Washington, D.C. is known for being the center of politics and power in the United States, but there is a sense of disassociation among the American people. It is a sense that Americans have lost control of their capital and perhaps even that it is hostile territory. This sense sometimes manifests in the city’s streets.
America continues to grapple with racial injustice and police brutality, which remains unaddressed by national leadership. With the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the relative balance of the Supreme Court is at risk. And always in the background of 2020 like a crackling static, the Covid-19 pandemic continues to kill more people in America than in any other country in the world despite a relatively low population density.
On the final day of summer 2020, the 200,000th American died from Covid-19. The next day, I decided to take a walk.
Since March, I have worked from home. I am very fortunate to be able to, so I have considered social isolation a responsibility and duty. On most days, the farthest I go from my apartment in the D.C. suburbs is around the block with my dog in tow. My wife and I have structured our lives as best as we can to help minimize the spread of the virus, to help prevent preventable deaths. We hadn’t dared to go into the city even when our conscience and desire to be decent people urged us to.
On Sept. 22, the Covid Memorial Project planted 20,000 American flags in the earth surrounding the Washington Monument, each flag standing for 10 Americans who had died from the virus. This memorial would expire at sunset on Sept. 23. I couldn’t miss it.
Getting into D.C. from the suburbs is a bit of a chore for a thirty-something, so it’s good to economize every trip. Going downtown to eat at a restaurant is a tough sell, but getting an early dinner at Le Diplomat and walking past the uplit monuments for a show at the Kennedy Center, now that’s a night on the town.
So it was in this spirit that I designed my walk through D.C. in memorial of all that 2020 has wrought. I would begin walking the length of Black Lives Matter Plaza, pass St. John’s Church, weave through the fencing at Lafayette Square, glare that the White House, pay my respects at the Covid Memorial, and finally traverse the length of the National Mall to view Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s body lying in repose at the Supreme Court of the United States.
When I saw the first Black Lives Matter Plaza sign, I was already feeling emotional. Something about the city choosing to close that portion of 16th street that leads directly to the White House struck me as an indictment that confirmed a sense of justice that the current national leadership had yet to acknowledge. As I scanned the plaza from end to end, I considered it an invitation. The city had blocked it to traffic, and even today, anyone can walk this stretch of protected road. President Trump has chosen not to.
Feeling like a tourist as I snapped pictures of spray-painted artwork, I wandered to the northern-most point of the plaza where my trail would begin. A police car with two officers rested at the blockade of 16th and K streets, securing the site as traffic rolled by with caution and perhaps respect. For the first time, though, I wondered if the police presence at such a place was welcome.
Beside the plaza, I stood for a moment, tapping the face of my phone as those in my generation are wont to do, and a man approached. He carried multiple dilapidated bags, one of them rustling plastic. He appeared tired, unkempt, and malnourished. On the streets of D.C., circumstances such as these are often not difficult to recognize.
He explained to me that he was down on his luck, that he was trying to find a job but couldn’t, that he had a prospect but that he was waiting for a call back. I asked him how I could help, and he said he could use some money. I apologized because I didn’t have any cash, and I offered him the granola bar I was carrying in my backpack in case I got hungry. He said he didn’t want food. I said we could use my phone to help him find support, and he said the shelter was closed and accused me of not really being willing to help him. He said, if I was willing, I would find an ATM. I felt his ire, and I understood it.
He ranted and moseyed on his way, probably intending to find another person who appeared to be a tourist in his city. Not for the first time, I presumed tourists tend to be more giving.
Sensing tension, another man stopped and looked at me. He was a big man. I am not a small person, but I make a living at a computer; this man looked as if he swung a hammer on a regular basis. His stature indicated he was there in case I needed help, as if I was the one who needed help. I shrugged and smiled behind my mask, hoping the man would see the relaxing tension in my eyes.
Then this man said something like, “someone should cleanse these streets,” gesturing toward the paint that effectively serves as a memorial to Black Americans. He said it loud enough so that, even with the city noise, the man who’d asked me for help stopped and turned. The big man pointed in the direction of the man who had asked me for help.
I told the big man it wasn’t right that he said that. Then the yelling started.
He engaged me in a delusional, conspiracy-laden tirade invoking George Soros and anarchists. He said anarchists had painted the street. I informed him the city’s Department of Public Works had painted the street and that the mayor had blocked it off to traffic and officially named it. He said, yes, they were anarchists.
He jabbed a thick finger at me and shot back that I should vote for Trump, and I wondered if he meant me as an individual or my apparent kind. I wondered about the assumptions he was making.
It was my generation that conceived Internet troll culture. For much of my life, I had dealt with such people through computer screens and copper wiring. When this man fired a presidential voting choice at me like an accusation, it became clear to me that his irrational tirade was intended not to persuade or engage me in any reasonable, good-faith debate. This man was a troll manifest in physical form, but the sinister nature of this encounter was that I don’t think he realized what he was doing. He was sincere, earnest. He meant every word.
I am not good in the heat of the moment. I am not particularly quick-witted, and I am afraid of confrontation. I am gullible, and I am exceedingly generous with the benefit of doubt. That is why, as this man spouted half-truths, conspiracy theories, and outright lies, I stood there like an idiot, questioning whether this was really happening at all.
I legitimately thought for a moment maybe this wasn’t real life.
Then, somewhere around his prescription that I needed to pray and his accusation that I didn’t have the right to get angry because, he felt, I had started our argument, something loosened within me. This is when I changed. This is when I realized I was not a tourist in my own city. This Internet-troll-of-a-man was right about me being angry, but the truth is hedidn’t do that. I had been angry for a long time, and I hadn’t called out a racist bigot in the street 20 yards from a police car because of my sense of justice. I had done that because I was angry about an injustice I’d witnessed, as relatively minor as it had been, and needed this man to know that what he’d said and done was wrong.
True to form of trolls, he wasn’t getting it, so I ended the encounter the same way I’ve combatted trolls on the Internet: I ignored him.
The police had remained in their vehicle but had watched it all unfold. The man who’d asked me for help had fled. The relevance of the setting clicked in my mind. Through the encounter, I had thought of the police presence as an asset to me. I was in the right, and I had done nothing wrong. The police would ensure the encounter wouldn’t escalate, and they would make sure this troll of a man didn’t harm me. Even if it ended with me in handcuffs, I knew I would be all right. This is America, after all.
The man who needed help hadn’t had the benefit of such faith.
After the man-troll left me alone, I continued my walk along Black Lives Matter Plaza. It is a solemn, respected place. Surrounding buildings contribute with displays of Black Lives Matter signage. Street art adorns walls and temporary wooden scaffolding of construction sites. When you reach the end of the plaza, St. John’s Church looms on your left, and a wall of signage added by citizens adorns the fencing erected around Lafayette Square, the place where, in June, people had gathered in protest for justice after George Floyd’s murder and then been forcefully and violently dispersed at the behest of President Trump so he could take some pictures with a Bible upside down in his hand.
At the entrance to the square, a man sat on the sidewalk, shaking a plastic 32-ounce McDonald’s cup with a handful of change in it. He was apparently blind in one eye, and I don’t think he could see well out of the other. This man I offered my granola bar, and he eagerly accepted it, held the packaging close to his face, and tore it open. I realized, despite my face mask and hand sanitizer, I had come into the city unprepared.
On the other side of Lafayette Square’s maze of fencing, I confronted the north side of the White House. I thought about how, over the years President Trump has been in office, the White House has become less accessible. As long as I’ve been alive, the grounds have been secured by a tall iron fence, but onlookers used to be able to walk right up to that fence and peer through the bars at the spouting fountain and marble columns. At some point, barriers made the sidewalk in front of that fence off limits. Then, police were added to tell passersby to keep their distance. Now, the barrier would not allow anyone to cross the street, keeping us contained to the statue of Lafayette’s shadow.
I wondered what it meant that those securing the president felt the need to increase security in such a manner. I wondered, if there were so many Americans who might do the man in that house harm, why didn’t that mean something? Why didn’t we as a people consider the sheer divisiveness of the man as a liability to democracy? Why did we continue to allow it to fuel our conflicts with each other? As I gazed at the house that belonged to the American people, the house I could not enter and was being pushed away from, the cost became apparent. Politics in America have become about winning and losing, not about serving our country and its people, and under this model, no matter who won, we all lost.
Forlorn, I circled around the block and headed for the Washington Monument, that obelisk reaching for the Washington skyline like a fist, an image at times used to symbolize victory and, other times, oppression. At the corner of 15th Street and Constitution Ave., I glimpsed the flags, all 20,000 of them. They laid out across the field like a blanket. As I crossed onto the National Mall proper and into National Park property, I thought these flags should have been planted in the White House’s front lawn, so Donald Trump would have to look at them, not that I had any confidence he would understand their meaning if he could see. Instead, they were planted on the north side of the Monument, on a gentle slope so you could see their full measure. Were it not for the trees lining Constitution Ave., he could have seen them if only he’d cared to look.
Each of these flags stood for 10 Americans, and if there had been one for every American who died because of Trump’s failure to lead, actions to impede states that are political rivals, and his lies and science denial, the flags would have surrounded Washington’s monument, and I can’t decide if they would have stood in support of the first founding father or to throttle him.
With the Washington Monument in backdrop, the flag installation was a powerful display, but not too distant, the WWII Memorial stood, which was apt considering as of this writing, Covid-19 had become the fourth most deadly event in American history, right behind the West’s campaign for freedom and democracy against Nazi fascism. In context, that loss and sacrifice has always made sense to us as a people. How will we reckon with Covid-19 and all of the losses attributable to Donald Trump?
To the east of these flags was the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. I wondered if the museum was taking note of all of this because it is well documented that Covid-19 has impacted Black and Hispanic Americans more than any other racial or ethnic identity.
As I kneeled there in the plush grass and generous sun, an otherwise perfect autumn day, a woman stepped into the flags to right one that had leaned over. I spotted two others that had fallen, and I followed the woman’s lead; I replanted those 20 Americans into their soil, the ground that belonged to them.
After, a group of men approached solemn and respectful. They each planted flags of their own. As they departed, I asked if they were associated with the project or adding flags to the field. I sensed unease, as if they wondered if I was accusing them of something. They said they were not associated with the project, that they were just visiting, and I realized their modesty. They were associated because we all were. Their flag planting to add to the field that would be removed that evening did not corrupt the memorial but augmented it because those flags would stand for the Americans that would die that very day. Their flags would be ready to accept and embrace the souls of our fellow Americans who otherwise would have missed the grievous milestone. It turned out, they were associated with the project. Indeed, they had performed a public service. I thanked them for it.
That was when I spotted the box of flags for the taking, flags available for anyone to plant. I took one not because I knew anyone who had died from Covid-19 but because I care anyway, because the ties that bind us as Americans and human beings should transcend personal, individual relations. They should be granted generously, and I have run out of ways to explain the idea that Americans need to work to be united and indivisible, that we cannot take it for granted.
So I planted my flag in the northern-most corner of the field, closest to the house we own and the tenant most individually responsible. I walked the perimeter of the display to the south side. With the Monument behind me, the mid-day sun cast its shadow north where, about 2,000 feet away, one foot for every 100 Americans who’d died from Covid-19, the president conducted his business, the dark tip of the spire pointing to a truck parked on the side of the road with a large billboard sign that read, Trump lied. People died.
Walking the length of the National Mall east toward the Capitol Building, the day grew hot. Sweat stippled my t-shirt, and my body grew tired. Whether the weariness was from the physical or emotional exertion, I didn’t know. It’s about a two-mile walk from the Washington Monument to Capitol Hill where the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) stands just east of the Capitol Building. On days when the weather is fair, you will encounter tourists seeking museums, lines of food trucks offering cheesesteaks and fried chicken in the cross streets, runners beating the pavement beneath the trees, dogs pulling leashes taut, and people starfished on blankets. There also is often scaffolding on the wide-open lawns for upcoming or recently concluded events. It seemed the pandemic had done little to change this.
When I made it up the hill and around the Capitol, I spotted the greatest gathering of people in the tightest quarters that I’d seen since March. It drove anxiety into me like a spike. Beside the SCOTUS, a line of hundreds of people snaked through East Capitol Street, waiting to be granted access to the front steps of the highest court in the land. Across First Street, which was blocked by iron barriers, a gathering of hundreds more paid their respects from afar, journalists among them, camera shutters snapping and iPhones with recording apps running.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s body lay inside a coffin at the top of the SCOTUS front steps beneath the west pediment upon which “equal justice under law” is inscribed. It struck me then why we disagree about the nature of justice. As a society, we are not concerned with justice as a moral element. We are concerned only with how the law defines it, and the law is a messy, amorphous thing that is undeniably corrupt with a measure of malcontent, and we certainly struggle with its equal application.
I had taken justice’s nature as inviolable and immutable for granted. Justice is not natural. We define it, and for a generation, Ruth Bader Ginsburg cast her fierce hands onto those scales. Not only did she fight for equal justice for those of differing genders and races, but she also brought reasonable balance to the highest court in the land, the one we should want to be balanced and non-partisan but which is increasingly becoming a political tool used by the ideologies in power.
No patriotic American should desire this. No American who loves our country should abide this.
We stand in a moment now in which how we define justice through the law is going to change. This new justice should not be born of deliberate imbalance dictated by a minority of Americans to scorn the majority of us, to wield our notion of justice as a weapon and cleave us in two, to divide these states of America, to win.
Later that day in Louisville, Ky., the grand jury in Breonna Taylor’s case would choose not to indict any of the three officers involved in her murder. One of the officers would be charged for shooting into Taylor’s neighbor’s house. Here in D.C. a crowd of protestors would assemble at the Department of Justice, which is just north of the SCOTUS. They would swarm west across the city, roughly carving a circle on a map of the D.C. 2020 trail, and they would stand in Black Lives Matter Plaza, demanding justice.
Miles away, secure in my D.C.-suburban apartment, I felt them, and I’m certain those protesting in Louisville felt them, too.