Sister Cities

Memorial to the Victims of Communism

This month's City Daily Photo Theme is Sister Cities. CDPB suggested asking a friend in a sister city to take a picture for us to post on our blogs. Washington, D.C., has 12 sister cities and I'm sorry to say, I don't know anyone in any of these cities: Accra; Athens; Bangkok; Beijing; Brazzaville; Brussels; Chongqing; Dakar; Paris; Pretoria; Seoul; or Sunderland. Wanting to participate in this theme, I decided I could either take a picture of each country's embassy here in Washington or I could post a picture of Sister Cities International's global headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Both sounded boring, so I started thinking a little harder. I finally decided to focus on Beijing and Athens.

In the case of Beijing, I chose as my subject the Victims of Communism Memorial on New Jersey Avenue and G Street NW. Based on a statue called the Goddess of Democracy created by Chinese students during the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, the purpose of the memorial is to teach "the history of communist tyranny...to future generations." The U.S. currently has no credibility in the world as a leader in solidly upholding democratic ideals and we certainly have little ground to stand on in calling out China and others on their lack of democracy.

Greek philosophy and architecture underpin the halls of our democracy

In the case of Athens, I photographed the U.S. Capitol with its iconic Greek architecture and the seat of our country's government. Our democratic ideals--when they aren't being trampled on by overly zealous politicians on both sides of the aisles--are founded in the philosophies and writings of many early Greek thinkers and a great deal of our architecture with its solid Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, pillars, and capitals are excellent examples of Greek influence in American life.

To visit other photo bloggers participating in this month's theme, click here.

Photo copyright: D.C. Confidential, 08/08