Welcome to Bizarro Congress. The past six months have been stuffed chockfull of triumphs and disappointments for the Democratic Party: bills denouncing the Iraq War, bills prolonging the Iraq War, bills calling the troops home, bills providing the funds to keep the troops in Iraq for up to three more years. The strange news? They’re all the same bill. The 2007 Supplemental Spending Bill, which passed both the House and the Senate in late March, put more than $100 billion toward the continuation of the Iraq War—billions more than President Bush himself suggested. Along with a proposed additional $142 billion slated to pass in the fall, this budget’s substantially bigger than any military budget in the past six years. Yet almost every Democrat in Congress voted to support the spending bill, as long as a little provision was attached: a timetable for the pullout of troops from Iraq by 2008.
“It’s like me saying to my sons, here’s ten dollars—don’t spend it at Hollywood video,” says Laurie Hasbrook, an organizer with the Chicago-based antiwar group Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV), which has been leading the movement against the supplemental spending bill since it was proposed. “The very necessary next step is for Congress to stop funding the war.”
No enforcement mechanisms were included to ensure that the pullout actually happens, and after the bill passed both houses, Bush vetoed it—ensuring a newly huge military budget without a troop withdrawal date. Yet on March 24, Democrats across the country celebrated Congress’s passage of the bill. The New York Times called it, “the most forceful challenge yet to President Bush’s war policy.” MoveOn.org, the progressive organization that emerged as a strong force for peace after September 11, endorsed the bill wholeheartedly. (Despite repeated attempts, I received no response from MoveOn.org regarding this issue.)
Why all the support from “antiwar” Democrats for a bill that so blatantly continues the war? Many antiwar activists fear it is due to politicking: the House initially chose September 2008 as a pullout date because it’s the beginning of the fall election season, and the Senate’s choice of a March 2008 deadline may have been linked to its timing in the middle of the primary and caucus season, says VCNV co-coordinator Jeff Leys. According to this strategy, the continuing horrors of war remain at the forefront of voters’ minds, and since the Dems were the ones who proposed the pullout date, the Democratic candidate becomes a shoo-in for president.
There’s no question that the Iraq War makes Republicans look bad, and its prolongation will also prolong Bush’s dismal approval rating. But lost in this savvy election strategy is the fact that with every month the war continues, hundreds more people die.
“The US war in Iraq has created a humanitarian catastrophe, with Iraqis forced to flee for safety to Jordan, only to be rejected and forgotten by the international community,” says VCNV’s other co-coordinator Kathy Kelly, also a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, who has spent the last several months protesting the funding bills. “We owe an obligation to Iraqis: to stop funding the war and to fully fund war reparations to Iraq so they might be able to rebuild their country after these past 16 years of economic and military warfare.”
Leys points out that in addition to the thousands of deaths occurring each year, exorbitant war funding means a huge neglect of human needs—in both Iraq and the United States.
“The healthcare system is destroyed in Iraq after 16 years of economic and military warfare,” Leys says. “The health care system is dysfunctional and broken in the US, with over 45 million people lacking health insurance. The educational system in Iraq—once the most highly educated population in the region—is destroyed. The schools in our own country’s central cities and rural regions are collapsed. Unemployment in Iraq is endemic and outrageously high. In the US, our cities’ inner cores and our rural regions remain economically depressed.” The controversy over the supplemental bill during the months it spent stewing in Congress sparked some progressives to take the unpopular stand of opposing the bill. They used an unlikely mechanism to protest it: instead of hitting the streets, these groups went straight to the main players—local senators and representatives.
Taking it to the Offices
On March 19, I left work early, took the train into downtown Chicago, and walked into the Federal Building around 2:30, informing the security officer at the metal detector that I was headed for the Credit Union on the 18th floor. I wasn’t—I was headed to Senator Dick Durbin’s office on the 38th—but anyone heading up to Durbin’s in mid-March (especially one clutching a stack of names of deceased Iraqi civilians) was bound to be given the once-over . . . or denied entry completely. That’s because, on a regular basis for the past month and a half, activists—in Chicago and across the country—had been gaining entry to their representatives’ and senators’ offices, asking them to vote against continued funding for the war, then refusing to leave the office until the politicians pledged to defund. The campaign, organized by VCNV and supported by prominent peace groups like CODEPINK and United for Peace and Justice, is entitled “the Occupation Project.”
“We are insisting that the US people, who themselves have given mandates to elected leaders that they don’t want to see this war continue, can see through the ruse of continuing to sustain corporate military growth at the expense of so many people’s lives, including lives in the United States,” says Kelly of the project’s aims. “If we continue to express this directly and clearly through nonviolent civil disobedience, we believe that elected leaders with conscience will pay attention.”
The project does make itself known quickly: During almost every “occupation,” protestors are arrested for remaining in the offices after being asked to leave. At the time I pushed the button for the Federal Building‘s 38th floor, I knew that hundreds of people had already been arrested during this campaign, and many more had accompanied them, serving as support. Organizers of the Occupation Project maintain that the arrests form a crucial part of the campaign, citing such inspirations as Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the widespread sit-ins that have taken place on college campuses to protest the war. Participants say that senators take civil disobedience seriously—it’s bad publicity when their own constituents are getting arrested in their offices. “When the senators’ staffs are exposed to civil disobedience, it ups the ante,” says Hasbrook, who was arrested on the project’s first day, at Sen. Durbin’s office. “When these senators are faced with grassroots folks saying, ‘We will get arrested in your office,’ it strikes a chord with people—both the senators and the public.”
Targeting the Decisionmakers, One by One
Part of the Occupation Project’s fresh appeal is its directness. It stands in stark contrast to the traditional marches through the streets, rallies in parks, vigils outside the White House, and even letters or phone calls to elected officials. The project challenges those officials face-to-face, asking them to respond in like manner—by declaring a face-to-face pledge that they won’t vote to increase funding for the Iraq War.
“The occupation project brought together folks willing to take action directed at the ‘representatives’ rather than the conventional sign carrying and parading directed at ‘the public,’” says Doug Mackenzie, organizer of the South Bay Occupation Project, a group of antiwar veterans, anarchists, longtime peace activists, and others.
“The organization and cohesion of the occupation project enabled us to meet with [Bay Area representatives] Lofgren and Honda. I don’t think we would have been granted an audience without our physical occupation of their offices.”
Setting up a physical (yet nonviolent) presence in a politician’s office calls for a response that most other actions don’t. That response may be the privilege to speak with the politician in private. It may also be the locking of a door and the immediate arrest of some of the participants—the response my friends and I received at Durbin’s office on March 19. Any way it goes down, the “occupation” model of resistance messes with the standard balance of power between citizens and leaders: we vote for them privately and silently, while they, publicly and vocally, make decisions about our lives and our communities. A physical occupation puts our two voices on the level of reciprocity.
Adding to this readjustment of the power equation is the fact that many of the senators and representatives addressed during the Occupation Project have been, in other times and circumstances, the friends and allies of progressives—Democrats who’ve voted for antiwar resolutions, who were against the Iraq War from the start. Hasbrook emphasizes that Occupation Project actions don’t not aim to antagonize congresspeople. For example, in the weeks leading up to the funding vote, most occupations in Chicago called upon senators who’d been particularly vocal in speaking out against the war—but who planned to vote to fund it.
“I think Durbin and Obama got into politics out of a desire to serve,” Hasbrook says. “But when they get to the level they’re at, it’s harder to be a servant. I hope these actions touch their core.”
Making Protest a Conversation
The actions have certainly touched the core of some of the politicians’ staffers. Hasbrook describes how the “star-struck kids” working in Obama’s office view their senator as an “antiwar guy”; this is often the reason they were drawn to him in the first place. The presence of the “occupiers,” with their brochures, signs, and speeches describing Obama’s support of war funding, causes these kids to take a second look at their hero—applying pressure to the senator from within his own staff. Many Occupation Project participants reported receptive—and surprised—staff members. Even after arrest, participants were often met with sympathetic ears.
“The woman fingerprinting me said, ‘Such a waste, these young people sent to this awful war,’” Hasbrook says. “Overwhelmingly, every security personnel we encountered, from the ICE agents to the Chicago police officers, agreed with our point. I sensed absolutely no support of the war or the continued funding.”
In addition to its straightforward physical presence, the Occupation Project’s unique vocal tone—turning down the decibels and turning up the meaning—blatantly but quietly disrupts the standard response to protest. It means that politicians and those that serve them can’t just turn off the TV, put down the paper, or avoid the street or plaza of the protest; they have to listen.
“As MLK [Martin Luther King] said, the purpose of civil resistance is to create a ‘moral crisis’ around the issue being focused on and I believe this kind of action does that,” says Peter Bergel, a member of the Defund the War campaign in Oregon, who has been arrested in the offices of Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith. “As long as our attitude remains one of communication and not punishment, that is, as long as we use our action to create dialogue and not just to indicate our displeasure, I believe we bring our issue home very powerfully.”
When I arrived with my friends at the door of Durbin’s office, we found it locked, but that didn’t cut off communication: Durbin’s chief of staff, Mike Daly, greeted us at the door with a smile—a forced one, but a smile nonetheless. He listened as Jeff Leys explained why we were there, laying out the reasons why funding for the war must be stopped. Leys urged that Durbin pledge to vote against the supplemental spending bill, which would be brought to a vote in Congress later that week. Meanwhile, security guards and police gathered around our group, and those who refused to leave were led away in handcuffs. One security guard shared an elevator with me as I rode down to the lobby to wait to see what would happen to my friends. “What do you think of all this?” I asked him. “This war is wrong,” he said. “Everyone’s saying it. Everyone here, too.”
Occupying DIY-Style
The groups occupying offices during the Occupation Project have been small: around 15 people at most. A small size means a larger possibility of communication with politicians and staffers. It also means a greater ability for participants to toss a little of their own personalities into the protest. Nina Klooster, a member of CODEPINK, occupied the office of Rep. Rahm Emanuel with several other women in February. They gave Emanuel’s staffers the Occupation Project pledge, urging that Emanuel sign it and refuse to vote for more war funding. By March 9, when Emanuel still hadn’t responded to the pledge, CODEPINKers returned to his office and staged a play they’d written, You Bought It, You Own It: a game show in which prizes included 3,200 dead service men and women and 650,000 dead Iraqis.
“The Occupation Project [keeps] the exact format of each occupation under control of the local groups, maximizing creativity and empowering local groups to act according to their conscience—while still having fun if they are so inclined.” Klooster said.
Other occupations were more sobering. Hasbrook’s first occupation at Durbin’s office included a memorial service entitled “In Memory of You.” Surrounding a coffin, participants sung spirituals, read poems, and chanted the names of the dead. During my second Occupation Project action, in April, the five members of my group who chose to get arrested donned sack cloths and sprinkled themselves with ashes to symbolize mourning. They spread pictures of the dead around them on the floor, singing their names followed by the simple mantra, “We remember you in peace.”
“I really believe in the power of song,” Hasbrook says. “Incorporating music and the arts, and the idea of mourning, can break through that tower of power.”
Thinking Long Term
Looking back now, four months from its beginning, how much has the Occupation Project broken through that tower? Both the House and the Senate—including most Democrats—voted for the Supplemental Spending Bill when it came their way. A few vocal members held out, including Rep. Lynn Woolsey, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Rep. Barbara Lee (who even devised an amendment to the bill). Yet some representatives who were holding out against war funding caved in, due to party pressures.
Illinois‘ Jan Schakowsky, for example, switched to supporting the spending bill just weeks before the vote, though she’d previously pledged to vote against it. She explains in a letter to her colleagues, “It is not nearly the bill you or I would have written, but, in my view, moves us closer to our goal.” To Klooster, the very fact that Schakowsky felt the need to write that letter—and to meet with vocal anti-funding organizers in her district after announcing her support for the bill—is evidence of the pressure exerted by the Occupation Project. Other on-the-fence Democrats were also forced into closer contact with their constituents, she says, gaining perspectives on their constituents’ beliefs that may well influence their positions on further votes.
“I think the Dems had to work very hard to sell their compromise on the funding bill and that many issues were articulated that may not have been had we not acted as we did,” Klooster says.
Peter Bergel credits the Occupation Project with swaying Sen. Smith, who has consistently backed Bush and voted prowar, to vote for March’s nonbinding resolution requiring the president obtain authorization from Congress before attacking Iran (the measure was voted down). Bergel also notes that since the occupations brought unwanted publicity to senators who ignored constituents’ complaints, some staffers have become more receptive.
“A co-worker in a less controversial organization recently told us that after trying unsuccessfully for over a year to get a meeting with Smith’s Chief of Staff, and being ignored, suddenly she is being glad-handed by this staffer and offered a meeting,” Bergel says. “She believes our occupations are a direct cause.”
Occupation Project participants are hopeful that anti-funding sentiment will build in the coming months, and their efforts will pay off come fall, when Congress votes on the proposed $142 billion in military spending for 2008. Though the project’s main action period has passed, its participants will continue to carry out civil disobedience once a month, at congressional offices across the country. The campaign’s organizers stress its long-term goals—the building of a movement and the publicizing of antiwar consciousness.
“The Occupation Project created the space for people to form affinity groups and ties of solidarity with each other which will continue to bear fruit in the development and application of nonviolent civil disobedience to end the Iraq war,” Leys says. “It put the powers-that-be on notice that so long as the war continues, business-as-usual will not continue.”
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