The Cumberland County district attorney dropped action Thursday against nine people arrested last year for trespassing at the Portland offices of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
The senator asked the district attorney to not to charge the protesters — most of them religious leaders — if they agreed to donate $100 each to a victims compensation fund. Members of the multidenominational group were arrested and briefly held when they refused to leave her office to protest her support for a tax overhaul enacted last year.
“We are committed, singly and as a group, to continuing our work against an economic and political system that brazenly robs those who have so little in order to give to those who already have so much,” says Rabbi Joshua Chasen, rabbi emeritus of a Burlington, Vermont, synagogue who lives in Portland and a member of Moral Movement Maine.
Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Ackerman says in civil disobedience cases, prosecutors often take into account victim’s wishes — in this case Collins’.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.