACKIE JONES

During tumultuous times, history bears repeating to put events in some sort of perspective.

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops into Baltimore, which triggered passage of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that limits the use of U. S. military personnel to enforce civilian law.

In 1963, Maryland Gov. Millard Tawes sent the state’ s National Guard to Cambridge, Md., to quell racial protests. The troops stayed two years – the longest occupation of a U. S. community since The Civil War. This year, more than 2,000 National Guardsmen – from the District of Columbia and six states – were ordered in the streets of the nation’ s capital, just 40 miles down the road from Baltimore. The troops were called up by President Trump to, as he put it, to restore law and order in the city.

The reviews have been mixed on the guard’ s presence in Washington, depending on where one lives in the city. In this issue of the“ Morgan Global Journalism Review,” Courtland Milloy writes that one seemingly welcomed sight was the appearance of troops from the District of Columbia’ s National Guard, who joined with residents of underserved neighborhoods to clean

trash strewn areas of their community. The civilian director of D. C. Guard, in response to a letter from community leaders throughout the city who opposed the deployment, wrote and offered help with a variety of beautification projects. People in the city’ s 8th Ward took them up on the offer.

Also, in this issue, writer Adam Nguyen gives readers a view of Washington’ s military occupation from people in the city’ s downtown, where public opinion seems more divided.

Besides the emotional impact of seeing armed troops on the street, there are psychological and economic consequences being felt, Nguyen reports. Tourism has fallen off, and some restaurant owners say their employees have expressed ambivalence about having to navigate their way past armed soldiers to get to work.

Even some guardsmen are questioning the mission and the obvious discomfort their presence gives residents.

Amid all of this is the national debate that President Donald Trump’ s deployment of the soldiers onto the streets of Washington – and his threat to send them

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