In this week’s episode, we sit down with DC Councilmember Zachary Parker, who represents Ward 5, for a conversation about one of the most contentious local issues of the moment: youth gatherings, and what — if anything — cities should do about them.
The Debate Behind the Headlines
Large groups of teenagers gathering downtown, at Metro stations, or in commercial corridors have become a recurring flashpoint in local news cycles across the country, and DC is no exception. But how we talk about these gatherings matters. In this episode, we dig into the language used by media outlets and local politicians to describe these moments — language that often frames young people as inherently threatening rather than as kids navigating boredom, lack of opportunity, or simply wanting to be with their peers.
That framing has real policy consequences. Do we treat youth gatherings as a public safety crisis to be policed, or as a symptom of deeper, addressable needs? Councilmember Parker makes the case for the latter, while acknowledging that many of his colleagues on the DC Council — and the Mayor — have leaned hard into the former.
A Different Approach: Meeting Youth Where They Are
Rather than defaulting to enforcement, Councilmember Parker has spent time building out long-term, community-based alternatives. A key piece of this work has been partnering with DC’s Department of Parks and Recreation to create constructive, enjoyable spaces for young people rooted in their own neighborhoods. According to Parker, these programs have already reached thousands of youth across the District — and, notably, coincided with a slowdown in the large, unplanned gatherings that have drawn so much attention.
It’s a straightforward premise: give young people somewhere good to go, and many of them will go there instead.
The Curfew Question
We also talk through DC’s juvenile curfew policies, which much of the Council and the Mayor’s office have supported despite social science research suggesting curfews are largely ineffective at reducing youth gatherings or youth-involved crime. Councilmember Parker points to something more counterintuitive still: rather than deterring gatherings, curfews may actually make them more appealing to teens looking for a thrill or a way to push back against authority.
This isn’t just Parker’s read on the research — it’s also what he heard directly from young people. He hosted a youth roundtable where teens were given the floor to propose their own solutions and explain, in their own words, why curfews can backfire. Their perspective is a central thread in this episode, and a reminder that the people most affected by a policy are often the ones best equipped to explain why it isn’t working.
Listen to the Full Episode
Whether you’re a parent, a policymaker, or just someone trying to make sense of the headlines, this conversation offers a grounded, evidence-informed look at an issue that too often gets reduced to a debate over more police versus less. Tune in to hear Councilmember Parker’s full case for investing in long-term solutions — and what DC’s youth themselves have to say about it.
Speaker: 00:00
Do you know where your kids are? As the holiday weekend begins, an 11 p.m. citywide youth curfew just went into effect across DC. City leaders are also enforcing temporary special curfew zones in four popular areas throughout the weekend. You can see them here. That includes the U Street Corridor, the Banneker Wreck Center, the Southwest Waterfront, and Navy Yard. Those enhanced curfews will run from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. through Memorial Day. This move follows weeks of large team gatherings, fights, and disruptions across the district.
Tracy Siska: 00:36
Welcome to the Chicago Justice Podcast. I’m your host, Tracy Siska. I’m also Executive Director of the Chicago Justice Project and adjunct professor in the Department of Justice, Law, Criminology, and Security at American University. Today we are focusing on my current hometown, the District of Columbia. The relic behind these gatherings is gross most of the time and usually racially coded and class coded, to be honest with you. And also is done in a way to support a law and order agenda, even though a lot of times the science proves that that agenda simply just doesn’t work. And remember, when the people pushing these agendas typically are always pushing agendas in a way that the law enforcement will point away from them. Always on the other, never on me. Don’t look at the things I’m doing. Should any of the youth that are committing any violence during any of these gar gatherings be held accountable? Yes, they should. Should they be investigated? Yes. Should they be arrested if it comes to that? Yes. Should some kind of accountability come as part of that? We can discuss what that should like? Absolutely. But painting all the youth and all these youth gatherings as violent, it isn’t all of them. It isn’t most. It isn’t over half. It’s a small percentage of them. Also pay attention how quickly politicians and regular citizens and the police are kind of trying to just give up all our rights. Give up the fundamental rights, right? Gathering in large numbers like that. That’s illegal. No. It isn’t. Gathering for the purpose of gathering. Regardless of what neighborhood it is, what community it’s in, what uh community area, if you’re in Chicago, other large cities, it doesn’t make a difference. Organizing a gathering and gathering is not illegal. Attending a gathering is not illegal unless you can prove, and there’s some evidence, that the sole purpose of the gathering is to commit violence or mayhem. Now people who use that law and order rhetoric around these gatherings are certainly saying that they’re all committing violence. It’s all about taking over and committing thuggery and violence, and it’s just creating mayhem. Hardly. We cannot, in America, we’re always under pressure to give away our fundamental rights in the um under the guise of security and safety, and just let the police do anything they want. We’ve covered this on this channel before. Look at flock cameras, right? Uh shot spotter. Now, um, you know, it’s always been for a long time curfews. DC is repeating that, even though all the science shows doesn’t really work. And the media, they’re useful idiots in this a lot of the times. A lot of the crime reporting, crime reporters, remember they’re used to be police reporters, now they’re crime reporters. A lot of those reporters cover the issue to get clicks, and to do that, you need to be hyperbolic. You need to exploit. And a lot of times the media is happy to just be exploited as long as you give them a quote or give them a visual that gives them clickbait, they’re all for it. So we’re gonna delve into these issues. We’re lucky to have as our guest today DC Councilmember Zachary Parker, who is just finishing his first term in the DC Council, representing the sixth ward. So let’s get to the discussion with Councilmember Parker, and I’ll be back after. DC Councilmember Zachary Parker, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right, so for the people that don’t know that are outside DC, you represent the fifth ward in the DC Council. Can you give my audience a little bit of a description of what you’re, you know, what you encompass in that ward there?
Councilmember Parker: 04:54
So ward five in DC uh encompasses much of northeast DC. So think of the uh northeastern quadrant of the city and communities like Trinidad, Brooklyn, Edgewood, North Michigan Park, Woodridge, Bloomingdale, Eckington, and the like.
Tracy Siska: 05:12
How um economically diverse is that? Because DC, like many cities, Chicago being one of them, we both know that, really sees huge economic swings. Yeah.
Councilmember Parker: 05:22
So I I say all the time, Ward 5 is a melting pot of the city as it has a little bit of everything. Um Ward 5 is a very diverse community of nearly 90,000 residents. And so we have some communities like Bloomingdale, where there are two million plus dollar homes, uh, and then other communities where uh, you know, they are in effect food deserts. And so I think it’s quite a range.
Tracy Siska: 05:48
Okay, so we’re here today to talk about um what I call and I try to refer to as like these youth gatherings. There are youth takeovers, there’s all kinds of derogatory terms around them. How, what language do you use to talk about them? And how do you define these when someone, when you’re talking about them, what are you talking about? Because I think people have different language when it comes to these things.
Councilmember Parker: 06:12
So, you know, uh the the language that has been used, I would say, uh referring to these gatherings as teen takeovers, and it’s essentially when large groups of young people are gathering by the hundreds usually in parts of the city. And this is a phenomenon that is happening across the country and cities, including Chicago, DC, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and many other places. Here in DC, we’ve had spirited debate around what do we do about these large gatherings that sometimes turn chaotic and violent, but oftentimes are just large gatherings of young people. And I’m of the mind that it is important that we address the root causes of why young people are gathering in large amounts, uh, and giving young people productive outlets to engage, leaning in on our Department of Parks and Recreation through their programming, especially their evening programming, making parts of the city more accessible for young people, uh, and making sure that they feel like they belong here in our city just like everybody else. Uh, I will say there are other factions in the city that would like to take a more carceral or punitive approach, uh, where there’s been a focus on designated curfews that would say, after a certain time, usually 8 p.m., young people can’t go to this neighborhood or that neighborhood. Um, and as you can imagine, that becomes tricky. While we don’t want uh nefarious behavior, uh, I believe we can address the patterns that we’ve seen, and we largely don’t see them anymore by addressing the root causes versus simply telling young people where they can’t go in the city.
Tracy Siska: 07:54
Right. And so you look at the media and the commentary in the media around these things, and it the rhetoric has it where it is. The people who like whoever’s behind organizing this, I’m sure it’s some youth. It’s always with nefarious intentions, it’s always trying to spread violence in mayhem. Is that really the case?
Councilmember Parker: 08:18
I mean, I don’t it’s hard to say because you don’t really know who’s organizing many of these events. Here in DC, what we have found is that flyers just pop up. There’s a flyer that says, meet up here. Um, and it’s not really clear who’s organizing them. And oftentimes, what we’ve seen is the vast majority of young people in these gatherings are peaceful and just hanging out with their friends. There have been times where these gatherings have turned violent or there have been fights or other things that have broken out. And I’m clear that that is unacceptable and we need to hold those perpetrators accountable. Uh, but again, I think we can do that without painting a broad brush and uh vilifying all of our young people.
Tracy Siska: 09:04
So part of the other rhetoric is the people that are behind the organizing are committing some kind of crime just by organizing people to gather, the youth to gather in a location. And I find that kind of rhetoric on a very slippery slope. We live in a city where some elements may be trying to outlaw protesting at all, but you’re getting a very slippery slope when you’re trying to just to limit the ability for people to gather the gathering and the organizing of the gathering, unless you’re right off from the beginning and you can prove their whole intent was to spread violence and they knew violence was going to happen and they were gonna start it and they were gonna perpetrate it. Just organizing the gathering of these people, or these kids just hearing about the gathering and showing up, they haven’t committed a crime. Just by being around there and being in this gathering or organizing a gathering of large groups of people, that isn’t a crime. And I think some of the rhetoric we hear from politicians, maybe from a little bit from the mayor, and and this is around the country for the urban areas that experience this, the rhetoric is getting kind of scary and un-American a little bit to me, because just getting together and organizing, I thought there was kind of protected things we could do.
Councilmember Parker: 10:25
I would agree that it’s unacceptable to paint all of our young people with a broad brush. And what’s also concerning here in DC is that uh we are an occupied city, uh, sort of speak, right now, where we have National Guard troops from other states and jurisdictions on our streets. Those National Guard troops are armed and they are being put in direct conflict with our young people as they are gathering. Um I also think there’s language that hasn’t been helpful, namely coming from the Trump administration and its surrogates who would speak in very demeaning ways about DC youth. And I would argue and imagine that they would say the same thing about youth across the country, which tend to be black and brown and younger, and there’s a perpetuation of fear that they are we should be afraid of our young people. When again, most of them are gathering, uh, obeying the law, wanting to hang out with their friends because they want access to the same amenities in the city as the rest of us. So we haven’t really had a dust up of a teen takeover uh recently here in DC, knock on wood. And I think that’s in large part because we’ve been focusing more on what young people can do versus simply telling them what they can’t do. We have been advertising more productive outlets, we’ve been sponsoring more late-night evening events through our Department of Parks and Recreation. And I think again, we need to lean more into what our young people can do versus simply telling them what they can’t do.
Tracy Siska: 12:03
Right. And the idea of like what they can’t do reminds me of stay in your neighborhood. Right? Back in the you know, the 40s and 50s, the 60s, the cops would pull over a person of color if they were in a quote unquote white neighborhood or quote unquote neighborhood they don’t belong in. And you can see I live in Navy Yard, it’s not entirely white, but it’s mostly white. It’s overwhelmingly white. I I have black neighbors, but overwhelmingly, the neighborhood’s white. And a lot of the youth that are coming here to gather and do things and hang up with their friends are kids of color. Uh, from what I’ve seen, mostly black in Navy Yard, but they don’t have the amenities and things to do that are in Navy Yard that I can walk to.
Councilmember Parker: 12:52
Yeah. In fact, I held a youth town hall, and that’s exactly what some of the young people said that folks are saying go home, but for all of our young people home, it’s not necessarily a safe or welcoming place. Uh, some others spoke about how they want to enjoy Navy Yard and the wharf just like everybody else. Uh, and then there was even some young people that said, you know, uh there’s a resentment that builds as the city says don’t go to these neighborhoods, often wealthier, wider communities like the wharf and and navy yard. Young people feel as though that is exactly what they want to do. And so I think there is a way that we can be responsible and constructive. That is where my focus has been. Let’s let’s double down on what young people can do, let’s provide them more productive outlets and move away from the carceral language, the demonizing language that we’ve heard from some, and work hand in hand with our young people.
Tracy Siska: 13:48
Right. And this idea that they’re bypassing all the things they have in their neighborhoods for them to do, they’re skipping them and leaving them to come to Navy Yard or other neighborhoods, the wharf or wherever else they’re doing it in DC to cause mayhem is simply untrue. They don’t have those amenities in, right?
Councilmember Parker: 14:11
They don’t I want to be clear that and under no circumstances am I excusing or saying it’s okay to be destructive or engage in violent behavior. But by and large, that’s not what we’re seeing. And I’m of the mind if young people break the law, they should be held accountable. But there is a way that you can still hold a young person accountable and not say all young people can’t, you know, go out after a certain time or can’t enjoy certain areas of the city. I think it’s restrictive and carceral and it’s a failed approach. National research uh studies uh repeatedly have shown that curfews are ineffective, but I think it’s part of a broader issue, both connected to social media, but how how our cities are failing our young people in many ways. We are sending young people to schools that are not meeting their needs. Uh we have our young people living in communities that are under-resourced, and as I mentioned in parts of Ward 5, that at times are food deserts. Uh, we don’t have basic amenities and resources available to them. And at the same time, we then uh decry the consequences of those actions. Um, and so, you know, I’m just focused on how do we drive solutions, how do we support and invest in our young people and give them more productive outlets so that they can live thriving uh lives.
Tracy Siska: 15:36
It’s not surprising. This is the same playbook. There’s never money for solutions, but there’s always money for more cops. More police, more cops, more arrests, more weapons.
Councilmember Parker: 15:48
There’s always money for that. On that note, I would invite people to interrogate the amount of money that we are spending to incarcerate our young people here in the district. Uh, as the chair of the council’s committee on youth affairs, I have oversight of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, which is our juvenile detention facility or juvenile jail, and we are spending millions and millions of dollars to detain young people. What is more alarming is that roughly 50 of those young people are coming right back into detention, which to me says not only are we preventing them from entering the system, uh, we are not doing a good enough job at rehabilitating them. And I think that starts with how we view our young people, how we talk about them, how we engage with them. And I’m very much of the mind that as we see the promise in our young people and want to invest in them, uh, we’re more likely to provide the supports that will prevent them from entering the criminal justice system than not. But simply saying uh we should implement curfews or arrest any young person, you know, at the drop of a hat doesn’t solve the problem. And it our our numbers and the data supports that.
Tracy Siska: 17:04
What were I know you voted against a curfew with a handful of other DC council members? What were what was the main argument by those who voted for it, other than the politics of saying to their communities, I voted for it and I’m getting tough. What was it other than that?
Councilmember Parker: 17:22
As with many things, it was uh trying to find a solution to a problem. And there is a real problem when you have hundreds of young people gathering at with those gatherings at times turning violent, you know. The problem is do you address the root causes or do you search for a band-aid approach? Do you look for the durable solutions or something that’s just gonna get you to the next, the next issue? There’s a framework of technical versus adaptive solutions. I’m very much of the adaptive framework that we need to address the root causes, why young people want to gather in Navy Yard in the first place. Why is it that certain young people are playing out their trauma in the way that they want to get into a big brawl there? And the technical solution is to simply say, oh, you can’t go there after eight o’clock. And what I respond with is I can show you that the curfews aren’t working by the mere fact that we have to keep establishing new curfews. And only when the city started investing in more durable solutions, providing more outlets for young people, extending programming for them to engage thoughtfully, productively, and safely, have we seen a decline in these youth curfews? So I think for me, it’s about how some of my colleagues view the problem and what is the best next step. I’m of the mind we need durable, long-term, lasting solutions. And sometimes that means taking a longer approach, even if that means taking some political heat in the media.
Tracy Siska: 18:59
So you held this uh youth roundtable to talk about this issue. What were their solutions? What did they say they needed to, I guess, to be a solution to this problem?
Councilmember Parker: 19:12
Yeah, our young people are brilliant and they gave very tangible ideas. One of them included more programming from our Department of Parks and Recreation, which we’ve been doing. And we’ve seen thousands of young people from all across the city attending these events, which further shows that it’s working. Uh, they wanted to have a voice in the deliberations that the council, our government, is having. Uh, and so I’m in the process of working with our young people now to establish a youth council where they can give advice and provide insight on issues relevant to young people. They wanted more access to jobs and to ensure their communities were safer and better supported. It’s all the things that we all want. I’m clear that we all want the same basic things out of life. Uh, and that’s what we heard from our young people. By and large, all of the young people that testified said youth curfews don’t work. They don’t like them. And in fact, they believe that those youth youth curfews instigated the gatherings and caused more young people to want to defy them and gather in large groups than help solve the problem.
Tracy Siska: 20:23
When I was in grad school at the University of Illinois, Chicago, one of my professors held a like a listening session between police and youth. And this cop got up and he was berating the youth about being on the corner. How dare they? And what are you doing? You’re gonna get hurt, and I’m gonna have to pick up your body, and I’m gonna have to go tell your mom you’re dead, and what are you doing it for? The corner’s safer than my house. And the big white cop sat down and was silent the rest of the time.
Councilmember Parker: 20:51
What an indictment of a statement that uh the corner would be safer than a young person’s house. And granted, that’s not all the responsibility of government, but certainly government has a role to play in providing safer, more productive outlets for our young people.
Tracy Siska: 21:09
But also understanding everyone’s not on that corner to do bad. There’s a variety of reasons why people are there. That’s addressing them as humans and engaging with them to find out why and to find out what’s going on, and what are the best ways we can keep you safe and engaging them? That, right, because that cop learned a lesson. He stayed late to talk to the professor, and he goes, Oh my god, what can I do? I can’t do anything about what’s going on in the home, right? And my professor’s like, Yeah, but now you have to take that understanding and view the kids that are out there differently. Yeah. Are some of them out there to do nefarious? Are they dealing? Are they out there to do harm? Sure. But vast majority aren’t, and you’re treating them all the same. And it was just like a wake up call for those cops that these are human beings and the Corner with complicated lives that are not easily painted with one big brush. And honestly, that’s what a curfew does. I’m sorry, I was young once. I’m 55 now. I’m old, but I was young once. My parents told me not to go there, not to go do that. You know what I did as soon as I got alone in time with my friends? I went over where I wasn’t wasn’t supposed to and did exactly what they told me not to do. It’s human nature. It’s human nature. Right. And for some reason, these adults that used to be youth are repeating the actions of their parents and thinking they’re going to work without realizing they’re just instigating those youth to defy them instead of engaging them. I’m really thrilled to hear that the district is making these investments in the programming. I’m thrilled that there’s thousands of youth engaging in those programs. I’m thrilled to hear you guys have this council because I think that’s the kind of innovative approach we need. You can only blame people for making bad decisions when they have choices. Right? My wife would teach kids from the Chicago Public Schools like financial planning. And a kid got up and said, you know, why would I say, well, when you’re, you know, when you’re 30 and you’re married, and the money that you made, it’ll be worth more. And he’s like, Are you kidding me? Marriage? 30? 30, I’ll be, you know, he’s a black youth from a poor neighborhood in Chicago. I’ll be dead or in prison. We don’t think about marriage. What an entire neighborhood. We have work for that. That’s it. That’s that’s a massive societal failure. That’s a societal failure. And so when you look at that youth and say you’re making bad decisions because you’ll never grow up to be this, your future, you’re sacrificing your future, they don’t believe they have one. And if you’re if your city is the culture is breeding youth that don’t think about having a future, that’s a that’s that’s a failure of the the city, right? Of the government, of all of us, that the youth are thinking that way. Because when you provide them the avenue to have that future, they’re gonna make different decisions. Not all of them, because some people make stupid decisions. Most of them will make good decisions going towards a future if you allow them to think they can have one and give them the support to have one. This is what giving that alternative and giving them a voice in things is gonna help, hopefully, create. Um because just building a curfew and having them engage more with the National Guard and armed police officers chasing them all over the place and locking them up, that’s not helping something. And I know there’s a study many years ago where it showed that once you put cuffs on a youth, just putting the cuffs on them dramatically increases the statistical likelihood that they will be system involved for the rest of their lives. That’s exactly right. And it’s not just the rest and you’re prosecuting them, it is just the act of putting the cuffs. There’s a correlation of that. And that’s mind-blowing. If that is the case, then we have to do everything we can in our programming and our society and the way the government works and our schools work to make sure we’re putting cuffs on as few kids as humanly possible, especially when they’re 12 and not thinking right. 1000%. It’s just um and I fear the language, the language coming out of Chicago around these gatherings is just so bad. And I always, it’s always infused with race and class because the kids, a lot of the kids that are coming, they’re coming from poor, underserved communities, that somehow people that are criticizing them think have all these solid gold businesses as all these places to entertain themselves and eat and drink like Navy Yard does. I invite people out of listening to this, come to Navy Yard on a Friday night, and then go parts of Southwest on a Friday night or the northeast sections of of some of the um some of the council members’ uh district or ward and see see what it’s like at 8:30 at night and see if you think what neighborhood you’d rather hang out with. 1000%. All right. Councilmember Parker, DC Councilmember Parker, thank you so much for taking the time. We’d really appreciate it. Absolutely. Keep up the good work on this issue. It’s really needed. Thank you. That was DC Councilmember Zachary Parker. Addressing root causes, providing alternatives, may actually be working in DC. Who would have thought? Getting youth involved in the decisions and the discussions also helps. Addressing disparities between communities for things to do safely, allowing them to gather and socialize in a safe way. In DC, they’re doing it constructively through the parks and recreation department. That’s great. But we’re still pushing back. DC just recently pushed more curfews. We have this classic American push that every social problem needs police. Only way to feel safe, throw the police at them. Which then just perpetuates all the disparities and makes sure five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, we’re in the same situation because they’re not looking for root causes. There’s never money to address root causes. Whether it’s in DC, LA, New York, Chicago, Houston, Miami, don’t make a difference. There’s never money to address root causes. There is always money, however, for more cops. More cops, more prosecutors, more judges, more incarceration, more prisons. Always money for that. We don’t care how much we spend, as long as it gives us this theater of safety and makes us feel safe, it’s worth it. The sad part is a lot of times, root causes, they’re cheaper. Right? How much money did it really cost the district to expand these programs to give youth across the city something to do in their neighborhoods? Has to be less than hiring a couple thousand more cops for the next 20 or 30 years to the force. Thanks for listening as always. Share with your friends and contacts. Also, go to our website and sign up for our weekly newsletter at chicagojustice.org, and you’ll receive more info about this podcast and all of our transparency efforts. I’ll be back with you next week.
