Getting Through at the White House
July 8, 2005
I once went with a family to an automotive expo at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. As we were leaving, the SUV stuck in a line of exiting vehicles, the father was approached by a panhandler. The black man walked up to the window and asked quietly for some money. The father rolled up the window, and, a little embarrassed, mumbled to us something about this being the wrong place to ask for money. I understood, but also wondered where could possibly be the right place. The family lived up on the hill in Redlands.. an expensive home.. and it was not as if they held weekly open house for poor people.
I bring that up not to change anyone’s attitude to panhandlers, but just to point out that there is a wide gulf between the general populace and those who actually make decisions and exert influence. I thought of this anew as I walked around the White House. The place to protest something is Pennsylvania Avenue.. now closed to anything but foot traffic. Across the wide empty street, at the edge of Lafayette Park, were several ongoing protests.
The first was an odd little plastic shack with handmade boards proclaiming that the nation that lives by the bomb will die by the bomb and other alarmist slogans. An odd gap-toothed woman spoke incomprehensibly to passers-by. A peace vigil was going on, and it seemed that someone stayed there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. A note explained that the vigil had been ongoing for years, and the little woman looked none the better for wear.
A little ways up the sidewalk, toward the emaciated-looking statue of president Andrew Jackson, was a man walking around with a large placard covering his chest and back. This man and a nearby woman moved toward me as I passed, both holding out a little flier filled with text: “Fast to Stop Global Warming.” The idea was to fast for three days, sundown July 5 to sundown July 8, all in an effort to push for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on the part of the United States and for further steps to reduce damage to the environment.
That anti-war vigil, with its scary pictures of bomb damage, and gap-toothed spokeswoman, was a harebrained idea, but I appreciated the gentle man from New Jersey who out of simple concern for the environment was going three days without food. It may seem a little odd to walk around with a large placard, but in 100 years it is probably the rest of us without one who will look crazy.. willing to float down the easiest stream.
But who was being reached by either protest? It is hard to imagine Bush or Cheney looking out the window and deciding that maybe these people had a point.. or walking out to talk with them. Tourists like myself may be sympathetic, but we already know our opinion.. and we know that people like this do not matter. Every effort feels so small.. They are like that panhandler walking up to the rich car coming out of the parking lot and looking to speak their mind and get some measure of influence.. but this is not the right way.. “meet me in a proper place.. a legitimate place.” But that is exactly the point: there is no such place. It is getting harder to get through to anyone.
