‘Crazy as hell!’ and ‘Distraction from Epstein’: Residents respond to Trump’s takeover of Washington, DC

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and The Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we are recording this urgent mini cast episode on Friday, August 15th to give you guys an update on what the hell we know about what the hell is happening in the nation’s capitol. As Chris Cameron reports at the New York Times, president Trump made a show of force in Washington, DC this week exercising his unique powers over the nation’s capitol to commandeer the city’s police force, deploy the National Guard and send hundreds of federal law enforcement agents into the city in what he described as an effort to combat crime.

It is the first time a president has used a declared emergency to rest control of the city’s police. A step that its mayor said was unsettling, though allowed under the law. Congress and the executive branch have long exerted controls over the city’s budget and other decisions, but the president’s move may represent the biggest encroachment on the city’s autonomy since it was granted home rule 52 years ago. While crime is a concern for many residents, the situation on the ground defers from Mr. Trump’s hyperbolic statements. In justifying the moves, official data shows that crime is falling, particularly violent crime, which hit a 30 year low last year after surging during the pandemic. And I’m sure you guys have been seeing the horrifying videos that have been circulating online all week of militarized police menacingly patrolling the streets of DC and setting up traffic checkpoints like the whole city is under Marshall Law, as well as videos of encampments of people experiencing homelessness being violently cleared and trashed.

As Brian Mann reports at MPR, just before midday Thursday, crews in DC moved into a grassy park near the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capitol, dismantling one of the small homeless encampments that’s drawn the ire of President Trump. David Beatty, age 65, looked on as a bulldozer, scooped up tents and other belongings and shoveled them into a garbage truck. It just feels wrong to me. The idea that we’re poor makes them uncomfortable. They don’t want to be reminded that poor people exist. He said, asked where he expects to sleep, Beaty shook his head and said quietly, I don’t know. I don’t know. Now we know that Donald Trump does not deescalate and the widespread dystopian, but sadly, credible fear right now is that President Trump will fabricate a national emergency to justify escalating his authoritarian assault on our cities and our communities. The administration has openly threatened to expand its military occupation to other cities around the country, specifically cities that they’ve identified as democratic strongholds, including our own city here in Baltimore.

As Stephen Prager writes at Common Dreams, US President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday he may declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and continue his military occupation of Washington DC indefinitely. Under the Home Rule Act, the president is allowed to unilaterally take control of law enforcement in the nation’s capitol for 30 days. After that, Congress must extend its authorization through a joint resolution. The authorization would need 60 votes to break the Senate filibuster, meaning some Democrats would need to sign on. Minority leader Chuck Schumer has said there’s no fucking way they would adding that. Some Republicans would likely vote against it as well. And in a final update, published also at Common Dreams today Friday, Brad Reed writes, Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwab on Friday filed a lawsuit to block United States Attorney General Pam Bondi from taking over the US Capitol City’s Police Department. The lawsuit accused the Trump administration of violating the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, a 1973 law that delegated certain powers over the city once held by the federal government to local government officials.

So that is by no means all the information that you need, but it’s a rapid fire barrage of key information that we have as of this recording on Friday. And we’re recording this in the Real News Network studio in downtown Baltimore. And as always, I’m truly grateful to have my colleague the great Mansa Musa here with me. Mansa is of course the host of Rattling the bars on the Real News, and he was actually filming in DC at some of the protests against the Trump administration’s authoritarian takeover of the city earlier this week. Mansa is also himself a resident living and working in Washington dc. Brother Mansa, thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with me, man. I really appreciate it.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, thank you Max for having me on this show working people. This is what it’s all about, people getting their rights as human rights as workers.

Maximillian Alvarez:

That’s right, man. Again, I cannot express to you how grateful I am that you and Cam ran down there to DC on Monday as this was all unfolding to film and talk with folks on the ground. And I want to get to that in a second, but I wanted to start by just asking if you could just sort of lay out for listeners what the past week has been like for you living and walking through Washington dc What does it look and feel like right now to you and what are you hearing from others in the city?

Mansa Musa:

Well, you know what, Mac, that’s interesting that you asked that the other day. And to really put this in perspective, the other day, I was coming down a regular street that I normally travel and the police was parked on the side. So when I passed him, he pulled up behind me and I didn’t come this way thousands of times. Literally, this is not an exaggeration. This is the route I take coming and going home. And so I was like, I ain’t paying no mind. I don’t have no issues with the police. I’m not doing nothing wrong. But I noticed that he was on, he followed me for significant amount of time before he turned off. And so I’m in a room, I’m in a group talking to guys and saying, everybody talking about the FU on police. I said, man, I felt like he was like, follow me.

Well, then he turned off and one of the guys say, no, what he did, he ran your tags and when he ran your tags and seen you ain’t had wasn’t nothing up, then that’s when he pulled off. And whether that’s true or not, that’s the state of mind of DC citizens. The state of mind of DC citizens right now is that they’re under police state, mainly in the poor black, poor brown communities, the Hispanic communities with large pockets of, and what they call east of the river, the low income projects, and that’s where they’ve been at. They coming around before, they wasn’t enforcing that you couldn’t smoke marijuana in public, and that’s the law. So we get that. But before they wasn’t enforcing it because it wasn’t an issue.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah, I walked down DC plenty of times and seen people smoking out,

Mansa Musa:

Everybody smoking, police right there, see ’em smoking. Now they’re saying, okay, it’s a law. So now enforce it before it wasn’t, loitering wasn’t an issue. Now it’s a law enforce it. So what they’re doing, what the administration is doing is they’re provoking the population by all these misdemeanor laws. And when it is, it gives them probable cause to approach you. Once they approach you, then it escalate. So that’s what’s been happening. You seen they went in one neighborhood, low income neighborhood, ran up there, guy smoking, put handcuffs on one guy. So now the whole community is up. Well, why you got him handcuffed? So they can’t understand, okay, why you got him handcuffed for smoking a joint? Why you just didn’t give him a citation or whatever, lease it path for resistance. But no, it escalated. Got a guy, Jack, took a guy out of his car, his car running up into the woman smoking.

But all this is about smoking or laing. And now I heard you was talking about the homeless encampments. They’re moved their systematically coming through with bulldozers, national Guard. They got every brand of police in the world in dc. And every brand of police that’s in the world is operating individually in their silos. So that’s what the attitude in the District of Columbia, it’s real tense. And it is not going to get no, it is not going to get any different because their mandate is to harass the citizens of the District of Columbia. That’s their mandate.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it sounds like that’s exactly what they’re doing. I mean, you know what? I can’t help but think about the first conversation that you and I had on this podcast, right? And that was a couple of years ago, but I remember you talking about what it was like living near and walking around DC as a young black man in the sixties and how it was very clear that it was still a segregated city. I’m wondering how this compares to your memories of DC back then.

Mansa Musa:

It doesn’t because the repression that you seen, it was based, you seen it from the perspective of a class, you low class, you don’t have, but everybody living in low income housing. So you got that. And you don’t have no way of assessing that against what’s going on in the real world because you don’t have a heavy police presence. Now, this is literally like any third world country where you have checkpoints because they’re moving in, having presence in areas where they letting it be known that we are here to do you have an id, you are asking people, lemme see your id. If you don’t have an id, they locking you up. You can say, oh, wait a minute, hold up. I just ran out to get the DoorDash. My ID is in my house. No, you don’t have an id. You getting locked up. So the difference is, is you can feel the tension in the city right now. I mean, it’s really tense. People are actually avoiding federal property and federal highways because the fear of if I’m on federal property, they can stop me, but the is that they going to stop you anyway.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And let’s not forget there are multiple converging assaults happening at once here, right? Because it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that on Thursday DC Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith issued an executive order allowing the officers who were setting up these traffic stops to report undocumented immigrants that they find in the course of those stops, which is a departure from how the DC police normally operates. So it’s a trap being set for anyone who they can get to fall into it. And between DC police collaborating with ICE in this and other ways to increase Trump’s assault on immigrant communities to now the assault on unhoused people in the encampments to the militaristic assault on the freedom and liberty of poor black and brown residents of places like Washington, DC and doing all of this under the guise. And he’s saying that it’s all because DC is just ridden with crime and it’s bedlam over there.

And we’re being told to fear all this crime from homeless people, from immigrants while a convicted felon is sitting at the White House who also pardoned a bunch of the January 6th rioters who killed police officers. It’s such a topsy-turvy, dystopian reality. But I wanted to ask you, this is what we do, right? We show people what’s actually happening on the ground so they can cut through all the lies and crap. When you are living and working in DC do you see the kind of DC that Donald Trump is telling the rest of the country he sees? Is it ridden with crime? Does it justify what’s been happening this week?

Mansa Musa:

There’s no justification for what’s happening this week. And this is one, DC was a sanctuary city. So he came and see all sanctuary cities. I’m attacked two DC is black, ran is a Black, have Black political apparatus. When you look around, he said, Baltimore,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Baltimore, Chicago. Chicago

Mansa Musa:

And LA. The difference with DC is DC as you open up, see DC don’t have no, it’s not a state. So he got the authority to take over the police. And so now what you see is that’s that. But in terms of your question, no, I’m talking about the DC I grew up in. You’ve rarely seen any white people in certain neighborhoods. Very rare, rare, rare.

Now you see white people walking their dogs in all neighborhoods, the so-called high crime neighborhood, they catching the bus right there. The subways right there. You don’t hear like, well, somebody slaughtered five or robbed. No, they feel safe enough to walk there. Animals, they feel safe enough to go shop. So the citizens of the District of Columbia, they feel safe. It’s not saying that DC don’t have crime because all city has crime, but what he’s using, the pretense that he using to take control over the District of Columbia don’t exist. So really this is not about the crime. This is about them taking over the district Columbia. 

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, it’s really wild to even be having that conversation, man. But that’s the country that we live in and the reality that we live in here in 2025. And I wanted to not leave our listeners with just a sense of all the awful shit that’s happening. But of course, as always, we want to lift up the voices from the grassroots that are saying no, the people who are fighting back, the people who are standing up and fighting for their rights and the rights of others amidst this onslaught. And that’s exactly what you were doing earlier this week, right? So let’s talk a little bit about the protests that you were at, the folks that you were talking to and what that message from the streets is right now.

Mansa Musa:

And there was a rally response by Free DC, which is a coalition organization of different groups, grassroots organizations that come together around DC, all things DC related. And the anti-fascist movement was, there was also a part of this protest, but what we was hearing from the street is people are not selling back and just accepting what he’s doing. So they had a strategy and their strategy is boots on the ground going into neighborhoods, educating people on their rights as it relates to your rights as a citizen in this city. Make sure that you don’t give them no ammunition to lock you up. So that means have your identification, understand that they are enforcing laws. They were one time misdemeanor, they’re making no felonies, and they’re going around to the neighborhoods and addressing the community and getting the community to become more involved. And I was excited to see this because when we talked to the people that was there that was supporting the protest, everyone to a person was saying that they don’t see crime as being up.

They feel safe. They don’t see this as a problem. They see this as more a takeover by the federal government and to let everybody was saying the same thing, that this is a diversion to divert people’s attention from the Epstein tapes. Now, whether it’s the diverted people’s attention from the Epstein tape, we know it’s a diversion, whatever the diversion, whatever, Epstein tapes, oil, Gaza, wherever we know to get the public attention off of issues that directly affect food, food prices being high, no job, you fired everybody. And then you’re saying unemployment is down. 

Maximillian Alvarez:

And to qualify that, when we’re talking about firing that many people in a place like DC and the DMV where so many people work for the federal government, that’s what we mean when we’re seeing lots of people around here have lost their jobs. But it’s not just federal workers who live in DC. Of course the majority of them live and work outside of DC. But we have such a high concentration of folks who have been losing their jobs over the past few months because of the cuts from the Trump administration. And we’re seeing that here in Baltimore and Maryland and in DC proper.

But I very much take your point that Trump was having a pretty bad couple weeks between all the allegations about his connections to Epstein and the very obvious photos of him with Epstein that have been circulating everywhere to the genocide in Gaza, which is now Trump has as much blood on his hands as Biden does. So yeah, rather than deal with any of these issues, he does what he always does and he doubles down and creates other news cycles with evermore authoritarian, brazen policy decisions that, like you said, distract people from what they were so outraged about just a few minutes prior

Speaker 3:

To that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It’s kind of anyone’s guess where this is all going to go. But I think again, what we know from having studied this man is that he’s going to go as far as he’s allowed to,

Mansa Musa:

Exactly

Maximillian Alvarez:

So inevitably the question’s going to come down to what are regular working people, the citizens of this country willing to do, to stand against authoritarianism and to stand up for their rights? And that is a question that we can answer for you all listening. That’s a question that you all have to answer yourself.

Mansa Musa:

What we see that the populace is going to respond because no matter what he say, and he say to his base when they go home and they put a plate in front of him and they got to divide up with a meal for one person, they got to divide that up among seven people. When they see that somebody not going to eat, they can blame the Hispanic community, they can blame the black community. They can blame a whole lot of people and claim that they took their jobs. They can blame, but at the end of the day, they’re going to have to blame him because that’s who’s responsible for the state of the economy. That’s what the distraction is. But the good news is working people not going to accept that unions, whatever major unions do, the people the rank and file, they not going to accept it. It’s always been a rank and foul that did it. It wasn’t, the AFL-CIO was not an AFL-CIO. The A-F-L-C-I-O was Bobby or Tony or John or Murray or Sally or Sue that said they didn’t like the conditions of what they was working under and they organized. You can’t take that entity, the neighborhoods. It’s the people in the neighborhood saying like, okay, we don’t want heavy handed police in our neighborhood. We don’t have no problem with you riding around doing what you been doing, but now when you come, I’m walking in my house, you say, come here where your ID at? That’s a problem for me. So that’s the difference.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh man, I think that’s powerfully put, man. And again, I really appreciate all the work that you’re doing in DC, all the work that you’re doing on rattling the bars. And of course this is not the end of the story, so we’re going to keep covering it and we’re going to keep doing what we can to lift up voices from grassroots of struggle. And in fact, that’s how we’re going to end today’s episode by playing a few clips from the interviews that Mansa himself was doing with DC residents and organizers earlier this week when Donald Trump announced that federal government would be taking over the DC Police and that the National Guard was being called in. So please listen to these, share this episode with everyone that send us tips for folks that you want us to talk to, stories you want us to cover because we’re going to be out there as long as it takes until we get justice. So keep listening, keep fighting, and thank you all so much for caring about this. And thank you again Mansa for joining me on the show.

Mansa Musa:

And thank you Max for allowing me and workers of the world united.

Speaker 4:

I am a native Washingtonian. Yes, I’m a former member also of the DC National Guard. I support law enforcement. I do not support this. Donald Trump is a pathological liar. He is a 34 counts convicted felon. He is not interested in making DC safe. He’s just trying to divert attention. He doesn’t care about homeless, he doesn’t care about black people. Donald Trump only cares about himself. He’s a pathological liar and he supports pedophilia and white supremacy.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, look now, tray White, the representative from the eighth ward, he called for the National Guard to come out. What’d you think about

Speaker 4:

That? Sharon Wright is wrong, but the National Guard does not have a right purpose under the situation that Donald Trump is called for. The National Guard has a purpose and a function in the District of Columbia, but this is not it. The Posse Act prohibits the National Guard from engaging in law enforcement. That is not their function, that is not their purpose. And that being misused by the commander in chief.

Mansa Musa:

Let me ask you this here. How detrimental or how critical or how detrimental is homeless people to the safety of the United States?

Speaker 4:

Homelessness is an issue that people don’t want to address and don’t want to deal with and they don’t want. People need a place to go and rather than try to find them housing, they want to just put them out of sight and push them someplace else. Out of sight, out of mind. Homeless people, everyone needs a place to stay, needs shelter. And we should work with our homeless people and try to find accommodations so that they can be off the streets. People on the street don’t want to be on the streets. Nobody wants to live in a tent in a park that’s not home called

Mansa Musa:

Trump issued an executive order saying that anyone that’s asleep on the street, anyone that’s homeless can be locked

Speaker 4:

Up. That’s crazy. That’s criminal. Poverty should not be a crime.

Speaker 3:

Poverty

Speaker 4:

Should not be a crime. And that’s what Donald Trump and his people are trying to, they want to criminalize poverty. Poverty is not a crime. Thank you. Thank you.

Mansa Musa:

And they using the crime as a pretext. Do you think crime is up in DC

Speaker 5:

No crime’s at a 30 year low. It’s been going down every year. I think this year, year over year. It’s down 26% this year.

Mansa Musa:

And in terms of safety, do you feel like the city is safe?

Speaker 5:

Yeah, it’s absolutely safe. I walk my dog at night. I am always out in the community. I love being here. I don’t feel unsafe at all.

Speaker 6:

So this is what we are building at free DC a people campaign. That is the goal for five years as we build this out to resist in a non-cooperative way that we will eventually in DC get DC statehood hood. Our goal right now in the present is to protect home rule by any means necessary. Right,

Mansa Musa:

Right. Because it’s under attack,

Speaker 6:

Right? Because it’s under attack. So as we see them come out, the whole rule, we strategize and organize around ways to protect home rule. We are asking our national organizations to contact their congress person to write

Mansa Musa:

No

Speaker 6:

To those the harms that’s causing dc. 700,000 people in DC pay taxes and we have no voice. We don’t have a vote. So we need the people in national, in other states to vote for us for in Congress. But here in DC on the ground, we are going to do our part to protect DC and DC on rules.

Mansa Musa:

What do you think about the city councils position? How do

Speaker 6:

You evaluate them in terms of this conflict? The council can do more right now as we give the little bit of the most impacted to satisfy Trump. This is why we are here now. When you give a little, they take a

Mansa Musa:

Lot. That’s right.

Speaker 6:

So therefore we are saying that know that the people are behind you and rise up to fascism and authoritarianism because when it start in DC, when they come for us in the daytime, they’re going to come for you at night.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. Angela Davis.

Speaker 6:

You hear what I’m saying? I hear what you saying. And so therefore they have to do their part and fight back. Don’t cater to them. Don’t cater to the police. Police don’t keep us safe. Police, police keep property safe.

Speaker 7:

So when Trump says that he’s going to bring the national guards back to dc back into dc, I think it’s incumbent up on the local population to resist. We know this is not the first time, but this time it seems more insidious and the rationale that’s being used is even more flimsy. We know if you look, you’re saying that crime is going up. We have to bring the troops in. Matter of fact, crime is going, crime is

Mansa Musa:

Going down.

Speaker 7:

So there’s no basis for that. Whether it’s laws that are passed by the city budget that the city deserves Trump, and the administration is saying that we are taking control of dc. Look at where we’re standing right now. The fact that he put pressure on the local administration, the mayor, mayor caved, and this is no longer Black Lives Matter plaza, right? So that’s an symbolic indication of like, okay, this is my home. The White House is right there. DC belongs to me. That’s what he’s saying to folks.

Speaker 8:

DC formerly has self-rule, but in reality, the rich people still run the city. So whether we have statehood home rule or not home rule, the same group of people are going to run the city regardless. We’ve seen that over the last 50 years as disinvestment has destroyed communities, the war on drugs has destroyed communities. So getting home ruler, getting statehood is not going to change those policies unless we have a different type of leadership or leadership, which is opposed to capitalism, which limits the power of these rich people and fights for the working class to lead society. Well, the city council just voted to give Harris the guy who owns the commanders a billion dollars. Why isn’t that money used for affordable housing, for better education, for better programs, for working people in this city? That shows you where the city council really lies with the rich people and the billionaires.

Speaker 9:

Oh, what Trump is doing is atrocious. So being out on the streets is very important to me. I work for a nonprofit in DC called Black Swan, which teaches young kids about advocacy, organizing and all of those things. And again, I grew up here, so the city was conducive to me being out on the streets, protesting when I was growing up, when I was in high school. So I’m happy to help educate younger people how to do that now.

Mansa Musa:

And talk about the youth because you say you deal with youth. Do you see the youth being so unruly, so disruptive, so homicidal that it calls for the president of the United States to call for the National Guard to come up specifically when he’s saying crime is on the rise and directly relating to youth?

Speaker 9:

Absolutely not. Absolutely not the city. It’s a safe place. The youth here, the youth that I work with, they represent to me the youth of dc. So I believe that there’s no warranted reason for him to be calling in the National Guard. Fuck Trump.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Why are you saying that?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Because he’s a wild piece of shit that doesn’t deserve to be in the White House. We don’t like liars in our lives, but we like him running our country. You make that make sense

Speaker 10:

On man. This is a city of men, right? This is a city of people that know how to do their own thing. We’re looking at a guy who’s sitting here saying that his focus is on crime. He’s a felon. He won’t release this Epstein list.

He’s not really worried about crime. He’s the same person that released the people that did January 6th. He cares about control and he cares about control of a Black city. You see, Washington, DC has always intimidated white lawmakers across this country. And it’s because they had to look at this city and it had to say, damn, it’s a Black mayor, it’s a Black city council, it’s Black entrepreneurs, it’s Black power in this city. And so them attacking this right here is a symbolic attack on Black America. So what I’m telling all of America, and I’ve often been saying that DC is a racial justice issue. All of the Black [inaudible] across America got to tap into DC statehood right now because if we fall, who else can go? And let me

Mansa Musa:

Ask you this, your opinion on this, Trayvon White council member Ward eight, he said that he think that Trump is right on the National Guard and he think they should bring National Guard. What’s your

Speaker 10:

Opinion, man? I think that we know how to do our own thing here. I think when we look at comparative to other major cities, we don’t need the National Guard here. We have over 3000 police officers. We have over 32 police forces, different police forces. We have more than police here. You know what I’m saying? If there’s a conversation about them doing their jobs differently, maybe more efficiently, that’s a conversation to be had,

Mansa Musa:

Right?

Speaker 10:

The idea that we need more police is crazy as hell. Like I said, that’s coming from somebody who walks the streets of DC every single day. Do you feel safe? I feel safe. And maybe it’s a consequence of me being from here. You know what I’m saying?

Mansa Musa:

Right. But you

Speaker 10:

Love the city. I love the city. Like I said, it’s no different than a New York City, than a Miami, than a Los Angeles. And you have activity everywhere. Like I said, all in all though, Washington DC is still a beautiful place to be. It’s still a safe place to be. I’m proud to raise my daughter here. I’m proud to live here and I don’t feel afraid at all being in Washington, DC

Speaker 11:

And I’m saying DC is safe for the most part because anywhere you go in the United States, you’re going to have crime in major cities. This is a major city. So I say we are pretty safe. And I say he’s overreaching. He don’t really know what he doing. That’s what I say.

Mansa Musa:

Now, did you know that he criminalized homelessness? Say if you homeless and you be on the park bench,

Speaker 11:

If you homeless, man, life done already beat you up and you don’t need to be beat up by racist president

Mansa Musa:

In terms of him criminalizing homelessness because he is your mandate. I was saying that if you homeless and you on the street that they can lock you up. What’s your view?

Speaker 12:

This country is lacking empathy by today. And I think that’s a prime example of it. I think we need more programs. I think we need more mental health programs for people who are out here because a lot of these people, unfortunately, are dealing with mental health issues. I don’t think a majority of people want to be homeless just for the fun of it. So we need programs, we need more clinics. We just need to pour back into our people. I mean, society has shown when we pour into the people who make it, we are all better just as a whole. And I think that’s just another form of division. It’s another form of classism essentially.

Speaker 13:

Yeah, there’s been a lot of people out today. Trump just announced that he’s going to be deploying the National Guard, federalizing the Metro Police. A lot of people are very rightfully upset about that. So it’s been a little bit chaotic. Everyone all at once is trying to do something, get out in the streets because we really don’t want to see this happen. Donald Trump and all of these politicians who are behind this, they don’t really live here. They’re here to go to that building for show and then they go home.

Speaker 3:

But

Speaker 13:

Some of us really do have to live here, and we don’t want the National Guard in the streets. We don’t want the militarized police department rounding people up. We don’t want ice here. We just want to live our lives.

Mansa Musa:

Do you think the fact that he’s able to federalize segments of the police department, is this the beginning of the complete takeover of this with Columbia?

Speaker 13:

Yeah, I mean I think it’s definitely really scary that he’s able to do that. And I’m sure a complete takeover of DC is exactly what Donald Trump wants, but we need to stand up and not let it happen. I think we really need to do more. I think it’s great to be out on the street. We need to be taking up space so people know that this is our city and we’re not going to stand for this. And I think we need to be putting a lot of pressure on the local DC government that has achieved to Donald Trump’s demands. I mean, mayor Bowser has been kind of just letting Donald,

Speaker 3:

Donald Trump

Speaker 13:

All over her, and that’s really just not acceptable. Right now, the DC people have voted on so many things that will actually help so much more than just doubling or tripling the amount of cops we’ve voted on measures that are actually going to help people and they won’t appropriate the funds for it because of threats from Donald Trump. And I just think that weakness, we really can’t have that in our leadership.

Mansa Musa:

And then he’s using this euphemism or this broad brush approach like crime is high, kids juveniles is running the streets killing people. Is this misinformation or is this just same old, same old?

Speaker 13:

It’s misinformation. I mean, crime has been going down in dc. I’ve never felt unsafe in this city. This is my home. I mean, there is crime, but the way to stop it is not by cracking down with violence. The way to stop it is to implement measures to end homelessness, making them be housing better education. So to keep youth from getting into violence.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Trey, and what, you got the last word. What you want to say to our S and to the DC population in general and the country,

Speaker 13:

I just want to say now is not the time to be afraid. Now is not the time to get overwhelmed. Anything that you can do will help anything that’s not just sitting at home being afraid or just sitting at home, getting in arguments on Twitter, get outside, get connected with your community, and get involved with resistance groups.

Speaker 14:

After January 6th when the National Guard had to be called out, we were occupied for weeks right here. I had National Guard dump trucks blocking alleys in my neighborhood. This is literally a neighborhood people actually live here. 700,000 people actually live in the District of Columbia.

Mansa Musa:

So you really know the ins and outs of the DC party. What do you think going to be the ultimate end game as we see what’s happening with the city in terms of the Trump administration, they systematically dismiss the District of Columbia.

Speaker 14:

They can try and they can do what they can do. One of the things that does give me hope actually is the free DC Coalition and Movement because it’s organizing in all eight wards of the city, and it’s brought together some would say strange bedfellows. And some of us make each other uncomfortable, but that’s okay. Democracy is messy. That’s right. That’s right. And it’s worth fighting for. So I am more than willing to be uncomfortable in coalition with folk who have different perspectives than me

Mansa Musa:

As long as we got the same objective and same goal.

Speaker 14:

Yes, we don’t have to agree on everything to certainly agree that like every other citizen of the United States, we deserve to have agency over our own affairs here. And ultimately that means statehood.

Speaker 15:

I feel like this is a moment that we’ve all seen before, especially as black people in this country. We know what it’s like for our communities to be constantly occupied. And this is nothing different than that. The Trump administration has shown that time and time again that they’re willing to flout the rules to break whatever’s legal, whatever legal doctrines exist. So out here, Freed DC is an organization that is fighting for the autonomy of DC and it’s important that we show that every step during history that we never consented to this no matter what happens. I would say the city council is a part of the problem at this point. The budget that they just passed was extremely, extremely favorable to what Republicans wanted to see out of a DC budget. They stripped worker protections, a democratically voted on ballot initiative. They gutted it. They have refused to actually raise taxes on the rich.

They cut the child tax credit. There were so many different things that through this budget they showed that the DC people were not their priority. And while all this is happening, they decided to work out a $2.2 billion with the commanders so that way they can build a stadium. The people have to wait. But the Commanders Stadium, the commander’s deal needs to be rushed through. And that is because the Trump administration has explicitly said that they want the advisory administration and the city council to work with the commanders. So this is another capitulation that the DC Council is being involved in.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about the cities and the grassroots efforts to combat this because I know you in that space and you in that space heavy,

Speaker 15:

There are a lot of really great organizations that are doing rapid response work in response to ice, keeping their neighbors safe, building alternative economies through our mutual aid networks, continuing to take care of our neighbors. The child tax credit is gone. So that means that our DC children are going to need more clothes, they’re going to need more food, and we need to be a part of the grassroots movement to provide that. There are going to be organizations that lose funding. It is going to be so important at this time for us to uplift the work of organizations that are going to lose funding and by proxy lose capacity to do this work. So how are we supplementing that? Because if we do not build the capacity, if we do not support these organizations, if we do not support working class people in their quest to get the materials that they need to survive, we will not actually have a sustainable movement. So we need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can outside of the institutions that already exist. We’ve done enough within the institution and they have showed us time and time and again that we are not their priority.

Mansa Musa:

Right. And George Jackson, this being black August, George Jackson called the Autonomous Infrastructure, basically saying exactly what you just characterize, that we have to take care our own. We have to build alternative institutions to feed people, clo people, and more importantly, to give people security to protect people.

Speaker 15:

Absolutely. And what’s

Mansa Musa:

Your name, sister? Yeah, I know you. Afeni.

Speaker 15:

Nice to see you. Afeni Evans. It’s so nice to see y’all. And yeah, the time is now to fight back. It is not time for us to shrink our ass. It is not time for us to be anticipatory compliant to what a factual regime is asking for us. We must stand 10 toes on our principles because every single time we sacrifice our principles, every single time we sacrifice our talking points and our messaging, we are sacrificing and seeding more ground to the right and to their cultural revolution as well. So we need to be the counter culture that we want to see all power to the people, all power to the people. All power. All power.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank my brilliant colleague Mansa for chatting with me today and for all the incredible work that he’s doing on our show, rattling the Bars, which every one of you should be watching. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you we really need it and it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

Speaker 16:

[Music] When my face you no longer. See, I live on, yes, I live on wherever we go. We are going to roll the union on the some I live on. Yes, I live on wherever Hungry, hungry. Are we just as hungry as hungry can do the some I live on? Yes. I live on where mean things are happening. In this land is read or sung. I live on, yes. I live on wherever the book mean things are happening. In this Land is read. I live on. Yes. I live on wherever the video tape of me showing I live on. Yes. I live on if I have help to make this a better word to give you. I live on. Yes. I live on when my body is silent and in some Dons breathe I live on. Yes, I on when my are on. Yes, I on.