DC has a texture. It's the grit of a purpose-driven machine. It's a federal city, non-state, and its economy is built on institutions and governance. And that also comes with weight.
Lately, that weight has been increasingly visual. Ice raids. The protests every weekend. The national guard on the streets. Do you know how crazy it is to have a these guys merge in front of you on I-295? lol
But it's made me reflective on the regional pipeline of a tech federalist. It offers a clear bargain: your creativity in exchange for stability. Your talent weaponized, put toward building the very tools of control and surveillance that define our current moment. They said do all of that so in 2025 in less than 6 months you can watch entire federal departments and research funding get slashed overnight.
I mean like, the number of people in the DMV with world-class skills just sitting in limbo is wild. My little sister at UMD right now during all of this did 75 job applications, landed her first college internship as a data analyst, and in less than two months her whole department dissolved. I am really jaded in this reality to be quite fucking honest.
But in my own way I feel like live coding right now is serving me like a reclamation. Like yes, I can be a doomer and repeat how we're living through dystopia every day era but I've shifted into a period of just sharing the gospel of creative agency within your own technical skills as a way to keep your spirit uncrushed. I'm passionate about giving others the same slice of liberation.
It is risky, trying to tell someone "make open source" when you should get a security clearance. "Make art" when you should start building a family or buying a home...(lol well you weren't doing that anyways.)
So I did the thing. I've always really thought about this point of return. I've been scouting venues in the DMV area and found the MLK Library downtown, specifically, a room called The Labs. It's part makerspace, part design studio, all public trust. It felt like the right kind of container. Safe, open, neutral. They have an event system that lets you schedule things and allows people to feel safe with ID checks and consent forms, all that. A small but important layer of care between the internet and real life.
I run a small Discord server called LivecodeDMV (regional spin off of livecode nyc). It's barely a month old. Thirty-five people, most of them still lurking. I typed a message into the channel, no flyer: "anyone wanna try coding at the library this week?" I didn't expect much.
But someone actually replied. His name is Rhythmos (Alejandro). He's been writing music with code since 2020, putting out full albums built in Tidal Cycles. He's a comp sci student at George Mason.
We scheduled the meet and found a table near the 3D printers. And then, we just shared! He showed me his setup, how he uses "choke groups" to shape samples. I pulled up some of my own sketches in Sonic Pi, told him about the School for Poetic Computation, alternative school, more a sanctuary for technical artists. We talked about internet mutuals like DigitalSebs and the amazing live-code show we both attended last Halloween.
He shared an article by someone named Alex Mclean called "How to Start a Movement" which is really just about sharing stories and paying attention to the small scenes already happening. Rhythmos told me he usually goes to New York or Richmond for this kind of vibe but it never needed to just be those cities...I get it. I follow this artist, Lia Cole, who posted something similar not too long ago, about how you don't need a main stage to make something cool.
I don't know what this becomes. A town hall? A regular thing? Maybe it ends at this post and I move on? I don't know. But I know the table is there and people are fucking with it so far.