When Donald Trump introduced he was sending 800 Nationwide Guard troops to Washington, D.C., he harkened again to the conservative rhetoric of “legislation and order.” He referred to as it “security.” However these of us who stay right here—who elevate children right here, pay hire or mortgage right here, mourn right here, dance right here, rejoice right here—know precisely what it’s: a political present of power designed to surveil, intimidate, and criminalize Black individuals in our personal metropolis, particularly our youngsters. This isn’t safety. It’s punishment dressed up as public security.
The pretext falls aside on contact with the details. In 2024, D.C.’s violent crime hit a 30-year low, falling 35% 12 months over 12 months—with homicides down 32%, robberies down 39%, carjackings down 53%, and assaults with a harmful weapon down 27% when in comparison with 2023 ranges. Within the first half of 2025, violent offenses saved trending downward, together with robberies, down one other quarter. That’s not a metropolis in free fall; that’s a metropolis pulling itself again from a tough few years.
And regardless of the “most harmful metropolis” rhetoric, D.C. doesn’t even seem within the U.S. Information’ High-10 “Most Harmful Locations” checklist—an inventory that, 12 months after 12 months, names different cities as having larger danger profiles. Info received’t cease a political stunt, however they need to matter to anybody making selections about our lives.
I additionally know what occurs when politicians use troopers to “resolve” social issues. I’m a Kent State College grad. On Could 4, 1970, the Nationwide Guard fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds right into a crowd of unarmed pupil protestors, killing 4 and wounding 9. We memorialize that day as a result of it taught a brutal lesson: when the federal government confuses dissent with hazard, violence follows.
And we’ve seen this playbook simply this summer time. In Los Angeles, after neighborhood protests towards immigration raids, the administration deployed Nationwide Guard troops and even 700 Marines, over the objections of state and native leaders. A federal trial now questions whether or not that deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which typically prevents the president from utilizing the navy as a home police power. In different phrases, what seems like “safety” was doubtless illegal militarization of public house—and it was aimed toward immigrant communities merely demanding dignity. The throughline from LA to D.C. is tough to overlook.
So let’s speak plainly: police and troopers should not arbiters of security—not for Black neighborhoods, and never for youngsters who want care and alternative greater than curfews and checkpoints. Policing in America has all the time been extra about controlling populations and defending property than nurturing neighborhood. If we would like fewer harms, the solutions aren’t in armored automobiles and federalized patrols. They’re in housing, faculties, after-school jobs, mental-health care, violence-interruption, avenue lighting, transit entry, and steady earnings. Security is what we construct collectively; “order” is what will get imposed on us.
Trump’s transfer additionally exposes the authorized wound D.C. lives with day by day: we don’t management our own residence. He invoked a provision of the House Rule Act to sidestep native authority and place our police below federal command—an unprecedented intrusion that treats D.C. residents not as neighbors and voters, however as an issue to be managed from a podium. If it may be executed right here, within the nation’s capital, it may be executed anyplace.
And be clear about who that is aimed toward: Black D.C. Black children on the Metro. Black teenagers filming dances within the park. Black individuals coming dwelling from a late shift. The presence is the message. The “present of power” is the purpose. When troops line a hall by way of a Black neighborhood with out credible proof of rising crime—at a time when crime is falling—what we’re seeing is a calculated try to sit back speech, meeting, and pleasure earlier than we actually have a likelihood to make use of them.
The reality is, D.C. is already over-policed. Layering federalized policing and navy presence on prime of that doesn’t make anybody safer—it makes organizing riskier.
That’s the purpose. Preemptive suppression masquerading as concern.
For this reason House Rule isn’t an summary speaking level. It’s the one option to put our metropolis’s future again in our fingers. Allow us to determine the right way to put money into public security. Allow us to select counselors over cruisers, housing over handcuffs. Allow us to construct on the very progress this administration pretends doesn’t exist—as a result of we made these features, not by staging photo-ops, however by doing the work.
If we settle for a navy occupation as an inexpensive response to a declining and even an growing crime fee, then we settle for the concept the federal government can militarize any metropolis, at any time, for any purpose. LA confirmed us how shortly an administration will leap to uniformed power within the face of dissent. D.C. reveals us how simply a president can deal with a majority-Black metropolis as a private fiefdom. Put these collectively and you’ve got a nationwide template for turning political disagreements into policing operations.
In order for you “legislation and order,” begin with legal guidelines that put money into us and order that respects us. Home unhoused individuals. Fill the clinics. Fund the colleges. Pay the advisors and case managers. In order for you a capital that displays America at its finest, then give D.C. what each different metropolis takes with no consideration: the correct to control ourselves—and the sources to maintain each other protected.
The administration can name this a crackdown. An emergency. An pressing matter. I name it a clarification. It clarifies who believes in democracy when it’s not handy. It clarifies who trusts Black individuals to guide our personal lives. It clarifies whether or not “public security” means preserving the general public alive—or merely preserving the general public in line.
We all know which facet we’re on. And we’re not going anyplace.
Preston Mitchum is an legal professional, entrepreneur, and author whose work focuses on the intersections of racial justice, gender fairness, and LGBTQ+ rights. He runs PDM Consulting, a social affect and advocacy consulting agency.
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