It’s a new generation of resistance.
Gone is the naïveté of the “protest, then brunch” crowd and the belief that we could somehow shame our government into doing the right thing.
Instead, you get calls to fight with everything we got. No more going high when they go low. You want low? We can go lower.
“I’m tired of playing by the rules when the other side doesn’t. I want revolution.”
That was the Jolly Good Ginger, a speaker at the FLARE Rally Against the Regime demonstration outside of Union Station on September 2, 2025.
The crowd roared. This was an event organized by veterans – not the old hippies of Stephen Miller’s imagination.
If the call for revolution sounds vaguely communistic, it’s because it is. With skyrocketing inflation and a system rigged against ordinary folks, people want change.
There is no more going back to the old order. People who trusted in our system of checks and balances have been proven wrong. Merrick Garland. Hakeem Jeffries. Chuck Schumer.
After a decade of struggling with a tyrant, finally, maybe, the Democrats are getting it. Or maybe they’re being dragged along by supporters who don’t want to cave like our elite class.
At the FLARE rally, a Trump supporter rushed the stage and tried to interrupt the speakers. In a kinder, gentler time, maybe he would’ve been allowed to speak.
This isn’t the tolerant left. The Trumpkin was pushed out of there to jeers and boos. We don’t have time for that nonsense.
It is time to get in shape. It is time to run.
The Freedom Run
A couple days earlier, there was another rally.
The Freedom Run on Labor Day brought hundreds of DC-loving runners to 14th and U. This is a city of runners and they assembled to jog through the District to protest Trump’s fascist takeover of DC.
I could hear them coming from blocks away, the chants echoing off the buildings as they ran:
“Free DC! Free DC! Free DC!”
The abuse of this city by masked agents of the federal government has enraged the people of Washington. Seeing your neighbors kidnapped and thrown into the back of a van has a radicalizing effect.
Where is Everybody?
Trump claims that the city has never been safer and that the restaurants are full.
The opposite is true. DC hasn’t felt this empty since covid.
There is a void. People of a shade darker than lily white are afraid to come to DC. Or if they live in DC, to go outside. Checkpoints manned by masked agents have been set up on major roads. SUVs with tinted windows prowl neighborhood streets. Helicopters loiter overhead. If your papers aren’t in order, you risk being taken away.
Yesterday, I was at Good Stuff Eatery. A couple blocks from the Capitol and the burger place was absolutely empty. No line to order. I went upstairs and I was the only one in the dining room. At noon on a Wednesday with Congress back in session. Where is everyone?
Turns out renditioning Latinos, scaring off foreign tourists, firing government workers and crushing the economy with tariffs is bad for business.
The National Gardeners
Arming the National Guard and placing them at the monuments doesn’t help tourism, either. Not that they do much. They stroll the National Mall, watch kickball and occasionally pick up trash or rake leaves.
DC has nicknamed them the National Gardeners.
“An infantry unit to rake? That doesn’t make any sense,” as one National Guard officer put it.
They were ordered away from their homes for this photo-op, to please the Mad King as he moves our military around like toy soldiers.
Coming to Your Hometown
I still haven’t seen the masked men of ICE. They are busy up the hill from me in Mount Pleasant, kidnapping people as they go to work and take their kids to school. Last night, from a strangely deserted Logan Circle, I could see two helicopters hovering over the neighborhood.
When they’re not brutalizing families and destroying property, ICE agents and other occupation forces like to hang out at the Wawa downtown. (Follow Amanda Moore to see what ICE gets up to after dark.)
All of this is laughable, absurd and ruinously expensive. Trump cut billions from Medicaid to fund a private army.
He’s beating up on DC because he can. We’re not a state.
But if you think this isn’t coming to your town, think again. Get ready. All of that stuff about the Constitution, checks and balances, the rule of law – none of that matters if people don’t stand up for them.
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