Sub Sandwich is Symbol of Resistance in D.C.

Sub Sandwich is Symbol 

  of Resistance in D.C.

A.J. Pike

     Washington, D.C. - Subway’s footlong sub is fast becoming an icon of resistance against President Trump’s D.C. police takeover. 

     After a resident, at the time a Justice Department employee, recently hurled a footlong Subway sub at a federal officer, new images and merchandise of sub sandwiches are popping up everywhere in the city of Cherry Blossom trees. Corporate experts claim the unlikely string of events is a case study in brand image management and crisis communication. But others feel such an analysis of the lone act of one man seems a bit far-fetched in dialing up the corporate think-tank ladder.  

     Sean Charles Dunn, 37-year old D.C. resident and newly-minted internet-famous protestor known nowadays as “Sandwich Guy,” aka The Prosciutto Pitcher, or the Pastrami Perp, clad in shorts and a pink shirt, was captured on video chucking a sandwich wrapped in green and yellow Subway paper at a federal officer, after calling a group of CBP agents standing outside Subway “fascists.” The video has since gone viral, racking up over 2 million views. 

     U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced that Mr. Dunn would be charged with assault on a police officer, a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. 

     “Stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else,” Ms. Pirro commented. 

     The following day, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Mr. Dunn had been fired from his job at the DOJ.

     Although federal prosecutors failed to convince a grand jury to indict Mr. Dunn, an Air Force veteran, on felony charges, for hitting the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent in the chest with the sandwich, D.C. residents have taken up his seemingly bombastic action to lead the charge against President Trump’s federal law enforcement takeover of the streets of the nation’s capital. In the Executive Order he has deployed nearly 1,000 members of the National Guard in an effort to rid the D.C. streets of crime.

     Portraits of the Sandwich Guy, his right hand winding up, armed with a green, yellow and red footlong are being artistically  displayed on billboards and the sides of buildings all over the capital. Some protestors have even brought wrapped Subway sandwiches to recent demonstrations outside the White House. 

     “It’s like a folk hero thing,” said one resident. “He’s just sort of a symbol for the emotion that everybody in the city is feeling, watching people get abducted off the streets and mistreated and manhandled.”

     “It’s some version of a primal collective scream for everyone who loves D.C.,” another said. “Is it professionally advisable? Probably not. But it struck a nerve with people.” 

      Mr. Dunn’s sub-throwing image has inspired an entire line of commercial products, including T-shirts, tote bags and enamel pins.  

     It is indeed the “sandwich throw heard around the world.” But one of the major points of contention to many who are intimate with this type of sandwich, besides for its recent symbolic interpretation, is the age-old question of whether the sandwich is called a sub, a hoagie or a grinder?

     The other question that seems to be on the minds of a number of D.C. residents, is what happens when the National Guard leaves? How long does it take for crime on the streets of the Nation’s Capital to go back to its old crime-riddled ways?