YarnDC ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿

Activism is powerful, y'all.

yellow on sea-blue FREE DC street sign banner on the edge of a grassy park bordering a city street, bare winter trees in background

blue on baby-blue FREE DC street sign banner on a red brick city sidewalk

*classic* white on red FREE DC street sign banner near a city crosswalk, brick Victorian rowhouses in background

Busy fingers getting us nearer the point where it will be impossible to go anywhere in DC without encountering cheery #FreeDC #yarnbombs. Already pretty much there on Capitol Hill, where these beauties are letting our Freek DC flag fly. #FreeDC

array on table top of four colorful, non-identical granny squares, a crochet hook and small scissors, and a rolled (and therefore not entirely visible) knit banner that says "JULIAN," in memory of DC citizen Julian Bailey, murdered this month by a U.S. Marshal.

A+ for cheery color, so far, and C- for consistency of shape and size.

#yarnbombing (soon)

Should DC's awesome soccer team (no disrespect to the men's soccer squad) celebrate Black excellence and local representation even if not on Juneteenth? We think so.

{Not to crassly self-promote (more for impact than clout), repost if you agree. NB 👏🏻👏🏽👏🏿: Bluesky does not amplify "likes"!}

Shouts to the Zamboni riders at tonight's Sirens game!

Frumin followed up with the question we were shouting at our screen: "So, are you thinking of ways to fix that?"

Carroll seemed pretty resigned to it, like bad weather.

{Thank you SO MUCH for covering!}

Did we stitch during these proceedings? Heck, yeah. Crocheted our first granny squares. (Ally in the next seat Tunisian crocheted a #FreeDC banner.) The 🟩🟧🟪 are for
a #yarnbomb we've knitted for a subject of testimony today, Julian Bailey, shot dead in D.C. by a U.S. Marshal.

#JusticeforJulian

11 things we’re asking DC Council to do during today’s MPD Performance Oversight Hearing

1. Prohibit facecoverings for federal officers operating in DC. 2. Require federal agents operating in DC to follow the same requirements for public identification as MPD, including name, badge number, and agency information. 3. Require MPD arrest reports to list all officers from all agencies present during the arrest along with officer names, badge numbers, and descriptions of their use of force. 4. Prohibit MPD from coordinating with federal agents in sensitive locations like churches and schools.

5. Repeal local qualified immunity protections for federal officers making arrests under DC law, as well as any law enforcement officer who enters a DC school, community center, or house of worship. 6. Require MPD to file a report on any interactions with a minor, including conversations on the street. 7. Conduct an independent investigation of all officer-involved shootings in 2025 and 2026 and release the names and body camera footage of all officers involved.

8. Restrict vehicular pursuits for all federal agencies. 9. Close the loophole in the Sanctuary Values Act so it applies to all DC agencies that contact residents outside of holding them in custody, including MPD. 10. Hold a hearing on the Safe Community Places and Policing Amendment Act of 2025. 11. Prohibit MPD from contacting federal agents over personal possession of cannabis.

Over the last year, MPD has started cooperating more than ever before with federal agents. It has had deadly consequences, and it's beyond time for DC Council to address it.

Here are the 11 things we're asking for during DC Council's annual Performance Oversight Hearing on MPD.

We saw police pull somebody over with their lights on a few weeks ago. They only stopped for a moment so unmarked cars could pull up and ICE agents could exit, then continued down the street to 4D

Too many of us have seen this shit to believe them at all

bsky.app/profile/free...

Pinto: "DC passed a law in 2021 restricting cooperation with immigration enforcement. Is it MPD's policy to follow that law?"

Carroll: "Yes."

Pinto: "Are you aware of any instances of MPD officers violating that law?"

Carroll: "No."

Cries in the room: "You're under oath!"

The final witness of today's MPD Oversight Hearing is Interim Chief Jeffery Carroll. Here are Councilmembers' questions and his responses. 🧵

Thank YOU for bringing us more beauty.

Yes! We have started meeting monthly and plan to move the gathering around D.C. You'd be welcome to join us, or to start satellite gatherings near you. As soon as you've done Orientation, you can ask to be connected to our yarnbombing group. <3

Seeing this beauty, could you ever again ignore a "humble" house sparrow?!? Gorgeous.

Pebble-dash sidewalk lined by allee of leafless wintry willow oaks along the Potomac River Channel in Southwest D.C. Patches of snow remain alongside. In foreground, at eye level on pebbled Mid-Century Modern light pole, is affixed a red banner reading "FREE DC."

Close-up of FREE DC banner on the beautiful Southwest waterfront beyond the DC Wharf. In background, you can see the row of globe-shaped light poles broken up by tasteful low shrubbery beds. Beyond that, Buzzard Point + Fort McNair, where the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers meet to flow together to the Chesapeake Bay.

From maybe it's last day on view, in mid-February, a knitted "ALEX" yarnbomb tied to the promenade fence. It's black-bordered black on white with a red cross for his nursing service. Behind it, sun glances on gently wavy waters of the Potomac Channel, with the Hains Point/East Potomac Park treeline in the distance. (That's the park where Trump wants to take over an affordable public golf course to brand + gild it in his execrable fashion, ruining it for the actual "real Americans" who live here and enjoy it as it is.)

Get yourself down to the Southwest waterfront--Titanic Memorial's always nice--to see gorgeous Tunisian crochet #FreeDC #yarnbombing ART while it's still hanging.

"Alex" memorial, alas, disappeared this week, but not before spending weeks in the winter sun. #alexpretti

@freedcproject.bsky.social

Yet another passerby snap (blurry bc we were rushing) of yet another group of bored National Guard personnel leaning around doing their usual nothing at taxpayer expense under the cavernous mid-century arches of DC Metro station.

Ad on concrete Metro station wall: For Army transformation THINK KBR. OP looked this up: KBR used to be called "Kellogg Brown + Root," one of the companies that made bank mismanaging military contracts for that noble endeavor, the Iraq War. (The ad hangs next to a brown Metro service door labeled Electrical/ Communication Mechanical Rooms.)

More "THINK KBR" advertising, this time with -- of course (!!!) -- an American flag waving in the sun. Some of our family members get motion sick riding Metro, but feeling nauseated in before reaching the train is something entirely new.

DC now: National Guard "patrolling" Trader Joe's (see @musicologyduck.bsky.social) + quiet Metro stations bristling w/armed personnel and growling ads for commercialized defense.

(Yet somehow knowing how flat-out unprepared we are if actual bad stuff happens...)

More story in alt-text.

Photographer is behind three soldiers on the escalator at Trader Joe’s

siiiiigh

💜🖤💜
#justiceforJulianBailey
#FreeDC

The 51st is expanding D.C. needs more local journalists. You can help us hire them.

7/ Our goal is to become D.C.’s go-to source for local news, one where residents of all 8 wards feel seen, heard, and connected.

Help us get there by signing up as a monthly or annual member — or upping your recurring tax-deductible contribution, if you’re already on board. ⤵️

Thanks for reading!

After 75 years, hand dance is still bringing Washingtonians together The history of D.C.'s official dance.

NEW: Hand dance first took root in D.C. at 1950s house parties.

Over the last 75 years, it has cemented itself in our cultural history.

Now, @samdelgado.bsky.social reports, a tight-knit community is doing what they can to help D.C.’s official dance stay alive:

Republicans just f*cked D.C.’s tax-filing season. City leaders could fight back. Congress' repeal of a D.C tax bill could cost the city more than $600 million in revenue.

D.C. residents infamously suffer taxation without representation, but congressional Republicans are complicating even the taxation part of our second-class reality.

It's the first time they've targeted local legislation setting tax policy for the city’s residents, @maustermuhle.bsky.social reports:

Middle School and HS lottery angst. Why? We have amazing destination middle schools in #Ward6! Not to mention the pride of Capitol Hill, Eastern HS! Meet the principals and hear about the programming + extra-curriculars. Tues, Feb 24 @ 7pm us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... @cmcharlesallen.bsky.social

COLOR! Bright red FREE DC banner is strung on black fencing in front of a colorful graffiti-art mural along the MBT bike highway.

Metropolitan Branch Trail
🚲🚲🚲
🚶🏼‍♂️🚶🏾‍♀️‍➡️🏃🏻🏃🏽‍♀️‍➡️👩🏿‍🦯‍➡️👨🏼‍🦽🕺🏻
#FreeDC

#yarnbombing

hah, love this messaging

Shaped like a smartphone... wow.

#FreeDC

Intro to Embroidery with Badass Cross Stitch Learn to embroider, stitch something brilliant, have a laugh, try something new! Just in time to make all your holiday gifts!

Want to learn to embroider?

I’ll teach on Saturday. Zoom. Pay-what-you-can

www.eventbrite.com/e/1980879834...

On an otherwise clear, freshly painted wall, a sticker has been torn off. In black Sharpie on its white remnants, someone’s scrawled “Free DC.”

You gotta love bathroom graffiti in our freedom-loving national capital.

Loo at The Roost on Capitol Hill.

standing outside the Capitol Hill Club with a camera is pretty much shooting fish in a barrel and it's about time someone did lol

the venn diagram of people who think republican policies will probably turn out fine

and the people who think all musicians have a default apolitical setting

is a circle