If you’ve ever lived in or near Washington, you know that feeling—a sense that in some small way you’re a part of our nation’s history. There’s something about the presence of all those imposing government buildings and grand monuments that makes it seem like you’re closer to the “action,” so to speak. I lived in northern Virginia for 26 years before relocating to Florida, and I return every Christmas to see my mom. I always schedule a day in Washington so I can revisit a favorite museum, park or neighborhood, and on the eve of a new decade I thought it would be fitting to swing by a place that has seen quite a bit of history unfold.

Lafayette Square is part of a national historic district that originally encompassed the land surrounding the Executive Mansion, an area that used to be called President’s Park. When President Thomas Jefferson ordered Pennsylvania Avenue built in 1804, Lafayette Park became separate from the White House grounds. Over the years it functioned as a soldier encampment (during the War of 1812), a slave market, a graveyard and a zoo. It was first landscaped in 1851, and during the 1930s the park was laid out the way it looks today, with statues of Revolutionary War heroes in each of its four corners and an equestrian statue of President Andrew Jackson standing in the center.

The streets in the vicinity of the park were the city’s most fashionable 18th-century address. The Federal-style townhouses that line Jackson Place (bordering the park’s west side) are much newer, but their dignified facades hint at what the Washington of two centuries ago (at least the well-heeled part) might have looked like. And as Washington parks go this is a handsome one, with lots of benches and trees (lushly leafy most of the year but of course bare on this chilly late December day). My favorite of the four war hero statues is the likeness of the French general Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette, for whom the park is named; he stands commandingly in his tri-corner hat and knee-length coat, pointing toward the south.  

Because it’s directly across from the White House, Lafayette Park also is the scene of numerous political demonstrations, protests and celebrations. Way back in 1974, when Richard M. Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal, I went to Lafayette Park with friends to be part of the huge crowd that had gathered. I’ve never been a particularly political person—and I certainly wasn’t back then in my somewhat wild and reckless youth—but that was a very significant event at the time, and it was rather exciting to actually be there and feel like you were part of history instead of reading about it in the newspaper the next day (try and imagine a time long, long ago when there was no Internet or YouTube).

So I stroll over to the park at the tail end of 2009 and once again witness a little bit of history taking place. With the forbidding-looking white barricades that went up after 9/11 gone, the White House stands in full view (although protected by a black wrought-iron fence), rising from an expansive and improbably green lawn. Gaggles of cell phone and digital camera-toting tourists milled around, snapping pics of friends and loved ones posing in front of the president’s house. I took the obligatory White House shot, but I was just as entranced by the geometric beauty of bare tree branches silhouetted against a winter sky.

In the midst of the throng a group of about 30 people holding flags and posters walked slowly in a circle, chanting “Go, go, go, harmony must go” over and over. They were Iranian, and although I’m not certain, I believe the protest had something to do with the violent demonstrations that occurred this past summer in Iran and flared again on Dec. 27 (the day I was here) protesting—according to The Washington Post—a June presidential election that the government claims was won by the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a landslide but that the opposition believes was stolen.

“Down with harmony, down with Ahmadinejad,” declared the protestors as people snapped their pictures. “Are you with us Obama?” they cried out. Their repetitive chants were punctuated by the beep of police whistles. The president happened to be on vacation in Hawaii, although an official statement by the White House condemned what it called the “violent and unjust suppression” of civilians by the Iranian government.

I wouldn’t necessarily call the scene festive, but it was subdued, orderly and above all an important reminder of democracy in action. I then took a look at the peace camp where Concepción “Conchita” Picciotto, a Spanish emigrant, has lived since 1981 (she shares occupation duties with another person). The humble encampment, a stone’s throw from the White House gates, urges passers-by to renounce the use of genocidal weapons and “wage peace.” We have the right to assemble. We have the right to air our political views, whatever they may be. And that’s a very good thing.