Hundreds gathered downtown on Aug. 16 to protest President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal officers to D.C.’s streets and his tightened efforts to remove homeless encampments.
A throng of protesters crowded around a few National Guard troops near the Washington Monument, causing police to encircle the troops and instruct attendees to move back.
“We are standing here … and behind us: Trump’s fascist troops,” a demonstration organizer announced. The crowd began jeering at members of the National Guard, with some shouting, “Fuck you.”
One person yelled, “You’re complicit, all of you. ... Shame on you,” and another shouted, “You’re not serving the people. You’re serving Trump.”
Refuse Fascism, a coalition founded after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, mobilized the protesters. The group called the Trump administration a “fascist regime” and wrote “it must be met with massive, overwhelming, united, nonviolent resistance from every corner of the city” in an official statement on Aug. 12. The group also organized protests in Cleveland, Chicago, Boston and Houston to show solidarity.
The rally began at Dupont Circle around 2 p.m. with several speakers addressing the crowd and at least eight police cars surrounding the area. Around 3:10 p.m., protesters began marching down Connecticut Avenue as police followed on bikes. The demonstrators crowded around National Guard troops next to the National Mall at about 3:53 p.m. The crowd then turned back north and settled in Lafayette Square, facing the White House. The demonstration ended at about 4:45 p.m.
“Everyone should care about the homeless having their tents bulldozed, their child's baby shoes taken, their husband's ashes taken. Everybody has a stake in our youth being terrorized,” Sam Goldman, the keynote speaker and host of the Refuse Fascism podcast, said in an interview with The Eagle.
Goldman said she and the organization are protesting to defend homeless people whose encampments are being removed by D.C. officials, and immigrants who are being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“D.C. is the seat of power, and it is also a community that represents so many groups that this regime hates, so many people that this regime believes is undesirable, and we have to say no to that,” Goldman said. “We can't let Black communities be terrorized. We can't allow these Gestapo-style raids against our immigrant siblings. We can't allow these masked gunmen to hunt down our youth.”
On Aug. 11, Trump announced his plans to place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploy National Guard troops and federal officers to D.C. to combat crime. As of two weeks since the announcement, Mississippi, Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia have sent their troops to the city. Reinforcements boosted the number of National Guard troops in D.C. to over 2000, according to CNN.
In contrast to Trump’s claim that D.C. crime is “out of control,” numbers show that violent crime in the city has been on a downward trend. Some local officials expressed that Trump’s budget cuts to the city have made it more difficult for law enforcement to handle crime.
As of Aug. 22, National Guard troops deployed to D.C. streets are also armed, per an order from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
At the demonstration, some protestors held signs expressing outrage over Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files, others showed support for the decimated federal workforce and some expressed desire for D.C. statehood and more.
Peter Dodge sat with his wife on a shaded bench in Dupont Circle as chants and speeches began.
“That’s illegal. He can’t do that. He does not have the power to, but he’s doing it because he knows if nobody pushes back, if nobody complains, if everybody lets him, then he can do that elsewhere in the country,” Dodge said about Trump deploying the National Guard to D.C. streets. “This is straight out of the fascist playbook.”
Throughout the demonstration, the crowd chanted, “Troops on the corner, feds on the block. The fascist takeover must be stopped.” A handful of signs read, “Free D.C.”
Many denounced the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well, which has ramped up activity amidst Trump‘s crackdown on D.C. crime. According to The New York Times, over 40 percent of those arrested since Trump’s deployment of federal troops have been unauthorized immigrants.
MPD has increased cooperation with ICE as a part of Trump’s struggle against crime. As of Aug. 14, police officers making traffic stops are able to report undocumented immigrants to ICE.
A protester named Bob Sledzaus wore a mask depicting Donald Trump’s face, adding a bonnet on his head and a bib around his neck. He held a baby bottle in one hand and a rattle in the other.
“Stop taking people off the streets and disappearing them. This is wrong,” Sledzaus said. “I served in the United States Navy. This is not what I signed up for. This is not the America I grew up in.”
Sam Chavez, a Mexican-American school psychologist, said he fears for the safety of his documented and undocumented Central American students and his Dominican wife, who is a naturalized American citizen.
“I’m fighting for my kids, my future, my students ... my family, my community,” Chavez said.
He said his wife is able to speak English but mainly speaks Spanish.
“ICE has been all over our zip code. I am afraid to send her to the market by herself without me, who speaks English,” Chavez said.
Chavez opposes Trump’s decision to assign military forces to patrol the city’s streets alongside the police.
“D.C. is a beautiful place. It’s a place where all Americans and tourists from other countries should feel welcome, not like they are in a militarized zone,” Chavez said.
Nadine Seiler, a Black immigrant woman who participated in the rally, said, “They want to get rid of me on many levels, and I'm not going to go out without a fight.”
Seiler said she is “disappointed in the American people” for not joining her in protest.
“Trump is only one person. If the American people would show up in the numbers that we have, this would not be a thing,” Seiler said. “We would have been able to drive out and have Republican voters know that we don't want this, and they would talk to their lawmakers to vote differently.”
Brett Schaffer, another demonstrator, urged people not to let fear stop them from protesting.
“We're only loud in big groups and [on] big days like this, but we gotta be loud and stand tall all the time,” Schaffer said.
Rick Hohensee, a homeless man in D.C., sat against the gates surrounding the White House, slightly removed from the nearby crowd. He goes to Lafayette Square most Saturdays to advertise his campaign “to run for dictator.”
“Why am I running for dictator? Because a homeless guy running for dictator of the United States is less ridiculous than Donald Trump,” Hohensee said. He was not part of the rally.
“I don’t pay any attention to it. I don’t think it works. Protest doesn’t work,” Hohensee said.
Hohensee said he has been in D.C. for a long time, witnessing people rally for and against political causes, such as protests against the Iraq War.
“There were 15 million people in the street in one day, and it didn't work,” Hohensee said, adding that members of the “protest industrial complex” have yet to try peaceful processes like a constitutional convention and a general strike.
He said he has been campaigning for 20 years and believes the probability of him leading the country continues to grow.
“What I realized a long time ago is the system is not fixing itself, so that means that it must continue to get worse until something else fixes it,” Hohensee said. “And that's the difference between me and everybody else in this town… I realized that.”
In contrast, Goldman encouraged people to continue protesting, believing the practice can change America’s political system.
“We are here to say no fascist takeover of D.C. and that we are organizing now to flood D.C. from every corner of the country starting November 5th,” said Goldman. “Then it's on. We're going to come back day after day after day until this regime is driven from power.”
She spoke on Americans’ responsibilities while under the Trump administration.
“Our grandchildren are going to ask us, what did you do, Grandma, Grandpa, when the Trump regime was in power — when they occupied D.C.? What did you do when they kidnapped people off the streets and dumped them in concentration camps,” Goldman said. “And it's not gonna be enough to say I posted a TikTok or I believed it was awful and I cried a whole lot. We're gonna need to say, ‘We refused to compromise. We didn't comply. We moved heaven and earth to drive this regime from power.’”
This article was edited by Gabrielle McNamee, Neil Lazurus, Abigail Hatting and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Sabine Kanter-Huchting and Emma Brown.
