Concepcion is known — with William Thomas, who died a few years ago — for leading what is apparently the longest protest in U.S. history: Against nuclear weapons in Lafayette Park, in
front of the White House. She died last month.
As WTOP —
the local news station noted today: "
Picciotto's nuke vigil became a permanent fixture across from the White House for five consecutive presidents, including President Barack Obama, but not one of the presidents ever spoke to her."
Tom Hastings, with trembling hands holding the microphone, sobbed "I built nuclear weapons for 23 years" and then that Concepcion "was so unselfish" — as she literally died to the end for peace, with failing health, virtually homeless, continuing the vigil. She was almost like a protester who
immolates themselves, but in slow motion.
At the memorial service, the speakers included former CIA man Ray McGovern who noted the
Washington Post's apparent proclivity for questioning Concepcion's sanity, and asked who was the mad one here given the
Post's apparent view that her desire to prevent nuclear war was at best quaint. Her lawyer, who spoke first and long, did some of the same, but seemed at one point to frame the nuclear threat stemming from the doctrine of MAD, mutually assured destruction, as a relic of the Cold War. He almost echoed a patronizing tone that one might hear from the
Post, referring to his arguments with her, barely disguising an eyeroll.
Comment: Notice where this mall is: an illegal Israeli settlement on Palestinian land. Back in the 1st century, when the Roman Empire occupied Judea, there was a group of Jews that came to be known as the sicarii (from the Latin word for dagger). These Jewish freedom fighters and resisters of the Roman occupation would conceal daggers in their clothes, mingle in a crowd, then kill their enemies with impunity. Karma?