There have been many radicalizing moments in my life, but few so acutely painful and memorable as witnessing the systems of structural violence that created the conditions for roughly 100 unhoused individuals to create community within encampments beneath the K, L, and M St. underpasses. These systems were layered with additional actors of harm levied against them — from the NoMa Business Improvement District’s (BID) behind-the-scenes attempts to forcibly displace them to the BID’s more public hostile architecture, including so-called ‘art installations’ costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the city workers instructed to bulldoze tents that contained individuals’ life belongings, to Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services (DMHHS) Wayne Turnage’s brazen lies under oath when questioned by the D.C. Council, and to the council itself, which failed, in a 7-5 vote, to pass Councilmember Brianne Nadeau’s emergency legislation that would have enacted a 90-day moratorium on encampment ‘clearings’ and evictions during hypothermia season.
I was an outreach worker with HIPS from 2014 – 2024, and recall watching the cold, detached manner in which most of the councilmembers spoke about unhoused individuals’ lives–a dehumanization, I suppose, that was necessary for them to cope with the cognitive dissonance of their vote. Escalating pressure from housing advocates who’d witnessed the violence of DMHHS’s so-called CARE pilot — very plain Orwellian doublespeak — is what drew enough attention to prompt Nadeau’s proposed legislation. Its failure to pass in many ways set the tone for the council’s actions as a body regarding homelessness for years to come under the Bowser administration. In that regard, as well as in witnessing an increase in evictions creating mass displacement of unhoused community members, I can think of multiple, heartbreaking examples of how that 7-5 vote cost people their lives.
I remember watching that council vote live and quietly noting who voted for the economic interests of the NoMa BID over human lives. Councilmember and current mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George supported Nadeau’s emergency moratorium on evictions. In contrast, then-Councilmember (and Lewis George’s primary opponent in the Democratic primary) Kenyan McDuffie was the final no vote.
In this election cycle, there has been a disappointing lack of focus on D.C.’s most marginalized residents, including unhoused individuals. And there are dozens of reasons, too many to name here, beyond that particular vote that I support Lewis George in her mayoral bid as the June 16 Democratic primary date quickly approaches. But I believe the ways in which elected officials advocate (or fail to advocate) for those with the least political power, unhoused people, and other groups I commonly engaged with as an outreach worker, including drug users, sex workers, formerly incarcerated individuals, and trans people, say a lot, especially when their response is silence. Centering our most marginalized community members holds vital importance unto itself, but also serves as a highly useful litmus test to determine who elected officials genuinely believe they are beholden to: everyday residents of D.C., or members of the political establishment and the ultra-wealthy.
One very notable exception to hyper-marginalized residents not being directly named has been the continued focus on D.C.’s ongoing federal occupation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and a half-dozen other federal law enforcement agencies all deputized to conduct immigration enforcement and instructed to ‘make D.C. beautiful’ through efforts that, per one of Trump’s hundreds of executive orders, includes reducing the visibility of unhoused individuals, by force or institutionalization if necessary.
Grassroots community organizations like Free DC (that endorsed Lewis George), Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, and Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid (MSMA) have responded to the trauma being daily inflicted upon D.C. communities — especially migrants, unhoused people, and Black residents east of the river — by continuing D.C.’s longstanding legacy of building powerful social movements of mutual aid, community self-defense, advocacy, and protest, welcoming supportive elected officials into the fold in the absence of mayoral leadership.
It’s another realm in which Lewis George not only outshines McDuffie, but also has been the most vocal councilmember since day one of the occupation. She went live on Instagram during the detention of one of her Brightwood neighbors, using her platform to document the incident to a large audience, which led to sustained pressure and the man’s release the next day. She has continually posted similar updates and documentation to craft mechanisms of accountability and keep migrant residents aware of potential threats.
She has spoken powerfully and repeatedly, often at Free DC events, demanding an end to the federal occupation, pairing that passion with pragmatism in her introduction (with four co-sponsors) of the Safe Community Places and Policing Amendment Act of 2025, legislation that would strengthen D.C.’s sanctuary values laws to expressly prohibit D.C. police from collaborating with federal agents regarding immigration enforcement by ending their participation in the taskforce. It’s been waiting to be referred out of committee by the council’s most conservative member and chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, Brooke Pinto, but whether legislatively or through the executive, Lewis George has on multiple occasions detailed her plan for ending local cooperation with this fascist administration’s whims as a day-one priority if elected mayor.
As a Ward 4 resident who has had many interactions with Lewis George over the years as a constituent, former outreach worker, and community-based advocate, I know the people-powered language of her campaign is sincere, and detractors whose instinctual reaction is cynicism have suffered so long under the status quo that it has limited their capacity to imagine a better world. Janeese Lewis George is fighting for the D.C. she was born and raised in, that she loves and knows is already beautiful because of its people, not in spite of us — and has proven through her leadership that she can execute her vision for an even more beautiful D.C., a vision in which everyday residents are at the center. All of us.
Shane Sullivan (they/them) is a former outreach worker with HIPS and co-founder and former core organizer with #DecrimPovertyDC who has been engaged in community-based advocacy and direct service in D.C. for over a decade. They are currently a student at Potomac Massage Training Institute (PMTI), rooting their training to become a certified bodyworker in their passion for harm reduction and health justice.
