Lisa McCormick sees troubling pattern is emerging across the United States from war to water

A troubling pattern is emerging across the United States, one that raises profound and disturbing questions about power, race, and the very foundations of our democracy.

From the halls of Congress to the city halls of our state capitals, a consistent narrative is unfolding, one that progressive activist Lisa McCormick asserts is impossible to ignore: the systematic disenfranchisement and targeting of predominantly Black communities under the guise of governance and security.

The battle is being fought over essential resources.

In New Jersey’s capital city of Trenton, a valuable public asset, the Trenton Water Works, is at the center of a contentious struggle. The state, citing a need for oversight and improved service, is pushing for a forced regionalization of the utility, a move the city opposes without guarantees for its workforce, its ratepayers, and its democratic control.

The heated debate in Trenton now centers on an ordinance that would eliminate residency requirements for jobs at Trenton Water Works (TWW).

Former Councilwoman Robin M. Vaughn is urging the City Council to reject the measure, warning that despite their stated opposition to regionalization, it would directly advance that agenda.

“Ordinance 25-085 would jeopardize the workforce, strip away institutional knowledge, and drive up unemployment,” Vaughn said. “It would push residents into economic hardship—costing them housing, health insurance, pensions, and even the ability to cover food, tuition, and basic expenses.”

She also pressed council members to reveal whether they consulted AFSCME New Jersey, the union representing TWW employees, before moving the ordinance forward.

This is not an isolated incident.

It echoes a decades-long history in New Jersey where state takeovers of school districts—in Jersey City, Paterson, Newark, and Camden—have disproportionately placed Black and Brown communities under external control, often with questionable results and the frequent expansion of charter schools.

The common thread, critics argue, is that these actions center on cities where Black voices hold political power, effectively silencing them.

This pattern finds a terrifying parallel on the national stage.

The illegal deployment of federal military forces by President Donald Trump began in cities with Black female leadership: Los Angeles under Mayor Karen Bass and Washington, D.C., under Mayor Muriel Bowser.

“These first targets were chosen as a political warning to Black women and other women of color mayors,” McCormick said. “It was a message that their leadership could be challenged and undermined.”

Despite official data from the U.S. Attorney’s office showing violent crime in the nation’s capital had hit a thirty-year low, the fascist administration declared the city a “crime-infested rat hole,” using this pretext to threaten a federal takeover of local police and install military patrols.

This act, a stark warning to leaders of color, trades essential liberty for a fleeting illusion of safety, creating not safe streets but the conditions of a police state.

The rhetoric is as dangerous as the action.

The President’s threats to mayors, his attempt to oust a Black police commissioner in favor of a White appointee, and his promise to “take over” the city recall a dark historical playbook.

Lisa McCormick draws a chilling comparison to the early days of Nazi Germany, where the Reichstag Fire Decree suspended civil liberties under the pretense of an emergency. This move paved the way for totalitarian rule.

Here, an alleged carjacking becomes the Reichstag fire, and concentration camps for immigrants already stand as a testament to this administration’s disregard for human rights.

“Crime may be down, but so is freedom. As Benjamin Franklin said, those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither. Trump has taken away both,” McCormick said. “It is only a matter of time before some soldier, guardsman, or federal officer kills an unarmed, innocent American citizen.”

Even within the Democratic Party, the response is critiqued as dangerously out of touch.

The spectacle of a Democratic candidate for governor campaigning under a military logo while the administration militarizes American cities strikes many as a profound failure of moral clarity, an attempt to mimic a cartoonish version of patriotism rather than defend democratic values.

"When the Trump admin is literally taking over US cities with the military, we really don’t need DEMOCRATIC candidates with military symbols on their campaign material for CIVILIAN office," said former Assemblywoman Dr. Sadaf Jaffer. "Would you advise a candidate to do that during the Vietnam War? Would you consider it normal for a candidate to include a tank on their campaign materials? This is why Dems keep losing elections. They keep trying to be a cartoonish idea of 'tough and patriotic' rather than reflecting their base and the electorate."

McCormick said the through line is unmistakable.

Whether it is the state of New Jersey moving to assume control of a water utility or a school board, or the President of the United States deploying troops to override local authority, the targets are consistently communities of color.

The message being sent is that their self-determination is conditional, their assets are not truly their own, and their leadership is illegitimate. It is a message that undermines the promise of American democracy.

When the world takes what Trenton makes, when the state takes what its cities have built, and when the federal government takes the liberty of its own citizens, we are left to conclude that our political system is indeed broken.

The responsibility now falls to the citizens to rise, to demand accountability, and to reaffirm that in a democracy, the power must always reside with the people—all of the people. That is the truth of this situation.