[Peace-discuss] Fw: [Aware] The Occupation Project

Fri Dec 8 01:37:36 CST 2006

At 03:18 PM 12/7/2006, Randall Cotton wrote:

>Just received at our aware at anti-war.net address, regarding an upcoming 
>statewide
>civil disobedience campaign rooted in Chicago. I suspect it's just a matter of
>time before this becomes common. Maybe we should start thinking about it.
>
>R

Randall Robinson wrote in Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America 
that civil disobedience was, in his experience, the only tactic that was 
ever successful in actually effectuating any sort of change in government 
policy, at least at the federal level.  I quote:

             ...Which brings us to the sine qua non for effective 
outside-the-Policy-House advocacy: a gift for self-promotion, a gift used 
or, more appropriately, misused to its fullest by those self-seeking souls 
unburdened by any restraint of shame.  This is not to disparage 
self-promotion, especially when it is an inadvertent by-product of a public 
effort to alter wrongheaded public policy.  We have seat belts in our cars, 
and consumer safety standards generally, because of the public advocacy of 
Ralph Nader, whose formidable public stature has carried in its trail a 
salutary and major public policy influence.
             My academic friends and the foundations that fund their 
painstaking research appear to understand none of this.  For forty years of 
apartheid, the tenured opponents of that system won grants, did research, 
wrote monographs and books, gave testimony ad nauseam before Congress.  All 
to no effect.  American policy toward South Africa had been and remained 
one of de facto public and private embrace.  Few if any members of Congress 
felt compelled to read or listen to anything the academic community had to 
say.  Only when a campaign of massive civil disobedience was packaged for 
public participation in late 1984 did American policy begin to turn around.
             This is not the preferred way to make or influence foreign 
policy.  But in America, if you are outside the Policy House, a position to 
which virtually all blacks have been relegated, it is the only way to have 
impact.  We have won most of the battles in which I have fought.  But the 
price has been dear and I am tired and diminished by the process.  In all 
the years of meeting with presidents, secretaries of state, national 
security advisors, U.S. trade representatives, and members of Congress, I 
cannot recall a single change of policy course that resulted from any of 
the hundreds of discussions, the thousands of letters, the scores of 
presentations to perfunctory nods and courteous closings.  Like water off a 
duck’s back.  It never ever meant a damn thing...

Pages 244-45

Even at that, civil disobedience has to be carefully thought out, targeted, 
etc.  It has, for example, still not succeeded in ridding America of 
nuclear warheads or the School of the Americas.  But I think a critical 
mass of Americans are ready to get out of Iraq....

John Wason

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Occupation Project - VCNV" <occupationproject at vcnv.org>
>To: <occupationproject at vcnv.org>
>Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 2:58 PM
>Subject: [Aware] The Occupation Project
>
>
>Voices for Creative Nonviolence would like to invite you to participate in
>the Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil
>Disobedience to End the Iraq War. The campaign begins on February 5, 2007
>and will run for eight weeks.  The campaign challenges Representatives and
>Senators to publicly declare that they will vote against any further funding
>for the war in, and occupation of, Iraq.
>
>We invite you to join with us and others around the U.S. in organizing
>sustained nonviolent civil disobedience at the offices of Representatives
>and Senators who do not publicly pledge to vote against war funding.  Voices
>is spearheading the organizing here in Chicago, as well as coordinating with
>groups all over Illinois so our efforts on our Representatives and Senators
>are most effective.  Our next organizing meeting is Sunday December 17 at
>6pm at Christian Peacemaker Teams Training Center, located at 2751 W. 16th
>St (near the corner of 16th and
>California, across from Douglas Park).  We hope you can join us for that
>meeting.
>
>Please feel free to contact us with any questions, comments, or interest you
>might have regarding this campaign.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Occupation Project:
>
>President Bush is expected to submit to Congress yet another request in
>early 2007 for supplemental war funding for the Iraq war.  Already, the
>military services are requesting $160 billion in additional war funding for
>the current fiscal year, which just began on October 1, though modest
>reductions will likely be made before being submitted to Congress in early
>2007.  The funds will be for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for the
>so-called Global War on Terror.
>
>In Chicago, a coalition of organizations and individuals will conduct weekly
>occupations inside the offices of elected Representatives and Senators
>beginning February 5.  Campaigns are also being organized in Wisconsin and
>Iowa.  We ask your participation in the Occupation Project campaign in your
>own locality—building a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience focused
>upon your own Representative and Senators.
>
>The campaign is nonviolent, consists of actions which risk arrest and is
>based upon affinity groups.  An affinity group is a grouping of individuals
>who come together for a specific action or for a longer period of time to
>make decisions together and support each other through a campaign of
>nonviolent resistance.  Each affinity group will determine the type of c.d.
>action in which its members engage.
>
>The location and frequency of the actions will vary.  One possibility is to
>focus upon a specific Senator or Representative because of their position on
>the war or in Congress (especially if they are on the Appropriations
>Committee which will initially vote on the war funding).   Another
>possibility is to rotate the action from one office to another: week one is
>at Senator A's office; week 2 is at Senator B's office; week 3 is at a
>Representative's office; week 4 is back to Senator A and the cycle is
>repeated.  Some may act once a week, others every other week.  If 16 people
>are willing to risk arrest, consider having 4 people risk arrest each week
>throughout the campaign, rather than all at once.
>
>The type of action will also vary as affinity groups decide what to do, so
>long as the action is based firmly within the nonviolence guidelines and
>principles of this campaign.  Affinity groups within a locality or region
>may coordinate with each other—perhaps using the model of one affinity group
>acts at an office one week, followed by a different affinity group the
>following week, and so on.
>
>One action within an official's office is to read the names of U.S. and Iraq
>dead, tolling a bell for each name read, until all names have been read or
>until the Senator / Representative publicly pledges to vote against any
>additional war funding or participants are placed under arrest and removed
>from the office.
>
>Another action within an official's office is to toll a bell once each
>minute for each Iraqi and U.S. person who has died since the U.S. led
>invasion.    The number of Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the war
>will quite probably never be known.  However, it is established that the
>number of Iraqis who have died since the invasion number at least in the
>tens of thousands, if not in the hundreds of thousands.   The tolling of the
>bell would continue until it is tolled once for each person who has died in
>Iraq or until people are placed under arrest and removed from the office.
>
>Other possibilities include an interfaith prayer service; a silent vigil;
>posting of the names of Iraqi and U.S. dead; bringing in photos of Iraqis
>and U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq; etc.—all occurring within the
>Representative's or Senator's office and continuing until such time as he /
>she publicly pledges to vote against additional war funding or the
>participants are removed from the office by law enforcement.
>
>In laying the groundwork for the Occupation Project, VCNV encourages you to
>contact your Representative and Senators to seek a public pledge to oppose
>war funding.  Delegations should be formed to meet with Representatives and
>Senators as soon as possible—but prior to the February 5 start date of the
>Occupation Project's sustained campaign of civil disobedience.  Ask your
>legislator to publicly pledge to vote against any additional funding for the
>Iraq war.   You should be in contact with the Mandate for Peace campaign's
>efforts in this regard (www.mandateforpeace.org).   If your Rep or Senator
>makes such a public pledge, please let VCNV know so that this can be noted
>on the campaign website.
>
>The VCNV website includes the following legislative resources: background
>information on prior supplemental spending bills; the voting records of
>Representatives and Senators; list of members of the House and Senate
>Appropriations Committee; and information on the legislation which
>Representatives and Senators co-sponsored in the current  Congress (please
>be aware that all pending legislation dies with the end of this Congress in
>December).  In addition, the site will maintain a listing all of the places
>where activists are participating in the Occupation Project.  On this
>website, activists will also find sample press releases, fliers,
>informational updates, announcements of actions happening across the United
>States, and nonviolence guidelines / resources to assist with participation
>in the campaign.  Voices will also provide a basic guide to the arrest and
>court process for those preparing to risk arrest during this campaign.
>
>During the coming weeks, we plan to be in touch with people and groups who
>have organized previous nonviolent efforts to end economic and military
>warfare in Iraq.  We plan to continue to work in collaboration with other
>organizations which promote nonviolent civil disobedience to end the war in
>and occupation of Iraq, especially the National Campaign of Nonviolent
>Resistance (www.iraqpledge.org) and the Declaration of Peace
>(www.declarationofpeace.org),
>each of which is organizing actions to take place in early 2007.
>
>Voices for Creative Nonviolence was established in 2005 by individuals who
>previously worked to end the brutal U.S. / U.N. economic sanctions imposed
>against Iraq by the U.S. and U.N.  Many traveled to, and supported those who
>traveled to, Iraq to bring medicine and other humanitarian supplies to
>ordinary Iraqi citizens in a campaign of civil disobedience. VCNV calls for
>the immediate end to the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq; the
>unconditional cancellation of all odious debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's
>regime; the unconditional cancellation of the war reparations charges
>imposed against Iraq by the U.N. following the Hussein regime's invasion of
>Kuwait in 1990-91; and the full payment of war reparations by the U.S. to
>Iraq for the reconstruction of Iraq following 15 years of economic and
>military warfare against Iraq.
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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