Pan-African Community Action (PACA) launched the D.C. Crime Bill Campaign to challenge the 2024 Secure D.C. Omnibus Crime Bill—a reactionary law that expands police power, strengthens surveillance, and deepens the criminalization of Black working-class communities in Washington, D.C.
Disguised as a “public safety” measure, the bill is a blueprint for state control, increasing penalties, expanding pretrial detention, and empowering police while ignoring the real roots of harm—poverty, displacement, and neglect.
Rather than making communities safer, it entrenches the colonial relationship between the state and D.C.’s Black population. City leaders have chosen control over care and incarceration over investment, diverting resources from housing, youth programs, and public health into policing and punishment.
The “Secure DC” Omnibus bill is an example of DC’s local government imposing law and order and advancing the war against the Black working class.
In July 2024, PACA hosted the D.C. Crime Bill Town Hall, bringing together residents, organizers, and movement partners to expose the bill’s true purpose and build collective resistance.
The town hall served as a people’s forum on safety and power, connecting the fight against the crime bill to PACA’s broader campaigns for Community Control Over Police and Community Control Over Health. It was also envisioned as a model for People’s Assemblies—a permanent, community-based structure where residents can debate, decide, and direct collective action outside the control of the state.
Through testimonies, analysis, and strategy-building, participants affirmed that true safety must come from organized people’s power, not from the institutions that oppress us.
