Barack Obama’s nearest neighbor lives in a plastic hut directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Her name is Conchita Picciotto, and she has been living on the same patch of sidewalk and protesting against nuclear weapons night and day, winter and summer for more than 30 years.
Since her partner at the vigil William Thomas died in 2009, Conchita has carried on more or less alone, handing out flyers and patiently explaining the consequences of a nuclear holocaust to anyone who stops to listen.
Conchita Picciotto has been beaten up and arrested and almost frozen in sub-zero temperatures again and again since her vigil began August 1, 1981. It was 99° in the shade when I talked to her last week, and there wasn’t any shade on Pennsylvania Avenue.
She’s there right now.