A somber occupation (continued)
	Becoming a Visitor Interested in pressuring our US senators and representatives to end the Iraq War? The Frequent Visit Program, run by some of Maine’s peace activists, does just that and they always need more hardy souls to join in. Here’s how you can get involved: Sign Up: There are anti-war groups all over the state, from tiny grassroots efforts in small towns to state chapters of national organizations like Peace Action and Veterans for Peace. Check your phone book to find your local action group and show up at a meeting. Or contact Peace Action Maine for a referral or to get involved with their actions. Log on to www.peaceactionme.org or call 772-0680. Show Up: The next FVP action will take place on the sidewalk outside Senator Olympia Snowe’s office in Bangor at 2 pm on December 15. There will be a press conference and an office visit. Meet just before start time at One Cumberland Place. Suit Up: If you miss the December 15 meeting, contact Tim Sullivan at info@mepj.org to get on the Maine Peace and Justice listserv for future actions. Or log onto the Veterans for Peace Web site at www.vfpmaine.org to contact people who know more about the Frequent Visit Program. _Sara Donnelly

Maureen Block, an activist from Swanville, became hooked on the Visit program from the first meeting she attended in March. Block heard about plans for the March occupation of Allen's office from friends, the same way most Maine activists learn about demonstrations, and was struck by how organized the sit-in was.

"The Frequent Visit Program was the first thing that was presented to me that would produce tangible results," Block says. "It was direct action in the offices, making statements with a clear purpose. It was a way to really get directly involved in something that made sense to me."

Gagnon and others who founded the program — including Karen Wainberg of Peace Action Maine, Dud Hendrick of Maine Veterans for Peace, and Pat Wheeler, an artist and activist from Deer Isle — hope activists in other states will adopt the format to put pressure on their own congressional senators and representatives. Wheeler has filmed four of the six occupations to date and edited hours of footage into 20-minute montages set to folk music which she sends to activists in the state and around the country. At an anti-war demonstration in Washington DC last September, Visitors handed out hundreds of flyers on how to recreate the program. Wheeler and other Maine activists frequently send informal e-mails to their activist buddies in other states talking about FVP. They talk about it on activist listservs. They hype it to their friends over coffee. "The good, old-fashioned, grassroots word-of-mouth network is the best way," says Gagnon.

"We felt that we created a model which could be recreated across the country," says Wheeler of Visit. "We try to encourage [other states' activists] to organize a new group of people that haven't done this before to teach them to do an effective office visit. We wanted more people to repeatedly visit the offices [of congressional representatives] because we've sent countless petitions their way, we've made phone calls and sent e-mails and it seemed too easy to ignore. We thought visiting their office in person would make a difference."

Francis Crowe, an 86-year-old peace activist from Northampton, Massachusetts, received one of Wheeler's DVDs and an e-mail from Gagnon about Frequent Visit. She conducted an office occupation with her group, the Quaker organization the American Friends Service Committee, in May 2005. Crowe and eight others sat in the Springfield office of Democratic congressional representative Richard Neal and read the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq and an equal number of Iraqis killed. For each name, one of the activists stamped a stick figure on a white sheet. Crowe says by the end of the meeting, Neal had personally committed to a town meeting with district constituents.

"[Neal] had been absolutely unreachable about the war in Iraq," says Crowe. "That day [his staff] said he wasn't reachable. But eventually, after the local newspaper called his office [about the demonstration], someone from the office came out to the reception room to say that Neal would be out to see us. In the dialogue with him we were able to get what we wanted which was for him to come to Northampton and hold a community meeting on the war and to spend an hour and a half answering questions and explaining his policy. But he hasn't signed on with [US representative] John Murtha or the [US representative James] McGovern bill, so I think we need to go back."

Pennsylvania Democratic congressman and notorious war hawk John Murtha sparked debate on Capitol Hill in November when he called for US withdrawal from Iraq in six months. Massachusetts Democratic congressman James McGovern's bill cuts off US money for the war.

On December 5, Anne Miller, director of New Hampshire Peace Action in Concord, was arrested along with eight other Peace Action activists while conducting a Frequent Visit-style occupation in the Concord office of Senator Judd Gregg. Miller, who did not know that the Maine program has a name, spoke with Gagnon in February and adopted most of the program's details for the occupation earlier this month.

"The call has come from all over the country for direct action," says Miller. "But I would say that Maine has provided a really wonderful model."

Bill Dobbs is the Media Coordinator for the United for Peace and Justice Coalition, based in New York City. Founded during the buildup to the Iraq War in 2002, the coalition is now the largest anti-war collective in the country, with some 1200 member groups in all 50 states and around the world. Member groups include small grassroots organizations with 10 or fewer activists to established anti-war groups like Peace Action and Veterans for Peace, each with thousands of members. Dobbs says this summer activists nationwide seemed to shift their focus to their congressional representatives. Dobbs believes the shift is the result of a number of factors, including the emergence of prominent anti-war voices in activist circles and in Congress.

"Congress is a great pressure point," says Dobbs. "There's a big gap between what the will of the American public wants and Congress and the Bush administration."

Dobbs says local work like FVP is as important to the anti-war movement as massive demonstrations in Washington DC and New York City. He believes local and national demonstrations fuel discussion on the war together — not only by showing growing numbers of voters oppose the war but by demonstrating the emotional toll on average Americans through vigils, word-of-mouth, and local actions like occupations.

"The national work and the local work are dove-tailing," says Dobbs. "There is a surge of interest in the last number of months in holding Congress accountable. Congress gave Bush the authority to wage this war and has continued to give him the money to wage it."

Gagnon, who worked as an activist in Florida before moving to Maine three years ago, says the number of activists here is unusually high, which helps regular actions like FVP. And, for an undefined war in which more than 2100 American soldiers have died and tens of thousands more Iraqis, Gagnon believes activists — or just concerned Americans — have to commit to more than the occasional demonstration or coffee-shop argument.

"Democracy is a participatory sport," he says. "If you don't exercise the muscles, they grow flaccid and weak."

Sara Donnelly can be reached at sdonnelly@phx.com