Mennonista

Passing On the Torch

2012-01-15T17:13:00.000-06:00

Passing On The Torch From The Geriatric Generation by Steve Clemens. January 15, 2012

In one week in early January 2012, the Twin Cities peace community lost Dr. Gene Ott, age 82, and Marv Davidov, age 80 after months and years of failing health. This same week saw two of the famed four McDonald sisters, Kate and Rita, along with their fellow faithful protesting compatriot, Marguerite Corcoran move into a senior retirement center just a week after their most recent court appearance for yet another act of civil disobedience. That court appearance at the Fourth District Courtroom at Ridgedale stemmed from the final action of a 16-year campaign directed at war profiteer Alliant Techsystems before it moved its corporate headquarters to a spot less than 5 miles from the Pentagon.

One of the defendants in that case entered the courtroom using a walker; two of the defendants have Parkinsons. Another defendant was unable to appear because of a follow-up medical treatment for his cancer. This scribe, at age 61, was the youngest of the 12 defendants and the only one not presently covered by Medicare and Social Security. Just two days after that court appearance another defendant fell down a flight of stairs in her own home and while badly bruised, fortunately didn’t break any bones before being driven away by the EMTs.

At the weekly Lake Street Bridge vigil, 98 year-old Elmer faithfully holds up his “Bring the Troops Home Now” sign each week, no matter what the weather, after visiting his wife in a local nursing home. Several other Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet haven’t been able to join us for the past couple of years due to health issues brought on by aging and one of the main organizers of local vigils has suffered a stroke and has now been diagnosed with cancer at age 83.

Even the annual Veterans For Peace-sponsored bus journey to Ft. Benning, GA to the “Close the School of the Americas” rally and vigil is getting to be too strenuous a journey for many of the local peacemakers. At least when we arrive 24-hours later at the gates of this huge military training base, the SOA Watch organizers now have chairs set up near the stage so some of us can rest our weary bones.

When the EMTs were summoned to the Alliant Action vigil this past August after one of us collapsed, we should have seen the handwriting on the wall: we are no longer “spring chickens” and will need replacements soon. Before we walked up the driveway to sit in front of the main entry doors at Alliant Techsystems, one of the 86 year-old nuns told me, “This might be the last chance I might have to get arrested with you.”

How wonderful to see a new generation step forward calling themselves “the Occupy! movement”. Other young people are part of the Anti-War Committee and some students have banded together under the banner of Students for a Democratic Society, reviving the SDS movement from its Vietnam-era origins. As we mourn the losses within our stalwart community, we are eager to help mentor and accompany the next generation of activists seeking nonviolent solutions to the challenges ahead of us. Who will take Marv’s place in telling stories from the peace movement to the Active Nonviolence class in the Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas? Who will fill the enormous shoes of Dr. Ott in making the links between healthcare justice and peacemaking? One doesn’t need a long resume to join us; we’ll help you fill in the details as you stand beside us on the street corners and in the courtrooms and we’ll stand beside you at the People’s Plaza, the FBI headquarters, and homes facing foreclosure. Together, lets continue to be the change we hope to see in this world.

RIP, Marv Davidov

2012-01-14T14:48:00.000-06:00

Remembering Marv by Steve Clemens. January 14, 2012

I moved to the Twin Cities after the Honeywell Project years so it took me a few years before my path crossed with Marv Davidov. It seemed to me that everyone involved in peace and justice protest in the area had worked with Marv at some time or other. He was a thorn in the side (or, more accurately, a pain in the ass) to those in authority who wished to protect a status quo which trampled the rights of the poor or marginalized or used military force against others. As one friend remarked to me, he was also a pain in the ass to many of his friends as well.

“A prophet without honor in his own home town” was an observation about another Jewish agitator a couple of millenniums ago; he ended up crucified by governmental authorities who wanted to repress his message which they thought was subversive to the empire. And what a subversive Marv was! Marv bristled at any sign of injustice and was quick to let you know his mind – but it was always tempered with his incredible sense of humor and his smile and laugh.

Marv gave me his blessing just before I went under the fence at the School of the Americas protest in 2005 and he told Christine I needed a proper reception when I was released from Federal Prison afterward so he, she, and some other faithful friends greeted me with a banner and noisemakers as I stepped off the Greyhound bus in my new prison-supplied clothes in 2006.

Carol Masters so wonderfully captured many of Marv’s adventures in the book she wrote with Marv (You Can’t Do That: Marv Davidov, Non-Violent Revolutionary)http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-That-Non-violent-Revolutionary/dp/1932472894/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326573991&sr=1-1 and it is great that this agitator for peace was able to be lionized before his passing. He loved being able to give readings from the book and then would embellish the story Carol had recorded with additional details and memories.

Thursday morning while visiting him at Walker Methodist Health Center, I told him I was stepping out of the room so one of his care-takers could change his dressing. He grabbed my hand, smiled, and said, “I love you, Steve” and I returned the sentiment. He knew his time was rapidly approaching and he dared not leave any loose ends. As I think of this brother with many fond memories, one of my favorites was his story about standing naked in the shower at a health club and his conversation with an FBI agent. If you don’t know it, get Carol’s book and enjoy some of the many adventures and stories of my friend and mentor.

Rest in peace, my brother. [Marv died about noon today]

Feast of the Holy Innocents

2011-12-28T16:53:00.000-06:00

Holy Innocents Talk at St Joan of Arc – Dec 28, 2011

The President announced two weeks ago that the war in Iraq is over. The TV cameras showed the convoy of military trucks driving out of Iraq into Kuwait. All US Troops are now out of Iraq – well, except for several hundred which remain in the Kurdish north who will continue to train Iraqi military and police. And except for the armed mercenary contractors, somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 who remain to “protect” US State Department personnel remaining and to guard the largest embassy in the world which remains behind fortress walls in the Green Zone in Baghdad. And, of course, the CIA operatives who remain. Apparently it is much easier to start a war than to end one. And the news last week seems to indicate that the war is hardly over for the Iraqi people: car bombs exploding in Baghdad.

There appears to be no end in sight in America’s longest war further east in Afghanistan. 25 years ago American politicians smugly chortled as the Soviet military experienced their own Vietnam-like quagmire in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the poppy fields of Helmand and Kandahar. Now, in our own hubris, we are replicating the same mistakes the Soviets made – and more. Soviet Premier Gorbachev pulled out his troops finally after 8 years. We are now going into our 10^th year with the vague promise to be out in three more years but it is said without any conviction at all.

Drones continue to prowl over the countryside, reigning death on young boys collecting firewood, on wedding and funeral processions. “Night raids” by Special Forces troops continue to wreak havoc on the life of villagers often leading to more death or detention into the huge prison on the Baghram Airbase. How long will the Afghan people have to endue foreign occupation?

The story included in the Gospel of Matthew detailing the arrival of the Three Magi and their encounter with the Roman-appointed King Herod – and the resultant “slaughter of the innocent” might be historical or not. However, the writer of Matthew’s Gospel included the story for a reason:

Biblical scholars tell us that Matthew’s Gospel was written to the small, struggling Community of followers of Jesus in the Roman capital city of Antioch, the eastern capital of the expansive Roman empire that dominated the world around the Mediterranean Sea. This small group who were first called “Christians” lived as a minority within a minority in the section of the imperial city where other Jews lived. The city of Antioch was the base of operations for at least 4 Roman Legions and boasted huge Temples and other edifices proclaiming the dominance of the Romans.

One thing the Romans did not tolerate was public dissent – especially that of other “kings” and rulers that weren’t already beholden to the Roman Emperor. So whether or not King Herod ordered the slaughter of all the young male children in the Jerusalem/Bethlehem area, the story is reflective of what imperial powers do routinely- make sure there are no challenges to their power, even if it means the sacrifice of innocent children.

In Matthew’s story, the infant Jesus is smuggled out of the country and taken to Egypt by his parents to avoid the slaughter-to-come. How convenient to go to the place where the same old story took place with the birth of another infant who was targeted by the empire- that time it was Moses targeted by Pharaoh.

Make no mistake about it: we, today live in the midst of an empire which is in serious decline – and we want NO ONE to challenge our hegemony – especially those who speak a different language and follow a different religion from the majority in the US. And the way empires are able to continue this oppression is by dehumanizing the enemy as “the other”, and less-than-human. They are fanatics, insurgents, jihadists. Those in the US military often take a term of respect and turn it into a racial and ethnic slur- “Hajji”.

One thing the empire does not want you to see is the humanity of the “enemy”. And there is no better disrupter of imperial domination than the innocence of children. Nine years ago I had the privilege to travel to Iraq and meet people before our bombs and bullets came crashing in, further devastating the already crippled infrastructure damaged by the 1991 war and the crippling economic sanctions. My camera captured the faces of hundreds of children – children whose fate we know little of today after almost 9 years of war.

In March of this year, I again was privileged to travel to a war zone to stand in solidarity with Afghan young people committed to peacemaking. We planted trees for peace on the first day of Spring in a schoolyard in Kabul. We also met young filmmakers and photographers in Afghanistan who help us connect with the humanity of the children – this in a country where 42% of the population is age 14 or under. Look at their faces. Children just like them have been the targets of imperial drones as well as the indiscriminate attacks of religious fundamentalists and fanatics.

[show photos of Afghans]

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers as well as the brave youth of The Open Society and the 3^rd Eye Photojournalism Center are some of those risking their lives for an end to imperial domination and a desire to work for reconciliation within their country. Tonight I ask you to pray for them, advocate for them, speak to the Powers that Be in Washington, DC on their behalf. To say with your voices and actions: “Let there be no more children as victims of war and foreign policies of domination.”

I want to give special thanks to my friends Basir, Asif, and Hakim in Afghanistan for allowing me to use some of their photos.

Remember, 42% of Afghanistan are age 14 and under. They are waiting to be joined by other peacemakers who will help end the scourge of the violence of war and foreign occupation.

Reaping the Whirlwind: The Shadow Side of Imperial Bullying

2011-11-04T10:17:00.001-05:00

Reaping the Whirlwind: The Shadow Side of Imperial Bullying by Steve Clemens. November 4, 2011

It was in conversation with the Iraqi doctors visiting from Najaf that I inquired about Muqtada al-Sadr and the role he and his militias might play in Iraq after the U.S. uniformed troops leave by the end of this year. [Note: we leave behind close to 6,000 mercenary “contractors” – mostly ex-military personnel hired at enormous cost to provide “security” for U.S. State Department and other American personnel remaining in Iraq.] Soon after the Saddam Hussein regime toppled, the Iraqi cleric and political leader, son of the murdered Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr, formed his youthful followers into a political group which included a fighting force called the Sadr Brigades or the Madhi Army and declared the Coalition Provisional Authority as illegitimate. Al-Sadr’s forces were a key factor of what has been called the “insurgency” in Iraq along with uprisings in Sunni areas as well.

What I was told by one of the physicians who works in Najaf, the city known as the home base for al-Sadr [who is now studying in Iran to become an ayatollah himself] is that most of his followers are “ignorant young people”. The doctor went on to explain that one of the consequences of the economic sanctions put in place at U.S. insistence by the United Nations in 1990 was a severe devaluation of the Iraqi dinar as the ability to import and export goods became increasingly difficult. Although the declared purpose of the sanctions was to force Saddam Hussein from power, the actual effect led to a black market that only further solidified the power of the dictator as he controlled what underground economy existed. As a result, he and his cronies got even wealthier while the middle class and the poor bore the brunt of the devastation that ensued.

To “connect the dots”, the economic catastrophe which hit Iraq destroyed much of the infrastructure as spare parts or key ingredients were embargoed. Baghdad was well known as “the” place to go for quality medical care in the Middle East before the sanctions. Less than 10 years later, doctors had to scrounge for the tubing needed to administer IV fluids, let alone the critical ingredients for drug cocktails used for many cancer treatments. Water treatment plants and electrical power stations which were bombed in the 1991 war were left in disrepair when the spare parts or critical components were denied importation by the sanctions committee dominated by the US and the UK. But even more tragic was the impact on the “human resources” of the country.

Children often went to bed hungry after only one or two meager meals a day that stunted both their mental and physical growth. As the dinar’s value was rapidly deflated, the schoolteachers were forced to take additional jobs to support their families. One doctor told me his history/geography teacher took a “job” selling tobacco on the street corners in order to feed his family. With both inadequate food and schooling, it is no wonder many of Iraq’s precious resource of children, now young adults, remain “ignorant” and are easily swayed by the persuasive powers of leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr. We have reaped the whirlwind in allowing a whole generation to be inadequately schooled, thus unable to help discern what leaders might be worthy of following.

Speaking of leaders, one of the primary charges leveled against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to war was that “he killed his own people” – referring to his chemical warfare attacks against the Kurdish population in the northern part of Iraq. Never mind that the Kurds, a ruggedly independent people, never really considered themselves as “Iraqi” but rather “Kurdish”; they suffered mightily under the Baathist regime as well as the “Marsh Arabs” and other Shia groups in the south. Is in not ironic (and certainly a revealing shadow-side of our empire) that we now have a U.S. President openly bragging about killing a U.S. citizen last month? Yes, Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemani-American cleric was considered by many as a “terrorist” or at least an inspirer of terrorists but he was a U.S. citizen who supposedly has a constitutional right to arrest and trial rather than summary execution. Saddam also accused the Kurds of “terrorism” and saw no need for a trial. Now we emulate those we say are our enemies; now our leaders “kill their own people” as well.

All in the name of “national security”. This idol, this obsession, has led us to the shredding of our civil liberties and our constitution. We continue to tremble in fear and obsequiousness whenever our leaders or corporate media tell us of another “threat”. We take off our shoes in the airport and trip-over ourselves in trying to be “more-patriotic-than-thou” by not only having the National Anthem played at the ballgame but have to add “God Bless America” to the seventh-inning stretch! All the lip-service given to “honoring the troops” is a mask to cover the shame many of us feel because these wars have cost us nothing as we go shopping at the President’s beckoning – leaving the bills for these wars as debt for the future generations.

We are a nation/empire in serious decline yet we live in denial. But the cracks are showing: the Occupy Wall Street movement and its metastatic-like spread around the country and the globe signals a stirring, possibly an uprising. Our Iraqi friends, in telling us their stories and experiences of sanctions, invasions, and occupations, can hold a much-needed mirror up for us so we can begin to see both the whirlwind and the shadow of empire.

A Message to Hillary from an Iraqi Doctor

2011-11-02T15:23:00.001-05:00

A Warning to Secretary Clinton: Economic Sanctions Kill the Innocent by Steve Clemens. November 1, 2011

I sat across the table from my new friend, Dr. Ali, an Iraqi Radiologist who was visiting Minneapolis as part of the Sister City delegation from Najaf, Iraq. We were between scheduled appointments in a busy schedule which was set up by The Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project, the sponsoring nonprofit organization which helped bring 8 medical personnel and a journalist from Minneapolis’ newest Sister City to the country that continues to occupy his nation and people. What he told me yesterday morning serves as a cautionary tale that our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, must weigh before she continues her threatened assault on Iraq’s neighbor – and our latest nemesis – Iran. Her proposed weapon of economic sanctions should not be cavalierly invoked before we learn the lessons from our most recent experience in Iraq.

Dr. Ali was only 11 years-old when President Bush the Elder led the movement to place economic sanctions on the people of Iraq, hoping to force the withdraw of Saddam Hussein’s troops from neighboring Kuwait in 1990. An unprecedented bombing campaign and a very brief 3-day land war in 1991 that left Iraq in shambles but Saddam remaining in power quickly followed it. The U.S.-led economic sanctions remained in place for an additional 12 years until President Bush the Younger decided to complete his daddy’s war with his own. In the interim, President Bill Clinton kept the comprehensive economic embargo in place despite the cries from humanitarian officials who pointed out the consequences to the people of Iraq, especially the children. Hillary Clinton’s predecessor, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, serving under her husband’s presidency, notoriously observed that she thought “it was worth it” when asked by a journalist about the excess deaths of more than a half-million Iraqi children midway through this cynical attempt to have the Iraqi people rise up to overthrow the brutally repressive Saddam regime.

I visited Iraq in December 2002 as part of the Iraq Peace Team just a few months before our present long war was reignited the following March. For many of the Iraqi people, economic sanctions, combined with U.S. bombing on average every three days during the Clinton years, were just a continuation of war in a lesser form. I visited hospitals and schools, water treatment plants and homes and talked with Iraqis during that trip, shocked at the devastating toll the Iraqi people paid from wars and sanctions. I had no idea that almost 10 years later I’d be sitting across the table at the Riverside Perkins restaurant over coffee and hearing another personal story of the continuing tragedy.

At age 11, and coming from a Kurdish family now relocated just outside of Baghdad trying to avoid the bombing campaign, Ali had neither the power or the ability to rise up to overthrow the oppressive dictator, ostensibly the goal of the economic sanctions campaign – but he now bore the brunt of it. He told me that he often only had one or two meager meals a day for many years. In school he noticed how his teachers often had to take second jobs to support their families and his father had to take second and third jobs to support his large family which included four brothers and three sisters – with Ali as the oldest sibling.

He went on to tell me about his mother’s breast cancer that was diagnosed in 2000 while Ali was in Medical College. Her cancer remained untreated because no chemotherapy or radiation treatment was available due to restrictions under the economic sanctions. She died 1 ½ years after diagnosis, at age 40, from lack of proper treatment; her youngest child just over one-year old. The frustration and horror of not being able to get the medical care she needed was a major factor in Dr. Ali choosing to make Radiological Medicine his specialty after he graduated and completed his two-year medical internship. After six years of Medical College and two years of government-mandated internship, Dr. Ali worked another four years to become Board Certified as a Radiologist. He now must work five years in a placement approved by the Ministry of Health (based on need and his ranking in exams) before he is free to practice wherever he’d like in Iraq.

Although he doesn’t speak the Kurdish language, Dr. Ali hopes to learn it and someday move back to the northern region of Iraq where his relatives come from. He would like Americans to better appreciate the suffering the Iraqi people have undergone not only from the wars but also the economic sanctions which so degraded and destroyed his country in less dramatic and slower (but as deadly) a way.

Now, if only Secretary Clinton and President Obama would take the time to talk to everyday Iraqis before threatening the mothers and children of Iran with the same failed policies. Hillary Clinton talks about empowering girls and women yet her strategies make them some of the first victims. One of the greatest tragedies from our wars is that we either learn nothing from them or learn the wrong lessons. As Armistice Day approaches on November 11^th, let us join with my friends of Veterans For Peace to remember and reflect rather than glorify war and our warriors.

Journey into Peacemaking

2011-10-26T21:23:00.000-05:00

Journey into Peacemaking – presentation to People of Faith Peacemakers. October 26, 2011 – Steve Clemens

My journey into peacemaking has been a progression from a purely personal stand (registering as a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War draft) to understanding it must inform my politics and sociology as well. Spending the next summer on the streets of Philadelphia with street gangs helped me realize that my “pacifism” had to extend to the rest of my life – not just in wartime. John Howard Yoder’s books, The Politics of Jesus (1972) and The Original Revolution, helped me understand how to link my ethical stand with the life and witness of Jesus.

In joining public protest at the local Draft Board in my college town of Wheaton, IL (led by a Catholic priest from the Maryknoll Seminary), I was forced to broaden my narrow circle of Evangelicalism to include other traditions. My rigid theology defining who was “saved” and who was not was the next piece of my upbringing that I was forced to jettison. Next, I was challenged to stop demonizing our national political and religious leaders and instead of anger and rage at them, I was encouraged to focus on compassion for the victims of war and injustice.

Throughout my early years of embracing peacemaking and nonviolence, I continued to draw inspiration from others who shared my faith-based values. One important voice was that of William Stringfellow, an Episcopalian lawyer who practiced in Harlem and was a close friend of the Berrigan brothers. His 1973 book, An Ethic For Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land was pivotal in helping me understand the nature of what the Apostle Paul called “the Principalities and Powers” and what Stringfellow called the idolatry of National Security. Stringfellow’s contention that institutions as well as individuals were affected by the Biblical concept of the Fall helped me focus on structural and institutional violence rather than just individual political leaders or military officers.

Next, when I doing (voluntary) Alternative Service with the Mennonites in Washington, DC, I joined a year-long Bible study group led by Phil Berrigan and Liz Macalister from Jonah House Community which introduced me not only to the “Catholic Left” but also the writings and insight of Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish theologian and cohort of Martin Luther King Jr. We read Heschel’s masterpiece, The Prophets and discussed how we were being called to undertake prophetic witness today. Under Liz’s gentle prodding, I decided to take a next step and risk arrest and possible jail sentence by protesting the Vietnam War inside the grounds of the White House just one month before the war finally ended with the fall of Saigon. I was arrested with Dick Gregory, Dan Berrigan, Jim Peck, Liz Macalister, and Ladon Sheats – people who became guides and mentors for me for the journey ahead.

It was the decision to risk arrest and jail that finally convinced my conservative evangelical parents that my “different path” might not signal my rejection of Christianity for radical politics: people didn’t usually risk jail for just “politics” – maybe my proclamations that I was acting on my faith, although different from theirs, might be what was behind what they first thought was merely “youthful rebellion”. My decision to continue on a different path by moving to an intentional Christian community in south Georgia, Koinonia Partners, reaffirmed that direction. This ecumenical community embraced commitments to nonviolence, racial reconciliation, simple living, service to others, and Christian discipleship.

I arrived in Georgia just as the 1976 political campaigns were beginning to gel and I lived only 7 miles from Plains, GA, home of Jimmy Carter. My year with the Jonah House folk, coupled with Stringfellow’s insights, kept me from buying into the illusion that “personal piety” and integrity were capable of repairing the politics of the Watergate mess. Stringfellow, writing in an early issue of Sojourners Magazine observed that electing a moral person to an immoral position – that of Commander-in-Chief of a successor to the Babylonian Empire – was an illusion – putting moral people in places of wickedness. In the same issue, John Howard Yoder opined that voting was actually one of the least significant political acts that Christians should engage in – feeding the poor and working for justice and stopping the wars were far more important than voting.

In the summer of 1980, I traveled to a national Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) conference held in Berea, KY. I rode the bus there with my new friend, Murphy Davis, who was in the process of forming a new Christian community now known as The Open Door Community in Atlanta, GA. At the conference, an old-time Southern Baptist preacher and writer, Will Campbell, led a workshop on visiting prisoners. He told us that there were very few specific commands Jesus gave us but one of the most explicit is that we must visit those in prison. Murphy, who with her husband, Eduard Loring, were heavily engaged in visiting and advocating for the growing number of men on Georgia’s Death Row, said she’d find someone for me “who needed a visitor/friend.” It began a 10-year relationship for me (and later for my wife, Christine) with Bob Redd – a man who had been on Death Row already for several years. After our sons were born in 1983 and 1986, Bob asked if we would bring them along for our visits on Death Row and to see the joy on his face when he met them and played with them is something I’ll never forget! It also led me to holding vigil at our Sumter County Courthouse with a full-size replica of an electric chair every time Georgia executed one of its prisoners. Our small group of prayerful vigilers were often jeered and cursed at by those passing-by.

In the Fall of 1980, my friend Ladon Sheats, who had moved from Koinonia to Jonah House just a month before I moved to the South, approached me and asked if I’d consider joining him and a few others in what might be a very dangerous undertaking. (At the time, I was not aware of the plans for the first Plowshares action at King of Prussia, PA where later that month the Berrigan brothers and several others would put hammers to nuclear weapons – but Ladon must have known since he lived in community with Phil Berrigan.) Ladon instead felt the call to pray at the physical site of the assembly of all the US nuclear weapons, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, TX. He asked me to pray about joining him and to discuss it with my wife, my community, and our families. This was further complicated with the sudden onset of my father-in-law’s leukemia, culminating with his death four months later, just weeks before the planned nonviolent prayer witness. Christine and I spent our Christmas vacation in Pennsylvania, shuttling between our two families, sharing with them my sense of call to take this next risky step.

Writing letters to our families as well as to my community during our four-day pre-action weekend of preparation helped steel me for the emotional roller coaster of contemplating my own death in the event of Pantex guards firing on us with their tank, bazookas, or rifles which guarded the alleged most-secure US facility. Choosing to act on my faith rather than my fears gave me a sense of liberation that is hard to describe. As we drove up to the area where we would attempt to scale the dual 12-foot fences topped with barbed wire, although the adrenalin was pumping, I never felt more at peace with my decision to try to pray for peace by being physically present at a place incarnating death. The following six months in the county jail and then Federal prison were grace-filled and taught me a new appreciation for reading the Bible in the context of prison – it gave the Psalms, Jeremiah, Revelations, and Paul’s epistles – books written in prison or exile - a whole new meaning for me.

Acting on my faith rather than my fears only helped increase my faith. Clarence Jordan, one of the founders of the intentional Christian community where I lived used to say that fear is the polio of the soul that keeps us from walking by faith. He went on to say that faith is not acting in spite of the evidence but rather in scorn of the consequences.

It wasn’t until I moved from the Potter County Jail to Federal Prison that I learned that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Amarillo, Leroy Matthieson, had visited Fr. Larry Rosebaugh – one of the six of us – in the jail at the behest of a parishioner whose conscience was troubled when he heard about our nonviolent witness at the place of his employment. Several months later, this Bishop took the unbelievably courageous stand and called for “all people of conscience to quit their jobs” at Pantex and he set up a fund in the diocese to help any families do such! He later joined Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen and Tom Gumbleton in pushing the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to issue the Peace Pastoral Letter against nuclear weapons the following year.

This experiment in peacemaking was also very important for our intentional community and I think we both grew in our understanding of risks we could take for peace. I think the shock (for some) of our 6-month to one-year sentences helped many to realize the seriousness of this undertaking. We learned how the call of resistance affects the rest of the community and this was a big step which helped enable another step a few years later.

When several other community members chose to spend a week in the DC jail with me instead of paying a $50 fine for praying for peace in the Capitol Rotunda in 1983, it helped the community see that others shared the call to take similar risks. One of the things which was reinforced for me during that week in jail together was how important music has been for me in resistance work. When we were preparing for the Pantex witness, I had just learned the song “Be Not Afraid”. (“Be not afraid; I go before you always. Come, follow me, and I will give you rest. …”). We sang it together as the Pantex guards pointed their automatic rifles at us as we awaited arrest. In the Peace Pentecost witness in the Capitol Rotunda coordinated by my friends at Sojourners, Henri Nouwen taught us new songs he had just brought back from South Africa as well as songs from the Taize Community in France. We learned “Freedom is Coming”, “We Are Marching in the Light of God”, and “It Doesn’t Matter If You Should Jail Us (we are freed and kept alive by hope)” from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The 400+ of us herded into the holding cells of the DC Jail the first night after our arrest sang those songs back and forth between the men’s and the women’s holding cells to keep up our spirits and solidarity. Then when the 50 of us continued in jail for the week, those songs were a constant reminder not only of our witness against nuclear weapons in the US Capitol but also our linkage with brothers and sisters in South Africa who were also struggling nonviolently for change.

Also in the early 1980s we learned of the prophetic witness of Jim and Shelly Douglass and the Ground Zero Community in the Seattle area of Washington State choosing to block trains carrying nuclear weapons to the submarine base located in Bangor, WA. They taught us about “The White Train” which transported nuclear warheads to the submarines from the Pantex Plant in Texas. By tracking the train from state-to-state and city-to-city via a network of activists, we learned that the notorious White Train would also head east to resupply the Poseidon submarines at Charlestown, SC and later the new Trident subs at a new naval base being built at King’s Bay, GA just near the Florida state line.

After tracking the train for several years and holding candlelight vigils, I felt led to take another risk for peace by attempting to block the train as it came through our state of Georgia. Having followed the train for numerous harrowing trips where we were always harassed by US Marshalls who escorted the train with their Bronco SUVs, we decided on the small town of Montezuma, GA, about a half-hours drive from the Koinonia community. After several meetings with the head of security for the CSX Railroad, the local Police Chief, and the Oglethorpe County Sheriff to politely but firmly describe our plans as well as our commitment to disciplined nonviolence, six of us calmly walked towards the tracks as the train (which had to slow down considerably before coming down the Main Street of this small town) approached us at only a few miles per hour. The police chose to arrest us before the train came to a complete stop which led us to chose noncooperation with them as we had informed them we would if arrested before the train physically stopped. In the haste to carry us off to jail (and to allow the train to pass), one of the six, and husband of the only woman in our group, a fellow Koinonia community member with me, was left behind as the “paddy wagon” hauled us off! (He later joined the next group to block the train about 9 months later.) We chose to fast in the jail and after a court appearance a week later, we were released with a promise to return for trial – a trial which never occurred due to a gross violation of our rights by the Judge prior to our arrest. (But that, and the death threats our family received, are another, much longer story.)

Looking back, my wife and I realized our second son was conceived the day I was released from jail so no one can say nothing constructive ever comes from acts of civil disobedience!

But having young children and parenting responsibilities are factors that must be taken into consideration in choosing to risk arrest, particularly when lengthy jail time and/or one’s physical safety might also be a consequence. Micah, my oldest son, came to visit me at the County Jail with Christine after the White Train action but at 1 ½ years old, he was more interested in the Sheriff’s bloodhounds in the cage next to our prison visiting yard than in seeing his Dad. Even though Christine has never been arrested, she has been an absolutely essential partner for me all during my “criminal” career. To show the change which had occurred in our community since the original skepticism when I proposed the Pantex witness about five years earlier, the entire Partnership (the name of our community members) carpooled over to the jail to sing and pray outside one evening in lieu of their regular Partner meeting. Katy and I were very touched by that gesture from our fellow Partners.

To fast forward into my journey, our family moved to Minnesota in 1990 for a Sabbatical Year and then chose to remain here and join the Community of St. Martin. It was a difficult decision to leave our commitments to our “family-of-choice” behind in Georgia (although we didn’t mind leaving the heat and humidity). We experienced the loss as somewhat akin to what others have experienced in a marital divorce and, still today, I deeply miss the close fellowship and sense of partnership we experience for 16 and 20 years respectively. It was the place where we met, married, and started our family. When you’ve worked, worshipped, and got arrested with folk over many years, those bonds are hard to replace.

However, as I gradually got involved with the Alliant ACTION vigil circle, the Lake Street Bridge vigil, WAMM, Pax Christi, and several other groups here in the Twin Cities, they have become a new family for us. As the war threats against Iraq (again!) began to surface in August of 2002, Kathy Kelly came to speak at Loring Park, having just returned from another delegation to Iraq in defiance of the economic sanctions. She described a vision of people of faith, peacemakers, traveling to Iraq just to stand side-by-side the Iraqi civilians, in solidarity and friendship, as our bombs were falling – taking risks with them – letting them know that not all Americans were their enemies. I came home excited about the challenge and the prospect of another concrete way to stand for peace. Also, my sons had by then entered high school and college and I felt freer to take on some additional risk. I have to be honest: it was a much harder sell with Christine this time – and with one of my sons as well. In forming a small “discernment group” of friends from the Community of St. Martin, one of them, Peter Thompson, a former Federal Prosecutor, Public Defender, and Criminal Defense Attorney, told me he was discerning that he should join me – but his wife was even more reticent than mine! As a compromise, we agreed to try to limit our time in Iraq to only two weeks although the time we were going, early December, would coincide with the deadline date the United Nations and the US had given Saddam Hussein to release all the documents about “weapons of mass destruction” – December 8^th. Many of us thought the war might start that night or the next day – little did we know that he would release those documents – and, more surprisingly, we have all later discovered that he had no WMDs – just like the UN weapons inspectors had said! Two days later, on Kathy Kelly’s 50^th birthday and the day the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, she was invited to meet with the Deputy Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister, Tarik Aziz and told she could bring “some of her friends with her”.

This trip of solidarity continues to be important as I got to visit the area where depleted uranium was used in the first Gulf War and to visit the Children’s Hospital in Basrah where the doctors introduced us to children whose cancers, they believed, were resultant from their exposure to the radioactive dust left behind by these weapons built and sold by Alliant Techsystems. I made a solemn pledge to the Iraqis I traveled with to the Highway of Death area that I would do all I could, nonviolently, to try to prevent these weapons from being used again – after tearfully asking for their forgiveness for their use in 1991 by my nation. As we hugged and cried together, we also felt the bonds of recommitment for the long struggle ahead.

It was just a little more than 8 years later that Kathy contacted me again to travel to a war zone. She had met Afghan young people on her two previous trips to Afghanistan who were being mentored by a doctor from Singapore committed to Gandhian nonviolence. Going by the name Hakim, this doctor met people from the Bamiyan Province when they were in a refugee camp in Quetta, Pakistan where this doctor was working as a public health physician. When the refugees were able to return to Bamiyan, he returned with them, having learned Dari, their language, to supplement his fluency in both Mandarin and English. Kathy asked Hakim and the group of young peacemakers he mentors called the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers how other peacemakers around the globe could support them. They told her that a tangible sign of solidarity would be to plant trees together for peace – on the first day of Spring, which is also the Persian New Year which is once again celebrated in Afghanistan now that the Taliban is out of political power.

They also stated that they wished to do an inter-ethnic peace march in the capital city to model the need for an end to ethnic and tribal and religious rivalries. They indicated that they did not wish to have internationals join that march, as they wanted it to be a clear call for peace in Afghanistan by the Afghans themselves. So just one day before we arrived, 28 of us from Germany, Australia, and the US, 40 young people – Hazara, Pashtun, Uzbeki, Tajik, Turkmen, and others, Sunni and Shia and those who identify as humanist – marched from the Iranian Embassy to the Embassy of the United Nations, in the heart of Kabul. The police were amazed that this protest was not accompanied by the usual “death to so-and-so” chants with angry fists up in the air but rather smiles to the police, telling them, “We can be friends”. It was inspiring to me to take relatively small risks (compared to their daily lives – especially when they are in the presence of westerners) to stand in solidarity with them. We continue to keep in contact almost monthly through Skype calls and FaceBook.

I have found that the use of pictures helps people connect with others on a non-rational level. I use my blog entries to try to help demystify nonviolent resistance actions, arrest, and jail so others realize they too might be able to consider these strategies in their own work as peacemakers. In my desire to stand in solidarity with the actual and potential victims of war, including traveling to war zones, it is likely we will have to take risks which others can’t afford to do. We have to consider the costs of peacemaking. Dan Berrigan reminds us that the costs of making peace are at least as costly as making war and there is no peace because there are few peacemakers. (read quote from No Bars to Manhood)

In our desire to be peacemakers, we must resist our culture’s obsession with rugged individualism and the Lone Ranger mentality; instead, we must envelope ourselves with small communities of challenge and support in order to be about prophetic witness. John Howard Yoder reminds us that we are not responsible to “make history come out right” – that is God’s job. We are called to try to be faithful rather than only striving to be effective. Yoder goes on to say, however, if God is really sovereign, than what is faithful will always be effective in the long run.

However, part of all of this is acting confessionally rather than dogmatically. We need to guard against self-righteousness and as Quaker leader John Woolman observed, we need to see what are the seeds of war, injustice, and slavery within our own lives. Our political leaders have embraced weapons of domination because they feel this is what the people want. We need to embrace lifestyles which do not need “defending” against others. Clarence Jordan used to talk about the “incarnational theology” of Jesus. Jesus modeled for us what our relationship to God can be. In Clarence’s CottonPatch translation, he tells us that “Jesus parked his mobile home next to ours.” What we need to do is incarnate our peacemaking.

One final observation: it is important that we recognize that peacemaking involves both saying YES and saying NO. Dan Berrigan in a beautiful poem, No and Yes and the Whole Damned Thing, observes that we stand on the dark side, waiting for our NO to be swallowed up in God’s YES, the resurrection.

I want to end with several images – first of some of my mentors, then of some of those on the receiving end of our empire of domination and destruction.

Render to Caesar or Render to God?

2011-10-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

Render To Caesar reflection for St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community – Steve Clemens. Oct. 16, 2011

The Gospel lesson assigned for today comes from the Gospel according to Matthew 22:15-22

Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how they might entrap [Jesus] in his talk. They sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are honest, and teach the way of God in truth, no matter whom you teach, for you aren't partial to anyone. Tell us therefore, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"

But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, "Why do you test me, you hypocrites? Show me the tax money." They brought to him a denarius.

He asked them, "Whose is this image and inscription?" They said to him, "Caesar's."

Then he said to them, "Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled, and left him, and went away.

In the English of the King James version, Jesus statement is recorded as “Render to Caesar …” and this phrase has been bandied about by apologists for submitting to governmental authority for decades, in not centuries.

Note in the story told, the purpose of the question was to TRAP Jesus. The question comes from “the Pharisees and Herodians”- the Pharisees were “separatists” stressing personal purity in the face of Roman political and military domination; the Herodians were the collaborators with the colonial occupation of the Jewish homeland.

Ched Myers tells us we should understand the word render as “Repay Caesar what belongs to Caesar but repay God what belongs to God.” Jesus is inviting his opponents to act according to their allegiances which are stated clearly as opposites. Note again: Jesus is NOT carrying one of these coins that bear the image and inscription of Caesar. To carry such for a devout Jew would violate the “no graven image” commandment. The image on the coin was a constant reminder of two things: Caesar is divine and Rome controls you politically and militarily.

Obviously the response by Jesus causes us to ask, “What belongs to Caesar – and, what belongs to God?” While Caesar is always wont to claim more and more, Psalm 24 indicates that everything already belongs to God. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein…”

But render to Caesar could also be a call (to us) to support the Commons. This was not possible under the occupation reality of the Jewish nation by the Roman Empire when Jesus lived in Galilee - but what is our call today? Some Tea Party advocates in a lashing out against any and all taxes might say we shouldn’t have to pay taxes for “government programs”. But what about funding for the Clean Water Act, for Fair Housing laws, for enforcement of regulations making public buildings accessible to those with disabilities? Maybe there are some areas where it is appropriate for us to render our taxes to Caesar. If “Caesar” stands for “government”, is all the government “evil” as some Tea Party advocates might conclude? Many Catholic Workers and other anarchists argue that we don’t need government to tell us how to behave. But others see government as a helpful organizing tool to help avoid social chaos. Ultimately, however, Christians need to remember that government is backed by “the sword” and its threatened use.

What we cannot render to Caesar is how to respond to our “enemies” – in fact, we cannot allow Caesar to define for us who our enemies are.

In Dec. 2002, I traveled to Iraq to be part of the Iraq Peace Team. Shortly before I left, I got a letter from the US Government which told me that anyone traveling to Iraq in violation of the Economic Sanctions was subject to 12 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. While in Iraq, I learned how the economic sanctions destroyed the Iraqi economy so that the Iraqi Dinar was now virtually worthless. This 250 dinar note [hold it up] was worth $85 before the sanctions were put in place. In Dec. 2002 this same bill was worth only 12 ½ cents!

So I decided that if “Caesar” was threatening to order me to “render” to him $10,000 for traveling to Iraq and taking aspirin and ibuprofen with me to give to a Children’s hospital, I would pay the fine with Iraqi Dinar notes based on the value before the crippling economic sanctions – so I did the math and then brought a stack home with me! [hold them up]. (It comes to less than $15. at the then present value)

You could call this being prepared to “render to Caesar” with a twist!

The Render to Caesar quote has frequently been used by politically conservative theologians in their arsenal against what they see as anarchistic radicals bent on rebellion against authority. It has often been paired (especially during the late 1960s era of social change) with the Bible passage of Romans 13 in a call for obedience to the government. However, it is critical to note that even the “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities” phrase of Romans 13 does not call for obedience but rather something else. There were good words in the Greek language Paul could have chosen if he meant to write that we are called to obey but he did not do so. In fact, Paul’s context in the book of Romans refers to refusing to seek vengeance on enemies and claiming to owe no one anything other than love. Echoing Jesus call for discrimination in this area, Paul calls the Church at Rome to determine what is properly “due” to whom or what.

John Howard Yoder used to help Christians understand our relationship to the State by informing us that this infamous Romans 13 text, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God…” should be understood that there is a clear distinction between “obedience” and “being subject” – the latter only implying that one be prepared to suffer the consequences of disobedience. This attitude was modeled so well for us by the stories of Martin Luther King and his comrades sitting in jail. It means for us to be willing to pay the costs for our nonviolent resistance rather than our acquiescence or obedience.

Looking more broadly at who is Caesar for us today, theologian Walter Wink talks about “the Domination System”. All of the “Principalities and Powers”, the term the Apostle Paul uses, includes more than just Caesar – basically all those individuals and institutions which seek to dominate and oppress others. A more current manifestation of this principle could be a “render to Rome?” question. Our friend, Roy Bourgeois claims that when push comes to shove, he cannot faithfully subvert his conscience to an exclusive male hierarchy – even after he was threatened with excommunication and de-frocking unless he recants of his public stand for full women’s equality in the Church. For him, he must render to God – rather than the man who claims to be God’s Vicar and a male domination system.

If we are going to resist the call when Caesar asks us to render what we feel belongs more properly to God, it is well to note that Jesus’ resistance was done in the context of community. Jesus deliberately sought out community with his disciples and other close followers whenever possible – although, at the end, when standing before Caesar’s Governor, Pilate, he was alone. Sometimes, like Jesus, sometimes, like Franz Jagerstatter, like Dietrich Bonheoffer, we must make our “render” decisions alone - BUT the preferred strategy is always better when one can be challenged and encouraged by a small group of fellow disciples. This is the call to our church fellowships today: to help each of us to better faithfully discern what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.

Another question arising from the text for us today is: WHO bears the “image of God”? And, thusly, how are we called to respond to that image? I saw it in March on the first Day of Spring in the faces of young men and women I met in Afghanistan - in the faces of Zahra, Abdulai, Basir, Sharbanoo, Mohammed Jan, and Zikrullah. Jesus is abundantly clear: Caesar does not define for the followers of Jesus WHO are enemies are!

Every time the Early Church used the phrase “Jesus is Lord”, the political echo of that declaration was also readily understood: Caesar is NOT our Lord. Followers of Jesus must never allow Caesar to determine what belongs to him – he always seeks to be the Lord. “Being subject to the authorities” means that we must also be prepared to pay the cost of our lack of obedience.

At the 9-11 anniversary service held at the State Capitol last month, I chose to remain seated for the “presentation of the colors” (all 3 sets of US flags were paraded in by people in uniforms carrying guns) and for the Pledge of Allegiance. I can’t pledge allegiance to competing “Lords” – I have to choose the flag or my faith in a God whom Jesus reveals to us as nonviolent. You won’t win a popularity contest by remaining seated during the National Anthem! Why couldn’t the event organizers substitute the song “Findlandia” instead? “Oh hear, my song, O God of all the nations. A Song of Peace for their lands and for mine” instead of the “rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air”?

You might rightfully ask, “Why should we listen to a convicted criminal?” – especially if you know of my record of having been a “guest of the State” several times, having been arrested dozens of times. Fair enough – but so were the Apostle Paul and Jesus. And Peter, James, John … in fact one would be hard-pressed to find an author of one of the New Testament books who hadn’t been tossed in jail after they chose to follow the executed carpenter from Nazareth. So “rendering to Caesar” or rendering to God is a choice all of us need to make. Some of these decisions are small and likely inconsequential – but other times, as we discern the call of the Spirit, they could be very costly.

Some of those who heard Jesus that day reported back to the governing officials; when he was tried, one of the charges against Jesus according to Luke’s Gospel was that he advocated refusal to pay taxes to Caesar. We all remember, each week, here at Mass, what the results of that trial were. BUT we also remember the YES of God that is commemorated on Easter Sunday. When we render to God, we leave ourselves and our future to “the One who holds the future”.

Waiting for our Tahrir Square Revolution

2011-10-05T11:40:00.001-05:00

Practicing for the Revolution: Preparing for our Tahrir Square Moment by Steve Clemens. Oct. 5, 2011

Peacemaker Kathy Kelly told our new friends, Zahra, Shahrbanoo, and Basir, in Kubul in March, “We didn’t know when the revolution would start in Egypt or what might trigger it but we did know that behind the scenes there were young people just like you – committed to nonviolent change – learning tactics and strategies of nonviolence. And we didn’t know that the change would come so quickly.” Those 3 Afghan peacemakers, along with their new friends from the Bamiyan Province, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, are working for a new, peaceful, and more just Afghanistan to come out of the bitter ashes of war and occupation.

Here on our side of the globe, we too need a radical re-ordering of our politics, our economy, and our whole society as the transition away from the declining empire become imperative. The last time I was in the Imperial City known as Washington, it was with environmental justice activists pleading with the President to stop the Tar Sands/Keystone XL Pipeline and to help move us more quickly into our post-oil/fossil fuel future. By all indications, it appears our protests and 1,253 arrests fell on deaf ears.

I’m back again, this time to join with a myriad of peace groups in an attempt to occupy Freedom Plaza, a park area in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol. October 6^th, the 10^th anniversary of the start of the longest war in US history was the date picked to begin what hopes to embody an on-going nonviolent presence calling for the end of both the wars on the Afghans and the Iraqis but also a radical re-orienting of our social and political priorities away from war and domination toward care for the earth, assistance for the poor and marginalized, and an end to corporate and big money control over our politics and policies.

This presence is with the same spirit and energy fueling the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, now entering its 3^rd week, and is metastasizing in other cities around the nation. We don’t know what might spark our own “Arab Spring”-type uprising but many of us know deep in our guts that it is needed and the time may be ripe for the masses to get off their couches and into the streets demanding change. The Tea Party folk are already angry but most of that rage has been misdirected by the Koch brothers and other right-wing bloviators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh towards the victims rather than the perpetrators and enablers.

I don’t expect the revolution will begin tomorrow (or, as has been said by prophets and poets, will it be televised by the corporate-owned and controlled media). But we do need practice in learning to say NO!, in using nonviolent methods, in taking responsibility for orchestrating change rather than merely voting for politicians whose promises are quickly abandoned on the altar of real-politick and re-election strategies managed by those with entrenched vested interests and a lot of campaign contributions.

It is a broad coalition attempting this occupation. Some of us come from religious/faith communities and networks, others eschew the role that religious institutions have enabled and baptized the imperial order. Some still hold out a diminished hope for change within the political systems while others see voting as a waste of time and energy which should be channeled elsewhere. Some are avowed anarchists; others envision themselves as true patriots. The group will include whistleblowers as well as those who have never worked “within the system”. Military veterans will be standing side-by-side with conscientious objectors and draft resisters. Many of us are retired while a growing number who will join are under- and unemployed. I suspect that our initial presence will be way too white but hopefully we will continue to work more frequently with our brothers and sisters of color who are more frequently on the receiving end of our empire’s dysfunction and destruction.

Hopefully, it will inspire, reenergize, and encourage us and others for the long slog ahead of building a nation which places people before profits, looks to the well-being of both present and future generations, and is designed around compassion rather than domination. [For more info, check out www.october2011.org]

The Things I Carried To My Arrest

2011-09-28T07:45:00.003-05:00

The Accoutrements of Arrest by Steve Clemens. September 28, 2011

Usually when I risk arrest in an action of nonviolent civil disobedience I try to only carry the bare essentials: my drivers license/ID and possibly some cash if I will try to make bail. I even remove my wedding ring if I’m expecting to end up in jail. Today, however, for our last arrest witness at Alliant Techsystems, Minnesota’s largest war profiteer, I carried a Civil Arrest Warrant for ATK’s CEO, Mark DeYoung. I also wore my blue scarf brought home from Afghanistan this Spring as a symbol of solidarity with nonviolent peacemakers in Kabul and Bamiyan Province.

I wore my Blue T-shirt with the bold lettering of “No War” coupled with “Love your enemies” and “our God is Love, our Gospel is Peace” statements.

I also carried excerpts of International Law provisions from the Hague and Geneva Treaties, resolutions from the United Nations, statements from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and statements from experts about the illegality of depleted uranium weapons. I carried a copy of my personal letter to CEO DeYoung as well.

Alliant Techsystems, also well known by their stock-ticker abbreviation as ATK, just recently announced that they are moving their corporate headquarters from Eden Prairie, MN to Arlington, VA so they can be close to their preferred customer, the five-sided Department of War headquarters also known as the Pentagon. Here in Minnesota they are a big fish in a small pond when it comes to corporate sales; in the Washington, DC area, close to the center of pork barrel politics and military contracts, they will just be one of many trying to sidle up to the hog trough.

Our AlliantACTION vigil group, usually about 20-30 stalwart peacemakers, have come every Wednesday morning for more than 15 years running from 7-8 AM to hold signs, sing songs, and gather together to call for ATK to cease production of illegal and indiscriminate weapons and instead use their inventive engineering genius to create products that are life-giving and useful. “Peace conversion with no loss of jobs” is one of our on-going mantras. It is coupled with another, a query: “Who profits? Who dies?”

We carry few illusions that our act of nonviolent civil disobedience today will result in a radical change in policy for a corporation which has profited from weapons of death and threats of annihilation. This spin-off of Honeywell’s weapons division (after years of nonviolent protest at their south Minneapolis corporate headquarters organized by The Honeywell Project), ATK has the notorious distinction of being one of our nation’s largest manufacturer of landmines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium weapons.

To further add to this pantheon of what the United Nations lists as “weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction” (and, as such are illegal to manufacture, sell, or use), ATK also makes components for nuclear weapons, including the nuclear missile for the Trident Submarine. As if that were not enough, they have developed a gun that purports to “shoot around corners”, the XM-25 which is now being field-tested in Afghanistan. There are also reports that Alliant is also providing components for the Pentagon’s latest obsession, the un-manned aerial vehicle, aka the drone. While ostensibly targeted at Taliban leaders, scores of reports of innocent civilians being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan has led hundreds if not thousands to join the insurgency to seek revenge for the attacks on family members.

Our act of civil disobedience comes just four days before the birthday of the premier disciple of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi. On October 2, the AlliantACTION vigil group will return to the front doors of the newly vacated corporate headquarters. The move of the corporate officers is to take place on October 1 but Gandhi’s birthday comes only once a year so we will gather to celebrate his life and witness as well as the power and the blessing our vigil circle has provided to us over the past 15 years. It was not our goal to “chase” ATK out of Minnesota; our state can use good paying jobs. We just want those jobs to affirm life rather than find ever more creative ways to destroy it.
__________________________
My letter to Mark DeYoung:

September 28, 2011

Mr. Mark DeYoung, CEO

Alliant Techsystems

7480 Flying Cloud Drive

Eden Prairie, MN 55344-3720

Dear Mr. DeYoung,

I come to ATK Headquarters today with a heavy heart. The last time I approached this front door, just a few weeks shy of one year ago, it was in response to your gracious agreement to meet with a small group of us from the weekly Alliant ACTION vigil. As you may recall, during that meeting you told us “We are not in that business” in reference to depleted uranium weapons and went on to say that ATK always “pick and choose what contracts we will go after” – or words to that effect since you requested that I hand over all my written notes as we left the meeting so these quotes are my best recollection of what was said last October 11^th.

Although I am not a shareholder of ATK stock, several members of our vigil group are and they reported back to those of us vigiling outside or the morning of your annual shareholders meeting in August that you admitted in that meeting that ATK is assembling munitions containing depleted uranium provided for you by the U.S. Government.

You might recall during our meeting with you we gave you (and your legal counsel who was also present) a lengthy document identified as “Employee Liabilities of Weapons Manufacturers Under International Law”. Included in that document was a resolution passed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1996 which stated categorically that weapons containing depleted uranium are “weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction” and “the production, sale and use of such weapons are incompatible with international human rights and humanitarian law”.

Therefore, we come with the intent of serving you with a Citizens Arrest Warrant, charging you with both the production and sale of illegal weapons according to Treaties signed by the U.S. Government. It has always been the intent of our vigil group to advocate “peace conversion with no loss of jobs” for the company you lead but since you have decided to move the corporate headquarters to the Washington, DC area at the end of this week, we felt we needed to take this nonviolent action.

Sincerely, in Peace,

Stephen D. Clemens

Member, Alliant ACTION Vigil

The Rest of the Story - Climate Change Arrest at the White House

2011-08-30T19:07:00.007-05:00

The Rest of the Story: Tar Sands Action at the White House by Steve Clemens. August 30, 2011

When I first signed up to come to Washington and return to the White House, I thought to myself: wasn’t it just a year and a half ago that I told Christine that I’m getting too old to spend another night in jail? My experience protesting President Obama’s continuation of the Afghan and Iraq Wars had left me physically very sore (but spiritually content) after 28 hours in the four different DC jails we occupied after our “die in” at the White House the day before the 2010 State of the Union address.

This time it was an email from my friend, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia that got the juices flowing again. He sent me a letter signed by Bill McKibben, Jim Hansen, Naomi Klein, and Wendell Berry (among others) asking us to come to DC at the end of August to nonviolently pressure President Obama to declare that allowing the Trans-Canada project to build the Keystone XL pipeline linking the Alberta Tar Sands oil fields to Houston, TX refineries and Gulf Coast shipping would not be in “the national interest”. Since the proposed 1,700 mile pipeline would cross the international border, Obama can unilaterally declare it is or isn’t in our national interest without Congressional interference. Come to Washington, the letter said, and risk arrest in a two-week civil disobedience campaign. The letter especially encouraged we older folk who have made a very large carbon footprint over our lives to share some of the burden of risking arrest to change our policies.

I first tried to see if several of my friends from the Community of St. Martin might be interested and willing to travel with me and join the action. Unfortunately Jack, Dave, and Peter, although very interested and supportive, couldn’t go. Neither could Scott, my friend with a new baby – I’m sure Tara would be uneasy with him getting busted as school is about to begin and he has primary care for the new family member! It’s not the easiest thing to approach people asking them if they want to go to jail with you.

Although the organizers were telling us as well signed up that they were trying to negotiate a “fine and forfeit” arrangement with the DC authorities (as is often the case with group arrests for nonviolent protest at the White House), I knew from past experience that one needs to be prepared: “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”. I read Dr. Jim Hansen’s statement that if this pipeline is built, it will be like a carbon bomb being set off and it is essentially “game over” for our attempts to avoid (or at least mitigate) some of the nasty results from human-induced climate change. Here was (another) cause worth risking arrest over.

I was anxious to join the group early on in the two week planned action because I knew many of the participants had never been arrested before and felt it would to helpful to lend them some of my experience. However, before committing to the day I would risk arrest, my friend Rose Berger, an editor and writer at Sojourners, told me that they would like to plan for one of the days to be an inter-faith action day and encourage religious leaders and faith-based activists to join together for worship before arrest. That’s my style: acting with others with similar values and beliefs is always an empowering experience for me ever since my first arrest more than 36 years ago at this same seat of imperial power. The cause then was Vietnam; last January, our latest imperial wars; now, our war on the environment and the planet’s climate. I jumped at Rose’s invitation and signed up on-line for August 29^th, not knowing a hurricane would try to intervene.

As I was about to fly to DC (yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy of taking an airplane to protest our dependence on fossil fuels – I’m working on that), I was aware of the monster Hurricane Irene was headed straight up the East Coast and the airlines informed me that I might want to reschedule my trip so I wouldn’t arrive the same day as the projection for Irene. So I flew into DC on Friday and joined the daily gathering at the White House Saturday morning as the dark storm clouds began to roll in. The Tar Sands Action coordinators had discussions with the police about the emergency conditions anticipated if the hurricane came nearby and already decided to call off any civil disobedience for Sunday in order to free up the law enforcement personnel for the hurricane.

Friday evening, those planning to risk arrest discussed the same issue and made the same choice for Saturday’s action –so we just had a public presence, sang some songs, listened to some inspiring words from Bill McKibben and then posted for group photos as the rain and wind gusts started. Many of those who had originally planned to risk arrest on Saturday or Sunday tried to rearrange their schedules in order to take action with our Monday group. On Sunday afternoon, the folk planning on participating as the inter-faith religious group met to outline the plans for a worship gathering in Lafayette Park prior to the arrival of the rest of the Tar Sands activists. Rabbis (and other Jews), Buddhists, and Christians of all stripes were there– from a large Unitarian contingent to mainline and evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, and at least one Anabaptist. Others represented Native American spirituality as well as other traditions. Since some folk arrived after introductions, it’s hard to include all the perspectives represented.

After the hour for inter-faith planning, more than 100 others jammed the room at the local Methodist church for the pre-arrest nonviolence training and legal team briefings. Our trainers were three energetic young people from the Ruckus Society and another woman activist. They were engaging and helpful, especially to the many for whom this would be their first arrest. At least ½ to 2/3s of the potential arrestees were planning on taking this step for the first time – some of whom appeared to be in their 60s and 70s! As in any new and potentially threatening experience, there were multitudes of questions and the lawyers and trainers did a great job of fielding them. We were asked to pose for individual photos so the Tar Sands Action team could later post “pins” on an online map to show where we all came from to be part of this action. A caravan from California arrived shortly before we began so I’m sure our group represented close to half the States and we also welcomed the couple in their 60s who had come from Alberta because they had witnessed the reality of the destructiveness of the tar sands “development” first-hand.

By 9 PM I was tired and hungry (even though they served us a modest vegan supper as we selected “arrest buddies” during the training. Since we were likely to be arrested and transported by perceived gender, we were asked to select a same-gender partner to look out for one another during the action component the following day. Since Dr. David Hilfiker and I had spent several weeks together in Baghdad as part of the Iraq Peace Team just prior to the start of the present war, we agreed to be arrest partners. (His wife was also risking arrest, both of them had never been arrested – even though David and I were threated with up to 12 years in federal prison for traveling to Iraq during the economic sanctions but fortunately were never prosecuted.)

Our trainers were explicitly clear: we were to carry as little as possible on our persons when we went up to the White House fence to risk arrest. Carry a photo ID, $100 in cash to pay the “fine and forfeit” charge if we were offered it (and we were strongly encouraged to do so to facilitate others later in the week being able to receive the same “offer” rather than going to jail overnight and face a Judge the following day), $5-10 additional cash to purchase a bus or Metro ticket once you were released, and a disposable bottle of water. Anything else could be confiscated by the police or would certainly delay the processing time – and with such large numbers, it would already take a long time without making it much longer.

We were told to remove wedding rings, watches, other jewelry including piercings, and one of the trainers recommended wearing adult diapers just in case you weren’t permitted access to a bathroom for hours on end. Put your ID and money in a zip-lock bag and put it in your pocket or bra. The Buddhist religious leader helpfully pointed out she didn’t wear one but maybe she had a pocket in the robes she wore the next day. Trainers recommended women not wear skirts as the pat-downs upon arrest were often quite aggressive. (And they were – especially for the women as we watched them as we waited for our own arrests the next morning.)

At the end of the training, Rose Berger rose to address all of us. She explained how she and several others had wanted to encourage religious faith leaders from many traditions to be part of this action and that Monday the 29^th had been designated for that day. But she told the group of us that she was very cognizant of the fact that many of us had (and have) been deeply wounded by both religious traditions and proponents. Religion has often divided us and has marginalized others. She asked us if instead we could see our presence tomorrow as a group of religious folk trying to act on the best within our traditions – a striving for compassion, justice, and inclusion, especially for the marginalized. And then she welcomed any of the group who wanted to be included in the “religious contingent” of the activities the next day. As someone who often shuns the moniker “religious” and often cringes at what is often labeled “Christian” in our culture and world, I was relieved to hear my friend’s confession and welcome.

Arriving back at my son’s apartment about 10 PM, I needed some time to decompress and then headed off to bed. I awoke, restless, as is often the case prior to an anticipated arrest, about 3 AM and since I was alone in the apartment, I put some music on my iPod and the shuffle feature must have figured out just what I needed – the song that came on was a South African freedom song that I first learned in 1983 when I was arrested for praying in the US Capitol Rotunda during a Sojourners-led Peace Pentecost witness. The words are “We shall not give up the fight, we have only started, we have only started (repeats). Never ever put to flight we are bound to win, we are bound to win (repeats) Together we’ll have victory, hand holding hand, hand holding hand (repeats).” Warm memories of singing in the DC jail with 400 others that night, followed by about 50 of us who chose to spend a week in the DC Jail rather than pay the $50 fine. We sang those South African movement songs all week to one another. It was a time of spiritual enlivening for which I remain grateful 30 years later.

I arrived at the park early the following morning, ready to put my prayers for climate justice and environmental protection into action – what Abraham Heschel used to say was “putting legs on our prayers”. We gathered in a circle as we were led in some Jewish prayers and songs, a brief Buddhist meditation, some reflections from several Christian pastors, priests, and lay leaders, a young Muslim man who described the inspiration and encouragement he had received from the Quran to join us and then a Rabbi blew his Shofar, a ram’s horn “trumpet” as a fellow Rabbi interpreted the tradition.

Following the worship time, many others joined a circle in the park facilitated by our training team. We checked in with the legal team to confirm who was going to risk arrest that day. Bill McKibben addressed the group and reflected about the destruction happening in his home state of Vermont from the hurricane and how the intensity of the storm was likely related to climate change. Dr. Jim Hansen, the NASA scientist and climatologist, also spoke to the crowd gathered but I had a hard time hearing him over the muted bullhorn and with such a large crowd. One thing I did hear him say was how he had tears (of joy) in his eyes the evening Obama won the election because he believed the campaign statements about addressing climate and environmental issues.

After last minute instructions, we lined up in two lines to process to the White House fence and sidewalk area known as the “postcard spot” because many tourists want their photos taken there with the White House neatly framed in the background. This is the same area the US Park Police has designated as a “no protest zone” and if one remains there for any period of time and choses not to leave when approached by a police officer, one will be arrested. In a way it fosters a less controversial method for nonviolent civil disobedience because one is “guaranteed” to be arrested if one doesn’t leave and allows activists of all stripes to risk arrest if they so choose.

We were told in the training that we would be given 3 verbal warnings by the police before we were arrested and that is how it played out.

Since there were more than 140 of us, the arrest process took quite a long time, close to two hours. I took some ibuprofen for my aching back and muscles after the first warning. I knew I’d be sore after standing in one place on the sidewalk for an extended period of time. Each of the women were individually handcuffed, banded with an arrest number, and aggressively patted-down. It took a long time so some members of the to-be-arrested group stated singing. Then some of the support people on the other side of the police barricades about 30 yards away also started singing.

As more and more women were arrested and escorted away, it gradually morphed into a men’s choir or glee club. I joined in and when some of the songs lagged, I tried to teach folk a couple of the South African songs including “We Shall Not Give Up the Fight” and “It Doesn’t Matter If You Should Jail Us (we are free and kept alive by hope)” I’m not a song leader so I sang them as much for my own benefit as well as the edification of others, knowing that we stand in a long tradition of witness and protest to governments and political leaders. Indeed, as Rose Berger reminded us in our circle, this weekend was to be the dedication of the memorial built to honor Dr. Martin Luther King and Rose observed the irony of honoring someone who was frequently vilified by political leaders while alive only to be honored when he was safely in his grave. She said King’s spirit was better honored in a “living memorial” of people today committing civil disobedience, recognizing that climate change more drastically affects the poor, those for whom Martin gave his life.

As I awaited my own set of plastic flexi-cuffs (which don’t actually feel that “flexible” when one is cuffed with hands behind one’s back), I had the honor of having Dr. Hansen sitting at my feet. It was not the time or the place to have a conversation with him; I was just very grateful to have him join us. After the handcuffs and the pat-down, we were photographed with a police officer holding up our arrest number (mine was 119) and then placed into the police transport van, squeezed in 6 to a side on a narrow metal bench with very little between our knees and the aluminum dividing wall between us and the six on the other side.

Rabbi Fred from a congregation across the river in suburban Virginia was closest to the van’s front so I asked him to describe where we were headed as the van took off, headed for the police station in Anacostia in SE Washington. It was a great tour although we had to use our imaginations a lot since we further back could see very little. As we pulled up to the Park Police Headquarters building I was relieved that it had only taken about 15 minutes. Little did I know that we would wait locked in that little box for another hour and ten minutes before being let out. We used the time to get to know each other a little better.

Finally, we were let out, a couple at a time, and then asked to line up according to our arrest numbers. Once we go into the garage area of the building, our handcuffs were cut off and I felt great relief in my hands and shoulders. After another pat down, we were then processed and we confirmed that we were choosing to “pay the fine and forfeit”, paid the $100 and then waited on a ramp to be released. Dr. Hansen had been in the van ahead of us so we were released together and were greeted by a group of supporters and our training team. We were grateful for the cups of water and snacks we were offered. We checked in with the legal team and then walked the little more than 1-mile distance to the Metro station. I was exhausted when I got on the train and was glad to sit down and put my feet up after walking to my son’s apartment. I’m glad I did this and had a great group of dedicated folk to share in it.

(For updates, photos, and more details, visit www.tarsandsaction.org ) Photo credits: tarsandsaction.org, Josh Lopez and Milan Ilnyckyj.

Acting on Climate Change

2011-08-29T20:38:00.002-05:00

Carrying the Living King Back to the White House by Steve Clemens. August 29, 2011

Rose Berger from Sojourners Magazine spoke to the hundreds of us gathered in Lafayette Park just before we processed to the fence surrounding the White House. She mentioned the irony of building a monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by the powerful political forces who disregarded or dismissed his message during his lifetime – we only honor him after he is safely dead. How ironic also that the dedication of the monument was postponed by the most recent example of significant climate change. Will evidence of climate change begin to also signal political change?

Rose called on us to take up the banner of the Living Spirit of Dr. King within ourselves and allow it to inspire us as we risked arrest by calling on President Obama to take a clear stand to help protect our environment and begin to make a U-turn from the climate change path we are traveling as a nation and culture. We are part of a two-week vigil and civil disobedience action calling the President to deny permission for building the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline from the environmentally devastating tar sands/oil shale development in Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas.

Dr. James Hansen, the NASA scientist who has done yeoman’s work on the issue of climate change for years (and original proponent of the 350 parts per million threshold), joined us saying he “wanted to get arrested with the religious folk.” Certainly not all (or most?) of the 138 persons arrested for their nonviolent presence at the White House today identify themselves as “religious”. During our nonviolence training the evening before our arrests, Rose Berger admitted that many of us carry scars and deep wounds that have been inflicted on us by religious leaders over the decades and she asked the others joining the action at the White House to be patient with us as we try to model what is best in our religious traditions – compassion and care for the weak and marginalized.

The blasts from the shofar, the ram’s horn used by Jews in worship for centuries was loud and clear as we moved from a time of worship and reflection to a period of action. One of the rabbis leading us told we non-Jews that tonight marks a month-long period of reflection before the Jewish high holy days – and then those two rabbis walked across Pennsylvania Avenue with us to spend part of that reflection time in the custody of the police - nonviolently, of course.

Before we left the park, Bill McKibben, the primary organizer and instigator of this two-week presence in front of the White House told us he had just talked to his wife in Vermont, hearing her reports of the tremendous devastation from Hurricane Irene from his home state. He told us that while we are paying attention to the floods and droughts which affect those we know, these climate change related wake-up calls are happening every day around our planet. NOW is the time to act.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on climate science or environmental justice; I’ll leave that heavy lifting to McKibben, Hansen, and others. I do know we all need to pay attention and take seriously the changes in our lifestyles we will need to embrace. We can’t expect our President to take political risks unless we are willing to model changes in our own lives. [http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/29/bill_mckibben_will_hurricane_irene_be]

But what is the connection to ML King other than the commitment to be nonviolent? As several speakers noted this weekend and today: climate change disproportionately affects the poor. No only do they have less “cushion” to ameliorate the extreme swings between hot and cold, drought and flood, they also find the recent budget cuts fall more heavily on them while at the same time the military budget continues to rise – something Dr. King spoke about frequently the year before he was martyred. I plan to visit the new memorial while here in DC while remembering to celebrate all the living memorials breaking out in nonviolent witness around our world.

[note photo credit www.tarsandsaction.org and Josh Lopez]

We Don't All Need To Be Leaders

2011-05-30T10:10:00.000-05:00

When Peacemaking is Derivative: Playing the Piccolo in a Marching Band. By Steve Clemens

Over the past 40+ years, most of my attempts at peacemaking, my efforts for justice, my acts of conscience have been derivative; I’ve followed the lead and inspiration of others, content to be a “ [nonviolent] foot soldier for justice”.

The massive Wall Street fraud scandal which destroyed the retirement savings of millions and brought about the total collapse of huge banks, corporations, and even countries has given the term “derivatives” a bad name. In finance, a derivative is the process of gambling on the future value of something and the practice in the 1990s and 2000s where fraudulent and/or toxic mortgages were sliced and diced into small pieces and then bundled together to be sold to other financial firms remains a scandal of herculean proportions and largely ignored by prosecutors by either the Bush or Obama Administration. But it made a tiny percent of hedge fund managers and assorted financial buccaneers obscenely wealthy.

Our society and culture seems to be obsessed with heroes, role models, leaders, and “movers-and-shakers”. We love to point out “who is in charge” and awards, honors, and occasionally wealth are showered on those designated as special or “not like us”. It seems to be a facet of our capitalist culture where we often aspire to bask in the limelight, to be patted on the back, to bolster our reputations, … as a way to rise above others and be noticed – while at the same time lamenting “we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians” or “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

Not everyone has to think the great thoughts, make the strategic plans, direct the operation; there needs to be someone to carry out the orders, to follow the instructions, to do the physical lifting that must be done to accomplish the task or bring the vision to fruition. Martin Luther King said he’d like to be remembered as “a drum major for justice” but even drum majors can’t do their task if there is no one in the band following the directions of that drum major. Too often our society lauds only the drum majors while ignoring the piccolo player because her instrument is so much smaller than the sousaphone or bass drum.

Most of my arrests for acts of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance have been the result of following the lead and ideas of others. At the White House during the final days of the Vietnam War, my first arrest was precipitated and encouraged by Liz Macalister, a veteran of the anti-war struggle from the Jonah House resistance community that has inspired and provoked many of us over the decades. Sitting beside her in the courtroom for my first trial gave me a wonderful mentor and role model for the path ahead. It was her brother-in-law, Dan Berrigan, whose prophetic witness at Catonsville, MD gave me the courage to burn my draft card and mail the ashes back to my Selective Service office during the years of struggle to end the carnage in Vietnam.

It was Ladon Sheats, a peacemaker extraordinaire who died from cancer nearly 10 years ago, who came up with the idea of taking our prayers for peace to the center of the nuclear madness – the Pantex Plant outside of Amarillo, TX, the final assembly point for all US nuclear weapons – back in 1981. This former IBM executive-on-the-rise became one of the gentlest yet determined peacemakers I’ve ever encountered.

I’ve followed the lead of Jim, Joyce, Bob, Jim and others from the Sojourners Community during the Peace Pentecost days of witness at the US Capitol, embassies, and alongside railroad tracks and military bases during the 1980s. It was the prophetic leadership of Jim and Shelly Douglass and the Ground Zero community that gave me the courage to sit on the railroad tracks to block the nuclear bomb-laden White Train as it passed through my home state of Georgia during that decade of nuclear bluster and threat.

It was the inspiration of Murphy Davis that led to my public protests by carrying a model of the electric chair to our county courthouse in southwest Georgia every time the state executed a prisoner when I lived in the South. Her husband and co-agitator, Eduard Loring, asked me to join him in protest on behalf of Atlanta’s homeless that led to a week in jail during my final year living below the Mason-Dixon line.

While living in Georgia, I had the blessing of meeting a veteran-turned-priest who welcomed me to join his weeklong acts of witness against the training of Salvadoran troops at Ft. Benning, leading me to my first “ban-and-bar letter” from the base which would become the home of the notorious School of the Americas the following year. Roy Bourgeois continued to provoke and inspire me to “cross the line” numerous times since then. We were already vigiling at the military base on a weekly basis when he came to Columbus, GA but it was at his instigation that several of us took the next step of resistance in planting the crosses on the base commander’s lawn back in 1983.

When our family moved from the Koinonia community to Minneapolis in 1990, I found myself in the presence of another large pool of inspiring, committed peace activists to walk alongside me on this path for justice. Marie and John Braun were the prime movers in getting me involved with the weekly vigil on the Lake Street-Marshall Ave. Bridge. The decades of inspired rabble-rousing of Marv Davidov coupled with the gentle spirit of Char Madigan and other nuns from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet led to my first involvement with the Alliant ACTION vigil group and the insight and ideas of Tom Bottolene deepened my acts of resistance and hope in front of Minnesota’s largest war profiteer over more than a decade.

Not all my actions of resistance and hope result in arrest. Kathy Kelly was the one who urged me to join her in sharing the risks with Iraqi civilians in Baghdad as war loomed at the end of 2002. Although we were threatened by our government with fines and long imprisonment for just traveling to Iraq during the period of economic sanctions, no arrest resulted but it had a huge impact on my life and work. Again, it was Kathy’s compassion and determined commitment to peace that reached out to me to meet with young peacemakers in the war zone of Afghanistan this Spring to plant trees for peace.

Walking the Migrant Trail to learn more about the plight of immigrants was the idea of Kat Rodriguez. My previous risky adventures with the over-ground and underground railroad transporting refugees fleeing from the US-sponsored wars in Central America during the 1980s was initiated by Don Mosley and other friends from the Jubilee Partners community. Picking up the vulnerable in south Texas and transporting them to a welcoming Canadian city was work that probably blessed me more than it helped them. Again, this wasn’t my idea; I just followed the lead and vision of others.

Most of my peacemaking has been derivative, following the lead, in the footsteps and trails walked by others. We don’t necessarily need more leaders and visionaries in the peace and justice movements. What is needed are more folk who are willing and able to swell the ranks, hand out the leaflets designed by others, and fill the jails. Thank God for the Gandhis, the Martin Kings, the Dorothy Days – but also for those Freedom Riders whose names we never learned, for those who joined Rosa Parks in the bus boycott, for the hundreds, thousands, who “crossed the line”, “sat down” and refused to move until arrested, insisted on the right to vote, refused to pick up the rifle and instead filed their conscientious objector claim. Those who are present and answer the call week after week vigiling in the cold and the dark. Baking in the heat of the Omaha summer to answer the call from Frank Cordaro to be present at Strategic Air Command headquarters at Offutt Airbase. Or walking in the sweltering temperatures with the Nevada Desert Experience leaders to be present at the nuclear test site.

Maybe it is joining local Native American leaders like Professor Chris Mato Nunpa in being present when they assert Treaty rights to fish and hunt. You could join me as I follow the leadership of Chuck, Sonja, Roger, and Coleen witnessing against torture at the Minneapolis Federal Building– or you can join Frida, Matt, Kathy and a score of others when they march on Guantanamo or the Supreme Court or the Senate Office Building as they Witness Against Torture in Cuba or Washington, D.C. Stand alongside Michael Bayly and other LGBT rights activists to lend your voice and support.

You don’t have to be an expert spokesperson about nuclear weapons; Ralph Hutchinson, Jane Stoever, or Ann Suellentrop can provide the leadership but they need others to join them at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge or the new nuke plant in Kansas City. If you want to lend your voice on behalf of those victimized in the foreclosure and mortgage crisis/bank fraud, there will be people at the Welfare Rights group you can follow. The Workers Interfaith Network (WIN) can provide leadership and information if you want to stand for the rights of laborers.

I don’t mind following Martin King as my drum major, I’m content to be a piccolo player in the marching band. Dr. David Harris was my drum major as we marched on the Republican National Convention. It was his idea to go beyond the permitted march to carry our symbolic tombstones with the names of American and Iraqi war dead right into the Xcel Center to present them to President Bush. It was the young organizers of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition who led the way to block the entrances of the ICE deportation center in the Twin Cites. I was proud to join them in the blockade. Kathrine Wojtan and members of the Michigan Peace Team sent out the call for a Minnesota Peace Team. I was happy to follow their lead and directions as I deployed amidst the armored police firing tear gas and chemical weapons. Father Tom, a Maryknoll priest was one of my first drum majors for justice when I hesitantly took to the streets for the first time in Wheaton, IL at the local draft board while I was in college.

The real issue, whether you provide the vision and the leadership or just help by holding the banner and risk arrest, is to be engaged in the struggle to make this world a safer and more just reality. I’ll play the piccolo, will you march beside me with your trumpet or sax?

Listening to the Voices of Afghans

2011-04-19T15:10:00.002-05:00

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Have Their Say by Steve Clemens. April 2011

Hakim, the founder and mentor of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), lives very simply. He attended a Methodist boarding school in Singapore as a youth but didn’t see the faith put into practice. He has read both Gandhi and Noam Chomsky and their ideas and values permeate much of his life. One would never hear this from Hakim himself but when the AYPV boys were on a Skype conversation in December, they talked to Hakim’s parents who live in Singapore and learned from his mother that Hakim was “sometimes number 1 in his medical class”. He learned English while in school. He worked as a public health doctor and came to work in a refugee camp in Pakistan 8-9 years ago. While there, he met many of the Hazara refugees from the province of Bamiyan, Afghanistan and when they were ready to return to their homeland, Afghans like Hakim’s friend, Mr. Feda (who now works for the Ministry of Education in the Afghanistan government) drew him to accompany them. In the ensuing years he has become fluent in Dari (the local language and one of Afghanistan’s two national languages), an eastern version of Farsi or Persian, based on the Arabic alphabet) and taught at the university in Bamiyan, the capital city of the province located about an 8 hour drive through mountain passes northwest of Kabul.

55 multi-ethnic students signed up for his weekly workshop three years ago but after a semester the students concluded that “peace was impossible” (within their lifetimes) but they wanted to stay engaged. Hakim raised the possibility of “love”. Would any of you be willing to try to live together for one semester? 16 said yes; Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and 2 Turkmen. They dressed in all white and did a walk for the International Day of Peace. They publicized a statement as a multi-ethnic group that “we want peace”. This created talk and questions within the broader community but it also created some concern for religious leaders - Hakim was the foreigner, some of the students were Sunni while most of the Hazaras are Shia. Hakim and some of the youth went to all the youth councils of each village asking that young people come together voluntarily to work for peace. Because they offered no money, there were no takers.

After working with the college students he concluded he would need to work with even younger-aged youth to share his commitment to Gandhian-style nonviolence. We went to various villages in the province to ask elders if they would help select some young boys and girls for him to participate with in the peace programs. (Unfortunately we were not able to meet any of the girls/young women who are peace volunteers in Bamiyan because the conservative cultural mores do not allow them to leave their home areas unescorted by their fathers or other older male family member. Hakim tells us that some women in Bamiyan are allowed to go to the bazaar “only once a year”, a 25 minute drive downhill, but many will never see Kabul, an 8 hour drive from their homes. Once they get married, they usually don't leave the province. They must wear full burkas whenever out of the home.) His “volunteers” came from different valleys and different tribal youth councils. They’ve been together now for about two years. Hakim’s goal is to introduce new thought; working to break a cycle of violence and revenge that is deep in the culture. He claims it is the #2 value. However, the #1 value is hospitality and if people focus on that and broaden the groups one extends hospitality to, the revenge value fades into the background.

He encouraged the AYPV to help build a peace park in Bamiyan despite the skepticism of the adults, most prominently, Bamiyan’s female governor (the only female governor in Afghanistan). They were told they could “apply for a grant from USAID (the State Department’s Agency for International Development) for $10,000; they discovered the application was only available in English. When they told her they could not only do it, but would do it without government funds, she allowed the project to go forward, saying “let it be” (assuming it might not work out but why not let them try.)

After two years, they have planted trees and grass seed. They have created and sold a book (entitled “A Book of Questions” and published by Operation Mercy) to raise the funds needed. They’ve put up signs reading “Why Not Love?” and “Why Not Peace?” and, although vandalized twice, they’ve been re-painted and now there is a beautiful green patch in the city.

The boys embarked on a public 7-day vigil, hoping to get a statement delivered to President Obama when news came that US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry would be coming for a visit. The ambassador told them he would deliver the statement, “Reconciliation of Civil Hearts” (which can be found on their website at: http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/) but they have never heard any response back from the US White House. The Bamiyan young people, mostly Hazara but also including some Tajik and mixed-race young adults also made some hand-made gifts (100 cell phone pouches made from scrap leather) and sent them to Pashtun young people in Kandahar in the southern part of the country as a gesture of reconciliation and intentions of peace. (Abdulai and his older brother, Khamad, fled to the mountains 11 years ago after the Taliban killed their father. The Taliban who killed his father were Pashtun.) They followed the gift with a phone call to the Pashtun young people; the response they received back was, “I can’t believe that there can be such love”.

I mentioned to the boys that I met Greg Mortenson of Three Cups of Tea fame at the Kabul airport and our conversation shifted to education. Abdulai, the AYPVer with the best English says, “The one thing we need to be educated in is to stop the killing of other humans; this is even more important than literacy.”

The boys don’t see the use of money as a measure of how “internationals” can help us. [Greg Mortenson is reputed as saying if we had 241 fewer US soldiers as part of this present “surge”, he could “build 241 schools” which would have a much more lasting impact.] But the AYPV boys said, “$241 million in the present system will still end up falling into the hands of corrupt people, the already rich and powerful”.

Hakim tells us this much money and power “will corrupt even an angel”. He told us that Greg Mortenson comes across to him as impersonal. [They were introduced to him via email numerous times but, so far, have only been met with silence.] The boys said, “it is better for an illiterate shepherd boy to learn it is not kind to kill another than to become an engineer. The people who flew their planes into the NY towers were all ‘educated’.”

In illustrating the culture of corruption, Mohamed Jan told us that at a college entrance exam, the teacher administrating the test was accepting bribes, giving students the answers in exchange for money. “The whole system is rotten. Young people must rise up like they have in Egypt.”

Zikrullah told us he learned nothing in school between the 2nd and 7th grades because his teachers were not properly trained. He still couldn’t read, so he dropped out of school and was selling pens and cigarettes as a vendor in the bazaar to support his family. His participation in the 7-day vigil helped convince him to go back to school and so he has returned to the 2nd grade, determined to learn how to read!

Although a lot of money has been poured into schools, Hakim tells us, “USAID has been unable to monitor how (and where) it is being spent.” Abdulai adds, “Money cannot solve this problem.” The average pay for a teacher is $120 US/month but the more important value seems to be learning English so one can get paid as a translator and make much more money than teachers. The translators are hired by the US and ISAF militaries or by the “private contractor teams” for a lot of money because they will be targeted by the Taliban. Other translators are hired for less money (but certainly much more than teachers are paid) by other international NGOs. The boys tell us that many of the teachers are unqualified and have gotten the job by paying bribes.

Several of our new friends tell us that the Hazara ethnic group (the third largest in the country after the Pashtun and Tajik groups) were particularly targeted by the Taliban during their reign of terror from 1996-2001 because the men have little facial hair, tracing their ancestry back to the Mongol invasion of Genghis Khan. The fundamentalist Taliban insisted that all men wear beards and all women be fully covered in burkas or be treated as infidels. Since the Bamiyan province is predominately Hazara in ethnicity, they were often the target of Taliban zealotry and anger.

The boys take turns telling us their stories as Hakim translates. Mohammed Jan, at age 20, is one of the three older young men. He tells us he always wanted to have a group of friends with a shared sense of humanity and found this with AYPV. He wanted a group where he could address “the things that irritate me a lot” and found he could do this with them. A Tajik ethnically, he tells us, “We must try to stand up to fight corruption.”

Abdulai, age 15 is the one most fluent in English. He tells us his father was killed by Taliban 11 years ago and he and his older brother had to run away into the mountains when he was just 4. Khamad, his older brother and also a member of the AYPV is now 20 and tells us, “The killings must stop. Afghans must stop killing.” He says he “lost his mind” after his father was killed and still continues to struggle with trying to regain it. He runs a potato chip factory and hired 14 year-old Zikrullah to work with him when he isn’t back in school learning to read. Abdulai tells us that he was initially doubtful about the AYPV program. He was cynical. He thought, maybe it is a lie. But as he conversed with the various internationals through delegation visits like ours or over Skype conversations, he concedes, “peace may be possible”. Many, many times he “gives up”, he tells us, but the group “drags him back”. The visiting delegations have “sealed his heart” that peace may be possible. He was amazed, saying, “Who would want to come and see a bunch of nobodies in Bamiyan?” But, he says, “Peace must include action, not just words.” Zikrullah adds, “We’ve been fighting for so many years and all it’s gotten us is bloodshed.”

Faiz, at age 22, is the oldest of the AYPV young men who have traveled to Kabul to meet us. His parents died when he was a young boy and told us his brother was dragged out and shot at a close range in front of him during the war. He would like to bring “true justice” as one of the reasons he joined Hakim’s group. He bought 5 sheep with a small business loan, fattened them up, sold them and took out another loan. He now has 12 sheep and 6 new lambs.

Ali, 16 years-old, works as a “donkey water-fetcher”. He has two donkeys and is well known as the boy who fetches water. He charges 25 Afghanis (about 50-55 cents) for 2 containers of water hauled from a spring and can transport 4 containers per donkey on the one hour round trip. His two uncles were killed in war and tells us all the news on the radio is about killing. It is tiring; you hardly hear about peace. With this group he has a chance to hear about peace and less negative things than killing. He recently participated in a “donkey demonstration”: people in his village decided to demand that the local government make clean water available. They had a parade of donkeys marching near the provincial Governor’s office. He leaves at 3 AM to take his donkeys into the mountains and does 6 round trips per day. He also uses his donkeys to haul firewood for fuel from mid-summer until winter.

Ghulamai, at 13 or 14 (many don’t know their exact age as record-keeping is difficult with a largely illiterate population in the rural areas), is the youngest of the group. He tells us that the peace program was a good way for him to make friends. Amer Shah, 15, tells us that Ali was the “preacher” who convinced him to join the group.

Mohammad, the 35 year old van driver for the week was hired by Hakim because he was the only one contacted who did not raise his price when he was told that he would be driving around “a group of international visitors”. (Hakim expresses his disgust at the other drivers who try to take advantage of foreigners. “I challenge them to be true Muslims and only charge the going rate but all but Mohammad wouldn’t comply.”) He first met the AYPV boys when he drove them to the inter-ethnic peace march on Thursday, March 17th and as the boys tell their stories to us six days later, he tells them he wants to join their group. The boys joyfully embraced him and said of course they’d love to have him be part of their movement.

One of the boys observed, “What are the roots of terrorism? Hate, poverty, lack of understanding, discrimination and prejudice, misuse of religion. None of these roots can be stopped by war.” When asked what they think will happen if the US troops leave, one boy says it might mean the Taliban would agree to negotiate and leaves the opportunity for reconciliation. Another tells us yes, civil war may break out. Yes, people may be killed –but people are being killed now! If the US/NATO leaves, it gives the Afghan people the ability to work things out – we must be left alone. Someone says if Americans fear that all Afghans are wild and might become Talibs, this is not true. There is intense hatred and pain toward the Taliban. He wanted to reassure Americans that the people of Afghanistan will not accept the Taliban as leaders again; they may try to take power by force but the people will fight back. (From my own reading of Afghan history, many people accepted the Taliban in 1996 because they were fed up with the corruption and thievery of the warlords, not anticipating the brutal oppression that would follow until too late.)

Our delegation was not able to schedule a meeting with Ramazan Bashardost, a dissident Member of Parliament before I left (he did meet with other delegates the following week) but we were told his position is to ask the US to leave with transitional security being provided by the United Nations. He also advocates a transitional government led by international bureaucrats for 2-3 years, monitored by the UN, after which elections could be held because he feels no Afghans will trust any of the present leaders. As part of this process, warlords will have to be brought to justice and reparations must be sought from them. The AYPVers have also met with Malalia Joya who they said “goes straight to the truth” of the situation. She is very angry but also very committed, telling the boys to “never give up hope” but they should also be prepared “to be killed”. Are you ready to die for nonviolence? - is the question put before all of us. One of our international delegates reminds us that courage is when love takes over reason. Courage is when you control your fear enough to act. Courage is to speak one’s truth by following your heart – it is not naïve, nor is it silly. It was a sobering conversation.

Hakim tried to apply for a US visa to bring a few of the young men to the US but they were denied. He attempted to apply at the US Embassy in Kabul but was told he could “try again in 3 or 4 years from your own country”. Former State Department official Ann Wright has advised Hakim on some avenues for re-application. He desperately wants to amplify the voices of Afghan people around the world but it is extremely challenging as “only 3% of the Afghan people have access to the internet”. And within the country, virtually all the Afghan radio stations have been bought up by USAID, so their voices aren’t heard very often at home as well. They are voices Americans need to hear.

Day 6: Tough Questions Without Easy Answers

2011-04-11T16:58:00.004-05:00

A Day of Tough Questions With No Easy Answers: Day 6 in the War Zone by Steve Clemens

The conversation actually began the afternoon before. The seven of us who traveled to the Panjshir Valley had hurried back so we could attend a session on transitional justice followed by a meal at the home of our speaker. I confess I was somewhat drowsy for the PowerPoint presentation by Yonos Akhtar and a younger spokesperson (whose name I failed to record) from Physicians for Human Rights. Talk of amnesty laws vs. prosecution of war crimes made me reflect on our own situation back in the US. How does on balance the need for justice and accountability against the other compelling need to “move forward” and not wallow in the past?

I have joined public vigils at the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis and at the University of St. Thomas Law School over the past several years demanding prosecution of Americans who paved the way for practicing torture on those detained in the tumultuous years following the September 11th attacks. Certainly part of my passion has aspects of retribution and anger at how the general public was manipulated and abused by the fear-mongering by politicians for political gain - but most of all, I feel that if Cheney, Bush, Yoo, Delahunty, Rumsfeld, Rice, and others aren’t held accountable, it will be easier to cross those illegal and immoral thresholds again and again. Since these perpetrators (or should I say perp-e-traitors?) are now out of office and at least some of the post-9-11 paranoia has subsided, I don’t feel an imminent threat of these policies being re-instituted although Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo still is glaringly unfulfilled.

However, there seems to be a palpable fear among the older and more middle-class Afghans we met with – a real fear of a resurgence of the Taliban and other brutal warlords if the US pulls out too precipitously. After the presentation, Yonos said he would transport us, four or five at a time, to his nearby home for the dinner. En route, he told me he wants the US Military to remain (he didn’t say for how long) because otherwise the Taliban would return and oppress them again. I listened respectfully, allowing him to express his fears and concerns. After a five-minute ride down several streets that were really no more than alleys, we arrived at his home, removed our shoes, and were ushered into a long, narrow room where our dinner was to be served. The long, carpeted room had no furnishings other than art on the walls and a TV set at the one end. He brought in a local musician who played the dauyab, a 3-stringed instrument, and sang while we waited for Yonos to fetch the others. We waited for almost an hour before others arrived and were told we missed a very lively (and at times heated) discussion amongst those who had remained after the meeting. One of the more outspoken Afghans, Liah Ghazanfar Jawed, Director of the Solidarity for Justice Foundation asked if the conversation could continue so we walked over to her offices the next afternoon.

One of the critical concerns raised by the transitional justice coalition surrounds what they feel is a culture impunity throughout the entire country with little to no acknowledgment of the victims’ suffering or of past crimes. Karzai signed an Amnesty Law (for acts committed during the civil war) in secret and the lack of transparency greatly troubles this group. They claim many of the warlords that populate his cabinet should be prosecuted for war crimes. Accountability, not amnesia, for past and present crimes is a prerequisite for genuine reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, they said. Some in the group appeared to be open to a Truth and Reconciliation process similar to that in South Africa but only if specific crimes are acknowledged as part of the process. There can be no peace without justice. “We don’t want a peace with these (known) criminals walking around”, especially those given powerful positions in the government.

However, the most contentious issue seems to be how, politically, can this process of accountability, reparations, and healing happen with the constant threat and fear of the Taliban regaining control? For many of these middle class Afghans (who, in all likelihood also benefit, at least indirectly, from the billions of US dollars flowing into Afghanistan for both the prosecution of the war and for the supposed re-building under the counter-insurgency strategy), there is grave concern of (another) rapid US pull-out reminiscent of what happened in early 2003 when Afghanistan was dumped for the new center of the war, Iraq. So they voiced a strong support for US troops to remain. [How long and under what conditions was more vague.] The AYPV boys, on the other hand stated clearly they wanted all foreign troops out as quickly as could be done “responsibly”.

Both the US and Australian peace delegates responded with a warning: beware of the fox guarding the hen house. The Afghans, desperate to have a strong counter-force to a possible resurgent Taliban had ascribed all sorts of honorable intentions to the US intervention – women’s rights, democracy, human rights, … The Americans countered that perception by citing US interests in securing a pipeline through Afghanistan for oil and natural gas, regional hegemony (especially to counter threats from Iran), empire-building, and political payback for US weapons manufacturers as less noble reasons. Donna observed that when an Australian soldier is killed in Afghanistan, it is front-page news back home. But, she continued, we hear nothing in our media about Afghan victims. The justice I seek, she said, is to value all the victims. US delegates expressed their pessimism that the US military might never leave.

Hakim pointed out what he thought was the foundational question that must be addressed in this discussion: Is peace and justice brought about with and through military means? Peggy noted that recent studies have reported that when the US increases the number of troops, the number of Taliban also seems to increase which indicates the strategy doesn’t work. A number of analysts have observed that whenever civilians were killed by US or ISAF military action, particularly by Hellfire missiles fired by pilot-less drone aircraft from miles above the intended target, an exponentially larger number joins the resistance or insurgency.

Kathy Kelly was asked by Hakim to respond to the concerns raised. She said, “We do have a great deal of cynicism but we’d like it to be tempered with love – but we know that the people who have been in charge in our country have been ruthless and they have tolerated tremendous bloodshed and starvation and terrible destruction of our environment in war after war after war.

And … we have to have tender hearts but tough minds; when the United States is trying to assure that all its soldiers here get fed – and they are fed – some of them complain that they are too fat now, it means many, many trucks of supplies have to go … and we know that the US has to pay for passage to get these trucks through and this money goes to the pockets of these same warlords that we say we are fighting against. And we know that it is costing $1 million per year for one soldier, $2 BILLION every week – who is getting that money, where is it going? It’s not going to the right hands. Its not going to help assure that the structures you are working hard to preserve will be supported.

Because I was in Iraq 27 times, and I’ve been with mothers, holding their babies, starving – none of those mothers went home with their babies – none of them. 500,000 children. And the United States government does not care. We fasted for 30 days under George Bush every summer; we tried every trick in the book, and they devastated Iraq, they broke it. We have a history of genocide and we don’t want it inflicted on other people. We want to tell the truth – to ourselves. And then we want to ask you to forgive us and hope we can go forward in friendship.”

By the end of our two-hour conversation, we realized we weren’t that far apart. Our Afghan friends wanted to hear their pain about the victims that are too quickly forgotten and their real fears about another civil war occurring if the US pulls out too quickly; the peace delegates wanted to be sure the Afghans didn’t mistakenly ascribe too noble intentions to the military intervention by the US and other international forces. The AYPV young people want the spiral of violence to end. All of us sensed the pain and destructiveness of war and the evils of unchecked and unaccountable power. We had come to Afghanistan to listen and learn. There are no easy answers once the dogs of war have been unleashed.

Day 7 in a War Zone

2011-04-04T04:09:00.011-05:00

The Faces of a New Afghanistan: Day 7 in a war zone by Steve Clemens. March 24, 2011

She is an unveiled, defiant young woman. He is a filmmaker still recovering from his kidnapping 6 ½ years ago. She told me this morning, only half in jest, that she plans on becoming the President. He, at only 15, has known the pain of losing his father but is still willing to stand up to the intimidation of much older adults.

What Zahra, Basir, Shahrbanoo, and Abdulai have in common is a commitment to peace, acts of courage, and, yes, they are all tired – tired of living in a nation of fear, corruption, violence, ethnic animosity and gender discrimination. One turns 30 in a few months, another 20 next week. At 23 and 15, the other two belie their ages with hard-won wisdom. All four took the gutsy step of protest in the streets of Kabul on Thursday, March 17th with 35-40 others, draped in bright turquoise blue scarves and holding banners reading “Today we make a resolute stand for a peaceful tomorrow”, “The citizens of Afghanistan say No to war”, “We wish to live without wars”, and “Warmongers, do not turn our houses into war bastions!”

Some are members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV); others belong to organizations that have aligned themselves to the AYPV, despite the enormous distrust many Afghans feel for their fellow citizens. These 4 collaborate together hoping to find ways to encourage each other in what is an admittedly lonely struggle – at least for now. While their elders sit in fear of the return of the Taliban, these young, energetic activists want their nation to move forward, not merely crouching in fear or wallowing in corruption.

Each of the four had 25 committed peacemakers from Germany, Australia, and the US travel with them for a week, listening to them, weeping with them, and smiling and hugging one another; peacemakers from four continents sharing stories and food, lighting candles to remember the victims of war. One of the International Peace Delegates, now in his 80s, had marched in the Deep South of the US in the days of the Cold War – a march from Canada to Cuba – and was there for the birthing of the Civil Rights movement. Two other internationals were so young that they couldn’t remember the first Gulf War in 1991, just a year older than my youngest son.

Abdulai laughs easily but he also carries a deep wound. It was the strength and courage of his older brother, Khamed Jan, who carried his younger brother up the mountains to hide from the Taliban who had killed their father. Like any 15 year-old who experienced such a traumatic loss, Abdulai has moments of anger and times of despair but when he was scolded by adults who told him he is naïve and unrealistic for advocating that negotiations to heal Afghanistan’s ethnic rivalries must also include the Taliban – at least lower-level Talibs – he quickly reminds the adults that he has already had a cup full of pain and wants the cycles of hatred, vengeance, and revenge to end.

Knowing a little of how hard it is for any woman – let alone one who openly defies her extremely patriarchal culture – one of the Americans asks Zahra if she’d consider moving to India, Pakistan, Iran, or even the U.S. to give her some breathing room, a safer space, from which to operate. No, this is my country; I am an Afghan woman was her response. I could see in her sad eyes and drooping shoulders as she let down her natural defenses to tell us how tired she was. We listened, our hearts breaking at her pain – yet strangely celebrating the strength of this young woman at the same time. She had invited many people to join her in the peace march in the street last Thursday who said they’d come but then didn’t answer her calls on the day it was happening.

She is trying to bring change to Afghanistan but says she sees little change - she doesn’t witness good results. She tried politics for a couple of years but was disgusted with the fraud and corruption. People accept them just because of money, she observed. Although she likes some of the ideas of Dr. Barshardost, a Member of Parliament, she is not sure about his strategy. But she still sees it as too much talk and not enough action. “He should do, he should Act. People are tired of speaking, they want to see action. Barshardost hands out money (to the needy) but he should help with real development.”

“I’m tired; I don’t know how I can accept this situation. I want to work for peace but I worry that I am alone. I can’t find more people who have the same idea. When people are hungry, how can I say to them that you should work for peace? When they are jobless, how can I ask them to take a political stand? They can only think about food and work.” Then one of the internationals tells her that the recent uprising in Egypt didn’t happen overnight. It was people just like you working behind the scenes for years – even we didn’t see how fast the change came.

Basir, a photojournalist, told me he awoke from a nightmare a few nights ago, fearing he had a hole blown into the back of his skull, waking up with a premonition that it might be best for him to lay low today. It might be a wise decision since he had a similar dream the night before the Taliban kidnapped him in 2004. Although it has been more than 6 years since that event, he told us he is more concerned about his physical safety in the past year than anytime before. He told us that suicide bombers could strike anywhere. Although his beautiful photographs grace many of the walls at the Open Society office, greeting us every morning with his colorful images, most of his work is at the 3rd Eye Photojournalism Center, the place where we held the candle light vigil for victims of war several days ago.

Basir tells us the story somewhat matter-of-factly, as if keeping his emotions at arm’s length, he won’t have to be re-traumatized. He was traveling with two other photojournalists and he doesn’t give us the details of the kidnapping or how long they were held. The female filmmaker was shot by the Taliban and she remained lying on the ground, the Taliban assuming she was dead. I wasn’t clear on where she was shot but in moving away from her, allowed her to escape and survive. Meanwhile, the Talibs held Basir and the other photographer, hoping to exchange them for prisoners held at Baghram’s prison on the sprawling Air Base. During this ordeal, one of his captors became sick and Basir helped him. This captor was sympathetic to them, telling them what was going on, the hope of the prisoner exchange.

However, it became clear that neither the US or Karzai governments were interested in a prisoner swap and so Basir was told by this man that they were to be killed the next day. The man he helped indicated that he was powerless to release them and was sorry it had come to this. As they were on the move to the area where they were to be executed, the Talibs got word that another group of their comrades had just ambushed and killed “an international [soldier] and an Afghan soldier.” His captors, elated with the news lit a fire, and began dancing and celebrating. With the forewarning about their planned execution, Basir and his friend used the distraction of the celebration to escape.

So when Basir tells us seven years later that “things are much more difficult now”, referring to suicide bombing attacks that can happen “anywhere”, it may be a sign of hyper-vigilance as a result of post-traumatic stress or it can be just a realistic evaluation of the depression and fear engendered after decades of war and senseless violence. Basir and my other three friends have not known any extended periods of peace in their lifetimes – yet they are still willing to embrace us, visitors from the country which has armed both sides of this on-going tragedy.

Shahrbanoo is being mentored as a filmmaker by Basir and also acted in one of his films. She and Zahra “escaped” to Kabul – leaving their very conservative, prescribed-roles, rural homes (without their parents’ knowledge or permission. [Their parents have followed them, moving to Kabul.] Basir serves as an “older brother” in picking them up and riding with them to the office. Never knowing who is watching, and with so many rigidly conservative men ready to pounce on any women brazen or foolish enough to travel unaccompanied by a male family member, having Basir or Asif accompany them is a helpful and prudent thing. I’m drawn by their lively spirits and their ready laughter with us but also know the deep well of pain they carry with them. They obviously draw support from each other.

For their future, for the future of their country, this war must end. They are very clear to us: Get the US troops out as quickly as can as be done responsibly. They don’t want to see the Taliban fill the political and military vacuum that could be created with too quick a withdrawal but the present reality must change. Karzai and his cronies may be hopelessly corrupt – but with courage and insight, these young people are getting ready to lead a new Afghanistan. It is a privilege to have listened to them.

Day 5: A Trip Up the Panjshir Valley

2011-03-28T09:58:00.009-05:00

Another Side of Afghanistan: Visiting the Grave of A National Hero by Steve Clemens. March 22, 2011

Panjshir is considered to be one of the most beautiful provinces in Afghanistan (although in fairness to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers from Bamiyan, many Afghans we met say Bamiyan is the most scenic). Although this valley about an hour and a half north of the capital city, Kabul saw some of the most intense fighting during the time of the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and then in the civil war that ensued in the early 1990s between various mujaheddin factions, it has remained one of the few relatively peaceful spots in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

However, the drive to get there is a sobering one. En route one passes the detritus of the most recent empire to have foundered here in the land of the western Hindu Kush Mountains. Afghanistan has seen many wars over its long history including invasions by Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. More recently it has been know as a place where “empires go to die.” It was part of what was known as “the Great Game”, the sparring chess piece of the competition between the Russian and British empires in the late 1800s and early 1900s, gaining it’s independence from Britain after the Third Afghan-Anglo War in 1919 but the treaty ending the war and establishing modern-day Afghanistan contained the seeds of further regional tension by splitting the majority Pashtun ethnic group in two – placing half in what is now Pakistan and the other half in Afghanistan by the geographic fiction known as the Durand Line. Most of the Taliban, both the Afghan version and the Pakistan version are ethnically Pashtun with Pashto as their language rather than Dari, the other official language of Afghanistan, a version of Persian or Farsi.

Most of the Pashtuns dominate the populations of the southern and eastern portions of Afghanistan but the Panjshir Province is overwhelmingly Tajik, the second-largest ethic group in the country. Panjshir only became a province in 2004 at the direction of President Karzai in an attempt to honor Ahmed Shah Massoud, the military leader who Karzai proclaimed as a “national hero”. [Some of my new Afghan friends told me “there is no ‘national hero’ in Afghanistan” claiming that ethnic rivalry prevents one from representing the whole nation – so one could say he is at least a Tajik hero. They claim Karzai’s primary motivation was to try to secure Tajik votes for his election.]

Massoud led the Afghan forces that helped defeat the Soviet forces as they attempted to come up the Panjshir valley and later was the head of what was called the “Northern Alliance”, a collection of the fighters under other war lords attempting to resist control of the nation by the Pakistan-supported Taliban in the 1990s. Two suicide bombers posing as journalists two days before Sept. 11, 2001 assassinated him – some say as a “present” from Bin Laden to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Wherever one goes in the Panjshir Valley, you see photos in homage to “the Lion of the Panjshir”. Halfway up the valley, on a rise overlooking the Panjshir River and his hometown of Bazarak, there is a memorial built for Massoud with his grave at the center of it. Plans are underway to build a museum and a hotel at the site. He is identified as a “martyr” for his people.

However, before we reached this scenic overlook, just before passing the road leading to the sprawling Baghram Air Base (with its notorious prison), we saw a huge field, an outdoor museum of sorts, of dozens
if not hundreds of destroyed or abandoned, rusting Soviet tanks. Next to this “monument” of defeat is the site of one of numerous U.S. military bases we passed. Ironically, it is situated on the site of a former Soviet base, where the last empire “went to die” and our empire, full of hubris and historical blinders, thinks it will avoid the same fate. Like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, why is our military choosing the same sites as previous oppressors to use in their own occupations? Are we that culturally ignorant? Baghram Air Base was the center operating base for the Soviets in their brutal war and now we blithely follow them.

As military convoys pass us on the road, it is instructive that the caravans are led by Afghan troops in smaller vehicles, followed by the American troops in vehicles that are considerably larger and more heavily armored.
It is a startling statement (to me) of whose lives are more valued.

This day trip was a pleasant interlude from the crowded, dusty, capital city where all of our other activities have been concentrated, primarily for security reasons. Returning to Kabul in mid-afternoon was first hair-raising – due to the driving style of the Afghan Logistics driver (as well as all the other drivers on the road and he didn’t even wear his seat belt!) – and then sobering. Just as we approached the city limits, we saw a refugee camp by the highway.
The collection of tents and makeshift shelters stretched on for several blocks in both directions. Others in our delegation who previously visited a different camp said it is one of many here in Kabul, with many, many others across the border in Pakistan. We’ve been told that many have “lived” in these camps for at least 3-4 years wondering if they’ll ever be able to return to their home areas – and when they do, can they ever reclaim their land and homes? This is the human face of war that all of our politicians seem to avoid.

Day 4 in the War Zone: Eating Chickpeas in the Cemetery on New Years Day

2011-03-25T19:40:00.011-05:00

Eating in the Cemetery on New Year’s Day: Day 4 in the War Zone by Steve Clemens. March 21, 2011

Afghan New Year coincides with the first day of Spring and has incorporated the Zoroastrian tradition of the new birth of Spring making the start of a new year as part of it. It seems to make a lot of sense to me instead of doing it in mid-winter. Who really wants to start a new year when you really are waiting for the next 2 ½ months to be behind you?

Basir, Zahra, Asif, and several other local Kabul friends whose names I couldn’t remember or spell join us by 9 AM to accompany us for the New Year’s celebration ritual at the base of a nearby mountain. The stream of people, many dressed in holiday outfits, is a joyous sight. The parade of families and individuals all headed in the same direction merges into a sea of people. Basir does his best to guide us and try to keep us together as a group. It is a challenge given the size of the crown as well as the number of police/military/security personnel. Jake is stopped and they check his camera and backpack. We are jostled and struggle to keep sight of one another. I’m not concerned as much for my safety as much as getting separated from each other, particularly those who can speak Dari.

We get to a gated, secured area close to the mosque, the center of the ritual. The heavily armed guards are pushing, shoving, grabbing we westerners, sometimes including our Afghan friends, sometimes ignoring them. Several of us are pushed or pulled through the gate and then pointed in the direction of a stairway to an elevated viewing area where we see some photographers, high-ranking military officers, and others which overlooks the courtyard of the mosque where the long green pole lies awaiting the ceremony. We are able to look down on the huge crown gathered in the cemetery; another large crowd is looking down from the homes which rise up the mountainside. People seem joyful, ready to see the green flag unfurl when the pole is raised - good luck for the year if it flies in the wind; prospects for a poor or troubling year if it remains limp on the pole.

After a few speeches, the pole is raised and after some hesitation the flag flutters in the breeze. People cheer wildly, hoping for an end to the three decades of strife, fear, privation, and violence. During the Taliban era, this ceremony was forbidden as well as music and other celebrations. After the flagpole and flag are securely tethered in the upright position, a number of young men, most in their 20s and 30s climb over a fence in order to try to grab the pole and kiss it as a sign of dedication or to get more luck? It is confusing but fascinating to watch as more than 100 men try to grab and kiss this pole while the guards for the mosque, all in outfits with green predominate try to keep them away.

As a group of of westerners, the International Peace delegation stands out, especially the two blond-haired Aussies, Simon and Donna. A number of Afghans want to have their picture taken standing next to us and the local TV station from Kabul interviews Paki and Linda but we have no idea if the footage was ever shown since we don’t have access to a TV. We are told by our Kabul friends that the media is closely controlled by the Karzai government or the US occupation forces which has bought up virtually all the radio stations. (On a ride across Kabul one evening, the taxi driver from Afghan Logistics playing one of the radio stations which obviously caters to the US or other English-speaking troops.)

I’m glad I brought along sunblock because the sun is bright and at 5,000 + feet, the UV exposure was projected to be a very high 7 or 8 for all the days I was scheduled to be in Afghanistan. There was a tent set up for the dignitaries nearby on our elevated viewing area which was the roof of a building which was part of the mosque complex. Today was one of the few days I saw a significant number of women out on the streets, enjoying the holiday. Most other days you find that men and boys outnumber the females visible in public by about 3 to 1 or greater.

We need to head back to the office space where we have most of our educational/listening gatherings because another is scheduled for mid-afternoon but Basir asks some of us if we’d like to get something to eat first. There are dozens of tents or tarp-draped areas in the middle of the cemetery grounds selling soups, kebabs, ice cream, and other foods and treats. Since an number in our delegation are vegetarians or vegans, Basir asks if the place selling chickpeas is OK with us and we agree. It takes a while to find all the delegates but we don’t mind waiting under the tarpaulin canopy because we are out of the sun. We could get it “spicy” or regular but when they brought it to us, it wasn’t clear to me which was which. Mine was spicy enough but others added the spices from a container on the table. Most also had ice cream for dessert but I passed. Ceylon, one of the delegates from Memphis who is game to eat virtually anything, is still hungry so he goes next door and brings back a sandwich which he thought had meat in it but after tasting a small bit of it, I thought it was made with mostly spiced vegetables and grain. It was very tasty but I’m not interested in risking getting sick while staying at a place that only has one toilet for the 8 or 9 of us sleeping at the office. At least the toilet is one you can sit on rather than the traditional squat-style that I tried to use at the internet café the day before but reeked so badly I decided I could wait until I had access to a toilet. I hadn’t realized our lunch “café” was just part of the cemetery until I tripped on an upturned rock which served as a “headstone” as I was leave the “restaurant”. As we began our walk back to the office, it became very clear that the sea of people who had gathered for the New Year celebration hid most of the grave markers during the celebration. Now that it was over (although many families stayed around to picnic together), it was much more evident.

While walking back from the new year’s celebration ritual, about a 20 minute walk, you before aware of how dirty and destroyed much of the public infrastructure is in this part of Kabul. We learn later that the area near where we are staying housed much of the Soviet-dominated offices and housing during their occupation in the 1980s but destroyed in the ensuing battles among various warlords and the Taliban during the early 1990s, much of it not rebuilt. We walk past a few fortified compounds and occasionally see new vehicles sporting UN signage or logos from other international NGOs. I’m sure some of these compounds host this other face of the on-going occupation of this ancient city.

After our discussion about safety/security concerns some of us had the previous afternoon, a number of the delegates staying at the Mustafa Hotel chose to move several blocks away to a guest house where Martin and Donna had been staying. (They had arrived several days before the rest of us, Martin having previously worked for the International Red Cross in Afghanistan and fluent in Dari was much abler in getting around without being escorted by other Afghans and had a lot of experience in this war zone.) While slightly more expensive than the other hotel if we put 2 to a room, and with breakfast and dinner provided as well as 24 hour internet access, it was a stark contrast to our “office” space but provided a greater appearance of security. I, personally, prefer our more rustic setting in keeping with the economic realities most Afghans face but do envy their ready internet access to stay in touch with family and friends on a more regular basis. Much of the “work” of our delegation is to hear the stories and see the reality of our new Afghan friends and then “report” that back to our home networks to increase our awareness and renew our collective commitment to work for a just peace.

In one of our smaller group discussions, Kathy notes our delegation is experiencing a “tale of two cities”. Some of us in the second-story office that has only two office type chairs plus about a dozen folding chairs with mats on the carpeted floor where most of us sit. As in Afghan homes, we take off our shoes before entering the office space and must put on slippers to enter the kitchen or bathroom or risk getting your socks wet. There is no shower curtain – and the shower doesn’t work anyway. You fill a small bucket while standing in the shower basin and pour water over your head and body as you soap up.

Although we’ve purchased toilet paper, we have a discussion amongst those sleeping at the office about the advisability of using it. Those with a lot more international experience than me (virtually all of those staying in our office space) point out that any toilet paper with fecal matter can serve as a ready source for cholera if not disposed correctly. Many toilets in developing countries are not designed to have toilet paper flushed with the bowel movements but rather be placed in a waste basket by the toilet. In many cultures, Afghan included, a washing pitcher with a pour spout is provided to be used to wash one’s (left) hand afterward. As best we can discover, all of our trash is placed out on the street curb by (or in) a trash container but we’ve seen much of that blown about our area of the city and some poor people are routinely picking through the trash to find anything of value. So, we decide to try to forgo use of toilet paper when possible and flushing down just small amounts when necessary.

We also have no vacuum cleaner and must sweep the carpet with a broom or pick up crumbs by hand so we encourage each other to use plates when eating our daily staple of fresh bread from the bread bakery two doors down from our office. We also discourage “double-dipping” when we have a common bowl of soup or cream into which to dip the bread. Instead, the preferred technique is to break off small pieces of bread, then dip it and put the whole piece in your mouth instead of putting the read you just bit back into the common bowl. Having lived in intentional community, I was aware of this but some of us didn’t have this at the top of our consciousness and needed to be gently reminded. It is all part of building community together this week.

Although it makes logical sense for our delegation to be split into 2 or 3 different lodging places so we don’t provide too great a target for those who may wish us harm, it does feel like we are too separated, especially since the balance of the group is a 20 minute ride away and we only have on van (and driver, Mohamed –who doesn’t speak English) at our disposal. A cab ride is the equivalent of $5. in the daytime and $7. at night but any ride seems to be very anxiety-producing for me because of the nature of kamikaze-style driving here. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of times in my week in Afghanistan that we were inches away from hitting another car, bike, pedestrian, or dog in the vehicle I was in – yet I only witnessed one accident and saw the evidence of two others in my week there.

This tale of two cities, one where some of the delegates live have people hired to pick up after you, make the beds, make and serve the food, a pool table, a work-out facility. It is not a five-star hotel by any means but compared to the common Afghan whose life expectancy is only 44 years, one of the three worst in the world, it certainly seems luxurious. Those corrupt politicians and warlords living off the bounty skimmed off the “reconstruction” or “security contracts” or living in “poppy palaces” funded by the production of poppies and the refinement into heroin and opium would find the relative comforts of the guest house insulting. Those of us eating the leftover lentil soup and bread from last night’s supper for our breakfast are still living in luxury for the millions of Afghans waking up to dire poverty. As Kathy Kelly so often reminds us, “What you see depends on where you stand.”

Day 3 in the War Zone: Creating Peace Via Skype

2011-03-23T22:38:00.006-05:00

Day 3: Creating Peace Via Skype by Steve Clemens. March 20, 2011

We were told to expect the AYPV boys at our office lodgings at 4:30 AM because the Global Day of Listening was scheduled to begin by 5:30. They arrived a little late because they had been on the phone to others around the world since 10 PM last night. The plan for today was to continue the conversations over Skype connections on the internet. We rented a local internet café for the day but it wasn’t schedued to open until 8 AM so the conversation across the ocean(s) began with just telephone conversations.

Scott Shaeffer-Duffy from a Catholic Worker Community in Massachusetts helped begin the dialog as his wife, son, and daughter all joined in to talk with Hakim and the youth seated around our table in our office /“hotel”. We had a few technical glitches but everyone was engaged despite the long night and the early morning. Different members of the International Peace Delegation were asked to send greetings to their friends at home as part of the listening project. I signed up for 7 AM and actually joined the conversation at 7:30, sending greetings to the peace community in the Twin Cities where it was 10 PM on the day before. The young people asked me to tell them about groups I was part of in Minnesota so I described our weekly Wednesday vigil at Alliant Techsystems (ATK).

The connection is relevant for our friends in Afghanistan since this Minnesota-based war profiteer has made landmines and cluster munitions, two of the scourges of war which continue to plague civilians long after the conflict ended in certain regions of the country. I also mentioned the new weapon used by the US Army in Afghanistan, a combat gun that “shoots around corners”. Hakim asked if this was the XM-25 and I said that was - its new name and it’s “roll-out” was happening now in Afghanistan.

Abdulai asked me about whether I was hopeful about change coming after vigiling for so many years at ATK. This 15 year old boy is wise beyond his years. He had previously said that he feels tired of trying but said we need patience – and, if it doesn’t happen in his lifetime, the struggle is still worth it. I told him I shared his sentiment: if ATK doesn’t end it’s production and sale of indiscriminate weapons, it is still important for my own integrity to continue our protest at the corporate entrance because I have to act on my values. Even if change doesn’t come to ATK, change does come in my life and my heart.

The boys were very engaged in the conversation even though they had been doing this conversation across the table and around the world via cell phone and Skype for more than 9 hours before I sat down with them. After our conversation lasting 30 minutes, the whole group of us took a ½ hour break to move down to the internet café to continue the conversations around the world over Skype.

They talked with Sami Rasouli in Iraq (about his and other Iraqis experience with the US war machine) and Media Benjamin and Ann Wright in Washington, DC before both of them left for a trip to Quantico to protest the inhumane treatment of whistle-blower Bradley Manning. They talked with people in Australia, a guy in Laos (who told the boys of the legacy of unexploded bombs from the Indochina War), someone in Poland, and many other groups from the US. I listened to their conversations but also used the time to send a few emails to my friends and family to reassure them I was safe while engaged in this important work of peacemaking.

Patrick suggested we use part of the afternoon to go shopping with our new friends Zahra and Asif (to help translate/negotiate and to show us where to go). As if to show that even shopping in Afghanistan can be an adventure, our van driver was stopped by the police for driving the wrong way on a certain street since the other street was closed. (There were no signs indicating it was one way.) Patrick and I sat quietly in the van as both Zahra and Asif got out to engage the police as more and more surrounded our vehicle. While the other two negotiated, our driver was instructed to turn around in an impossibly small space. Driving conditions are a complete nightmare without the police stopping you.

After about 15-20 minutes, our two defenders came back to the van and said, “We’ll walk from here.” As we got to the sidewalk, Zahra assured us the driver wasn’t in serious trouble. She told me later that the policeman wanted a cash bribe. She told him she was a journalist and if he demanded money, she would print his name to expose his corruption in her newspaper. He withdrew his request. For a country where women have been marginalized, it is so refreshing to see a determined feminist here. She was no slouch in negotiating a fair price for the rug Patrick bought but she hesitated and was puzzled when I told her I wanted to buy a scarf for my wife. Here is a woman who is determined to be “unveiled” whenever possible, why would her new friend want his wife to cover her head? I laughed and told her Christine would only be wearing it around her neck! Besides, she’s the breadwinner in our family – while I’m out trapesing around the world in search of peace and justice.

After we returned, she shared her concerns with a couple of us about our safety here in Afghanistan. (I hadn’t known she had just received threats a week ago and I’m sure that added to her caution for us. She was concerned about the security of the area where the hotel some of the other delegates were staying at – noting that the main entrance was neither guarded nor locked. Anyone could walk into the building. She also expressed concern about a group of us traveling to Panjshir, a province north of Kabul, past Baghram Air Base and site of the notorious prison where the US had detained so many earlier in the war. Apparently they’ve just built a new detention center a few hundred yards away so they can claim not to being holding people in that shameful place.

After returning to re-join the young peace volunteer and their indefatigable mentor, Hakim, for several more hours, most of we westerners left to go to bed at 10 PM, leaving Kathy Kelly and a few others to finish the international dialog at midnight – 26 hours after they started! As is the custom this week, we walk back to our home-base in small groups, always accompanied by one of the Afghan youth. And here I thought that some of my work was to accompany them! They are such a blessing and inspiration to us.

Day Two in the War Zone

2011-03-20T11:55:00.008-05:00

Day Two in the War Zone: Planting Trees, Burning Candles by Steve Clemens. March 19, 2011

In the morning we walked in groups of five for about 30-45 minutes through our area of Kabul en route to our morning activity. I awoke at 4 AM to use the bathroom and when the call to prayer was broadcast from the nearby mosque about 40 minutes later, I knew it was time to get up because the dogs on the street also joined the chorus. The city is fairly dirty (what does one expect in one of the poorest countries in the world which is at war with the world’s largest military machines?) and the traffic has no street lights or road striping so the cars switch invisible lanes as the pedestrians dodge and move between them.

Vendors crowd the sidewalk selling fruit, live chickens, freshly butchered meat, nuts, beans, and a multitude of other items. We travel in groups of 4 or 5 – always escorted by one of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. I know I shouldn’t have favorites - they are all so wonderful and helpful – but I can’t help but respond most to 13 year-old Gholami, the youngest and smallest of the 8 who have joined us for several days. We walk in small groups so we blend in a little more than if we all walk together. About half of the International Peace Delegation is staying at a hotel, others of us are sleeping on the floor in the office building of a non-profit organization that has joined with AYPV in inviting us. After walking down two main streets, we branch off into what seems to be a side street which more resembles an alley with an open sewer/gutter on one side. As cars or trucks pass us they blow their horns so we can step aside.

Vans come by with other delegates from the hotel and we are offered rides but Simon and I prefer to walk with several of the boys, enjoying the sunshine and “fresh air”. Actually, the air is often quite polluted with fumes from older, untuned vehicles. We walk purposefully and deliberately so as to not draw undue attention, despite our pale complexions. (Simon, from Australia, is fairer-skinned than me.) Since most of the others arrived before us, we missed part of the presentation at the private school which was our destination.

Lena, the teacher who addressed our group at the school, was a young woman who described the school and answered our questions. We had “one cup of tea” (we could have had more if we wished – even 3 Cups of Tea) but were told what Afghanistan needs is not more money to build schools but rather to have teachers properly trained. Having school buildings does no good without trained teachers. And teachers have to be paid a wage they can live with. The public school teachers are not paid enough and often have class sizes of 50-70 students – an impossible situation to help students learn at the grade school level. This private school had 20-25 students per class and it appeared to me at the recess time that the predominance was girls at this school.

When asked about whether the US military is needed for security, both the school’s principal and the teacher quickly said they wanted the US troops to leave. Lena added that “we need to make peace by ourselves” – it is not something that can be imposed from the outside. She continued, “Instead of waging war [here], the US could concentrate on education instead”, using the incredible amounts of money to train teachers.

The AYPV had picked this school for the tree-planting opportunity as a way to symbolically celebrate the New Year which would begin two days hence on the first day of Spring. Afghans are about to begin Year 1390 – their calendar, like that it many other Muslim-dominated nations, is dated from the time of their Prophet Mohammad. Students at the school drew or painted pictures of trees as an art project to celebrate the tree-planting event in their schoolyard.

Before we moved to the schoolyard to plant the trees, Hakim and the AYPV boys recited a poem they wrote the night before, “We Need a Different Tree” – a moving statement of choosing peace over war. It lamented how “power and privilege oppress the people – it is perfected in war. … Why would an Afghan mother want a tree that kills? … War is not a tree we want to plant – so, if we wish to live without war, we need to plant a different tree.”
Then 55 trees, almond, poplar, plum, apricot, and apple, were placed in the already-dug holes provided. A local man pruned them after they were planted and watered. As we finished, the children were let out of the classrooms for recess/exercise and they were enamored at the visitors to their school; some loved posing for photos, other avoided our cameras.

The school principal announced that the garden/schoolyard would be re-named “The Friendship Garden.”

The van ride back to our office space –like all rides in the Kabul traffic – was another adventure. Just when you think the driver will hit a bike rider or pedestrian, scrape an on-coming car or one that you are passing, the brakes are applied or the steering wheel turned to prevent the accident. Any insurance agency would have to be crazy to cover someone for collision –although I don’t seem much beyond very close calls. It makes rush hour in the Twin Cities look positively relaxing.

Next on the day’s list (after a light lunch) was to drive to the Emergency Medical Hospital for civilian war casualties operated by an Italian NGO to donate our blood. (Ironically, I was told in Minneapolis before I left that I will not be able to donate platelets for a full year if I travel to Afghanistan due to threat of malaria – even though the threat doesn’t arrive until May, long after I’ve left.) My group had some difficulty getting a taxi to the hospital so we missed most of the tour and discovered that they only needed O negative blood that day. Two of us met that requirement but Kathy, who was one of the two, was asked to wait a couple of weeks since she gave at that hospital only several weeks before. She will donate again before she returns to Chicago in a couple of weeks.

Returning to the office, we had a convoy of 5 huge armored tan vehicles of the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) pass us. Even though there were no US markings, it is clear to everyone who is in sight that these behemoths are the dinosaurs of the crumbling American empire – unfortunately still very deadly in its decline.

Later in the afternoon, we walked to the 3rd Eye Photojournalism Center, the host organization for the candlelight vigil in remembrance of the victims of war. A stunning gallery of wonderful photos taken from all over Afghanistan graced the walls of the four rooms and a table with candles encircling a banner reading “For the War’s Victims” in both English and Dari. After a few moving talks and the reading of the names of the 7 boys who were killed earlier this month in one of the northern provinces, the AYPV boys lit candles and passed them to all of us and we observed 2 minutes of silence in memory of all of war’s victims. Many of us felt tears welling up knowing that two of the boys present had lost their father to the Taliban several years ago. I am amazed at their courage and commitment.

At dinner afterward, I had a great conversation with Zahra, yesterday’s moving speaker from the Open Society, deeply moved by this 23 year old women who refuses to wear the veil except when she is outdoors. She has many questions for me – why I came here, what do I think about Afghanistan, what other Americans think about the war, … . I’m sure we will have several more conversations before our week’s end.

Having gotten up before dawn, I was very grateful for the air mattress and sleeping bag at 9 PM. I am so grateful for so many friends who have supported me/us on this pilgrimage/journey for peace.

Report from Day One in Afghanistan

2011-03-19T23:37:00.014-05:00

Three Powerful Perspectives on Afghanistan by Steve Clemens. March 18, 2011

I couldn’t afford to give in to jet lag after my arrival in Afghanistan this morning after 3 flights and layovers totaling 40 hours before reaching my floor space in a Kabul office of a small nonprofit human rights organization formed by some very dedicated Afghan women eight months ago. I did nap for about an hour before Hakim showed us a new five minute video he had just created from yesterday’s historic peace walk through the streets of Kabul.

It was a group of more than 20 international nonviolent peace activists and at least a dozen Afghan counterparts that crowded into the 12’ x 16’ office room and overflowed into the adjoining space. After a few minutes for introductions and several more for logistics and a look at the proposed schedule for our week here, Hakim, the mentor, translator, and prime mover of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV) begins to share about yesterday’s historic event.

About 40 Afghan young people, primarily in their teens and early 20s donned bright blue scarfs and carried banners as the inter-ethnic group marched from the Iranian Embassy to the Embassy for the United Nations in the busy area of central Kabul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uedQzWck7xc
Hakim shows us the video before explaining that “ ‘Peace’ is a dirty word to Afghans”. President Obama won the ‘Peace Prize’ in 2009, the same political leader who has increased the level of foreign military occupiers (both uniformed armed forces as well as ‘contractors’ and other mercenaries under the pay and control of the Pentagon or US State Department). “Peace” is the term used (or more accurately, abused) by everyone to excuse or justify anything. Many, many Afghans have been killed in the name of “peace”.

“We have had non-stop occupation and war; Afghans can’t trust each other because of decades of war”, Hakim tells us. We get a lot of ‘lip-service’ to the causes of peace by others – but then they ‘don’t show up’, he continues. “How do we restore hope; how do we begin to build up trust?” He observes there is not a culture of questioning here in Afghanistan (at least out loud, not in public). “War mongers have misused the word of peace” – to the point there is no trust. It is left to us, foreigners, who must encourage Afghans to find their own voice, this trained Public Health medical doctor from Singapore tells us. He started working in public health with refugees first in Pakistan and then accompanied them back to the Bamiyan area of central Afghanistan 8 years ago when he decided his role to encourage and nurture the ideals of the local young people was more pressing and in line with his deep commitment to Gandhian nonviolence then his medical practice.

“It is easy for politicians to talk about peace – but nothing is working here. Violence is a failing strategy. Every family here has someone who has been killed [in these wars]” – if not in the immediate family, then certainly in the extended one. There is no clear plan by any leader that is nonviolent he laments but goes on to say that there are only two leaders that these young people trust: Malalia Joya, an out-spoken woman activist, and Dr. Ramazon Barshardost, a humanist Member of Parliament who states categorically “It is wrong to kill” but is readily dismissed by many of his compatriots as “the mad (crazy) one.” Joya tells these young people, “If you truly walk this path [of peace and nonviolence], you will be killed one day.” We are told that the US government has just refused to give her a visa to come to the US for a planned speaking trip that was to begin next week.

Three years ago at a college in Bamiyan, Hakim led a 3 month workshop with students and their conclusion was “Peace is not possible in Afghanistan” – so, what do we do? He helped organize an effort to get an inter-ethnic group to live together for a semester and 16 students did. However controversy arose near the end of the time and Hakim started receiving death threats. He spoke to the “authorities”, he traveled from village to village, meeting people and listening. A group of boys coalesced and he helped supervise them in building a peace park in Bamiyan. The boys did a 7 day vigil to try to deliver a peace message to Obama. They recently sent gifts of some things they made to Pashtun people in Kandahar. A gift from some Hazaras and other ethnic tribes to Pashtuns stunned the recipients. “I can’t believe that there can be such love” was one of the responses Hakim heard. [Please go to the AYPV website to learn more about them.]

Zahra Mobtaker, an amazingly strong, 23 year old Afghan woman who spoke out during the peace march shared with us next. As the director of Open Society, a nonprofit working to empower Afghans –“helping ordinary people overcome their fears to give voice to their experiences”, she is focusing on human rights and democracy. She said they quickly found themselves very much alone. They sponsored a festival to help their fellow citizens overcome their fear and speak the truth. She has displayed photos of victims of the wars in gatherings to facilitate conversation about the reality of today’s Afghanistan.

This tiny (25 members) but bold non-profit has helped form a singing group with the intention of bringing a message of peace through song– especially to the many illiterate in the rural villages. They support their work primarily through their own personal funds – recognizing that their “aims might be sidetracked” by outside donors. This is often the reality of many NGOs here in Afghanistan – especially those getting the predominance of their funds from US AID, the UN, or other funding mechanisms tied to governmental agencies or large bureaucracies. (Note: this Open Society has no connection to the George Soros organizations which also take the Open Society moniker.) This group just operates in Kabul and Afghanistan. Open Society has also used film-making as a vehicle for peace and change. “The Night of the Cartoon-makers” used cartoons drawn on walls of public places, including mosques, as an educational tool. They were pleased that many of the cartoons have been “protected” by the people from defacement- a sign of the growing empowerment the group strives for.

They are also using web blogs (www.opensociety.af@blogspot.com) and yesterday’s march was their first public partnership/ joint venture with the AYPV. “Thank you for coming to this exceptionally frightening country”, she told us. We felt her warmth and welcome and we are so grateful for her courage and eloquence.

Our heads and our hearts were already full before the country director from an [unnamed] NGO (non-Governmental Organization) dropped in to meet with us. He was pleasantly surprised to discover one of the international peace delegates he was to address included a Maryknoll priest who he had worked with in Cambodia many years before! The speaker had just joined this work in Afghanistan two months ago and is responsible for their program in 3 of Afghanistan’s northern provinces, Bamiyan, Herat, and Ghor. This organization has a long history in this country and focuses on 4 main program areas: an agriculture-based program in Herat which primarily works with girls and women developing sustainable methods; community-based education with a focus on girls; watershed management featuring gravity-flow spring management and work to prevent run-off and erosion; and emergency work with an aim to transition to sustainable development. This last program entails road construction and road snow clearance, especially the mountain passes which are cleared by shovel under a cash-for-work plan. One critical pass on the national highway between Herat- Bamiyan – Kabul must be cleared in a timely fashion to allow any traffic to flow, getting supplies to remote areas.

This NGO maintains a strict policy and reputation for not proselytizing and they don’t use any armed guards. Their director talked with dismay about the almost complete failure of the US/NATO military forces and privatized “contractors” (he said we call them ‘Beltway Bandits’ referring to the corruption in Washington, DC) to rebuild needed infrastructure. He said the saying among NGOs is “where progress begins, the Taliban ends”, referring to the on-going struggle against forces of fear and repression. However, what this group has observed is with every contract with US AID (Agency for International Development, the “foreign aid” arm of the US State Department), funds are siphoned off in kick-back style payments, even in the written agreement itself. He recommended we read Descent Into Chaos by Hamad Rashad about this practice and lamented that he sees a “perfect storm of US AID, “contractors”, and local corruption” as a spiral leading to frustration, despair, and a culture of corruption which infects most things happening in Afghanistan.

A lot to think about on my first day in the war zone.

Have Visa, Will Travel [For Peace]

2011-03-11T18:53:00.006-06:00

Have Visa, Will Travel [To Afghanistan]. March 11, 2011 by Steve Clemens

“Praise the Lord and pass the tree-seedlings [or other nonviolent equivalents of ammunition].” Finally, after a nerve-racking 2-week wait, I received my visa (and Passport back) from the Afghan Embassy in Washington, DC. Although I paid extra to have the visa request processed “within 24 hours”, I had not even received confirmation from the Embassy (despite 6 phone calls and an email over 4 days) that they had even received my application. Other friends from Chicago who are also part of our peace delegation received their visas a week ago.

Now I can concentrate my energies toward our intended mission: to stand in solidarity with the youth of Afghanistan and to plant trees with them in Kabul as a symbol of our desire for peace. If you are on Facebook, you can “friend” that group (search for Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers). They are hoping to have an International Day of Listening on March 19-21st (depending on your time zone) where young people from Afghanistan and Iraq will talk via Skype with other people around the globe. http://globaldayoflistening.org/Home.html and http://www.livewithoutwars.org/ are sites that have the details about this.

We will also participate in the candlelight vigil they have planned for the evening of March 21st which is both the first day of Spring and also the Afghan New Year. Our candles will be in remembrance of all the young people who have lost their lives in not only the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but also the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Palestine/Israel. Why don’t you get some of your friends together in your area and have your own candlelight vigil in solidarity with these young people and then send them a photo of you doing that?

Jim Haber, one of our delegation members and part of the Nevada Desert Experience suggests some of the reasons why we take the risks in traveling to a war zone:

Delegation members are responding to an invitation to support Afghan peace-making efforts by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and the Open Society Organization (of Afghanistan, not to be confused with the Open Society Institute started by George Soros; there is no connection between the two similarly-named groups). Afghans need to see, meet and know westerners other than those in military roles or who are protected by armed contractors. There are partners for peace everywhere, including in Afghanistan. These groups are courageously standing up, saying, “No!” to all the armed actors there, be they Taliban, War Lords, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), or private security contractors.

This delegation is one in a long history of citizen-citizen diplomatic efforts, whereby we meet with other people from civil society to foster peace. As President Eisenhower said, “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.” It is popular in this country to dismiss the people of Afghanistan and other war-torn countries as full of unloving people (or why would there be so much fighting there), very different from ourselves, and to portray them as motivated by promises of riches in the afterlife for violence committed here, now. The presence of violent extremists is not unique to Afghanistan nor to Islam as history amply, and sadly, bears out. No Eastern or Western religion is devoid of supremist adherents. I expect to meet people who have lost loved ones to violence and who do not wish a similar grief on anyone else. There are people who come through violent situations everywhere who don't want retaliation, who want to end the cycle of violence.

To better understand a situation, it is generally good to have some first-hand experience of it, to put someone else's shoes on and walk in them for a day. Our stay in Afghanistan is necessarily brief, but I am sure it will lead us to correct some perceptions and reinforce others that we have from this vantage point. I want to put faces and names to people who too often are treated as pawns in geo-political fights. The various invasions of Afghanistan have never been out of concern for the people of Afghanistan. Rather, they have unleashed violent forces, both foreign and domestic, that have no regard for the lives of the Afghan peoples.

Some of folk who will be part of the delegation: Mary Lou Anderson, George Capaccio, Patricia Chaffee, Mary Dean, Elizabeth Deligio, Chris Doucot, Detlef Enge-Bastien, Christine Gaunt, Peggy Gish, Phil Glendenning, Clare Grady, Jim Haber, Martha Hennessey, Judith Kelly, Kathy Kelly, Patrick Kennelly, Ceylon Mooney, Simon Moyle, Donna Mulhearn, James P. Noonan, Jake Olzen, Martin Reusch, Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, David Swanson, John Volkening, and Paki Wieland. Some are Catholic Workers, others have been part of Christian Peacemaker Teams, Iraq Peace Team, or other nonviolent campaigns.

I will fly Wednesday evening (3/16) from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, then to Dubai, and finally to Kabul, arriving Friday morning. (There is a 10 ½ hour time difference from Central Daylight Savings time.) Besides the tree planting and candlelight vigil, we hope to observe the AYPV inter-ethnic peace walk on March 19th and meet with various NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) working in Afghanistan. We also hope to meet with Dr. Ramazan Bashardost, a Member of Parliament and former Presidential candidate. Because of security concerns, we won’t be staying in the hotels where westerners usually stay but will rather “camp out” with sleeping bags in the office rooms of two organizations in Kabul. It is our hope to create durable relationships and deepening hope with the Afghan youth, NGO reps, and their friends.

Kathy Kelly, one of the founders of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) and organizer of our delegation has shared with us 3 goals for our journey: To learn more about Afghanistan and what Afghan people want; to build solidarity with indigenous movements working for peace, human rights, and a just end to the conflicts; and to use first-hand reports to catalyze opposition to US military intervention in the region. I will be available to speak to local groups after I return on March 25th.

Please pray for us –and especially the brave youthful peacemakers we will meet. And then, get out in the streets, contact your political representatives, and work for an end to this war!

May I Go With Your Blessing?

2011-02-19T18:42:00.001-06:00

May I Go With Your Blessing? My Upcoming Trip to Afghanistan

Last week I received an invitation from my friend Kathy Kelly to join her and other international peacemakers in a trip to Afghanistan to stand in solidarity with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in actions of hope and resistance around the first day of Spring which also coincides with the Persian New Year (March 21).

The plan is to fly to Kabul in order to arrive by March 18th and return after being in Afghanistan for about 6 days. While there are obvious risks involved in traveling to a war zone, the risks we take for peace and reconciliation are very small compared to that of the Afghan youth that we will support. Voices For Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) members have made 3 previous visits (the last being in December 2010) to meet with these youth and their leaders.

Kathy writes: “We're working hard, over the next several days, to determine whether we could muster the skills and wherewithal to bring 100 peace activists to Afghanistan in March to undertake a tree-planting project, seeking nonviolent options for Afghanistan's future.

Would you by chance have any time and inclination to consider being part of such a delegation? It would be risky. We're thinking of a short delegation, perhaps only six or seven days in Afghanistan. Dr. Ramazon Bashardost is willing to lead the tree-planting and would welcome international accompaniment.

Gandhi's quote comes to mind regarding the inviolable connection between nonviolent means and ends, akin to the relationship between a seed and a tree. I'm especially appreciative of the willingness shown by several of the youngsters to eschew retaliatory violence, even though they lost their uncles and cousins and, in Abdulai's case, a beloved father. …

We also grew to know, through three visits, Dr. Ramazon Bashardost, whom a majority of Afghans hold in high regard as a populist leader with Gandhian values. He meets people in a vacant lot where his office is a "pup tent;" he travels around in an old "Mr. Bean" car. And he has no armed guards and bunks in with relatives, a far cry from many elected and appointed Afghan officials who flaunt convoys of armed guards, live in "poppy palaces," and often seem impervious to charges of corruption. Dr. Bahsardost came in third in the last presidential elections. He is a former Minister of Planning who resigned because of corruption. He also resigned from a Parliamentary seat, after a previous election, again because of corruption. Now he is again a Member of Parliament who advocates tirelessly on behalf of sharing Afghanistan's resources fairly, bringing criminal warlords to justice, and practicing basic principles of nonviolence.

The AYPVs are coordinated by a Hakim, a Singaporean M.D. who has lived in Afghanistan for the last eight years and who has been welcomed to make his home in the mountain village where several of the AYPV live. We have come to trust him deeply. Hakim, several of the AYPVs, and Dr. Bashardost will be visiting various provinces in Afghanistan during the month of February to learn more from people in various villages about their views of non-violent future options.

Hakim regards such options as the answer to every Afghan mother’s prayer. He has met many ordinary family members in his work as a teacher, organizer and healer. Trained in Singapore as a medical doctor, he moved to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan after completing his residency. For two years, he lived among Afghan refugees, learning their language and living under the same circumstances of poverty and violence that they endured. For the past six years, he has lived in the Bamiyan province, having decided to accompany the Afghan refugees back to their homes. Hakim speaks fluent Dari, English, Mandarin, Urdu and various dialects. He is both highly skilled and deeply humble. It's exciting to think of how he and Dr. Ramazon Bashardost might work, together with the youngsters, to help promote nonviolent options for Afghanistan's future.

Action in Afghanistan
The AYPVs seek our support as they launch a tree-planting event to communicate their rooted commitment to nonviolent, life-giving options. Voices for Creative Nonviolence has agreed to help “get the ball rolling” in formation of an international peace team to briefly visit Kabul. Upon return, participants would promote nonviolent options, globally, and help end the war in Afghanistan.

Why tree-planting? As members of a global movement, and as U.S. people with a grave responsibility for destroying Afghanistan, we are hoping to provide support for ordinary Afghans who are proposing nonviolent options for their future. Alfred McCoy states, in a March 2010 article, that it would take $33 billion to replace the rural infrastructure of Afghanistan – a sum that equals roughly one round of U.S. supplemental spending for the war. …

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have assured us of “an ample welcome for internationals” to take part in their week of peacemaking including the March 19th tree planting and a March 21st candlelight vigil. They will also hold an inter-ethnic walk on March 19, but they ask that participation in the walk be limited to Afghans who will have had an opportunity to prepare well in advance of the event.

All activities will be part of one (ongoing) campaign pursuing nonviolent options for Afghanistan. The tree-planting will allow us to share in a very small way the courageous and patient toil with which Afghans begin, every spring, to restore a land of beauty and peace in a country where so many lives have been cruelly cut down. The candlelight vigil will commemorate lives lost in Afghanistan and other war zones.”

So, with Christine’s blessing, I am submitting my application for a visa to the Afghani Embassy and hope to fly to Kabul (via Dubai) arriving March 17th and returning on March 24th so I’ll be home to help celebrate Christine’s 65th birthday a few days later on the 28th.

How you can support me:

I’d appreciate your thoughts and prayers as I travel and while in Afghanistan. (And prayers for Christine as I travel into a war zone.)

I am asking for support especially from 4 groups that I would intend to represent : The Community of St. Martin, Pax Christi Twin Cities Area, The Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project, and AlliantACTION.

I have enough financial resources to cover my expenses but would encourage each of you to consider making a donation of $10 to Voices For Creative Nonviolence (1249 W Argyle Street #2, Chicago, IL 60640 www.vcnv.org ) to cover some of their organizing/coordinating work and/or give me a donation of $10 to take and share with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers organization.

After I return, I’d like to show my photos and talk about the trip to a variety of local groups. Contact me about possible speaking venues like adult ed sessions at your local congregation, a civic group, or a classroom.

In peace and solidarity,
Steve Clemens

30 Years Ago I Climbed A Fence and Went To Prison

2011-02-02T16:06:00.006-06:00

30 Years Ago I Climbed A Fence and Went To Prison by Steve Clemens. February 2011

At the dawn of the Reagan Presidency, just after the death of my father-in-law, I was sentenced to 6 months in Federal Prison because I climbed a fence. Five months earlier 8 peacemakers committed what was to become the first of many “Plowshares” actions, a nonviolent attempt to “beat [nuclear] swords into plowshares”. The where and why of the story explains the consequence.

After the end of American involvement in Vietnam ended with the fall of Saigon [later renamed Ho Chi Minh City] in 1975, Phil Berrigan and Liz Macalister turned their peacemaking focus toward nuclear weapons. As part of the Bible Study group they facilitated at the Community for Creative Nonviolence in Washington, DC in 1974-75, I was inspired and challenged to consider nonviolent direct action in my own peacemaking efforts. We carried full-scale models of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, to the steps of the US Capitol to mark the week of the 30th anniversary of those war crimes. Shortly after that, I moved to southwestern Georgia to join an intentional Christian community outside Americus called Koinonia Partners.

The genesis for the prayer witness at Pantex began for me with a conversation with Ladon Sheats in Washington, DC in September of 1980. I had just participated in a week-long group of peace actions at the Pentagon as part of Jonah House’s call for “The Year of the Election”. Peacemakers were urged to “take their vote to the Pentagon” for a week of actions since neither President Jimmy Carter nor Republican nominee Ronald Reagan were advocating movement toward disarmament or peaceful solutions to the world problems confronting us. Ladon Sheats was a former Resident Partner and Director of Koinonia Partners, living at the that Christian community from 1968-1975. From there, he joined the Jonah House Community in Baltimore and remained active in a life of resistance to the power of the war machine until his death in August of 2002.

Ladon discussed with several friends and me the possibility of conducting a prayer vigil at the heart of the nuclear weapons empire - the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, TX, the final assembly point for all nuclear weapons produced by the US government. He envisioned a small group of committed Christians who would travel to Texas, meet to pray and reflect for several days, and then attempt to enter the plant to pray in or around the buildings where the bombs were assembled. Participants would covenant together ahead of time to be committed to nonviolence and the group would agree not to notify the press ahead of time nor to cooperate with providing any defense of our action other than to state clearly why we were there. We would not defend ourselves with legal arguments but only statements about our faith and convictions.

When I returned to south Georgia and my community at Koinonia, I first discussed the proposed witness with my wife, Christine, and then with a smaller group of Partners who were committed to nonviolent direct action. As we were discerning my participation, we received word of the first Plowshares witness at King of Prussia, PA. While in support of that creative witness, it was clear that our planned witness would not involve any attempts to disarm or damage weapons we might encounter but rely solely on the power of prayer. As I continued in the discernment process, I had conversations with my parents and my wife’s parents. It was a very difficult time as my father-in-law, Benton Haas, was dying of leukemia and my wife spent most of her fall helping to care for him at his home in western Pennsylvania. While neither set of parents was enthusiastic about this proposed witness, I tried to communicate to them my sense of “call” to take this action of faith and witness.

In early February 1981, the Koinonia Resident Partners had a time of prayer during our weekly Partner’s meeting as a blessing and send-off. My wife, Christine, and Gail and Edwin Steiner and I drove the 20 + hours to Amarillo, Texas where we gathered with about a dozen others for a time of reflection, prayer, and sharing before the witness at the plant. The times of Bible study and prayer were very uplifting, helping to calm some of my fears and anxieties. Especially difficult was taking the time to write letters to my parents and to our community in the event we did not return. We tried to face the fact that this facility was one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the nation and that the guards confronting us would be armed with deadly weapons. Facing one’s own death and still choosing to act is the most liberating feeling in the world!

Yet not all the preparations were so serious. We had a “trial-run” of the two ladders we built to scale the 12’ chain link fence topped with barbed wire that we would encounter. When we set it up to scale a local baseball field backstop, the ladder collapsed under our weight and had to be rebuilt with heavier wood. We ended up in a heap, laughing at ourselves and the “folly” of our witness.

On the morning of Feb. 10, 1981, the six of us who covenanted together for this witness drove to the Pantex Plant to arrive in conjunction with the morning employee traffic, hopefully to allow us to get close to the area protected by 2 rows of chain link fence, separated by a 50’ “no man’s land” area between them. The radio station announced that visibility was “almost zero” as the blowing snow made it almost impossible for us to be seen as we briskly walked toward the fences with our two ladders.

After the first 3 scaled the fence and I threw their ladder over it so we could scale the second fence, all types of bells and whistles and lights were activated by sensory mines placed in the inner area between the fences. After all of us were inside the first fence, we noted that the second fence was electrified and security personnel had their automatic rifles pointed at us. We decided that it was as far as we were meant to go and so we gathered in a circle, read the passage from Ephesians about bringing light into darkness, and prayed for forgiveness for our complicity and trust in these weapons which threatened all of creation.

It took about 45 minutes for the security personnel to bring a van inside the fences to arrest us. Then they took us to the heart of that area of the plant (where we hoped to go anyway to pray) to question and process us. The Manager of the plant asked to meet with a couple of us to inquire why we were there. In the ensuing conversation, we discovered he was Jewish and one of us asked him how he would have felt if a group of people had sat on the railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz, challenging the Nazi plans for extermination. While he didn’t agree with our actions, he said he could understand [somewhat] our motivations.

After transfer to the local county jail, Federal Agents then transferred us again to the FBI building in Amarillo. After being questioned [and threatened] by the FBI, we were then taken to the Potter County Jail, our new home for the next 3 months. The two women in our group, Kathy Jennings and Mary Sprunger-Froese were sent to the women’s facility. Ladon, Father Larry Rosebaugh, Vince Scotti Eirene, and I were sent to maximum security in the men’s jail. After one week, Ladon and Larry were transferred to the minimum-security facility while Vince and I remained in the maximum lock-up. Vince and I only saw the other 4 when we went to court for arraignment, then our one-day trial, and then our sentencing. We also convinced two court-appointed lawyers assigned to our case to schedule two “pre-trial meetings” so we were able to see each other for a couple of hours before our trial.

Just before our trial began, the lawyers notified us that the US Attorney had filed several “Motions in Limine” aimed at preventing us from testifying about certain “irrelevant” issues. They asked the Court to disallow any testimony about “nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, US foreign policy, or our religious convictions” because they were not relevant to a simple criminal trespass charge we faced. This being only my second trial, I was nervous, wondering if the Judge would charge me with contempt if I attempted to talk about my motivation for our act of witness. Federal Judge Mary Lou Robinson had stopped both Ladon and Fr. Larry in the middle of their testimony stating that they could not testify about growing up in west Texas (Ladon) or his work on the streets of Recife, Brazil (Fr. Larry). While they were not charged with contempt, it was clear she had little patience with the prospect that the jury would hear any of this “irrelevant” testimony.

30 years later, I don’t remember what I said on the stand that day. I do remember talking about my faith and belief that Jesus called me to a life of nonviolence and that I had gone over that fence “to pray for peace”. I expected to be cut-off by the Judge at any minute but my testimony was short and to the point. The judge’s instructions to the jury left no doubt in my mind that our conviction was a forgone conclusion. She instructed the jury to disregard everything the defendants had said since our “motivation” was not important – only our intent: did we intend to enter the property and did we have permission to do so? It was all so neat and antiseptic. No need to “confuse” the jurors with complicated notions such as International Law and indiscriminate weapons. Did they trespass? If so, find them guilty. They did their duty and 45 minutes later returned to the Courtroom with their six guilty verdicts, one for each of us. Judge Robinson thanked them and announced she would sentence us in several weeks after court officers had a chance to research our prior records and come up with their recommendations.

Because of our decision to refuse to give our Social Security numbers or other irrelevant information at the time of booking, neither Vince nor I were permitted any visits in the Potter County Jail for the three months we were incarcerated there. But that decision, coupled with the incompetence of federal bureaucrats who failed to find prior arrest records for Vince and me, even though they had our names, addresses, fingerprints, and photos, that led us to be sentenced as “first-time offenders” and only get 6 month sentences, half the maximum allowed. Kathy and Mary, who had previously been arrested at Rocky Flats, another Department of Energy facility in Colorado that made the triggers for nuclear weapons, got 9 months. Ladon and Fr. Larry both were given the maximum one-year in prison because of their prior acts of conscience that led to convictions.

Several more weeks after sentencing, we were transferred to the Federal Prison in El Reno, OK to finish our sentences in federal prison. Federal Prison guidelines called for us to be sent to low-security prisons close to our homes because we had been convicted of nonviolent offences with relatively short sentences. However, since the prison camps at Maxwell Air Base in Alabama and at Eglin Air Base in Florida both had nuclear weapons located there, the prison authorities decided to ship me to Texarkana, TX for the remained of my 6 months. When I arrived, the minimum-security camp was not yet opened so I was housed in the “big house” (a medium security, level 3 prison) for several weeks until the camp opened. I finally was able to get a visit from my wife, Christine, over the Memorial Day weekend, after she had a grueling 20+-hour bus ride to see me.

In early August, nearly 6 months later, I was given a new set of clothes, about $25 and a bus ticket to Americus, GA and released, just two months shy of my 31st birthday.

Reflection on the past

Before we were transferred to federal prison, we heard a rumor about a Pantex worker quitting his job for reasons of conscience. We also learned that the local Roman Catholic Bishop, Leroy Matthiesen, visited Larry in his Amarillo cell and then later called for all persons of conscience to quit their jobs at Pantex and started a transition fund for workers who quit for reasons of conscience.

If we had strategized about how to get religious leaders to denounce nuclear weapons or had concocted a scheme to get the Roman Catholic Bishop to make a public statement about the morality of Pantex, we wouldn’t have come up with what we did. In retrospect, I feel that God used the faithfulness of our witness to help move the conscience and courage of the Bishop. And while the Bishop’s statement caused a shock wave throughout the Amarillo community, in the long run I believe the witness had more of an affect on me than on others.

What I took from the Prayer Witness At Pantex was the conviction that when we choose to act on our faith rather than our fears, our faith increases. Clarence Jordan, co-founder of the Koinonia community used to say, “Faith is acting not in spite of the evidence but in scorn of the consequences” and “faith is betting your life on the unseen realities”. When we chose to place our lives into the hands of God’s grace over against the fear of the weapons of the Pantex security guards, it was a statement of faith and hope rather than a resignation to despair in the presence of “The Bomb”.

The time in jail and prison was grace-filled. There were moments when I was scared; times when I was “concerned”; a lot of the time was filled with boredom, loud noises, and way too much cigarette smoke from fellow inmates. I learned to sleep with a towel over my eyes since the 100-watt light bulb in our 6-person, 8’ x 14’ cell was on 24/7. I read through my Bible twice. Wrote scores of letters, one every day to my wife while in the county jail, less frequently when I hit the federal prison. Listened to the stories of my cellmates and grew to understand the powerlessness that an inmate experiences. Having survived it, I feel I am stronger for it. I had a vibrant, loving community praying and supporting me that goes a long way when one is locked up!

It gave me a new appreciation for what it can mean to be on the “receiving end” of the American Empire. Those nuclear weapons, protected by the barbed-wire-topped fences and the plant security guards, are metaphors for the length to which our nation is willing to go to “protect our way of life”. As such, they are idols to our god of National Security, Mars, the god of war, and Mammon, the god of greed. February 10, 1981 was a day to reject those idols, those false gods; the rest of my life is one of nonviolent resistance to them while at the same time an embracing the alternative reality my faith calls me to: what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom or Reign of God. I am thankful to have friends who continue on this journey with me.

When Being a Member of an Historic Peace Church is Not Enough

2011-01-10T21:49:00.003-06:00

When Being a Member of an Historic Peace Church is Not Enough by Steve Clemens. [Every Church A Peace Church Presentation – Jan 10, 2011]

At the age of 14, I was baptized into the Mennonite Church of my parents in SE Pennsylvania. I have come to treasure that Mennonite background although I also look at it critically. The Mennonites were part of a broader movement called Anabaptists – the generic name given to “re-baptizers” – including the Mennonites, Czech Brethern, Hutterites, and the Amish.

This movement split with Protestant reformers and the Roman Catholics in the early 1500s over the issue of baptism and membership in a “State Church” – saying that one must choose the faith as an adult and then be baptized – and being a “citizen” within the local form of government had nothing to do with one’s religious beliefs – although one’s religion had a lot to say about what one might do as a “citizen”. The nickname, Anabaptist, was a slur meaning “rebaptizers” – which was a capital offense because it was not only theological heresy but also political treason since one’s baptism as an infant was also one’s political identity – to reject it was tantamount to political betrayal.

The Anabaptists insisted that the Protestant Reformation movement should more closely to resemble that of the early church after Jesus. Some practiced a community of goods. Virtually all embraced an ethic of nonviolence – citing Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies and a rejection of the strategy of domination. It is sometimes called the Radical Reformation. They saw themselves as taking the concept of discipleship seriously. Nachfolge, the word in German which most of them spoke, meant “following after” – for them, discipleship meant following Jesus. Faithfulness to the way of Jesus is given priority over effectiveness.

Many of the early Anabaptists were martyred for their faith by both Protestant and Catholic leaders – depending where – in whose jurisdiction - they were caught. Many were drowned – a fitting punishment for those who sought “another baptism”. The expectation of persecution because of their faith and their refusal to take up arms in defense of the state led the Anabaptists to embrace their minority status. “Straight is the gate and narrow the way” was preached rather than the “broad path that leads to destruction”. Because of this mindset, whenever Mennonites were forced out or immigrated to another area or country, the first book, after the Bible, which was printed for Mennonite families was a thick tome titled The Martyr’s Mirror –replete with the many illustrations of Christian martyrs from the story in the book of Acts of the first deacon, Stephen, who was stoned to death as Saul looked on, to the stories of numerous Anabaptists drowned, burned at the stake, beheaded, or otherwise gruesomely killed during the 1500s and 1600s. Even though my ancestors came to Pennsylvania at the behest of Quaker founder William Penn, Martyr’s Mirror was the book published and distributed amongst them after the Bible shortly after my ancestors arrived from Holland in 1705. It was a book I frequently looked at as an adolescent and in my teenage years.

It is important to note that not all Anabaptists were nonviolent –Thomas Munster and the Munsterites –were caught up in apocalyptic visions and he and his followers insisted their role was to “Bring in the Kingdom now!” In doing so, they took up the sword – and were roundly denounced by fellow Anabaptists and were arrested or slaughtered by the Lutheran Princes. Today, many of the “Mennonite Brethren” living in the Fresno area of California are more staunchly anti-communist than pacifist; their migration out of Russia occurred after the Bolshevik Revolution and they had lost their valuable farmland after the socialist state came to power. (They no more reflect traditional “Mennonite” values than did President Nixon’s reflecting his “Quaker” roots.)

The Sunday School movement heavily influenced some Mennonites as well as the cultural debate raised by the Scopes/Monkey Trial. Mennonites in the US had become suspect during World War I since many continued to speak (and especially sing) in their tradition of “low German”. Because they wouldn’t fight in the Army and most refused to buy War Bonds, they were especially ostracized. Because most Mennonites were not “evangelical” – in the sense of “sharing their faith” and proselytizing, those influenced by the fundamentalist tide ended up marginalizing the distinctive witness of the minority faith (peace witness, distinctive dress, downplaying jewelry and musical instruments, …). They exchanged this for what I’d call the “mess of pottage” of embracing capitalism, American exceptionalism, and rigid fundamentalism stressing verbal infallibility of the Bible and “born again” verbiage. Some were seduced by “the American Dream”; having tired of being considered part of a minority movement, some longed to be considered relevant and powerful.

The traditional Mennonite position was one of “nonresistance”. This was often expressed in a lifestyle of withdrawal from the world – a privatizing of the ethic of refusal to “return evil for evil.” War, Peace and Nonresistance a book by Guy Hershberger was the popular text for Mennonites long before the publishing of The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder in 1972. Hershberger used the text of Jesus statement in the Sermon on the Mount to “resist not evil.” Some texts say, “resist not the evil one.” Taking this statement literally, Mennonites often refused to intervene in matters of conflict – leaving space for “divine intervention” if God so chose to act. Many Mennonites did not vote in elections nor would run for public office that was viewed as part of the “realm of the sword”. Academic scholarship and new forms of Biblical criticism and interpretation were not a high priority for many Mennonites until at least the 1950s since most remained on their farms and often their preachers were selected by lot, with little academic training.

In contrast, John Howard Yoder was the best-known Mennonite intellectual during the last half of the 20th Century and taught at both the Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana as well as at the University of Notre Dame. A student of Karl Barth, fluent in at least 4-6 languages, Yoder set out to reevaluate the traditional Mennonite view of the relationship of the Christian to “the State”. An ethicist, Yoder maintained that “nonretaliation” would be a better translation of Jesus’ ethic rather than “nonresistance” since there is no imperative of passivity or pointless suffering in the text. Responding in kind is what Jesus rejects – don’t respond to evil with evil rather than “nonresistance”.

John Howard Yoder died suddenly in 1997 – but not before publishing numerous books and articles on Christian nonviolence and ethics. He was often scorned by critics who claimed that his ethic of “faithfulness” to Jesus call to nonviolence was outdated and “ineffectual”. This criticism was one of the main strong disagreements Yoder had with Reinhold Niebuhr who jettisoned his pacifism to embrace the “necessity” of World War II. In a nutshell, Niebuhr argued that Jesus’ ethic of turning the other cheek was just an “interim ethic” until the establishment of the Kingdom of God that Jesus mistakenly believed was imminent. Since Jesus and Paul were “wrong” about the timing of the Kingdom, Christians had to take on a position of “responsibility” and “effectiveness” which included wielding the “sword” according to Niebuhr. (Interestingly enough, Niebuhr is the theologian quoted by President Obama when he attempted to justify his Nobel Peace Prize in his speech in Oslo two years ago.)

Yoder claimed that although the Kingdom of God was not fully realized yet, it is the responsibility of the believers to live with those values now, as a sign of that ultimate reality. The follower of Jesus was called to be faithful to that ethic described in the Sermon on the Mount without an inordinate emphasis on determining what strategy was most “effective”. We are not responsible for making history turn out right, Yoder would claim – that is God’s responsibility. Our job was to be faithful.

Yoder’s position, clarified in his last book, edited and published posthumously by theologian friends from his manuscripts in 2009 under the title of The War of the Lamb points out: if God is sovereign, then what is faithful is ultimately more likely to be effective. Quoting Martin Luther King, “the arc of the universe is long but bends toward justice,” Yoder, echoing that sentiment writes, “Suffering love is not right because it “works” in any calculable short-run way (although it often does). It is right because it goes with the grain of the universe, and that is why in the long run nothing else will work.” [Yoder, The War of the Lamb. Pg. 8]. Yoder took seriously the early church confession that “Jesus is Lord” and argued that the church was called to follow the way Jesus lived and taught. There are Christians today who claim to “follow Jesus” but the Jesus they proclaim as part of their “prosperity Gospel” or as a projection of power bears little resemblance to the Jesus of Nazareth recorded in the Gospels. Following Jesus has to correspond to the Jesus of history, not just some fanciful projection of a triumphalist Lord that so categorizes the widely popular “Left Behind” book series.

While the notion of “historic peace churches” is a common phrase in some circles, it is important to note that it wasn’t until the 1930s and the rising threat of national mobilization for war that the Quakers (or Society of Friends), the Church of the Brethren, and the Mennonites, ever got together to discuss mutual concerns. This followed a tough period during World War I when 3 Hutterites were killed in prison for refusing to fight in the military. Other Mennonites and Quakers were threatened when they refused to buy war bonds. The Peace Churches met together to urge national recognition of the position of conscientious objection to war in relation to a military draft and also in support of their overseas service activities.

Even though all three denominations agree on conscientious refusal to fight in war, they often have little other in common with each other. Many Quakers feel more at home with non-church peace people than with Mennonites or Brethren who use language and styles of religious services which often leave Quakers uncomfortable. Some Brethren feel more at home with other Protestant mainstream congregations while other Brethren and many Mennonites identify more closely with evangelicals.

Mennonites, [Church of the] Brethren, and Quakers at least raised the default option of Conscientious objection and provided a structure for alternative service instead of military service (I-W work and MVS - Mennonite Voluntary Service). Even without an active draft since the military first went to a lottery system in 1970 and then moved to the voluntary “mercenary” military we have today, Mennonite young people were encouraged to spend a year or two in “VS”, voluntary service, before going to college –or after college – before taking on a job. Service to others continues to be a strong value embraced by Anabaptists today.

A significant number of young evangelicals in the late 1960s and 70s identified with the Anabaptist movement and its theology after reading Yoder’s classic The Politics of Jesus which reaffirmed their opposition to the Vietnam War. Jim Wallis and what became the Sojourners movement, The Other Side Magazine, and other young people labeled as “new left” or “Christian radicals” were often linked to the broader Anabaptist movement. In fact, they appeared to be more excited about the need for a church’s “peace witness” than many of those growing up in Mennonite circles who took it for granted.

The question for me was how to move from “nonresistance” to nonviolent resistance. Many of the Mennonites I knew while growing up were not actively engaged in social change and political activism – even when their nation was at war! Many Mennonites were known as “the quiet in the land” and were content to remain quiet if they could farm and worship freely and be exempt from military service. When one’s “personal stance” of conscientious objection doesn’t engage the larger issue of the politics and policies which lead to war, you are not a peacemaker but a passive-ist. To be a pacifist, one must address the causes of the conflict or problem. A baby is given a “pacifier” for only a temporary stop-gap. What is ultimately is needed is sleep, food, a clean diaper. The “pacifier” only buys a little time before one needs to address the underlying cause. A true pacifist must address the causes of war, not just refuse to fight – it requires action, not being “passive”.

On a more personal note, I was asked to share about the role that my religious faith plays in my activism so I’d like to turn to that.

My Dad rebelled against his Mennonite upbringing and went along with the Draft for WWII and joined the US Army. He never talked to my brothers or me about what he did in the war – he’d say, “it was nothing to be proud of.” He did things “before I became a Christian” – and told the Lord he would go to church and become a better Christian if he made it home alive. I knew he had seen some action because he had two German Mauser rifles and a sidearm- all with the Nazi swastika on them that he had brought back from the battlefield. I used one of the rifles to go deer hunting when I was 14 and distinctly remember his instructions: “Never ever point your gun at another person. Never ever point a gun at something you don’t want to kill. And eat what you kill.”

Having gone off to a college prep school for high school, I was enmeshed in academics and sports, totally oblivious to the dramatic escalation of the US War in Indochina. Since all my graduation class of 1968 was going to college, the war and the draft were not issues on our all-boys campus. This was clearly a reflection of the “privilege” I took for granted as an educated, well-to-do, white male.

When I first registered as a Conscientious Objector as a freshman in college that fall, it was, for me merely a private, personal stance. It had no bearing on how I voted and my opinion about the Vietnam War – except that I could not fight in it due to my personal convictions. Even though Wheaton College had compulsory ROTC, with many male students of the school becoming Second Lieutenants in the US Army upon graduation, I saw no immediate need to “force my views on others”.

It took a summer working with African-American street gang kids before I started to realize that my politics had to be congruent with my faith; if I was morally opposed to war, I had to also address the political ramifications – not just hide behind my personal exemption. It led me to my first demonstration at the Wheaton Draft Board – led by a Maryknoll Catholic priest. Often my protest life at Wheaton College was a lonely, individual affair – only a small group of students embraced Christian nonviolence. Especially after I graduated in 1971, I personally knew very few others in my home area of Southeastern Pennsylvania who shared my faith-based opposition to the war. So when I burned my draft card after one of President Nixon’s speeches, I sent the ashes to my Draft Board without my return address. Only in the months to follow did I have the courage to return their letters asking for up-to-date addresses with the note: “Return to Sender. Refused – Obscene materials”.

While doing my voluntary service, first in the rural Delta area of Mississippi and then in Washington, DC, I learned the importance of being part of a community of resistance and part of a counter-cultural group. I joined a Bible/book Study group led by Phil Berrigan and his partner Liz Macalister. It was Liz who mentored me and gave me the personal challenge to take the next step – that of risking arrest as part of a nonviolent act of resistance.

It has been 35 years since that first arrest at the White House in the spring of 1975, less than a month before the Saigon government fell to the North Vietnamese army. Some times I am fined; other times have meant jail or prison – sometimes for a week, once for 3 months, once for 6 months. I have found it more important to take risks for peace –whether one is arrested or not – rather than notching my belt for each arrest on my résumé.

Even after deciding you are willing to risk arrest and jail, the issue of risking jail time when my kids were young and in school had to be factored into the equation. Being married, living in an intentional community means that others need to be consulted in one’s decisions that would obviously effect others you have made commitments to. When you are in jail, you are not available for the many community duties that are now shared by others left behind.

The “bottom line” for me has become a verse found in Galatians 2:20. I had memorized it in Sunday School: “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” Dan Berrigan explains in his book, They Call Us Dead Men that the Christian symbol of baptism reflects that “dying to self”. If we are “crucified with Jesus”, then we no longer need to fear death. Our lives have been given back to us by God as GRACE. The life we now have, as believers, is a gift and can leave us unafraid of what the state authorities can threaten us with. They can threaten you with jail – but you have already voluntarily “died” in following Jesus. State power no longer has credible threats to level at those who have chosen to follow the crucified Lord.

I remember how important that concept has been for me, especially in 1981 when I scaled the 12’ high fence guarding the nuclear weapons assembly plant in Amarillo, TX and again, four years later when I sat on the train tracks in Montezuma, GA attempting to stop the “White Train” loaded with over 200 nuclear warheads headed for the submarine base on the Atlantic coast. Yes, I did write letters to friends and family in the event I was killed while witnessing for peace, but I can honestly say I was not fearful those days. When I traveled to Iraq in December 2002 as part of the Iraq Peace Team, the intent was to be there in solidarity with Iraqi civilians when our bombs were dropped there. We didn’t know when the war would start but we went with the intent to be present with the people. Others might view this as either heroic or naïve or stupid. I saw it as a way to be a disciple, to follow the Jesus, the Prince of Peace, I claim as the one who most clearly reveals to me the nature of God, our true creator and parent.

Once one has experienced a different reality, it is hard to “unlearn” it. You can live in denial but you won’t have a sense of inner peace unless you can act on your knowledge in light of your conscience. Looking back on the past 40+ years of peace activism, virtually all the mentors for me in this journey have been people motivated primarily by their deep, personal faith. For me, it is virtually impossible to separate out my faith from my “politics”, my theology from my “protesting”. Nonviolence, for me, is an essential element of Jesus’ life and teaching so that it is a nonnegotiable aspect of my Christian faith. But it is also my understanding that it is not exclusively “Christian”. Jesus reveals to us that this is the nature of God so other religious faith expressions are not a threat but rather enable a broader perspective for all of us.

It is not enough to adopt a “purist” position – I belong to a historic Peace Church; I won’t fight in your wars. If people are being killed in war, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to the victims who is doing the killing on behalf of your own nation. Just because we have a mercenary army today in the absence of a military draft does not excuse us from responsibility for what is done “in our name”. Being a peacemaker is about more than just what one won’t do; there must be a positive edge, a saying “Yes” as well as “No”.

Mennonites and Quakers have enjoyed an enviable reputation in Foreign Service circles because they have often refused to take sides in political conflicts when both sides are using violence to advance their cause. We have to model a “third way”, a way that doesn’t increase the spiral of violence. Many Mennonites have been referred to historically as “the quiet in the land” primarily because they’ve often kept to themselves and were hard workers, productive farmers. Until the mid-20th century, many Mennonites chose to not exercise the right to vote in either local or national elections, often seeing the partisan political sphere as contaminated by the system of domination and “lording it over others”. Especially when it came to Presidential elections, some Mennonites asked the question why they, as pacifists, should vote for a person who, after elected, would serve as “Commander-in-Chief”.

The clear advantage of being from one of the Historic Peace Churches is that one shares with others a clear understanding of the nonviolence of Jesus and the value of a God of peace. It is then up to all of us to put our beliefs into practice – active peacemaking – rather than a passive resignation waiting for a future reality. It is a reality we are called to begin to live into now, trusting in the grace of God, believing that the cosmos, God’s creation, the “arc of the universe” is long –“but it bends or unfolds for justice”.

My Application for Conscientious Objector status during the Vietnam War in 1968

2010-12-20T17:55:00.000-06:00

On Conscientious Objection by Stephen D. Clemens. November 1968

[In October 1968, at age 18, I was required to register for the Military Draft under the provisions of the Selective Service Act. I chose to register as a conscientious objector, Classification I-O, and submitted these answers in response to the 4 questions from my Draft Board in Norristown, PA as required.]

1. It is my belief that participation in war of any sort or in any form is wrong, and I am thereby opposed to service in an organization (the Armed Forces) which is actively engaged in such activity. I believe that it is wrong to kill, and this is the basic goal of the Armed Forces in defeating an enemy. I believe there is one God, a Supreme Being, and it is his right alone to decide who should or should not continue living. If I am fighting as a soldier and kill a man, I am essentially playing god, because I have decided that I should live while my enemy must die. Who am I to judge that I deserve to live; yet he doesn’t?

My religious training and beliefs have led me to believe that I am to love my enemy, and I feel that taking up arms against someone is contrary to this. Although the ultimate goal or purpose of war may be honorable, such as the purpose of peace or freedom from tyrannical rule, I believe the goal may be reached through other means than the taking of other men’s lives. In the instance of war, I do not believe that “the end justifies the means.”

I believe that by participating in any way, shape, or form in the Armed Forces, not only am I condoning, but I am actually helping something with which I am religiously opposed. I am commanded, I believe, by God in Exodus 20:13, that I must not kill and therefore participation in war is morally and religiously wrong for me. In the situation of war, one is obviously subjected to the emotions of anger and hate when je sees his buddies killed before his eyes, or after he has been forced to crawl through swamps, trenches, not knowing when he will be killed or have to kill to protect his life. I believe that [the Apostle] John was correct when he claimed that hatred of the other man (in this case the enemy) is essentially the same as murder (I John 4:15), when one realizes that although only one may be a physical act, both are morally alike. The Bible claims that “man only looks on the outward appearance” (murder as a physical act) “while God looks on the heart” (hate as a state of mind), found in I Samuel 16:7.

I believe we are to be “our brother’s keeper” (Genesis 4:9-10). This does not mean that we are “our brother’s keeper” for just our allies but also for our enemies. In taking their lives, this concept is violated. I receive this concept through the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). The Good Samaritan was praised because he helped his enemy, not because he took his life or ignored him.

I do not believe in the use of force for revenge or retaliation, which is a purpose of the Armed Forces. I put my trust in God and in the Bible, which I believe is God’s word to men. It claims, “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Jesus Christ commands us to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:9), a direct contrast to the idea of war. Christ instructs us to “not return evil with evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17) – not armed force. We are commanded to pray for, comfort, and feed our enemies, not destroy them.

We are instructed to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Surely we don’t wish to be killed. Maybe if we take the initiative and love our enemies instead of warring with them, peace might finally be established. It is man’s natural instinct to resist force, but “love conquereth all things.”

I base much of my belief on the exemplary life of Jesus Christ. One relevant example can be seen in Christ’s actions on the night before he was crucified. His enemies came to capture him and one of the disciples, Peter, drew his sword and lopped off the ear of one of the guards. Christ could have helped in the use of force against force but he didn’t. He not only told Peter to put away his weapon of force, but even went to the extent of showing love to his enemy in that he healed the man!

The Bible instructs: “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19). In the verse following the former, He also instructs us to feed and give drink to our enemies, not to heap vengeance on them. The prophecy of “beating swords into ploughshares” (Micah 4:3) shows that our efforts should be turned toward a constructive goal (plowing to support life, rather than using the sword to take away life). Christ claimed, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). The Bible instructs to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). God has said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another” (I John 1:5).

2. I was born and raised in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and as early as I can recall, I attended Calvary Mennonite Church in Souderton. I was dedicated to God by my parents in March 1951 in that church, and have attended there regularly prior to my sophomore year in high school. Since that time I’ve been away at prep school on Long Island and now I’m attending a religiously based college in Wheaton, Illinois.

It was from my parents, my father being a deacon in the church, and from the church itself along with personal investigation into the Bible, that I have arrived at my beliefs. I’ve attended Sunday school, church, youth fellowship, Sunday evening services, and Wednesday prayer meetings ever since I was a small child. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I have been taught that what I believe should not be so much how my church or parents believe, but how I feel God is causing me to believe through the personal relationship which I have established with his Son, Jesus Christ; and through reading the Bible, I found in the majority of cases that I totally agree and believe in what my church and my parents believe in. However, this is from my personal investigation rather than being molded into believing and never questioning that which my parents and the church as a whole believe.

I was baptized and accepted as a member into the Calvary Mennonite Church at age 14. Most of my religious training I received through Sunday School, vacation Bible school, discussion of topics with my parents who supported their beliefs with the Bible, and trough hearing scripturally based messages.

Through daily reading of my Bible, I have my beliefs affirmed so that presently I know that God wants me to serve in some peaceful program, rather than being connected in any way with war and killing. I mentioned in the above paragraph that I feel this is an individual decision concerning one’s beliefs and therefore, I feel my decision must be a personal one. I have no right to condemn others who do not believe the same as I do.

Most of the articles, books, and related material which I have taken in probably do more to affirm my already established belief and strengthen it rather than “instructing” me as such. Most of the influence of such works merely strengthen my conscience toward the subject of nonresistance and opposition to war. I have read several articles in magazines such as Christianity Today and Christian Life on conscientious objection to war. Another work which struck me as a relevant commentary on this idea was Hemmingway’s masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms. Also reading books aimed with another point of view in mind, or at least on the surface, such as The Red Badge of Courage, has convinced me that I thoroughly believe in the position which I am trying to explain.

Many people have caused me to think about my position; many disagree with the viewpoint for themselves but see how it is valid for me. A lot of times I, or someone, will bring up the question of military service in “bull sessions.” Some in the discussions help build up my belief either by saying things which I do believe but never have expressed in their way, or by opposing my beliefs, making me analyze my stand in view of their new ideas.

A special speaker here at college on Veteran’s Day unconsciously helped me see the aspect of me being “my brother’s keeper” in relation to war – in this case a specific war – Vietnam. Colonel Robinson, the speaker, emphasized that the people in South Vietnam are our “brothers”, so we must protect them by helping them militarily. But this point caused me to consider the fact of the enemy too. Just because they live under a different political structure and have a different religion, does that mean they are not are “brothers” too?

I have also talked to several people who have been classified I-O because of similar beliefs and we discussed our position. I have talked to two of my friends from my church, and also two or three friends here at college who are conscientious objectors. These talks have helped to affirm my belief and clarify it in some areas where I didn’t know how to articulate my feelings, while some of the others could understand and verbalize my beliefs.

Another encounter which points me to the stand of conscientious objection to service in the Armed Forces is my present experience in ROTC here at Wheaton. ROTC is mandatory the first two years. In there, I find myself thoroughly disgusted with the pervasive emphasis on killing and bloodshed. I strongly object to the fact that the basic “mission” of the Rifle Infantry is to seek out and “destroy (kill) or capture the enemy.” I all good conscience, I could not support such a mission.

Probably the source which I have used the most to arrive at my position is the Bible. I find that Christ preached a message of love and peace – not destruction and war. Not only have I received ideas from God (the Bible), but also through the songs of contemporary men. Donovan in his song, “Universal Soldier”, proposes that without the soldiers “there is no War. He decides who lives and dies.” I think that decision must rest with God, not the “universal soldier”. Eric Burton informs the listener in “Sky Pilot” that just the “sky pilot praying” won’t “stop the bleeding or ease the hate.” Bob Dylan also reminds us of the serious crimes of war in “Masters of War.” He goes on and adds that the soldier coming back from battle “remembers the words, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

3. According to my beliefs, I want no connection whatsoever with the Armed Forces because by being associated with them, I would be condoning something against my conscience. I have nothing against helping those injured or sick, but I could not do so within the confines of an organization with whose mission I am at odds.

I feel that it is my duty and patriotic privilege to serve my country in a program where I know I would be doing good rather than in the Armed Services as a non-combatant where my conscience would not permit me to serve. I am anxious to serve in a capacity similar to the Peace Corps, or work in inner-city problems. I hope to major in sociology, and I feel I could do a positive good serving my country in such a manner.

I have received information and am very interested in an organization called “Christian Service Corps,” which is similar to the Peace Corps but is not supported through the Federal Government, and whose aim, along with loving people by helping them with physical and social problems, is to help people fulfill a basic need of man, a spiritual one. In such a program I feel I can spread goodwill for the United States and also do something I know to be worthwhile.

I am not afraid to die – here, in Vietnam, or elsewhere – but when I do die, I want to die doing something which I consider to be worthwhile and morally acceptable to me. Serving as a medic I would have to face a dilemma which to me presents two distasteful choices. If while serving as a non-combatant, the base would be overrun, I would have a choice of taking up arms or not. If I take up arms and kill, I know it is wrong for me, and if I stand by and refuse to interfere while helpless patients are slaughtered, I feel I am guilty there. My only solution is to avoid such a situation, if possible, by completely cutting myself off from the Armed Forces.

4. Although I have never formally presented the views stated herein, I have discussed them in detail with several individuals. I have discussed my views with my professor of Military Science of the ROTC department. I have discussed them with my [academic] advisor and his assistant here at Wheaton [College] also. In my speech class we have briefly exchanged views. And numerous times I have been glad to explain my views to them.

I feel (as expressed in #2) that the decision of one’s military service should be on an individual basis, and I feel that I have no responsibility to persuade others to adopt this opinion against their will. This is why I have never formally presented my views on war or service in the Armed Forces. However, if someone is not sure of their position, I will explain my position to him so that he may have a clearer idea of what stands he is deciding on. It is up to the individual’s conscience in deciding this matter, and I believe it should be settled with the individual and God alone.

Learning from Cuba, Part 2

2010-12-09T10:25:00.007-06:00

What Has Become of the Revolution? By Steve Clemens. December 3, 2010

My friend Colin really liked an oil painting of Che Guevara that he saw in a little shop in the “Old Havana” part of the city. Che was one of the intellectual and military leaders of the revolution to overthrow the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba in the late 1950s. After his death in 1967 in Bolivia where he was trying to organize another revolution against another US-supported dictator, (both Batista and Hugo Banzer were trained at the US Army School of the Americas), he was accorded almost mythological status throughout Latin America but especially Cuba. Some say Che was more useful as a martyr for the movement than when he was alive. Anyway, today his image is a marketable commodity. His face adorns T-shirts, hats, postcards, coins, and posters.

There is no little irony in having two Americans barter with two Cubans over the cost of two paintings of Che. Colin had spotted another painting – larger and more colorful – a more impressionistic image with a hint of a twinkle in Che’s eyes. The artist and his grandfather wouldn’t budge off the $40 CUC price for it but were willing to drop from $20 to $15 for the smaller canvas; if we bought both, we could get them for $50.

As a seminary student, Colin’s budget was tighter than mine so I told him I’d pay $20 for the smaller so he could get the larger one for the $30 he could afford. A deal was struck and the artist and his family should be able to get some extra mileage out of the sale amounting to about $55. US. Viva la revolution – everyone seeks to profit off Che but does anyone still share the reasons for the revolution? As one oppressive system replaces the other, when will a real human liberation movement succeed?

Dependency on Tips

It was suggested to us by our government-hired tour leader that we tip our bus driver $10 CUC for his 4 partial days with us. Some of us suspected that Maggie was hoping for an even bigger “score” when she got her tip from us at the end of our stay. One delegation member observed that at $10 CUC each, given that our group was 18 persons strong, the $180 CUC would be well in excess of a year’s salary for most Cuban residents. Certainly many of us could afford it but is tipping like that a way to move forward or to create a new dependency? With most things being government-run and government-owned, I feel better paying our CUC pesos to the local Episcopalians for meals and staying in the church dorm rooms in Itabo and at the Cathedral.

First the Crowing of the Cock and Then the Clop, Clop, Clop.

[The small town of Itabo is almost 4 hours east of Havana. It is the town where Griselda Delgado served as priest for the small Episcopal Church of the Saint Virgin Mary for the past 20 years. Our visit was brief, just less than 24 hours but it gave us a taste of the community and a hearty appetite to return for more.]

The roosters in Itabo must have started, timidly at first, about 2 AM and then by 4 AM it wasn’t just those few extraverts, it must have been all their cousins as well. By 6 AM they were all in the chorus and I dragged myself out of bed realizing no more sleep was forthcoming. Soon the clopping of horse hooves on the pavement of the street in front of the Iglesia Episcopal de Santa Maria Virgen joined the morning’s music. We slept in the church’s dorm located behind the sanctuary and had a bracing cold water shower to bring me to full consciousness. By 7 AM, the hens and other chickens began clucking, a sound more pleasant than the raucous rooster screeches. I’m surprised the dogs in the neighborhood didn’t join in the singing – or the overly friendly church cat that had sidled up to us at supper.

The wonderful, friendly hospitality makes it quite evident that the parishioners treasure our visit. As a few of us sat around visiting and trying to understand one another (fortunately 4 of the 7 of us on this extended stay portion of our Cuba trip are somewhat proficient in Spanish), someone raises her glass filled with a fruit cocktail and offers a toast in Spanish. Another one follows and then another. So I add (in English) my toast: “End the embargo, ahora!” Everyone smiles and says, “Si, yes!”

This parish had “irregular” services for a period of 20 years and then no priest at all for another 4 years; we were told the church building itself was infested with bats, the roof leaked, and the place was mostly in disrepair when a new priest, a recent graduate from a Protestant seminary in Matanzas, Griselda Delgado, arrived in 1988. After replacing the roof, adding some additional buildings and rooms, and building a wall to enclose the back of the property to protect what is now a verdant garden with fruit trees and a variety of vegetables and herbs, the makeover is simply amazing. But this makeover was not the work of that one priest, now the newly consecrated Episcopal Bishop of Cuba, but of a partnership with several Episcopalian parishes in the US and tremendous work from the Itabo parishioners.

“Sy”, the hospitality coordinator of the Cathedral in Havana and Carlos, our bus driver, accompanied us on the four hour drive east from Havana, skirting the northern coast of Cuba for about half of the trip along with the Bishop and her husband. [What a wonderful sound to hear “and her husband” or “and her partner” added to any phrase describing church leadership today!] We stopped briefly at a rest area at the border between the provinces of Habana and Matanzas, one of the highest spots in Cuba for a wonderful look around. We also stopped briefly en route so the Bishop and her husband could see their grandchildren in two towns we were driving through. The second town/city was Cardenas, hometown of Elian Gonzales, the young boy taken to the US in the 1990’s by one parent and then returned to Cuba after a prolonged political storm of controversy in the US.

Now is the time for those storm clouds to lift. We need to restore diplomatic relations with our neighbors to the south and allow for a free exchange of ideas and goods, carefully – so the giant empire to the north doesn’t overwhelm but rather find ways to learn how to survive –and thrive- in a post-oil world. We have much to learn if we can humble ourselves and act as partners rather than as patrons and beneficiaries.

Learning from Cuba: Observations and Reflections of My Pilgrimage

2010-12-08T20:19:00.013-06:00

Learning from Cuba: Observations and Reflections of My Pilgrimage by Steve Clemens. December 2010

[From November 27-December 4, 2010 I traveled (legally!) to Cuba as part of a 18 member delegation from St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis. We went to celebrate the installation of Griselda Delgado as the new Episcopalian Bishop of Cuba. As one of two non-Episcopalians on the trip, I felt thoroughly included and welcomed by both my fellow travelers and those we met in Cuba.]

Two weeks before leaving to fly to Havana, many of those traveling together met at the Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis to talk about plans for the trip. As part of that gathering, we received our plane tickets and a schedule of our itinerary. Included in that was an essay adapted from material from Paul Strickland entitled “Why Do Pilgrimage?” It encouraged us to travel not as tourists but rather as pilgrims on a transformative journey. Rather than go as observers, we were urged to “become pilgrims who come with searching hearts”.

Our trip gave me much “grist for the mill”, things to think about and ponder for a while. It is not “sound bite”-ready, nor is it likely to be. Our nation has a complicated (and mostly shameful) history with our island neighbor and decisions made by both governments over the years have squandered many opportunities for a healthy reconciliation. The experience was sobering yet celebratory. We have much to share with each other: it should not be a one-way street modeling the colonial past or the domination of empire present.

The Cuban experience since the collapse of the USSR in 1989 has left the island with some harsh economic realities but a resilient population. Like the Iraqis I met in Baghdad three months before our present war, the people I met who were ostensibly my “enemy” greeted me with warm hospitality, curiosity, and much enthusiasm. Both peoples have lived under repressive regimes yet still enjoyed benefits many within our dominant empire lack: access to free healthcare and education for all. Both societies, suffering under economic sanctions imposed by or at the bequest of our government, lacked affordable consumer goods that many of us take for granted. The assumption being that when the people hurt enough, they will rise up and overthrow their governments. It didn’t work in the 13 years before our invasion in Iraq; it has been tried for more than 50 years in Cuba, so far without “success”.

Here are a few stories I wrote during my first few days in country; hopefully more will come as I find time to process the events but I wanted to share some initial impressions soon after returning.

The “Old Man” and the Sea

There is a statute at the end of The Prado, a walkway umbrellaed with trees overhead that proceeds from near the Capitol building in Havana to the wall protecting the city from the ocean to the north. At the end of the walkway, looking out over the expanse of water ahead is a sculpture of marble and bronze. From a distance I assumed it referenced Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea but the front it tells me that it is dedicated to a poet/martyr, J.C. Zenea, and dated in 1871 while Cuba remained under colonial rule of Spain. Since Hemingway did much of his writing at a hotel nearby, maybe he was referencing this statute. As I cross the Malecon, the street parallel to the sea wall, I enter the area of the remains of one of the two forts that attempted to protect the entrance to Havana Bay and the harbors within.

After listening to a lone bagpipe player greeting the Sunday morning by playing tunes over the Florida Straits toward Key West, and watching a fisherman cast his line into the sea, a dark-skinned Afro-Cuban man greets me as I take photographs of the forts and surrounding vistas. He inquires, “Que pais?” asking what country am I from. (Many Cubans I encountered on the streets asked me if I were from Spain or Chile because they don’t expect to encounter many Americans because of our country’s travel restrictions.) When I respond that I am from the U.S., he asks what state and proceeds to tell me in English that is better than my Spanish that he once visited Des Moines.

He asked me to sit down with him on a nearby bench by the waterfront sea wall and tells me a slice of his life: he is 58 and helps take care of his 90 year-old father – the only family he has left. He works from 7 PM to 7 AM as a security guard at a local school – paid 2 Cuban pesos (worth about $0.15 U.S.) to guard the computers and other school equipment.

I could see the sadness in his eyes when I told him I was 60 and my own father was 89 – we were almost the same – but he said, “look at my wrinkled face compared to your smooth, young-looking face”. He did appear to be 10 years older than me. Life here is hard.

When I commiserated and denounced my own country’s embargo, he responded, “No, it is also the embargo that my own government sets up”. (Cuba’s government has strict limits on TV stations available and allows no access to the internet other than email. Certain other goods aren’t allowed in and prices are prohibitively expensive for many consumer goods, all blamed on the US embargo.) He shook his head and observed, “I don’t know if I’ll live to see the day of change here.” When I asked who would succeed the aging Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, when they die, he told me “nobody knows”. They’ve hung on to power without a clear succession plan that the people support.

What hath the revolution wrought? Many Americans rightly praise the Cuban ingenuity of keeping 1950s era automobiles running but much of “Habana” is crumbling from the lack of care for the infrastructure. Although not naming Fidel and Raul, this Cuban man felt the government was hoarding the resources for themselves and stifling other initiatives.

The high blood pressure he suffers from greatly restricts his diet and although he tells me he shouldn’t eat bread and pasta, he says he has only had bread and coffee for breakfast (it being the end of the month and his food ration long used up) and “soon it will be lunchtime”. It felt like it with the hot sun beating down on us although when I looked at my watch it was only 9:30.

Where is the investment in solar collectors? Clearly this “managed economy” has failed; is the rapacious capitalism I so often deplore and denounce the answer here?

He doesn’t ask but I hand this brother a $10. CUC note (worth about $11-12. US) and tell him to get some breakfast and to share it with his father. He had told me he was too old and not inclined to “hold a gun up to someone’s head” to get money to survive. “Besides, that’s not how I treat people”. But he is waiting, hoping that his countrymen and women will rise up and demand a government that can help lift them out of the grinding, urban poverty.

Returning from my walk, a teenage boy approaches me in the area in front of the Museum of the Revolution with his cart, broom, and two waste receptacles. He tells me his job is to clean up the park/walkway in front of the museum for which he is paid one Cuban peso a month. He is the only son of his mother with whom he lives. He asks if I can give him some money for food. I hand his a $3. CUC note and continue my walk.

Tuna For My Baby

I went into the small tienda/store looking to buy some bottled water in larger containers than our hotel carried. After spotting some (everything being behind the counter) and noticing a price sticker of $.70 CUC for the 2 liter bottle, I was approached by a 20-something Cuban young woman who asks me to buy her an ice cream treat from the locked freezer in front of me. After determining the price to be $1.55 CUC, I noticed that I had to get in line and wait my turn to make a purchase.

Waiting for the 4-5 customers ahead of me, my new “friend” points to a can of condensed milk in the display case and then pats her protruding belly and says, “You buy this for my baby”. I make no answer of committal and when the cashier approaches us for our turn to buy, she quickly points to the condensed milk and asks for 3 cans and then points to a huge can of tuna fish and asks the clerk for that. I quickly told her “no” but the clerk removed the price sticker and took one of the cans of milk over to her register and began ringing it up. I had no time to tell her I just wanted to purchase the bottled water.

When the clerk tells me the total price (which I didn’t understand with my limited Spanish), I told her I wanted “dos aguas grande” and she added that to the bill. She handed me her calculator that read “$13.75” so I fortunately had a $20. CUC note with which to pay. As I got my change, an older woman carrying a one-year-old child behind me taps me on the shoulder asking for “leche por mi hijo” – milk for my son – but my shopping adventure was finished for now. I asked for a plastic bag to carry my water, the expectant mother having already disappeared with her milk and tuna, leaving me with the thought that I hoped doctors’ warnings about too much tuna during pregnancy (due to mercury contamination) was less risky than the lack of protein.

An Encounter of a Different Kind

Colin, a third-year student at the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria, VA asked if he could accompany me on another foray into central Havana, the area near our hotel, a former hotel/casino during the mafia-run days of Cuba under Batista before the success of the revolution was assured with Batista’s fleeing on New Years Day of 1959. I had told him of my earlier walk down The Prado to the sea wall and back while he was studying prior to his ordination exam that will occur later this spring. We walked near the Capitol building and took photos of the 1950s era cars and then continued down a narrow alley/street that was now bustling with people. Right away a couple with their school-aged son approached us asking where we were from, probably overhearing our conversation in English. The father added that he had visited New Jersey. Colin tells him “Washington, DC” and the man recognizes that but looks puzzled when I say Minnesota. Mentioning Minneapolis brings no more recognition but when I add “close to Chicago”, he lights up in recognition.

He tells us “Welcome to Cuba. This is a special festival day – Do you like beisbol?” [Our tour guide on the bus ride from the airport the day before had told us the baseball season officially opened on Sunday as we drove by the stadium for the Havana team.] He wants to tells us about it and shepherds us into a small bar down the alley where only the bar maid is present and tells us to have a seat. He asks Colin in Spanish if we can get some “refreshments” and Colin agrees. The barmaid quickly making 5 drinks and I quickly stop her before she adds rum into my drink.

So Colin’s and our new friend’s mojitos have rum, the other 3 do not. They want to talk to us about our impressions of Cuba, telling us that everything is good for them here – except they don’t get enough food. They blame the US embargo as the source of their troubles unlike my first encounter by the sea where the Cuban “government” was the main culprit.

We got the bill for our “education” – it was $25 CUC (about $30. US). I figure it is the government’s way to gain income since it owns virtually all the restaurants, stores, and bars in the nation. Do “tips” go to the wait staff or does the government take those as well? I paid the bill and started to leave. Although this man told us he worked at the nearby government-run hospital as a radiologist and his wife worked as a schoolteacher, he asked Colin to give him $20. CUC “for food”. Colin was rather surprised and came up with $10. so he turns to me to ask for more. I decline and we both left the bar asking ourselves if all encounters we will have with the locals will be on this basis. I try to avoid eye contact as we leave the area and return to the now-bustling Prado where artists are displaying their wares, hoping for a sale.

Our hotel is nearby and we return to our rooms to change clothes and get ready for the installation ceremony of the new bishop- not knowing then that it would run 3 hours in the very crowded Cathedral – but joyous nevertheless.

The Private-Public Conundrum

Our Cuban guide took us to a “private” family-owned restaurant for our supper on Monday evening. Located on the second floor of a building which was ostensibly their residence, I noticed the fancy woodwork design as we climbed the stairs. Named “La Gardenita” or Little Farmer, the décor of this restaurant and ambiance were noticeably different and the wait staff extremely welcoming and friendly in their cowboy hats and plunging necklines. The menu was impressive and the food presentation and quality was excellent.

Unlike the government-owned and run restaurants, this “palador” was an outgrowth of some limited private enterprise now allowed by the government since the Soviet largess dried up after the collapse of many communist economies and governments in 1989. I am a strong supporter of government programs for education, healthcare, social security, and a safety net for the poor – all of which Cuba seems to do better than the US – but it appears to me that there seems to allow little incentive in their economy for this kind of initiative. It was refreshing but it also caused me to wonder how far to let it progress lest it fester into the incredible gaps between the rich and the poor so evident in the US today. Tonight was a powerful argument in favor of a mixed economy that also allows room for private initiative and resourcefulness.

Jaded as we Americans often are, some of us wondered if “Maggie” our tour guide got a kickback from the restaurant for bringing in 18 customers. We are told “there is very little corruption here in Cuba” but one must wonder about the temptation when government wages are so low and consumer goods are rare and expensive.

Meeting With the “Obispa”

There is no word in proper Spanish for a woman bishop of the church - the language being so traditionally linked to an exclusive male-dominated hierarchy which continues today in the Roman Catholic Church. (A practice, I suspect, which leads many would-be Catholics to become Episcopalians!) Some argue that newly installed Bishop Griselda should be referred to as La Obispo, using the feminine pronoun with the masculine noun. Doug and his Catholic priest friend Gilberto, from the St. Vincent DePaul Order in Mississippi who has been living in Havana for seven years, discussed this back and forth after one of members of Gilberto's parish, a copy editor said it is incorrect. Doug triumphantly pointing out to his friend the Order of Worship program passed out at the service with the title: La Obispa. As old prejudices slowly die (too slowly for some of us), so too must the language change.

I could see the surprise on the taxi driver’s face on the return ride from the Cathedral as Susan explained to him where we had been (installing a woman bishop in the church!) – and then told him that she, too, was a priest – “sacerdote” – and her bishop (this time a male, Brian Prior, Bishop of Minnesota) was seated in the taxi directly behind her! The driver seemed to accept this in stride; after all, being under a secular and, some might say, an anti-religious government since 1959 has already changed many of the attitudes of younger generations. (It is said that more than 70% of today’s Cuban population has only known the government under “the revolution”, having been born after January 1, 1959.)

We met in the Bishop’s residence next to the Cathedral two days after her installation for two hours. With the retired Suffragan Bishop, Ulysses, translating, Bishop Griselda talked about her desire to help her parishes to become self-sustaining. She wants her parishioners to come up with the plans for what they would like to do (agriculture/gardens, cattle or chickens, crafts, …) and then she will work to train the priests to help the congregations implement that dream.

The Minnesotan Episcopalians want to “walk alongside” their Cubano sisters and brothers, assisting where needed. Do they need computers? If so, is there IT help when needed when the computer laptop crashes? Is there enough infrastructure in the far away eastern end of the island for good internet/broadband service? (We learned later that the government doesn’t allow Cubans to surf the net, just get email – and often without any attachments.)

The bishop explains one of her priorities is getting money to pay for transporting priests and key laypersons to a central gathering place to learn from each other. Santiago de Cuba, a parish on the eastern end of the island is a 14-hour bus ride from the capital city although only a one-hour plane ride which costs considerably more.
Should the folks at St. Mark’s in Minneapolis try to raise the $8-15,000 CUCs it would take to buy a car for the bishop to use – if they could find one in Cuba for a fair price? Many of the newer cars on the street are made in China, Korea, or Europe. Most of the buses in Havana are made in China we have been told.

If only there was the political will and courage in the US to lift the damn embargo! The Cuban people we meet are warm and hospitable – they are not our adversaries. Why can’t the political elites left the people enjoy the ability to share with each other across the boundaries of nation and language? This is clearly a peacemaking and justice issue to add to an already long list that our leaders must confront – and soon!

"Shared Word" to Community of St. Martin for Nov. 14

2010-11-14T16:14:00.003-06:00

Shared Word for CSM on Vow of Nonviolence Sunday, Nov. 11, 2010 by Steve Clemens

The assigned lectionary readings for today:

Malachi 4
The Day of the LORD
1 "Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire," says the LORD Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. 3 Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things," says the LORD Almighty.
4 "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
5 "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."
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2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 (New International Version)
Warning Against Idleness
6In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. 7For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, 8nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. 9We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. 10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
11We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. 13And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.
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Luke 21:5-19 (New International Version)
Signs of the End of the Age
5Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, 6"As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down."
7"Teacher," they asked, "when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?"
8He replied: "Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and, 'The time is near.' Do not follow them. 9When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away."
10Then he said to them: "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.
12"But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. 13This will result in your being witnesses to them. 14But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. 15For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. 16You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. 17All men will hate you because of me. 18But not a hair of your head will perish. 19By standing firm you will gain life.
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Wow! It is no wonder some of us hesitate to do a “shared word” some Sundays if you have to deal with texts like these. Please note that in the lectionary readings assigned for today, verses 3 thru 6 of the Malachi readings are omitted. I wonder why? Is it because it makes those of us hearing it squirm too much because it is a text used by our own “mullahs”, our own “ayatollahs”? Like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Michelle Bachman?

These texts, all of them, would be gladly read and received by our conservative brothers and sisters, especially the Gospel text of “wars and rumors of wars” and the Thessalonians text of “he who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat.” I learned both texts when I grew up in my fundamentalist church. We awaited the “Day of the Lord” with the eagerness of the self-righteous, knowing that “we” were the “wheat”, and “they” were the “chaff” or stubble that will be burned up.

What do we do with these texts on a Sunday when we take a vow of nonviolence? Many churches in the US will use this Sunday to “honor our Veteran’s”, conveniently forgetting that November 11th was originally known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day rather than Veteran’s Day. The end of the “War to End All Wars” was renamed World War I after the failure to end all wars became readily apparent in 1939 when the German blitzkrieg rolled into Poland. Some military historians now refer “the Cold War” as World War III and claim George Bush’s “Global War on Terror” as World War IV.

We’ve certainly had “wars and rumors of war”. And we look for any excuse we can find to justify and bless them – and as Jack has so often eloquently reminded us – we find texts in the Scripture to bolster our “righteous cause”, our “crusade” against the infidel. It is easy for us to see the fallacies of other religions while readily glossing over our scriptural texts which allow our smug knowledge that “we are on the Lord’s side”.

We could take the time to talk about what Biblical scholars have to say about the problems with the text of the Epistle – whether Paul really wrote this or whether a pseudo-Paul or a monk copying the text added his own comments under the guise of it coming from the Apostle himself. As someone who “retired” from paid employment at age 52, I’m not sure I’d be the best person here to expound on this text on “he who doesn’t work doesn’t eat”!

For us to take a “Vow of Nonviolence”, we must also look at the “shadow” side of our scripture and those brothers and sisters who also claim the same religious tradition as us. In my own case, I can resonate with some of the apocalyptic words ascribed to Jesus when the Luke text says, “You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, … All [people] will hate you because of me.”

In my case, “betray” is too strong a word. Disown, discount, or distance from would be more accurate. When I chose the path of becoming a conscientious objector during a war that was fought “to protect our Christian missionaries from being killed by the godless Communists in Vietnam”, I was the one who signaled his own betrayal from my own upbringing. Later, when I went to prison for protesting the weapons “which protect us” and “allow for your ‘freedom to protest’”, it merely confirmed in the minds of many of my relatives that I was “misguided” at best, or “lost” and “on the road to destruction” at worst.

Never mind the eerie parallels with the text warning that those hearing Jesus’ words might land them in prison –or worse. The security guards who rushed at us screaming for the 6 of us to “Stop!” “Don’t go any farther!” had their automatic weapons pointed at us and we didn’t know if a nervous young man would fire at us while guarding the nation’s final assembly plant for all nuclear weapons that cold, snowy February morning 30 years ago in Amarillo, Texas.

After we were ordered at gunpoint to stop, we circled up, and Ladon Sheats pulled out his battered New Testament and read from Ephesians about taking “light into darkness” and we sang and prayed for the 45 minutes it took for the security guards to get inside the fences to arrest us. I think the Apostle Paul’s term of “fools for Christ” was probably more appropriate for us. After that encounter, it made sitting in prison for the following 6 months relatively easy. After all, “Three hots and a cot” as the jail lingo goes is better than getting shot.

I must confess that despite my familiarity with the Luke text, I did worry about what I would say when dragged into court. After all, it was only my second trial (I had veteran protester Elizabeth McAlister sitting aside me at my first trial). Court-assigned lawyers told us the week before the trial that the government had issued a “motion in liminie” to prevent us from testifying about “nuclear power, nuclear weapons, US foreign policy, or our religious beliefs”. Not knowing court procedure as intimately as I do today, I was unsure if the Judge would hold me in contempt of court if I tried to speak about what motivated me to climb that 12’ fence topped with barbed wire in an attempt to “pray” at a place that produced evil incarnate.

I really did trust the Spirit that day in Court because I had planned only to talk about why I did what I did. I nervously talked about scripture and my faith, waiting for the Judge or Prosecutor to cut me off at any minute. The Judge silenced two other fellow defendants because their testimony was “irrelevant” to our criminal trespass charge. Fr. Larry had tried to talk about his work with the poor children of the barrio in Recife, Brazil and Ladon tried to talk about growing up in west Texas and the sense of responsibility he assumed for being raised in that area – that same area where nuclear bombs are now assembled.

What was most helpful for me in getting to that place of taking risks for peace was an explanation of Galatians 2:20 that Daniel Berrigan wrote about in one of his many books. The text, as I had memorized it as a child (in the King James version) in Sunday School goes like this: “I have been crucified with Christ nevertheless I live, yet, not I, but Christ liveth in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Berrigan went on to claim that if we take seriously Paul’s idea behind our baptism as “dying to self” and then raised to new life in Christ, there is really nothing State authorities can do to us if we have already “volunteered” our lives to Christ. “They call us dead men,” he said, writing before many of us learned to use inclusive language. If we are already dead, we can’t be killed. What does it matter if you jail us if we are already “dead”? It is a power no State can understand or overcome.

In our Vow of Nonviolence there is a phrase about “persevering in nonviolence of tongue”; When we use “empire-speak”, when we use words like “collateral damage” we do violence against the innocent victims of war. Instead, we should say slaughter of the innocent. Language itself can become a measure of our nonviolence. A few examples:

• Our media talks about Drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – but their real names are Predator and Reaper (as in Grim Reaper). These “extra-judicial assassinations” are conducted with “Hellfire Missiles”. Unmanned assassination airplanes might be a better term for us to use. The term “drone” is too innocuous for what it does- it masks the reality.
• We have been told there is a “covert war” going on in Pakistan, primarily using these “drones”, CIA operatives, and “Special Forces”. Who is the war being hidden from? The people in Pakistan see the results of the bombs and missiles everyday. It is hid only from the American public. Is it really a “covert” war or just another “undeclared” one?
• We often us the term “Defense” Department rather than the more accurate old name: War Department.
• Our military and media constantly refers to “insurgents” when someone fights against US Occupation but uses the name “resistance fighter” when someone opposes a government “we” don’t support.

Tom Engelhardt, the editor of the online site TomDispatch.com says, “such language plays a role in normalizing the running of an empire”. So, when we take the Vow tonight, lets embrace a language which doesn’t do more violence to the victims of war.

I’d like to conclude with what maybe should be considered a “scripture” for the Sunday when we take our Vow of Nonviolence: Martin King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Just listen to a few excerpts of this powerful letter scribbled on a newspaper and smuggled out of the jail to respond to critical white “liberal” clergy who urged King to “wait” or “go slow”:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."

Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, … am here because I was invited here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. … just as the Apostle Paul … so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

… We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. … there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth…. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

… We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

… Over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate... who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom… Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. … injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

… I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom.

Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.

In conclusion, need I remind us, as we gather here tonight preparing to once again take the Vow of Nonviolence that we are still at war in Afghanistan and Iraq; we are actively bombing in Pakistan; and we periodically ratchet up the threats against Iran? And there is talk as well about intervening in Yemen. The military budget, when one includes the supplementary appropriations for the wars, add the costs for mental and physical care of the veterans, the “black budget” for covert operations, secret bases, and special renditions, and the “bribes” we pay for our all-volunteer (mercenary) army, the annual total exceeds $1 TRILLION. Our empire may be in sharp decline –if not outright collapse. Now, as much as ever, we need more peacemakers, people striving to “persevere in nonviolence”. I ask you to join with me in taking the Vow.

Continuing the Story: How the Dominant Story of the Rwanda Genocide Is Unraveling

2010-11-01T09:18:00.011-05:00

Continuing the Story: How the Dominant Story of the Rwanda Genocide Is Unraveling by Steve Clemens. October 31, 2010

Who is the real pariah: The Professor or the President of Rwanda?

Peter Erlinder, the William Mitchell Law School Professor and noted human rights attorney addressed a small but attentive group at the law school Thursday afternoon. While attempting to update people about his recent arrest and imprisonment in Rwanda late this spring, he also used the opportunity to describe his role in how the story history will record is changing dramatically in the past year.

He began with a startling announcement: two days before the top prosecutor of Rwanda said he will file charges against Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero of Hotel Rwanda. (In the movie Don Cheadle played the role). Erlinder said that the Kagame regime is now lashing out in all directions as a sign of desperation. It also arrested Victoire Ingabire, the Hutu opposition candidate who tried to run against Kagame for President, this month on similar charges of supporting a “terrorist group”. Certainly their relationships with Professor Erlinder didn’t help them, especially since he is the one who has “documented” that the well-known story of the Rwandan genocide is at best a half-truth if not an outright fabrication to hide the real perpetrators.

Of the four year civil war in Rwanda from 1990-1994 most of us, if we know anything at all, know only what the victors claim happened: the Hutus carefully planned to slaughter the Tutsis and only the intervention of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels ended it. Erlinder reminded us of Robert McNamara’s stark admission at the beginning of the documentary The Fog of War where he confesses in one of his last interviews before his death that if the US hadn’t won the war against Japan in 1945, “we would have been prosecuted for war crimes” [for the fire-bombing of Tokyo where 250,000 civilians were killed].

Up until now, there has been very little questioning of the predominate story of the Rwandan genocide. In the past 15 years, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has prosecuted only those who lost the war. “Either this was the only war in history where the crimes occurred on only one side or this Tribunal is like Nuremberg where there was only ‘victor’s justice’”, Erlinder stated. It was either a strange war or a strange tribunal, he quipped.

Fortunately, Erlinder continued, Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR, wrote her memoirs that were published in early 2009. In it, she describes her work for both the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals and claims that she had enough evidence to prosecute Paul Kagame, the leader of the RPF and now the President of Rwanda, for his central role in the assassination of the Presidents of both Burundi and Rwanda on April 6, 1994, the event everyone considers to be the triggering factor in the ensuing genocide/mass slaughter. (Erlinder is very careful, as a lawyer, to remind his audience that it is not technically genocide if there is no planning or conspiracy. No one doubts there were mass killings throughout the countryside but Erlinder points out it was predominately in the areas where all semblance of law and order had broken down due to the civil war initiated by the RPF. More recent evidence shows that much of the killing occurred in the areas controlled by the RPF.)

Del Ponte also claimed that she had evidence of RPF troops killing “tens of thousands” of civilians during this period but she was ordered not to prosecute those cases by US War Crimes Ambassador Pierre Prosper. When she told him, “I work for the UN, not the US”, Prosper replied according to the memoir, “That’s what you think”. She was replaced within 6 weeks at the insistence of the US by the UN Security Council. “If you want to keep a UN career, you learn from what happened to Carla Del Ponte,” Erlinder continued.

Del Ponte’s firing caused very little media attention even though Kagame called for her resignation because of the timing: all the world was focusing on the search for WMDs in Iraq in 2003. But despite all the attention paid to Iraq, US Secretary of State Colin Powell went out of his way in a press conference to agree that she should be removed. All the outcomes have been manipulated in these cases when only one side is prosecuted. (Does this remind anybody of the aftermath of the Republican National Convention in 2008 when only the demonstrators and not the police were prosecuted?)

Erlinder described how he first got involved in the Rwanda case: while in Kenya in 2003, he was approached and asked to serve as defense counsel for General Bagosora, one of four Hutu military leaders charged with the most serious crimes of conspiring to commit genocide. Seven years later, the three Judges hearing the case against these “leaders of the genocide” rendered their judgment: a unanimous verdict of not guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide. [They were convicted of significantly lesser charges for actions of soldiers under their command for which they might not have even known about.]

With this verdict on February 8, 2009, for the first time in the public record was a significant chink in that wall erected of the dominant story of the genocide. If these 4 military leaders had not planned and conspired to commit the genocide, maybe there were other parts of the Kagame-is-a-hero story that were not true either. The second shoe to drop was the leaking of the draft of the United Nation’s Report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights (otherwise known as the Mapping Report), a 600-page report that had been held in secret for almost a year while Kagame was given a copy allowing him to comment on it before it was officially released. This act of civil disobedience by UN staffers in leaking it is reflective of the disgust and frustration that is growing for allowing Kagame to continue to act with impunity.

Part of that growing awareness of something seriously wrong with the glowing praise of Kagame’s “economic miracle” and his hero-status was his administration’s thuggish arrests of his political opponents – anyone who dared to challenge him. It was one thing to arrest Victoire Ingabire; after all, she is Rwandan. But when Kagame’s government overreached to arrest Peter Erlinder, a westerner with a strong network of legal and activist colleagues, much more attention came to bear on what was going on in Kigali.

The leak of the draft of the Mapping Report forced the hand of the UN officials and the final report was issued this month. Although the focus of the report was on what happened in Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from 1993-2003, it showed a clear pattern that completely negated the narrative that Kagame has spun: the killings of civilians in the Congo (and the genocide in Rwanda) were the work of the Hutu. The UN Report states that the RPF, Kagame’s military force, is responsible for many of the 6 million killed to date in the Congo. The primary victims? : Hutu civilians from Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo.

As Erlinder was preparing his defense in front of the ICTR, he noticed that virtually all the “evidence” against his defendants was “apocryphal”. There didn’t seem to be any documentation, just statements or stories by others claiming, “I saw this” or “I heard that”. When questioning UN peacekeeping force leader, General Dallaire, a Canadian, the ICTR prosecutor asked about his telegram to NY on January 11, 1994, four months before the mass killings. Dallaire said “folks in New York didn’t respond to my warnings.” On cross-examination by Erlinder, he was asked if he had “any documents” and he mentioned statements by informers in his “personal files”.

So Erlinder asked for any documents the UN had relevant to the case. Told he was allowed to “inspect” UN files at the UN headquarters, he was escorted to a room that had a wall of documents arranged like a library. He was told he couldn’t take in his computer, camera, or even a notepad and pen or pencil. But he was instructed that if he put a “Post-It” note on any pages he needed a copy of, it would be given to him and the UN legal department staff would review it to see if it could be released to him. The professor told us he went downstairs “and bought a whole gross of Post-It Note packets” and literally spent a week putting a sticky note on every page. He said the UN staff are good bureaucrats and just followed orders. He received copies of thousands of documents by the end of 2004.

He also stumbled on “the archives”, a warehouse in NJ that also had relevant documents that he could use. Included in them were declassified documents from the Pentagon, US State Department, and the CIA. After arranging all the documents into chronological order, he converted them into PDF format and placed them on a website he created so they would be available to other researchers and the public. At the site, www.rwandadocumentsproject.net, Erlinder has assembled UN documents, US documents, evidence used in the Tribunal trial of his defendants, the Defense brief, articles about Rwanda, documents about Erlinder’s arrest, and a copy of the UN Mapping Report. The documents allowed him to assemble close to a minute-by-minute account of what happened during the 100-days of the genocide. It created a completely different narrative of what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Erlinder claims what he has put together is what historians will ultimately report once the dominant narrative is exposed as fraudulent. The documents are now in the public record –exposure will come.

Erlinder then proceeded to give us a brief outline of the events as they unfolded. Explaining that Rwanda was about the size of the State of Maryland and that historically the richer, minority Tutsi raised cattle and the majority, poorer Hutus grew crops. The Tutsis had the spears, they were the warriors in that society.

Between 1980-1990, Paul Kagame was the Ugandan rebel leader Museveni’s Military Intelligence Chief and then part of the Ugandan Army when Museveni became head of state with US assistance. Kagame himself received training at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas. In 1990 he took about 25% of the Ugandan Army, renamed them The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and led a guerilla-style terrorism campaign to destabilize Rwanda.

His forces grew tenfold from 2,500 to 25,000 fully armed troops in those three years, obviously with outside help at a time when the Soviet empire was collapsing and the US was “concerned” about the socialist leanings of the Hutu President in Rwanda. In February 1993 the RFP attacked and advanced close to Kigali, the capital city. One-sixth of the population (1.2 million people) was displaced during this attack. A power-sharing agreement was reached in July that included the RPF because of their military superiority even though the Tutsi were only about 15% of the population. Pressure in the UN led to the removal of French and Belgian UN Peacekeepers who had helped keep the RFP out of Kigali and less-trained UN forces replaced them. An election for President was scheduled for the following August. Meanwhile neighboring Burundi elected a Hutu president by a landslide.

That Burundi president was assassinated by his own army consisting primarily of Tutsis in league with the RPF. The Burundi Army proceeded to kill between 100,000-250,000 predominately Hutus and another 300,000-500,000 refugees fled north to Rwanda. In November of 1993, US Ambassador Bob Flaten (now a resident of Northfield, MN) warned Kagame and the Rwandan president that if either side renewed the civil war there would be massive bloodshed. On April 6, 1994, RPF forces shot down the airplane carrying the Rwandan President and the new Burundi President and within two hours the RPF made a blitzkrieg assault to control much of the country. By July 19 they declared victory.

By September and October some reports of RPF crimes began to surface. Robert Gersony spent six weeks investigating the massive killings and his oral report to the UN claimed “systematic and sustained killing and persecution of the Hutu civilian population by the [RPF]” between April and August. His report was treated as “confidential” and suppressed. To this day (but hopefully not too much longer) the dominant narrative claims virtually all the victims were Tutsi and “moderate Hutu” although none of the statues or memorials today in Rwanda depict Hutu victims. And the “crime of genocide denial” was put into law by the victorious Kagame regime to prevent any other account from being raised.

From Erlinder’s account, it appears to me that most of the Tutsi-on-Hutu killing was done by the RPF military forces in the areas they controlled while the Hutu-on-Tutsi killing happened in the ensuing chaos of a complete breakdown of the society rather than as a military-led strategy. The killings on both sides must be condemned and be a part of the history. There are crimes on both sides in any war. But, in all likelihood, only one of those sides received US military aid and it was not the Hutu government which was overthrown.

For the US government to continue to allow Kagame’s false narrative to be dominant dishonors all the victims of the war. US foreign policy has aligned us with some really reprehensible leaders for political and economic reasons. Our support for Mobutu in Zaire was shameful and embarrassing. A few years from now the world will have a similar perspective about Paul Kagame. Hopefully our foreign policy will prioritize human rights over the resources we covet in the eastern Congo which Kagame has profited from. Time will tell. Meanwhile, the Professor, while a pariah to some in power in Kigali, is a prophetic voice calling us to do the right thing.

For a video of Peter Erlinder’s talk soon after being released from prison: http://ourworldindepth.org/archives/311

To view actual documents from the UN files on Rwanda: http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/cgi-bin/library

The International Criminal Court and the "Black Hole"

2010-10-29T07:32:00.002-05:00

The International Criminal Court and the “Black Hole” by Steve Clemens. October 28, 2010

Professor/Lawyer Peter Erlinder sat in front of us with his eyeglasses perched on his upper forehead very reminiscent of another lawyer of the recent past who also blazed a path for justice in defending the unpopular and marginalized: William Kunstler. While Kunstler actually defended the Chicago 8 after the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Erlinder was not part of the recent RNC 8 case protesting another American war of imperialism – but many of his friends and colleagues were. Instead, Erlinder was sitting in a jail cell in Rwanda as the result of his attempts to defend a candidate for President of that nation from charges of “genocide denial”.

It’s been only four months since his release for “health reasons” (and significant pressure from the U.S. State Department and the world community) and Erlinder’s talk at the Mad Hatter’s Coffeehouse on Tuesday evening was designed to give the 20 or so of us in attendance a broader context to understand what is happening in east-central Africa.

Before addressing the International Criminal Court (ICC), Professor Erlinder gave us a quick update on Rwanda. After his arrest and imprisonment and the attention of the world placed on this small African nation sandwiched between The Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda, a Green Party candidate for President was beheaded, a prominent journalist was killed, and there was an assassination attempt on the life of a former Rwandan General who had fled to South Africa. On August 26^th, a 600-page report from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (aka The Mapping Report) very critical of the Kagame regime’s actions in the DRC (Congo) was leaked. This was only weeks after Kagame’s reelection with more than 90% of the vote – often a telltale sign of a rigged election.

With the release of the leaked UN report, Erlinder said, “the story is starting to unravel” – meaning that for the first time the world media is beginning to seriously reexamine the dominant story-line about the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s and the role Kagame and his Tutsi rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front or RPF, may have played in it. The U.S. White House recently issued their first-ever critical statement about the Rwandan administration. Kagame just signed a military agreement with the Chinese. And Victoire Ingabire, Erlinder’s former client and Presidential candidate, was rearrested - this time for “material support of terrorism” and jailed in the same cell where Erlinder had been held. She has just been denied bail and was shipped to one of Rwanda’s notorious prisons.

With the recent FBI raids in Minneapolis, it seems like Rwanda is learning quickly to imitate its imperial masters with phony charges meant to intimidate others.

To understand the role and history of the International Criminal Court, Erlinder told us to look at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals after World War II if we really want to explore how the ICC reinforces American foreign policy. Both of these post-war Tribunals were designed to condemn the vanquished; they weren’t designed to be even-handed in looking at war crimes, they were legitimated by military victory and provided only “victor’s justice”.

When the United Nations Charter was established, there was no vehicle within it to hold individuals accountable for war crimes or egregious human rights violations, just those of nation-states through the vehicle of the World Court. Erlinder claimed that it was Stalin rather than Churchill or FDR/Truman who pushed for trials of Germans and Japanese in order to delegitimize the vanquished. With the Security Council’s veto power held by the five “permanent members”, the US and the UK held the Soviets at bay – and visa-versa - for much of the next 40 years.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, the US and UK had much freer rein because the Soviets were too weak and China was just becoming an economic and military power. Within this vacuum, the US and UK initiated an International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993 and a similar tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1994. They were justified under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter that allows for peacekeeping forces but Erlinder contended that the US/UK wanted to have “peacemaking” powers as well – thus the Tribunals. However, these tribunals were designed on the adversarial system and clearly limited in scope of which crimes to prosecute – only those by “them”, NOT by NATO or other allies of the US like Kagame.

By the end of the 1990s, the UN sought to establish a more permanent vehicle to prosecute individuals and the Treaty of Rome in 2000 established the International Criminal Court. However, once again with the initiation of the US/UK domination, the ICC severely restricted who could initiate cases: only nation-state signatories or the UN Security Council, NOT non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Erlinder claims it was set up to prosecute rebel groups but not state forces.

Although President Clinton signed the Treaty before leaving office, he did not submit it for ratification with the US Senate. After George W. Bush succeeded him, he “unsigned” the Treaty to prevent any Americans from being prosecuted by a world body. Even though the US cannot bring cases before the ICC as a non-signatory, as a powerful permanent member of the Security Council, it carries the ability to initiate cases against those with whom we wish to oppose. So, through the Security Council, the US can refer cases to the ICC without risking any prosecution themselves!

Erlinder described the power of the US in the world community by using the language initiated by physicist Stephen Hawking: a “black hole” which sucks everything within its gravitational pull into its orbit, eventually absorbing it with its power. Like the black cylinder at the Science Museum where kids roll a coin around and around until it is “swallowed up” at the center, The US uses its role as “the world’s only superpower” to dominate anything within its ever-expanding sphere. Everyone is aware of its power and influence even as the empire is collapsing. Still it sucks everything into its gravitational pull. What a great metaphor!

A perfect example of this occurred when Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor for ICTY and later ICTR chose to broaden her investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity to include the actions of Kagame and his rebel forces. She developed evidence that Kagame should be indicted for his role in the assassinations of Rwanda’s and Burundi’s Presidents in April of 1994 which triggered much of the genocide which followed but was summarily dismissed from her position soon after she visited Washington, DC and was told to drop the investigation. She said she “worked for the UN, not the US” but soon found out otherwise when she refused to stop her investigation, mistakenly thinking that the Tribunal was after the “truth” rather than just to persecute political enemies. Erlinder pointed out that “everyone” connected with the Tribunals or the ICC know what happened to Del Ponte - and why - and thus won’t try to challenge the limits the US tries to place against prosecution of those who do our bidding. In fact, the prosecutor who replaced her in 2003 has only prosecuted members of the defeated group of Hutus.

We know about Carla Del Ponte because her memoir, Madame Prosecutor, was published in February 2009. However, she has since been appointed as the Swiss Ambassador to Argentina and her government has ordered her not to talk about what she wrote in her book.

To date, every defendant charged by the ICC is African – and all of them find themselves on the “other side” from US interests. After the US pressured the ICC (through the Security Council) to indict the leader of Sudan (another country that refused to sign or ratify the Treaty), all the African presidents unanimously voted not to cooperate with the ICC.

The struggle to restrain power through law can be traced back to the Magna Carta forced on King John by those he was oppressing. This process has had fits and starts. In war, Erlinder observed, there are always cases of crimes on both sides. When a Tribunal or Court only looks to one side of the ledger, one can’t get justice. There is an imbalance built into the ICC that gives more power to nation-state actors than others.

While leaving much of the detailed story of Rwanda’s genocide for another talk to be given two nights later at William Mitchell Law School where he is a Professor, Erlinder did observe that most Americans know about Rwanda through the camera lens of the movie “Hotel Rwanda”. (Erlinder is friends with Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero of the movie that features actor Don Cheadle in that role and he is a member of the nonprofit board Rusesabagina established.) As “good a story” as the movie is, the law professor said, “ ‘Hotel Rwanda’ is as accurate about the Rwandan civil war as ‘Gone With the Wind’ is about the US Civil War.” If you only see the latter movie, you come to think “the damn Yankees” and General Sherman are the real villains and slavery wasn’t all that bad.

Erlinder concluded with the observation: if you ultimate goal is to learn the truth of what happened and to work to heal the nation, going the route of a Tribunal will not get you there. Tribunals are just good for condemnation and retribution. Instead, take the path modeled by South Africa – a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But there is a trade-off – it will often mean that the perpetrator will not be punished (even though he/she will probably be shamed). But, Erlinder continued, “righteous indignation” will almost never get the whole story right. Erlinder didn’t say it but the thought came to my mind: in order for that to work, one also needs a Mandela-type to order it and a Bishop Tutu-type of leader to run it. Now that they are both retired, the world could use a few more like them.

Punishment To Fit the Crime?

2010-10-22T08:49:00.001-05:00

Punishment To Fit The Crime? By Steve Clemens. October 2010

In the past two years, I have been given the “opportunity” to do court-ordered “Community Service”. Often the sentence is to pay a monetary fine (plus “court costs”) and then the Judge allows a substitution of community service to be performed in lieu of paying the fine. Historically, community service was a way for poor people to be “punished” for their conviction in court when they were unable to pay the fine. Today it is sometimes used to assuage the “convictions” of protestors who object to paying money to the government (the fine) as a “tax” on their conscience.

So, how does a Judge determine the amount of community service to equal the fine – or, how much community service should be required to heal the “breach of the peace” which led to the guilty verdict in the courtroom?

Years past my position was clear: don’t pay the fine or agree to community service when convicted of the “offense” of acting on your conscience. Most of my convictions were resulting from “trespass” charges – usually on the property of an activity which should not exist: the plant assembling nuclear bombs, a plant building first-strike submarines, a military base training soldiers in techniques designed to sew terror in the hearts and minds of Latin Americans. The list goes on and on.

Sometimes the arrest comes at a public place in protest of a specific activity or policy advocated by the resident office holder: at the White House against the current war or practice of torture, at the Capitol in protest of taking from the poor to give to the military, at the Immigration Office to protest deportations. Yet other morally legitimate things also happen at those sites: new immigrants are welcomed as citizens, policies are passed to help protect the environment, and decisions are made to end discrimination against marginalized groups and individuals.

One of the things I’ve learned from U.S. history is that a lot of the significant change (for the better) that we’ve seen has been principally brought about politically because of citizens taking to the streets or lunch counters in protest, risking arrest and imprisonment. Women’s suffrage, the 5-day workweek, civil rights, human rights, shortening wars of aggression, even preventing the development or deployment of some weapon systems has been facilitated by acts of conscience and protest, mostly through nonviolent action.

Under our present “justice” system, we’ve evolved theories which primarily see the State (or city or federal government) as the “victim” of the “crime” for which we are arrested. This often leads to the notion in a trespass case that the “owner” of the property (often a war merchant or an elected official who supports the wars or other evil policies) is at most peripheral to the case to the Judge but absolutely central for the defendant.

Therefore Judges often choose not to listen to arguments about intent or motive from the defendant because to do so is too threatening to the established order. The Courts mostly see their role in protecting the establishment, the status quo – that is from where their power emanates. Not many judges are willing to face the fact that the Nuremberg Tribunals also convicted German judges for their roles in the perversion of justice during the reign of the Nazi Party.

At what point do judges ever look back on their own history to see what should have been done differently? Are there any judges alive today who now wish they’d handled Martin Luther King differently when he stood before them in the dock? Plans are underway to erect a monument to him on the Washington Mall yet there are still probably a few of the lifetime-appointed Federal Judges who still defend sending him to jail.

When we finally (and we will) abolish nuclear weapons and give human rights to sexual minorities, society will have a different take on the Berrigan brothers and GLBT/queer activists. But until that day, principled protesters will be cuffed and shackled and hauled before judges for their civil disobedience. Sometimes the result will be jail or prison; more often it will be a fine, probation, and possibly “community service”. What community service is appropriate when the charge is pointing out that the emperor has no clothes?

After blocking the ICE Center to prevent undocumented immigrants from being deported, I was assigned work picking up trash and mowing grass at public boat landings in the wealthy suburbs. The only connection to the “crime committed” is that often those tasks are done by low-wage workers, many of who are new arrivals to this country or those who have been marginalized for decades if not centuries.

The protest against the wars during the Republican National Convention resulted in 24 hours of community service – this time of my own choosing, as long as it was in Ramsey County. I counted my many hours transporting Iraqi visitors around the Twin Cities for that sentence. At least there was a connection for me between opposition to the war and working to heal some of the wounds by acts of reconciliation with those who may have been our “enemy”.

Arrested at the headquarters to the local war profiteer Alliant Techsystems last fall, my judge was very creative: he told the four defendants about his sister who had polio as a child and how local Shriners and Children’s Hospitals gave her great care. He told us after hearing our testimony that we cared deeply for victims of indiscriminate weapons, especially children, so he recommended we do our community service at one of those hospitals – which we did with great joy. This hospital is now providing free treatment to a young Iraqi boy who lost his leg during the war.

Most recently, my judge in Kansas City allowed me to perform my 10 hours of community service (for protesting the use of city funding to build a nuclear weapons plant) at a place of my choosing, adding, and “I hope at least some of it will be here in our city”. I chose to work with a Catholic Worker community that lives, works, and serves with the homeless of Kansas City – the population that should have received the tax monies that were earmarked for blighted neighborhoods but ironically spent on a weapons plant that could wreak blight on the entire planet.

While I like the sense of symmetry that my last three stints of community service engendered, whenever possible I’d prefer a jail sentence over a fine or “sentenced-to-service”. There is something powerfully symbolic about being in jail when one’s society and government are out of whack. Thoreau’s challenge to his friend Emerson – “Why aren’t you in here with me?” – is a testament of marching to the beat of a different drummer. Martin’s call for us to become “drum majors for justice” continues to beckon us to risk jail or community service, even when others say it is “unwise or untimely” like his critics claimed when he was in the Birmingham Jail.

I don’t expect to receive a posthumous Monument on the Capitol Mall – but I do want to be part of those struggling to become the “beloved community” that Martin dreamed of and embodied – that would be a true “community service”!

Blinded By "The Law"

2010-10-19T16:05:00.000-05:00

Blinded By “The Law” by Steve Clemens. October 19, 2010

Judge Teresa R. Warner, perched above the packed Courtroom 131 B in Ramsey County Courthouse. A special hearing had been called to allow the 4 remaining defendants in the notorious RNC 8 case to agree to settle their cases with a plea bargain, thus avoiding the 4-6 week jury trial scheduled for beginning next week. She listened as each of the four young men pled “guilty” to either a charge of “conspiracy to commit damage to property in the third degree” or “conspiracy to riot in the 3^rd degree”.

She meticulously insisted that each of the defense attorneys go over what rights the defendants were “giving up” in exchange for their pleas: the right to a jury trial, the right to confront the witnesses, the right to testify oneself, … and on and on – as though these “rights” could somehow even the scales of “justice” when the State retained almost unlimited resources in the desire to win a conviction.

The prosecutors and the defendants (and their lawyers) had agreed to a plea bargain over the weekend: in exchange for a guilty plea, the State would ask for no jail time, no restitution, credit for “time served” after arrest, and agree not to force them to testify against other defendants about incidents around the Republican National Convention in September 2008. They recommended that those pleading guilty be given 100 hours of “Community Service” and requested a 2-year probation period be placed on each of the four.

Each of the Defense lawyers asked the Judge to “stay” (suspend) execution of her sentence for a shorter period of probation until the community service could be performed. Noting that each of the defendants had limited income and had all qualified for court-appointed attorneys due to their economic status, they also asked any fines be limited as well.

One-by-one, each of the four defendants came before the Judge, accepted the guilty plea, and was then asked if they had anything further to say before they were sentenced. Nathanael Secor stated that this case was about the criminalization of dissent. He said that while he was guilty of violating the law, local law enforcement personnel did “many acts” which were also illegal and have not been charged. He commented about the police being part of a network of “social control” which allowed the furtherance of “colonial wars”. He reiterated his desire to “abolish institutions of domination”.

Judge Warner, in preferencing her sentence, stated that she was sentencing Mr. Secor for “his acts, not his political beliefs or motivations”. She stressed she was following the law; he pled guilty to violating the law and was being sentenced for his actions, not his beliefs. After giving him “180 days in jail and a $1000 fine” she then said she would stay the execution of that sentence in exchange for one year of supervised probation (remaining law-abiding with no same or similar offenses and abiding by all the rules of the probation), 100 hours of community service, no more than 10 hours per month for 10 months, no restitution, would not be compelled to testify against others in related cases, and fined $200 plus court cost fees of $81.

Max Specktor was the next defendant to stand before Judge Warner. After his guilty plea, he stated that “conspiracy is only part of the story.” He decried the “spectacle of democracy” that we claim is practiced in the U.S., claiming he preferred to live in a more “decentralized world”. He preferred to address real economic needs he sees: “real needs versus conspicuous consumption”. “I refuse to sleep-walk through life”, he continued. He recognized that he and other defendants have had a lot of privileges in life, including being able to speak on their own behalf while “many too others lack those privileges.” He ended by saying he was committed to help “build the world we wish to see.”

Again, Judge Warner went out of her way to claim her sentence “is based on your acts, not your motivation.” It is what she feels is “appropriate, fair, and just.” It is not about “political opinions or ideals”. To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Methinks the Lady doth protest too much.”

This case is all about politics. From pre-emptive house raids to ridiculous trumped-up felony charges alleging “terrorism”, it has been from start-to-finish about “politics”. It was about politics to dismiss the charges against both the women and another male defendant. The County Attorney who brought the initial charges was running for Governor as a tough law-and-order candidate. And then there is the real reason any charges were brought at all: Sheriff Bob Fletcher. Most of what he does is political – playing to his political base while mired up to his eyeballs in corruption. His press conferences just prior to the Republican National Convention were designed to ramp up fear and hysteria about “anarchists” coming to his city to create mayhem. For me, the biggest tragedy of this plea bargain deal is that we won’t get to see Sheriff Fletcher in the witness chair, facing committed movement lawyers about what he did and why before and during the Convention.

But the most significant reason this case is all about politics is the utter silence in the courtroom about the grossest violation of law: what the Nuremberg Tribunal calls the supreme international crime: “to initiate a war of aggression”. The main reason thousands of citizens came to protest at the RNC centered around two wars initiated by the President of the United States in contravention of the United Nations Charter. For the court to pretend to strictly follow “the law” while ignoring the context of the war is not only disingenuous but absurd. The fact that both these wars continue (and continue to be ignored by both the media and the courts) is an indictment on our entire society.

Spector’s sentence differed only in the fine amount: $500 rather than $1,000 – most likely due to the different sentencing guidelines between conspiracy to riot rather than to commit property damage.

Rob Czernik followed with his statement of “proudly” when asked if he was guilty-as-charged. His answers of “yep” and “nope” to the questions asked him by the Judge and attorneys certainly did nothing to endear him to the Judge. When asked if he wanted to make a pre-sentencing statement, he responded, “Nope. Get on with it.” Judge Warner gave him two years of supervised probation instead of the one year the two prior defendants received. When asked by his attorney, Jordan Kushner, about the discrepancy, Judge Warner responded briskly that she wasn’t about to negotiate. Her decision was the “court’s discretion”. Excuse me, but “politics aside”, is such a statement from the court based “entirely on ‘the law’”? I doubt it.

Finally, Garrett Fitzgerald was the last defendant. He talked about the dedication of “his whole life to community”. He lives a life of voluntary poverty and sobriety. He was not “wanton” in breaking the law; he broke the law on the basis of his principles. He too claimed that he and the other defendants were specifically targeted for their “political beliefs”. After being cut-off by the Judge from reading a passage from Dr. Suess’ book, The Lorax, Fitzgerald concluded, “What we allow and what we don’t allow says a lot about our society.”

He must have struck a nerve: he got the extra year of probation as well.

I left the Courtroom with a conviction reaffirmed: the law is inherently political. These “laws”, especially protecting “property” do not come down from Mount Sinai; members of our legislature whose election is more often than not determined by who has the most money hash them out. Governors or Presidents who are also “elected” by a money-polluted system then appoint judges. Our system of check-and-balances counts on the Judiciary to help “establish justice”. I don’t think I witnessed much “justice” in the St. Paul Courtroom today.

It Doesn't Matter If You Should Jail Us

2010-08-17T19:29:00.014-05:00

(photos by Bill Cordaro; National Catholic Reporter staff)

“It Doesn’t Matter If You Should Jail Us” by Steve Clemens. August 16, 2010

14 of us stood in front of the huge Caterpillar dump truck with our hands outstretched, holding on to one another as we sang, prayed, and read our statement on why we were protesting the building of the first nuclear bomb plant to be constructed in 32 years on the south side of Kansas City, MO.

We sang the South African freedom song: “It doesn’t matter if you shall jail us, we are freed and kept alive by hope …”. We talked with Janice, the dump truck driver after she read a copy of our statement. Neither she nor the nearby bulldozer driver knew that what they were working on was to clear a site for a nuclear weapons plant. She was also unaware of the toxic waste that pollutes the present Kansas City Plant now operated by Honeywell that makes 85% of the non-nuclear components for the US nuclear bomb arsenal.

I hadn’t planned to risk arrest as I traveled down I-35 through Iowa to Kansas City last weekend but what I heard from the locals convinced me that I needed to act as well as speak against this crime. After hearing two retired workers tell about their friends dying of cancers and other diseases after working at the Bendix (and now run by Honeywell) Plant, I was stunned to learn that it was only recently that the EPA was forced to list the site as a source of major toxic pollution. Yet a day-care center remains on the grounds that sit atop this toxic mess. It looks like the federal government (and Honeywell) will walk away from this site once the new plant is built, leaving the local taxpayers stiffed for the clean-up bill.

Speaking of taxpayers, the city government of Kansas City decided to use funds earmarked for urban blight remediation to purchase the soybean fields and trees on the southern edge of the city for this plant with the promise to turn it over to private owners for $10 after 20 years- all under the cynical guise of protecting about 2,000+ jobs.

Presbyterian pastor and local Catholic Worker member (yes, one in the same), Eric Garbison spoke in a loud voice over the dim of the construction equipment this morning to the construction supervisors and the police who had come to arrest us: “I’m a pastor who lives in Northeast Kansas City at 12^th and Buford. I heard 4 gunshots last night. There are crack houses and abandoned houses in my neighborhood. The homeless come to our house for food and showers – yet the city government took funds for blighted neighborhoods and use it for this”, as he pointed to the vast expanse of bulldozed land in front and behind us.

“I went to the city council meetings two years ago to try to stop this plant. That is why I’m standing here today, risking arrest, to stay we cannot use this money to build weapons of death.” He, Brian Terrell, and Steve Jacobs had just returned to our group after walking over to two other large construction machines, a power shovel and a bulldozer, to try to talk with those equipment operators while the rest of us tried to engage the dump truck driver we had stopped with our bodies in front of her huge machine.

Garbison told the JE Dunn Construction supervisors and the police, “We want people to have jobs. They could take all of this equipment over to the old Honeywell bomb plant on Bannister and begin to clean that site up.” He went on to inform them that a day-care center remains on that deadly polluted site and asked them if they’d want to have their children to be cared for there. As a father himself, he didn’t want any children exposed to the beryllium, arsenic, and other deadly chemicals being used to make these nuclear weapons.

It is beyond ironic, in fact numbingly stupefying, that our nation can decry Iran’s attempt to enrich uranium for a potential bomb while we continue to modernize our illegal nuclear weapons and extend the life of present bombs for another 40-60 years – all at a time when our President claims a goal of zero nuclear weapons, beginning with the New START Treaty.

Half of the 14 arrested came from outside of the KC metro area: from Des Moines and Malloy in Iowa, from Tuscon, AZ, Columbia, MO and Minneapolis. The other 7 were from Kansas City, primarily from two Catholic Worker communities that live and serve among the poor and marginalized. They see a direct connection between the neglect of human needs and the obscenity of dumping billions into the troughs of arms merchants. Committed to a faith-based nonviolence, these activists chose to risk time in jail rather than to allow this plant to proceed without protest.

Catholic Worker troubadour Steve Jacobs from the St. Francis Catholic Worker in Columbia, MO sang his version of a Bob Dylan classic, changing the title and words to say “I ain’t gonna work on Uncle Sammy’s nuke plant no more. I ain’t gonna work in Kansas City’s nuke plant no more …”

The developer, Jim Cross, pleaded with us to walk away from his earth-moving equipment so his workers could resume, promising us “cold drinks and a place to sit and talk in the shade”. “I don’t want to have you arrested”, he claimed as he returned three times asking us to leave before the police put us in handcuffs and drove us downtown. We were booked on trespass charges and released with a court date on October 7.

__________

Statement carried by the 14 and given to workers:

Statement of Resistance to Nuclear Weapons Production in Kansas City, Mo., Aug. 16

We are gathered today, August 16, 2010, at the site of the future nuclear weapons production plant in Kansas City, Missouri, to protest the continued manufacture of U.S. nuclear weapons.

We also denounce the existence of the current Kansas City facility, where 85% of the non-nuclear components for the U.S. nuclear arsenal are produced, and demand its closure and clean-up.

The current plant and the future plant threaten the health and well-being of workers, our environment and the Kansas City community. The new plant is the recipient of funding by the city government through the explicit misdirection of funds intended for the improvement of urban blight.

The 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty requires an end to all planning, preparation, production, threat, or use of nuclear weapons and adherence to the fundamental rules and principles of Humanitarian Law. Further, ratified treaties are enshrined by the U.S. Constitution as supreme laws of the land. Building the first new U.S. nuclear weapons production facility in 32 years is in obvious violation of these laws.

The cardinal rules and principles of humanitarian law require that civilians never be the object of attack and prohibit weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets.

The International Court of Justice found that the destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time, and nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet, and thus are illegal. In keeping with the Nuremburg Principles, we choose to act nonviolently rather than be complicit.

The intended use of the new Kansas City Plant is to improve and extend the life of nuclear weapons. Any complicity in planning, preparation, threatening to use or use of these weapons is a crime against peace, war crime and crime against humanity.

Under principles of democracy we exercise the right of every citizen of this republic and this planet to peacefully resist the nuclear threat that attacks every core concept of human rights.

We act to exercise our basic rights to life and freedom from violence and we exercise our duty to protect children and future generations.

We act to ensure that our government fulfills its promise and responsibilities to unequivocally pursue and achieve nuclear disarmament in good faith.

We call on national, state and local Kansas City government to end the use of our tax dollars to wage permanent war and demand clean-up of all chemical and radioactive contamination.

Open Letter to Attorney General Eric Holder

2010-07-28T23:54:00.002-05:00

July 28, 2010

Attorney General Eric Holder

US Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001

RE: US Attorney in Eastern Tennessee District

Dear Mr. Holder,

Let me begin by saying “thank you” for challenging the recent Arizona law seeking to intimidate immigrants. This is the kind of leadership I hoped for with President Obama’s election and your subsequent appointment.

However, the subject of this letter is less optimistic. I write to you as a nonviolent activist with a long history of nonviolent protest against war and weapons, the death penalty and present prison policy, and other justice issues. As a result, I have found myself as a defendant or supporter in a number of courtrooms since my first arrest at the White House during the last major demonstration against the Vietnam War in March of 1975, mentored that day by Daniel Berrigan, Jim Peck, Dick Gregory, Liz Macalister, Ladon Sheats, and others.

While I always enter the courtroom with the hope that somehow truth and justice might prevail, I have seldom left feeling optimistic. A few times when juries have been allowed to consider International Law and Treaties, I have been acquitted. Most of the time, however, I see the courtroom as a place to continue my witness for nonviolence, truth, and justice despite the outcome. I consider it an honor to have been a prisoner for reasons of conscience several times over the past 35 years.

So my recent experience in Knoxville on July 6, 2010 shouldn’t have shocked me - but it did. Please allow me to set the stage for you. Along with 200 + others, I attended a Conference for a Nuclear Free Future at Maryville College over the 4^th of July weekend which concluded with a nonviolent protest at the entrance to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant (now called the Y-12 National Security Complex since the 9-11 attacks in an attempt to further obscure the dirty secret of our continued production/modernization of nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) on Monday morning, July 5^th under the banner reading “Independence from Nuclear Terrorism”. 23 of us chose to peaceably block the state road entrance to the facility with the banner (the road had already been blocked by Oak Ridge Plant security) and were arrested and charged with “obstruction of roadway”. That, being a state/local matter, is not the focus of this letter.

13 others, with two in their 40s and most in their late 60s, 70s, and 80s, chose to risk Federal Trespass charges by ducking under a barbed wire fence and then sitting in a circle singing, praying, and sharing poetry prior to their arrest. Most anticipated spending the night in jail although with at least three of the arrestees in their 80s, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they would have been cited and released with a court date. All were jailed overnight.

The following afternoon, many of us crowded into the Howard Baker Federal Courthouse in Knoxville to witness the first appearance of our friends under these Federal charges. They all knew of the possibility of up to 1 year in prison for their act of conscience but it was still shocking to me to see 83 year old Jean Gump, 82 year old Brad Lyttle, and 73 year old nun, Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch enter the courtroom with leg irons and hand cuffs attached to waist chains. This for a nonviolent protest offense! (I’ve written at greater length about this in my blog (http://mennonista.blogspot.com/2010/07/obscenity-in-courtroom.html ).

After overcoming the shock and disappointment that these defendants weren’t even released from these ridiculous shackles during this entire court appearance (for which I hold both your US Attorney, the US Marshalls, and the Federal Judge accountable) I was further taken aback when the Judge asked your Assistant US Attorney to read the charges and legal consequences for the offense. (I’m sorry I did not hear her name. She is a blond-haired woman in her 30s.) I almost fell out of my bench in the back of the courtroom when she replied that the defendants not only faced “up to one year in prison with supervisory release of not more than a year and a $100. assessment” but they were also subject to “a fine of up to $100,000.”

That’s correct. I didn’t accidently add a couple of zeroes. One hundred thousand dollars! For a nonviolent offence! For people of conscience intent on peaceably demanding that our nation live up to International Laws and Treaties (and the ruling of the International Court) which clearly identify nuclear weapons as illegal. For such an absurd (and obscene) penalty – even if only threatened and never meant to be carried out – I hold both you and the President to account. Those Assistant US Attorneys are acting under your jurisdiction and supervision.

Neither you nor President Obama can pretend to take the high road by lofty speeches calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons like he did early in his term in Prague or more recently with the signing of the New START Treaty while at the same time threatening and intimidating men and women of conscience who should be your allies in this struggle for a world with fewer threats of annihilation.

Setting aside the “criminal trespass” offense itself, do you really wish to convey a message with such outrageous threats of hundred-thousand-dollar-fines for nonviolent protest? Have you learned nothing from the legacy of Rosa Parks and Martin King, from Susan B. Anthony and Cesar Chavez, from Dorothy Day and AJ Muste? (The list, as you well know, could go on and on. … ) President Kennedy presciently said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”

Frankly, I expected such reckless and calloused threats and charges from some of your predecessors like Ashcroft and Gonzales, John Mitchell and Dick Kleindienst. But from Eric Holder and Barack Obama? Surely we can hope for real change – but so far, it hasn’t been too much in evidence.

Please, Mr. Attorney General, use your position and office to help our nation realize and appreciate the valued contribution that civil disobedience has played in our history and instruct your US Attorneys to adjust “punishment” to “fit the crime”.

(Still) Hopefully and Respectfully yours,

Steve Clemens

2912 E. 24^th St.

Minneapolis, MN 55406-1322

steveclemens@gmail.com

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2010-07-20T14:20:00.003-05:00

Should I Stay or Should I Go? : Wrestling With Pax Christi and the Roman Catholic Institution by Steve Clemens. July 16, 2010

It was the article in this morning’s paper that was the straw that broke the camels back. The Vatican announces new restrictions or threats against the scandal of pedophile priests but, in the same breath, announces that the attempts to ordain women as priests is as grave a sin as molesting children. When the hierarchy’s commitment to misogyny and patriarchy is so strong that it risks watering-down its defensive strategy to cover its shameful pedophilia, the entire religious institution must be condemned as woefully corrupt, morally bankrupt and socially insensitive. To identify itself with The Body of Christ is a blasphemy. Roy Bourgeois and Joan Chittister may be today’s Martin Luther but does it also herald another Reformation of the Church that boasts continuity to the time of Jesus?

Pax Christi is the international peace organization within the Roman Catholic Church. Over the decades it has vied for recognition from both the Vatican hierarchy as well as local diocesan leaders, hoping against hope that the church will recognize the moral vacuity of its silence and/or acquiescence (not to mention outright endorsement) of wars and instead embrace the Peace of Christ, a choice to follow the radical nonviolence of Jesus of Nazareth. Because of its desire to be heard on the subject of the morality of war and peace, it has often chosen to remain silent (or less militant) on other controversies surrounding other moral issues the church should address – immigration, the growing gap between the rich and poor, role of women in the church, acceptance of GLBT people, …

But peace can only be the product of justice; peace cannot come at the expense of silencing or marginalizing certain groups over others. We can’t really enjoy “the peace of Christ” if our gay brothers are excluded, if our immigrant sisters are threatened with deportation, if poor families find their homes foreclosed by greedy bankers and hedge fund criminals.

All of this could be a moot point. I’m not even Roman Catholic. I was asked to serve on the local Pax Christi Board as a non-Catholic representative – yet I find that many of my mentors and colleagues in my peacemaking endeavors are Catholics, some of whom are still priests and nuns under the jurisdiction of these Vatican mis-rulers. Several of my fellow Board Members are members of a congregation which has been excommunicated by Rome and now holds its own services without recognition of the Archbishop or the presence of a priest. Another has left the church and now attends a Quaker Meeting. So why should it bother me, a jack-legged Anabaptist to be associated with these other obvious rebels?

The problem, as I see it, is with its association with the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of my friends who have remained within the church tell me that they are really the true church, not the pretenders in Rome or in the Bishop’s garb. But unless I see a wholesale exodus of the faithful from the pews, I can’t pretend that the Vatican doesn’t represent the realities of the institution. To continue with even a modicum of association with the present cabal in Rome and the Bishops it has steadily appointed over the past three decades to undue the reforms of the Vatican II Council is to send a message to the on-going victims that we are not on their side.

Work within or without?

There comes a time when one must chose to work within the system for change or to leave, hoping the shock of disassociation might motivate a change from without. Sometimes the choice is couched as remaining ideologically pure vs being effective. Others see a distinction between a prophetic witness vs coalition building where compromise or “agreeing to disagree” on other issues is central to building strength for the specific movement. When does the need for compromise quell the Spirit? Without the pull of an ideological pole, how does compromise move us closer to the goal of resembling the realm of God here on earth?

I seem to face a similar dilemma with my association with the Democratic Party in the political arena. I admire the courage and tenacity of Dennis Kucinich and Russ Feingold (most of the time) in a similar fashion to my respect for the outspoken leadership of Chittister and Bourgeois, Gumbleton, and Rohr. But I frankly cringe when I hear that Fr. John Dear considers acquiescing to the directive of his pro-nuke Bishop in New Mexico to stay away from prophetic witness at Loa Alamos so he can continue to say Mass for his mostly poor and marginalized parishioners. I no more want to countenance a Catholic Church that restrains a Franciscan priest from prophetic prayer at a nuclear weapons plant than identifying myself (when asked by a pollster) as a Democrat when President Obama and his accomplices in the Congress continue to wage wars of occupation in defense of empire.

Is there really any more hope for reforming the Roman Church than the Democratic Party? How does having one fewer non-Catholic members of Pax Christi help further the work of Jesus? But following one’s conscience is essential for being faithful over the long haul. We can’t be purist but we can be confessional. Some will confess their complicity and chose to remain within; others will hear a call to “come out from among them” – but to whom do we go? The disciples in their fear and uncertainty respond to Jesus, “To whom would we go? You are the one with the words of eternal life!”

To be on the way to discipleship, we need to travel with like-minded travelers. Maybe we don’t have to ask to see what other identity cards each other carries with them and be satisfied that we are journeying toward the same Shalom, the holistic peace-with-justice of the Bible.

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Addendum - July 22, 2010:

Less than 5 days after writing this I was informed that the disease emanating from the Vatican is spreading and metastasizing, infecting even what was formerly healthy within the church. The Maryknoll Order had been quietly supporting Fr. Roy Bourgeois despite his differences with the Church hierarchy. However, they just informed the School of the Americas Watch organization that they would no continue to contribute the $17,000/year for the annual commemoration/protest at the gates of Ft. Benning, GA as they have in the past Novembers. Why? Because of Roy’s outspokenness on the justice of women’s ordination.

So, this once great missionary order will “cut off its nose to spite its face”. There is no better a recruiting tool today for Catholic young people to see the relevance of the church and religious ethics than the movement to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC. For the past dozen years it has attracted a growing number of both high school and college youth – from primarily Catholic schools – to the 20,000 + people of conscience gathering calling for an end to this school of assassins. There those young people meet seasoned activists in a truly inter-generational gathering that is filled with hope, compassion, and power. Now Maryknoll wants to tell young Catholics that hanging on to a system of patriarchic domination is more important than the call of the Gospel to do justice and stand for the marginalized and oppressed. Good luck with that when they send their missionaries back to Central and South America and have to explain their new-found silence about a military-run school designed to continue their oppression.

The Vatican has its charges scared. Threats of withdraw of pensions goes a long way to keep priests and nuns from leaving their orders (and the Church). Closing schools and parishes due to a combination of dropping attendance and lack of funds due to massive pay-offs to the victims of sexual abuse by priests does not bode well for the future. Instead, a “hunker down” mentality has been adopted, thinking that all these problems arose from the “liberalism” of the Vatican II Council. Fear among so many who have donated their entire lives to the Church is both tragic and sad. Maybe out of this turmoil can another reformation (or revolution) arise.

May it be so.