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
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
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
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!
[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
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."
-----
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.
----
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.
----
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.
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."
-----
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.
----
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.
----
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
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
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
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