Anti-nuke Activists to Hold
Their Lines at Lafayette Park
The Washington Times
METROPOLITAN
Monday, November 9, 1992
Associated Press
Washington -- Concepcion Picciotto has camped outside the White House 24 hours a day every day for 12 years to protest nuclear arms. She wants it to be known straight off that, new
president or not, she's not going anywhere. "Changing the president won't do anything,' Ms. Picciotto said mournfully after the election, "It's like a chess game; you just move the pieces."
The small Spanish-born woman, her head covered in a thick black wig and a large babushka, spends her days directly across from the White House door, on the edge of Lafayette Park. President Bush has never crossed Pennsylvania Avenue to meet her, and her attitude toward presidents in general goes well beyond disappointment.
But she did go to the polls Tuesday -- to vote for Ross Perot.
"He did make a little more sense than the other ones. He was more sincere," said Ms. Picciotto, who would not give her age. "Besides, he's not a politician."
A few paces away, between two white signs with messages like "WANTED -- WISDOM AND HONESTY" sits Ellen Thomas, who voted
for "a man of my generation": Bill Clinton.
But Ms. Thomas has no plans to quit her 8 - year White House vigil.
"I told myself if God wanted me to, I'd stay here until there were no nuclear weapons left anywhere," said Ms. Thomas, 46,who wears her gray hair in pigtails held in place with red rubber bands, and sports a metal shell like a talisman around her neck.
"I'd rather not be here,'"she said, but I probably will be for a while."
Ms. Picciotto has no other home. Ms. Thomas is married to a man who works on nuclear-arms protests from a friend's basement, where she sometimes goes to shower and take a break.
The women see themselves more as teachers than protesters Their purpose, they said, is remind. Both hand out information to anyone who wants it. Ms. Picciotto has photocopied article in a variety of languages. Including Spanish, German, Japanese and English.
Ms. Thomas asks passers-by to sign a petition for Proposition One, a voter referendum she hopes one day to see on the ballot in every state. It calls for total nuclear disarmament in the United States and eventually, the complete conversion of all military forces and industries to peacetime pursuits.
She said Mr. Bush has been more receptive to disarmament since he started taking his thyroid medicine, but she feels "real hope." for, Mr. Clinton -- a man free of the terrible memories of
World War II.
Ms. Thomas said she danced and beat a drum in Lafayette Park until 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning to celebrate Mr. Clinton's election. But reality is returning along with the vigil routine.
Ms. Picciotto quietly swept the area around her belongings which include a makeshift board seat between two bright yellow signs emblazoned with large black and red letters.
"STAY THE COURSE AND THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU." reads one,which is plastered with gruesome post-Hiroshima photographs of dying people and skulls piled up in large mounds.
"WHITE HOUSE 24 HRS..A DAY ANTI-NUCLEAR PEACE; VIGIL SINCE 1981" reads the other, a bulletin board of sorts for press clippings, bumper stickers and letters she's written to Mikhail Gorbachev and others.
Mrs. Thomas, meanwhile, said she has a challenge for Bill and Hillary Clinton: "What I would hope is that, unlike his two predecessors, they will be free enough of fear to come out of that gate and come over here and talk to us."
1997 Inaugural | Park Closures | Pennsylvania Ave. Closure
Peace Park | Proposition One
Legal Overview | Regulations