Activist scales DC bridge in protest of Trump’s ‘colossal failure’ Iran war

Forty-five year old social justice activist named Guido Reichstadter on Saturday morning was still perched atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC after first scaling the structure Friday afternoon in protest against President Donald Trump’s disastrous war against Iran, now in its third month, and the rapid and unregulated spread of artificial intelligence technology.

As Reichstadter, who described himself as the father of two children with masters degrees in both math and physics, said in a video posted to social media on Friday: “Hi my name is Guido Reichstadter and I’m currently occupying the top of the Frederick Douglass memorial bridge in Washington, DC.”

“I’m calling on the people of the United States,” he continued, “to bring an immediate end to the Trump regime’s illegal war on Iran and the removal of the regime power through mass nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation.”

In a separate video, he explained he was at the top of the bridge, which rises approximately 168 feet above the Anacostia River at its highest point, “because the government of the United States is engaged in acts of mass murder in my name. And I refuse to be complicit in that.”

While bridge traffic in both directions was closed at times on Friday and overnight, the bridge is reportedly open to traffic Saturday morning, though with some lane restrictions, as law enforcement said a “barricade situation” with the protester continued.

Reichstadter, who has staged high-profile protests in the past, spoke to Al-Jazeera via video stream on Friday to explain his actions and call for an end to the war that he says—and tens of millions of other Americans agree, according to polling—is a colossal failure by the Trump administration.

“I mean, it’s an atrocity, right?” he said, when asked what motivated him. “I woke up on February 28th and I found that hundreds of schoolchildren had been blown apart. I think there are many millions of Americans who reject the war in principle, but whose actions have not yet been sufficient to bring it to an end.”

Democratic members of Congress, both in the US House and Senate, have now brought several War Powers Resolutions to the floor in an effort to end the US attack on Iran, which now includes a naval blockade of the country, but Republican majorities in both chambers backing Trump, those efforts have failed.

Poll after poll, meanwhile, shows that Reichstadter is completely correct in stating that millions of people “reject the war,” but still the war continues even after a 60-day deadline, according to the War Powers Act of 1973, which says the president must either end military operations or get the explicit approval of Congress, came and went on Friday.

On Friday, video showed Reichstadter wearing a t-shirt that read “NO WAR” and he unfurled a large black banner down the side of the bridge’s central arch as part of the protest.

Before scaling the bridge, Reichstadter also spoke with journalist Ford Fisher to explain his motivations and what he hoped to accomplish with his one-person direct action:

Reichstadter stayed on the bridge overnight, even as fireworks exploded overhead from a nearby Major League Baseball game.

In his statement concerning AI, Reichstadter said he wanted to “urgently warn the people of the US and the world of the imminent danger we are in of crossing a point of no return towards the development of artificial intelligence which poses the risk of catastrophic harm to humanity, including human extinction.”

“I call on the governments of the world to take immediate action to end this danger by permanently banning the development of artificial general intelligence and machine super intelligence,” he said. “I also call on the people of the world to exert all possible influence through nonviolent action to compel their governments to end this danger with all possible speed.”