Taking their lead from the veterans who first pushed through the barricades to visit the World War II Memorial, Americans nationwide are defying the federal government shutdown, tossing aside traffic cones and toppling wooden fences to get to national parks and other federal lands that the administration has deemed out of bounds.
As the shutdown hits the middle of its second week, civil disobedience has become a sensation. Some proudly post online photos of themselves overcoming the government’s obstacles, and others use more subtle ways to make their point.
In Arizona, one road-stop inn is quietly giving visitors directions on how to use Forest Service roads to get a glimpse of the Grand Canyon, a national park that has been shut down.
In Washington, D.C., a South Carolina man said he has spent the past week picking up trash around the shuttered Lincoln Memorial, taking the place of National Park Service employees who have been furloughed.
In Massachusetts, Minuteman National Park is closed, but that hasn’t stopped the leaf-peepers from crossing the barricades to watch as autumn blooms in the Northeast.
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