Why Washington shouldn’t learn to live with troops on its streets | Opinion

At the height of this summer’s deployment, more than 4,000 National Guard troops from more than 15 states were sent to Washington, D.C.—my home. Thousands remain here today, even though there is no emergency requiring their presence.

In recent weeks, Arkansas and Michigan have withdrawn their troops, joining other states that have ended their participation in President Donald Trump’s manufactured emergency. Governors have the authority to decline requests to send their National Guard troops to D.C., and a growing number have done so.

I’m glad to see those troops going home. But their departure leaves Washingtonians with an obvious question: why are so many still here?

The remaining troops should go home, too.

Keeping National Guard troops deployed in D.C. without a genuine emergency is an expensive stunt that has nothing to do with safety. The deployment has already cost taxpayers well over a quarter of a billion dollars. If the president continues to station National Guard troops in D.C. through 2029, as planned, the cost to taxpayers could climb to $3.4 billion.

Think about what $3.4 billion could mean if it were invested in communities instead. According to the National Priorities Project, over three years, that amount could fund paid parental leave for more than 12,000 people, medical care for more than 7,000 veterans and the hiring of more than 5,000 registered nurses.

The costs aren’t only financial. National Guard members also have civilian jobs. Some are students, and others have families and communities depending on them.

That matters to me because my objection is not to the people wearing the uniform. National Guard members perform important roles for communities across the country, especially during natural disasters and other major emergencies. They deserve our gratitude for that service. That is part of what makes this deployment so frustrating: they are needlessly deployed to our nation’s capital where there is no emergency needing a military response.

What worries me most, though, is something harder to calculate. It’s the possibility that we will simply get used to troops patrolling our neighborhoods.

The longer troops patrol D.C. without an immediate emergency, the easier it becomes to stop noticing how extraordinary that is. Military personnel stationed in civilian neighborhoods start to blend into the scenery. Something that should be exceptional begins to feel routine.

We should not become accustomed to this. Troops should not patrol American communities, full stop.

For those of us who live in Washington, the deployment also reflects something deeper. Without statehood, we already lack the same democratic rights and freedoms as residents of every state. Congress has the power to overturn our local laws and dictate how we spend our own locally raised tax dollars.

This democratic inequality is one reason why what happens here matters beyond this particular deployment. D.C. has long been vulnerable to federal interference because the people who live here do not have the same political power as other Americans. What the federal government is allowed to normalize in Washington, D.C., can become a model for broader abuses of power elsewhere.

Defending D.C., then, is about more than defending those of us who happen to live within the District’s borders. If an extraordinary use of federal power becomes routine here, Americans elsewhere should not assume it will always stay here. We’ve seen this already—for example, before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flooded the streets of Chicago, the administration sent ICE and other federal agents into the District.

The recent withdrawals should be the beginning of the end of this deployment, not an opportunity to keep a smaller military presence in place for years. ACLU-D.C., together with ACLU National and every ACLU affiliate across the country, has called for all National Guard troops to leave our nation’s capital.

This would address the immediate problem. It would not, however, fix the democratic inequality that helped make this possible in the first place. D.C. residents deserve the same democratic rights as residents of every state, including meaningful control over the decisions that shape our lives and the ability to hold those who exercise power over us accountable. Ultimately, D.C. needs statehood, so those of us who call this district home have the democratic power necessary to prevent abuses like this from happening again.

Washington is often talked about as a symbol of the country: the seat of our national government and a place meant to embody American ideals of freedom and democracy.

To me, Washington, D.C., is my home. My friends, neighbors and loved ones live here.

I look forward to the day when I can walk through my neighborhood without seeing military personnel stationed on our streets. Washingtonians should not have to learn to live with an extraordinary military presence. The rest of the country should not learn to accept one either.

Monica Hopkins is the executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia (ACLU-DC). As executive director, she oversees substantive programmatic and advocacy efforts to defend and advance the ACLU-DC’s work on civil rights and civil liberties for the over 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.