Louder than a peep
They have no mouth and their name sounds as if they’d be a quiet bunch, but on Friday one group made its voices heard loud and clear: Peeps.
The fluorescent, marshmallowy Easter candies made their political debut at the John Wilson Building, thanks to the nonprofit group D.C. Vote, which presented its Peep diorama for The Washington Post’s annual diorama competition.
The diorama included a miniature plastic foam replica of the Capitol building surrounded by little Peep protesters holding signs that read “Power to the Peeps” and — in a nod to the city’s license plates — “No taxation without re-peep-sentation.”
The diorama made its way around the D.C. Council offices to spread the word on D.C. voting rights. First stop for the Peep protest: Councilman Jack Evans, whom the “Peeps-arazzi” snapped photos of with the diorama in hand. Evans said he had intended to enter his own Peeps diorama with his son but hadn’t gotten around to it.
“It was going to be ‘Peeps of the Lost Arc,’ ” Evans said (maybe he had Harrison Ford’s recent visit in mind).
D.C. Vote’s Eugene Kinslow told us that just like Washingtonians, “All of our Peeps support the right to vote. … Peeps outside the D.C. area are fully empowered, and we want Peeps everywhere to be empowered.” And fear not, “no Peeps were harmed in the making of this diorama,” Kinslow joked.
Before we left, Kinslow had some final parting words: “There’s no shelf life on the rights of the Peeps.” Maybe their “rights” don’t, but we’re sure the Easter candy has one.
-Ryan Freeman reporting
