Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Protester’s warning about the existence of nuclear weapons lives on

January 28, 2016 at 5:13 p.m. EST

Concepcion Picciotto’s anti-nuclear-weapons vigil stationed along Pennsylvania Avenue on the edge of Lafayette Square Park on Jan. 26. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

Regarding the Jan. 26 Metro article "Woman held vigil outside White House for decades":

Concepcion Picciotto may indeed have engaged in “the longest-running act of political protest in U.S. history,” but her outpost most decidedly was not an “anti-nuclear-proliferation vigil.” That suggests that her primary concern was the spread of nuclear weapons. No. It was the existence of nuclear weapons and their possession by anyone — including the country that invented them. In her quite extensive display of photographs and materials, surely the most striking was the large sign that said, simply, “Live by the bomb, die by the bomb.”

Yet despite President Obama's declaration less than three months after taking office that he would "seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," his administration plans to spend $1 trillion in the next three decades to modernize the U.S. nuclear triad.

Ms. Picciotto was a great American patriot. She is gone, but her warning endures.

Tad Daley, Washington