[Fourth and final part of my reporting from Take Back the Capitol]
Take Back the Captol closed out its week of actions today with a rousing dinner celebration and inspirational live performance from the African-American femaie a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.
But today's action was of a markedly different tenor than the big public/media splashes of Tuesday and Wednesday. The air was cold and crisp, but for the first time the sky was clear and blue. The media was still here, but no traffic got disrupted (except briefly when we crossed the street); we stayed away from congested commercial areas, didn't descend on Congress en masse (although small delegations paid visits to the home and office of House Speaker John Boehner, and the Miami delegation stopped by Florida Senator Marco Rubio; all were denied an audience); and instead of civil disobedience and arrests, when the Capitol Police asked us to get off the Capitol steps or clear a walkway, we complied quickly and peaceably.
Tuesday and Wednesday were for public consumption; today was for ourselves.
For two days we've split into teams and delegations and contingents, or simply scattered along the length of a long march. Today we pretty much hung together, still gathered around our colored team banners (blue, green, brown, etc.), but now as a mass of some 2,000 people, a blocks-long delegation walking unhurriedly from our People's Camp to Capitol Hill; there we congregated for an interfaith prayer vigil, the day's main program event.
Holding aloft white carnations that organizers handed out as we entered the grassy Upper Senate Park beside the upper house's office buildings, we heard from and about the unemployed in this country. Taking care of the unemployed was the political focus of the day. It was a group of unemployed who got turned away at Boehner's office.
Speakers of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith all called upon Congress to extend the unemployment benefits set to expire at year's end. "We stand as people of ethics and conscience, regardless of our religious heritage," said one, for all of them.
"Jobless benefits mean the difference between slipping and falling completely," said the Jewish speaker (sorry, I didn't catch names). Quoting Scripture: "If your brother falls destitute and his hand falls beside you, you shall help him."
"The struggle for justice," said the Muslim speaker, "cannot be stripped from faith. Faith must stand with the unemployed. We stand with you."
It was the Franciscan priest, however, who really wowed the crowd. "The Franciscan speaking who got arrested on K Street yesterday is amazing," someone tweeted on the spot. "Keeping this non-believer cheering in support!"
"When I stood with you yesterday on K Street," the Franciscan said, "I was just practicing my faith and following the example of Jesus. I was showing my faith by taking a stand for the poor and marginalized. Every time Jesus healed on the Sabbath, that was civil disobedience." Got this non-believer cheering in support too.
A moment of silence
"Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!" has been one of this week's marching refrains. Another was the call-and-response: "Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!"
But as we left the vigil and headed across the street to the Capitol, we fell almost eerily silent (I think the Capitol Police told us no chanting) and simply raised our fists. We paused to throw our carnations onto the Capitol steps and then moved on -- because the cops told us to -- while they crunched the flowers beneath their boots with obvious deliberation even though they acted like, oh, we couldn't help it, the flowers were in our way.
We moved on and got noisy again as we approached the Longworth office building, where Boehner works. There we actually sat for awhile, chanting, again in call-and-response: "One! We're unemployed! Two! We are united! Three! Tell the Speaker we're not leaving!"
In truth, we left after about 10-15 minutes, though not before someone inside the building raised his forearm between a window and the blinds to give us an anonymous fuck-you fist. What defiance! What courage!
The beginning of the ... beginning
At that point we headed back to our People's Camp, still chanting, and then things began to wind down. At a wrap-up assembly inside the 99% Tent, participants shared their stories of why they'd come to take back the Capitol and what this week had meant to them.
As I listened, a common theme emerged that I'd first heard up on Capitol Hill, at the vigil, our sermon on the mount.
People are taking Take Back the Capitol back home. For all the excitement and activity, it's not these three days of office visits and traffic jams that Congress and lobbyists need to fear; it's what we're going to do next week and the week after that and after that.
People from all over the country -- union members and students and occupiers and the unemployed, in Maine and Miami and Chicago and Boise and Minneapolis and Houston (to name just a few of those I've met here) -- are going home really inspired.
During the afternoon sharing, one woman read a poem she'd written about the experience, of which I managed to capture the final couplet: "Life is not about how many times you fall./It's about who's left standing, victorious and tall."
Our week of actions has ended; the real action is just beginning.
[Follow Take Back the Capitol on Twitter #99inDC]