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WIDENING THE CAMPAIGN

Gagnon based FVP on the 1930s General Motors sit-down strikes conducted by United Auto Workers in Flint, Michigan. That movement is recognized in activist circles as one of the most important labor strikes in American history, because it was the first time workers seized control of a building from the inside, rather that simply picketing on the outside. The Flint strikes also influenced the civil disobedience used by various protesters in the ’50s and ’60s. Maine’s FVP organizers understand that it belongs to a long, effective tradition of protest.

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 Maine occupations to date and edited hours of footage into 20-minute montages set to folk music, which she sends to activists around the country. At a September 2005 anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC, Visitors handed out hundreds of flyers on how to recreate the program. Wheeler and other Maine activists frequently send e-mails about FVP to their activist buddies in other states. 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. "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."

More and more people seem to agree. So far, the FVP model has been used in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Some of the occupations have resulted in town meetings; others have ended with activists spending a few days in jail.

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 known as 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 that by the end of the occupation, Neal had personally committed to a town meeting.

"[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 Crowe adds that Neal has yet to back either Pennsylvania Democratic congressman and notorious war hawk John Murtha, who sparked debate on Capitol Hill in November when he called for US withdrawal from Iraq in six months, or Massachusetts Democratic congressman James McGovern, whose bill cuts off US money for the war. "So I think we need to go back."

Last month, Anne Miller, director of New Hampshire Peace Action, in Concord, was arrested along with eight other Peace Action activists while conducting an FVP-style occupation in the Concord office of Republican Senator Judd Gregg. Miller, who did not know that the Maine program has a name, had spoken with Gagnon last February and adopted most of the program’s details for the occupation.

"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."

THE BIG PICTURE

Bill Dobbs is the media coordinator for the United for Peace and Justice Coalition, based in New York City. Founded during the build-up 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 that last summer activists nationwide seemed to shift their focus to their congressional representatives.

"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 and New York City. He believes local and national demonstrations together fuel discussion of the war — not only by showing that 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 dovetailing," 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, believes activists and concerned Americans alike 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[a]phx.com.