On August 11, 2025,  the Current Occupant of the White House announced “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse. This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back.”

He declared an emergency and invoked powers to requisition the services of the city’s police department and sent  federal law enforcement from several agencies to the city’s streets, including Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation. More than two thousand members of the National Guard have descended upon the streets of the District.

Let me be clear: He has never walked the streets of our nation’s capital, displays paper-think knowledge of the city, and his descriptions of crime are nothing short of fantastical. Which should come as no surprise to people who pay attention to current events. He is attempting to create crisis where there is none and use military and law enforcement professionals to display fealty to him and sow fear in the populace.

Why should I care? I reside, vote, and pay taxes in a nearby Maryland suburb. Answer: Because what happens in DC affects everyone in surrounding communities. We derive our identify from DC. We work, congregate, and spend lots of disposable income in DC. We are in community with and extensions of DC.

Many of us in DC and surrounding communities want to know what we can do to voice our displeasure at this takeover of the city we love, and which he loathes. In a city of 700,000 Americans with no elected officials in Congress who can vote, we can write, call, and march. And we can make noise.

Making noise is one way to display public resistance and solidarity with each other.

Every night at 8:00 PM, people in DC stop what they are doing, go outside, and bang pots and pans for five minutes. I hope everyone in DC does this every night for as long as the escalated federal forces and this occupation are in place.

So, six days after the takeover, a dozen of us took turns and began making nightly climbs up several flights of narrow, dimly lit stairs into the bell tower of All Souls Church Unitarian to make noise for five minutes. Very loud noise about two miles north on 16^th Street from the White House.

Our instrument is the Revere Bell, cast 200 years ago by Joseph Revere, the son of Paul Revere. How poetic.

You can hear its thunder in at least three neighborhoods. See and hear for yourself here: https://freedcproject.org/news/noise-every-night-8-pm

Here is some background on the Revere Bell (taken from Washington Unitarianism: A Bicentennial History of All Souls Church):

“Essential equipment for the new building included a bell to all people for worship. As early as September 1821, Charles Bulfinch, apparently in response to an inquiry, was informed by Joseph L. Revere, son of Paul Revere, operating the foundry at Canton, Massachusetts, that ‘A bell suitable for the Church in Washington ought to weigh one thousand to twelve hundred pounds. If you shall employ me to make a bell for your Church, I will cast as good a one as possible. It shall be subject to the examination of such persons as you shall see fit to appoint here. If it should not please them, another will be cast without any expense to you whatever. The price will be 40 cents per pound and it will be warranted  with suitable usage for one year.’

“George S. Bulfinch and George W. May were appointed to raise the necessary amount. Their report, dated July 7, 1822, announced that their efforts had been successful and that $419 had been received, including a subscription of $100 from President James Monroe. His contribution, as well as others from non-members of the Church, was doubtless occasioned by the need for an adequate alarm, which had lately been demonstrated by a destructive fire in the neighborhood. “With suitable usage,” the bell has been hung successfully in three church steeples and now, after [200 years], continues to perform its original function Sunday after Sunday.”

I like putting that bell to suitable usage. See here: https://youtu.be/EyDiLxXM3YI

What are you doing?