Alex Dickson stood before hundreds of protesters at East Potomac Park in D.C. Saturday, megaphone in hand, taking aim at President Donald Trump’s plans to transform the historic public golf course into a championship-level facility.
“It’s all because of one man’s greed and ego,” Dickson said. “He’s obsessed with getting a major.”
The Arlington, Virginia, resident and publisher of Beltway Golfer is suing the Trump administration over the proposed changes, along with fellow golfer Dave Roberts and the D.C. Preservation League.
Dickson pointed to events including the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup and the U.S. Open, saying that golf’s governing bodies won’t give Trump-owned properties a major tournament.
“And he’s pissed off about it,” Dickson said.
While Trump-owned courses have hosted women’s and senior majors, none has hosted one of the four major men’s championships during his ownership.
Dickson also told the crowd that the park meant the world to him.
“I’ve been playing golf in East Potomac for over 20 years,” Dickson said. “Right over here on the Red Course, I taught my 10-year-old son to play golf.”
After his speech, Dickson told WTOP the course sees 124,000 rounds of golf a year.
“It’s for beginner golfers, for family golfers, for junior golfers, for people that can’t afford the more higher-end golf courses, which this area has so many of,” Dickson said. “And that’s the way it’s been used for 100 and whatever years.”
Dickson said the course “absolutely” needs to be fixed up, but that “their plans for what they’re doing here are quite frankly a joke, and nobody that actually uses the golf course wants it.”
The proposed redesign, he said, would eliminate the nine-hole Red Course, along with the nine-hole White Course, the 18-hole Blue Course, and the nation’s oldest continuously operating miniature golf course, which opened in 1931.
The Halloween-themed protest, called Hains Point Hoopla 4.0, was organized by the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, or WABA, marking the group’s fourth protest against Trump’s plans for the park on the Potomac River island.
It began less than 24 hours after the Trump administration submitted its plans for the golf course to the National Capital Planning Commission.
Also on Friday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered an investigation into whether government attorneys knowingly made false statements and otherwise misrepresented information about the park plans to the court.
The Trump administration has announced plans to close the golf course and the portion of East Potomac Park south of Buckeye Drive beginning Nov. 15, although the project remains the subject of ongoing litigation.
Saturday’s gathering was part protest, part parade, as hundreds of bicyclists and other demonstrators made their way to East Potomac Park. They followed a large truck carrying the D.C. Activist Street Band, which was playing “This Little Light of Mine.”
Joining the cyclists were runners, golfers, nature enthusiasts and families who also use the park.
And since it was Halloween, some protesters came in costume, including one wearing an oversized Trump head. Another carried a sign featuring a jack-o’-lantern with Trump’s signature hair and the words, “Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater!”
“So this park has been really special to D.C. residents, particularly those with really limited green space where they live, you know, down in Southeast and Southwest, for decades,” said Alison Pearce, the executive director of Nature Forward, D.C.’s oldest environmental organization, founded in 1897.
Among those riding their bikes to Saturday’s gathering were friends Jonathan Mack and Phil Johnson, both born and raised in D.C.
“Hains Point is legendary for Washingtonians,” Mack said. “So much more than just golf that happens there. There’s a huge cycling community, walking community, running community, people that fish into the Potomac, people that just like the views.”
For Ed Thompson, who lives in Northwest D.C., Hains Point is all about relaxation.
“A place where you can go and find that Zen instead of sitting at $250 an hour talking to somebody who doesn’t care,” Thompson said.
And what if that all goes away?
“Hains Point has been a part of everybody’s life in the city, and to lose this kind of like losing a family member, man,” Thompson said.
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