The Maine Campus Online

Issue date: 9/25/06 Section: News

Media Credit: rose collins BOOK HIM - A Bangor police officer leads professor Doug Allen out of One Cumberland Plaza. Allen was arrested for refusing to leave the offices of Olympia Snowe Thursday afternoon.

Media Credit: rose collins SNOWE PATROL - Philosophy professor Doug Allen addresses the media in Olympia Snowe's office shortly before his arrest for refusal to vacate her office in protest of the war.

A University of Maine philosophy professor was arrested on criminal trespass charges Thursday during an anti-war protest in the Bangor office of U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe. Professor Douglas Allen, along with 10 other protesters, including his wife, refused to leave Snowe's office when at closing time.

Allen was released on bail that same night and is due in court October 26 to face the trespassing charge.

Before the protest, Allen said that he was hoping to be arrested for the act of civil disobedience.

"It's a way of trying to dramatize the injustice and bring more attention," said Allen. Earlier last week, he sent a press release to campus media and university public relations.

The arrests came at the end of a larger protest that began at the Federal Building in downtown Bangor. About 40 protesters held signs and chanted before crossing Exchange Street and walking uphill to One Cumberland Plaza, home to Senator Snowe's Bangor office.

The protesters marched up to the third floor and occupied Snowe's office as well as the hallway outside. Their numbers grew to about 60 as they explained their case to Gail Kelly, Sen. Snowe's state director and the Mayor of Brewer.

Thursday was recognized by anti-war protesters worldwide as the International Day of Peace. According to Allen, the Bangor protest centered around a document called the Declaration of Peace. The declaration was written by the peace movement specifically for members of the U.S. Congress. Signing it pledges a commitment to ending the U.S. military's occupation of Iraq.

Allen said members of the movement sent a copy of the declaration to Snowe weeks ago but that she hasn't responded. According to the Declaration of Peace's official Web site, no U.S. senator has yet signed the document.

Snowe was in session Thursday and left no comment for Kelly, who wouldn't comment on the issue.

"I don't answer on her behalf," Kelly said. Kelly did accept a copy of the declaration as well as several pairs of baby shoes the protesters brought to signify the children who have died in Iraq as a result of military operations.

"I will make sure the senator receives this," Kelly told the group, who had crowded into her office.

Later, Kelly expressed no ill will toward the crowd, calling it their "God-given right" to express their views. Kelly was in the office during a similar protest last December, when 19 protesters were arrested for refusing to leave Snowe's office.

According to Allen, people have been surprised to learn that Thursday was the outspoken professor's first arrest for civil disobedience. "I was hoping I was not going to jinx this," Allen joked. He said before he came to Maine, he was involved in sit-ins and demonstrations which ended in attacks from police, particularly when protesting for civil rights.

There were no such problems Thursday. Before Snowe's office closed at 5 p.m., uniformed Bangor police waited in the hallway for an hour and a half. When it came time to close the building, they warned protesters that anyone who didn't leave would be arrested for criminal trespassing. Most of the crowd filed outdoors.

"There was no problem with the police. I think the police even felt rather appreciative of the fact that we were so easy," Allen said. As he and other protesters were marched out the front door wearing plastic handcuffs, the crowd who had already evacuated cheered for them. Allen and the others were loaded into police vans which were parked outside in anticipation of the arrests.

UMaine philosophy professor Michael Howard also made an appearance at the protest, but he had no plans of getting arrested with Allen. "I have to go pick up my daughter," Howard explained, although he expressed support for Allen.

The University of Maine had no comment on Allen's arrest, but Allen said the university hasn't made him feel unwelcome or chastised him since the '80s, when he was at odds with a former university president over UMaine's interests in apartheid South Africa.

Allen said his arrest was in Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi's tradition of civil disobedience and that he felt he did the right thing. "I think if King and Gandhi were alive today, they would have been getting arrested alongside us on Thursday."

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