Why do the babies starve
When there’s enough food to feed the world
Why when there’re so many of us
Are there people still alone
Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they’re aimed to kill
Why is a woman still not safe
When she’s in her home– Tracy Chapman
Category: Just Peacemaking
How an 85-Year-Old Nun, Activists Infiltrated Top U.S. Nuclear Site, Exposing Dangers & Urging Peace
Video and report from Democracy Now!
Three peace activists who infiltrated a nuclear weapons site have been freed from prison after their convictions were overturned. In 2012, the self-described Transform Now Plowshares broke into the Y-12 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Known as the “Fort Knox of Uranium,” the complex holds enough uranium to make 10,000 nuclear bombs. The activists cut holes in the fence to paint peace slogans and threw blood on the wall, revealing major security flaws at the facility, which processes uranium for hydrogen bombs. The break-in sparked a series of congressional hearings, with The New York Times describing it as “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.” The three were convicted of damaging a national defense site. After two years behind bars, a federal appeals court recently vacated their convictions, saying the prosecution failed to prove the three intended to “injure the national defense.” All three were released this weekend until their resentencing on a remaining charge of damaging government property. They have likely already served more time than they are set to receive under their new sentencing.
http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2015/5/19/how_an_85_year_old_nun
47 Years Later: The Catonsville Nine
Today is the anniversary of the Catonsville 9 action in 1968. Here’s how Howard Zinn chronicles it in his classic The People’s History of the United States (1980):
The following May, Philip Berrigan-out on bail in the Baltimore case-was joined in a second action by his brother Daniel, a Jesuit priest who had visited North Vietnam and seen the effects of U.S. bombing. They and seven other people went into a draft board office in Catonsville, Maryland, removed records, and set them afire outside in the presence of reporters and onlookers. They were convicted and sentenced to prison, and became famous as the “Catonsville Nine.” Dan Berrigan wrote a “Meditation” at the time of the Catonsville incident:
Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise…. We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.
Civil Resistance
Nor is this a private experience because the addictions from which we must turn are systemic economic/political/cultural pathologies. The insights from the 12 Step programs tells us that the dysfunctional system cannot be reformed, it must be disengaged. We must develop collective and long-term disciplines of “turning around” that empower a political practice that is nonagressive and nonexploitative.
It may seem indulgent to talk this way in view of the suffering of the innocent. Yet how, except through suffering, are we to allow God whoever or whatever that might be for us to train us to fling ourselves upon the impossible? For when we learn that behind the impossible is God’s grace and presence; the future is an enigma; our road is covered by mist. But, we need to go on giving ourselves, because God continues hoping amid the night and God continues calling us to put ourselves out there with those who suffer. I don’t believe there is a better way to live than this a life of nonviolent civil resistance.
– Elizabeth McAlister
the word you’re looking for
Sarah Matsui was born and raised in Hawai’i, raised some more in Philly, and is now living in San Francisco. She did not grow up in the church though is now part of the church, and she cares deeply about intersections of faith, identities (race, gender, language, sexuality, cultural, etc.), justice, and reconciliation.
The church I am attending sent out a letter today (3/13/15) that overall I was excited about, and thankful for. But it also invited further response. In an optional survey response they requested, I submitted the following note:
“Firstly, I am thankful for our church, this board, and for the direction indicated by the board letter. Secondly, a question: if the board has come to the conclusion that our church’s practices have been causing harm, not leading to human flourishing, and excluding LGBTQ people from belonging in the body of Christ, would a logical next step be to issue an explicit apology to the LGBTQ Christians attending our church and/or to the broader LGBTQ community?” Continue reading “the word you’re looking for”
Report from Prison: Possibly Escape
Letter from Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (info@vcnv.org), is in federal prison for participation in an anti-drone protest.
That is also us, the possibility of us, if the wonderful accident of our birth had taken place elsewhere: you could be the refugee, I could be the torturer. To face that truth is also our burden. After all, each of us has been the bystander, the reasonable person who just happens not to hear, not to speak, not to see those people, the invisible ones, those who live on the other side of the border.
– Karen Connelly, The Lizard Cage
It was a little over two weeks ago that Marlo entered Atwood Hall, here in Lexington federal prison. Nearly all the women here are nonviolent offenders. Continue reading “Report from Prison: Possibly Escape”
From Ferguson to Guantanamo
To read more about the work of Witness Against Torture, read Fighting racism and torture from Ferguson to Guantanamo
Frohe Weihnachten: A Century After The Truce
If the well-meaning Christian boys from England, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, and other nations had been, in their childhoods, thoroughly exposed to the ethical teachings of their Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, they might have had the capacity to refuse the invitation to kill their co-religionists on the other side of the battle lines.
Gary Kohls
This year marks the 100 year anniversary of the 1914 Christmas Truce, just months into the first World War. Continue reading “Frohe Weihnachten: A Century After The Truce”
Reflections on Today’s Civil Resistance, Dec 17, 2014
Leah Grady Sayvetz lives in Ithaca, New York, where she grew up in the Catholic Worker tradition and part of the broader Catholic Worker community across the country. After having finished school in the Philly area, she most recently returned from traveling through southern states and spending time at the Open Door Community, a Catholic Worker house in Atlanta.
As we drove home from Watkins Glen this afternoon, it began to snow. The flurries danced about us and flew at the windshield as we sped down the road, making our surroundings seem magical. The rolling hills, carved out by a gorge or waterfall here and there, brushed in the feathery grey of bare trees which covered hillsides of rich dark brown hummus now patched with bright white snow… the landscape took my breath away and I remembered how in love I am with this region where I was born. As the snowflakes fell like little blessings from the sky, we in the car remarked on how today had brought a huge blessing: New York’s governor had just banned Fracking in the state. Continue reading “Reflections on Today’s Civil Resistance, Dec 17, 2014”
Witnessing to the Darkness
Reflection given by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann at the Air National Guard Base in Battle Creek, MI where they have begun operating drones.
Luke 1:41-47
I am really grateful to be here today. I grew up spending Mondays in Advent at Williams International. So, this feels like just the right place to be.
These days, I find myself turning to Mary as a mother. She raised an incredible son. Continue reading “Witnessing to the Darkness”
Radical Discipleship 