Mickey Z

Cool Observer

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Sunday, December 26, 2004

DC Activist on the Ledge for Homeless

The following Washington Post article was sent to me by Tom Wheeler, editor of Alternative Press Review (http://www.altpr.org)

I met Jamie Loughner, the subject of the article, at the Arlington event on Oct. 16...and I post this in solidarity with her passion and dedication:

A Protester’s Precarious But Firm Stand
Activist Goes Out on a Ledge For New Homeless Shelter
By David Montgomery
Friday, December 24, 2004

She lies curled up, fetal, vulnerable: like a homeless person hugging the marble of a grand doorway on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Except her doorway is a ledge 50 feet in the air.

The ledge, three or four feet wide, is part of the old Beaux-Arts facade at the rear of the Wilson Building, the District’s city hall. That this facade is now enclosed in a modern, soaring atrium after a recent renovation only makes this week’s unfolding spectacle that much more strange. Context has been wrenched. Outside is inside, powerlessness seizes power.

This is Jamie, hospitalized after a 2001 hunger strike.