Neighbors Times: April-May 2006 #5

"Not One More Death, Not One More Dollar"

On Feb. 20 a group of  20 women - many of them from Evanston - went to the Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago to request that Senator Richard Durbin vote to cut off funding for the Iraq war. 

Their actions were part of the nationwide Occupation Project, which is a campaign of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience to end the Iraq war. It is coordinated by Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV), along with CodePINK, Veterans for Peace and over 25 other groups. The project aims to pressure senators and representatives to vote against the proposed $124 billion supplemental war spending bill currently making its way through Congress. The project's campaign began Feb. 5 and is planned to last at least until the end of March, when the Senate votes on the bill.

The “occupation” of congressional offices is  symbolic of this country’s occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.  As of March 16, 188 citizens had been arrested across the country.

In response to a peaceful civil disobedience action that had occurred in the office the week before, Durbin’s office was locked to the public on February 20^th. Twenty women had originally been scheduled to meet with his chief of staff, but after crack down in security, only ten of the twenty women were allowed in the meeting. They were all escorted by armed security guards to a conference room outside the Senator’s office.

While they met, women from CodePINK, Women for Peace, and others leafleted outside the building and held giant pink signs in  the shape of women's torsos that said, “STOP FUNDING WAR. ” 

After the meeting, four women were arrested for a non-violent protest in the lobby of the building. Laura Bernstein, 59, of Highland Park; Katie Jean Dahlseng, 25, of Rogers Park; Marjorie Fujara, 43, of Evanston; and Rosalie Riegle, 70, of Evanston remembered the war dead, both from the United  States and Iraq. They engaged in a call and response memorial, with Bernstein singing out the names of soldiers and civilians, followed by a chant: "We remember you. Not one more death, not one more dollar."   Police arrested the women within fifteen minutes.

The message from the women to the Senator and members of Congress is, "You cannot say that you're against the war if you fund it.  And if you fund it- you own it.”

[For more information about the actions of the Occupation Project, go to www.vcnv.org]

(Submitted by Dickelle Fonda of North Shore Coalition For Peace and Justice)