Over the past year, I have watched political powers tear into the very fiber of my community here in the District of Columbia. We have more troops on our streets than we have kids playing in our parks. We have more gaudy bronze statues erected by the administration of President Donald Trump than we have safe places for our neighbors to gather without fear. We have more restraints and less power over how we exist than I can remember.

Trump has turned our community parks — the places where our greatest organizing has always been rooted — into immigration traps. During a 30-day period last year, he took over our police department in an attempt to extend control and crack down on dissent. He and Congressional Republicans have forced limitations and sanctions on our budget, and threatened federal intervention if our elections don’t bring about their preferred results.

For myself and others who live, work and serve in Washington, D.C., it feels like we are being robbed of our ability to shape our own destinies. We urge others to join us in resistance, in the knowledge that Trump’s racist power grab won’t end with us.

The Trump administration’s deployment of thousands of National Guard members in the District of Columbia in August 2025 was so successful in disrupting the city’s life that he went on to do the same thing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Chicago and Memphis.

It is not lost on me that the District of Columbia is one of the nation’s Blackest cities, and the only capital in the democratic world without real political representation. Our lack of statehood has put us on the front line for Trump’s anti-democracy virus.

The lesson to be learned here is that if any of us is denied our rights, all of our rights will soon be endangered. We are bound together — both by the hope of a country that works for every person and by the promise of a democracy that protects every person. The very end of humanity would look like watching everyone around you lose their own humanity.

I come from a tradition that has always fought to expand who the “we” is in “we the people.” The civil rights movement embodied our dreams and our collective power. We need that same fire now more than ever, not just here in my neighborhood or in my congregation but across the country.

If you care about the people of the District of Columbia and the future of democracy, there is something you can do. Together for DC is a new effort our church is engaged in that brings our fight here at home to your doorstep. The campaign is designed to be a bridge between the District’s 700,000 residents and our neighbors from across the nation; its goal is to protect democracy and hold those in power accountable.

Together for DC is a new path toward liberation, one that has to involve all of us. The group, made up of nearly 200 “Champions” across the country, including local American Civil Liberties Union affiliates, labor unions, health advocacy organizations and places of worship, is intended to mobilize communities with political representation to act on behalf of Washingtonians who lack it.

Our first course of action is to activate communities to push their representatives in Congress to pass the Washington, D.C. Admission Act in the U.S. House and Senate, which will establish the District of Columbia as the 51st state and give residents a future where their voices will finally be heard.

No elected leaders should feel comfortable with taking away a community’s ability to decide its own fate. That is why I am in this fight, and why I think you should be, too.

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The Reverend William H. Lamar IV is pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

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