For 32 years, she has kept up anti-nuclear vigil outside White House
TAMPA BAY TIMES
WASHINGTON -- Her voice cannot be heard more than a few feet, but Concepcion Picciotto, small, leather-skinned and sitting on a folding chair across from the White House, calls to the Japanese TV crew. The men look at her oddly and walk away.
A couple from Cuba draw close, pondering the wooden yellow signs Picciotto sits between, one covered in graphic black-and-white photos of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the words, “Stay the course and this will happen to you.”
“Is that sign right?” one of the tourists asks, “This has been here since 1981?”
For 32 years, Picciotto has kept up the longest-running political demonstration in the country. If you have traveled to the White House, you probably have noticed her, certainly the signs and the tarp that is her shelter.
Picciotto, 77, has been celebrated as a hero, ignored as a flake. She has endured arrests and taunts. She said she was once punched in the face by a Marine who didn’t like her message. A few years ago she was buried in a blizzard. “I dug out with my feet,” she said.
Five presidents have lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue during her stay; none has walked over to listen to her appeal for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
“Dear Mr. President Barack Obama,” Picciotto wrote in an email a year ago, introducing herself as “your closest neighbor.” She has voted for none of them, considering them war-mongers.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/16/3821588/sticking-with-a-cause.html#storylink=cpy
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