NORTHAMPTON — On Wednesday afternoon, Nick Mottern stepped out into the sunlight on Pleasant Street. A friend and fellow activist, who had just arrived for a rally about to take place, asked him how he was doing.
“I got bones that are talking that I haven’t heard from in a while,” Mottern replied.
Mottern, 85, and three others had slept on the floor of U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern’s office the previous night after announcing an occupation of the Worcestor Democrat’s Northampton office until he commited to demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and working to end all U.S. aid to Israel. Two other activists were joining them during the day.
On Friday morning, the group announced at a press conference that they were ending the occupation.
“We’ve come to a dead end,” Paki Wieland, a local peace activist and one of the occupiers, told The Shoestring. “The Congressman is not changing his tune and we’re not changing ours. We’ve decided to put our energy into other creative acts of resistance.”
The occupation of the office grew out of an ongoing action that Mottern and Rev. Peter Kakos have called the Leahy Fast for Palestine — a fast each day until the United States enforces the Leahy Law, which prohibits the shipment of U.S. weapons to states known to be violating human rights.
Mottern, Kakos, and the other occupiers expressed frustration with McGovern when The Shoestring visited the office on Wednesday. According to Mottern, McGovern had assured him at a December meeting that he would speak with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about their concerns, but Mottern said he doesn’t know if that conversation ever happened. In the meantime, he said, thousands more Gazans have been killed.
Indeed, the United States is deeply implicated in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The Washington Post recently reported that while only two congressionally approved arms transfers to Israel have taken place since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, more than 100 arms deals have taken place that appeared to strategically fall below the dollar amount that requires Congress be notified. The Israeli assault has so far killed over 30,000 people, including over 12,000 children — more than the last four years of armed conflict have killed globally, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Palestine.
Outside the office, about two dozen people gathered to support the occupiers.
“Paki’s got a bullhorn,” a McGovern staffer said quietly into a cell phone, relaying some of the content of Wieland’s speech to the listener on the phone.
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Wieland explained to the crowd that although McGovern had been advocating for a ceasefire, he was also allegedly leading a discharge petition that would bring an aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is currently blocking the bill.
McGovern declined a request for an interview via a spokesperson on Thursday, who instead shared a statement with The Shoestring.
“Jim was one of the first U.S. politicians calling for a ceasefire,” the statement begins. “This week he again demanded that President Biden stop sending military aid to Israel because it violates our own laws — which prohibit us from sending weapons to countries that block U.S. humanitarian aid or bomb civilians.”
McGovern’s office said that the congressman has also been calling for Hamas to release its hostages “from day one.”
“He’s been a national leader on these issues, and has consistently reached out to and met with constituents — including students, peace activists, faith-based leaders at synagogues and mosques, and those whose loved ones have been directly affected,” the statement said. “He invites everyone to continue working together to promote peace and justice and demand an end to this war.”
“Yes, he has done all of these good and worthy things,” Priscilla Lynch, another occupier, said in response to McGovern’s statement. “That is precisely why we are demanding he do more!”
Wieland further explained on Friday that McGovern would not agree to calling for an end to all Israeli military aid, saying some of it is used for defensive purposes. This point was important to the group, Wieland said, because there is so little oversight to ensure aid is used for defensive purposes. Israel is currently “in a most offensive position,” she said.
Conditions in the office were cramped when The Shoestring visited. The six activists were stationed in the front desk area and were keeping the door locked, allowing only press inside at the request of office staff, who continued working in private offices in the back. Office staff declined to comment on the situation, but Wieland said they had been “very hospitable” and hadn’t attempted to have them removed.
The six occupiers named a laundry list of organizations with which they were affiliated, including CODEPINK, Demilitarize Western Mass, and Veterans for Peace, of which Mottern is a member of the national board. But they emphasized that their action was autonomous of any of these groups.
“We’re demographically favored” for the action, Jennifer Scarlott of Northampton told The Shoestring, “in that we’re all retired.”
“We need more people in the street,” Mottern said when asked what the group was calling on supporters to do. “Keep calling McGovern and keep rallying.”
After answering The Shoestring’s questions, the group began discussing one-state vs. two-state solutions to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a subject on which the group was not of one mind. Yet they were unanimous on what they said were should be the first steps towards peace and ending U.S. complicity in genocide.
Kakos illustrated the point by referencing a banner someone brought to a recent Northampton City Council meeting in support of the ceasefire resolution, which itself referenced the religious story of Cain and Abel.
“‘What have you done?’” Kakos said, reciting lines spoken by God in the Book of Genesis. “‘The blood of your brother cries out to me from the earth.’”
Brian Zayatz is the managing editor of The Shoestring.
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