Remarks at Lifetime Peacemaking and Justice Award

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Vince Hawkinson Foundation Honorary Award remarks by Steve Clemens, October 14, 2012

When Eric Hucke called me in July to inform me about this award, I went to the website to view the listing of past honorees. I noticed I had been arrested with at least 10 of the previous honorees.

My friend Marv Davidov had 11 more years of resistance after receiving his award; John and Marie Braun keep going, keep going, keep going … like Energizer bunnies for peacemaking.

I see Ralph Hildenberg on the Lake Street Bridge almost every week; I was just on trial this past May with 3 of the 4 McDonald sisters. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer has poured his energies into the Minnesota Arms Spending Alternatives Project (MN ASAP) and another book since he and Sara were recognized a couple of years ago.

So when the honorary award is for lifetime achievement it really is merely an encouragement to keep on rather than rest on one’s laurels. Have you ever known Polly Mann to give any indication that she is “retiring” from peacemaking and her passion for social justice? Ken Masters has slowed down but he and Carol continue in the work of reminding us to keep agitating for justice.

Vince Hawkinson: I never knew him personally but I heard him speak a few times after moving to MN in 1990. It is clear to me that his deep faith inspired and fed his resistance to war. I, too, find my personal faith –coupled with its public expression in a faith community – has been my primary inspiration for my work in peacemaking. The Biblical call to be reconciled to God and to one another is central to my understanding of peacemaking.

However, day-to-day ministries of reconciliation are often ignored in favor of dramatic arrests. We need to end the hierarchy of peacemaking or spirituality and instead celebrate all the diverse gifts given to the body. This Hawkinson Award has recognized many various facets of peacemaking – not just practitioners of direct action and nonviolent civil resistance. For that, I am grateful that the Foundation has an expansive view of the ministry of peacemaking.

In this journey, I’ve found that humor is essential. Unless one can laugh at oneself or the seemingly impossible forces we are up against, we can too easily succumb to despair. And without accountability and feedback we will fall victim to our own blind spots. That is why peacemakers who are in it for the long haul need community. While there are some Lone Rangers, most peacemakers are supported, nurtured, encouraged, and corrected by fellow disciples along the way:

There are Teachers who give the ideas and explain the context. Some preach sermons or give powerful, moving speeches; others are story-tellers. Many write books or essays to deepen our understanding or give us a new perspective. Some give us inspiration – especially for me is the power of song or a piece of art which gets past the defensive walls that surround my heart at times. For me, listening to the sermons of Martin Luther King and Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm have inspired me. Books from John Howard Yoder, William Stringfellow, Walter Wink, and Ched Myers have enlightened my way. The music shared with us by my friends with Bread for the Journey have given me songs to while away the hours in jail; and the music from the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa recorded as “Freedom is Coming” reverberates in my thoughts 30 years after I first learned them from Henri Nouwen and Jim Wallis during a sit-in at the Rotunda of the US Capitol in 1983 – especially the lyrics, “It doesn’t matter if you should jail us – we are freed and kept alive by hope.” And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the insight and passion of my fellow Hawkinson Award recipient in this category: Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.

On the journey as a peacemaker, there have been plenty of Mentors who model the practice – since moving to Minnesota in 1990 I’ve been blessed by learning from the McDonald Sisters, Char Madigan, Marv Davidov and many, many others – Minnesota has been an oasis of peace mentors after living in southwest Georgia for 16 years. In Georgia, it seemed we knew most of the peace activists from all over the state as we’d travel to support each other to the various corners of that state. But I’m so grateful for a multitude of mentors before moving to Minnesota. One of my first mentors was a dairy farmer, Walton Hackman, who lived across the road from the house where I was raised, and had returned to the farm after his younger brother died suddenly. Ladon Sheats, a former IBM executive, who radically changed his life and was mentored himself by Clarence Jordan.  Two priests: Larry Rosebaugh and Roy Bourgeois inspired me and – in fact - most of my mentors were people I’ve been arrested with – including Dan and Phil Berrigan and Liz McAlister. Now, I find some of my mentors are younger than me. Kathy Kelly, Dr. Hakim in Afghanistan, and Ched Myers readily come to mind. I’m encouraged and inspired by the youth and vigor of the Occupy movement.

One of real pleasures of this journey has been Co-conspirators – con-spire – to breathe with. People who accompany one on the journey – our Alliant Action vigil group would be a great example of co-conspirators. Sometimes in the 1980s I’d vigil by candlelight outside the gates of Ft. Benning or with the model of an electric chair outside the Sumter County Courthouse in Georgia with only a handful of folk. Other times, I am astonished to be one of more than 6,000 people risking arrest by crossing the line 15 years later at the same School of Americas’ witness. I always need to remember that many times there are folks “back home” – in my neighborhood, my faith community, my many friends –scattered across the country-side (and now around the world) who are with me in thoughts, spirit, and prayer as I undertake some of the riskier acts of nonviolent witness. Many of these co-conspirators have never risked arrest themselves but write and visit you in prison and share the message of peace and justice with their co-workers.

I remember how moved I was when the entire group of Resident Partners from the Koinonia community cancelled their weekly meeting in order to drive 25 miles to sing outside the jail where I was fasting and being held for trial after blocking the White Train carrying nuclear warheads to a submarine base off the Georgia coast in 1985. When the Community of St. Martin takes the Vow of Nonviolence together each year on the second Sunday in November, I’m reminded of others on this journey with me. The powerful women of WAMM – and they let some of us men join them as well – and the Veterans For Peace, who have also welcomed as Associate Members those of us who have “served” our nation and fellow humans without weapons; my compatriots in the Pax Christi movement, Catholics who have welcomed this Anabaptist into their midst, and now the Muslim Peacemaker Team partnering with our Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project continues to broaden that circle. 

And, of course, there are the Examples and Role Models of others from afar: for example, Jim and Shelley Douglass and the White Train resistance community they founded at Ground Zero in Washington State helped inspire our own White Train witness in Georgia. All of us in the movement of non-violent resistance owe a debt of gratitude to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, to Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day.

But we cannot forget the Alternatives creators – those who help envision what we want, not just opposing what we don’t; Back in the ‘70s, Dan Berrigan penned a powerful poem, “No and Yes and the Whole Damned Thing” describing the dual call to both nonviolent resistance and the building of alternatives – something we can say “yes” to.  When Dan’s brother Phil Berrigan came to Koinonia in 1974 with his call to prophetic criticism of US Militarism, some of the Koinonia members pushed back stating that creating educational alternatives for pre-schoolers was equally important if one wished to live in a just and peaceful society. So, to name a few of these alternatives close to my heart: Common Harvest Farm, Seward/Longfellow Restorative Justice Program, From Death to Life, Loaves and Fishes, St. Stephen’s Housing and Street Outreach Ministry, Southside Family Nurturing Center, Centro Campesino, IARP, …

I confess that I have a lot of fear and trepidation before many public actions but my faith and the companionship of like-minded folk can help overcome fear and allow one to act. So I want to acknowledge some of that companionship today in receiving this award as a community effort rather than an individualistic accomplishment: For me today: Christine and my sons Micah and Zach. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. Both of you going to Death Row with Christine and me to visit Bob Redd. Micah, for standing aside me as the smoke bomb hit my feet outside Ft. Benning when you were only 4 or 5, and then traveling with me to El Salvador in 2005 to learn more about the witness of Oscar Romero.  Zach, for walking with me up to the fence before I crossed at the School of the Americas vigil and then visiting me when I was taken to the hospital from prison. Christine, as I now head off to Iraq again, and the many adventures we’ve shared together, thank you for your love and support for these past 34 years. And especially thanks to those of you who supported her when I was locked up.

But I also have an extended family of fictive kinship. Peter Thompson who accompanied me to Iraq in December 2002 just months before the war started; David Harris who was my support person at the School of the Americas protest and again at the Republican National Convention. He even joined me at the Hennepin County Workhouse/Jail this Spring – choosing imprisonment over community service to be in solidarity with me. The Community of St. Martin is part of my family. I have a Pax Christi family, and I could go on and on. For me, my 16 years living in an intentional Christian community in south Georgia was probably the most significant aspect of my spiritual formation as a peacemaker. Today I continue to be connected with the many life-long friends I shared life with at Koinonia during those years. Did not Jesus promise us that if we left our old securities to follow him, we will be blessed with homes and families, and friends, one hundred times over? I have found this to be true and I am grateful.

Peacemaking must always be combined with social justice – for example, LGBT issues, the rights of immigrants/refugees, the needs and cares for the homeless, for those in prison – especially those facing the death penalty, and care and advocacy for the natural environment is an especially pressing issue for both peace and justice.

So, when I am arrested at the White House protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline, it is connected with peacemaking. When I stand with my gay brothers and lesbian sisters demanding their rights to love and marry, it is connected to peacemaking. When I march with the custodial workers of the CTUL union in front of K-Mart or Cub Foods, it is connected to peacemaking. When I attend the march and memorial remembering the homeless who have died in our state each December, it is connected with peacemaking. On the first Sunday of each month when I am part of the Interfaith Coalition on Immigration’s prayer vigil in front of the Ramsey County Detention Center is for me an act of peacemaking.

So I accept this award on behalf of a broad community of peacemakers – those here in the Twin Cities today as well as my friends and mentors who are part of the “great cloud of witnesses” whose lives and message have help blaze the path which I have tried to follow.

Punished for Exercising Our Constitutional Rights? by Steve Clemens May 16, 2012

The contrast between the two Judges couldn’t have been starker. Judge Peter Cahill and Judge Ronald Abrams both serve on the Hennepin County’s Fourth District Bench. Both Judges were assigned criminal trespass cases for nonviolent protest at the entrance to the corporate headquarters of Minnesota’s largest war profiteer, Alliant Techsystems (ATK). The same defense arguments were made in both courtrooms, the former in 2010, the latter this week. The same Eden Prairie Prosecutor, different Judges. The results were significantly different: Judge Cahill thanked the defendants for interesting and enlightening testimony and fined us $1 or one hour of community service – hopefully at a local children’s hospital, he added, noting in our testimony about our concern over civilian causalities of war.

While Judge Abrams treated us courteously and thanked both the defense and prosecution for our behavior in court, the sentencing differed widely. 10 days in jail; two days in jail; 68 hours of community service; 32 hours of community service. When is the last time you hear a Judge order 90 days in jail for an 89 year-old nonviolent defendant who is a nun in declining health? Yes, he stayed 87 of those days for a year in mandating the 32 hours of community service but his sentence was the maximum allowed under the trespass law of Minnesota.

To further add to the disparity, the 12 nonviolent defendants were repeatedly offered a plea bargain deal if we chose to forgo our right to a jury trial and enter a no contest plea to the charges: any amount of self-reporting community service to any local non-profit organization would be the prosecutor’s recommendation to the court. All we had to do is take the guilty plea.

“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” is an adage I’ve heard (and repeated) many times. In fact, if we choose to engage in civil resistance for the sake of peace and justice, we would do well to always be prepared to face the legal consequences of our actions.

The Constitution gives us the right to a jury trial of our “peers” but the way the system operates when one looks closely from behind the defendants table in the courtroom is a process which often removes citizens with well-formed, educated opinions when the jury pool is whittled down to who will actually hear the case. Strict rules of evidence and what testimony will be allowed in front of a jury controls the process – treating as “hearsay” and “irrelevant” the years of study and investigation done by principled protestors. The jury is instructed to follow the precise letter of the law, the spirit of which be damned.

One can go “pro se”, act as one’s own attorney but you aren’t invited back to the inner sanctum of the courtroom where the prosecutor can huddle with the judge, planning out sentencing strategy. When one co-defendant tried to go through the back door to request that the microphones be turned off during a break in the proceedings so the defendants could discuss issues without them being recorded or overheard, he was briskly told he could not be “back there” because of the security risk – even though he had gone through the same security checkpoint on the second floor as any prosecutor would.

We are told by the Prosecutor that “more than 95%” of all his cases are “settled out of court” with a type of plea bargain. The number of cases overwhelms the Court as the budgets for the judicial branch continue to face cuts to both staff and finances. The entire system would collapse if only a few more defendants would request their right to a jury trial. Judge Cahill asked his defendants if they were will to accept an official “hearing” rather than a jury trial and I suspect his sentence reflected his appreciation for our willingness to avoid the more confrontational style of a jury trial.

But defendants shouldn’t have to make such choices when a trial by jury is a constitutional right. I went in to the Courtroom this week a skeptic about the type of “justice” I’d receive. I remain skeptical. The Judge was given input from the Prosecutor about my past convictions (although Patrick Leach, the Prosecutor, probably didn’t do a thorough search of all the defendants) but I’m certain he did not mention that 3 times Hennepin County juries have acquitted me of the same charge for the same type of protest. In jury trials for this offense, I’m still 3 wins (not guilty) with now two losses; a batting average of .600, not bad for a non-lawyer.

I’m glad to do the 10 days in jail if it exposes our “judicial system” for what it is: straining at gnats while swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:24) when it continues to fail to challenge illegal wars, indiscriminate weapons, and predatory bankers but instead fills our jails and prisons with those who are predominately on the margins of our society. Our jails are filled with people who are mentally ill and/or physically addicted but instead of treatment, we specialize in punishment. A friend of mine in Georgia who recently was jailed because of his nonviolent support of immigrants told me he experienced his jail time as a sacrament. His friend told him, “Being imprisoned for the Gospel is sacramental.” Lets hope I can keep that in mind when it is time to “do my time”!

We Don't All Need To Be Leaders

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?

Punishment To Fit the Crime?

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”!

Open Letter to My Judge for White House Protest Arrest

January 31, 2010

Judge Richard H. Ringell
DC Superior Court
500 Indiana Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Judge Ringell,

I was one of the 13 co-defendants who were arrested in a peaceful, nonviolent protest at the White House who arrived in your courtroom on Wednesday, January 27 in the late afternoon. (Case # 2010 CDC 001810). We were told by one of the guards in the jail as we were being brought upstairs that “the judge is going to be mad that these ‘failure to obey’ cases are coming before the other traffic cases.”

Little did I know that you would take out your anger over nonviolent defendants. I have been a defendant numerous times – all for nonviolent protest arrests – and never have I witnessed such rudeness, contempt, and a sense of dismissal from the bench than what I experienced last week. I’m not sure that was your intent but that is how it was received by several of my co-defendants and me.

We were unable to consult with Ann Wilcox, our preferred counsel since she was on jury duty that week so when we shuffled into your courtroom (the leg irons, waist chains attached to handcuffs were totally inappropriate for nonviolent offenders), we were told a man we had never seen or met before was “defense counsel”. Without consulting with us, he entered a “not guilty” plea on our behalf, thwarting my initial plan to plead “nolo contendre”. Of course that was all moot when we discovered new additional charges of “unlawful assembly” and “disorderly conduct” were piled on. Besides the absurdity of those charges, (we clearly informed the Park Police and the Secret Service officers present at least 1 hour before our “die-in” protest of our intent and we were anything but disorderly), I felt I was rushed into a decision after I asked to consult counsel. Your threat to put me at the “end of the line” and wait until all the traffic cases were heard (more than 20-30 other cases given the number of men in our holding pen downstairs) meant spending another night in the jail since it was already after 4 PM. Not having any food other than 4 white bread “sandwiches” in the 28 hours we were incarcerated, there was no guarantee I’d be fed again before coming back to your court.

I understand and sympathize if your bruskness was due to short-staffing and an overwhelming workload but you are the one in power in that setting, not those you victimize with a travesty of one’s “day in court”. (It is ironic that if our protests against war spending were successful, you might have an adequate budget for your courts and jails.) Given that our intent on the day of our arrest was to assert our First Amendment rights to “peaceably assemble for a redress of grievance”, the entire process since our initial booking until facing you was an insult to principled dissent. As a Judge, you have it within your authority to dismiss these cases with a “time served” sentence but you instead allowed the Prosecutor to further insult 3 co-defendants by not even allowing them to post the forfeiture bond because of prior arrests for similar nonviolent protest in the District. Since I had two prior arrests at the White House and the Capitol Rotunda, I should have also been included in that group.

It pains me that if elderly, white, educated defendants like those in our group are treated so disrespectfully, I can only imagine the psychic damage inflicted on the poor and marginalized defendants caught up in that “Justice” [sic] system you are presiding over. Please forgive me if this seems to you to be a personal attack on you – it is rather my desire to expose what I feel is part of a bureaucracy determined to allow systemic injustice to proceed unabated.

Sincerely,
Stephen D. Clemens
2912 E. 24th St.
Minneapolis, MN 55406-1322
steveclemens@gmail.com

Pillar or Pest?

Pillar or Pest? By Steve Clemens. May 4, 2009

On Friday evening, my brother Phil was honored at a banquet/fundraiser by the Harleysville Senior Center as a “Pillar of the Community”. It is a well-deserved honor for someone who has donated his “time, treasure, and talent” [Phil’s words] back to the local community. In his gracious and eloquent acceptance speech he hit most of the right notes. He observed that the honor really belongs to the entire team that embodies the Clemens Family Corporation and that he was accepting this on behalf of the “team”. His speech was peppered with the words generosity and stewardship. He acknowledged the role that family and faith has played in his economic and social “success”.

One thing that struck me was the courage Phil showed in addressing the crowd that certainly included some of the “movers and shakers” of the community. He cited statistics about some of the economic realities affecting our world. Paraphrasing his remarks, he told us that more than 50% of the world lives on less than $2 per day – the “poor” and among that group, many live on $1/day or less – “the extremely poor”. The people populating the middle include the middle income group making the equivalent of $4,000-6,000/year and the Middle Class earning up to $11,000/year. The balance of us, including most of those often labeled as “poor” in the U.S. are the affluent. In this context, Phil called on us to be good stewards of what we have been blessed with by God and to, in turn, be generous to others with our time, treasure and talent.

On the table before each of us was a piggy bank inscribed with a quote from Phil calling us to “live to give”. He asked us to place it on our dressers at home and every night to empty the change from our pockets and put it in that piggy bank. When it gets full, we are to take it to a charity and donate it for their work. It could be a start for each of us to put into practice Phil’s challenge to us. We could follow that small cash donation with offering to volunteer at that charity, sharing our talents and time as well. Phil’s remarks were well spoken and were received well as evidenced by the standing ovation at the end.

But I left with conflicting feelings. I have a lot of pride and gratitude for what my older brother has done for both the family business as well as the broader community. But the question that nagged at me was the recurring question, “why?” Why is more than half the world’s population living in abject poverty? Why does Phil identify even the “poor” in the U.S. as affluent? I don’t quarrel with his facts but I think we need to ask another question beyond the call to stewardship and generosity. What about the call to justice?

Charity is both good and necessary but it doesn’t challenge the structures which insure its own continuation. It reminds me of the famous quote from Catholic Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil in the 1970’s: “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why people are poor, they call me a communist!” Of course to ask these kinds of questions when one is being honored by one’s home town would be considered in bad taste. But Phil at least had the guts to even remind us of the global reality. For that I give him credit. But if you ask Dom Helder’s question, you quickly move from being a pillar to a pest.

The Harleysville Senior Center is a modest attempt to help rebuild “the commons” and the community. In years gone by, one’s immediate family or neighbors took care of the elderly. Today, our society seems to promote greed, individualism and privatization. Even though this state is known as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the idea of holding wealth in “common” has long been dismissed as quaint and old fashioned – if not down right socialistic. So while the “affluent” within our society entertain themselves with the latest electronic gadgets and toys or go on “get away” trips, the less affluent Harleysville seniors depend on their Senior Center. It is great that it exists and has a staff that really is committed to serving those who use it. But how many neighborhoods have such a center, supported by ever-in-demand tax dollars?

I hear the complaints of many about the burden of taxation without the corresponding analysis of what should be commonwealth for all. While many industrialized countries have universal healthcare, Americans are told to fend for themselves. Many are fortunate to have jobs which help cover those costs but a growing number do not. It is not a matter of some are “lazy” and others “industrious”. Do you think most family farmers are lazy? Yet many of them have no ready access to affordable healthcare. The amount of physical energy expended by the local roofer, house or hotel cleaner, or even restaurant waitress is certainly greater than the corporate executive yet one has health insurance with all the bells and whistles while the other often goes without, hoping to survive the next medical crisis.

It isn’t simply a matter of greed although the recent reports of hedge fund managers and banking executive bonuses exhibited quite a bit of what could only be seen by others as avarice. When the economic system we are in seems to inevitably lead to a growing gap between the rich and the poor, charity becomes a Band-Aid when surgery seems to be more the need.

When we start honoring prophets instead of those who make profits (justified or excessive) as pillars of our communities, maybe we’ll have less need for charity and instead all share equally in the benefits of justice. The Clemens Family Corporation’s companies have practiced “profit-sharing” with its employees since 1951. That is certainly a step is the right direction. Healthcare has been an additional benefit for those who work for it. Terrific! But notice that word: benefit. Why is it not considered a right? Why should ones ability to get medical care be tied to ones employment?

Charity encourages generosity, and that is good. Justice demands we don’t leave others behind, and that is better.

Living With Denial

Living with Denial by Steve Clemens. October 11, 2008

Why do we Americans lionize Oscar Schindler, The White Rose, the originators of the Kinder train, the villagers of Le Chambon? There were many honorable and courageous acts of conscience and compassion that surfaced in resistance to the attempts of the Third Reich to exterminate the Jews of Europe. We relish the story of Anne Frank and the family who risked much to shelter her from Nazis. Even though ultimately unsuccessful, their heroics give many of us a smug sense of relief that there still remain at least a remnant of ordinary folk who are able to rise to the occasion and be truly human(e). Even while we recognize that most people remained either silent or actively complicit with the unfolding holocaust, somehow the memory of a few resisters continue to give us hope for the rest of “humanity” – in the midst of growing inhumanity evidenced in our global community.

It is always easier to celebrate these triumphs of the human spirit against the brutal crushing machine of repression and oppression in hindsight. We have enough distance and separation from the Nazi movement in western Europe, the wholesale slaughter under communist systems in Stalinist Russia or Maoist China to celebrate those who resisted those injustices. Some Americans have even dared to look beyond political alliances to recognize the “excesses” of US –supported regimes in the Congo (Mobuto), Indonesia (Sukarno), the Philippine Islands (Marcos), Chile (Pinochet), … and the list could go on and on.

Harder still is the recognition and appreciation for creative resistance to bad policies and inhumane actions taken by essentially “good” or benign governments. For many Americans, we may be open to resistance taken by Israeli citizens on behalf of occupied Palestinians – but less receptive to Palestinians acting on their own behalf. Advocates on behalf of indigenous rights for Aboriginal people in Australia could be recognized – although Aborigines acting on their own would be less welcomed by most Americans because we see the “Aussies” as our allies and too much like us to be criticized. Some of that same scrutiny might be focused on our own policies.

It seems we need the distance of time (and the passing of some of the major protagonists) for widespread recognition of the righteousness of the cause when the resistance is closer to “home”. Enough time has gone by to celebrate the differences of William Penn’s and Roger Williams’ relationship to Native Americans when compared to that of other colonial imperialists. Enough time has gone by to recognize the principled witness of the abolitionist movement and (maybe) even the violent resistance of Nat Turner and John Brown. Even some U.S. history books have been willing to appreciate the courage and conviction embodied by Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce and Sitting Bull –although fewer are willing to extend their salute to the violent resistance of Geronimo and Crazy Horse who also stood up to the violent oppression of their nations.

We feel free to celebrate Susan B. Anthony and the suffragette movement now that they aren’t disrupting our lives since enough time has passed. Some of us are more ambivalent about the passions and actions embodied by Carrie Nation and some of the more “radical” prohibitionists –but even if we might disagree with her cause or tactics, we can have a sense of pride in identifying with her convictions. Even enough time has passed for many to begin to join the chorus for elevating Catholic Worker movement co-founder, Dorothy Day, to sainthood for her work for the poor. Some even are willing to celebrate her refusal to comply with bomb shelter drills at the height of the Cold War scare.

How much time has to pass before we are willing to embrace principled resistance to present injustice? And why do I always want to qualify my admiration and appreciation to “principled” resistance? Isn’t any resistance better than acquiescence? Am I so defensive about my own commitment to nonviolence that I fail to celebrate any and all attempts to resist injustice? How many years of “distance” will we need as a nation and people before we are ready to identify the evils embodied in our present actions and policies? Torture justified at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Baghram, and other black sites. Wars of choice and aggression in clear violation of the UN Charter. Ignoring the cries of the growing numbers of poor and uninsured. Deliberate targeting of “economic immigrants” trying to feed their own families both here and in their economically devastated homelands. Once again, the list could go on and on.

I have much more in common with the black-clad, kerchiefed “Anarchist” who sees the injustice and hypocrisy embedded in our society and “acts out” in anger and rage than those who remain silent and “enjoy” the benefits and privilege that come with complicity. Yet even that description does not do justice to many of the “angry” people in the streets during the Republican National Convention last month in St. Paul. I witnessed not only the “taunting” of riot-geared police but also joy and celebration of resistance. When 3 or 4 girls danced chorus-line style chanting, “You’re hot, you’re cute, take off your riot suits!” to the cops, I laughed and deeply appreciated the humor in a tense situation. Dancing to songs by Rage Against the Machine and other resistance anthems played on portable boom-boxes in the middle of street intersections in front of rows and rows of up-armored cops with tear gas guns and Tasers pointed at them, these (mostly) young resisters weren’t only about anger and confrontation but also wanted to embody an alternative to an “uptight” society that seems to over-react in fear and possessiveness when feeling threatened.

While still clinging to my deep conviction and belief that only creative nonviolence can bring about the ultimate just society we long for, recognizing with Gandhi and King that the means used help determine the end results, I need to remember to embrace any acts of resistance to what Dorothy Day calls “our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.” We don’t need to wait 50 years before historians make it safe to look back critically at America in the dying days of its empire. Let’s tap the energy of the young and combine it with the wisdom of our elders and, together, remake our society where we won’t have to look back in shame and wonder at the “silent majority”. Don’t criticize others unless you, too, are out in the streets or working “under the radar” to resist injustice and help build the new world for which we await.