This week, our leaders imposed yet another curfew targeting our youth, following a chaotic Halloween night in the Navy Yard neighborhood. Video and eyewitness accounts show National Guard members, alongside police, advancing on a crowd of teenagers in scenes that have since gone viral. Ten teenagers were arrested, and hundreds more were chased out of public parks in a city where more police, fences and military uniforms seem to materialize every week.
Let’s be clear, the National Guard presence in our neighborhoods invokes painful memories. There have been too many moments where state force has been overused on our Black and brown youth. Our fears about the domestic military deployment are entirely justified. D.C. has a tragic legacy of over-policing, especially as federal workforce layoffs gut crucial jobs, the majority of which are held by Black women in our city. Since January 2025, the District has lost nearly 3.2% of its federal jobs, thousands of livelihoods stripped from the heart of our communities. Unemployment in D.C. has crept up to 5.8%, just in time for the holidays. Why not start here?
Instead of investing in and protecting our youth, our leadership has doubled down on enforcement and criminalization. The curfew and deployment of military force may be sold as public safety but it’s nothing less than a betrayal. Mayor Muriel Bowser has once again rolled out the red carpet for Trump’s authoritarian playbook, given his concerns fertile ground, and has denied our children their right to exist safely and joyfully in public.
We know what works, and it isn’t troops and curfews. In Baltimore, a comprehensive public health and violence prevention strategy led to a staggering 23% decrease in homicides in 2024 alone, with even sharper drops in prior years. Investments in after-school programs, rec centers, youth employment, affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization pay off. It doesn’t pay because it’s the right thing to do, but because these methods are cheaper and proven to work much more effectively than flooding our neighborhoods with enforcement.
Want youth to behave? Make sure their families have jobs, food and housing. Open new spaces for them to gather after school without a price tag. Create job security for families and pathways to the future promised. Instead, D.C. has become a testing ground for every failed, heavy-handed measure in the book.
Make no mistake, the increased military and police presence is not temporary. Although it has only been extended to February 2026, this will change again. It is a calculated effort to normalize authoritarian control, paving the way for even more illegal and dangerous actions by this administration. Crime was already at historic lows before the National Guard was sent in, D.C. wasn’t even among the nation’s 10 most dangerous cities, it’s just the most melanated. Don’t let them rewrite the narrative and claim victory when winter weather brings the usual drop in crime.
D.C.’s youth, and D.C. workers, deserve far better. We can no longer play along with this charade. Let’s fight for real safety, the kind you build with opportunity, justice and care — not curfews, checkpoints and fear.