6 hours ago

Police dismantle longstanding White House peace vigil on Trump’s orders

Law enforcement officials on Sunday dismantled a peace vigil that had stood in front of the White House for more than four decades, an action taken on orders issued by Donald Trump two days earlier.

The vigil targeted by the president was started in 1981 by William Thomas to promote nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflicts, and it is believed to be the longest continuous anti-war protest in the United States. For decades, volunteers would man the site, just in front of the White House gates in Lafayette Square, to prevent it from being taken down.

A correspondent for the conservative network Real America’s Voice, Brian Glenn, asked Trump about the vigil on Friday. “Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms – it’s kind of morphed into an anti-America sometimes, anti-Trump at many times,” he said. Trump replied that he didn’t know about the tent and then turned to staff to say: “Take it down, right now.”

Will Roosien, a 24-year-old who had been volunteering at the vigil on Sunday, told the Washington Post that officers arrived at 6.30am on Sunday and told him he had 30 minutes to remove a tarp under which he had been sheltering from the rain. He refused and told the Post he was detained while the officers dismantled the tent.

“This is a disgrace, and you should all feel ashamed,” Roosien told the officers, according to video obtained by the Post. “Twenty-four 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.”

The vigil’s longest-serving steward, 63-year-old Philipos Melaku-Bello, told the Post that volunteers had partially rebuilt the vigil on Sunday. Melaku-Bello told Law Dork, an independent news outlet, that he expected the battle over the vigil to wind up in court.

The dismantling comes as the Trump administration has taken over policing in Washington DC. In March, Trump also issued an executive order calling for the “beautification” of the US capital and ordered federal officials to remove encampments.

“The difference between an encampment and a vigil is that an encampment is where homeless people live,” Melaku-Bello said. “As you can see, I don’t have a bed. I have signs and it is covered by the [constitutional] right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”

The inquiry from Glenn came less than a month after the Republican congressman Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey wrote a letter to the Department of the Interior, which oversees US national parks, criticizing the vigil.

“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 capital] and the National Park Service,” he wrote in the letter. “This isn’t ‘free speech.’ This is a failure of enforcement.”