198 Sundays: Take A Seat, Make Yourself To Home

In honor of The Williston Thirteen, today's Method is 162. Sit-in, which is a form of nonviolent physical intervention.

In a sit-in the interventionists occupy certain facilities by sitting on available chairs, stools and occasionally on the floor for a limited or unlimited period, either in a single act of in a series of acts, with the objective of disrupting the normal pattern of activities.

That's just what happened Friday:

Reached by cell phone while he was inside the Guard offices, Matt Howard of Iraq Veterans Against the War said he would remain until the office closed for the day or police drove him out of the building. "Our mission is to shut down recruiting. Every minute this office is shut down a life is saved," he said.

Howard said the military was deceiving young people to join the military, only to serve in an unjust, deadly war. Asked whether military recruiters had a First Amendment right to discuss the military with students, Howard said the recruiters were deceiving students, and that is improper.

Police, Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan and others were also in the Guard offices, trying to persuade the group to leave. Outside, demonstrators waved signs and chanted slogans such as, "Education, not occupation, military out of our schools."

The demonstrators also pressed themselves against the Guard office's storefront windows to watch the activity inside. Shortly before 5 p.m. police began dragging the protesters out of the Guard office into a back room and into an enclosed loading dock. They were placed in a Chittenden County Sheriff's van.

Demonstrators ran to the back of the building, where a phalanx of police officers urged the group to get out of the way. The demonstrators obliged as the large garage doors slowly opened and the van pulled out. The protesters yelled cheers and encouragement to the arrested demonstrators, invisible in a windowless portion of the vehicle. A few people thumped their hands on the van's side while others took pictures and videos of the scene.

While many people will think of the modern Civil Rights Movement in the United States when sit-ins are mentioned, those who were arrested during their peaceful occupation of the National Guard recruitment office in Williston were following in a tradition that dates back as far as 1838 when the Antislavery Convention of American Women began using the tactic as part of their abolitionist efforts.  Once again, congratulations to everybody for a successful action on Friday.

Onward!

ntodd

Covered on previous Sundays:

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION  

5. Declarations of indictment and intention
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
11. Records, radio, and television
15. Group lobbying
19. Wearing of symbols
21. Delivering symbolic objects.
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property.
34. Vigils
38. Marches
44. Mock funerals

THE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION

57. Lysistratic nonaction
61. Boycott of social affairs

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION

71. Consumers' boycott
90. Revenue refusal
117. General strike

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION

120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
148. Mutiny

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION

159. The fast: a) Fast of moral pressure; b) Hunger strike; c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
171. Nonviolent interjection
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
193. Overloading of administrative systems
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of "neutral" laws