The View They Don't Want You to See
The Reflecting Pool is hidden behind fencing. The stories we tell this week won't be.
I arrived in Washington yesterday and set out for what I hoped would be a relaxing jog along the National Mall. Nothing prepared me for what I found. It is one thing to read about the changes taking place in our nation’s capital and another thing entirely to witness them for yourself.
The Mall is closed off from roughly 12th Street nearly all the way to the Capitol. What remains of the Great American Fair, which looked nothing like a fair and was not remotely great, still stands in all of its shoddiness. National Guardsmen patrol the grounds.
Banners bearing Trump’s face hang from federal office buildings, and you cannot escape them. Of everything I saw on that run, this is what unsettled me most.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is not simply gated off. You cannot see through the fence line at all, and on one side you cannot even run the path that leads straight to the memorial. I can only assume the president would prefer that we not see the 250-foot gash at the bottom of the pool. Or is it a 350-foot gash?
Little is visible of the construction site at what was once the East Wing of the White House. The grounds are entirely closed, including Lafayette Park. The whole city feels like one enormous fence.
I tried to imagine what Lincoln might be thinking as I jogged up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Let me be clear. This city is not under construction. It is being dismantled. None of this had to happen, and anyone paying attention could have predicted exactly this outcome.
Tomorrow Republican Congressman Tim Burchett will hold a subcommittee hearing on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which has recently been in the news. A member of Senator Richard Blumenthal’s staff kindly invited me to sit in after I mentioned that I would be in town.
I am grateful for the invitation, but I did not come to Washington to watch hearings. I came to work with teachers from around the country.
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Right now I am angry, and I will not pretend otherwise. But I have learned over many years that there is no better way to recharge my batteries and recover my sense of hope than by spending time with teachers.
These are people who show up for their students every single day, who believe that an honest engagement with the past still matters, and who refuse to let anyone tell them which stories are safe to share.
So that is what I will do this week. Every site we visit, every story I share, and every question I field will be offered in the spirit of a giant FU to this president and his administration.
But it will also be offered in the spirit of something far more durable than anger.
These teachers will return to their classrooms in the fall and do what they have always done. They will teach. Their students will learn to ask hard questions of the past and of the present. No fence on the National Mall can stop that.
That is where my hope lives and this week I intend to draw on it.
Good luck. Try to keep your sanity. My sister came back after spending a week in Trump’s Washington in June and she is still disturbed.
Thank you for this. As someone who lived in Washington during the mid- and late sixties, I can hardly imagine, and I haven't read a description of the city quite as bleak as this. Teachers, especially public school teachers, are on the guardrails, so your time is well spent.