Politics

Nearly an hour into Friday night’s game between the Washington Spirit and Racing Louisville FC, a chant started to spread throughout the stadium that briefly silenced the television announcers for the women’s soccer match.

“Free D.C.! Free D.C.! Free D.C.!” the spectators chanted at the stadium in the southwest quadrant of the nation’s capital.

It was a response to Republican President Donald Trump’s militarized takeover of policing in the District of Columbia that began last week; it was also a nod to the women-founded grassroots movement that has been organizing Washington’s 700,000 residents to resist federal interventions during the early months of the second Trump administration: Free DC.

Free DC is the latest embodiment of a generations-long fight by District of Columbia residents to operate autonomously from the federal government. Its ultimate goal is statehood. In the 1870s, Congress dismantled the elected local government and installed federal commissioners. It wasn’t until the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1961 that people in the district could vote for president. The enactment of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in 1973 established that the city could again elect its own local government. To this day, the district does not have representatives who are able to cast votes in Congress despite having a larger population than Wyoming or Vermont — and all city-passed policy is reviewed by the same Congress.