Soon after the election results were announced, crowds gathered around Lafayette Square. Photographs by Joshua Yospyn for The New Yorker
afayette Square is where, just over five months ago, Black Lives Matter demonstrators were tear-gassed by police, on orders from the Attorney General, so that the President could cross the street to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo op with a Bible. Up the block, a street mural dedicated to Black Lives Matter was installed just a few days after—the street itself was renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. On Saturday, when news of the results of the Presidential election arrived in Washington, D.C., cars started honking, people started dancing, and the sidewalks—which had been unsettlingly quiet this week, since many local landlords and business owners had boarded up storefronts—were suddenly full. People streamed from all directions toward the White House. The blocks around Lafayette Square, which in this pandemic year had seen protests and violence, were suddenly the scene of a party.
“I woke up to screaming,” Annalise Parks, who was there with her boyfriend, said. “That’s always a good way to start your Saturday.” They’d decided to walk over, Parks said, because “I knew that I’d be surrounded by good people, celebrating a good cause. We’re ready. The wait was worth it.” Everywhere, people smiled, jubilant, as they let go of the trepidation of the previous four days, and the previous four years. The week was “stressful as hell. Barely have slept,” Alexa McKenna, a worker at a tech startup, said, her glasses fogging up a bit above her mask. “You know, wake up in the middle of the night, checking Twitter. Having stress dreams. But it was all worth it for this moment right now.”
Lucha Bright, a member of a group called Refuse Fascism, addressed people through a P.A. system. “This is a new phase in the struggle!” Bright told the crowd. She had gathered a small audience together, and one of the activists who accompanied her urged them to raise their arms in the air and wave “bye-bye” to Trump. “The celebration is righteous—we should be celebrating,” Bright told me. “But Trump is also saying he won. And he’s also got fascist thugs in the streets.” (At that moment, Trump was at one of his golf courses, where he’d gone for a morning round.)
Up the block, Michelle Healy, a longtime organizer for the Service Employees International Union, was part of a group of people wearing S.E.I.U. purple. She’d been out on these streets a number of times in the past few years, she said. She pointed to the spot where she’d stood during a protest against the Trump Administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border. “Trump created this idea that there is, like, a violent left,” she said. “My experience is that it has been moms, dads, grandparents, kids.” She looked around. “It’s all Americans here.”
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Nearby, in the shade of a building, a young man named Rahim—he declined to give his last name—stood with his arms crossed. “People just show up for a celebration, but they weren’t here two weeks ago, when we was protesting for our rights,” Rahim said. “It’s really weird to hear a bunch of white folks yell, ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ on Black Lives Matter Plaza because Biden won the election.” Rahim, who is twenty, said he had been helping to organize protests since May, when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. He’d just voted in a Presidential election for the first time. “It was cool to vote, but it just sucks that I had to pick between two shitty candidates,” he said. “I just hope people focus on the bigger picture that there’s still work to be done. Like, just because Biden won the White House does not mean that everything is all happy and dandy.”
A few feet away, a middle-aged woman named Ingrid Vaca was resting for a moment on a bench. Vaca, who was born in Bolivia and lives in Virginia, has two children in the DACA program, and has been involved in organizing for immigrant rights for years. “I breathe, like, democracy today,” she said. “Since Tuesday, I couldn’t sleep. My stomach was tight, thinking, and waiting. Three days ago, when they said that in Pennsylvania Trump was winning—you know, I started to cry again to God because I’m scared a lot. He wanted to deport everybody.” She was holding a homemade sign that read “Here to stay,” and she had one mask layered on top of another. That Biden has pledged to protect the DACA program meant everything to her, because it would help her kids. “I came to this country for a dream,” she said. “I think some of my dream, today, is going to be real.”
In McPherson Square, in the shadow of the Department of Veterans Affairs, a band was playing in the bed of a truck, and CNN was being projected onto a giant screen. Someone had blown up an inflatable Trump with rodent teeth. Deniz Houston, an American-flag fanny pack worn like a sash across her chest, was standing around with her friends, smiling. “It feels like we won the World Cup for the first time and defeated Fascism in the same day,” Houston, who is twenty-six, said. “I understand that this feeling might be limited to very select parts of America. But I’m confident that Joe Biden, unlike Trump, is going to try and do what he thinks is best for everyone.” Her father had voted for Trump, twice. “I tried really hard to persuade him, but he just fell victim to fake news and the people who surround him,” she said. I asked if she’d talked to her father after the race was called. She said that less than an hour after the news broke, “He texted me, ‘Don’t forget to bring your hair dryer when you visit tomorrow.’ ”
As the afternoon wore on, I walked to Pennsylvania Avenue, toward Trump International Hotel, which was surrounded by barricades. Several people took the opportunity to scream an obscenity at the façade. “An irreverent gesture,” a young man said with a shrug, after giving the building the finger. Nearby, a vendor had three kinds of hats for sale, his wares arranged on a bench. There was a blue model with “Biden President” printed on it, a red model with “F✻ck Trump,” and a white one with “Fuck Trump.” Which was selling best? The “F✻ck Trump,” the vendor said, “’cause he always wears red.” How much for a hat? “For you?” he said. “Give me ten.”
While the area north of the White House felt like a block party, south of the White House, on the grass across Constitution Avenue, the day had a picnic vibe. Couples lay together on their backs; friends sat cross-legged in circles. At the base of the Washington Monument, a group of Trump supporters had assembled. “Biden’s Laptop Matters” read one yellow sign. If anyone was feeling down, they weren’t showing it. “I think you’re going to find that this is completely overturned,” Rob Presler, a retired Navy officer, said. He was convinced that Trump had a plan, and that it was only a matter of time before he succeeded in carrying it out. I countered that there was no evidence of any kind of deliberate manipulation of the vote. He smiled, as if he pitied the surprise I was in for. “I think you’re going to find, in a couple weeks, there’s going to be a court battle, and it’s going to come out in favor of the President,” he said.
Back on Black Lives Matter Plaza, the crowd was as big as it had been all day. The sun was going down. A speaker with a microphone was talking about Black Power as, behind him, people sprayed one another with bottles of champagne. A man named Ken Wright was walking around holding a sign that read “Former Republicans for Biden.” Wright was fifty-five, and from Annapolis. He’d voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and registered as a Democrat this past January. He’d come to Washington by himself, and spent the day basking in the general bliss. “I’ll tell you—I’m pretty popular,” he said. “For the awkward kid in high school, I’m finally popular.”
Nearby, Ashley Blades, who had turned thirty-two on Election Day, was standing with a friend. Blades is from Georgia, and it looked as if her vote was going to be part of the state’s going for a Democrat for the first time in nearly three decades. “For me, it’s just a big sigh of relief,” Blades said. “Honestly, everything we’ve been through these past four years, dealing with the Orange—to know that, finally, we will get some real politicians, with real qualifications, just real worth. I’m just happy for that. And also shout out to Black woman”—she made a fist and held it up by her shoulder—“I’m so proud of Kamala for being the first Black Vice-President. I wanted to be the President—when I was in fourth grade, I used to say that all the time. To see somebody that is like me making it into the White House and is going to be able to make some change, that’s bomb as hell.”
