I didn’t expect to begin this article on a sidewalk.
But on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, around noon, I mentally finalized what I thought would be a clean two-week account of Washington’s slow tightening. I got off the Metrorail at 14th and Irving to join the #WeAintBuyingIt rally in front of Target’s entrances. A small crowd had gathered, calm and steady, holding signs.
Someone turned to me and said, almost casually, “This is Week 36.”
Thirty-six consecutive Saturdays of protest. Thirty-six weeks of refusing to spend money in a store that, in their words, “walked away from the very people who kept it standing.”
Speakers harkened back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began on Dec. 5, 1955. “Seventy years this week.” “Different city. Same principles.”
And just like that, everything planned for this article changed. Because the story I thought I was writing—about federal pressure, congressional posture, a mayor stepping aside, a court ruling ignored, and a shooting near the White House—was part of a larger, older story.
A story about refusal. A story about memory. A story about what happens when people decide to stop funding their own disrespect.
From that sidewalk, the city looked different. Not softened—sobered. And what follows now is the story that the sidewalk revealed.
The city shifts
Washington didn’t change all at once. It changed in increments—the kind you only notice when the rhythm of a place begins to feel slightly off. Between Nov. 15 and Nov. 30, the city held a thickness, a tension, a sense of being observed.
Federal uniforms appeared in places where they hadn’t been. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) SUVs began to linger at corners that had always been resolutely local. National Guard troops—deployed months earlier—continued walking foot routes, sweeping sidewalks, lifting trash bags, performing assignments no military handbook would recognize.
D.C. wasn’t in crisis. But it wasn’t itself.
It was being bent. Slowly. And the people who lived here felt it.
On Nov. 20, a federal judge declared that President Trump’s extended deployment of the National Guard in Washington was illegal. A significant statement on paper. A restoration of boundaries. A check on power.
But the next morning, the troops were still there. And the day after. And the day after. The ruling had force. The reality had none. It was the first sign that the takeover had slipped into something stranger and more dangerous: a governance that no longer recognized limits.
While the court spoke in law, Congress spoke in language—the kind that signals intention long before policy arrives. Throughout Nov.15–26, Members held hearings on D.C. public safety and called the city “a national public safety risk,” “a federal responsibility,” and “a question of governance capacity.”
No legislation passed. But legislation wasn’t the point. Words were the rehearsal.
Inside the White House, officials discussed “national capital readiness”—a phrase with a long tail and a short fuse. They said little publicly. They reassured no one. They contradicted nothing. The silence wasn’t absence. It was permission.
Federal agencies expanded their footprint between Nov.15 and 25, not loudly but unmistakably: more patrols in residential corridors; more federal vehicles; stationed at Metro-adjacent corners; more reporting demands sent to D.C. agencies; more uniforms where community networks used to suffice.
Each step was small. Together, they formed a pattern. And patterns, in Washington, are the real story.
The crackdown turns deadly
On Nov. 26, the abstraction broke.
Two National Guard soldiers—Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24—were shot near the White House while on foot patrol. Beckstrom later died.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national resettled via Operation Allies Welcome, was taken into custody.
Within 24 hours:
- federal officials froze Afghan immigration processing,
- prosecutors signaled first-degree murder charges,
- national outlets framed the incident as a refugee-vetting failure,
- and President Trump called for more Guard troops—despite the court ruling six days earlier.
But the most revealing detail wasn’t in the headlines: The Guard was patrolling without legitimacy and without protection—not even from D.C.’s own police. Now, D.C. police had to protect the Guard patrols.
This is the perversion of the occupation: Power entered the city without responsibility, and responsibility refused to follow.
On Nov. 25, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced she would not seek a fourth term. In another season, it might have been simple political news. Here, it felt like a pivot—a shift in the center of gravity just as the city was struggling to hold its shape. The 2026 mayoral race suddenly became not a choice of candidates but a choice of direction.
The boycott that remembers
Which brings us back to that sidewalk. On Nov. 30, the boycott organizers at Target weren’t just protesting a DEI rollback. They weren’t just calling for accountability. They were practicing lineage.
“Montgomery lasted 381 days,” one organizer reminded me. “We’re only at Week 36.”
They said it without bravado. Without spectacle. Without the need for size or attention. They said it as people who knew exactly what they were doing.
The boycott wasn’t separate from the federal occupation. It was its counterpoint. If the occupation controlled policing, the boycott controlled capital. If federal power moved through force, community power moved through refusal.
And on that Saturday night, it was clear: D.C. wasn’t just resisting; it was remembering.
By the end of Nov. 30, the pattern was unmistakable:
- Federal presence expanded.
- A court ruling failed to check power.
- Congress rehearsed deeper control.
- A mayor stepped aside.
- A guardswoman died.
- And a boycott reached Week 36, standing in the shadow of Montgomery’s 70th anniversary on Dec. 5.
The capital is being tested. But so is the country. And in the middle of it, D.C. is answering in its own language—one sidewalk, one Saturday, one refusal at a time.
Every takeover begins in the shadows. Every resistance begins in the breath. Presence is its own form of power.
This article originally appeared at Dr. Paige’s Substack blog; it appears here with permission.
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