JOHN,

The U.S. military has arrived in our nation’s capital, with National Guard troops on the ground along with a surge in federal law enforcement. We cannot be silent as Trump tries to silence dissent and militarize Black neighborhoods.

The racist-in-chief named potential cities he may target next, including Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, and other cities with Black mayors and majority Black and brown populations. He’s encouraging violent repression, telling law enforcement to “do whatever they want” and “knock the hell out of” people.

Trump’s anti-Black and authoritarian takeover is a test run to target other major cities. His administration is planning to set up a rapid response group of National Guard troops for this very purpose.

Trump didn’t want to send in the National Guard on January 6th as a white supremacist mob attacked the Capitol but has no problem sending them into D.C. neighborhoods with majority Black residents.

Now is the time to speak up, before this fascism spreads further.

Sign the petition to demand your members of Congress stand up to Trump’s fascism and end this militarized takeover.

Trump is targeting Democrat-majority cities, likely punishing people for their votes and punishing Democratic politicians for opposing him. For example, Washington, D.C. is a majority Black city where over 90% of voters choose Democrats for president.

Trump is starting with D.C. because the city’s residents have less power—they don’t have statehood and they don’t even have full self-governance of their city.

In an abuse of his presidential power, Trump is exploiting a loophole in the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 that enables presidents to temporarily take over D.C.’s city government if there’s an emergency. But Trump’s “emergency” claims are racist lies: In D.C. and the other cities he’s named, crime rates are at historic lows.

D.C. residents weren’t able to vote for president until the 1960s, and they still lack voting representation in Congress. They even have limited control over their own city government: Congress can rewrite or block D.C. city budgets, and Congress reviews and regularly blocks city policies that have been voted for by a majority of D.C. residents.

This is the un-democratic status quo, which began and has persisted due to anti-Blackness.

Many enslaved people fled to D.C. after the Civil War and started to elect Black political leaders. White people pushed back against growing Black political power, using racist tropes to claim that Black people couldn’t govern themselves. Congress and the president began controlling the city, appointing leaders and overriding local democracy.

It’s past time for D.C. residents to finally have full enfranchisement and voting rights. With 700,000 residents, D.C. is more populous than Vermont and Wyoming. Both of those states have two senators and a voting member of the House of Representatives. The people of D.C. have voted overwhelmingly in support of statehood, but Congress hasn’t yet passed a policy to make it happen.

Right now, local activists are asking people across the country to push their members of Congress to do three key things: end Trump’s emergency declaration and get troops off D.C. streets, stop freezing D.C.’s city funds and trying to overturn local laws, and finally pass legislation making D.C. a state.

Please sign on and urge your members of Congress to act now. You can give D.C. residents a voice, since they have no voting member of Congress.

Last time Trump was in office, he called in the National Guard to D.C. during protests following George Floyd’s murder. Federal agents used rubber bullets, smoke bombs, flash grenades, and chemicals on peaceful protesters.

As part of the current attack on the city, Trump is deploying National Guard troops to forcibly displace unhoused people and lock them up. Because of the still-growing racial wealth gap, 85% of unhoused DC residents are Black—so this will have clear racial impacts.

This is happening during Black August, a month that honors Black political prisoners and other activists who’ve pushed for Black liberation. Pushing back against racist policing and making D.C. a state is part of the fight for Black liberation, power, and self-representation.

I’m a proud co-sponsor of the Washington, D.C. Admission Act to grant D.C. statehood. I’ve also pushed for policies to keep our communities safe from police violence, reduce mass incarceration, empower and support unhoused people, keep people in their homes, and make housing more affordable.

Our government should fund housing and care, not criminalization and prisons. I will keep pushing for this in Congress and I will keep fighting back against Trump’s fascism.

Since D.C. residents don’t have a voting Congressperson, they’re asking you and others around the country to advocate on their behalf, urging your senators and representative to act now.

Add your name to demand an end to this fascist takeover and demand equal citizenship for D.C. residents.

Thank you for taking action. Together, we’ll keep pushing for a democracy that lives up to the ideals of equal rights and representation for all. We must also keep defending the most vulnerable among us.

In solidarity,

Rashida