1,000 Protest Role Of U.S. in El Salvador; 215 Arrested in Blockade at Pentagon

From the Washington Post, October 18, 1988

At least 1,000 rowdy but mostly peaceful protesters of U.S. involvement in El Salvador blockaded the south entrances to the Pentagon early yesterday, sitting in front of moving cars and buses and creating a sea of bodies at the building’s doorsteps.

At least 215 demonstrators were arrested, most of them charged with obstructing a passageway, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and one year in jail. Only minor injuries were reported.

Pentagon employees arriving for work found themselves engulfed in swaying human waves. Some workers broke through with help of helmeted police, while others retreated to the unblocked entrances.

By sunrise, the protesters had managed to close the 3,700-space south parking lot, causing major commuting delays on all roads around the complex and halting bus service to the Pentagon, a major bus-subway transfer point, between 6:30 and 9 a.m.

A Pentagon spokesman said it was business as usual inside.

The mood and tactics of the protest were reminiscent of the 1960s, although many of those arrested yesterday were not yet born in 1967, when 35,000 demonstrators converged on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.

Yesterday’s demonstration united the two generations-veteran dissidents Daniel Ellsberg and David Dellinger representing the older side, and 18-year-old Len Riccio of Connecticut the new generation.

“I object to everything the United States is doing in El Salvador,” said Riccio, who was in handcuffs even before the sun came up. “If it’s got to be done, it’s got to be done,” he said of his arrest.

Peace activist Ellsberg, who in 1967 was a Pentagon employee working on what became known as the Pentagon Papers, said there was a major difference between the anti-Vietnam message and the one protesters were trying to make yesterday about El Salvador.

“We are telling the administration and the people in this building that they can’t do what they’re doing to America without arresting America,” Ellsberg said. “This is different than Vietnam. We’re acting before American combat troops are sent . . . . For every person willing to get arrested now, a hundred or thousand are willing to get arrested if they escalate this war.”

The coalition behind yesterday’s demonstration, part of a campaign called “El Salvador: Steps to Freedom,” is seeking an end to U.S. military aid, including advisers, to the government of El Salvador, which has been waging a war with leftist guerrillas for eight years. More than 65,000 people have been killed in the war and related political violence, according to media accounts.

The coalition, which includes CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), the Winning Democracy Campaign and the Pledge of Resistance, has charged that U.S. involvement in the Central American country has prolonged and aggravated the war.

The Salvadoran government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte receives nearly $100 million a year in U.S. military aid.

State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said yesterday that the U.S. assistance “has helped {El Salvador} push back the threat of communist revolution and move . . . toward a stable democracy.”

Yesterday’s demonstration at times resembled a nine-ring circus, with large knots of protesters moving from barricade to barricade to fill in cracks in the human fortress.

Although the demonstration was largely peaceful, some protesters threw red paint at passing buses, set trash cans afire, burned an effigy and tussled with police officers wielding riot clubs. Protest organizers blamed those incidents on the militant May Day Anarchist Network, whose members said they were not opposed to using violence.

At least four police officers received minor injuries, some from thrown objects and others the result of carrying protesters who went limp during their arrests.

On her way to the Pentagon Metro stop, commuter Mary Beth Greenleaf was punched in the mouth by a protester, she said as she stood by an ambulance, her mouth bleeding. Four protesters were sprayed with Mace by a Defense Protective Service officer. The officer, whose badge identified him as H.G. Meyer Jr., would not explain his actions when asked by a reporter, saying only: “I had a good reason.”

Most police maintained a low-key attitude and went out of their way to avoid arrests, a tactic that frustrated many of the protesters and resulted in a cat-and-mouse game in which the demonstrators barricaded the entrances and the police carried some of them a few feet away to clear passageways and then allowed them to move back in.

Try as he did, Bill Hawkins had a hard time getting arrested. A mathematician from the 25-member “Orioles Against Death Squads” unit from Baltimore, Hawkins helped block the Pentagon’s southeast entrance. Police picked him up by the arms and legs and gently threw his ample frame into the bushes at least three times. Each time he got up and headed back for more.

Finally, police subdued him with plastic handcuffs. “I had to very insistently position myself in front of the stairway, to make sure I was obstructing something,” he said after his arrest.

There were moments of drama and of humor.

Before dawn, angry confrontations sprouted between Pentagon employees determined to park in the south lot and protesters determined not to let them.

“I’m not going to back up, I’ll go through them,” shouted a Navy officer as a dozen people dropped to their knees in front of his van.

“If you move forward, they’re going to get hurt and it may be terrible,” pleaded Guy Burton, a CISPES “peace keeper.”

“I don’t care, I want to park my car,” the officer shouted back.

“Don’t hurt people . . . . We all have different opinions about it,” said Burton, his face inches away from the officer’s. “People are going to get hurt.”

“This is causing stupidity for you all,” the officer shot back.

A police officer stepped in, urging restraint. The Navy officer put his van in reverse.

“Thank you, sir,” said Burton. “We hope you resign.”

Reaction to the protest varied among Pentagon employees. “Obviously they’re making their point,” said Army Col. Herb Williams as he walked past demonstrators. “I’m just glad we’re living in a country where they can do what they’re doing.”

Yvette Boyd of the Army Corps of Engineers was more critical. “I don’t think it’s fair for people to have to rassle and scuffle to get to work.”

About 7:30 a.m., two teen-age girls from the District pounded a wooden cross into a mock graveyard of at least 100 crosses, each bearing the name of a victim of the Salvadoran strife. Nearby, police officers knocked over crosses.

Officer V.E. Starks approached the girls, pleading in a quiet voice: “Please, I don’t want to arrest you.”

“Are you volunteering to be arrested?” Starks asked.

After the other crosses had been knocked down, the sisters slowly walked off, with Clarity Haynes, 17, clasping a cross to her chest an looking straight ahead.

An hour later, the sisters returned, erecting that cross and many others. This time, they stayed up.

Pentagon Protest

In 1988, more than a thousand of CISPES activists participated in a mass civil disobedience action, surrounding the Pentagon and effectively shutting down it’s operations for part of the day.  240 people were arrested and charged with obstructing a passageway after blockading the south entrances to the building, sitting in front of moving cars and buses, and creating a sea of bodies at the building’s doorsteps.

Said peace activist Daniel Ellsberg: “We are telling the administration and the people in this building that they can’t do what they’re doing to America without arresting America.  This is different than Vietnam. We’re acting before American combat troops are sent . . . . For every person willing to get arrested now, a hundred or thousand are willing to get arrested if they escalate this war.”

The demonstration was part of CISPES’s campaign called “El Salvador: Steps to Freedom,” which sought an end to U.S. military aid, including advisers, to the government of El Salvador.  Protesters planted wooden crosses around the Heliport Entrance, symbolizing the thousands killed by U.S.-funded death squads in El Salvador

Lawsuit against the FBI

In 1988 The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of CISPES against the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning the agency’s multi-year campaign of harassment and surveillance aimed at anti-intervention, solidarity, and sanctuary activists.  Subsequent Congressional hearings revealed the extent to FBI activities, and ultimately lead to restrictions on the conduct of FBI agents.

The thousands of pages of files also showed that the FBI, to justify its actions, accepted as fact a right-wing conspiratorial world-view which saw dissent as treason and resistance to oppression as terrorism.

read an extended article here

Protesting Henry Kissenger in the Bay Area

The Bay Area CISPES chapter had radically politicized a core of 3000-4000 activists in a San Francisco ballot initiative. During the drive for the ballot initiative, Henry Kissinger was speaking at the San Francisco Hilton, and CISPES organized their thousands of democrat-identified ballot activists to attend. Riot police surrounded and corralled the protest, blatantly attacking the demonstrators. This served to radicalize all of those activists, who San Francisco CISPES continued to incorporate and organize.

Central America-South Africa solidarity rally

In April 1987, with substantial union support and important allies from the anti-apartheid movement, CISPES led the combined forces of solidarity in mobilizing 100,000 people onto Washington’s streets for a joint Central America-South Africa rally.  The photo at right shows the giant student contingent at the rally, calling for President Reagan to be impeached.

Mid-war CISPES May Day Delegation

First May Day Delegation that sent 80+ delegates to El Salvador to commemorate assassination of Oscar Romero and march in May Day parade. Met twice at Embassy. First time they served us Oreos, 2nd time we were met by a CIA agent who let us know he knew were from CISPES. That was the last of the large scale delegations until cease fire.

from David Fierberg

1986: Unions take to the streets on Mayday in El Salvador

In 1986, the Salvadoran labor movement re-emerged with a massive march on Mayday. The National Unity of Salvadoran Workers (UNTS), formed in February 1986, had become the nation’s strongest and broadest coalition of labor groups, emerging in the aftermath of intense repression that left 10,000 trade unionists dead.

It was an act of enormous physical and moral courage for the UNTS to march in the face of heavily armed riot police fingering the triggers on their U.S.-supplied guns. But the march went forward, denouncing economic austerity programs imposed by the Duarte regime, and international solidarity formed a vocal contingent.