For a few short hours, a familiar sight was missing from Lafayette Park. The White House Peace Vigil was temporarily dismantled by Park Police after the activist attending it abandoned it last night.
The Peace Vigil has stared at the White House for 32 years, possibly the longest-running peace vigil in history. All these years, through broiling heat and winter cold, Concepcion Picciotto, a co-founder of the vigil, has sat in front of a tent flanked by huge yellow signs, handing out flyers and talking to tourists about nuclear nonproliferation.
According to a statement from Peace House, home to Picciotto and the vigil’s support team, police took down the tent and signs when it was left unattended at about 2 a.m. “due to an individual’s negligence.” It turns out that it was more than negligence. After “making a scene,” the activist told police he was walking away from the vigil.
Activists have feared that if the Peace Vigil’s tent and signs were ever removed, Park Police would take the opportunity to bar it from returning and its decades-long run would be over. But Park Police gave permission to reinstate the vigil, and activists retrieved the tent and signs from the Anacostia station and returned the vigil to its well-worn spot.
The Peace Vigil was grandfathered in when a court decision no longer allowed permanent protests at that location. Under current statute someone must occupy the vigil, otherwise Park Police would consider it abandoned property, which seems to have been the case last night.
There have been a few instances when police insisted on its temporary removal, for example, during Inauguration proceedings last January.
William Thomas founded the vigil in 1981 to promote the Proposition One Campaign, “a grassroots movement for abolition of nuclear weapons and the conversion of nuclear and other arms industries to provide for human and environmental needs.”
