WASHINGTON, D.C. — Scores of demonstrators took to the streets of Washington on an oppressively hot and humid Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops.
Hundreds gathered at Dupont Circle for a march through Washington to protest the deployment, which the Trump administration has said is intended to clamp down on crime and homelessness in the city. Many of the demonstrators dismissed that pretext and said the National Guard deployment was an abuse of power.
An activist group called Refuse Fascism led the demonstrators as they marched down Connecticut Avenue to the National Mall, filling the road and blocking traffic. Many were wearing bright orange bandannas and holding signs with slogans, including “Trump Must Go Now” and “No ICE! No National Guard!”
Metropolitan Police officers on bicycles looked on from afar as the group marched in what was a largely peaceful, upbeat protest. Marchers sang, danced and blew brightly colored whistles. One blasted music — by D.C.-based artists only — from a portable speaker. The crowd chanted and cheered at drivers who honked in support. Many marchers were residents of Washington and its suburbs, and they said they showed up to defend of the region they call home.
Robin Galbraith, 61, said she hoped the current moment would underscore the need for statehood in the District of Columbia. She said that, too often, federal lawmakers, particularly Republicans, have used the district as a pawn “for their own agenda.”
“Trump is attacking my city to distract from everything that’s going bad in his administration,” said Galbraith, a retired schoolteacher who has lived in the area all her life.
Sam Luban, 29, who has lived in the nation’s capital for almost six years, said she had embraced the city as her own and thought it was sometimes unfairly maligned by those who don’t understand its beauty. She said this past week had been a tense time in the district, whose residents were overwhelmingly liberal.
“It’s a city that hates the current administration, but it has to survive under it,” Luban said. “It’s being attacked right now.”
As Luban marched down Connecticut Avenue, she carried over her head a painted cardboard sign that read, “I did it. I threw the sandwich,” quoting Sean C. Dunn, a Justice Department employee who hurled a “sub-style” sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer last weekend. Dunn, who was fired from his job and charged with assaulting a federal officer, has become something of a folk hero for some residents, Luban said.
“He’s become like a local legend, and that’s what D.C.’s all about,” she said.
Sandwiches appeared to be a motif of sort in the protest. Some demonstrators, like Luban, drew them on signs. Others opted for the real deal: At least two marchers held aloft actual sandwiches, much to the amusement of some and befuddlement of at least one passerby who wondered aloud why someone would bring a baguette to a protest.
As demonstrators passed between the White House and the Washington Monument, the mood briefly turned tense as some berated National Guard troops standing in front of a military vehicle. Some marchers shouted expletives and yelled “traitor” at the Guard members.
Police officers who had been following the protest intervened, forming a barrier with bicycles between the crowd and the troops. The tension dissipated, and the protest moved on, joining forces with a handful of demonstrators who had been at the White House.
Among them was Robin Matthewman, a 68-year-old retired foreign service officer who carried a sign declaring that she was “proud to protest a police state.”
At least one person was detained by the U.S. Park Police and U.S. Secret Service officers outside the White House. It was not clear what may have caused the arrest.
Saturday’s march was one of several over the past week in the city organized by liberal groups like the Free D.C. Project. There were more protests by Democrats on Saturday elsewhere in the country, including New York, Chicago and Austin, Texas. They rallied against a redistricting proposal in Texas designed to deliver Republicans additional congressional seats.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Source: The Garden Island
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