Law enforcement
officials on Sunday removed parts of the White House Peace Vigil,
which has sat just outside the White House for decades.
The vigil remained untouched Friday and Saturday,
through two unrelated closures of Lafayette Square.
About 6:30 a.m. Sunday, federal police and workers
from the National Park Service showed up with a pickup truck
and a dolly, according to Will Roosien, a 24-year-old
volunteer who was watching over the Peace Vigil at the time.
Roosien said the officers told him he had 30 minutes to remove
the blue tarp that he had been sheltering under in the
early-morning rain. Roosien refused.
When the officers began to tear down the structure,
Roosien said, he got in front of them and put his body between
them and the tarp.
“They threw me in cuffs,” Roosien said. He said
they later released him without arresting him. “That tarp is
what makes it possible for us to be there for 24 hours — when
it’s cold, when it’s raining, like last night. It protects the
protest.”
In a video obtained by The Washington Post,
officers shook out the tarp and pulled apart the pieces of
what had been holding it up: PVC pipes, pairs of crutches and
other ad hoc materials. The Park Service left a heap of
political placards, flags, protest literature and other items
lying on the wet brick ground.
“This is a disgrace, and you should all feel
ashamed,” shouted Roosien, who stood with his hands cuffed
behind his back. “Twenty-hours a day, seven days a week, for
44 years, someone has sat here, advocating for people around
the world who we don’t know. Advocating for human rights.
Advocating for peace.”
In the video, a federal officer can be seen trying
to calm Roosien. He said: “Once they’re done taking the
structure away, you can go right back down to sitting there,
with your umbrella and your sign. ... The vigil will still
remain because of you. You are the vigil.”
But Roosien was dismayed.
“No, no,” Roosien said. “That’s not true. You just
violated the First Amendment.”
Roosien, originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan,
had only moved to the District earlier this year to “protest
the rise of fascism in America.” Friday night was his
first-ever shift at the Peace Vigil.
“See, they didn’t try this when the old lion was
out here. They waited until I was gone,” Philipos
Melaku-Bello, 63, the vigil’s longest-serving steward, said
later. “They waited until there was just this young guy. Veal
for these vultures.”
By Sunday afternoon, Melaku-Bello and a team of
volunteers had reassembled the bones of the protest.
Melaku-Bello spent Sunday in his usual spot in his
wheelchair, now under a red umbrella, as tourists ambled by.
“Wow,” a woman in a pink sundress remarked. “It’s
still here.”
Over the past five decades, the vigil had been
removed only a handful of times — typically when the protest
was left unattended in violation of Park Service rules. The
protest was also forced to move from Lafayette Square in 2020
amid confrontations between racial justice demonstrators and
police following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
On Sunday, the White House confirmed the removal of
the vigil’s tarp to The Washington Post. In a statement, White
House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said: “President Trump is
committed to the public safety of DC residents and visitors,
as well as the beautification of our nation’s capital. This
tent was a hazard to those visiting the White House and the
surrounding areas.”
Melaku-Bello said he was greeted Sunday with
surprise and relief from longtime supporters and passersby,
who had heard the vigil was torn down. He was joined by a
reinforced group of activists, who came to Lafayette Square to
help him rebuild.
One woman introduced herself to Melaku-Bello as an
attorney and handed him her phone number. (“I just want you to
have this in case you need it,” she told him.)
“Hundreds of people have been by here today wishing
us well — we’ve got lawyers calling us, coming by. People are
just excited to see that we’re still here,” Melaku-Bello said.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the
protest’s materials had been swept up in the early-morning
clearing, though some activists said they seemed to be missing
several large “peace rocks,” painted by vigil keepers of years
past.
“This is an institution, and Trump hates
institutions,” John Zangas said Sunday as he sat under the
umbrella. Zangas said he has volunteered at the vigil for the
past 15 years.
“The truth is they’re going to be gone, and this
vigil is still going to be here. We’ve seen lots of presidents
come and go. But this is still here.”
The Peace Vigil began on June 3, 1981, when its
founder, William Thomas,
appeared outside the White House holding a placard that read
“Wanted: Wisdom and Honesty.” Over the years, those who have
maintained the vigil have been subject to harassment by police
and passersby, many said.
But no president has directly called for the
vigil’s removal, said Ellen Thomas, who married William Thomas
and helped keep the vigil going from 1984 to 2002.
“Nancy Reagan didn’t like us; she thought we were
unsightly, and she wanted us out of there,” Ellen Thomas said
in a phone interview Sunday. “But we just made sure there was
always somebody there, and we followed the park regulations
exactly.”
Ellen Thomas said that, during more hostile
administrations, vigil keepers would come up with creative
ways to maintain the protest while not stepping a toe out of
line with regard to Park Service rules. She was arrested once,
she said, because she was too slow to roll up a large piece of
clear plastic that the group had been using as a canopy during
a rainstorm.
“If there is going to be more harassment, it will
be in the middle of the night — that’s when it usually
happens, when the number of people there is down to just one
or two,” she said. “There aren’t very many people who are
willing to sit there all night long, unprotected from the
weather. That’s what they probably need the most right now:
help.”
The Peace Vigil has come
under increased scrutiny this year after Rep. Jeff Van
Drew (R-New Jersey) sent a letter to the Interior Department
calling the vigil “a 24/7 eyesore” and accusing the protesters
who maintain it of hijacking a national park. He demanded the
agency review its legality and, if appropriate, disband the
demonstration.
“Let me be clear: nothing in the Constitution
guarantees the right to erect permanent structures and occupy
public land day after day, year after year, in a manner that
creates public safety hazards, degrades the appearance of one
of our most iconic parks, and burdens both the District and
the National Park Service,” Van Drew wrote to Interior
Secretary Doug Burgum.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s
longtime nonvoting representative in the House, has had a long
relationship with the vigil keepers and repeatedly introduced
legislation supporting their call for the abolition of nuclear
weapons. She told The Post in a statement: “The First
Amendment protects peaceful protests, even when they’re seen
as unsightly or inconvenient, and even when they occur in
front of the White House. … As D.C.’s sole member of Congress,
I’m the best advocate for the District, and I wholeheartedly
support the Peace Vigil, its organizers and its message.”
Melaku-Bello said he left a message with the
delegate’s office Sunday morning, informing her of what
happened in the park.
Trump has targeted homeless
encampments and tents around the District as part of his
federal crackdown on D.C. over the past several weeks. The
White House has said 50 homeless encampments have been
cleared.
But the peace vigil is not a homeless encampment.
It’s a tentlike structure used by vigil keepers to house
literature and supplies — or take shelter from rain, snow or
winds. Melaku-Bello and other volunteers maintain homes
elsewhere.
Melaku-Bello, who is originally from California,
found his way to the Peace Vigil in 1981 while touring the
East Coast with his bandmates, performing at alternative
venues — including the original 9:30 Club in D.C. He moved to
the D.C. area in the 1990s and secured a job with the
Alexandria parks and recreation department. Melaku-Bello is
the last of the original activists still dedicated to
preserving this protest.
Thomas died of pulmonary disease on Jan. 23, 2009,
at the age of 61. His longtime collaborator Concepcion
Picciotto became the face of the vigil soon after. Seven years
later, Picciotto died after spending three decades of her life
outside the White House “to stop the world from being
destroyed.”
Natalie Allison contributed to this report.
