Demonstrators hearken to a go-go band throughout a “Free DC” protest in Washington, DC, on August 21, 2025.
(Eric Lee / Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos)
As summer season ends, masked, badgeless ICE thugs and red-state Nationwide Guard militias stalk an unnaturally quiet Washington, DC. 5 years in the past, town was completely different. After the 2020 police homicide of George Floyd, large multiracial demonstrations stuffed the streets. Whereas these protests have been fixed, there was one we ought to be remembering this week. It began downtown on the Capitol One Area, house of the NBA’s Washington Wizards, and was led, bullhorn in hand, by Wizards captain John Wall.
On August 19, Wall quietly retired from the NBA after a star-crossed 11-year profession. Accidents dramatically reduce quick Wall’s prime, however for a number of seasons he captured the creativeness of Washington, DC.
Basketball is a lifestyle within the DC, Maryland, and Virginia space. There’s even a documentary by native product Kevin Durant referred to as Basketball County: In the Water concerning the unimaginable proportion of professionals who come from these elements. Even an above-average NBA crew can be an obsession right here. As a substitute, DC has the Wizards. The final time they received a championship, Jimmy Carter was essentially the most highly effective man on earth. The final time they received 50 video games, ET had but to cellphone house. And but there was this second when it regarded like John Wall was going to harness all the space’s untapped basketball electrical energy and lead the Wizards someplace particular.
DC liked Wall, and never simply due to his play—the quicksilver velocity, slam-dunk award-winning hops, and 360-degree, open-floor flair. It wasn’t even as a result of Wall poured cash into underserved communities and appeared to actually get pleasure from working with children. It was that Wall’s household was torn apart by poverty and this nation’s system of mass incarceration. He was raised by his mom, Frances Pulley, who labored a number of jobs to boost him and his two sisters. His realness and authenticity—uncommon in right now’s flattened, media-trained NBA the place everybody desires to be an influencer however few have something to say—made him a star in schoolyards all through town. White sports activities radio scolds like Colin Cowherd howled reactionary trash, together with the argument that since Wall’s father had been imprisoned, Wall couldn’t be trusted as a “chief.” The racism and sophistication contempt that Wall confronted from conservative commentators solely certain him to the DC neighborhood extra. Within the final present of respect, a two-story mural of him was painted onto the aspect of DC’s legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl. In 2020, this was John Wall’s city.
Present Concern
Then Wall, on the peak of his cultural affect within the metropolis, determined that he would take a megaphone and lead that march. John Wall is missed proper now, and never as a result of the Wizards will doubtless be horrible as soon as once more. We miss him, and folks of integrity like him, as a result of the DC mayor, Michael Bloomberg acolyte Muriel Bowser, is faceplanting. Following the 2024 election, Bowser made each effort to indicate the Trump administration that she wouldn’t be a thorn in his aspect. The president even complimented her on July 8 for the relationship she’s built along with his chief of workers, Susie Wiles. He praised their conversations about “testing” a takeover in DC. This obtained little consideration on the time. It ought to be revisited with a purpose to ask when Bowser knew this occupation can be occurring and what she did to arrange town.
Centrists nonetheless don’t perceive that reaching out to the Trump administration is only ever interpreted as weakness. Bowser, scrambling, now argues that what Trump is doing isn’t “a federal takeover” however quite “a surge of regulation enforcement presence.” That’s utterly out of contact with the despair, anger, and worry gripping a lot of town. Bowser can’t even do what Mayor Michelle Wu did in Boston, saying this week, “Cease attacking our cities to cover your administration’s failures.” Bowser is extra prone to say that the worst factor about army checkpoints demanding individuals’s papers is that they may lengthen commute occasions.
Bowser isn’t going to avoid wasting this metropolis, and John Wall doesn’t dwell right here anymore. However DC residents aren’t ready on feckless politicians or cultural icons. We’re beginning to see speak-outs, massive out of doors press conferences, impromptu anti-ICE demonstrations driving feds off the streets, teams of neighbors clanging pots and pans within the night, and the management of teams like Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Free DC, and the Long Live GoGo Movement. Most of the individuals who make up the guts and backbone of those organizations have been additionally marching, getting gassed, and being shot by rubber bullets in 2020. There’s continuity right here and that’s the biggest hope individuals in DC have: They know one another, they belief one another, and they aren’t going to stop.
On Thursday night, as Donald Trump oozed out of the White Home to indicate the media an occupied DC that’s bent to his will, the streets have been booming only a few miles away at an indication towards the occupation that doubled as a go-go music live performance. In DC, the clanging go-go drums have lengthy been the soundtrack of actions towards gentrification and displacement, and on Thursday evening, they have been a name to withstand the tyranny of occupation and Trump’s vulgar, violent effort to color over the vibrancy of town. The regime desires to duplicate the DC occupation in cities throughout the nation. The individuals combating for a free DC hope that what will get replicated is their refusal to stay silent.
On this second of disaster, we want a unified, progressive opposition to Donald Trump.
We’re beginning to see one take form within the streets and at poll bins throughout the nation: from New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s marketing campaign targeted on affordability, to communities defending their neighbors from ICE, to the senators opposing arms shipments to Israel.
The Democratic Social gathering has an pressing option to make: Will it embrace a politics that’s principled and widespread, or will it proceed to insist on dropping elections with the out-of-touch elites and consultants that obtained us right here?
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Bhaskar Sunkara
President, The Nation