04/19/07 War Protesters Leave Sen. Kohl's Office Here After Threat Of Arrest

War Protesters Leave Sen. Kohl's Office Here After Threat Of Arrest

The Capital Times
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Katrin Madayag and Katjusa Cisar\ The Capital Times
After spending a night in Sen. Herb Kohl's downtown office, most members of the University of Wisconsin's Campus Anti-War Network decided to end their occupation today and peacefully leave after Madison police threatened to arrest them.

At about 9:30 a.m., police told about 35 protesters in the office to leave and later arrested a lone member of the group who refused the request.\ Chris Dols, spokesman for the student group, said that Kohl's staff had told them on Wednesday that they wouldn't be arrested. "They've gone back on all of the promises to us," he said.

At around 8:45 a.m., the protesters started chanting and shouting when security officers told the students that the office was at capacity and more people weren't allowed to come in and stay.

"The ninth demand is no more demands," a law enforcement officer told them at the time.

About 25 people had stayed overnight in an office conference room to reinforce their demand to meet personally with Kohl, who is currently in Washington, D.C., to urge him to rescind his support for a timetable rather than an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.

"We've been ignored. We've been ignored for four years," Dols said. "We do not stand for Kohl because he funds the occupation." Other demands included full veteran benefits and shifting money from the war to jobs and education.

During the night, they said, they were denied access to their belongings, including backpacks, computers and medication. Protesters weren't allowed to fill up their water bottles, and security officers allowed only two people to go to the bathroom at a time. Otherwise, anyone who stepped out of the room would be kicked out of the building, Dols said.

Dols said they told the women: " 'You don't need your birth control.' "

Federal protection officers and some staff members herded the protesters into the room at around 11 p.m. Wednesday without telling them that they would be confined there for the night, Dols said.

But Joe Bonfiglio, Kohl's press secretary, said the reports he's been getting indicate the protesters have been exaggerating and making unfounded claims regarding the nature of the protest.

Madison police had complaints today from other businesses in the building, he said. Unlike other protests, this protest was disruptive enough to disturb other companies, the staff and other visitors at the office building.

Kohl offered on Wednesday to have a conference call with the protesters, which they agreed to, but it fell through.

"We've seen this before," Bonfiglio said, but the other protests have been more peaceful.

The protest began Wednesday when about 200 students braced nippy temperatures for an anti-war rally on Library Mall and then marched down State Street to Kohl's office off the Capitol Square.

Speeches, poetry and chants filled the hourlong rally before the march up State Street.

"We must withdraw from Iraq because our military is broken," Christina Taber of Iraq Veterans Against the War told the crowd.

Middleton-native Taber, 27, has served in the military since 2000 and said that as a mental health specialist at Camp Atterbury in Indiana, she witnessed firsthand the devastation the war has on troops.

"My personal experience has shown me that returning servicemen and women are not getting the help they need and deserve from our government. Instead of recognizing the strain that multiple tours take on our military, the Bush administration continues to send troops to Iraq three or four times," she said.

The turning point in the war for Taber came in 2002 when her friend and army reservist Rachael Lacy, a 22-year-old nursing student, died from an adverse reaction to a military vaccination.

For seven months after Lacy's death, the Pentagon denied that the inoculation had anything to do with her death, although a Minnesota coroner listed "recent smallpox and anthrax vaccinations" under cause of death, according to a CBS news report. The Pentagon eventually admitted that the woman had not died from pneumonia as they previously reported.

Taber said that as she carried Lacy's casket at the funeral, she realized that her friend had died senselessly for an "illegal" war.

Senior Devin Walker skipped his English class to join protesters.

"If we don't do it, no one else will," Walker said.

Edgewood College senior Kari Stevens said she came down to the rally because she "supports the troops but not the war," and likes seeing grass-roots organizing in action.

Steve Thunander, a senior political science major, staged a one-man counter-protest near the rally by holding a sign advocating for troops to stay in Iraq.

"All the people who support me are in class. They just don't want to bother with this," he said, adding that he believes it's important to "fight al-Qaida and get them out of there."