About 20 people are on the steps of the Treasury Building at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue. Their signs say "NO KXL" and "CLIMATE NOT TOXIC TRADE." In the middle there is a giant novelty check for $15 billion. The check says "Voided" in large red letters. It is raining lightly. Only one of them has an umbrella. They don’t plan to be here long.
I always have a hard time keeping people’s names straight at these things. I know Alana and Eric and Ben, but then I get confused: There are either two Matts (counting your correspondent) or two Erics.
"Okay, guys, we’re probably only gonna have time for a quick photo-op and a couple chants before they shoo us away, so make it count," says a guy in a black fleece jacket who is either the other Matt or the first Eric.
The crowd is made up of activists from the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and Food and Water Watch. They are here today because they suspect that TransCanada, the Calgary-based energy giant, will sue the United States soon under an obscure provision of NAFTA.
Not many issues unite Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Rand Paul, Joseph Stiglitz, Julian Assange, and this lot. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is one of them. Matt gives a short speech denouncing the TPP. As he shouts he looks at the lone security guard, who is wearing a hood to keep the rain off. The guard does nothing.
A woman with her arms full runs up to the group.
"More signs!"
"All right, fists in the air!" says Matt/Eric.
Everyone gives a version of the Black Power salute.
"We actually want to thank TransCanada today for exposing the big lie that is our trade agreement. These agreements are not about helping the economy. They are about expanding corporations’ rights to pollute and plunder the world!"
"No TPP! No TPP! No TPP!"
People look at the security guard. He seems to be giving directions to a cyclist.
"No bad trade! No bad trade! No bad trade!"
Still nothing. I ask a different Eric, who is with Friends of the Earth, about it.
"They’re not going to kick you guys out?"
"Not yet anyway."
After another minute of shouts, the guard has moved farther away. We decide to begin our march to the offices of TransCanada to deliver the voided check in person.
"The check should be in front," someone yells.
"Yeah, it needs to lead the way!"
Everyone lines up behind a girl in a purple sweater and a longhaired guy in a black t-shirt who are carrying the check.
Eric/Matt is screaming into a bullhorn, but he stops at the corner of New York Avenue and 15th Street, where we meet some schoolchildren.
"All right," says the kids’ teacher. "Time to part the seas and make room."
The kids split into two groups. "I think they’re against cruelty to animals," one of them says.
It’s time for chants. When we start with "Hey ho, hey ho, TPP has got to go!" there is not much enthusiasm. Eric/Matt grabs the longhaired kid’s messenger bag as if he were steadying the reins of a horse.
"Is #NOTTP the hashtag?" someone behind me asks.
"Yeah, I think it is," says a woman dryly.
Ben, who is wearing sandals and some kind of woven belt—could it be needlepoint? I don’t ask—has good news. "We’ve got a good one, people!" He means a good chant. The new one is in the style of a jody call.
"A clean environment is what we need."
"A clean environment is what we need."
"But ‘T-P-P’ spells corporate greed."
"But ‘T-P-P’ spells corporate greed."
This goes over very well, so well that we repeat it too many times for Alana.
"Guys," says Ben as we pass in front of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, "Alana wants us to change the chant."
Ben starts improvising enthusiastically on the jody call model. Some of the other things we end up needing are a green economy, a stable climate, a healthy planet, clean jobs, and responsible trade; TPP always ends up spelling corporate greed.
Suddenly, at the corner of 13th and I Street, we go silent. We are quiet the rest of the way to 1250, where the TransCanada office is on the second floor.
Everyone pauses in front of the door. Grave looks are exchanged. A UPS man walks past us, smirking. A few people don’t want to head inside. But most of us enter this temple of Moloch.
"Who are you here to see?" a woman asks at the front desk.
"TransCanada."
She gives us permission to head to the second floor on the condition that the Associated Press cameraman does not record video.
We head up in two massive elevator loads, signs and all. Someone jokes about a YouTube video of college football players getting stuck in an elevator, but mostly the mood is somber, pregnant with anticipation. I have a bitter feeling. What’s about to happen?
The door of the elevator opens. There is no one in the hallway. We see the suite with a sign for TransCanada. Looking through the glass door, we see an office with no lights on. It looks abandoned. Someone murmurs that the capitalist pirates must have had nothing to do ever since Keystone died.
The bullhorn, which has changed hands a few times, gives off feedback. A photo is taken, everyone posing with the check in front of the door. The check is left idly propped up against the entrance.
Our situation is confusing. This isn’t what we expected to happen.
"So it’s an empty office?"
"It’s a metaphor for something."