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Earlier this year, audiences were thrilled as Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel “V for Vendetta” was adapted to the screen by the Matrix trilogy’s creators, the Wachowskis. This “uncompromising vision of the future” largely built itself on the paranoia that the wars present in the world today would yield to a veritable fascist regime that would affect the entire world. As a result, V – a terrorist vigilante dressed in black with a mask of the anarchist Guy Fawkes – took up the stead to remind the world that, “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

On Nov. 6 – the first weekday after Guy Fawkes Day – security enforcers in Washington, D.C., were surprised as they were visited by a version of the vigilante V. The costume-clad citizen held copies of the People’s Petitions for Redress of Grievances and exercised his rights of speech and protest against the masses of police and Secret Service that came to meet him at the gates all across the capital.

When one police officer requested identification and asked if the protestor would remove his mask, he refused, saying that it would ruin the reason behind the disguise as it symbolized the idea of America becoming a police state. These fears have become even more apparent in the seizure of rights from “enemy combatants” as outlined in the Military Commissions Act passed in October.

Overall, the virtuous visit from the vigilant V was without incident or issue. V spoke cordially and politely to every law official that approached him, and also interacted liberally with the public, quizzing citizens on their knowledge of their own rights. Sadly, many could not answer V’s questions about the most basic permissions of the Constitution.

However, with V’s valiant voyage was a message: should the Petitions for Redress not be addressed, on Nov. 14, many more Vs would be present at the Capital to make their desires known.

Sure enough, that chilly Tuesday, almost 100 men and women, dressed in Fawksian garb, took up their places in the ranks of their fellow Vs to march through Washington, D.C., in attempts to get responses to the petitions. Signs held by the masked marvels read, “Dear Government, No Answers, No Taxes” and “Obey the Constitution – The Right to Petition.”

Despite their silent vigil, it became clear that the Vs were representing the We the People Foundation, a New-York-based organization that takes on the mission “to protect, preserve and enhance the unalienable rights, liberties and freedoms of the people” by educating people about the Constitution, their history and the current state of their government. According to their Web site, they also hope “to institutionalize vigilance by the ordinary, nonaligned citizen-voter-taxpayers.”

Unsurprisingly, there was no official response from the government regarding the protest.