Many of us are closely watching Trump’s ongoing takeover of the Washington D.C. police department and his deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital. On Friday, Kelly Hayes was able to connect with Shannon Clark, an organizer with Remora House, which provides material support and advocacy for unhoused and recently housed people in Washington D.C. Shannon offered a frontline view of the violence unfolding—and the solidarity efforts activists are mobilizing in response.
Kelly Hayes: What are you seeing on the ground right now, in terms of policing and how unhoused people are being treated?
Shannon Clark: What’s happening in D.C. is an explicit racist attack on a majority Black city, with majority Black leadership, that is also a Sanctuary city providing defense and support for our migrant neighbors. His goal is to terrorize the city’s residents. With the help of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the absurd number of bored federal agents wandering the streets has increasingly targeted predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods over the past week. They are stopping anyone who isn’t white to ask for ID and proof of residency. They are setting up ID checkpoints. They are harassing people sitting on their front porches. They are targeting and kidnapping migrant neighbors doing food deliveries. The National Guard, which has no authority to make arrests, is dramatically staged around the city to remind us as we move about our day that we are under a violent occupation.
The attack on our unhoused neighbors is an escalation in an already escalating attack on the city’s residents. The fact that MPD and federal agencies have been able to speed up the rate of camp evictions is astonishing, given how frequent and expansive camp evictions on both federal and city property have been over the past several years. There is now no notice. Evictions that would have taken hours, so that people could plan, pack, and move, are finished in 30 minutes, with people packing as fast as they can while MPD drags their tents to dump trucks.
Camp evictions are violent, traumatizing, and cruel. People lose their belongings, medical documents, medications, IDs, and birth certificates. Family photos, clothes, and favorite books. Privacy, safety, and protection from the elements. They claim they’re connecting people to services. Not only is that clearly not the goal—how would 850 federal agents from outside of D.C. even know where to begin? Even if that were the plan, there are no shelter beds. People are outside because there is nowhere for them to go, or the options for shelter would force them to separate from their partners, pets, and belongings.
Kelly Hayes: How are you and other community members responding?
While people are exhausted and scared, D.C. residents have shown up in force to defend each other. Evictions were stopped by local advocates, buying people another night of rest and safety. Organizations are getting people into hotels, making sure they are fed, getting them tents and camping supplies, helping them pack and move, and finding safe places to hunker down during the federal takeover. People all over the city are sharing photos and warnings about federal agents patrolling the streets, setting up vehicle checkpoints, and calling into ICE watch hotlines to keep each other safe.
Kelly Hayes: What do you want people to understand about the severity of this moment, and what do you hope they'll do?
The biggest thing people outside of D.C. can do is continue to support these groups. The government is doing nothing to protect us or is actively complicit in this violence. The second thing people should do is connect with mutual aid organizations and networks in their communities. D.C. was able to respond to defend our neighbors quickly because we had so many great networks already in place, ready to respond.
Organizations to support in D.C. right now: