Washington, DC, youth activist Afeni Evans has become the most recent symbol of US President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the city’s police.

On August 15, Metro Transit Police officers pepper-sprayed and forced the 28-year-old Evans to the ground at the Navy Yard subway stop for allegedly committing fare evasion. Evans and other Harriet’s Wildest Dreams volunteers were at the station on “cop watch” to ensure the federal takeover would not lead to harassment of Black youth. Yet, it happened to three Black youths anyway, prompting Evans to intervene, which led to her arrest.

After public protests in DC and on social media, she was released to cheering crowds outside the court, and the charges against her were dropped the next day.

Like with so many other issues related to Trump and his attempts at autocracy, his use of the National Guard and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stifle community ecosystems especially impacts Washington’s Black, Brown and Queer residents. This effort to squash potential dissent is more than a distraction from the Epstein files controversy or America’s economic troubles.

Locally, it is a partial end to the District of Columbia’s half-century of home rule, which otherwise makes the city independent of direct federal oversight. Nationally, it is an open question about whether DC can remain a site of protest, a place where marches and other gatherings can effect change or even occur at all in the current autocratic climate.

Trump’s executive order announcing his takeover of DC’s police force on August 11 should not have come as a surprise, especially given his attempts to bring the federal government’s power to bear in California back in June. “Crime is out of control in the District of Columbia”, the order reads, stating that the “increase in violent crime in the heart of our Republic… poses intolerable risks to the vital federal functions that take place in the District of Columbia”.

But the truth is, Trump’s executive order manufactured a crisis out of far-right fantasies. Six days before........

© Al Jazeera