Small joys in a city under watch

On the Mall, in the shadow of the Capitol, federal agents stand in a place where not a single crime has been committed in 2025. Tourists veer wide. Joggers change course. The summer air is heavy enough without the weight of their boots, and the blunt shape of sidearms on their hip. Sirens ricochet off marble and glass.

The news has been running the same headline: President Trump invoked the Home Rule Act, ordering the national guard into the DC streets under the banner of fighting "crime." Here, the display feels less like protection and more like a set piece for power.

You've probably seen the claims: that Washington's murder rate rivals Baghdad. But the numbers tell a different story. Violent crime in the District fell 35% last year. Homicides dropped by nearly a third — and 2025 is already on track for another double-digit decline. Carjackings, robberies, and juvenile arrests have all fallen sharply. Washington is far safer than its own 1990s past and nowhere near the crisis levels of the world's most violent cities.

Yes, DC's homicide rate in 2024 was higher than Mexico City's or Bogota's - but still far below dozens of cities worldwide, from Kingston to Tijuana, with with murder rate several times higher. Even here in the US, Memphis, New Orleans, and St. Louis report far worse numbers.

The reality is more complicated than a soundbite: this is a city with challenges, eyes, but not the dystopia those at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would have you believe.

And yet, perception is stubborn. Two-third of Washingtonians told the Washington Post last year they see crime as a "very serious problem", even as the numbers all. Part of that is the viral video effect — short, shocking clips of youth fights or shoplifting that travel faster than any official statistic. They linger in the mind, and they make rare moments feel commonplace. On the ground, though, daily life in most neighborhoods is still marked by mundane city rituals: kids on bikes, clipboard carrying charity solicitors, migrant workers on mopeds delivering Door Dash.

I know what it feels like when a city truly feels unsafe — not because of your neighbors, but because the air itself feels tense. In the days after January 6, 2021, the streets downtown were lined with Humvees.

Cement barricades cut off familiar routes. To get a coffee near my apartment, I had to pass through an ID check. It was the stillness that unnerved me most: the absence of everyday sounds, replaced by the mechanical hum of generators and low murmur of national guardsmen on their phones "on watch." That was the only time DC has felt like it was at siege. This is different. The uniforms and sirens are props, not reality of daily life.

There's another current running through the city — quieter, harder to photograph. Friends checking in for no reason. The unspoken camaraderie of a shared glance on a quiet street. Small acts that refuse to let intimidation define the mood.

Activists and organizers in DC have been practicing resistance for years. The people running violence interruption programs, community fridges, and youth mentorship projects understand that safety is something you build, not something you enforce at the barrel of a gun.

They know the names of the kids who hang out on the corner, the grandmothers who watch from their porches, the shop owners who will quietly spot you a coffee when you're short a dollar. Their work is slow, unglamorous, and often invisible to those looking for quick fixes. But it's this steady web of relationships that keeps a neighborhood whole. In a city too often flattened into headlines, these are the people making sure we remember each other in full color.

It reminds me of something Václav Havel wrote about "living in truth" — the idea that even the smallest honest acts matter when the largest stage demands you perform a role you don't believe in. For Havel, resistance wasn't loud; sometimes it was simply refusing to participate in the lie, tending to the integrity of your own daily life. Audre Lorde wrote that self-care is "not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." The radical act of keeping yourself well enough to keep showing up, refusing to let oppressive systems wear you down to nothing.

Each of these concepts circle the same truth: gentleness is a choice in the face of political theater. In a place where fear is staged, these moments remind me there's still a commonality that belongs to us. Grace is a parallel refuge and an act of resistance.

So here are a few seeds you can plant today:

• Donate to DMV Mutual Aid for direct community support
• Martha's Table provides healthy food and education to local families
• Review Cure the Streets, a violence interruption program building safety without more policing
• Support Street Sense Media, empowering those experiencing homeless with jobs and skills they need to success

I'm not in danger the ways others might be, and I know that. Still the message is clear: this is about who gets to feel safe and who doesn't. And in moments like this, the urge is to armor up, to match hardness with hardness.

Even in a city braced for spectacle, a neighbor holding a door can be the truest show of force.

Until Soon,

Sarah