NADINE SEILER
The Other
Essential Workers Photographs by Darrow Montgomery
“What do you do?” is often the first question asked in D.C., where the federal government workers turn over like it’s, well, their job. Consultant, lobbyist, policy researcher, strategist, legislative staffer. Yawn. They’re a dime a dozen in this town. But as any good native Washingtonian or longtime resident knows, there’s another side of work that keeps the city going. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted fields that we absolutely cannot do without: medical care, emergency services, education, food production, infrastructure, transportation, and, ahem, journalism to name a few. But there are also the less obvious jobs that are equally important to the function and character of the District. The following profiles are stories of odd, ordinary, and otherwise un-thought-of local jobs, and the people who do them. —Mitch Ryals
8 JANUARY 21, 2022 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM
NADINE SEILER
Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence Guardian and Curator Nadine Seiler had no idea when she showed up at the Women’s March in 2017 that four years later she would be a lead guardian, and ultimately the preserver, of artifacts on what would become the BLM Memorial Fence. Seiler wasn’t a member of any activist group then, but she felt in each bone of her 5-foot, 5-inch frame every antiBlack, anti-woman, anti-immigrant restriction and rant under President Donald Trump’s leadership. She felt she had to do something. So Seiler started going to the White House holding a regular rotation of provocative signs. Her favorite activities included shouting obscenities at Trump supporters who got in her face and educating elementary school kids who chanted “Make America great again!” about the history behind their statements. “Make America great again to when?” she would ask. “When they were lynching Black people?” Her Trinidadian accent both offended and riled up such visitors. Seiler joined the 2017 and 2018 global women’s protests and most daily Kremlin Annex protests that started after Trump’s 2018 Helsinki visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A shy activist she mentored at the Kremlin Annex rallies called her “Warrior Goddess for the Resistance,” an alias that still motivates her. Seiler had started protesting at Lafayette Square by herself when a White police officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. She joined the ensuing protests against systemic racism and police brutality in front of the White House. When law enforcement put up the first fence, amid the rattling of steel bars, Seiler glimpsed the beauty of Black Lives Matter signs, art, and
photos left behind. During the pandemic, Seiler lost her odd day jobs as a personal concierge specializing in helping local residents organize their homes. (“IF the clutter makes you shudder, get you a Nadine,” the tagline on her LinkedIn profile says.) Soon Seiler started leaving her Waldorf home at night to stay by the fence typically from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and do what she does best: organize and protect the things that had shown up. During one of these shifts, word got around to Seiler that the fence was coming down. Seiler and other night-shifters acted on preservation instinct, taking photos and signs off the fence and sorting the items into categories based on material type and size. The processing made for an easier transfer to institutes such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was notified about the collection and came to collect items on June 9, 2020. While Lafayette Park reopened to the public the next day, law enforcement soon fenced off the area again after some protesters sought to topple the Andrew Jackson statue. This second structure became the BLM Memorial Fence, which Seiler and a few others guarded for the next seven months. But as stunning as the stories and protest artwork posted there were, they weren’t properly secured to the fence, so they made for a messy second home. The home organizer in Seiler couldn’t stand it. “It just looked bad,” she says. “I didn’t want to be part of the [messiness]. So I just started picking up the stuff and putting them back on the fence as best as I could.” Others also helped secure the items with zip ties and duct tape. The reorganization effort “just grew and grew and grew — and then [the fence] became a focus of Trump supporters,”
