Dear Weary Friends and Fighters:
Summer is winding down, and authoritarionism continues to heat up across the country, exhausting us all. There is no better way to counter the bad with some good community fun, food, and commraderie. Below are some events happening across the 8th in the coming weeks.
Check your local county parties for additional events and actions.
What happened in Washington this week should make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Donald Trump used a false pretext of “crime and homelessness” to declare an emergency, deploy the National Guard, and seize direct federal control over DC’s local police force. Pam Bondi is now in charge of law enforcement there.
What does that look like? Checkpoints. Military presence on civilian streets. Local control erased at the stroke of a pen.
If you think this can’t happen here, think again. The SAFE Cities Act, introduced by Rep. Tony Wied, would let the U.S. Attorney General label certain places as “anarchist jurisdictions” if federal officials decide local leaders aren’t doing enough to “maintain law and order.” Once on that list, a city or county could lose significant federal funding — not just for policing, but for housing, transportation, and other local needs.
If enacted, this will give the federal govenrment a powerful lever to punish communities for their policy choices. Combined with new “emergency” powers like those Trump just used in DC to federalize and militarize local police, it’s easy to see how the SAFE Cities Act could become a companion tool — first stripping funding to pressure local leaders, then justifying federal takeover of law enforcement under the guise of restoring order.
This is how authoritarianism creeps in — not all at once, but step by step, “for your safety,” until we wake up to find that our rights, our local self-government, and our freedom to walk our own streets have been replaced by a permanent show of force.
I know we are exhausted. Every day brings some new, mind-blowing headline, and the temptation is to tune it out — but that’s exactly how those in power want us to react. We cannot allow this to be normalized.
We are for safe communities where neighbors know each other and solve problems together. We are for local democracy, where decisions are made here, not dictated from Washington under a false emergency. We are for freedom that doesn’t require a checkpoint to prove you deserve it.
That’s the future worth defending — right here, right now.
In Solidarity,
Julie Hancock, Chair, 8th District Dems
Let’s show Tony Wied that silence and inaction have a price.
Chip in to help us hold our Congressman accountable every day between now and election day 2026.