Gloomy weather was no deterrent for dozens of protesters who made their way to East Potomac Park on Sunday morning for Hains Point Hoopla 3.0 — the third iteration of the Washington Area Bicyclist’s Association’s efforts to draw attention to the uncertain future of the national park.
Ex-Olympian David Hearn, whom the Trump administration had accused of vandalizing the reflecting pool in June and whose federal case was dismissed with prejudice on Thursday, joined local advocates at the rally.
“I’m proud to be here today as a free man,” he told the crowd. “It was a difficult 104 days being accused by the top leadership of our country of being guilty of something I didn’t do and having a contrived set of charges against me.”
The protest underscored the fears that some locals have about the administration’s intention to transform the East Potomac Golf Links into a luxury golf course that will be inaccessible to many members of the public, in a renovation that could eliminate other recreational uses of the park.
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Rebecca Miller, the executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, said the fight for the park is becoming urgent. The recently introduced Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act includes a section that she believes will “gut”Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which allows non-federal actors to intervene if there is the potential harm to historic sites and has formed the basis of the group’s lawsuit opposing the East Potomac renovation.
“That law is what is protecting this site currently,” she said. “That is what we are suing under on all of these different actions.”
The Maryland-born Hearn, who was arrested less than four miles from Hains Point, called the park “an invaluable resource for the public,” adding that “through all the trials and tribulations for me over the past four months, I was able to ride my bike [there] every day. I know for a lot of people coming out here is a great way to relieve stress as well.”
Local resident Marc Blackman, who called the park “an oasis in the desert,” said he wanted the park to remain open to the public as it has for more than a century. He added that he views the Trump administration’s efforts in East Potomac and elsewhere around the D.C. area as a “total disregard of the Washington metropolitan area and all the other presumptive beautification projects that are going on, all of which sully rather than beautify the space.”
Peter Harnick, the founder of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, expressed similar frustrations.
“It’s been terrible,” he said. “They’re not telling us what they want to do. They’re not telling us how they’re going to go about doing it. Zero transparency. And this is our park.”
At-Large D.C. Council member Robert White, who attended the rally for the second time, told The Washington Sun in an interview that his late mother used to bring him to the park when he was a child. As a college student, White learned to play golf with his brother on the golf course.
“He ended up locked up for a number of years,” White said of his brother. “I was coming out here by myself, missing my brother. So this place is very special to me in different parts of my life.”
Throughout the rally, speakers denounced the potential removal of bike lanes, fields and trees from the park. But less than a mile away, the sound of saws reverberated across the golf course as a crew of National Park Service arborists appeared to be in the process of clearing several trees from a mature grove.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Interior Department said the tree removals were part of routine maintenance “with selective removal of hazard trees, non-native invasive trees and declining and dying trees that cannot be brought back to good health through any degree of intervention.”
As protesters dispersed from the rally, very few seemed to notice the tree removal crew.
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