Sen. Smith targets Peace Activists

Senator Smith once told greiving parents of a dead soldier basically to just wait and they'll see that Bush was right and they were wrong for protesting the illegal occupation.

He then has flip flopped and said that the war may be wrong.

Now he has changed his tune again and supports a Surge. So people were arrested for refusing to leave the lobby till Smith flip flops back again.

Tomorrow "C" and "T" of CodePink will enter again. I'm forwarding on this email from our action email.

"Happy Valentine's Day Massacre of Peace People's Lobby Rights,

You've heard the old joke that starts, "A master's student, a legal secretary and a hippie peace professor walked into a Senator's office..."

Whoops! Joke's on us. Turns out all we had to do was walk to the public elevator--never made it to the office--and we were halted by one security guard, with half-dozen more on the hoof toward us. We were going to US Senator Gordon Smith's office to offer our opinion, in person and in writing, that the Republican Senator from Oregon ought to live up to his brave proclamation for peace that he gave on the Senate floor way last December 7, when he said he was at the end of his rope with this war. Rhoda Moore, Kerry Bassett and I had only one request, that he promise to vote against the supplemental war and occupation spending bill.

Instead, we were asked to leave the 12-story office building because our presence was "a disturbance to the other tenants."

Gosh, that was our intent. Guess we succeeded.

Oh, they meant that thinking at all about the war is disturbing, I suppose. Disturbing enough to prevent those who looked suspiciously like peace people from even entering the elevator.

We talked for an hour or so. We assured the security people, and the representative from Smith's office who came down to talk with us on the brick outdoor plaza, that keeping peace messages out of Smith's sight and office environs was only going to disturb more of the tenants in the end. Since the building is on private property (PGE), one of our secondary goals is to drive a wedge between PGE and Smith by making it more costly to have him as a tenant. Smith's rep, Andrew Over, categorically denied that we were being kept out at Smith's office request and, upon further questioning, even denied that the Smith people had any input into this decision.

OK, then. This is an invitation to fax Senator Smith's office to tell them two things:

1. Tell the Senator to immediately promise to vote against any further funding for this godawful war.

2. Insist that the office be open to those who wish to be peace lobbyists. No one who has gone there has yelled (or even talked loudly), nor have we blockaded (yet), we haven't invaded any inner or private spaces, and we've been friendly to all.

I wish I could assert that we've never interrupted any of them in conversation, but we are working on our conversational skills, which are not perfect but are not illegal--or maybe they are."

Smith's office:

Phone: 503.326.3386

Fax: 503.326.2900

And if you'd like to learn more about being a part of this nonviolent civil resistance campaign, please visit the website: www.defundthewar.com

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This is such an outrage and I am asking that everyone flood the senator's office with faxes and phone calls demanding our right to lobby for peace. Thanks everyone!

I apologize for any errors. My computer is fritzing out. I'm trying to get this out and about because my loved ones are going in again.