With mandatory social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders in effect throughout the region, and given the grueling demands of their jobs as the deadly coronavirus continues to spread, it would have been nearly impossible to assemble 1,000 health-care workers outside Congress this week.
Instead, volunteers put up 1,000 signs to stand on the lawn in their absence.
Activists who are used to relying on people power to amplify messages and picket lawmakers have been forced to use alternative protest tactics amid the pandemic.
Half a dozen volunteers with liberal activist group MoveOn pressed lawn signs into the grass outside the Capitol as the sun peaked over the Statue of Freedom.
On each sign was a message.
Some, bearing the blue Star of Life seen on the uniforms of doctors, first responders and emergency medical technicians, reiterated a hashtag that has made the rounds on social media for weeks, accompanying posts from desperate front-line workers who say they are running out of necessary protective equipment: #GetUsPPE.
Others showed photos of medical workers in scrubs and hair nets and baseball caps. Some wore face shields and plastic visors. Others donned gloves.
One barefaced doctor in a white lab coat held up a hand-drawn sign. “Trump,” it said. “Where’s my mask?”
Health-care providers in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and rehabilitation centers have for weeks begged for more PPE to protect themselves and their vulnerable patients.
States and hospitals have been running out of supplies and struggling to find more. The national stockpile is nearly out of N95 respirator masks, face shields, gowns and other critical equipment, the Department of Health and Human Services announced last week.
“Health-care workers are on the front lines of this crisis, and they’re risking their lives to save ours every day, and our government, from the very top of this administration on down, has not used the full force of what they have with the Defense Production Act to ensure [workers] have the PPE they need and deserve,” said Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn. “We wanted to show that these are real people who are demanding that this government protect them.”
Unlike protests that have erupted from Michigan to Ohio to Virginia demanding that states flout social distancing practices and reopen the economy immediately, organizers with MoveOn said they wanted to adhere to health guidelines that instruct people not to gather in large groups.
“Normally, we’d want everyone down here,” said MoveOn volunteer Robby Diesu, 32, as he looked out over the rows of signs. “We wanted to find a way to show the breadth of this problem without putting anyone in harm’s way.”
A large white sign propped at the back of the display announced in bold letters: “Social distancing in effect. Please do not congregate.”
The volunteers who put up the signs live in the same house and have been quarantining under the same roof for weeks. Still, as they worked, several wore masks over their face to protect passersby — even though there were few.
A handful of joggers stopped to take pictures as the sun rose.
One man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is a government employee, said he supported the idea.
“I’m so used to seeing protests out here by the Capitol that it really is bizarre to see how empty it is,” he said. “But this is really impressive to me.”
By sharing images and video on social media of front-line workers telling their stories, MoveOn organizers said they hope to galvanize people in the same way as a traditional rally with a lineup of speakers.
Activists planned to deliver a petition to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) with more than 2 million signatures urging Congress to require the delivery of more PPE to front-line workers. Murphy has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force and its reliance on private companies to deliver an adequate amount of critical gear, such as N95 respirator masks, medical gowns, gloves and face shields, to health-care workers.
“In this critical hour, FEMA should make organized, data-informed decisions about where, when, and in what quantities supplies should be delivered to states — not defer to the private sector to allow them to profit off this pandemic,” the senator wrote last week in a letter to Vice President Pence, co-signed by 44 Democratic and two independent senators.
Organizers said the signs would remain on the Capitol lawn all day, but that the demonstration was only the beginning of a spate of atypical ones the group expects to launch this month.
Epting described activists’ energy as “more intense” than usual as the pandemic drags on.
“The energy is very high, the intensity is very high,” she said. “That’s forcing us to be creative and ingenuitive in order to figure out how to protest in a social distancing posture and keep one another safe at the same time.”
HENRY KOTULA 