By Gretchen Keiser

As debate intensified in the last year over aid to the Nicaraguan contras, a movement known as the “Pledge of Resistance” also took shape, people vowing to engage in protests including civil disobedience if Congress voted to keep sending funds to those opposing the Sandinista government.

On April 14, 15 and 16, while debate over contra aid was taking place in the House of Representatives, opponents did sit in at the offices of Congressmen and women around the country.

But, at least in the Gainesville, Georgia office of Rep. Ed Jenkins (D-9^th District), there was no arrest for the protesters. Instead, according to one participant, there was an atmosphere of respect.

Four people, three men and a woman, arrived at Rep. Jenkins’ office on April 14, following an ecumenical prayer service outside the office that involved, among others, Glenmary Father Gerry Peterson, pastor of St. Mark’s in Clarkesville, and the mayor of Clarkesville, Bo Turner, who is also a Southern Baptist minister.

One of those committed to sitting in at the Congressman’s office throughout the debate on Nicaraguan aid was Glenmary Brother John Benish, who said he and his three colleagues in the “Pledge of Resistance” were prepared to be arrested.

“We assumed they were probably going to arrest us,” Brother Benish said, adding that they had discussed their plans to occupy the office with Rep. Jenkins’ Gainesville staff and with the local chief of police and sheriff’s department.

Instead, the Congressman and his staff made the decision to allow them to stay peacefully during the Congressional debate on aid, which lasted until Wednesday, April 16.

“I know these people,” said Rep. Jenkins, explaining his decision. “They’ve talked with me on numerous occasions. They’re good people, well-intentioned people.”

“It appeared to me that the vote (on aid) would come within a couple of days. There seemed to me no reason to have them arrested,” he added. “They were well-disciplined. We provided them with a conference room. At the end of the day, I let them sleep in my office instead of in jail.”

Rep. Jenkins, who supports aid to those fighting against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government, was in Washington while the sit-in was taking place, but his Gainesville aide, Sammy Smith, kept the protesters informed of the debate that was unfolding in the capital, Brother Benish said.

“We were allowed to go in and out of the office during the day,” he said. Some of those taking part would talk to passers-by on the street, present petitions and invite them to view a slide show on Central America and the Nicaraguan situation, he said.

The four who spent approximately 48 hours at the Congressman’s office fasted throughout that period from solid food and rotated through a prayer vigil, Brother Benish said, so that one person was always praying for the debate process in Congress, even during the night. Other people in Blairsville, Cleveland and Clarkesville, who were not sitting in, were also praying and fasting, he said.

The Gainesville staff on Rep. Jenkins “were great, they were really great,” he said. “They could have arrested us if they wanted to. It showed we had a working relationship.

The $100 million aid package to the Nicaraguan contras, proposed by the Reagan administration, had been defeated once in the House of Representatives, passed by the Senate and then sent back to the House for consideration.

During the three-day debate, House Democrats succeeded in attaching the aid measure to a supplemental appropriation bill that was opposed by the Reagan administration. In the meantime, three different amendments to the aid package were being debated, one of which would have essentially eliminated the military aid to the contras and instead given $2 million to any nation working toward the Contadora peace plan for the region.

According to rep. Jenkins, the House Republicans viewed the attachment of the contra aid measure to the larger budget package as “a (Democratic) ploy to pass the measure and have it vetoed” by President Reagan because it was a part of the budget package he opposed.

When Republicans failed in a bid to separate the contra aid from the budget package, they voted en masse for the very liberal amendment which would have given $2 million to the countries working for the Contadora peace plan. Republicans voted that way not because they supported the amendment, but to defeat the whole package and try to resurrect contra aid later as a separate item.

Although the protesters in his Gainesville office supported that amendment, Rep. Jenkins voted against it.

“I do not believe the administration has done a good job in trying to forge a peaceful solution through the Contadora process,” Rep. Jenkins said. “Nevertheless, a lot of the lack of success has been caused, in my view, by (Nicaraguan President Daniel) Ortega.”

“Secondly,” he said, “I do not believe you can create a foreign policy on the House floor.”

The “Pledge of Resistance” supporters in Gainesville were disappointed at the Congressman’s vote against the amendment, but pleased that the maneuvering in Congress led to the defeat, for the moment, of the $100 million in aid to the contras.

“Whoever thought that the vote would turn out that way” with the Republicans aiding in the demise, for the moment, of the aid, Brother Benish observed. “Even though one can interpret it as a political maneuver by the Republicans, one can also interpret it that God works in strange ways, especially when one least expects it.”

The dialogue between the Congressman and the aid opponents is to continue, as is the debate over aid to the contras. Republicans in the House have gambled, Rep. Jenkins said, that they can resurrect the aid package through a maneuver called a discharge petition, which requires 218 signatures of House members. “It’s a very risky procedure from their point of view,” he said. “They may not succeed.”

The protesters, who are attempting to sway Rep. Jenkins away from contra aid, would like him to visit Nicaragua and observe conditions there firsthand.

He questions the value of such a trip, noting that he serves on House committees that are peripheral to foreign affairs.

“I do not know how much I would learn that would be valid information in one or two days,” he said.

Asked about statements from the Catholic Church hierarchy in Nicaragua that the Church is being persecuted and denied religious freedom by the Sandinista government, Brother Benish said he did not believe that there was persecution of the church.

“There is no persecution,” he said, adding that he is basing his view “on a number of people who’ve been down there a number of times.”

He said that “there is a conflict” within the Church, “but I also believe the people in the hierarchy need to deal with that themselves and not have outside influences whether that’s coming from the United States or the Soviet Union.”