Seizing Congressional Offices And What's Next For The Anti-War Movement

[crossposted at DailyKos, w/some intresting comments]

I, rep. Edward Markey, pledge to vote against the supplemental spending measure that President Bush will seek in 2007 from Congress to fund the war in and occupation of Iraq. I will take leadership in getting other Representatives to also vote against the supplemental.

These solemn words, as recorded on the front page of the Woburn [MA] Daily Times Chronicle, highlight a most important tactic in the uphill battle to stop the $93 billion "emergency appropriation" Bush wants Congress to pony up so he can continue the war in Iraq. Markey's pledge was wrested by a two-day occupation of his office, spearheaded by the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace. Nate Goldshlag of VFP says Senator John Kerry is next!

Similarly, Representative Lacy Clay (D-MO) told an assertive audience in St. Louis last week

that he would continue to vote against escalation of troops and “against additional funding.”

This diary will update my overview from earlier this month, "Wave of Congressional Office Occupations Builds, Below the Radar." It will highlight some of the particular battles, talk about the inadvertent role MoveOn .com is playing in the campaign, and try to set everything in the context of the upcoming Congressional appropriations battle and the anti-war movement today.

According to the Update page at the website of the Occupation Project, the group at the center of the ongoing wave of seizures of Congressional offices, last week saw at least four actions resulting in the arrest of protesters (which means the Smedley Butler crew don't even make the cut for this unofficial list).

Portland--Senator Tom Allen (D-ME): 13 arrested

“We need to ratchet things up a bit,” said protester Phil Weyenberg of Old Orchard Beach. He said the campaign reflects a tactical shift for activists frustrated by a Democratic Congress unwilling to cut funding for the Iraq war.

Denver--Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO): 7 arrested

Now known as the Salazar seven

Toledo--Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH): 4 arrested

Klein, a truck driver, said he was willing to be arrested because he believes in the group’s message.

“Cut the funding and end the war,” he said. “Not cut it down lower, but cut it off. That will force them to bring the troops home.”

Fairbanks--Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK): 2 arrested, 1 cited

Senator Steven’s staff worker in the Fairbanks office assured the nine peace activists occupying the office that their efforts were worthless. “The Senator’s aide told us that our action wouldn’t do any good,” said Rob Mulford, “but when we were locked up I knew we’d done something good because a woman jailer spotted us in our cells and she said, ‘Oh! You guys are my heroes!’”

There are all kinds of other lobbying efforts going on simultaneously, from the deadly serious push by Military Families Speak Out to MoveOn.org's online "Virtual March." I focus on these seizures for several reasons:

• they are the most dramatic form in which the demand to cut off funds to the occupation is being presented;
  
• despite good local coverage in most cases, they are being ignored in the national mainstream media;
• they reflect a growing sense that the anti-war movement has to amp up the struggle in these difficult times:
• and most of all, because they are changing the terrain on which the whole broader lobbying effort is taking place.

This last was apparent in an Occupation Project effort in Chicago. A contingent of 25 clergy and supporters tried last week to deliver a letter to the offices of Senators Obama and Durbin. Authorities locked down the whole Federal building in Chicago to prevent them getting inside. There have been other instances of delegations being refused admission to the offices of their elected representatives.

Oklahoma City saw an even more startling incident last week. As blogged here, a group organized by MoveOn.org, went to the office of Representative Mary Fallin (D-OK) to deliver letters demanding she take a stand against the escalation, not even the war as a whole.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A group opposed to the war in Iraq on Thursday was ordered to leave the building where Rep. Mary Fallin's office is located after members delivered protest letters opposing President George W. Bush's plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

In the comments responding to that post, a Kossack whose nom du blog is FeelingsickinMN, reported that there's a crew of MoveOn.org members who occupy the office of Betty McCollum (D-MN) every Tuesday! It's not, he says, an official MoveOn.org operation. No kidding. McCollum speaks fiercely against the occupation, but they want to hold her feet to the fire to defund:

The object of our being in her office Tuesday after Tuesday is to demonstrate that we are not going to settle for less than a quick end to the war. Ms. McCollum's view is that cutting off the funding right now would put a lot of Dem House seats in jeopardy in '08 and that the most important element in getting out of Iraq is keeping Dems in elective office.

And there's the problem of the day in a nutshell! Last week I analyzed Representative John Murtha's plan (formally) to block escalation and (actually) to gradually end the war through attaching stringent conditions to the emergency appropriation that Bush is requesting. This approach would also give Democratic pols cover to resist the growing pressure coming up from the people of this country and lensed by the anti-war movement to flat-out stop funding this murderous fiasco. It posed some real challenges to the anti-war movement.

What I thought was pessimism appears, it turns out, to have been channelling Pollyanna. The Congressional Democrats are responding to Murtha's lifeline, carefully framed as a series of measures in defense of the troops, as stupidly and as short-sightedly as Bush did when offered the Iraq Study Group's proposal as covering fire to help him shuffle toward the exits. As reported in the Washington Post, the Murtha plan is being attacked as "a non-starter" that will undercut the troops. Attacked, mind you, by his fellow Democrats, some of whom have joined the Republicans in vowing to pass the emergency appropriation without any conditions.

Meanwhile too many "lefter" Dems, like McCollum have rallied around Murtha's plan and dropped their opposition to the appropriation. Even Ed Markey started tap-dancing the day after he signed his pledge to the veterans who seized his office.

What does this mean? In theoretical terms, I'd argue that it means that the ruling class in this country is still trapped in a box. They cannot afford to leave Iraq and they cannot afford to stay in Iraq. They are paralyzed and have found no satisfactory solution to their problems. Unless and until somebody convinces enough of them that their only choice is to cut their losses, that paralysis in going to be reflected in Congress.

In practical terms it means the anti-war movement has its work cut out for it. On the good foot, it's gonna be harder for some "moderates" to use the Murtha bill to split the anti-war movement and try to remove the "Now" from slogans like "Bring Them Home Now!" Overall, though, we need to figure out how to mobilize through the dismay and disheartenment many will feel if Bush gets his $93 billion, even with some strings attached. We need to come up with a strategic approach that can mobilize more of the huge reservoir of mass sentiment for ending the war and can take advantage of the freedom of moveement the enemy's paralysis gives us.

Some argue that impeachment should be the main thing we do now. I say: Iraq Moratorium. What say you, dear reader?

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Will Murtha's Plan Damage The Anti-War Movement?

Representative John Murtha (D, PA) has a plan to end the war in Iraq (though at the moment he’s selling it only as a way to end "The Surge."). This plan is based on attaching conditions to Bush’s "emergency appropriation" request. It has the backing of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership, and presumably of those significant allies within the military’s High Command with whom Murtha has legendary ties going back decades.

The Murtha plan also serves to provide cover for elected officials, especially Democrats, who are facing intensifying pressure to take strong action to end this fiasco pronto. That pressure comes from (perhaps through would be more apt) a resurgent anti-war/anti-occupation movement which is moving powerfully forward on a broad front these days. The Murtha plan is bound, and perhaps designed, to put obstacles in the path of that advance, and to change the balance of forces within the anti-war movement and its focus.

This piece will summarize the Murtha plan, touch very briefly on its actual prospects for success and then discuss its very serious implications for the anti-war movement.

THE MURTHA PLAN

I recommend that anyone wanting to understand the political terrain anti-war activists will be facing watch the video interview with him posted at MoveCongress.org a couple of days ago. It fleshes out what has been in the press about the Murtha plan, and shows the subtle thinking and the flexibility that has the Right in a foam-flecked attack frenzy.

First, let me state at the outset that I think Murtha genuinely wants to end the occupation of Iraq as soon as possible, and has for some time. He fears the enormous harm it is doing to his beloved Marine Corps and the military as a whole, and he recognizes, like many, that the occupation is lost. And unlike many politicians, he has had the guts to take a stand. His November 2005 call for complete rapid "redeployment" out of Iraq--no timelines, no benchmarks, no phased withdrawal, no residual forces—changed the terms of the debate over the war greatly and for the better. (I also liked that, when asked about what he meant by "over the horizon" redeployment, he suggested Okinawa would be a good place.)

His MoveCongress.org talk lays out a strategy based around the upcoming debate on Bush’s latest trip back to the "emergency appropriation" well—a request for $93 billion this time. In hearings in the House Appropriatioons Defense Subcommittee, which he runs, conditions will be attached to the bill.

Moreover, the most prominent conditions are couched as defense of the troops: No troops to be redeployed to Iraq without a year intervening, and then only if they are certified as being fully retrained and equipped. No more extensions of deployment (which would mean that one year, boots on the ground, would be the maximum). No more Stop Loss, the dreaded "Back Door Draft" that snatches men and women with a few months or weeks left of their service commitment and sends them back into harm’s way for another full tour.

Murtha presents this as a way to stop any further escalation of the US presence in Iraq (and with most of the remnants of the Coalition of the Willing eying the exits, the occupation is the US, a shrinking contingent of Brits, and mercenaries, period). In fact, to a military strapped for troops, with a brutal optempo, sinking morale and barrel-bottom-scraping recruiting practices, this would make anything like the current occupation impossible to sustain any longer.

What’s more, Murtha says he intends to include a clause requiring that the US announce that it will not seek permanent bases in Iraq, which rules out keeping a toehold (meaning a trigger point for re-invasion). He also talks about mandating the closing of Abu Ghraib and even Guantanamo.

The mechanisms through which all this will be enforced are unclear, but the general idea appears to be that the money will be released in batches and failure to comply with the bill’s requirements at one stage will immediately result in the sequestration of the next batch.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Will this pass? We’ll see. And to go into effect, it’ll have to get the Senate’s okay too.

Would it stop the war? Quite possibly, but with a couple of very important caveats. First, almost any scenario for ending or downsizing the war other than waiting until January 2009 may well lead to a Constitutional crisis. Faced by a funds cutoff or by a veto-proof bill calling for withdrawal or a revocation of the war powers bill, Bush will try and keep the war going. Though Murtha’s strategy is gradualist, there are potentially a lot of separate trigger points for such a crisis. Second, it would take a long time to end the occupation this way, time in which the devastation of Iraq will continue unabated, troops will die and be wounded and the damage to the US itself will deepen.

Will it lead to impeachment? It would be foolhardy to predict that now.

Will it help position the Democrats for the 2008 elections? Funny you should ask. By not choking off funding for the war now (or when the 2008 emergency appropriation comes up), they get to run against Bush and his failed war all over again. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children who will die between now and then. Never mind the tens of thousands of troops who will be killed or wounded.

THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT’S PLAN

Before it does anything whatsoever to bring the end of the war closer, this approach has the potential to do real damage to the anti-war movement. That movement, let me underline, is on a roll. The January 27 demo was large and determined and far broader than generally understood, campuses are stepping up, resolutions against the war are in play at the state level instead of just in cities, local activities are doing very well. And there has been intense focus on Congress and stopping the funding as the key to stopping the war.

Therein, of course, lies the rub. Congress has been the focus of anti-war strategy for a long time now, as activists and everyday people alike realized that how intent Bush administration was on "staying the course" (and possibly rolling double or nothing in Iran). Mass disapproval and indeed seething anger were not gonna change much of anything in the White House. Congresscritters on the other hand are clearly more susceptible to mass pressure, especially after the wholesale rubbishing of Republican candidates in the November election.

Thus lobbying, petitions and other pressure tactics have been intensified even more than demonstrations and broadly-directed educational activities. Some organizations like Progressive Democrats of America and Military Families Speak Out have mobilized to really bear down on this, supported by United For Peace and Justice and other groups in the mainstream of the anti-war movement. One whole new effort, the Occupation Project, sponsored by the Committee for Non-Violent Action, represents a bold ramping up of this approach. They’ve been occupying Congressional offices, demanding that the Senator or Representative targeted agree to vote against the "Emergency Supplemental"--in the case of those who’ve declared their opposition to the occupation but done squat, to put their money where their mouths are.

Absent a serious worsening of the situation on the ground in Iraq, it has been a long shot that we would be able to cut off the funding this time. On the other hand, all it would take would be defeat of the $93 billion appropriation by a simple majority vote in either house. No need to get the same bill agreed to by both houses, to beat back a filibuster in the Senate, to overturn a presidential veto. One more "No" than "Yes" vote, and that’s that (or rather, here comes the Constitutional crisis).

TWO PLANS COLLIDE

The Murtha strategy and its adoption by the Congressional Dems knock this topsy-turvy. First off, it gives pro-war, waffling, and anti-war but gutless elected officials an out: "I’d love to vote against Bush’s request, but we are using the appropriation to turn the tide and start bringing the war home." It may even increase pressure on the more principled souls who have voted against emergency appropriations in the past to fall in line now.

(How much pressure will depend on how smart the Republicans play this. Suppose that they can stay united on voting against Murtha’s booby-trapped version. Suppose further that they put their opposition in terms of not getting in the way of the troops—after all, at this point nobody’s likely to rally behind, "We can’t tie the President’s hands." Too many people would like to see his feet tied, too, and wired to the engine block of a 1947 DeSoto and dropped in the Potomac. How many Dems will vote "No" if it means joining the Republicans in trying to block the Murtha plan?)

Second, it sets up the folks who have been working hardest on pressuring Congress to defund for a big, fat demoralizing hit.

Third, and more broadly, if the Democrats and a bunch of Republican allies go with the Murtha approach, gradualism becomes the order of the day. We will be back to politicians and pundits talking about timetables and phased withdrawals and benchmarks and all the rest of the think tank nonsense we had to fight to sweep away in 2003 and 2004. Once again we will have to blaze a path our way through thickets of policy wonkery to keep to the fore the simple demands that more and more people in this country are uniting around: Stop The Occupation! Bring Them Home Now!

This is already happening. Tom Hayden has jumped out with a convoluted plan that amounts to dumping the current puppet government and somehow getting the Iraqis to set up a new one. These puppets would then demand that the US withdraw all troops within six months to a year. Oh yeah, and the new regime will also establish a cease-fire among the militias and call an international conference to "fill the vacuum." And people like him claim it’s "not realistic" to demand that the US government just end the occupation!)

Fourth, it has the potential to drive a wedge into the critically important movement of Iraq veterans and active duty troops who are speaking out against the war. With Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Appeal For Redress leading the way, more and more soldiers are coming to the anti-war side. Murtha’s approach, cast as it is as a defense of the troops and a way to enhance their capacity to fight, thus making it eassier to isolate those who attack the occupation as insane and unjustifiable and call for its immediate end.

Finally, it gives a big boost to the more reformist Beltway-based opponents of the war, as opposed to the left, progressive, pacifist, and just plain fed-up folks who are the rank and file of the peace movement. They will again claim a disproportionate share of resources and media attention. Meanwhile, grassroots opponents of the occupation will get discouraged or quickly grow more radical (the latter being just fine with me, but concerning if it comes at the expense of weakening or sidetracking the anti-war movement.)

What do readers think of this take on developments, and what do you think should be done about it? I’ll save my few suggestions about how the anti-war movement might respond to this turn of events for a later post, but as a sneak preview let me leave you with two words: Iraq Moratorium.

[crossposted at DailyKos]

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Wave Of Congressional Office Occupations Builds, Below the Radar

I just watched the new MoveCongress.org video of John Murtha explaining his legislative strategy to end the occupation of Iraq, which seems to contain some interesting hidden booby traps for the Bush administration. There is, unfortunately, another concealed agenda item in his plan—providing cover for Democrats who are under massive pressure to vote No on the upcoming $93 billion emergency appropriation Bush needs to continue the war.

And plenty of them need cover. Since the 110th Congress opened, pressure has been escalating on Democrats and Republicans alike to screw down the valves on the money pipeline. Most dramatic has been a surge, so to speak, in actual takeovers of Representatives’ and Senators’ offices.

So What’s New?

The tactic of taking over politicians' offices is hardly a new one and has been used to notable effect earlier in the struggle to end this unjust and unjustifiable occupation. In Maine, for instance, there have been repeated occupations of the offices of “moderate” Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (as reported here last year by Michael Uhl, Veterans For Peace Chapter 1.).

One change now is the breadth of the movement and its intensity. Though the occupation tactic has long been under discussion by many activists, a trailblazing step forward was taken last month by peace movement folks in Sacramento. With an outfit called Sacramento for Democracy at the core, they are in the 28th day of a rolling 9 to 5 occupation of the local office of Representative Doris Matsui. Matsui, a Democrat, has stepped up her anti-war rhetoric in response, but that’s all so far.

Interestingly, Sacramento for Democracy is the local affiliate of Progressive Democrats of America. When folks whose primary political identification is with the Democratic Party are rock solid for cutting funding to the occupation and are taking over Congressional offices, things are shifting.

The tide is swelling even under more difficult conditions. In Huntsville, AL, two activists supported by a rally of dozens of supporters took a first step, standing silently in Representative Bud Cramer’s office. One of them, Gordon Engstrom, said:

“I feel like we made some history. It’s probably the first time anyone has ever stood in Bud Cramer’s office in honor of Gandhi. I can’t say that I think I changed anyone’s mind, but I know that I made a statement that cannot be misinterpreted. We are against the war, and we are for peace.”

The Occupation Project

The Alabama action was part of the unfolding Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War. The occupation project was initiated by Voices for Creative Non-Violence, an organization with roots in traditional pacifism. The campaign has been endorsed and is being heavily promoted by Veterans For Peace, Code Pink and United For Peace & Justice.

The kickoff of the campaign took place on February 5, with a total of 18 activists arrested while occupying the offices of Senators John McCain in DC, and Barack Obama and Dick Durbin in Chicago. The campaign’s Occupation Project Updates is, along with Indymedia, the best source of information on what’s been done and what’s brewing.

The Demands

So far, all the occupations have focused on getting elected officials to do more than denounce the war. A Sacramento activist noted:

“Congress has the power of the purse strings. It is the one real way it can stop the war. Yet Doris refuses to agree to our lone request – vote against future funding for the war. There are billions already allocated to protect our troops. New funding only extends the war.”

In Portland, OR, Greg Lief, arrested for “trespassing” in the office of Senator Gordon Smith, agreed:

The main reason why we visited Smith's office was the fact that, last December, Smith went out on a limb with very strong anti-war statements. As Smith's constituents, all that George Hutchinson and I (as well as Troy Horton and Joe Walsh, both of whom visited Smith's office on January 25th) were doing is to encourage Smith to support his statements with concrete action by voting to defund the war.

Why don’t I know about this?

That’s pretty obvious. The mainstream media has by and large let this story drop or, worse, censored it. One of those arrested for occupying McCain’s office, Midge, summed it up:

We got a little news coverage including just one paragraph in an AP article about the demise of the Senate’s non-binding resolution denouncing Bush’s “troop surge.” However, that very article was edited in some publications, including my hometown paper The Springfield News-Leader, which cut the article short without mention of the McCain protests…If you live in Southwest Missouri, email the Springfield News-Leader and ask them “Why did you edit out news reported by the AP?” I mean, how Orwellian is that? Is this 1984 or what?

Why this isn’t bigger in the dKos orbit? (Six posts in the last two weeks tagged “Occupation Project” all from LA.) Or other liberal centers like Huffington Post? You tell me. I mean, I know Kossacks are all over the map on what Congressional priorities around the war should be (see the poll on this in a recent post), but ignoring this is nuts. And in hard left sections of the blogosphere, alive with calls to “escalate the struggle” and “turn dissent into resistance” one searches in vain for detailed coverage and analysis of these exciting actions. What’s with that?

And that’s not all!

In the meantime, here are a few more occupations I tracked down:

Representative Mike Honda (D) Campbell/San Jose, CA.

Representative Adam Schiff (D) Pasadena, CA

Representative Russ Carnahan (D) St. Louis, MO

Representative Russ Carnahan (D) St. Louis, MO (again)

Representative Russ Carnahan (D) St. Louis, MO (again)

Representative Russ Carnahan (D) St. Louis, MO (Today!)

And if you happen to be in Santa Cruz, CA on Friday, you might want to fall by Representative Sam Farr’s office. Around, say, 1:00 PM.

What have I missed?

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