Don’t close more capital public spaces

Just hours after the inaugural festivities for President Joe Biden concluded Wednesday night, work crews started to remove the temporary barriers and fencing that closed off key areas of the nation’s capital. Washingtonians, who saw their daily routines disrupted but understood the need for the unprecedented security after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, should welcome the news. But they also should be wary because if the past is any guide, the events of Jan. 6 will be used to try to justify further permanent fortifications that will close off even more precious public spaces in the capital city.

Indeed, if Washingtonians have learned anything over the past 25 years, it’s that “temporary” security measures imposed during an emergency — such as the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 — have a way of becoming permanent. The city is increasingly dotted with bollards, concrete jersey barriers and higher and higher fences — the most recent being the one topped with razor wire to keep the public away from the U.S. Capitol. Legislation has been introduced that would “direct the Architect of the Capitol to design and install an appropriate fence around the perimeter of the United States Capitol including the East Front and the West Front.”

We are not naive. There are dangers today that didn’t exist when Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1791 designed a federal city to embody the openness of the country’s democracy. It would be folly for the nation’s capital not to have effective security measures. But the knee-jerk response is to close down public spaces. “The erosion of access” is how The New York Times characterized it; over the years it has meant Americans not being able to walk up the steps of the Washington Monument and being pushed farther and farther from a view of the White House. Protests over the summer and subsequent preparations for the inauguration closed off Lafayette Square and the pedestrian promenade (formerly Pennsylvania Avenue) in front of the White House, and there has been no word on when they will reopen. Biden should urge that it be done as soon as possible.

While the events of Jan. 6 were terrifying, the failures of security that need to be investigated and addressed had to do with a lack of planning and deployment as well as the disregard of intelligence foreshadowing the mob attack. “That [violence] could have been managed on Wednesday very effectively, but we shouldn’t penalize the public for poor management of the security challenge,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., on the Jan. 8 edition of WAMU’s “Politics Hour.”

Congress realized that if they didn’t return to their chambers on Jan. 6 to continue their constitutional duty, the mob would have won. So, too, it will prevail if the people’s house is walled off from the people.