The “We Are All D.C.” march yesterday (Sept. 6) was the largest protest yet since President Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the nation’s capital.
What was this protest about? The signs carried by marchers told part of the story.

DC police responded to a possible armed robbery at Mount Pleasant and Irving Streets. As they interviewed the victim, a swarm of DEA and federal agents arrived, angering residents. One officer rolled down his window to film the jeering crowd. Read more here: substack.com/@lucianperkins

Washington, DC, residents describe violent ICE abductions, others showed photos of ICE agents that threatened them, and a migrant worker spoke of being too scared to go to work. Read more in my free substack.com/@lucianperkins

As ICE roams the streets of DC and more National Guard troops are pledged from West Virginia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Ohio, a Black woman protestor told me, “They need to send them back home to their families, so we can feel safe here with ours.”

On our last day in Paris, we spent the first half viewing the 400-piece David Hockney retrospective at the equally massive Louis Vuitton Foundation designed by Frank Gehry. More about the Hockney exhibition in the days ahead.

We took a leisurely walk along the Seine River after a stretch of heavy rain. Ironically, officials had just opened the river for swimming—for the first time in over a century—but were forced to close it again due to a spike in E. coli and other harmful bacteria caused by the runoff.

Fans are the rage in Paris—at least when it is 98°F, as it was today. Here, a couple cools off at 9pm at Monceau Park. Luckily, it will start cooling down the rest of our stay.

Evening walk through Lisbon, Portugal

There were no “No King’s” anti-Trump protests in DC on Saturday, but “Refuse Fascism” marched to Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.

Yesterday, I attended Pope Francis’s funeral at St. Peter’s Square, which transported me back 25 years to Pope John Paul II’s funeral. Continued below in comments:

Who would have guessed? Jack Rasmussen performing songs like the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" to the Eagles' "lyin' Eyes" with The Artifacts at Comet Ping Pong. Fun music. Delicious Pizza.

Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the “anti-American ideology” hidden in the many Smithsonian museums on the Mall, so I went to investigate. But I got sidetracked by a richly diverse crowd of joyous visitors visiting them. Oh well. I’ll go back again soon to resume my investigation.

In Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Jordan, I witnessed the unsung heroes supported by USAID who are making a difference worldwide. Musk’s DOGE team started dismantling USAID, which accounts for 1% of the total U.S. budget.
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

Holocaust survivor Manny Lindenbaum, who I photographed in 2017, turned his war trauma and the death of his parents and sister in Auschwitz into a “superpower.” Read more in the comments.

Scenes outside of Capital One Arena before Trump’s MAGA Victory Rally.

Scenes from “The People’s March” ahead of Trump’s upcoming Inauguration.

Uruguay can boast of having the first free-standing Skyspace in South America by master James Turrell, the spectacular Ta Khut. Viewers arrive just before sunrise or sunset to experience the sky transforming because of subtly evolving color shifts of natural and artificial light.

Scenes from the annual Transformer Benefit Auction Gala. We’ve watched it grow for over 20 years!

In Bastrop, Texas, musician Hannibal Lokumbe celebrates his book "Spiritual Soundscapes of Music, Life, and Liberation" with a wide-ranging talk from how he instructs his orchestra to sound like a cumulus cloud to why his loving mother and music helped him survive a segregated Texas in his youth.