Air and Space Museum "Occupied," Closed

It seems that I lean more and more on DJ Redman, whose CDN article sets the stage for the latest “occupation” by a rather small group of smelly Marxist anti-capitalists. Now the occupation has spread to Washington D.C., where some 150 to 200 anti-war protestors tried to occupy the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to protest Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and drones like the one that killed Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen on September 30, 2011. Many who tried to occupy the Air and Space Museum said they were inspired to come to Washington D.C. by the Occupy Wall Street movement that began last month in New York and has spread across the country.

Smithsonian spokesman John Gibbons said a group of anti-war demonstrators arrived at the Air and Space Museum about 3 p.m. and tried to enter. When a security guard stopped demonstrators from entering, saying they could not bring in signs, he was held by the demonstrators. A second guard who arrived used pepper spray on at least one person. The crowd soon dispersed, and the museum closed at about 3:15 p.m. The protesters reportedly pushed a guard up against a wall, prompting another guard to intervene with pepper spray.

David Swanson of Charlottesville, Va., said he was among dozens of people sickened by the pepper spray even though he was outside the building when the spraying began. Swanson said, “I began choking and vomiting and got a headache.” He said the protesters were not trying to close the museum, but to make a point about the use of deadly drones.

The anti-war protesters included people from the October, 2011, “Stop the Machine” group and Occupy D.C., an offshoot of the larger Occupy Wall Street movement in New York. “Along with the Occupy Wall Street movement, it represents an upswell of people taking to the street around the country to demand social and economic justice as well as an end to the immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” occupation organizers said in an e-mail.