Letter to President Clinton
<B>Letter to President Clinton</B>
November 25, 1996
Dear President Clinton,
In case you're looking for us, our vigil continues (at least for
the moment); the signs have been moved across the park while a
dozen large mobile homes rest on the grass of the southern half
of Lafayette Park for the construction crews' comfort. Police
patrol regularly to make sure no homeless people crawl under the
empty trailers in the icy dark of night. The bricks where office
workers and tourists usually walk are being torn up, and soon
huge ugly three-story bleachers will rise in the space where our
vigil normally stands, along the north shore of Pennsylvania
Avenue, so the press -- for one afternoon -- may stay warm and
dry and near bathrooms while President Clinton has his second
inaugural parade.
Personally, I think it unwise for you to have a second
inaugural parade. You might set a more modest example. Somehow
a second inauguration seems ostentatious. Extravagant.
Boastful.
Ronald Reagan tried to have a second inaugural parade but it was
so cold Inauguration Day 1985, the president had to call it off,
and the quarter-million-dollar bleachers went unused. We were
shivering and dancing in the northeast quadrant of the park,
giving credit to God for a good sense of humor.
Since there are private citizens who insist on paying for this
desecration of Lafayette Park every four years (via the Inaugural
Committee), I suppose we're stuck with the bleachers again this
year. So I'm writing you, President Clinton, asking you, as I
asked President Reagan in 1985, at least to leave the bleachers
up for the rest of the winter, for homeless people to get out of
the cold, wet, snowy, icy streets. I'm not asking for us -- we
will remain at our signs with the minimal amount of protection
necessary to survive. We are asking on behalf of the homeless
sleeping on the DC streets (in spite of police harassment),
still, after all these years.
Your friend,
Ellen Thomas
PEACE PARK ANTINUCLEAR VIGIL
PO Box 27217, Washington, DC 20038 USA
202-462-0757-- (voice) | 202-265-5389 -- (fax)
prop1@prop1.org -- (e-mail) | http://prop1.org --
(World-Wide-Web)
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