District families are gearing up for a new school year at a time when hundreds of federal law enforcement agents and National Guard troops from red states have descended upon the nation’s capital, occupying marginalized communities and, as many have reported, targeting young people and immigrants.
For D.C. State Board of Education (SBOE) Representative LaJoy Johnson-Law, the current situation raises the question of what District youth can do to avoid confrontations with, not only the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), but the litany of federal forces, many of whom are covering their faces as they engage community members.
“We need our kids really listening because this is a life-or-death situation,” said Johnson-Law, a mother and Ward 8 SBOE representative. “This is a state of emergency. Traveling gives me so much worry for kids [and] some of them self-medicate [smoke cannabis]… a lot of times at the bus stop or Metro, and I don’t think that’s the time for that.”
On Aug. 14, Johnson-Law counted among hundreds of audience members at the rainbow graduation that D.C. Public Charter School Board (DCPCSB) and D.C. Charter School Alliance hosted in the auditorium of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Northwest. As she and several other elected officials and education leaders celebrated the successes of those who spent the summer completing their high school education, Johnson-Law thought, and attempted to speak with the recent graduates, about the road ahead during such a precarious time in the nation’s history.
“They’re trying to figure it out,” Johnson-Law said. “When I talked to them about this safety issue, they weren’t hesitant [but] they said they knew where we were coming from.”
While much of the conversation since President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House has centered on D.C.’s lack of statehood, Johnson-Law told The Informer that District leaders need a “come to Jesus” moment about what they haven’t done to address inequities keeping young people mired in cycles of poverty, illiteracy and criminality.
“The council went back and forth, and they’re passing different laws [to address crime] but when I look at the proficiency rates in the Black community, for reading and math, how is that not a crisis?” Johnson-Law told The Informer. “We have programs for our Black and brown communities east of the Anacostia River, but these communities have experienced decades and decades and decades of not getting what they need.”
Johnson-Law spoke about plans in the works for a yet-to-be-announced town hall she said will help community members bring longstanding issues to the forefront.
In the interim, she continues to visit Ward 8 schools and assess what resources school officials need to properly facilitate safe passage programs this school year. As she continues to engage adults, she encourages District adults to support the youth in whichever way possible — even if that’s giving an open ear.
“I think we’re afraid to talk to the youth,” Johnson-Law told The Informer. “Some of our children have been sexually abused. Some of our children are in parenting roles in their household. And then you have some parents who are doing everything they can. It’s a mixed bag, but we need more of the majority talking to our students.”
The Fight to Protect Young People Lands at Least One Activist Behind Bars
Last week, MPD declared Navy Yard a juvenile curfew zone, starting on Aug. 15 and ending on Aug. 18., meaning that youth under the age of 17 are prohibited from gathering in groups of nine or larger. Young people, no matter where they are in the city, would also have to adhere to the citywide curfew that went into effect for all youth earlier this summer.
On Friday, members of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, an abolitionist-led grassroots organization dedicated to protecting all Black lives at risk of state-sanctioned violence, canvassed the Navy Yard neighborhood as what members described as part of an effort to protect youth from overzealous law enforcement officials, agency or jurisdiction notwithstanding.
However, as seen on footage that circulated on social media, officers of the Metro Transit Police Department (MTPD) pepper sprayed, manhandled, and detained a Harriet’s Wildest Dreams activist by the name of Arianna Afeni Evans after she questioned why officers were questioning three Black youth.
On Saturday, Evans’ comrade Frankie Seabron described the moments leading up to Evans’ arrest.
“There was MPD. There was Metro Transit Police. There was [Department of] Homeland Security. There was FBI,” Seabron told a crowd of more than 100 people standing outside of H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse in demand of Evans’ release. “There was a checkpoint…taking drivers, taking their belongings, taking their mopeds, and the drivers, all of them were Black and brown folks.”
However, Washingtonians, Seabron said, have been working to make sure law enforcement officers do not abuse their authority.
“They shut down the checkpoint because there were people out there watching them,” Seabron continued. “There were people out there holding them accountable.”
As Harriet’s Wildest Dreams’ program manager, Seabron continued in giving her account, telling supporters that Evans stayed within the bounds of the law as she advocated for youth entering, and walking around, the Navy Yard metro station.
“It is within our legal right to film the police. It is within our right to keep the youth safe. It is our duty to protect the kids,” Seabron said. “In clusters of twos and threes, children were out past curfew. They did not know their rights. They did not know there was a curfew. We escorted children from where they were to safety.”
In a statement, MTPD identified Evans as a 28-year-old alleged to have evaded fare by use of a Kids Ride Free card. Throughout much of the night, as they struggled to locate the activist, Evans’ comrades organized for her release by calling on their lawyer, Andrew Clarke, and mobilizing hundreds of supporters, including D.C. Councilmember Trayon White (D-Ward 8) and the Rev. Graylan Hagler.
By early afternoon Saturday, when legions of people converged on the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse on Indiana Avenue in Northwest, Evans ran outside the doors of the courthouse, in a white jumpsuit and with all charges (obstruction of justice, evading fare, and resisting arrest) dropped.
After much pandemonium and a moment of solitude, Evans returned to the middle of the courthouse plaza where, while encircled by comrades and supporters, she spoke about the bigger issue at hand.
“Clearly, I’m gonna be fine but the people who are gonna be directly and deeply impacted by this [are] people that don’t have a large community, that don’t have a bunch of resources, that don’t have a large…platform,” Evans said on Saturday. “This… is going to deeply impact them, so we just have to be very mindful that moving forward, this is the beginning and the people that really need our protection are the children east of the [Anacostia] River.”
On Friday, hours before Evans’ encounter with MTPD, a federal judge ruled in favor of D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who filed a suit against the Trump administration for its attempted takeover of MPD.
Though the Trump administration agreed to leave MPD under the purview of Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the local police department to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), despite the District’s sanctuary city law remaining intact. Republican governors from at least four states— Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia— also announced the deployment of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital, more than 700 total.
On Monday, after cutting the ribbon at the newly constructed east end of Stoddart Elementary School in Northwest, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser showed candor as she expressed her thoughts about the National Guard presence in the District.
“This doesn’t make sense,”Bowser said. “The numbers on the ground in the District don’t support a thousand people from other states coming to Washington, D.C. We’re in this beautiful school with children singing, about to go to school in a beautifully renovated building with the most prepared teachers in the country. You know the facts on the ground don’t support this.”
Bowser addressed Evans’ arrest, telling reporters that she continues to review the reports to determine the need for further action. When asked how she can guarantee that youth will be safe while interacting with police, Bowser pointed out what she described as the avenues that community members can navigate to hold law enforcement accountable.
“How we interact with our police officers hasn’t changed,” Bowser said. “They’re always expected to follow the law and engage in constitutional policing. Our residents continue to have the safeguards that we have in place in our law and our protocols, including body-worn cameras, including the ability to make complaints to the police complaints board.”
Bowser also encouraged young people to do their part to get to and from school safely.
“All of our children have a Kids Ride Free card, and so they have access to use the Metro to get to and from school and to their after-school activities,” Bowser said. “So there should be no reason for a child to have a negative experience with Metro Transit or any other police related to fare evasion. And we continue to expect our children to behave in a good way, in a lawful way, and get to school and be ready to learn.”
Ty Hobson-Powell Stands Up for Young People
On Tuesday, during a press conference announcing gains in District students’ standardized test scores, Paul Kihn, D.C. deputy mayor for education, declined to answer inquiries about what communication, if any, local education officials have made with parents about the federal law enforcement personnel navigating District neighborhoods as schools open.
By the time that Kihn, State Superintendent Dr. Antoinette S. Mitchell, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Dr. Lewis D. Ferebee, and DCPCSB Executive Director Michelle Walker-Davis converged on D.C. Prep Public Charter School Benning Elementary Campus in Northeast to celebrate this academic milestone, the White House had already reported more than 300 arrests made amid the federalization of the local police department.
D.C.-based activist and author Ty Hobson-Powell said the significance of the current moment isn’t lost on him, especially as it concerns school-aged Black youth, who, unlike their older and more politically inclined counterparts, might be less informed, under normal circumstances, about how to assert themselves during interactions with law enforcement.
“Young people are less situated to know their rights in a world where we understand that under…this current totalitarian regime that we have had federal officials engaging in extrajudicial interactions with civilians,” Hobson-Powell told The Informer. “That our young Black and brown people who are going to be targeted, who are just automatically going to be [young Black people] to these patrol officers [are] going to be some of those who are least situated to know their rights, to know what it means to advocate lawfully, to get themselves out of situations, to get themselves out of extrajudicial detention or extrajudicial search warrants or searches without warrants.”
Last week, while out and about with his significant other, Hobson-Powell saw federal agents surrounding someone’s car across the street from Jake’s Tavern in Northwest.
Within seconds, he posted a livestream of the interaction, during which he questioned the officers’ rationale for stopping the driver and demanded that they immediately reverse course.
“We’re talking about this man [who] was…solidly an adult and he was…visibly shaking,” Hobson-Powell said. “I sat there and thought to myself, ‘Well damn, where would he be if I didn’t just so happen to be at dinner at this time and happen to get alerted to what’s going on by my girlfriend?’ Where would he be? because he seemed shaken. He seemed out of his element. He seemed unable to respond properly to what the moment was calling for.”
Over the last few days, Hobson-Powell has made the rounds on national media, including on the National Black State of the Union program alongside D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson (I-At large) and other local elected officials. On Wednesday, he and D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D-At large) also engaged in discussion about an issue that, in recent weeks, has united local political forces that have differed about stadium funding, the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, and other hot-button issues.
For Hobson-Powell, this public engagement comes as social media followers and comrades alike continue to download copies of his newly released book, “The Fire Right Now,” what he calls a not-so-gentle reminder to his contemporaries.
“It’s a call to action… designed to inspire people to realize that the worst thing that we could be doing right now in this moment is nothing,” Hobson-Powell told The Informer. “To realize that organizer is a functional term. To get up and inspire people to organize. That activist is a functional term. To get up and get active, but realizing that we don’t have too much longer to sit on the sidelines and say, ‘Well, maybe later.’”
While opinions about what school-aged youth should do in tense situations with law enforcement run the gamut, with a subset of the community encouraging them to avoid the police at all costs, Hobson-Powell told The Informer that the current moment calls for young people to walk in the spirit of those who faced similar situations head on.
“If you don’t know nothing, know to pull out that damn camera when these folks show up,” Hobson-Powell said. “Know to record them, know to share information if you see checkpoints and things like that for some of our folks who may have the most to lose by interacting with these federal forces.”
Of course, Hobson-Powell acknowledged that, in what he likened to a gestapo state, all attempts to play by the rules may be futile— but it doesn’t hurt to try.
“I still believe what I was grown up to believe and raised to believe is that knowledge is power,” Hobson-Powell said. “That maybe in the immediacy of the moment where they are not following the law, that that knowledge won’t be power. But once you get free, maybe that there will be some power in your ability to go get recourse because you understand that you were violated in some way.”