Resurrection City

We returned from Japan in 1966 to a Navy assignment in Washington, DC. Along with my first ship, a destroyer, and Naval Station, Mayport, Florida, it was easily my most enjoyable tour of duty, in part because of the work and in larger measure because my commanding officer was in every way the best man I ever worked for in my Navy years. We lived just outside the Beltway in Annandale, Virginia, across from a huge empty field, a long ago farm, where we used to walk. About this time of year, or maybe a bit earlier, we would hear geese honking and look up to see their V-forms in flight headed south. It was probably always the same flock of geese on an instinctive route. 

My office was in the Navy Annex just west of the Pentagon. Downtown across the Potomac River was Main Navy, a huge old building, long gone now. And my memory is no doubt faulty, but behind Main Navy and to the west was an enormous park. In 1968 the park became the center of a huge protest movement against poverty. 

Tents went up, shipping crates were fashioned into living accommodation, a city grew up, a tent city that became known as Resurrection City. In size, spread and duration, it may have been the mother of all protest movements. 

My recollection is that Resurrection City was there for so long that it seemed to become permanent, even with their own “city hall,” and that the people there were, if not welcomed, treated civilly and as Americans with both the constitutional right to peaceable protest and with a demonstrably righteous cause. 

Resurrection City comes to mind this morning as police move forcibly to evict Occupy protesters in Portland and elsewhere. 

TW+

Apologies for using someone else’s photographs. No offense intended.