In this first of two sessions, Sam Truitt, Andrew McCarron and Sparrow X. Carter talk about “Lafayette,” both the historical figure (French Marquise and a US founder) and the square in Washington, DC that bears his name. The latter particularly has featured in the news recently: both as the site of the teargas-stun-grenade attack on BLACK LIVES MATTER protestors (that cleared it for Agent Orange’s bizarre march across it to bible thump at a nearby church); and as a sudden “no man’s land,” with its six-block entirety barricaded with eight-foot, chain-link fencing. The latter has been taken down, though not the questions its erection calls up. We touch on those, while filling out the Marquise’s patently heroic life and touching on what words he left us.
