District of Columbia
Lesbian activist assaulted with barstool at D.C. lounge
Police say victim’s claim of anti-gay hate crime under investigation
D.C. police say they are actively investigating an Aug. 3 incident in which lesbian activist and Ward 8 community leader Aiyi’nah Ford says she was hit three times in the head with the metal legs of a barstool swung by a man yelling anti-gay names at her.
A police report says the incident took place at the Player’s Lounge, a restaurant and bar at 2737 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., S.E., in the city’s Congress Heights neighborhood shortly before and after midnight on Aug. 3 and 4.
Ford, who witnesses say was covered in blood when she stepped outside the restaurant after other patrons intervened, was taken by ambulance to George Washington University Hospital for treatment of a head and scalp injury that required multiple stitches.
Ford and an employee at Player’s Lounge said the man who allegedly committed the assault is a regular customer at the restaurant but is known to people only by his nickname of Black. A police spokesperson said that as of Monday no arrest had been made in the case but that it remains under “active investigation” by a detective with the department’s Seventh District in Southeast.
A police report obtained by the Blade lists the incident as an assault with a dangerous weapon, but it does not classify the incident as a hate crime.
“There is no indication at this time that this incident was motivated by hate/bias,” said D.C. police spokesperson Alaina Gertz in response to a question by the Blade about the police report. “Should further interviews with the complainant reveal information that suggests that this should be a hate crime, the report can be amended with the new information,” Gertz said.
“Anyone who has knowledge of this incident should take no action but call police at 202-727-9099 or text your tip to the Department’s TEXT TIP LINE at 50411,” Gertz said in an email message. “The Metropolitan Police Department currently offers a reward of up to $10,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for a violent crime committed in the District of Columbia,” she said.
Ford told the Blade she believes she made it clear to the police officers who spoke with her at the scene of the incident that the man who assaulted her called her anti-gay names, including “dyke bitch.” In a video of herself talking about the incident that she posted on Facebook Ford refers to the assault against her as a “gay-bashing.”
The police report says officers arrived on the scene while Ford was being treated by paramedics with the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.
“Victim 1 stated that she was talking to a friend of hers at the location when another person who frequents the location interjected himself and began to curse at Victim 1,” the police reports states. “The verbal altercation escalated, and Victim 1 stated Suspect 1 began to assault her with a bar stool,” the police report continues. “Other patrons at the bar broke up the altercation and Suspect 1 fled,” according to the report.
It adds, “Witness 1 corroborated Victim 1’s story and stated that Suspect 1 frequents the area but doesn’t know his name, only his nickname.”
Ford told the Blade the incident began while she and three or four Player’s Lounge customers were engaged in a conversation about local community issues, including the city’s violence interruption program. Ford said that, among other things, she expressed her strongly held opinion that the violence interruption program was not working and was a “joke.”
It was around that time, she said, that the man who assaulted her approached the group and interjected himself into the conversation and indicated that he was interested in possibly becoming one of the violence interrupter program volunteers or participants. Ford said the man, who appeared to be over six feet tall, began referring to women as “bitches” and hurled other curse words.
“So, we’re all going like, what?” Ford said of her and the others’ reaction to the man’s comments. At that point, most of those she was speaking with left the restaurant because it was close to its 11 p.m. closing time.
“And I’m like, who are you talking to?” Ford said she recalls asking the man. According to Ford, he responded by repeatedly reciting the words “dyke bitch” in a hostile way.
“At that point I immediately knew he was talking to me because I’m the only openly lesbian person in that space that frequents there regularly and who was in that room,” Ford told the Blade.
She said she questioned the man’s motives, including whether he could become a violence interrupter, and the two began to argue back and forth until, according to Ford, he walked up to her and stood almost shoulder to shoulder next to her.
“He continues to call me all kinds of homophobic slurs,” Ford said. “He calls me all kinds of bitches and continues to encourage the bar staff to get me to shut up before he shoots me and whatever else he will do to bring my death,” Ford said.
“Before I know it, he has picked up this barstool and hit me in the head,” said Ford. “He takes a second barstool and proceeds to hit me again,” she said, adding that he hit her a third time in the head with one of the barstools, each time with the metal legs of the stool.
Ford said she has learned that the man who assaulted her has told people she spit on him, which he considered to be an assault by her against him. Ford called that allegation a lie, saying she absolutely did not spit on the man.
When the Blade contacted Player’s Lounge for comment, a man who answered the phone arranged for Teresa “Auntie” Smith, one of the longtime employees who was present at the time of the incident, to speak with the Blade. Smith said while she was getting ready to close the restaurant she saw and heard what sounded like a heated argument between Ford and the man known as Black, but she said she was busy doing something in another part of the room and did not see the assault take place.
But she said both Ford and Black, whom she has known for a long time from their role as regular customers, were each saying “very mean things” that she had not heard either of them say before. Among other things, she said she heard Ford say to Black that he engaged in “oral sex with other men.”
When asked about Smith’s claim that she raised the issue of oral sex with Black, Ford said, “Yes, after he called me a dyke bitch I most certainly did.” Ford added, “It sounds like she’s saying that I deserved to be hit with a barstool. Nothing a woman says to a man that is yelling and encroaching on her personal space justifies hitting her in the head three times with a weapon,” Ford said.
“We at Players had a very sad incident on Wednesday night,” the restaurant said in an Aug. 5 post on its Facebook page about the assault case. “We are mostly family here and we look out for each other. We are so sorry for what happened and hope she will be ok,” the message says. “We are still trying to sort out the details of what happened, but we know that no one here would support gay bashing or any type of violence.”
Phil Pannell, a longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights and Ward 8 community activist, said he has organized LGBTQ community events at Player’s Lounge, saying it has the reputation of being an LGBTQ-friendly establishment for many years. He told the Blade that he was surprised upon learning of the assault against Ford because he was unaware of that type of incident ever having occurred at Player’s Lounge.
Ford, among other things, serves as executive director of the Future Foundation, a Ward 8-based community organization that provides services to local teenagers and their families. The organization’s website says one of its programs, called LGBTQ+ You, has provided a “safe space” drop-in facility for LGBTQ youth living in the city’s east of the Anacostia River neighborhoods.
District of Columbia
D.C. police investigating threat of shooting at WorldPride festival
Police chief says weekend was ‘success without incident’
D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a June 9 press conference that police investigators are looking for a man who reportedly threatened to “shoot up” the WordPride festival on Sunday, June 8, inside the fence-enclosed festival grounds.
Smith, who joined D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser at the press conference to discuss public safety issues, said aside from the shooting threat, WorldPride events took place “without an incident’ and called WorldPride 2025 D.C. a success.
“I think last evening at the festival footprint there was an individual inside the festival who said there was an individual who was there and that they were going to shoot up the place in some terminology they used,” Smith told news media reporters.
“As you know, the event went off without incident,” she said. “We did have appropriate resources down there to address it. We did put out a photo of the individual – white male. That’s all we have right now. But our team is working very diligently to find out who that individual is.”
Smith added that D.C. police made 15 arrests during the WorldPride weekend with at least 23 violent crimes that occurred across the city but which she said were not related to WorldPride.
“There was a lot going on,” she said. “But I’m so grateful we were able to have a WorldPride 2025 in this city that was very successful.”
In response to reporters’ questions, Bowser said she regretted that an incident of violence took place in Dupont Circle Park shortly after she persuaded the U.S. Park Service to reverse its earlier decision to close Dupont Circle Park during WorldPride weekend.
The mayor was referring to an incident early Saturday evening, June 7, in which two juveniles were stabbed inside the park following a fight, according to D.C. police. Police said the injuries were nonfatal.
Bowser noted that she agreed with community activists and nearby residents that Dupont Circle Park, which has been associated with LGBTQ events for many years, should not be closed during WorldPride.
Park Service officials have said their reason for closing the park was that acts of vandalism and violence had occurred there during past LGBTQ Pride weekends, even though LGBTQ Pride organizers have said the vandalism and violent acts were not associated with Pride events.
“I think if I were standing here this morning and we hadn’t opened up the park you would be asking me were there any requests for not pushing hard to have a D.C. park opened that’s important to the LGBT community during Pride,” Bowser told reporters.
“So, any time that there is harm to someone, and our responsibility, we regard it as our number one responsibility to keep the city safe and keep from harm’s way, certainly I have some regrets,” she said. “But I know I was working very hard to balance what our community was calling for with our preparations. And that was the decision I made,” she said, referring to her call to reopen Dupont Circle Park.
Bowser also noted that the National Park Service would not likely have agreed to reverse its decision to reopen Dupont Circle Park if an event had not been planned to take place there over the WorldPride weekend.
She was referring to a Saturday, June 7, D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation “DISCO” party in Dupont Circle Park, which took place after the decision to reopen the park.
“Step Outside, Feel The Beat, And Shine With Pride,” a flyer announcing the event states.
District of Columbia
WorldPride wraps up after epic weekend of events
Historic LGBTQ celebration brings color, music, activism to nation’s capital
After more than two years of preparation, thousands of volunteers, countless LGBTQ community members and allies, queer celebrities, and hundreds of events across the District, WorldPride in Washington has come to a close.
“It has been an extremely powerful three weeks,” Ryan Bos, executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, told the Blade on Sunday at the International March on Washington for Freedom. “This weekend has been well above expectations in relation to the energy and the crowds.”
WorldPride celebrations were set to kick off on May 31 with Shakira’s “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour,” but following reports of stage issues, the Colombian superstar canceled her D.C. show — and her Boston stop the day prior.
The festivities got into full swing on June 4 with the 2025 Human Rights Conference. Held at the J.W. Marriott, the three-day gathering brought together more than 800 attendees, including Jessica Stern, Spanish Sen. Carla Antonelli, Peruvian Congresswoman Susel Paredes, and Mariann Edgar Budde of the Washington National Cathedral.
Following the conference, Capital Pride hosted the annual Capital Pride Honors and Gala, recognizing outstanding figures in LGBTQ advocacy. Honorees included Cathy Renna, Jerry St. Louis, Ernest Hopkins, Lamar Braithwaite, Rev. Dr. Donna Claycomb Sokol, Kriston Pumphrey, Gia Martinez, Kraig Williams, and SMYAL.
As the week went on, the tone shifted from formal to festive. Venues across the city filled with partygoers draped in glitter and rainbows, dancing and celebrating love in all forms. From the 17th Street Block Party and Full Bloom celebration to Kinetic’s dance events and the Pride on the Pier boat parade and fireworks (presented by the Washington Blade), nearly every corner of D.C. turned into a dancefloor. The Wharf was transformed into a Pride dance party on both Friday and Saturday nights for the Blade’s annual Pride on the Pier and culminated in the city’s only Pride fireworks display.
The annual Pride Parade was a standout. The nearly six-hour-long march drew hundreds of thousands to 14th Street, stretching toward the Capitol. A 1,000-foot rainbow flag led the way as parade grand marshals Renée Rapp and Laverne Cox waved to cheering crowds. Confetti, beads, condoms, and joy poured from elaborate floats.
The parade fed into the WorldPride Street Festival and Concert, which for the first time spanned two days. The festival featured hundreds of booths — from queer merch and leather vendors to nonprofit fundraisers — and drew thousands of LGBTQ attendees under sunny skies.
Evenings wrapped with free concerts headlined by LGBTQ talent and allies, including Cynthia Erivo and Doechii. Other crowd favorites included Khalid , David Archuleta, and Kristine W.
At the RFK Stadium grounds, the WorldPride Music Festival drew thousands for powerhouse performances by Troye Sivan, RuPaul, Kim Petras, and Renée Rapp. Under glowing rainbow lights, fans danced and sang through the night.
Despite security concerns, no major issues were reported, though a few minor incidents occurred.
One of the biggest pre-event concerns was safety for LGBTQ attendees amid rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and anti-trans policies from the Trump administration. Multiple countries issued travel warnings for trans and gender-nonconforming individuals visiting the U.S., but turnout — including trans folks and their allies — remained strong and visible throughout.
Another flashpoint was the temporary closure of Dupont Circle, a cornerstone of D.C.’s — and the nation’s — LGBTQ rights movement. The U.S. Park Service initially closed the park, citing the need to “secure the park, deter potential violence, reduce the risk of destructive acts and decrease the need for extensive law enforcement presence” — despite the MPD chief’s request to keep it open. Strong public backlash led to a reversal, and soon the park was full of rainbow-clad LGBTQ people celebrating freely.
On Saturday night following the parade, two juveniles were stabbed in Dupont Circle. However, MPD later confirmed the incident was unrelated to WorldPride celebrations.
The weekend ended with the International Rally and March on Washington for Freedom. Hundreds of LGBTQ people and allies gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to hear prominent activists speak on why Pride is still essential in 2025. Speakers called out rising hate and violence — and named Trump directly. As rain began to fall, the crowd only grew, marching from the Memorial to the Capitol, signs raised high, ending WorldPride as the first Pride began — as a protest.
District of Columbia
Two juveniles stabbed in Dupont Circle Park hours after U.S. Park Service reopens it
Early police reports don’t indicate connection to nearby WorldPride events
D.C. police are investigating a stabbing incident inside Dupont Circle Park early Saturday evening, June 7, in which two juvenile males were injured about 12 hours after U.S. Park Service workers removed a fence they installed closing the park.
Park Service officials said they initially decided to close Dupont Circle Park during the concluding weekend of WorldPride 2025 D.C. out of concern over possible destruction of property and violence. They cited incidents of vandalism and violent acts that occurred in the park during previous Capital Pride weekends over the past several years.
Capital Pride Alliance officials have said the destruction of property and reported acts of violence were not associated with any Pride events.
Capital Pride Alliance organizes most of D.C.’s annual LGBTQ Pride events and is the lead organizer of WorldPride 2025.
Around 5 a.m. on Saturday, June 7, Park Service workers began removing the fencing they had put up one day earlier to close Dupont Circle Park and reopened the park.
A short time later on Saturday the National Park Service and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser released a joint statement saying it was decided that the park should be reopened and the fence taken down following strong objections to the closing by nearby community leaders, including at least two gay Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners.
“We are pleased that the mayor’s office and the National Park Service could work together overnight on a solution that protects the historic features of this park while also ensuring the safety of all who enjoy it,” the statement says. “We want this weekend to be a safe and fun celebration in our nation’s capital – and one that includes one of the best parks and community spaces in our city, Dupont Circle,” it says.
In response to a request from the Washington Blade for information about the stabbing incident, a D.C. police spokesperson said a more detailed incident report had not yet been completed but released this statement:
“At 7:02 p.m. a stabbing occurred in Dupont Circle Park during a fight between groups of juveniles. Two juvenile males were transported to area hospitals conscious and breathing.”
The spokesperson, Public Affairs Specialist Freddie Talbert, included in his statement information about an unrelated shooting that occurred a short time later just outside Dupont Circle Park.
“At 7:52 p.m., after MPD officers cleared Dupont Circle Park, a shooting occurred in the 1300 block of 19th Street, N.W. immediately south of the circle. One adult male was transported conscious and breathing with a gunshot wound to the foot.”
No further information was provided, and Talbert didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up question from the Blade asking if police investigators knew whether the victims and perpetrators in the two incidents were in any way involved with WorldPride events.
At the time of the stabbing and shooting the WorldPride parade was nearing its end, with the last parade contingents traveling several blocks away from Dupont Circle on 14th Street from T Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. The first day of the two-day WorldPride Festival was also still taking place on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. from 9th Street to 3rd Street, N.W.
South African activists demand action to stop anti-LGBTQ violence
Gay pharmacist’s murder sparks outrage in Chile
D.C. police investigating threat of shooting at WorldPride festival
Capitalism, patriarchy, and neocolonialism are repackaging the scramble for Africa
WorldPride wraps up after epic weekend of events
Japan should end abusive detention conditions for transgender people
I interviewed Biden in late 2024 and he was attentive, engaged
Delaware Gov. Meyer announces LGBTQ commission
PHOTOS: Capital Pride Honors
