The Sandusky Verdict: A Bittersweet Sense of Vindication

A Bittersweet Sense of Vindication by Steve Clemens. June 23, 2012

When the guilty verdict came in on the sexual abuse trial of Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky I breathed a sigh of relief for the victims. As a survivor of sexual abuse over numerous months by my sixth grade teacher, Mr. John Stark, at the E.B. Laudenslager Elementary School in Hatfield, PA in 1961-62, I know first-hand the shame, guilt, frustration, disgust, and powerlessness engendered when a person in power/authority over you betrays the public trust out of predatory urges.

It took me seven years before I had the courage to tell another person about the abuse I suffered at the hands of my teacher. Only when the English rock group The Who released their rock opera Tommy – whose title character had been abused by his “wicked Uncle Ernie” – did I tell my college roommate that I had endured similar experiences when I was in sixth grade. It was another year and a different roommate who had also been molested (by his Boy Scout troop leader) before I met another survivor who shared his own story with me and helped me begin to realize that it wasn’t my fault; it didn’t happen to me because God was trying to punish me. Although the multiple encounters with Mr. Stark left me disgusted and cringing with shame, somehow the sense of guilt, thinking that I somehow deserved that punishment was even more scarring to my soul.

It was another 30 years before I took the opportunity to tell my parents what had happened. Their raising me to “obey those in authority” coupled with my church’s theology which often proclaimed a God of wrath and judgment kept me silent and shamed for years. If only I could have experienced a jury’s declaration of “guilty” – even years or decades later -, I think I would have found a sense of vindication for the burden I carried for so long. As it was, only after years of therapy, I had to visit the gravesite of Mr. Stark, my perpetrator, to confirm he was no longer able to create new victims. He was probably 60 when he preyed on me - and who know how many other victims - and while I knew he was definitely retired (the school had closed after consolidation), I wasn’t certain he was dead until I visited the cemetery and saw the grave marker.

I want to see Jerry Sandusky hauled off to prison – but only for a few years. I also know what prison is like and don’t wish that on anyone, including these predators of youth. I want him to have a taste of prison but then released under very strict house arrest or halfway house confinement where he will be monitored to prevent further victimization. For the sake of the survivors, any savings and assets he has accumulated should be used to pay for their therapy and as a token of restitution – if for no other reason than as public recognition of their suffering. The guilty verdict, I hope, will go a long way on the healing journeys they/we will need for decades to come.

Our society has come a long way from the days of silence I encountered in the early 1960s and I’m grateful for public awareness that has arisen from the on-going tragedy of denial and cover-up within the Roman Catholic Church and many other institutions which have protected pedophiles and sexual predators but we still have a long way to go to protect our children. May today’s verdict continue to move us from silence to solidarity.

Choosing Jail: Experimenting With Redemptive Suffering

Experimenting With Redemptive Suffering by Steve Clemens. June 11, 2012

It was in reading Mohandas Gandhi that I first learned about his “experiments with truth” – a term he used in perfecting the tactics of nonviolent resistance to the apartheid regime in South Africa and the British colonial occupation of his homeland of India. Martin Luther King Jr. took lessons from Gandhi’s campaigns in designing his own strategies to throw off the shackles of racial prejudice and legal discrimination. King used the term “redemptive suffering” drawing from his training as a Baptist minister and his understanding of the nonviolent response of Jesus to persecuting authorities.

Even though I’m now on the far side of 60, I feel I’m just a novice when it comes to creative nonviolence when I read the accounts of Gandhi, King, Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and many others. I’ve been arrested now more than 30 times; jailed more than 10 (for periods of a few hours up to six months). Some trials were before just a Judge, other times with a jury; some acquittals but more convictions. All of them learning experiences but I find each time I enter the courtroom, I find I have fewer expectations of “justice” from an entrenched system to is clearly in service to empire.

While the option of doing community service is definitely preferable to incarceration for most crimes that don’t involve violence, (especially having seen first-hand the dehumanization of most jails and prisons, even the “minimum security” Federal prison “camps”), it struck me that, for me – this time, I could experiment again by choosing the more difficult option.

To choose suffering over against retaliation or violence is what Martin King, Ralph Abernathy, and thousands of others (including my friend Marv Davidov) did during the Civil Rights struggle. While suffering in itself might be efficacious, publicly choosing to do so can hopefully encourage others to join the struggle. Thus, from King’s choice to remain in jail rather than seek to be released on bail, we were blessed with arguably one of the best treatises on nonviolent action in the form of King’s powerful “Letter From the Birmingham Jail.” King’s choice to suffer in jail lent moral credibility to his letter to his critics – especially those who also wore clerical garb but chose a “go slow” strategy when it came to human rights for people of color. King not only chose suffering over retaliation but also over comfort and convenience. His friends argued that “you could do a lot more for the cause on the ‘outside’ rather than rotting in jail” but King understood the power of redemptive suffering as a way to move others.

So, it got me thinking as I prepared once again for trial on the charge of criminal trespass at Alliant Techsystems (ATK) – purveyor of death and destruction for corporate profit by making and selling landmines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium munitions among other products designed to kill, maim, and dominate. Although I would defend our nonviolent actions on the basis of International Laws and Treaties, I knew there was a good chance our legal arguments would fall on deaf ears. If found guilty, should I request the likely consequence, community service, a “penalty” already offered us by the Prosecutor in exchange for giving up our rights to a jury trial and pleading “guilty” – or should I choose a path which might embrace some discomfort and suffering?  

My friends on the receiving end of ATK’s lethal products take daily risks. My friend and fellow peacemaker, Sami Rasouli, now back in his homeland of Iraq, has to ask whether or not to risk having another child with his wife Suaad, knowing that the contamination of Iraq by depleted uranium has caused birth defects and cancers to rise precipitously since 1991. How can I stand in solidarity with him?

My friend and member of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, Ali, must take risks every time he leads his donkeys into the mountainsides of the Bamiyan Province of Afghanistan to earn his living carrying water and firewood back to the village. He risks death or dismemberment from landmines, cluster bombs, or attacks from Apache helicopters or unmanned drones. How can I stand in solidarity with him?

I can choose to take a very modest amount of suffering and discomfort by going to jail in solidarity with them. Ten days of sleeping on a steel bunk with a pathetic 2” plastic-covered mattress and a clump of material called a pillow will be hard enough if I’m allowed a daily dose of ibuprofen to ease the aches but most jails deny the painkillers as a matter of course. Physical separation from friends and family, missing the physical comforts of home, forgoing the autonomy of being able to choose what and when you eat, the lack of quiet – all of these may cause some “suffering” but pale in the face of what my friends must encounter without a 10-day release promise. There is some risk of assault by guards or other inmates, the physical humiliation of the strip-search, the gratuitous orders from guards just to remind you that you are not in control anymore.

But Jesus tells us in the Gospels, “Be not afraid, I go before you”, and, he does. Besides, I have a community on the outside to support and advocate on my behalf – something very few other prisoners have. I only have 10 days; my friend Mark just was sentenced to 4 months and another friend Brian will likely get 6 months for a recent nonviolent protest against drones at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri this spring. But we can offer up whatever we are able to risk and endure when we think of those on the receiving end of these illegal and indiscriminate weapons.

My suffering won’t in any way match theirs – but, when offered in solidarity, compassion, and hope, I pray it will help to begin the healing process that war is so bent on destroying. It’s been 10 years since my last incarceration at Hennepin County’s Adult Correction Facility, aka “the Workhouse”. It’s time to “experiment” again in the struggle for nonviolent change. I report to my jailers on June 26.

Reflections on today's lectionary texts

Choosing a King or Community. Shared word for Community of St. Martin by Steve Clemens. June 10, 2012

The two readings from the lectionary for today:

1 Samuel 8:4-20 New International Version (NIV)

⁴ So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. ⁵ They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

⁶ But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. ⁷ And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. ⁸ As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. ⁹ Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

¹⁰ Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. ¹¹ He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.

¹² Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. ¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. ¹⁵ He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.

¹⁸ When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. ”

¹⁹ But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. ²⁰ Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

Mark 3:20-35 (NIV)

²⁰ Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. ²¹ When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

²² And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

²³ So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. ²⁶ And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. ²⁷ In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. ²⁸ Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

³⁰ He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

³¹ Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³² A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

³³ “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

³⁴ Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Schanan shared with us last week about this second passage, focusing primarily on the response of Jesus’ family members. I want to continue my reflection on this passage by linking it with the Hebrew Bible lesson in today’s lectionary from I Samuel about the desire to have a king.

Since all this summer and fall we will be inundated (and nauseated) by millions of dollars worth of political ads – not to mention the paid bloviators of the political pundocracy, all focused on the horserace for the crowning of our own emperor, king, or “President”, we might want to re-assess that fateful decision the Children of Israel made in going the way of all the other nations.

It is just one more step from “give us a King!” to 8 centuries later hearing the cry from the people to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar”. It is easy for us today to look back over the history recorded in the Hebrew Bible about how that all worked out. The official texts included now in the stories of the Tribes of Israel often try to whitewash or minimize the greed and folly of many of the Kings; we’ve been Sunday-schooled to admire King Solomon’s request for wisdom and gaze with wonder at the lavish Temple he constructed.

But, as Wes Howard-Brook so eloquently exposes in his book, Come Out, My People, the Bible carries another critique less flattering of King Solomon. Not only has Solomon’s desire for “wisdom” directly contradict the instructions of the Garden of Eden (Do not partake of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), but Howard-Brook speculates that Solomon might also be the model for the wicked Pharaoh in the Exodus story. Come Out, My People contends that throughout the Bible there is a battle between those worshipping a god of Empire and those who worship the God of Creation who rejects the path of domination.

When the moveable and transient tent of the Tabernacle was replaced with the monumental fixed Temple, a repressive tax structure was also required to provide for the upkeep and staffing – creating a pyramid-like hierarchy which restricted access to the divine.

I should have had my radar up in Sunday School when I learned that the offspring of the illicit relationship of David with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his generals who David had killed in battle to cover-up his adultery, was a boy child named Solomon. Not an auspicious start, realizing we cannot blame the child for his parent’s actions. But if your Sunday School upbringing was like mine, we are seduced by the tales of Solomon’s “great wisdom” and his magnificent Temple while overlooking or minimizing the slave labor, oppressive taxes, foreign alliances through multiple marriages, the harem of more than 700 concubines, … . The list goes on and on. We, instead, focus on the Proverbs, pearls of wisdom, as if that balances out Solomon’s standing army and cruel forced labor.

But Jesus reminds us, “Even Solomon in all his glory wasn’t dressed as well as the wildflowers blooming in the meadow”.

Wes Howard-Brook reminds us that the technology of the written text was not possible until the empirical reign of David and Solomon because no one had the time or ability to hire “scribes” before then – so the earliest books in the Hebrew Bible were the accounts written of and by the monarchy with the accounts and stories of creation, Abraham and Sara, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and even Samuel all written later. So how much of the re-telling of the original stories of the founding of the Hebrew people and their escape from Egypt was written as a critique of the Imperial project that was steering the people toward a captivity in Babylon?

We can look at the account of Samuel being pressured by the people for a King to be a nice, quaint story – interesting but not relevant for us today. Quaint, maybe in the same way that Attorney General Gonzales, John Yoo, Delahunty, and other White House sycophants claimed for the Geneva Conventions when the question of torture arose. “The Geneva Conventions are quaint’, Gonzales said in an interview. Oh, we shouldn’t say “torture”. We “don’t torture”. Just say, “Enhanced interrogations”.

Well, maybe this story has something to tell us today about what has become an “imperial presidency”. Yes, the founders of the American Republic wanted limited powers, checks and balances. But followers of “American exceptionalism” don’t like limits and restrictions – after all, we are “the last, best hope for the world”. Virtually every modern-day President has embraced American Exceptionalism and are roundly criticized if they don’t verbally proclaim it with some frequency. If you question whether or not the American presidency has approached “king-like” pretensions, I would point to Obama’s recent visit to Minneapolis where seats at the luncheon went for $50,000 each with the promise of a photo and minimal “face time “ with his majesty. In the recent Republican primary, one losing candidate for the throne was given $20 million from one billionaire donor! One doesn’t have a democracy when positions of power are up for auction.

Today we have an “Assassin-in-Chief” – a President that brags about creating a “kill list” in articles written for the NY Times after interviews with key Administration players. And it is further justified by downplaying civilian causalities in drone strikes by casually declaring that any male between the ages of 14 and 50 killed must be “militants” and our corporate press obliges in this outrageous falsehood. From spying on us through eavesdropping on our cell phones and intercepting our email, to active assassination of US citizens without trial or any public evidence released, our imperial presidency fulfills the prescient warning of Samuel about the people wanting a “king to rule over us” – all because of fears about “national security”. 

Today, instead of the forced labor and the seizing of crops of Solomon’s day, our imperial leaders pay for their weapons and wars through taxes. As our MN ASAP ministry so clearly describes, our “kingly” government takes the resources needed for the common good and instead conspires with greedy corporations to turn ploughshares into swords.

Moving back to our Gospel text from Mark: Jesus’ family thinks, “He’s out of his mind”. They want to call him home; take him off the healing and preaching and teaching circuit because he is stirring up criticism and trouble from the political and religious leaders. I’m sure they felt Jesus might be putting them in danger if the authorities were getting upset. If not putting them in danger, Jesus is at least putting himself at danger and his family wants to protect him- as well as their own reputations. To his extended family, Jesus is deluded; to his political opponents he is demonic.

Ched Myers writes about this: “To put it in terms of the political war of myths, when the ruling class feels its hegemony threatened, it tries to neutralize challengers by identifying them with the mythic cultural arch-demon. … in our cold war dualism, Jesus is being labeled a ‘communist’”.  

How many of you have had family members question or criticize you for speaking out against the war, or torture, or extra-judicial assassination by drones? I know my parents and my brothers have more than once questioned my mental state or at least my “political” judgments. They haven’t exactly told me that I’m out of my mind but I’m sure my latest decision to go to jail instead of doing community service has caused a few of my relatives to roll their eyes and shake their heads in pity for what Christine has to put up with.

Jesus is being accused of being in league with Beelzebub or bul or some strange name to us. Maybe if we heard the text as accusing Jesus as giving material support to terrorists, labeled as a Communist, or anarchist, or being an atheist or Unitarian we’d understand this charge better. His opponents are just throwing about accusations, seeing what will stick to discredit him. He’s in league with Satan. Jesus’ response? Satan cannot cast out Satan; a house divided cannot stand.

How can we criticize China or the Philippines of violating human rights when we refuse to prosecute those who ordered and justified torture? How can we condemn Iran for pursuing weapons we already have and have used? How can we demand fair treatment for dissidents in China when “Occupy” sites in most major cities are routinely shut down because of “urban camping” regulations? Last week President Obama admitted he ok’d a cyber attack against computers in Iran. If any nation did that to us, you can imagine how quickly we would retaliate with guns and bombs.

Later on in Mark’s Gospel, we learn the name of one of the demons Jesus cast out: the name was “Legion” – just like the name of the Roman troops occupying their homeland. If Jesus’ family heard that remark, they’d re-double their efforts to keep him at home – or at least to “moderate his message”.

So what do we do when even our families don’t understand us? Mark gives us a new kinship model sometimes called fictive kinship. It is based on obedience, not to the clan patriarch or family, but to God alone.  Jesus calls us to be his brothers, his sisters – to form a new community.

Jesus didn’t get a lot of accolades in his day – neither should we. In a society comfortable with kings or imperial presidents, those who choose to follow a man “who had no where to lay his head”, a man whose rightful place should have been in the “holy-of-holies” of Herod’s rebuilt Temple but instead lived off the generosity of others. When we choose to follow that man, we had better expect a similar reward. When the heavy hand of the Temple elite and the Roman occupiers came down, most of Jesus’ disciples scattered. But who stayed, looking up at that rebel on the cross? His mother, the same one who just chapters before in this story thought he was crazy. She obviously reassessed, had a change of heart and mind.  Maybe we all deserve another chance to choose to follow the carpenter from Galilee.

We can become his brothers, his sisters: a community of discipleship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going To Jail for Peacemaking

Going To Jail For Peacemaking by Steve Clemens. May 15, 2012

I could tell by the way the jurors entering the courtroom today refused to meet our eyes or even look at us that the verdict would go against the 11 peacemakers on trial in Hennepin County’s 4^th District Court. The jury trial was the result of a nonviolent witness at the entrance of Alliant Techsystems’ corporate headquarters in Eden Praire, MN just two days before ATK would move its main office to Arlington, VA on October 1, 2011 to be close to the Pentagon, its largest customer. 

There were 12 defendants the day we were arrested on trespass charges when we refused to leave unless we could meet with the CEO or other corporate officers to deliver a Civil Arrest Warrant as well as a notebook entitled “Employee Liabilities of Weapons Manufacturers Under International Law”. Even though the Eden Prairie Police Officers agreed to place the documents we carried into our case files, Judge Ronald Abrams agreed with Prosecutor Patrick Leach’s objection to the documents being allowed to be entered as evidence in our trial. So the jurors never had the excerpts of the international laws and treaties in front of them when they deliberated and instead seemed to agree with the prosecutor’s closing statement claiming we cited no actual laws in our defense after he and the Judge had prevented including them as evidence.

Despite the disappointing verdict, it was a great pleasure to hear the moving, clear testimony of my fellow defendants. I was proud to sit beside Sister Marguerite Corcoran at the defense table and watch her slowly walk up to the witness chair aided by her cane due to her Parkinson’s. She knew, given some of her health challenges, that at age 82 this might be one of her last times she might be able to participate in civil disobedience for a cause she cares deeply about. She wasn’t alone in that sentiment: her housemates, Sister Rita McDonald, age 89, and Sister Kate McDonald, age 83, didn’t choose to sit on the sidelines that September morning and so were great compatriots while testifying on their own behalf.

A third of the four “notorious” McDonald Sisters, Brigid, was feisty with her comments in the courtroom, expressing her outrage that ATK can profit by killing people yet we were the ones hauled into court rather than “the real criminals”. Jeanne Hynes carried a bandaged doll to the ATK protest and brought it again to hold while testifying about how indiscriminate weapons like the ones ATK sells continue to victimize real children – and keep killing and deforming long after a war has ended. Dr. David Harris, a retired surgeon and military veteran told his reasons for joining the arrest witness. Retired postal worker and fellow veteran, John Schmid tried to talk about some of the medical affects he has learned about from depleted uranium but Prosecutor Leach interrupted his testimony as irrelevant. Roger Cuthbertson attempted to explain the need for a citizen’s arrest procedure but was also stifled by objections which were sustained by the Judge.

Tom Bottolene, the creator of Alliant Action’s webpage and fount of information about Minnesota’s largest war profiteer testified about ATK’s history of making indiscriminate weapons, describing three of them in greater detail: cluster bombs, the XM-25 combat weapons designed to fire around corners or over walls, and depleted uranium. He told of our October 2010 “secret meeting” with ATK’s CEO, Mark DeYoung, and how he told us his company was no longer making depleted uranium munitions, indicating that he did not feel compelled to continue some of the “bad” decisions of his predecessors. Bottolene went on to describe his attendance at the AKT Shareholders meeting in August 2011 where CEO DeYoung admitted that the new contract for tank shells included depleted uranium. Therefore, Bottolene continued, it was incumbent that we remind the CEO of the illegality of this indiscriminate weapon by trying to once again deliver to him copies of relevant treaties and international law contained in the notebook.

Bill Barnett, also a stockholder, told how he had been arrested while trying to attend a shareholders meeting in past years and once again asked the Judge to reconsider entering our notebook into evidence since we carried it with us at the time of arrest and certainly documented our intent that day – to no avail. My own testimony may have been the longest because I attempted to read into the court record excerpts of Treaties the U.S. has signed, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions which clearly outlaw indiscriminate weapons. I tried to describe provisions from the Nuremberg Tribunals which compel all people to resist complicity with War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. Although I managed to read a few of these excerpts despite the prosecutor’s objections, copies of these were prohibited from being included as evidence even though the US Constitution declares such treaties as “the supreme law of the land and judges in every state shall be bound thereby”. It appears that in Hennepin County, “supreme” somehow needs to take a backseat to private property trespass laws!

The jury took barely one hour to convict all of us when they returned to deliberate the next morning after receiving the jury instructions from the judge. After dismissing them, the Judge asked if we were ready to proceed to sentencing. The defendants were. Having already appeared four times in the courtroom at Ridgedale for arraignment and pre-trial appearances, we had little desire to make another separate trip to the façade of “justice”. However, the Prosecutor asked if he could have some time to consult with the defendants before making his recommendations to the Court.

“What do you want to do, Mr. Clemens?” Leach asked me. I responded that I felt my actions were a “community service” already and if the court felt it needed to punish me, I’d prefer to go to jail. “For how long?” was his response. I refused to set the parameters of my own punishment declaring that he should “let the punishment fit the crime.”

Why would I “choose” jail over a sentence of community service and a fine?

Doing the time for the “crime” certainly is closer to Gandhi’s own practice of asking his judges for the maximum penalty. He understood the value of taking on suffering as a moral force for change and how it exposed the violence and cruelty of the state. For me, having the Judge order me to jail helps expose the preposterous idea that peaceful, nonviolent protest should be punished when it challenges the “rights” of corporate war profiteers. [The Prosecutor went out of his way to say that he might not like what ATK produces and did not represent the company in his role as prosecutor. Other prosecutors I’ve had in the past went further –admitting they despised what ATK did – but all followed their prescribed role in protecting a trespass law over human life in “enemy” lands.]

Choosing jail is my offering to my new (and future) friends in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a statement to them that I take seriously my desire to stand in solidarity with them in denouncing the scourge of depleted uranium and depleted consciences. Their knowledge that there are Americans willing to sit in jail (even if only for 10 days) out of concern for their well-being can hopefully help the healing needed between citizens of the US empire and citizens of its new vassal states in the Middle East and southwest Asia. I go to jail in good conscience to stand in solidarity with my friends Sami, Hakim, Abdulai, Sammera, Faiz, Zuhair, President Akeel, Zahra and Sharbanoo, Dr. Ali, Hiba, Dr. Askouri, and many others. I’ll have time in jail to think about and pray for them. I’ll have time to think about and pray for my own nation’s leaders and corporate chieftains.

Dr. David Harris, a stalwart friend (although all the other defendants have become good friends over our years of vigil and protest together), said he wanted to join me in going to jail when Mr. Leach asked him what he felt was an appropriate sentence for his conviction. Although he was sentenced to only two days in jail, the Prosecutor deciding (without a lot of first-hand evidence) that he had fewer criminal convictions, I am grateful for his act of conscience and solidarity.

While other defendants have been sentenced to between 32 and 68 hours of community service, our 12^th defendant, Charlie Bloss, had his sentence suspended because he remains in the hospital battling the effects of cancer. He had been excused from attending the trial but the court honored his desire to be included with us, accepting whatever verdict came down on the others.

So, after our conversation with the Prosecutor, one by one we were called before the bench for our sentencing. It was a little startling to hear “I sentence you to 90 days in the Hennepin County Adult Corrections Facility (Workhouse). Execution of 81 days is stayed for one year. You are fined $50. You will serve 10 days with the 10^th day served in lieu of paying your fine and surcharge and assessments. You will report to the Workhouse on June 26^th by 11AM. You are not to go on the property of 7480 Flying Cloud Drive in Eden Prairie for a year. No trespass (within the State of Minnesota) during that year. I wish you well in the future.”

David was sentenced before me and the Judge prefaced his sentence saying, “I work very hard to keep people out of jail. I am sending you to jail (at your request) with a heavy heart.” I believe he meant it. Our Judge is trapped in the same system which seems bent on victimizing everyone in the process. Such is life in the declining empire.

Letter To Bradley Manning

March 4, 2012

Commander, HHC USAG

Attn: PFC Manning

239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417

JBM-HH, VA 22211

Dear Brad Manning,

I write to you as an associate member of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 27 of Minneapolis, MN to let you know that you are in our thoughts and prayers for the days and years ahead as you face trial and the threats of lengthy imprisonment. As someone who has done time in jail and prison for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, I know how important it is to know that others are with you in Spirit as your remain incarcerated. I want you to know that I’ve also carried word of your [alleged] whistleblower actions to young peacemakers I met in Afghanistan last March when I traveled there as part of an international peace delegation to plant trees for peace on the First Day of Spring which coincides with the Persian New Year. Those young people, known as the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are also working in their own nonviolent way to end the scourge of war they have known all their lives.

As a friend of Dan Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, and Ray McGovern and in gratitude for other people of conscience who dared blow the whistle to correct injustice and self-destructive national policy, I hope to convey to you that the disclosure of documents which appeared on WikiLeaks and thru it to international newspapers helped disclose in a more full manner the lies and corruption these wars have been based upon and the continued duplicity of our political and military leaders who have jeopardized the true security of our nation by inflaming others and causing many more “terrorists” to have been created. As is often said, “The first casualty of war is Truth” and Americans have had it in very short supply for more than a decade now.

It is my hope and prayer that you will remain strong of heart and purpose throughout the trials ahead, knowing that there are many citizens of your nation who stand alongside you and wish you health and hope.

In solidarity and peace,

Steve Clemens

2912 East 24^th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55406-1322

Passing On the Torch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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