Demonstrators listen to a go-go band during a “Free DC” protest in Washington, DC, on August 21, 2025.
(Eric Lee / Bloomberg via Getty Images)As summer ends, masked, badgeless ICE thugs and red-state National Guard militias stalk an unnaturally quiet Washington, DC. Five years ago, the city was different. After the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, massive multiracial demonstrations filled the streets. While these protests were constant, there was one we should be remembering this week. It started downtown at the Capitol One Arena, home of the NBA’s Washington Wizards, and was led, bullhorn in hand, by Wizards captain John Wall.
On August 19, Wall quietly retired from the NBA after a star-crossed 11-year career. Injuries dramatically cut short Wall’s prime, but for several seasons he captured the imagination of Washington, DC.
Basketball is a way of life in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. There is even a documentary by local product Kevin Durant called Basketball County: In the Water about the incredible percentage of pros who come from these parts. Even an above-average NBA team would be an obsession here. Instead, DC has the Wizards. The last time they won a championship, Jimmy Carter was the most powerful man on earth. The last time they won 50 games, ET had yet to phone home. And yet there was this moment when it looked like John Wall was going to harness all of the area’s untapped basketball electricity and lead the Wizards somewhere special.
DC loved Wall, and not just because of his play—the quicksilver speed, slam-dunk award-winning hops, and 360-degree, open-floor flair. It wasn’t even because Wall poured money into underserved communities and seemed to truly enjoy working with kids. It was that Wall’s family was torn apart by poverty and this country’s system of mass incarceration. He was raised by his mother, Frances Pulley, who worked multiple jobs to raise him and his two sisters. His realness and authenticity—rare in today’s flattened, media-trained NBA where everyone wants to be an influencer but few have anything to say—made him a star in schoolyards throughout the city. White sports radio scolds like Colin Cowherd howled reactionary trash, including the argument that since Wall’s father had been imprisoned, Wall couldn’t be trusted as a “leader.” The racism and class contempt that Wall faced from conservative commentators only bound him to the DC community more. In the ultimate show of respect, a two-story mural of him was painted onto the side of DC’s legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl. In 2020, this was John Wall’s town.
Then Wall, at the height of his cultural influence in the city, decided that he would take a megaphone and lead that march. John Wall is missed right now, and not because the Wizards will likely be terrible once again. We miss him, and people of integrity like him, because the DC mayor, Michael Bloomberg acolyte Muriel Bowser, is faceplanting. Following the 2024 election, Bowser made every effort to show the Trump administration that she would not be a thorn in his side. The president even complimented her on July 8 for the relationship she’s built with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. He praised their conversations about “testing” a takeover in DC. This received little attention at the time. It should be revisited in order to ask when Bowser knew this occupation would be happening and what she did to prepare the city.
Centrists still don’t understand that reaching out to the Trump administration is only ever interpreted as weakness. Bowser, scrambling, now argues that what Trump is doing is not “a federal takeover” but rather “a surge of law enforcement presence.” That is completely out of touch with the depression, anger, and fear gripping so much of the city. Bowser cannot even do what Mayor Michelle Wu did in Boston, saying this week, “Stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures.” Bowser is more likely to say that the worst thing about military checkpoints demanding people’s papers is that they will lengthen commute times.
Bowser is not going to save this city, and John Wall does not live here anymore. But DC residents aren’t waiting on feckless politicians or cultural icons. We are starting to see speak-outs, large outdoor press conferences, impromptu anti-ICE demonstrations driving feds off the streets, groups of neighbors clanging pots and pans in the evening, and the leadership of groups like Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, Free DC, and the Long Live GoGo Movement. Many of the people who make up the heart and spine of these organizations were also marching, getting gassed, and being shot by rubber bullets in 2020. There is continuity here and that is the greatest hope people in DC have: They know each other, they trust each other, and they are not going to quit.
On Thursday evening, as Donald Trump oozed out of the White House to show the media an occupied DC that’s bent to his will, the streets were booming just a few miles away at a demonstration against the occupation that doubled as a go-go music concert. In DC, the clanging go-go drums have long been the soundtrack of movements against gentrification and displacement, and on Thursday night, they were a call to resist the tyranny of occupation and Trump’s vulgar, violent effort to paint over the vibrancy of the city. The regime wants to duplicate the DC occupation in cities across the country. The people fighting for a free DC hope that what gets replicated is their refusal to remain silent.
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