For Immediate Release

Contact: press@blmgrassroots.org

August 16, 2025

The occupation of Washington, DC by militarized troops at the behest of a racist, fascist Trump regime is the full-on declaration of war on Black people in America. While some “Black faces in high places” are complicit, becoming proxies for the colonizer, it is ultimately the power of the people that will defeat the oppressor. In DC, this is the long-held work of the #FreeDC movement and Black Washingtonians who have always resisted, never submitting to their own oppression.

Bulldozers come at dawn to demolish the makeshift homes built by those that gentrification has pushed out, relegating people to “blight.” Those who call themselves “cleaners” claim it is progress, refusing to acknowledge the wheelchair left behind, its bent spokes catching the light like a broken halo.

The heavy boots of the National Guard echo assault rifles trained on Black bodies throughout “Chocolate City,” one of America’s Blackest communities. Washington, DC was built on stolen Piscataway Nacotchtank (Anacostan) land, designed by Black genius Benjamin Banneker, and built by enslaved Black labor. A rhythm and culture is sown into the very soil of the City. Transgenerational memories bury themselves in Black hips swaying to go-go beats. Ancestral voices echo through every “Shawty” sing-songed through an air that hangs heavy with a humidity reminding us of African homelands.

Residents are 48% Black, pay federal taxes without Congressional representation, and now face military occupation by a white-supremacist regime. The same federal power that genocided the Nacotchtank and dehumanized Black mamas, babas, and babies now deploys military troops against the Black folks who designed, built, and power DC.

A Blueprint For National Repression

When more than 700,000 predominantly Black residents can be locked down by federal troops acting as an occupying force, the blueprint becomes clear: manufacture ‘chaos’ in a disenfranchised city, then normalize domestic military occupation nationwide. By Trump’s own utterances, Washington, DC is the testing ground for tactics destined for Black cities nationwide.

1. Manufactured Crises: To justify the imposition of federalized policing in a city with its own police force, the Trump regime makes false claims of pandemonium and widespread crime, from which residents must be saved. They are manufacturing fear where there should be none. Violent crime in DC is down, hovering at a 30-year low, as it is in most major American cities.

2. Occupation: Residents are treated as enemy combatants, subjected to the same militarized policing that occupies Palestine.

3. Sidelining Black Leadership: The threats against; Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York all cities, like Washington, with Black mayors, expose the plantation logic that survives in marble corridors: that Black governance deserves no more sovereignty than sharecroppers’ cabins.

When Washington’s Black plurality can be locked down without consequence, every city is next.

And they will not save us. Black mayors and the political class (many of whom are vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard right now… as their cities are literally under siege) rarely put their own positions and ambitions at risk. They cannot be relied on to counter growing fascism.

All power to the people! It is ordinary, everyday people who have toppled every oppressor; slaveholders, colonizers, genociders, and lynchers. The liar and thief that occupies the White House may not have been held accountable by a criminal system of injustice that is built to protect white-supremacist-patriarchal-capitalism. But he and his brethren will not escape the power of the people. Now is the time to double down on People Power.

Black Lives Matter Grassroots stands in solidarity with the boots that have been on the ground for decades and centuries… Gifted organizers like DC native Nee Nee Taylor, and organizations like Harriet’s Wildest Dreams and Free DC are leading the way. In the coming days, we can expect the soul of the City to take shape through the formation of sound brigades and “DC Don’t Sleep” actions, community safety patrols, and guerrilla tactics. Even when facing down assault rifles, tanks, flashbangs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and masked men, the people have the power. And the people will win.

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Black Lives Matter Grassroots 

The mission of Black Lives Matter Grassroots is to support, sustain, and uplift the necessary agitations, mobilizations, community organizing, and initiatives of Black Lives Matter chapters to fulfill our sacred duty to advance Black liberation. #BlackLivesMatter was birthed to end state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Black Lives Matter Grassroots is a collective of 52 chartered chapters globally working on the ground since 2013.

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