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[quote=Anonymous]Oof, a lot of gaslighting going on in this thread.

I don't think it makes sense to lump all of the changes in DC in the last year into the same bucket of "Trump initiatives." It's flatly false, first of all.

I am someone who was happy to see the homeless encampments cleared out. I live in NE DC and the homeless issue had hit a breaking point circa 2023/2024. It was negatively impacting families, businesses, and the homeless themselves. Examples I personally witnessed were things like: retail employees on H Street NE being repeatedly harassed by homeless people on a daily basis, and entire streets in NOMA becoming impossible to walk down (especially with a child) because the sidewalk was overtaken with tents, bodies, the smell of urine, rats, etc. All of this is better now, and I am grateful for it. If you are fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood that didn't have these issues, congrats. But the idea that it was the big bad government against vulnerable, innocent homeless people is false. The lack of enforcement of vagrancy laws was resulting in violence, harassment, and a loss of public spaces. And now it's not.

However, I don't actually attribute that to Trump for the most part. I actually think what happened is that Bowser and others in city government had been fighting for years to try and take down these encampments, but were running into the typical obstacle of DC activists who both refused to see the negative externalities of the issue while also using a variety of legal and political mechanisms to prevent actions. Trump merely tipped the balance agains the activists. He provided cover to a government that already wanted to do something. I loathe that Trump was necessary in order to make that happen, but unfortunately a vocal minority of people in DC have been running amok with public policy for a decade or so now, and it took a revolting orange ahole to shift the balance of power towards the majority in DC, who actually does not want to just cede all our sidewalks and parks over to homeless encampments.

The national guard in DC had nothing to do with addressing the encampments. To the degree that they participated in the process, it was only as extra manpower the city chose not to turn down. DC actually has enough personnel to do it and always did, there was just not political will to stand up to activists who were advocating for a totally unacceptable status quo. The NG was beside the point and is a mostly useless force in the city. It's a joke.

The ICE enforcement has been terrible and has nothing to do with removal of the homeless encampments. In fact I think the DC government did a good job of acting on the encampments early and in a way that thankfully didn't turn that process into an excuse to round up immigrants for ICE. A lot of people will ignore the things DC did to actually protect citizens from ICE as Trump initiated this take over, because it was intentionally done quietly. ICE and BCP in DC has mostly acted independently from MPD or the city, and certainly that was true in their worst enforcement actions. I object to these and don't feel the city has endorsed or supported them.

I obviously also object to Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center and the Institute for Peace. His destruction of the East Wing and his stupid ballroom proposal. His plans to build a stupid arch at Arlington. And so on. Trump is a pox. I hope every day that this country can find a way to get rid of him and recover from the disease he's helped foster in this country.

Which is why it makes me angry that he played any role at all in a necessary improvement to DC, and addressing the homeless encampments. I wish some of the people who stood in the way of this very needed change for YEARS would exercise some introspection and ask themselves who they were helping when they filed injunction after injunction to stop MPD from clearing out encampments that were obviously causing a public health problem, blocking sidewalk access to kids and disabled people, harming businesses and, yes, impacting home values. Was it worth it? All so now Trump can claim he did something good in DC? Learn a freaking lesson, folks.[/quote]

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