WELCOME

After 28 years of service in Arlington County’s local government, first on the School Board and then the County Board, I have stepped into a new role and life chapter: Private Citizen. My career has equipped me with extensive experience, valuable connections, and an unwavering passion for fostering good local government in Arlington and in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia (DMV) region, an area I call home.

🚨STAY ALERT: DC POLICE AND ICE ARE STOPPING EVERYONE

Dear Friends:

This is not a blog post, but an alert.

News reports say that, as of today, DC police are working with ICE, including using vehicle checkpoints. This increases the risks people face when they cross the river and go into DC. With such actions, I believe it is not only immigrants who face risks, but anyone could be pulled over and told to hand over their phone for searching or anything else the police/ICE want to do with them or their vehicle. I think this is likely unconstitutional, but this Regime does not care about that.

So I would advise not going into DC for a while and urge my readers to warn anyone who might be of special risk to avoid DC. This may mean long drives on the beltway for a lot of people. I don’t know how this will turn out, but it occurs to me that if thousands of people avoid DC the whole effort may backfire.

In order to protect yourself:

Avoid Washington, DC until this ends.
If you are stopped, record everything.
Do not answer questions beyond identifying yourself when legally required.
Share any evidence of rights violations widely, with the press, civil liberties organizations, and your community.

Your safety is paramount. Getting caught in Trump’s authoritarian stunt -- a distraction from the Epstein files and a direct assault on your freedom -- is not worth the risk. Stay alert. Stay safe. Spread the word.

Libby

In the immediate future, we need to save our democracy. I know some of us have been attending the One Million Rising training sessions and/or the weekly Indivisible calls. Both the Mobilize and Indivisible organizations are working hard to build enough of a base of non-cooperation and resistance that we can effectively push back on the destruction of our democracy.

I hope a number of my readers have had, or will have, some friends over for a conversation about how to defeat a dictator as requested by the One Million Rising folks. Our Fairlington Rush Hour Resistance group decided to invite a few neighbors to a film screening of “JoJo Rabbit” which we held two nights ago. We had 28 people which was about double what we expected. While we didn’t strictly follow the agenda of One Million Rising, we shared the very powerful satire about Nazism; had some handouts to explain the theory of attacking a dictator’s support pillars to take him down; and had a brief discussion. We’ll have another

gathering fairly soon which is part of the One Million Rising model. I encourage everyone to attend the 3rd and final (for this series) webinar by One Million Rising tonight, the 13th at 8:00 pm.

I’m not familiar with “Free DC” yet, but plan to attend the allies’ webinar: “Maryland + Virginia Team August Meeting” Wednesday, August 20, 2025 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM. Perhaps a number of my readers who live in Maryland and Virginia would may like to join.

“Free DC” is definitely kicking into action. Friends Meeting of Washington invited people to come join them for the first nightly “Free DC Noise Action” last night. everyone in DC will make a lot of noise for about 5 minutes at 8:00 pm. And they plan to do that every night at 8:00 pm until the occupation is over. Beating pots, ringing bells and generally making a lot of noise for a few minutes with thousands of people around the city sounds like fun! And clever resistance.

As I write this on Tuesday, my banner group has decided to go out at 5:00 – 6:00 pm as per usual today despite the heat and humidity being at our cut-off level for being outdoors. The group is too upset about DC and everything else to stay in. Our current banners say “Keep DC Free” and

“Epstein”. We used to say “Release all the Epstein files” but realized we can just say “Epstein” and get the message across while saving space.

As I mentioned in my last blog, Visibility Brigades has called for morning and afternoon banner drops on Friday August 15 that say “Be Brave: Join Us.” Our Fairlington Rush Hour Resistance team will be out at 7:30 am and 5:00 pm that day weather permitting, and we invite you to join us.

Yours in peaceful resistance,

Libby