My editor has been to the Capitol a few times in the last few months to visit legislators, but I haven't been inside since last February, on my epic photo excursion with Reedsburg teachers and other protestors. Jeff was taken aback at the addition of metal detectors to only two open entrances to the building, tables where you place your belongings to be searched by several guards. I shrugged it off at first, having visited Washington DC several times where that kind of security is the norm, expected. My visit Sunday was the first time I encountered it in my own backyard, in the city I call home, in the building in which I will get married next year.
The entrance to each wing of the Capitol building has always been in darkness; coming in from the bright sunlight outside bouncing off that white stone, it takes awhile for eyes to adjust to those dim lanterns bleakly illuminating tunnels cased in orange marble. It's part of the experience - the hallway opens up into that spectacular rotunda, an explosion of space and light. I am sure that the architect who designed it never imagined those hulking metal detectors, crammed and menacing in that small space.
In DC, heavy security is expected. People line up, open their bags, walk through those metal skeletons - a formality as routine as putting your shoes on before you leave the house. I've never thought twice about it, but Sunday in Madison was vastly different. My fiance and I decided on a whim to visit the nearly empty building, excited to show our five friends the space where we plan to get married next year. We were searched and wanded by three or four officers, who were nice enough and jovial, but I walked away from the experience shaken and upset.
It should not be taken lightly that John and I chose that building to host our ceremony. I grew up thinking of it as a beacon, that all roads in Madison led to it. It's the first piece of Madison I spot near the end of my regular commutes home, shining on the horizon like Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. And it is, after all, where he proposed. The Capitol building is familiar, it's Madison, it feels so mine.
And I think that's where the metal detectors and searches finally got personal for me. It was a trespass, not only on my person, my belongings and my friends, but on my city. My building. My home. It was a "Halt! Who goes there?" by strangers in a building that used to be so familiar, so inviting, so much a part of myself and my history, my past and my future. I can't shake that feeling.
No matter what your politics, I don't think anyone likes to see young school children and white-haired grandmas lined up like cattle and funneled through metal detectors, searched and wanded by officers in uniform.
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