Washington, D.C.'s political subjugation exposes America's democratic facade. While claiming to champion self-rule globally, the U.S. increases repression and lays siege on the residents of its own capital.
Originally published in Black Alliance for Peace.
President Donald Trump’s recent announcement to deploy the National Guard to Washington, DC, framed as a crackdown on crime, marks a dangerous escalation in the federal government’s militarization of one of the spaces of the Black/African internal colony. On August 11, Trump declared, “We’re taking our capital back,” while signaling an unprecedented federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department. This move, under the pretext of public safety, follows his March 2025 executive order establishing the “Safe and Beautiful” task force, led by Stephen Miller, an architect of white nationalist immigration policies. The initiative has accelerated mass surveillance, aggressive policing, and the criminalization of Black/African and working-class communities, particularly in Southeast DC.
Trump’s declaration comes on the heels of the "Secure DC” Omnibus bill, alongside decades of Democrat-backed crime bills that have devastated marginalized communities and are now being expanded further under Trump’s task force. His order promotes harsher pretrial detention, sweeps of homeless encampments, ICE raids, and relaxed concealed carry laws—measures that will inevitably target the same communities Democrats once claimed to protect. This bipartisan tradition of punitive governance reflects a shared commitment to maintaining racial and class control, differing only in rhetoric.
Moreover, historically, the National Guard has been weaponized against Black/African communities, from suppressing uprisings during Red Summer (1919) to violently attacking and then occupying the community of Cambridge, Maryland during the Black Freedom Struggle (1963) to the George Floyd uprisings during the first Trump presidency (2020).
Trump’s current deployment revives this legacy, embedding militarized force into daily governance. But this moment is not isolated—it reflects the enduring logic of settler colonialism, where state violence and deputized white civilians (from slave patrols to modern “stand your ground” vigilantes) uphold racial hierarchy. By seizing DC’s police apparatus, Trump isn’t just escalating policing; he’s testing a more blatant and centralized model of authoritarian urban control, one that could soon extend beyond the District.
It is no coincidence that the consolidation of this outright militarized domestic occupation advances as the U.S. deepens its support for the zionist perpetuation of genocide in Gaza. The barbarous collaboration in a live-streamed genocide by the U.S. and collective “West” has opened the door for open disregard for the lives and livelihoods of the masses of people across the globe, as well as the demonization of our resistance. The failure to recognize the humanity and fundamental rights of Palestinians is replicated in the escalating fascistic domestic policies of the U.S. settler-state. Just like with the zionist occupation, this acceleration of barbarous violence and militarized repression is simply an embrace of the states’ settler-colonial foundations.
The tragedy is not just Trump’s brazenness and further consolidation of neofascism, but the Democratic Party’s continued collaboration in strengthening the repressive capacities of the state through militarization, surveillance, and economic austerity. Decades of “tough-on-crime” posturing have normalized the criminalization of poverty, leaving communities vulnerable to even more extreme repression.
Now, as Trump invokes “law and order” to justify occupation, the challenge lies not only in resisting his agenda, but also in confronting the colonial/capitalist structures and oppressive class rule that made it possible. BAP is clear: self-determination and collective resistance are paramount human rights, central to the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework that BAP is prepared to defend.
The fight ahead is not simply against Trump’s authoritarianism. It is a fight for a future where safety is not imposed by militarization but built through structures of popular democracy, peace, social justice and collective liberation. But to achieve this future it is absolutely clear that the people must fight. We will oppose the intensification of colonial occupation with popular organization and a steeled determination to defend our individual and collective rights by any means necessary.
We want peace. We work for peace but we understand the sacrifice that sometimes must be made for peace and a new world—and we stand prepared to make those sacrifices.
No Justice, No Peace,
No Compromise, No Retreat
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El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Shaquille Fontenot is a co-chair of the National Network on Cuba and a co-founder of the Low Country Action Committee in Charleston, South Carolina.
