Longtime White House peace activist Concepcion Picciotto dies

(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 27 January 2016

Concepcion Picciotto, an activist who spent decades manning an anti-nuclear-proliferation protest outside of the White House, died Monday. She is believed to have been around 80 years old.

The Peace House, the group that organized the installation at the White House, announced her death Tuesday, and said in a statement that Picciotto manned the vigil longer than any other volunteer and "stayed there through thick and thin." The cause of death is not yet known.

Born in Spain, Picciotto moved to the United States at 18, NBC News reports. She moved to Washington from New York after her marriage ended, and became a fixture at the vigil in 1981. Someone always has to be at the makeshift camp to ensure authorities don't dismantle it, but one volunteer left in 2013, and the vigil was shut down for one day. "At first I felt terrible," Picciotto told NBC News at the time. "But now I see all these people helping to attract attention that we need to stay here. Nevertheless, I was never going to give up, I can't."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.