About a year or so ago I went to Washington,DC for the first time.  It was business, and as such I only had a few hours to myself, but I had a hotel room within easy walking distance of the major landmarks.  Mostly I wanted to see the Mall; the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Viet Nam Memorial, and the more recent World War II Memorial.  My walk to the mall took me past the White House (where I barely restrained my impulse to moon it, or rather its occupants).  There were some protesters there, braving the cold, sitting out with signs and whatnot. I didn’t take much notice of them at the time; when you go to Berkeley you develop a kind of already-seen-that kind of attitude to street protesters, especially the ones who are more long term.

It turns out that one of those protesters was a man named William Thomas who, I’m almost certain, I saw camped out on the sidewalk in front of the White House.  Two days ago, on the 26th, William Thomas died.  He had been sitting in front of the White House, protesting the more unsavory and arguably un-American policies for 27 years.

William Thomas, who protested outside the White House for 27 years.

It’s hard to know what to say in the face of something like that.  From the look of him he was just another street person, albeit a lot more dedicated than most.  Several eulogies have appeared on the internet since his passing. By all accounts he was not the harmless, burned-out crank I don’t doubt his detractors would portray him.  He was someone of considerable influence in the peace movement who was respected for his acumen, his knowledge, and devotion to a worthwhile cause.

That cause was to decry in particular the nuclear policies of the United States, something that I can certainly appreciate and even sympathize with despite the fact that I am not a pacifist per se, and my view of nuclear weapons is probably a bit more nuanced than William Thomas’ was.  But anyone willing to argue for a peaceful world, to turn their intellect and their passion to such a thing in a town like Washington during the Bush years must command our respect.

But I cannot think of him and his street-level activism without being reminded of the Hebrew prophets of Old Testament vintage.  Maybe it’s his beard.  To hear others tell it, his demeanor was quiet but resolute and willing to bark back when faced with fools.  His was not usually the raving, passion those earlier prophets tended to express; the kind of opposition to the status quo that would get them stoned–and not in a good way.

There’s an old song I grew up with that affirms that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.”  It also reminds us that “silence like a cancer grows”, and so it does.  William Thomas spent his life holding back that curtain of silence that is the comfort of the complacent or the corrupt. Society needs a conscience to argue the case of the better angels of our national consciousness.  It must never be assumed that we can’t be better, wiser, kinder, more humane and as a result, stronger than we are when we act out of fear, paranoia, or worse, cynicism.