(Photo by Billy Blankenship)

I’ve been in Washington, DC for the past week battling the icy and snow piled sidewalks and streets, one week after the big snow and ice storm that immobilized the city for days.

While using the city’s buses and Metros, it was very apparent the most probable danger in DC is falling on sidewalk ice and at the unshoveled bus stops.

The National Guard, the group that was brought into the city by President Trump for the protection of the residents of the city, was doing nothing to protect its residents.

National Guard Should Buy Shovels Not Bullets

Of the two thousand National Guard personnel sent to Washington, every day at least 15 National Guard personnel in groups of three or four were at various corners around the Eastern Market Metro stop. These young men and women in uniform watched as residents slid, climbed over and fell through piles of snow and ice.

Never did I see one of the young National Guard soldiers help the mothers with babies in strollers that were pushing through piles of snow to get onto a bus or help a person with a cane or walker.

I introduced myself as a retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel. I asked if their officers had told them not to help residents, something I would have hoped that each would have done out of uniform as pure courtesy toward others. The polite answer, “No ma’am, but that’s not our job. We are to protect you from criminals.”

Have you apprehended any criminals? “No ma’am, but we are always ready.”

Have you thought to ask if the National Guard could buy some shovels for you to help protect citizens from injury? “Yes, but no one has.”

A total of 2,188 National Guard troops have been assigned to the joint task force in Washington, DC, according to a government update reported by the Associated Press. 949 D.C. National Guard troops, as well as close to 1,200 troops from several states, with West Virginia having deployed 416 guardsmen.

So much for a good use of the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC.

We demand a cut to Pentagon spending, an end to military deployment and violent ICE raids in our cities, and an investment in the people’s needs instead of the war machine! Take action NOW!

Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She was also a US diplomat for 16 and was assigned in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US government in March 2003 in opposition to the US war on Iraq.

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