Concepcion Picciotto: Peace activist who maintained a vigil outside the White House for more than three decades

Picciotto said she held the vigil 'to stop the world from being destroyed'

Picciotto: motivated by a desire ‘to stop the world from being destroyed' (

Concepcion Picciotto maintained a peace vigil outside the White House for more than three decades, widely considered to be the longest-running act of political protest in American history. She said she spent more than 30 years outside the White House "to stop the world from being destroyed."

She was sometimes controversial: fellow activists lauded her as a heroine, but critics and even passers-by dismissed her as foolish, perhaps unwell. She spoke little of her life before 1960, when she moved to New York and worked as a receptionist in the Spanish embassy. She met an Italian man who she married in 1969 and with whom she adopted a daughter.

Picciotto first went to the White House in 1979 to seek help from officials, believing that her husband had orchestrated an illegal adoption and arranged to have her committed. She believed she was the target of a web of conspiracies involving doctors, lawyers and the government. She met William Thomas, a peace activist who founded the peace vigil. They teamed up in 1981, and were joined in 1984 by Ellen Benjamin, who married Thomas – sparking hostility from Picciotto.

But despite that, the trio protested together for 25 years. Theoir grass-roots campaign was known as Proposition One, and its crowning achievement came in 1993, when their nuclear disarmament petition resulted in a ballot initiative, although legislation has never reached Congress. The vigil and its keepers made a cameo appearance in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

Concepcion Picciotto, peace activist: born Vigo, Spain 15 January 1936; married; died 25 January 2016.

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