Occupation Project targets Congress' war spending votes

Encouraged by successes in its winter-spring campaign to stop funding for the Iraq war. a coalition of antiwar groups is organizing another round of sit-in demonstrations in the home offices of U.S. senators and congressmen and congresswomen through the end of September.

The chief organizer of the "Occupation Project," the Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence, calls the effort "a campaign of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience aimed at ending funding for the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq."

Under the project, groups of people visit the home offices of senators and U.S. representatives. Typically they ask to meet the lawmaker and try to secure a pledge from her or him to stop funding to the Iraq war. The group refuses to leave the offices until they have the pledge. The office occupations are to be nonviolent and generally end in arrests for trespassing or similar charges.

The first phase of the Occupation Project was launched Feb. 5 and ran until April 17. In that time, organizers say, more than 320 people were arrested in the offices of 39 U.S. representatives and senators in 25 states.

That campaign targeted legislation authorizing a $482 billion military budget for fiscal year 2008 and $93 million in supplemental funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Congress debated and voted on in the spring and early summer. Final votes on all the bills are pending.

Also pending is another $142 billion in supplemental funding for the wars. The Washington Post reported Aug. 29 that President Bush plans ,to add $50 billion to that supplemental bill in mid-September, after the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus, makes his much-anticipated report to Congress on the status the Iraq war.

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The Occupation Project organizers say that 15 of the 39 lawmakers whose offices were occupied during the first phase of their campaign voted against funding bills in May and that 14 of those 15 had voted in favor of the previous year's Iraq war spending bill.

Sensing an advantage, the organizers launched a second phase of the Occupation Project Aug. 6 to run through September.

An analyst at DefenseNews.com said war spending is at "the center of a hard-fought debate."

"When the U.S. Congress reconvenes Sept. 4, lawmakers will have less than four weeks to pass three major military funding bills before the money runs out and a new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Not much time, when you consider that passing a defense budget, at least for now, depends on resolving a fierce debate over whether to set withdrawal deadlines, readiness requirements, benchmarks and other conditions on the U.S. military presence in Iraq," William Matthews wrote on DefenseNews.com.

Trials for the arrests in the first phase of the project began this summer. A Colorado protester was found guilty and sentenced to 365 days in jail and $1,000 free. Two activists in Alaska were found guilty and sentenced to seven days in jail.

Eleven protesters, convicted of trespassing Feb. 26 in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, office of Republican Sen. Charles Grassley were ordered to pay $190 in fines and court costs.

However, five protesters arrested the same day in Grassley's Des Moines office were acquitted. A six-member jury returned a unanimous not guilty verdict. The protesters said they were exercising their constitutional right to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

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