Several hours had passed on a recent Saturday before a Charles Allen supporter walked by a table of Ward 6 residents hoping to recall the D.C. councilmember and called them “stupid racists.”

It had been an otherwise quiet morning at Eastern Market. One woman muttered, “Go home,” while another stopped and politely said, “I don’t agree.”

But the group, whose members want to oust Allen over policies they say fueled the city’s rising crime, collected more than 80 signatures that day from a range of Capitol Hill denizens, including an independent who tends to vote for Democrats, a Republican National Committee staffer and plenty of true-blue liberals, some of whom had voted for Allen in the past.

“We’re making good trouble,” one of the organizers, Mary Masters, joked when a curious onlooker asked what they were doing.

“Good” in this case is a subjective term, and many in the neighborhood think the effort to boot Allen, who’s been on the D.C. Council since 2015, is just plain trouble.

“I’ve seen pictures of these gatherings and the rooms look overwhelmingly white, which obviously is not representative of D.C.’s demographics,” said Tré Easton, a senior Senate Democratic aide who donated to one of two campaigns opposing recall.

“I would never dismiss people concerned with carjackings or gun violence out of hand,” Easton said. “But I think this is probably the most vibes-based waste of time that D.C. has seen in a while. You cannot lay the complicated issues around public safety, around crime, at the feet of one particular member of the council.”

Like many things in the nation’s capital, this local fight is not entirely local. It has drawn national attention as it divides a very politically connected and largely Democratic ward. And it has fed partisan narratives in Congress, as Republicans describe a nightmarish city run by soft-on-crime liberals.

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to risk my life coming up here to serve the people of North Carolina and serve the country and get shot doing it,” GOP Rep. Greg Murphy said at a House hearing last week, adding he worried about his wife’s safety when she was walking their dog. “We’re allowing a city council to let havoc be wreaked in this town because they don’t like law enforcement.

“It’s time for the adults to come back in the room. … It’s interesting. D.C. wants statehood, and this is the type of legislative body that they demonstrate themselves to be,” he said.

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