I was first arrested at the White House when I was 10 years old. My hair was pulled off my face by a blue bandana. I drew a penguin on my sign and wrote: “Reagan: Give Kids A Chance to Live.” My brother, a year younger, was arrested too, along with the activist and pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock. The arrest was a novel experience — the police officers were courtly. Jerry and I kept a quiet eye out for the elderly doctor’s pointy ears. It wasn’t until days later that we realized we hadn’t been arrested with Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk’s half Vulcan science officer.
Over the years, I’ve been arrested in front of the White House many times. As an adult, I’ve always felt a mixture of tension, excitement and righteousness — which is followed by brief terror, before being swept away amid the cheers and solidarity of supporters. Then the emotions switch to a compound of boredom and community-building in the holding areas or cells, as we wait for processing and release.
The beginning of that arrest process over these many years has always been the same: to stand still with a sign along the central stretch of the White House’s south sidewalk known as the “picture postcard zone.”
Not anymore. The picture postcard zone is now inaccessible. There is a permanent cordon that shortens the depth of the sidewalk by half. The White House fence is now protected by another fence and guarded by an armed officer behind an improvised bulletproof barrier. Pennsylvania Avenue, long a car-free promenade, is now often shut down and inaccessible to even the most appealing tourists.
This reordering of public space was announced by the Secret Service last April in response to a series of fence jumpings and security breaches that occurred during the final months of the Obama administration and the early days of Trump’s residency. A Secret Service plan for a nearly 12-foot fence surrounding the White House with “pencil point anti-climb fixtures” was approved and work will begin on this project sometime this year. In the meantime, it looks like the sidewalk is a no-go zone.
I took in all these changes from beneath a black hood on January 11. I was at the end of a single-file line of 40 or so friends dressed in orange jumpsuits. We were at the White House to mark the 16th year of Guantanamo’s existence as a prison and torture chamber for Muslim and Arab men deemed to be terrorists and held since the beginning of the War on Terror. Now there are just 41 men being held, but under President Trump, even those cleared for release have almost no hope of ever being free.
Through the rally and interfaith prayer service, we maintained a specter-like stillness and silence, representing men like Sharqawi Al Hajj, a Yemeni who is the same age as me and has been held at Guantanamo for 14 years. He has never been charged with a crime. He was subjected to sustained interrogation and torture, undertook protracted hunger strikes to protest his detention and is now weakened and ill.
Our plan after the rally was to process across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House sidewalk with our Shut Down Guantanamo banners and signs. But, met with cordons and barriers, we set up along the Lafayette Park curb to begin our ceremony of transformation.
As each Guantanamo name was read, the people dressed in orange were handed a cup bearing that name. I took the cup, pulled off my hood, drank the sweet tea and then set the cup down in front of our banner “Land of Liberty: 41 in Guantanamo, 2.3 million in U.S. prisons, 44,000 in immigration detention.” One after another we did this until all 41 lives, stories and humanities were represented. And then five of our group ducked under the police tape and tried to take our message across the street in front of the White House. They didn’t get 20 steps before they were intercepted and placed under arrest.
Brian Terrell, an activist with Voices for Creative Nonviolence, has been arrested in front of the White House countless times since the Carter administration and was arrested again on January 11. In a recent Common Dreams article describing his arrest, he noted that the sidewalk is cut in half. “This public forum,” he bemoaned, “a place of protest and advocacy for more than a century, the place where the vote for women and benefits for veterans were won, has been strangled to the point where no dissent is tolerated there.”
There is a great picture of Grace Paley, Ralph DiGia and other members of the War Resisters League holding a banner on the White House lawn emblazoned with “No Nuclear Weapons! No Nuclear Power! USA or USSR.” It was 1978 and while their message needs little updating, their simple action would be essentially impossible these 40 years later. In the name of security, space for unfurling banners, holding signs and hearing speakers is too constricting. And it is not just in Washington, D.C.
A Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on freedom of assembly toured the United States during the summer of 2016 and concluded that “people have good reason to be angry and frustrated at the moment … and it is at times like these when robust promotion of assembly and association rights are needed most. These rights give people a peaceful avenue to speak out, engage in dialogue with their fellow citizens and authorities, air their grievances and hopefully settle them.” In most places it is not an overt curtailment of free speech but an effort to control, corral, extract permits and fees, the compounding of regulations and ordinances, that all results in more private space and less public space.
However, not all cities are going this route. Perhaps unsurprisingly, San Francisco is redesigning one of its central squares as place to gather, rally, organize and strike out from. Harvey Milk Plaza, named for the civil rights activist who became the first openly gay elected official in the United States, sits right on top of public transportation. The new design for the plaza — approved and slated to be built by 2020 — is an elevated, universally-accessible amphitheater and plaza that architects hope will support “a wide spectrum and scale of activity. An afternoon picnic with a friend or a small activist’s meetup on a Saturday or even a starting point for thousands of people to march down Market Street; the plaza welcomes everyone.” Sounds great, doesn’t it? Did I mention the design includes thousands of LED lights? Sounds like we need it yesterday.
There is a lot for us to do in this Trumpian time. Against the backdrop of his administration’s sweeping and systemic affront to us all, the narrowing of public, physical, political space might not seem like a big deal. But it is. I have my own attachment to the White House as the site of my first arrest, but it is more than that. Tyrants take away space.
I have always thought of that strip of sidewalk in front of the White House as “America’s front porch.” In one hour, you can talk to a world of tourists, see a world of issues expressed on banners of varying sophistication and art, and hear a cacophony of voices calling out for justice. Do a quick Google search of demonstrations at the White House to get a sense of the span of political issues and voices and faces that converge on that small bit of our shared topography to draw attention to their causes: Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline, No Deportation of Immigrants, Stop the Wars — alongside groups taking aim at everything from circumcision to the cruelty of circuses.
There is a lot for us to do, and unless we have public space — unless we push back against all the ways that politicians at all levels try to privatize, monetize or securitize space — we can’t do the work of building a different kind of society and a different kind of world.
This is a very perceptive piece by Frida. Tyrants do indeed take away space in various ways, from land grabs for “development” to reducing public space for protest. That is why nonviolent activists need to be ever more creative.
Here is a good example from the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong.
https://www.facebook.com/pg/NVCW.GS/posts/?ref=page_internal
Thanks so much for this, Sam. I will read up on the umbrella movement.
Here’s a good start, Frida.
http://oclp.hk/index.php?route=occupy%2Feng_detail&eng_id=28
Thank you for this great piece. it is so timely.
May I offer that the person who was the first to march to the wite house was Miss Alice Paul. (see Lucy Barber on Marches in Washington).
and the first openly gay person elected to office is Elaine Noble.
I tell you this as I know this information will find a home in your heart.
Zoe Nicholson
Zoe@missalicepaul.com
http://issalicepaul.com
Thanks, Frida, for your important message and all the great photos! Thanks for your continuing participation in Witness Against Torture. I loved seeing you at age 10 next to Ched and your father. Phil continues to challenge and inspire us, and now you continue that too!
Frida, you are one of my heroes–today and forever! Along with my grandmother (and her sisters)–your mother, and my mother, sister, wife, daughter–and sooo many other women! You folks will probably pave the way to PEACE–yet–along with the “Veterans For Peace” group, and others! Norma and I had only 2 little children when I acted with your Dad, Phil, in “The Baltimore Four” 10-27-1967 along with Tom and Dave. Those were relatively lonely days, before “The Catonsville Nine” and so many other acts that followed. Liz and you have certainly carried the PEACE “ball” ongoing. Don’t give up! Your “pen” is MIGHTIER than any of the violent “swords”! We LOVE you! Please pray for health–for my Norma, and our Philip and Mary! God bless you–and your witness!
And Woody Guthrie wrote a song about protesters at the White House, “Why Do You Stand There in the Rain?”. I gather Roosevelt asked that, but I can’t remember if he actually asked the protesters directly, or if it was a comment to a newspaper. I’ve never come across the song as a Woody recording, but someone sang it at one of the two memorial concerts that followed Woody’s death, it’s on the recording that was released.
In the early eighties, there was a peace camp on Parliament Hill here in Canada, and eventually it came down, “too unsightly”, and a law prohibiting such continuous actions.
I think people got carried away with the idea of “peace camp” which certainly was useful in non-urban settings where you needed a place to live. As the camp came down I pointed out in a letter that the protest could be as effective without the camping, just organize a daily vigil, finding places for people to stay, “Like Jonah House is doing in Washington”. I’d seen the regular ad in “Win” calling for participants, complete with billeting offered.
Michael
Who was on the White House lawn in that historical War Resisters League photo? I only recognize Grace Paley, Ralph DiGia, and (the tall guy) Ed Hedemann. Is that Igal Roodenko on one side of Ed, and playwright Karen Malpede on the other? And was it Karl Bissinger who took the photo? Any info on this would be greatly appreciated!
Why are people so scared to truly protest? So what they block you off and arrest you for crossing “tape”. It’s a public building and as such, We The People have a right to protest there. If the American people would wake up and all join together for change, there would be change. The US Constitution gives us the right to take over the government and make changes, but people are bullied to the point where they are scared.. The few great Presidents in history all tried to make changes by getting rid of the foreign banks that print and distribute our money (Federal Reserve), which is owned by a group of elite that aren’t even American. We need to rise up… None of these protests phase the Government anymore, especially the White House…. But if we brought loud speakers and started protesting in full might, they would literally be forced to hear us, and if we start talking about the individuals, which is our right, it will strike nerves, and will eventually lead to the government violating the constitution or change. But seriously if 200 Million people all signed a petition and protested for change, we have that right to make change… We don’t have to fear the Government, there’s tons of wealthy individuals outside of the “power elite that control our country” that would help us over throw this Government. Basically FORCE them to hear your voice, don’t let them threaten you with free room and board at jail, because if they violate your constitutional rights for protesting proactively, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and we can bankrupt and build a better government. One that doesn’t rely on foreign banks to fund us.