Local DC Organization Explains Trump Takeover of DC As a War Against Working Class Communities
Pan-African Community Action calls DC citizens to action
WASHINGTON, DC – August 13, 2025
The Southeast DC-based grassroots organization, Pan-African Community Action (PACA) refers to President Trump’s enactment of the DC Home Rule Act, allowing the federal government to seize control of the metropolitan police departments (MPD) for a proposed 30 days, as the latest attack in the joint federal and local war against DC’s working class communities. In response, PACA will be holding an action on Thursday, August 14th, at Franklin Square Park at 6 pm to call out the administrations and mobilize DC’s citizens.
The federal takeover is purported to come on the heels of the alleged carjacking of a prominent member of the Department of Government Efficiency. However, this is one more story in the broader narrative of rampant crime, the source of which is supposedly to be found in DC’s local Black youth – the “roving mobs of wild youth” referred to by Trump. Such stories have been broadly reported in local news, accompanying the ongoing rollout of DC’s 2024 Secure DC Omnibus Crime Law. PACA says the series of measures – from expansion of pre-trial detention to a crackdown on fare evasion to new youth curfews – reflects Washington, DC’s intensifying punitive responses to poverty across the district.
Yet, “It’s important to deemphasize the particular spectacle that Trump is in at this moment,” says Oliver Robinson, an organizer with PACA. “[T]his takeover in DC is just a greater extension of repressive tendencies, a trend that we’ve seen… a broader criminalization both of the movement and of the comings and goings… of people’s mere existence in the District.”
Wards 7 and 8, where poverty is highest, have been the disproportionate targets of these measures. With over 90% of each of these wards being Black, PACA argues that these actions can only be understood as part of the ongoing legacy of contemporary Wars on Poverty, and on Black people in particular.
In Trump’s address, he made pointed calls for cities, such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, to bring crime under control, implying a desire to enact similar measures in these same cities. This, along with a declaration that “this is liberation day,” echoes and appropriates the language of developing movements on the left who seek to resist these latest advancements of fascist repression in the U.S. The language calls to mind other federal crackdowns on organizers through the use of RICO charges and anti-terrorist legislation, which precede the Trump Administration.
However, for many local organizations in DC, the Trump Administration and its slew of executive orders have become the impetus to amplify collective calls for DC Statehood. PACA sees the issue differently:
“We know that statehood isn’t a solution because we can look at states where Black working class people are also being crushed by repression. What does statehood do for Black working class people in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York or Los Angeles?” Robinson continued.
PACA’s Thursday evening rally aims to mobilize local DC residents and other grassroots organizations to speak out against the actions of both the local DC and federal governments.
PACA’s demands are:
The DC City Council and Mayor Bowser should stand with their constituencies by ordering all DC agencies to refuse to cooperate or comply with a federal takeover.
Hands off homeless encampments and reallocate the new Stadium funding to housing, healthcare, and community services.
Police Hands Off DC Black Youth
Community Control Over Public Safety!
ICE out of DC. Unwavering sanctuary for the migrant diaspora!
To contact PACA, send an email to paca@protonmail.com or call Netfa Freeman at 301-938-4628
Image: Members of PACA protest the federal takeover. (Courtesy of Netfa Freeman)