Protesters on Memorial Circle against President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch there on Sept. 14. (Photo: Jonathan Capehart)
On the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge sits a large grassy circle that slings traffic back into Washington or up to Arlington National Cemetery. On most maps it isn’t even labeled. But it has a name — Memorial Circle —and it is where President Trump wants to erect another one of his vanity projects: a monstrous 250-foot arch called the United States Triumphal Arch and others have taken to calling the Arc de Trump. It would block the sight line from the Lincoln Memorial to the cemetery, not to mention overshadow the entrance to sacred land.
Usually, there is no one inside that grassy circle. But today, there were eight people with signs expressing their displeasure with the impending arch. I couldn’t resist a diversion from my morning walk to talk to them.
As I approached the group, I identified myself as an anchor at MS NOW and asked if I could ask them some questions. As excited as they were to see me, most of them weren’t too keen on talking or being identified. Except one: Ann Wright.
Clad in a tan baseball cap that read US Army Retired, the first thing Wright told me before even telling me her name was that she came to this spot all the way from Hawaii. Of course, I asked her to tell me more.
“My name is Ann Wright. I’m a retired Army colonel and former U.S. diplomat. I resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. I live in Hawaii and I was so fed up with hearing about the possibility of Arlington Cemetery being desecrated by this vanity arch by Trump that I flew here, made some banners,” she said, reading off the banner pictured below. “We don’t want that arch here or anywhere, but particularly right here where ‘Mr. Bone Spurs,’ who never served a day of his life in the military, is going to have it, right next to Arlington Cemetery.”
Ann Wright (left) and Art hold up sign protesting President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch on Memorial Circle on Sept. 14. (Photo: Jonathan Capehart)
Wright’s outrage is shared by other veterans. A group of Vietnam veterans has been in court since February trying to stop this arch, which would be taller than its inspiration, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. VoteVets, a Democratic-aligned group of veterans and military families, released a video last week urging opposition to the arch. “Entirely inappropriate and borders on sacrilege,” said Paul Eaton, a retired major general in the U.S. Army and a senior adviser to VoteVets. Gold Star mother Karen Meredith, whose son First Lieutenant Ken Ballard was killed in the Iraq War, adds, “We don’t need tourists overlooking funerals. I’m just appalled.”
Seeing and then talking with Wright and her compatriots — and hearing the honks of approval from passing drivers — I thought of the late Rep. John Lewis and his exhortation to get into “good trouble, necessary trouble.” Shortly after he passed away on July 17, 2020, a posthumous essay from Lewis to the nation was published in the New York Times. He recounted hearing Dr. Martin Luther King on an old radio and what King said.
“[King] said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act,” Lewis wrote.
Wright and the seven others are saying something and doing something. This morning was their first day of doing so. They will be out there every day this week from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and then 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.. That’s perfectly timed for maximizing eyeballs on the morning and evening commutes. For getting into “good trouble.”