It took three days, but the Washington Post finally has a story about the woman arrested for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial on the Sage of Monticello’s birthday:
It is just before midnight at the Jefferson Memorial, and as the celebrants dance in honor of the founding father’s birthday, wind whips across the Tidal Basin and spotlights gleam off the towering bronze statue in the echoing sanctum of the monument.
Suddenly, in a video and audio recording of the event, a shadow looms and a voice commands: “You gotta go. Leave. You’re acting disorderly.”
“Why?” a voice asks. There is a commotion. Protest. Cursing. A woman, a former ambassador’s daughter, is handcuffed, arrested and taken away. And within moments, an event that participants say was a simple libertarian celebration of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday turns into a tense encounter between police and the public.
This was Saturday, and the face-off between the celebrants and the U.S. Park Police and private security guards has splashed across YouTube and the blogosphere. It has also prompted complaints about what some say is a trampling of the individual rights that Jefferson championed.
The author of the Declaration of Independence would have been appalled at the conduct of the police, the celebrants say.
Not so fast, says one noted Jefferson scholar: The country’s third president would more likely have been angered at the civic disobedience of the revelers, which he would have seen as a threat to orderly democracy.
(…)
Quite the contrary, says Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor of history at U-Va.
“What they’re referring to here is Jefferson’s endorsement of popular resistance to tyrannical authority,” he said yesterday. “What these folks were involved in was provoking authorities into having to enforce the law. Jefferson was very anal about obedience to the law.
“It trivializes Jefferson to suggest that in his name or spirit someone would ignore the will of the people as expressed in law,” Onuf said. “I don’t think he’d bother to turn over in his grave in this case.”
Are we talking about the same Thomas Jefferson here ? The same man who romanticized the French Revolution and once said that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” ?
And what law was violated here, based on the charges filed, this just came down to a pissed-off police officer:
The Park Police, for their part, say the group was violating a federal law that prohibits disturbances in the sanctuaries of hallowed memorials.
“They were dancing and just generally making a distraction, and the chamber is posted that you are to remain quiet so you don’t disturb other visitors,” said Sgt. Robert Lachance, a Park Police spokesman. “The chamber of the Jefferson Memorial is a restricted area for demonstrations or causing any kind of activity that could distract other visitors . . . [in order] to preserve a spirit of tranquility and reverence.”
(…)
The arrested woman was identified as Mary Oberwetter, 28, of the District, the daughter of James C. Oberwetter, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a longtime friend of the Bush family’s. She was charged with a misdemeanor count of interfering with agency functions and released.
No, I don’t think Jefferson would be pleased. Hamilton ? Maybe, but not Thomas Jefferson.
Update: Radley Balko notes that the Post article got the facts about Saturday night’s even completely wrong:
The article flat-out gets one fact wrong:
A security guard soon appears, insisting that the group leave.
Oberwetter was among those ushered out and was arrested after she kept returning to the chamber.
The video pretty clearly shows that that’s not the way it happened. Oberwetter did not keep coming back. She was arrested after asking the officer to explain why she had to leave.
You can watch the video and judge for yourself.
Radley also has a fairly good response to the “scholar” quoted above:
As for the quotes from the Jefferson scholar, well, far be it from me to argue with someone who’s spent his entire life studying Jefferson, but I think the guy’s a bit full of himself. Jefferson adamantly warned that liberty is lost incrementally. Government takes over gradually. Not to mention the fact that the dancers still weren’t actually breaking any laws. No one provoked the officers. The dance was meant to be a celebration of Jefferson. No one thought there would be a confrontation.
And, in a sane country, there would not have been one.
