D.C. vigil keeper gives peace a chance, shift by shift

WASHINGTON -- It is 6:15 a.m. when Jay McGinley begins his work on the edge of Lafayette Park in a homemade tent made of white plastic. He is dressed, as always, in jeans and a windbreaker, protection against the often harsh weather while he holds his lonely vigil in front of the White House.

For a moment in January, it looked as though a 28-year nonstop peace protest across Pennsylvania Avenue might come to an end with the death of William Thomas, its activist co-founder.

Then McGinley, formerly of West Goshen, Pa., stepped in and took Thomas' place in a grueling rotation devised to outfox the U.S. Park Police, who would tear down the tent and remove the protest site if it ever went unmanned, even for a moment.

McGinley and his partner, Concepcion Picciotto, the vigil's other co-founder, cannot leave at the same time or sleep while on duty, lest they be cited for camping in the park, which is prohibited.

"You don't fight genocide part time," says McGinley, 58, who goes by the nom de guerre Start Loving, a moniker tattooed on his forehead.

A dozen years ago, McGinley was a well-paid vice president at a software firm with a degree from Ithaca College and an MBA from Syracuse University. But then the passion for leadership that had made him a corporate turnaround expert morphed into ever more extreme social activism after, he says, he realized that "making rich people richer and myself richer is not a joyful life for a human being." To spend a day with McGinley -- bearded, tattooed, impoverished, estranged from his family -- is to walk a fine line between what some call sainthood and others madness.

But no one -- not his ex-wife, the Secret Service agents who keep a close eye on him or the hundreds of tourists who chat with him week after week -- thinks Jay McGinley is crazy.

In the first morning hours, the park remains mostly empty. The only visitors are squirrels that steal a chocolate bar Picciotto left during her night shift. "They are total criminals," McGinley says with a laugh.

The first tourists arrive in front of the White House in midmorning, the sun shining bright. McGinley seems, to them, irresistibly intriguing, sitting in his tent, where he spends his time reading the newspaper or working on his laptop. He's a blogger and maintains his own YouTube channel (http://youtube.com/StartLoving1).

Indeed, his coherence and commitment have made him one of Washington's best-known street peace activists.

The tourists at Lafayette Park invariably see the tent and the posters warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons and the black-and-white photographs of Hiroshima and ask, as one young man puts it: "What's this sitting here about?"

"We are protesting here against nuclear weapons so that this doesn't happen to you guys," McGinley replies.

"Do you get paid?" asks another.

"No."

"So how do you survive?"

"Well, sometimes people make donations," McGinley explains. He, Picciotto and other peace activists share a house nine blocks from the White House, when not at the tent.

Thomas, who started the vigil with Picciotto in 1981, bought the house at a tax auction in 1998 with a $90,000 inheritance from his mother.

Some of the tourists start to drift away. Half remain and continue the conversation. McGinley begins to tell them about his concerns for the world, especially global warming. He asks them about the state or country they are from, and he tells them whether they have moved sufficiently toward green energy.

The children are eager to ask questions -- unafraid and genuinely interested.

After the group leaves, one of them, a 10-year-old, comes back and throws some of his pocket money into the donations cup next to the tent.

"This vigil might not make any difference at all, but it also might make a difference to reach out to all these kids," McGinley says. "It is sure worth a try." Life was not always about bladder control and nuclear weapons for McGinley.

He left his vice president's job at a software firm in suburban Philadelphia in 1997 and went back to graduate school to become a school counselor in impoverished Chester.

In 2001, he left his wife, Catherine, and their two sons and started a hunger strike to call attention to his students' deprivation.

The McGinleys divorced in 2003.

"Jay has always been a deep thinker and always been very philosophical," says his former wife, a teacher at Mary C. Howse Elementary School in West Chester. She refrains from expressing the anguish she related in past interviews and has no more contact with McGinley.

Neither do sons Steven, 28, and Chris, 24. Both declined to comment.

McGinley concedes that his estrangement from his family "hurts" and understands that his "journey makes many uncomfortable."

"But I've come to realize that this is how all major social improvement happens," he says. "It is never because it is reasonable, practical. It is because some folks simply do what is needed, no matter the personal cost. And sometimes they starve or die of exposure. 'I consider myself a soldier,' said Gandhi. Me, too."

Soon, Picciotto, small and elderly, arrives on her bike to spell McGinley.

The constant alternation, with not enough sleep, makes this vigil an exhausting commitment.

McGinley knows that two people doing this is very little. "But maybe it could be an ignition point for some people," McGinley says. "I would rather take this chance than do nothing."