Lafayette "Peace" Park

Proposition One - Current Events
The Current Situation in Peace Park

Since June 3, 1981, nine years to the day before tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, signs calling for "Wisdom and Honesty," justice, and nuclear disarmament have stood every day and night in front of the White House. To those who maintain perhaps the longest continuous vigil in human history, the signs represent the ancient right -- Thomas Jefferson may have termed it "the duty" -- of people in a democracy to voice opinions on issues of broad public concern. According to National Park Service figures the signs have been seen by over forty million people.

To the public, those who maintain the vigil broadcast a spectrum of perceptions.

The 1992 Berlitz Travel Guide for Washington, DC pictured one of the vigilers over the caption,

"It's the right of every American to set up a stand and make a point in Lafayette Park."

Those who share the materialistic values symbolized by the White House may view the vigil as "visual blight" (the Washington Times called the vigilers "pitiable lunatics" and the signs "gibberish" in the 1980s).

On the other extreme, those who assign a high value to life and view the policies of the White House as slightly "mad" think that the vigil reflects sanity, and some journalists have likened the vigilers to saints and prophets.

As the vigilers see it, they are neither saints nor lunatics. They wait for humanity to understand that we no longer have to live under an Orwellian philosophy which pursues peace through war; truth, justice, freedom and equality through money; and a "voodoo economic" system which places a higher premium on dollars than on life.

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