Excuse me, is the teen takeover in Washington, D.C., government-funded? Or would that even surprise you? Nothing really shocks anymore, especially with daily reports about voter fraud, illegal aliens on voter rolls, and systemic, widespread fraud. Still, you’ve seen clips of these teens storming public places, starting fights, and destroying everything in sight.
Leona Salinas, a Daily Wire intern, decided to observe a takeover unfold as she left dinner last week. It’s crazy. There, after talking to some potential troublemakers, she learned that the government might have known about and even organized the chaos:
I asked a few of the kids running past what was happening. They yelled obscenities at me and kept going. Soon I realized that I had found myself in the middle of a “Teen Takeover,” the social media trend that that goes viral for the wrong reason every few weeks. It’s this generation’s version of a flash mob, and this version almost always ends in violence. Just earlier this year, a “Teen Takeover” in D.C. took over the internet with footage of numerous teens trashing a Chipotle, throwing metal chairs across the restaurant.
I moved to the edge of one of the groups and walked with them. An 18-year-old girl named Mekala told me the event was coordinated by “DPR.” I asked what the letters stood for and she didn’t know, only that “DPR” puts these events together for teens to “come out and have fun.” She said the organizers reach the kids through Instagram.
It turns out DPR is the District of Columbia’s Department of Parks and Recreation. The teens I spoke to that night said they were there for the government-organized event.
Its Instagram account identifies it as a government organization that organizes “fun programs and events.” One of those events, according to the department’s website, is called Late Night Hype. It’s a program it created in 2021 to give teens and young adults “safe, high-energy spaces to connect after hours.” The government office had planned a Late Night Hype event at the Banneker Rec Center Fields just north of Le Droit Park, according to its online schedule of events.
Attendees knew what was coming. A young Muslim man in a keffiyeh named Janar joined us as we walked. I asked him what the kids usually do at these DPR events. He answered without softening it: “All these n*gg*s out here are wildin’.” He described how the teens rob each other and take each other’s shoes and clothes. Mekala said that at most of these events the teens “go overboard” and take it to “the next level.” When I asked what that looked like, Janar said, “You gonna see.”
[…]
What the Department of Parks and Recreation frames under the guise of an opportunity for teenagers to gather and have fun instead fosters a place for teens to commit crimes. They all knew what was going to happen.
This was not an isolated night. As Heather Mac Donald has written in The Daily Wire, the same trend is popping up from Chicago to Florida, and repeated outbreaks inside Washington itself. Large groups of urban teenagers, often coordinated online, take over public space and the mass violence follows with enough regularity that participants treat it as expected.
First, the Muslim guy dropping the N-word—I mean, this whole story is unbelievable. Second, you’d think someone would realize that these community outreach events are being used to host a street fight. Everyone knew it was coming, and they just let it happen. That seems typical for Democrat-run cities.