The PROGRESSIVE, APRIL 1983
O WASHINGTON -- Arthur Jones
William Thomas at
his White House post: 'I polarize people, and these days more
people are agreeing with me.' (Caption under photo)
Lunch at the White House
Lunch at the White House, noon to l P.M. Campbell's beef
broth and Golden Delicious apples. I introduced myself to the
man next to me-William Thomas. who spends more time at the White
House than President Reagan does. He is there almost twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week.
I offered Thomas some of my soup, which he accepted. and
a Golden Delicious. which he declined. This was lunch at the White
House. not in the White House. Thomas and I were seated on the
Pennsylvania Avenue wall. leaning against the railings. The wind
whipped across the White House lawn.
William Thomas has been sitting outside the White House
for about twenty months now. And for the last six or seven he
has been accompanied TV huge hand-painted posters-WELCOME TO THE
MAD HOUSE: MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION and IF A GENOCIDAL WEAPON
IS A PEACEMAKER THEN ADOLF HITLER WAS A SAINT.
The local Moonie paper, The Washington Times, has editorialized
that Congress should rid the White House of such "visual
pollution''-a strange stance for an organization that makes its
money by sending its acolytes to litter airports with fatuous
books.
Thomas doesn't just have posters; he has a plywood living
box and a plywood "tent''-both covered with slogans. The
tent'' carries tributes to his late friend. White House wall sharer.
and fellow poster maker. Norman Mayer. who was killed by police
after threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.
Thomas's own tale is no less bizarre than Mayer's. A self-declared
stateless person, he arrived on Pennsylvania Avenue from a New
Mexico jewelry-maker's stall by way of jails In Egypt, Israel,
and Britain.
It was in London three years ago that Thomas threw away
his U.S. passport and other identification papers and declared
himself stateless. His sole remaining document is a baptismal
certificate issued July 13. 1979, by the Life Tabernacle United
Pentecostal Church, Battersea Park Road, London.
From his living box and "tent.'' Thomas can extract
not only the certificate. but smudgy photocopies of his essays,
such as ' Ultimate Decision'' and ' The Parable of the Two Slaves''
(the United States and the Soviet Union). as well as Mayer's "Ten
Laws of Reality', and 'Prelude to the World Wipe-Out for the Intellectually
Honest- Mail One to a Russian. Time Is Short.''
It was because Mayer finally couldn't do what Thomas does-take
some satisfaction from talking to those who stop and sending them
away with copies of the essays and tracts-that Mayer went to the
Monument to make people listen. Thomas. by contrast, has been
on the White House beat long enough, he says, to sense that people's
attitudes toward the nuclear threat are changing. "I polarize
people,'' Thomas told me over lunch. "and these days fewer
people are attacking me and more agreeing with me.''
"Norman,'' he said. "was frustrated. People were
not listening.''
Thomas. too. has had his share of frustrations.
Some years ago he was making jewelry. and it occurred to
him that money was the root of all evil, yet money was necessary
to live, so it was necessary to live with evil. "That was
a conclusion I didn't like," says Thomas.
He decided to set off and see the world' seeking an answer
to his dilemma. He went to North Africa. and walked from Casablanca
to Cairo. "1 saw suffering. It was due to the economic selfishness
of the United States and Western Europe. and secondly to the Soviet
Union and the Warsaw Pact countries, '' he says.
As Thomas recounted it during our luncheon, he kept getting
into trouble. Middle Eastern countries were determined to deport
him. The Egyptians for example. wanted him gone. but would not
let him walk to Israel. He started off anyway and was thrown into
jail for trespassing on a restricted military zone.
That was on the first day of President Carter's Camp David
talks, says Thomas. who gleaned that information from an English-language
Egyptian newspaper possessed by one of his Palestinian cellmates.
Thomas revels in the irony: Anwar Sadat, "on this lawn behind
us,'' telling Carter Jerusalem should be open lo everyone - -
on the very day the Egyptians wouldn't let me walk to Israel.''
Because of Camp David. Thomas. as an American was treated
well by the Egyptians, but he observed the ill-treatment the Palestinian
prisoners received and decided that global oppression stems in
part from nations unnecessarily defending borders and the private
property within them.
When the Egyptians released Thomas. he walked across the
Sinai to Israel. where he was arrested for illegal entry. And
so it went until, in 1979, he landed in England.
"Every thing seemed to come together in England,"
says Thomas. He would become a stateless person, like his Palestinian
cellmates. He would oppose the arms that were used to defend borders.
Nuclear weapons, he concluded, existed mainly because national
boundaries existed: Get rid of the one and you get rid of the
other.
But he couldn't get himself declared stateless. And he
refused deportation to the United States.
The consul at the U.S. embassy in London would not provide
a document that certified Thomas as a stateless person who had
renounced his citizenship. Thomas said he would remain on U.S.
soil -- the American embassy -- -until his status was put in writing.
The consul called the U.S. Marines; the Marines handed Thomas
over to the British police.
British immigration charged Thomas with overstaying his
visa, and he was sentenced to three months in prison. This time.
the British said they would deport him to the country that last
issued him a travel document -- the United States. Three policemen
put him on a British Airways plane for New York When they left
the aircraft. so did Thomas. through a service door.
Life, laws. and the British police eventually caught up
with him. He was jailed again, for refusing to tell the police
how he had reentered Britain when they'd stuck him on a plane
for New York. The next time out. two British bobbies accompanied
him to New York. But. once at John F. Kennedy Airport, Thomas
refused to leave the aircraft.
The British police had no jurisdiction. The airport security
force was called. Thomas recalls, "The airport security men
said. It's a nice country, you'll like it here We've got Disneyland
and everything.'''
When Thomas said he would not get off the aircraft, they
said. "We'll get you the fuck off,'' and dragged him off
to immigration. As an old hand at entering and leaving countries.
Thomas refused to answer any questions. So the guards just took
him through the gates. stuck him on the street. and said. "You're
free, go where you want.''
At the Soviet embassy in Washington. an official agreed
to listen to William Thomas's complaints against world powers
as peacekeepers. Thomas spent a half hour at the embassy' and
even offered to work for peace in the Soviet Union.
"I don't think we could use you there.'' the Soviet
official told him. That answer did not satisfy Thomas, who insisted
that he would remain in the embassy until he received permission
to go to the Soviet Union. The official said Thomas would be arrested
for trespassing: Thomas replied he wasn't trespassing, he had
been invited.
It took two hours to remove him from the embassy. One of
the arresting Secret Service agents said Thomas was crazy: the
other. according to Thomas. said. "No. he's the only sane
one here ''
In the District of Columbia Jail Thomas was not, as he
had thought, without friends. Two nights earlier he had slept
outside on a heating grate. Someone from the Community for Creative
NonViolence (CCNV) had invited Thomas to stay instead. at a CCNV
shelter. The next night. Thomas did. CCNV arranged for Thomas's
release. and eventually charges were dropped because Soviet embassy
officials would not appear In court.
Around June, 1981 Thomas began sitting on the wall at the
White House. Then he went up a tree in Lafayette Park on a hunger
strike. He hung up a hammock and hung down a sign: WANTED WISDOM
AND HONESTY. That was at noon. The park police told him he could
not hang a sign more five feet off the ground in that area. Thomas
said that was nonsense.
At 2 A.M. twenty, police cars, two fire trucks, and a cherry
picker attended the dislodging. Thomas was charged with offenses
ranging from damaging the tree to camping. Eventually, the charges
were dropped.
Thomas was building his plywood "tent'' the day Norman
Mayer was shot. "Norman bought the paint.'' Attending the
leaflets that day was another regular, Thomas's colleague Concepcion.
She said the White House guards came over and laughed at her when
they told her Mayer was dead. The White House guards regularly
harass her and Thomas, she said, and every now and then the park
police arrest them -- -as they had the day before Mayer's death
The signs get confiscated.
Thomas flips through the transcripts of the court cases
in which he has been accused of "camping'' where it's forbidden.
He contends he isn't "living" in front of the White
House, just demonstrating. However, each night he drags his box
to the front of the Executive Office Building next door and sleeps
there. Just to keep the peace.
After an hour or so, I thanked Thomas for an agreeable
lunch and walked back to my office past a sign that proclaimed:
GOD BLESS JELLY BEANS AND I H-BOMBS.
And beef broth and William Thomas
The PROGRESSIVE pg. 15