Advocate NL 7/6/26

That is the scenario Roswell Encina found himself in over the weekend in our nation's capital.

Hello folks, Audience Editor Edgar Ramirez here, back in your inbox after the Fourth of July weekend.

On Saturday, Encina was on his way from Washington, D.C., to meet friends for a Fourth of July party in Maryland when the train car changed. At either Eastern Market or Potomac Avenue, he saw them: men in masks, hats, and sunglasses, waiting to board.

“I think I froze a little bit,” Encina told The Advocate's Christopher Wiggins in an interview. “At first, I’m like thinking, oh my, who are these folks?”

They were members of Patriot Front, the white nationalist group that marched through Washington, D.C., on Saturday as the capital marked the 250th anniversary of American independence. Hundreds of masked members moved through the city near the U.S. Capitol and Union Station before boarding Metro trains and exiting at New Carrollton, a D.C. suburb in Maryland.

Encina -- a gay Filipino American who leads an institution devoted to the history of the U.S. Capitol -- was one of the riders caught inside that tableau. In a Getty Images photograph by Finn Gomez that spread widely online, Encina sits on the train as masked members of the white supremacist group crowd around him. He tells Wiggins that the moment was frightening because it was both sudden and familiar. America has been here before, he said, even if the uniforms change.

“It made me realize that we do have to work harder, maybe even extra harder now,” he said. “History doesn’t get erased; it gets documented, it gets preserved, but most importantly, it’s shared and taught.”

Read the full interview here and stay safe, folks. We'll be back in your inbox tomorrow.

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