December/January 2004-2005

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Remembering "Sofagate"

Arnie Alpert coordinates the American Friends Service Committee's New Hampshire Program.

This is a story about how I managed to get arrested for sitting in silence, by myself, in the waiting room of my US Senator's office during normal work hours. I offer it now to help us consider what actions we might take to stop the war/occupation in Iraq. Specifically, the lessons I draw now from this experience are: Use role plays to help refine the intent and message of your action; be thoughtful about how our message is carried by your action -- in other words, try to "embody" your message; and from the start, consider post-arrest scenarios as an extension of your action.

The Pledge of Resistance of the early-mid 1980s was an important vehicle for mobilizing nonviolent protest against US aggression in Nicaragua. The idea was to "deter" a US invasion by getting lots of people pledged to foment nonviolent disruption should an invasion occur. Sit-ins at Congressional offices were the most popular idea for what we would do.

When Reagan did not invade, we found ourselves all organized with nowhere to go protest. But since Reagan was committing aggression, in the form of support for the Contras, there was agreement to launch coordinated civil disobedience actions anyway.

When my affinity group, made up of Concord, NH area activists, held a nonviolence training session, we role-played a sit-in at our Senator's office. In the role-play, we refused to leave until we could talk to the Senator. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I recall clearly that in debriefing the role-play, we realized that talking to the Senator, either in person or over the phone, was not our objective. In other words, even had the Senator been willing to sit down and chat, we would not have been ready to leave his office. We would not have been satisfied unless we felt that we had communicated to him the depth of our concerns.

Neither did we feel we would communicate well by saying "we're here to occupy your office, and we're not going to leave until the US stops its aggression against Nicaragua."

While other groups occupied Congressional offices, or blocked street corners, until they were arrested, our group chose a different course. We decided the best way we could communicate with the Senator, and with anyone else who happened to be paying attention, was not to take over or shut down his office. Instead, we decided to pay visits to his office, one by one, for periods of two hours each, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Rather than impress him with numbers or militancy, we decided to impress him with persistence.

This went on for about a week. Each morning, a member of our group would show up by herself, introduce herself to the receptionist, and sit on the sofa in the waiting area by the door. For two hours, she would sit quietly, and use the time for prayer, meditation, writing, or reading about Nicaragua. Sometimes we would leave letters to the Senator. Sometimes we would just leave.

We knew they were paying attention because at the end of a week, one of our members was handed a letter from the Senator saying we would no longer be "allowed" to continue our witness in his office. His rationale was that people sitting on the sofa in his waiting area were in a position to overhear confidential conversations between constituents and his staff.

Since we had never asked permission, we did not feel he could withdraw it. Nevertheless, we agreed to a short cooling-off period while we considered our response. As a gesture of good faith, we decided to reduce our presence in his office from two people a day at two hours each to one person a day for one hour. We said it was not our intent to disrupt his normal affairs, nor were we interested in disrupting the affairs of constituents. But we were intent on letting him know how seriously we were opposed to what the US government was doing in Nicaragua.

Over the course of the next five days, one person a day went to the Senator's office, introduced herself to the receptionist, and took a seat on the sofa (still in earshot of the receptionist). Each person was asked to leave and refused. Every day, a member of the Concord Police came, asked the seated activist to leave, and then arrested her for criminal trespass.

We had five separate trials. The one person who hired himself a lawyer got his charges dropped. The other four of us, who each represented ourselves, were found guilty (by a different judge). One served time. The other three of us appealed to the Superior Court, where we raised a novel defense; we insisted we had a constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Senator brought in a Senate lawyer, who argued that we were interfering with the essential business of the government. This time we had help from a Civil Liberties Union lawyer. Eventually, the judge agreed with us, and charges were dropped.

The arrests and court cases received sufficient attention in the community that we felt that the Senator and others had heard our message. We felt good about what we had done.

I wish we had had the will to return to the Senator's office. But as is so often the case with civil disobedience, we were exhausted by the time the court case was over. And by then, the Senator had re-arranged the office to eliminate the waiting area entirely!

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