"Nonviolent refusal to cooperate
with injustice is the way
to defeat it.”
--Mahatma Gandhi
"Non-violence is not inaction.
It is not discussion. It is not for
the timid or weak... Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness
to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.”
--Cesar Chavez
"The motivation underlying our activism for social change
must be transformed from anger and despair to compassion and love.
It is not to deny the legitimacy of noble anger or outrage at
injustice of any kind. Rather, we seek to work for love, rather
than against evil. We need to adopt compassion and love as our
foundational intention, and do whatever inner work is required
to implement this intention. Even if our outward actions remain
the same, there is a major difference in results if our underlying
intention supports love rather than defeating evil."
TV ad by religious leaders apologizes to Arab
world for abuses at Abu Ghraib
Don Lattin,
Chronicle Religion Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
An interfaith group that includes a top bishop in President Bush's
own church announced Tuesday that it will run television ads in
the Arab world apologizing for the U.S. government's "sinful
and systemic'' abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
"Our nation should be doing more to fess up about what is
going on in Iraq,'' said Bishop Melvin Talbert, the top ecumenical
official in the United Methodist Church, which counts the president
and first lady among its 8 million members.
Talbert, who served as the United Methodist bishop for Northern
California from 1988 to 2000, will be the chief spokesman for
the new campaign by FaithfulAmerica.org, which has already produced
one advertisement to be broadcast on the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya
satellite television networks.
Talbert himself does not appear in the televised message, which
features an American rabbi, a Catholic nun, a Protestant seminary
president and an imam of a New York mosque.
It begins with the Arabic greeting, "Salaam Aleikum,"
or "Peace be with you," and continues in English with
separate shots of the four speakers delivering the following apology:
"As Americans of faith, we express our deep sorrow at abuses
committed in Iraqi prisons. We stand in solidarity with all those
in Iraq and everywhere who demand justice and human dignity. We
condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name,
and pledge to work to right these wrongs."
Talbert acknowledged that Bush apologized shortly after graphic
photos emerged in late April of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Since
then, however, a series of congressional investigations and media
reports have shown that the abuse was widespread and have alleged
that it was approved by top military and administration leaders.
"Bush made a qualified apology about a few rogue soldiers,
but this was a systemic and sinful disgrace. It's more than just
a few rogue soldiers,'' Talbert said in an interview. "Forgiveness
only follows a full confession of sins.''
Featured on the TV advertisement are the Rev. Don Shriver, president
of Union Theological Seminary in New York; Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
of the American Sufi Muslim Association; Catholic Sister Betty
Obal of the Sisters of Loretto religious order; and Rabbi Arthur
Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
In an interview Tuesday with The Chronicle, Talbert said the
president had refused to meet with him and other moderate-to-liberal
religious leaders who are not identified with the Christian Right.
"I was part of a delegation that went to Iraq a couple months
before the war,'' Talbert said. "We sought to have an audience
with the president, but he refused. (British Prime Minister) Tony
Blair agreed see us, but not our own president. Later, we tried
to visit him as representatives of his church, but he would not
see us.''
Bush was raised in the Episcopal Church, but later joined the
United Methodist Church of his wife, Laura.
While both are still members of the Methodist Church, Bush now
calls himself a born-again Christian and identifies personally
and politically with fundamentalist clergy and conservative evangelical
leaders.
Talbert said he suspects that Bush has shunned him and other
religious liberals because the president "is tied in very
closely with right-wing religious groups and feels he has too
much to lose by meeting with the more moderate and liberal wing
of the church.''
In another sign of the increasing political polarization among
American Protestants, the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention
voted Tuesday to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance.
That decision comes after a Southern Baptist panel investigated
the global alliance and found that a "decided anti-American
tone has emerged in recent years.''
The Southern Baptists citied as other errors a "leftward
drift," a "continued emphasis on women as pastors"
and the inclusion of Baptist congregations and organizations that
have split off from the increasingly fundamentalist Southern Baptist
Convention.
Bush's political ties to the Southern Baptists were on display
at the denomination's convention in Indianapolis Tuesday afternoon.
In a speech shown to the convention via satellite, the president
reiterated his rejection of gay marriage, abortion and cloning
-- all of which are staunchly opposed by his political base of
conservative Christians.
"The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human
institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every
religious faith," Bush said. "And government, by strengthening
and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all."
That remark drew the longest applause from convention delegates
listening to the presidential address.
There is an old saying that "to speak the name of our ancestors
is to keep them alive." Today, on his birthday, I speak the
name of labor leader and environmentalist César Estrada
Chávez. He was a man who died prematurely at 66 in 1993,
his life marked by dedicated service, personal sacrifice and constant
threats to him and his family, as well as the formidable efforts
of agribusiness, Teamsters and government agents to derail everything
he tried to accomplish.
Those of us who lived during his time on this earth have a special
obligation to speak his name today and to find enduring ways to
remind our children and ourselves of his legacy. Over the years,
Chávez, more than any other person, was able to bring light,
energy and forward movement to the struggle of farmworkers in
this country. He tirelessly brought attention to society's detachment
from the source of our nourishment, the faceless farmworkers who
labor in the fields to put food on our tables and who suffer the
vicissitudes of a yearly harvest.
Inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, Chávez set an example
for the nation in his nonviolent leadership. He used Gandhi's
notion of "moral jujitsu" to describe its effect on
the opposition. He fasted for enlightenment as well as to protest
against intransigent growers or grocery chains or to restrain
his own followers when the impulse to violence reared its ugly
head.
Chávez's successes were many, including the signing of
the first agricultural worker agreements, passage of the Agricultural
Labor Relations Act, banning use of the dreaded and disabling
short-handled hoe and raising the public's awareness about the
dangers of chemicals and pesticides used in modern farming.
In the vernacular of my youthful street self and the many Chicanos
who grew up in the barrios of California and the Southwest, Chávez
was "the Vato" -- the man who stood up to "The
Man," the one who met danger without giving way to fear.
He was courageous and it gave us courage. He was determined and
it made us determined. He practiced tolerance and nonviolence
and it made us more tolerant and nonviolent. He was persistently
hopeful, and it gave us hope. Though he rejected the rhetoric
of the defiant La Raza Movement, he was still ours and he made
us proud.
Chávez combined a set of virtues to sustain the struggle
he led, relentlessly championing those who have no voice and resisting
the allure of a society propelled by a consumer definition of
happiness. So how do we perpetuate the speaking of his name, to
perpetuate his virtues -- determination, courage, tolerance and
hope? How do we adapt them to the challenges of the future as
Chávez might have?
In Berkeley, the César Chávez Memorial Solar Calendar
Project has chosen a dual approach, with an educational curriculum
(K-12) integrated with a unique memorial that would serve as a
field classroom. The project, more than five years in the making,
aims to create a major work of "site-specific" public
art in the form of an ancient solar calendar, a fitting monument
to a man who devoted his life to the earth and to the farmworkers
who have always lived by understanding the cycle of the seasons.
Think of Stonehenge if you are searching for an image -- or check
the Web site (www.solarcalendar.org)
if you want to see the proposed design in detail.
The Berkeley City Council has provisionally reserved 1.5 acres
at César Chávez Park for the memorial, a site with
a sensational 360-degree panoramic view of the horizon and a perfect
place for reflection. The project connects art, science, culture
and history. The memorial calendar will incorporate the four Chávez
virtues into the four cardinal directions of the site. When the
memorial is completed, it will be both contemplative and educational.
The companion educational curriculum will link the legacy of Chávez
with the pressing need for environmental stewardship and service
to the community.
There are many ways to honor an exceptional leader. One is to
speak his name and to tell his story. The César Chávez
Memorial Solar Calendar and educational curriculum will ensure
that we speak his name, reflect on his life and serve his legacy
through service to our community. There are few major monuments
to individual Latinos in this country. May this be the first one
for Chávez here in the Bay Area.
Santiago Casal is director of the Chavez Memorial Solar Calendar
Project and Rhythm of the Seasons Curriculum (chavezmemorial@earthlink.net).
Pablo Picasso has words for Colin Powell from
the other side of death
Ariel Dorfman
Yes, even here, here more than anywhere else,
we know and watch what is going on
what you are doing with the world
we left behind
What else can we do with our time?
Yes, there you were, Mr. Secretary,
I think that is how they call you
there you were
standing in front of my Guernica
a replica it is true
but still my vision of what was done
that day to the men to the women
and to the children to that one child
in Guernica that day in 1937
from the sky
Not really standing in front of it.
It had been covered, our Guernica,
covered so you could speak.
There in the United Nations building.
So you could speak about Iraq.
Undisturbed by Guernica.
Why should it disturb perturb you?
Why did you not ask that the cover
be
removed
the
picture
be
revealed?
Why did you not point to the shrieking
the horse dying over and over again
the woman with the child forever dead
the child that I nurse here in this darkness
the child who watches with me
as you speak
and you speak.
Why did you not say
This is why we must be rid of the dictator.
Why did you not say
This is what Iraq has already done and undone.
Why did you not say
This is what we are trying to save the world from.
Why did you not use
Guernica to make your case?
Were you afraid that the mother
would leap from her image and say
no he is the one
they are the ones who will bomb
from afar
they are the ones who will kill
the child
no no no
he is the one they them
from the distance the bombs
keeping us always out of sight
inside death and out of sight
Were you afraid that the horse
would show the world the near future
three thousand cruise missiles in the first hour
spinning into Baghdad
ten thousand Guernicas
spinning into Baghdad
from the sky
Were you afraid of my art
what I am still saying
more than sixty five years later
the story still being told
the vision still dangerous
the light bulb still hanging
like an eye from the dead
my eye that looks at you from the dead
beware
beware the eye of the child
in the dark
you will join us
the child and I
the horse and the mother
here on the other side
you will join us soon
you will journey here
as we all do
is
that why you were
so
afraid of me?
join us
and spend the rest of eternity
watching
watching
watching
next to us
next to the remote dead
not only of Iraq
not only of
is
that why you were
so afraid of that eye?
watching
your own eyes sewn open wide looking
at the world you left behind
there is nothing else to do
with our time
sentenced to watch
and watch
by our side
until
there will be no Guernicas left
until the living understand
and then, Mr. Secretary,
and then
a world with no Guernicas
and then
yes then
you and I
yes then
we can rest
you and I and the covered child
Ariel Dorfman's latest books are "Exorcising
Terrror: The Incredible Ongoing Trial of General Augusto
Pinochet" and the poems, "In Case of Fire in a Foreign
Land (Duke University Press)." He has just completed a play
about Picasso during the Nazi occupation of Paris. 03/09/03
(Adapted from his writings and public statements
by Clayborne Carson)
Sunday, February 23, 2003
On a beautiful afternoon in 1959, Coretta and I journeyed from
our hotel in Beirut to take a plane for Jerusalem. After about
two hours in the air we were notified to fasten our seat belts
-- we were beginning to descend for the airport in Jerusalem.
Because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this city has been divided.
And so this was a strange feeling -- to go to the ancient city
of God and see the tragedies of man's hate and evil which causes
him to fight and live in conflict.
Israel's right to exist as a state in security
is incontestable. At the same time the great powers have the obligation
to recognize that the Arab world is in a state of imposed poverty
and backwardness that must threaten peace and harmony. Until a
concerted and democratic program of assistance is affected, tensions
cannot be relieved. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for
the Middle East.
At the heart of the problem are oil interests.
As the American Jewish Congress has stated, "American policies
in the Middle East have been motivated in no small measure by
the desire to protect the $2.5 billion stake which U.S. oil companies
have invested in the area." Some Arab feudal rulers are no
less concerned for oil wealth and neglect the plight of their
own peoples.
The solution will have to be found in statesmanship
by Israel and progressive Arab forces who, in concert with the
great powers, recognize that fair and peaceful solutions are the
concern of all of humanity. Neither military measures nor a stubborn
effort to reverse history can provide a permanent solution.
As I said in my Nobel Peace Prize Lecture:
Nations are not reducing, but rather increasing, their arsenals
of weapons of mass destruction. The proliferation of nuclear weapons
has not been halted. The fact that most of the time human beings
put the risk of nuclear war out of their minds because it is too
painful does not alter the risk of such a war. Man's proneness
to engage in war is still a fact, but wisdom born of experience
should tell us that war is obsolete.
If we assume that life is worth living,
that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative.
In a day when guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death
through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war.
A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous
legacy of human suffering, political turmoil and political disillusionment.
A world war, God forbid, would leave only smoldering ashes as
a mute testimony to the human race whose folly led to ultimate
death. If modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war,
he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno even the
mind of Dante could not imagine.
It is not enough to say we must not wage
war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must
shift the arms race into the peace race.
In 1967, when I took my stand against the
war in Vietnam, I recounted that I had lived in the ghettos of
Chicago and Cleveland, and I knew the hurt, the cynicism and the
discontent. As I walked among the desperate, rejected and angry
young men, I told them Molotov cocktails and rifles would not
solve their problems. I tried to offer my deepest compassion while
maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully
through nonviolent action.
But they asked, and rightly so, "What
about Vietnam?" They asked if our own nation wasn't using
massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about
the changes it wanted. I knew that I could never again raise my
voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without
having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today: my own government.
In 1957, a sensitive American official
overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the
wrong side of a world revolution. This need to maintain social
stability for our investments . . . tells why American helicopters
are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American
napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against
rebels in Peru. . . .
It is with such activities in mind that
the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. He
said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will
make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice
or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role
of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to
give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense
profits of overseas investments.
When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people,
the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism
are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause
us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and
present policies. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily
on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. The Western arrogance
of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing
to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands
on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling
differences is not just." This business of burning human
beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans
and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins
of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and
bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.
A nation that continues year after year
to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social
uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and
most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this
revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish
to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit
of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
I wonder how Toni Smith's critics feel
about Muhammad Ali. They jeer her at Manhattanville women's basketball
games when the senior guard turns sideways, her face looking away
from the American flag during the national anthem. Do they adore
the Ali of today, and would they have hated him in the '60s, when
he refused to serve in Vietnam?
I doubt that Smith will ever be loved in the
same way, that she will ever be cheered madly as she lights the
torch at an Olympic Games. She isn't the Champ, one of the
most charismatic athletes of her time. She plays basketball almost
anonymously in suburban Purchase, N.Y.
Her protest, of course, won't cost as much
as Ali's did. Smith won't lose the heavyweight boxing crown, and
she won't have a five-year prison sentence hanging over her until
the Supreme Court strikes down a criminal conviction. She simply
has to endure relentlessly hostile chants from fans, a nasty confrontation
with an opposing player whose brother serves in the military and
the kind of media attention rarely bestowed on NCAA Division III
athletes.
The Manhattanville president has asked
that Smith be treated with respect, that she not be harassed for
expressing her opinion. His statement currently appears at the
top of the school's Web site.
He is right that she shouldn't be physically
accosted. The man who recently ran onto the court to confront
Smith, saying that he was a Vietnam veteran offended by her stance,
deserved to be removed from the arena.
But the other kinds of heat that Smith
faces -- the verbal challenges and the miniature flags distributed
at one game in protest of her protest -- are all vital parts of
her statement. If it were easy or fashionable to do what she is
doing, the gesture would be hollow, like a team winning an uncontested
game.
When I first heard about Smith's decision
to turn her back on the flag, I assumed she was a grandstanding
kid, trying to be provocative in the hope that a talk-show gig
would be waiting for her at graduation. But it turns out she has
been quietly shunning the flag all season, and her protests went
largely unnoticed until two weeks ago.
Manhattanville traveled to the U.S. Merchant
Marine Academy, and newspaper accounts of the game say that at
least 300 midshipmen turned out to wave flags at her, chanting
"USA" and "Leave the Country." At halftime,
50 freshmen -- known as plebes at the academy -- positioned themselves
across from the Manhattanville bench, each holding a flag. They
stood there for the entire second half.
That, more than anything, should have shaken
her up. The plebes' display reflected real resolve. Smith's other
critics have been variations on the rabid sports fan. At another
game, one woman reportedly taunted Smith while wearing a halter
top made of Stars & Stripes material. (Does anybody remember
when it was considered desecration to wear the flag as if it were
a team's colors?)
But even after the visit to the Merchant
Marine, Smith kept up her silent protest. She finally issued a
brief statement explaining her position last week, apparently
to clarify that she is not simply opposing a war against Iraq.
"The government's priorities,"
she wrote, "are not on bettering the quality of life for
all of its people, but rather on expanding its own power."
So far, she hasn't said anything else.
According to Manhattanville coach Shawn Lincoln, the team has
diverse opinions on the issue. He has declined to elaborate. One
teammate held Smith's hand during the national anthem at Mount
St. Mary last week.
It's been awhile since sports and world
politics had any serious interaction, unless you count athletes
popping off a la John Rocker. They're certainly exercising their
First Amendment rights, but with all the care and forethought
of someone binging at a breakfast buffet.
Rocker had no idea that buffoonery would
damage his baseball career. When Ali defied the draft, and when
Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in Mexico City,
they knew they would pay. Just a generation after they were reviled,
they are revered. The world came around.
Someday, Toni Smith may be vindicated,
too, as brave rather than childish, as someone who cares more
about her country than the people who refuse to challenge it.
But her critics shouldn't be silenced any more than she should
be. If her protest is easy, it doesn't really count.
RECENTLY, I asked a class of University of California undergraduates
to name their heroes. Ten years earlier, their counterparts had
listed the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy,
Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Vaclav Havel.
This time, they mostly named celebrities who were famous -- well,
for being famous.
Sure, it's a sign of the times, a result
of our pervasive celebrity culture.
But we need heroes. Celebrities teach us
about glamour and appearance, not how to reach deeply and draw
upon inner strengths.
These are times that test our character.
Al Qaeda threatens terrorist acts; North Korea risks going ballistic.
Our government presses for war with Iraq, condemns our traditional
allies, considers using tactical nuclear weapons, curtails our
civil liberties, shreds our social services and offers the rich
even more of the nation's wealth.
Now, more than ever, we need courage to
overcome fear, register protest, disregard conventional wisdom,
reject easy answers, buck conformity and stand up for what we
believe.
So, in honor of Black History Month, let
me tell you about my personal hero, Harriet Tubman. What inspired
my obsession with this former slave? Her courage.
Harriet Tubman, the granddaughter of an
African, was born into slavery around 1820 in Dorchester County,
Md. As a child, she suffered repeated whippings. At age 12, she
tried to help a slave who had attempted an escape. In relatiation,
a white overseer beat her with a 2-pound lead weight, causing
a serious head injury. For the rest of her life, she suffered
from brief blackouts.
At age 25, she married John Tubman, a free
African American. Five years later, fearing she would be "sold
South," she made her escape. White "conductors"
on the Underground Railroad -- a secret network of safe houses
-- moved Tubman by horse and wagon, covered from head to toe in
a sack, from one home to another, until she safely reached Philadelphia.
It's what she did afterward that is so
astonishing. She could have remained in the North, working for
the abolitionist movement. Instead, she returned to the South
19 more times, rescuing members of her family, as well as 300
other slaves, for which she earned the nickname, "Moses of
her people."
Despite the huge bounty offered for her
capture, Tubman used her quick wit to avoid slave hunters. Because
newspapers didn't publish runaway-slave notices until Mondays,
she spirited away slaves on Saturday nights -- using a slave owner's
own wagon. When pursued by slave hunters, she would throw them
off by suddenly turning south. To quiet babies, she used drugs
to put them to sleep. Deeply spiritual, but grimly determined,
she threatened to shoot any "passenger" who dared to
turn back. Later, she would proudly tell the great abolitionist
Frederick Douglass that she "never lost a single passenger"
on the Underground Railroad.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, Tubman
served as a soldier, spy and nurse for the Union Army. When the
war ended, she moved to Auburn, N.Y., worked for abolition and
woman's suffrage, and built and worked in a home for the aged
and indigent, until her death in 1913.
Harriet Tubman's daring exploits have helped
orient my moral compass. We need such heroes because they remind
us that, by comparison, our fears are often overblown and our
own courage is rarely tested.
If you don't have a personal hero, now
might be a good time to find one. As the events of Sept. 11 so
clearly revealed, they are not in short supply.
I wrote a long response to your query,
but didn't send it because I realized I was angry when I wrote
it--not at you, because I respect your grappling with these issues,
but at what I consider some of the deeply warped New Age ideas
that you've got to grapple with...
What it comes down to is a set of assumptions
about what constitutes 'spirituality' and even 'peace'--there's
one set of things associated with calm, light, benign thoughts,
lack of conflict, and general positivity that is assumed to be
'spiritual'. And another set of things associated with conflict,
rage, anger, dirt, darkness, and saying 'no' that is assumed to
be non-spiritual.
First of all, I don't accept those divisions.
My spirituality is about dirt, passion, emotion, and even rage--which
is a great life force emotion, a sign that something is wrong
somewhere.
But what makes me angry in these debates
is that those espousing the first group of things often claim
the moral high ground. But in moments when great acts of violence
are being proposed and perpetuated, responding with only that
first group of things is, to my mind, unethical and inadequate.
It's a weakened, watered down form of spirituality
that is not effective either spiritually or politically. It's
unethical because what we DON'T resist definitely persists--and
spreads all over the place. Imagine if there was no resistance
to Bush's policies, no marches, no demonstrations, no protests---we'd
already be nuking Iraq back to the stone age. In fact, over the
last ten years when there has been very minimal resistance, sanctions
have caused the death of over half a million Iraqi children--many
from the cancer caused by our depleted uranium.
And no, I don't think it's adequate or
appropriate or terribly useful to respond to this only by praying
or meditating or beaming love at world leaders who already are
getting more than enough attention. I think an honest, ethical,
and spiritual response that includes the whole spectrum of spiritual
energies MUST involve a loud and public saying NO! and our rage,
our anger, our passion, our outrage as well as our vision for
what we want.
Without that loud NO! the system is not
getting the feedback it needs to get reset back on a saner course.
If you have a car about to run over a cliff, you can't save it
simply by showing it a better route--you first have to stop it
from continuing in the direction it's going. NO is sometimes necessary
and life affirming.
And 'peace' can be a code word for 'I want
all those other bad people to go away and disappear and stop making
uncomfortable demands.' When I got back from Palestine, I almost
couldn't use the word because I'd heard so many people claiming
they were for 'peace' when what they meant was, "I want the
problem--and by extension, the Palestinians--to disappear so I
don't have to feel endangered or uncomfortable or guilty any longer."
If our spiritual tools of prayer and meditation
and energy work are powerful, they are most powerful in the midst
of the 'No'--in the protest, in the actions, at the point of confrontation
when people need someone there who can embody faith and nonviolence
and love in the midst of battle. If we use them as an excuse to
stay silent in the face of great injustice, to stay safe when
others are taking risks for justice, to avoid conflict when conflict
is necessary, we diminish ourselves and the spirit and collude
with the violence.
Love, Starhawk
¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤
Philip
Berrigan, 1923-2002
Reinventing Resistance,
One Break-in at a Time
By Judith Mahoney Pasternak Jan/Feb 2003, Nonviolent Activist
He once said
he wanted “to die in the trenches, not on the beach.”
He came closer than most do to getting his wish: Philip F. Berrigan,
the former priest who helped originate the Plowshares movement
against weapons of mass destruction, died December 6, less than
a year since the end of his last prison term. He was 79.
Philip Berrigan and Liz McAlister
in Portland, ME, on the occasion of his sentencing for his
last Plowshares action. Photo Roger Leisner /Radio Free Maine
The metaphor — “the trenches,
not the beach” — was rather martial for a pacifist,
but it fit the man. Philip Berrigan was among the most militant
of U.S. peacemakers, an activist who spent some 11 years in prison
for multiple acts of extreme nonviolent resistance committed over
a span of 32 years. A radical’s radical, Berrigan defied
not only the state, but the church, as undeterred by excommunication
as he had been by prison; he then went on to challenge the conventions
of the very movement he was part of.
Along with comrades including his brother,
the equally radical poet-priest Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan
engaged in new forms of protest not once, but (at least) twice.
During the Vietnam War, the Berrigan brothers were among the “Baltimore
Four” and the “Catonsville Nine” who destroyed
draft files instead of draft cards. More than a decade later,
they and six others broke into a General Electric nuclear missile
plant, dented nose cones with hammers and poured blood—their
own—onto the deadly weapons in the service of fulfilling
the Old Testament prophecy that one day humanity will “beat
their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Resistance was bred in the Berrigans’
bones. Born in Two Harbors, MN, in 1923, Philip Berrigan was the
last of the six sons of German immigrant Frida Fromhart Berrigan
and railroad engineer, labor organizer and radical Thomas F. Berrigan.
The family moved to Syracuse, NY, in Philip’s childhood,
and he went to school there and played semiprofessional baseball
before being drafted in 1943.
Basic training in Georgia honed his consciousness
of racial injustice in his homeland; combat in Europe gave him
his lifelong opposition to violence (although he came out of the
war a second lieutenant). His older brother Daniel had joined
the Jesuits at 21 and been ordained in 1952; some combination
of those experiences led Philip to ordination as a Josephite priest
in 1955.
From the beginning, his clerical career
was turbulent. No matter where the church sent him—to the
poverty-stricken Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, DC, to
an all-Black high school in New Orleans, to another poor community
in Baltimore—and over the hierarchy’s increasing objections,
he inveighed against poverty, segregation and injustice: In 1962,
he published the first of many books, The Catholic Church and
the Negro.
He didn’t stop with criticizing social
ills; he resisted them. He was arrested for the first time during
a civil rights demonstration in Selma, AL, and as the decade wore
on, he joined the growing opposition to the escalating war in
Vietnam. In the mid-’60s he founded a Peace Mission in Baltimore,
the city that had become his home and would be for the rest of
his life. In 1966, he joined pickets in front of the homes of
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean
Rusk.
Sabotaging the Draft
But protest, whether in print or on the
streets, didn’t appear to be stopping the war; on the contrary,
its scope and impact were widening. U.S. soldiers were dying by
the thousands, Vietnamese by the tens of thousands. Some of the
nation’s youth were advocating armed resistance, and the
Berrigans, ever committed to unarmed resistance, nevertheless
felt the need to go further than they had up until then.
On October
17, 1967, Phil and Dan and their friends Tom Lewis and Dave Eberhardt
(the “Baltimore Four”) committed the first of what became
a series of daring break-ins, entering the Baltimore Selective
Service office and pouring their own blood on a number of draft
files. Exactly seven months later, on May 17, 1968, the “Catonsville
Nine”—Phil, Dan and Tom Lewis, along with their associates
David Darst, Thomas Melville, Marjorie Melville, Mary Moylan,
George Mische and John Hogan—walked into the Selective Service
office in nearby Catonsville, MD, seized some files, carried them
out into the parking lot and burned them with a home-made version
of napalm, the jellied gasoline that was being used to such deadly
effect in Vietnam. Phil, Dan and Tom were in the middle of their
trial for the Baltimore action.
The Baltimore Four and the Catonsville
Nine were convicted. Phil and Dan received concurrent three-and-a-half-
and six-year prison sentences. But the system moved slowly; it
was not until the spring of 1970 that the sentences were due to
take effect, and by that time, Phil had published another book,
A Punishment for Peace, and committed yet another kind of disobedience:
He had fallen in love with, and secretly married, a nun, Elizabeth
McAlister.
In the spring of 1970, the brothers decided
not to cooperate with the sentences and went underground, but
were soon captured—Phil in April, Dan in August. They had
become famous as symbols of the nation’s opposition to the
war; in 1971, they appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.
While in prison, Phil corresponded with
Liz through an intermediary to elude the prison censors, but the
ploy failed, and the letters were read. The authorities weren’t
interested in his love life, but the political content resulted
in yet another trial, this time for conspiracy to commit various
acts of illegal resistance including kidnaping Henry Kissinger.
That trial, in 1972, resulted in one of Phil’s few acquittals.
Upon Phil’s parole in 1973, he and
Liz were married in a formal ceremony; the church responded by
excommunicating both of them. They settled in Baltimore, founded
the intentional community Jonah House and began constructing what
was, for them, a normal domestic life: They wrote, organized and
had children—Frida in 1974, Jerry in 1975 and Kate in 1981.
Nose Cones into Plowshares
But before Kate’s birth, Phil and
Dan had come up with their second innovation in resistance. In
September of 1980, the “Plowshares Eight” (the Berrigan
brothers, WRL’s Elmer Maas, Dean Hammer, Father Carl Kabat,
Sister Anne Montgomery, Molly Rush and John Schuchardt) entered
the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, PA, and symbolically
disarmed two nose cones—beating them, they said, into plowshares.
At their trial, the eight attempted to introduce a “necessity”
defense, arguing that the action was necessary to save lives.
The judge told them, “Nuclear warfare is not on trial here;
you are.” He sentenced the eight to prison terms of five
to 10 years. (The sentences were later reduced on appeal.)
The Plowshares concept had critics within
the peace movement as well as outside of it. There are pacifists
who believe that the destruction of property—even such property
as nuclear weapons—is not nonviolent. Plowshares activists,
on the other hand, urge that such weapons ought not to exist in
the first place. Over the two decades after the symbolic disarmament
in King of Prussia, Phil Berrigan would engage in five more Plowshares
actions and serve a total of 11 years in prison; Liz participated
in one in 1983 and served 26 months.
Between prison sentences, they published
more books, including Phil’s Whereupon to Stand: The Acts
of the Apostles and Ourselves in 1993; his and Liz’ The Time’s
Discipline: The Beatitudes and Nuclear Resistance the same year;
Phil’s autobiography, Fighting the Lamb’s War, in 1996.
In 1999, Phil participated in the Plowshares
vs. Depleted Uranium action in Middle River, MD. The next year,
at the age of 76, he was convicted of malicious destruction of
property and conspiracy to maliciously destroy property. He was
sentenced to 30 months in prison.
It was his last Plowshares action. Four
months after his final release from prison in December, 2001,
he broke his left arm in a fall, and his health began to fail.
In October of last year he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver.
He died two months later, as he had lived: surrounded by friends,
family and comrades, talking peace and politics to the last. His
family rode to his funeral in the pickup truck that carried the
casket, with hundreds of people carrying peace signs and flowers
following on foot behind it. His daughters Frida and Kate delivered
the eulogy. To date, some 175 people across the globe have committed
about 80 Plowshares actions.
Longtime journalist and writer Judith
Mahoney Pasternak is the editor of the Nonviolent Activist.
In a world
racked by terrorism and violence, it is appropriate that we commemorate
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message of love and nonviolence.
It is also fitting that while remembering
his relentless fight for equality and justice, we mull the wellsprings
of his philosophy that changed the face of this nation.
Initially, King believed that becoming
a minister of the church would be the best way to lead his people
to equality and freedom.
During a period of soul-searching, he had,
in his words, "despaired of the power of love in solving
social problems." At this point, he was coincidentally introduced
to the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi in a sermon by Mordecai Johnson,
president of Howard University, who had just returned from a trip
to India.
King was so moved that he immediately bought
a number of books on the Indian nationalist leader. He read with
fascination of the life of one who had successfully transformed
the ethic of nonviolence into a political instrument against British
colonial rule.
The impact they made on him is best described
in his own words: "As I read, I became deeply fascinated
by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. As I delved deeper
into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power
of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first
time its potency in the area of social reform."
"The 'turn-the-other-cheek' philosophy
and the 'love-your-enemies' philosophy," he went on, "were
only valid when individuals were in conflict with other individuals;
when racial groups and nations were in conflict, a more realistic
approach seemed necessary. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how
utterly mistaken I was."
King came to realize that Gandhi was the
first person in history to re- invent the Christian ethic of love
as a "a potent instrument for social and collective transformation."
It was a short journey thereafter to unreserved acceptance of
the Gandhian technique of nonviolence as the only viable means
to overcome the problems faced by his people.
After completion of his theological studies,
it was once again by chance that King had his first opportunity
to test his newfound theories of love and nonviolence. Following
the well-known Montgomery bus incident -- in which Rosa Parks
was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man --
King helped organize within 24 hours a complete boycott of the
buses, which lasted for more than a year until, on Nov. 13, 1956,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses
was unconstitutional, vindicating his cause --and more important,
the philosophy behind it.
"The experience in Montgomery,"
he was to explain later, "did more to clarify my thinking
in regard to the question of nonviolence than all the books I
had read. Nonviolence became more than a method to which I gave
intellectual assent; it became a commitment to a way of life."
The Montgomery campaign had not only united
his people but also stirred the conscience of the country. From
then on, the civil rights movement gained momentum under his leadership,
leading from one victory to another.
King was to explain later the rationale
and evolution of his thinking. "It was the Sermon on the
Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially
inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action
-- (and) to protest with the creative weapon of love."
He added: "As the days unfolded, however,
the Christian doctrine of love, operating through the Gandhian
method of nonviolence, was one of the most potent weapons available
to the Negro in his struggle for freedom."
Today, freedom remains in peril in many
parts of the world. The anniversary of King's birth is an occasion
to reflect on the seemingly impossible challenges he faced in
his time, and whether our current condition can be alleviated
by adapting his philosophy.
Placido P. D'Souza is a former ambassador
from India now working as a visiting journalist in the East Bay.
Mike Oduniyi
This Day
Lagos, Nigeria, August 2, 2002
When dialogue fails, parties resort
to war. This is the situation that Chevron Nigeria Limited has
suddenly found itself in as Itsekiri and Ijaw women of the Niger
Delta have openly declared war on the American oil company.
The setting looked like one that was masterly
scripted by Hollywood producers/directors. Only that this was
for real. The scene was the river-rine area of the oil-producing
Niger Delta region. The actors were Ijaw women, 'directed' by
stern looking ten women-leaders.
As night fell on Monday July 15, the women
had six speedboats and carefully anchored them in readiness for
an undisclosed mission.
At the dawn of the next day (Tuesday July
16) the women numbered 1,500 and drawn from ten Ijaw communities
of the Gbaramatu and Egbema Kingdoms, filed out in groups for
a trip that was to set a new dawn in relationship between oil
producing companies and their host communities.
For about two hours later, they stormed
four oil flowstations namely, Abiteye, Maraba/Otunana, Dibi and
Olero Creek, operated by Chevron on behalf of the NNPC/Chevron
Joint Venture. Thus began the drama that would last for 11 days.
"There was no warning signals from
the women to anyone, not even the paramount rulers, community
leaders or opinion leaders", said Chief Wellington Okirika,
the traditional Prime Minister of the Gbaramatu Kingdom.
Indeed as THISDAY checks revealed, co-ordinating
the invasion of the flowstation had been one that was carefully
marshalled by four of the Ijaw women leaders, Chief (Mrs) Josephine
Ogoba, Mrs Esther Bubor, Madam Fanti Wariyai and Madam Mary Olaye,
who used the Global System Mobile telephone (GSM) to their fullest
advantage.
According to Madam Wariyai, the women decided
not to inform anyone, not even their leaders for fear of 'sabotage'.
On the flowstations, the women distributed
themselves into groups of 400 on each flowstation handed by a
'Platoon Commander', wherein they then ordered all oil workers
and security details to vacate the facility. Perhaps, giving credence
to the imense power of women, the officials heeded their command
without any opposition.
Thus, a total of 110,000 barrels per day
(bpd) of oil was shut in, resulting in huge loss of income for
Chevron and Nigeria.
Nigerian women end protests
at ChevronTexaco facilities
July 26, 2002
By D'Arcy Doran, Associated Press Writer
LAGOS, Nigeria — Village women chanted
jubilantly Thursday as they ended their weeklong occupation of
a series of ChevronTexaco oil pipeline stations in exchange for
jobs, a micro-credit plan, schools and hospitals.
Hundreds of women left the captured flowstations
in canoes and on foot after protest leaders signed an agreement
with company executives late Wednesday, both sides said.
"History has been made," said
Esther Tolar, a spokeswoman for the protesters. "Our culture
is a patriarchal society. For women to come out like this and
achieve what we have is out of the ordinary."
Six hundred Nigerian women held a US oil
giant to ransom armed with a simple weapon - the threat of taking
all their clothes off. And it worked. Tania Branigan and John
Vidal explain.
After more than eight days of protest, 600 unarmed Nigerian women
who took over ChevronTexaco’s Escravos oil terminal agreed
today to end their siege after the company offered to hire at
least 25 villagers and to build schools, electrical and water
systems. Early last week, the women occupied the terminal and
held 700 workers inside to demand that the corporation provide
their oil-rich community with jobs and infrastructure development.
The women plan to wait until the verbal agreement is put in writing
and signed before they withdraw from the facility in southeastern
Nigeria.
The protest — organized by women between 30 and 90 years
of age — has been peaceful. As a show of “good faith,”
the women released 200 workers on Sunday. However, they have threatened
nudity, a tribal shaming gesture against ChevronTexaco and its
workers, if their demands go unmet.
The
spate of communal protests directed against Chevron Nigeria Limited
shifted yesterday to Ekpan, near Warri in Delta State, as a multitude
of women sealed up the operational base of the oil conglomerate
demanding for jobs for the people of the community.
Over a thousand women
defied the early morning heavy downpour to take part in the protest
that saw them barricading the gates of the company.
The Ekpan women had
actually issued an ultimatum to Chevron last week, threatening
to storm the company's base located along the Nigeria Ports Authority
(NPA) Expressway, Warri, if it failed to meet a set of demands.
The ultimatum expired on Monday.
If you are
a decision-maker or opinion-molder in a position to act on the
creative idea presented here, you are earnestly urged to read
on. Nine million desperate Palestinians and Israelis will thank
you for taking the time. The paper introduces a concept called
"parallel sovereignty"--an innovative ultramodern paradigm
for resolving the longstanding sociopolitical impasse in Israel/Palestine.
Oslo advocates may find it attractive because it could be termed
a "post- quantum-physics two-state solution," and Oslo
opponents may find it attractive because in this scenario, believe
it or not, Greater Israel and Greater Palestine both emerge intact.
* * *
The conflict between Palestine and Israel,
between Arab and Jew, goes back a very long way--over a hundred
years in its present form (and a lot longer, if you go back to
Sarah, Hagar and Abraham).
In our time, at least, all the usual approaches
to resolving this conflict share one basic dynamic: Let us call
it "peeling the onion of blame." We take the conflict
in its most current incarnation and peel away a layer, looking
for who is to blame, and why and how--and as the first layer of
the onion is peeled away, we are all weeping, because the facts
are tragic, our situation is tragic, and the history of this conflict
is a history of tragedy.
When that first layer has been peeled away,
someone who doesn't like the answer that has just emerged, and
who feels that the finger of blame should be pointed elsewhere,
goes ahead and peels away another layer, and someone else peels
another, and so on. Some of the best minds on both sides of the
aisle are engaged full-time in this dead-end endeavor. Meanwhile,
more innocents have been killed and injured, more youngsters turned
into killing machines, more lives and more families blighted,
and there's no resolution in sight. And we continue to weep.
