March
2004
The
Further Invention of Nonviolence
By Kathy Kelly
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Last month, Judge G. Mallon Faircloth sentenced me to
three months in prison for participating in a November, 2003 peaceful
protest, organized by the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), at Fort
Benning, GA. During three days of trial, 27 activists offered moving
testimony about why they carried crosses and coffins onto the base.
Defendants called for an end to the U.S. Army combat training school,
the SOA-WINSEC. All were found guilty. Some were sentenced to probation,
others to probation with fines, and still others to three to six month
terms in prison. As in previous years, the trial provided a forum for
defendants to speak on behalf of people whose voices can never be heard
in U.S. courts, the voices of those who’ve been wounded, orphaned,
maimed, disappeared and murdered because of U.S. militarism.
For my part, it was important to recall experiences tracing back to
1985, when I traveled to San Juan de Limay, in the north of Nicaragua.
Children there were radiant and friendly, many of them too young to
understand that during the previous week, U.S.-funded Contras had kidnapped
and murdered 25 people in their village. Later that summer, I fasted
with Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister, Rev. Miguel D’Escoto,
himself a Maryknoll priest, and listened to stories pour forth as many
hundreds of Nicaraguan peasant pilgrims vigiled and fasted in the Monsenor
Lezcano church to show solidarity with the priest-minister’s desire
to nonviolently resist Contra terrorism. Rev. Miguel D’Escoto
urged those of us from the U.S. to return to our homes and there develop
nonviolent actions commensurate to the crimes being committed. This
experience gave me reason to believe that the U.S. could have used negotiation
and diplomacy to resolve disputes with Nicaragua.
Likewise, in Haiti, the poorest country of the western hemisphere, nonviolent
activists had experienced, through peace teams, an arrow pointing to
the potential for nonviolent activism to protect human rights. The Christian
Peacemaker Teams maintained a steady presence in Jeremie, in the southern
finger of Haiti, throughout the time when the U.S. had determined it
was too dangerous for U.S. soldiers to be there. I was there for three
months in 1995 just before the U.S. troops returned. Throughout this
stretch of history, the U.S. spent more money on moving, equipping,
and training troops, than it spent on meeting human needs. The Commandant
of the region, Colonel Rigobert Jean, commented publicly that he was
“ashamed and embarrassed that it was left to the Œblans (Creole
for foreigners) on the hill to preserve peace and security in the region.”
He was referring to our five person team. Again, I had reason to believe
that unarmed peacemakers with almost no funding could be relied on to
create greater security than the military could provide, in an area
of intense conflict.
Indelibly marked in my memory from that summer are the Creole words
that children could no longer suppress as evenings drew to a close and
they longed for adequate meals. “M’gen grangou”—I’m
hungry.
More recently, in Iraq, during the U.S. bombing in March and April of
2003, I saw how children suffer when nations decide to put their resources
into weapons and warfare rather than meeting human needs. All of us
learned to adopt a poker face, hoping not to frighten the children,
as ear-splitting blasts and gut wrenching thuds exploded across Baghdad.
During most days and nights of the bombing, I would spend a little time
holding little Miladhah and Zainab in my arms. That’s how I learned
of their fear. These two little girls were grinding their teeth, morning,
noon and night. But they were far more fortunate than the children who
were survivors of direct hits, children whose brothers and sisters and
parents were maimed and killed, and children who were themselves scarred
and deformed.
A recent report in the London Observer quoted U.S. Armed Forces medical
personnel warning that 20 percent of the veterans returning from Iraq
will suffer post traumatic stress disorders—already 22 soldiers
have committed suicide. As of this writing, over 500 U.S. soldiers,
caught in an inconclusive war in Iraq, have been killed, and 9,000 wounded.
How can we best educate the U.S. public about the futility of pouring
U.S. resources down the rathole of military spending?
During the recent SOAW trial in Columbus, GA, as co-defendants told
what motivated them to risk imprisonment and heavy fines, we heard stories
of military atrocities that explain why increasing numbers of people
in other parts of the world feel seething rage and antagonism toward
the U.S. In a very real sense, our dangerously over-consumptive lifestyles
were on trial, just as much as U.S. readiness to use threat and force,
overwhelming military force, to protect the American way of life. The
belief that, as President George Bush said at a 1992 energy conference
in Rio de Janeiro, “the American way of life is non-negotiable,”
leads others to justify violent responses to stop U.S. imperialism.
For most of us, the U.S. government does not want our bodies on the
line in combat. It wants our assent and our money. Elected officials
often perceive that we put them in power to protect our inordinately
comfortable lifestyles, and if they have to use violent means to do
so, we will foot the bill. Refusal to pay for war (through war tax resistance)
and readiness to radically resist militarism through nonviolent means
helps us find what Rev. D’Escoto pointed us toward: “actions
commensurate to the crimes being committed.”
Before sentencing me, Judge Faircloth asked me why the campaign I work
most closely with is called “Voices in the Wilderness.”
I explained that we believe there is a wilderness of compassion here
in the U.S. I’m grateful to have been part of the passion that
motivated defendants in the courtroom. We haven’t given up on
nonviolence. Rather than advocate that others risk torture and slaughter
as the only way to resist U.S. warmaking, this group and the many thousands
of supporters who are part of the SOAW network are committed to “the
further invention of nonviolence.”
By telling a judge that we are willing to go into the prison system,
and there give witness on behalf of mothers and fathers separated from
their children by a cruel and wrongheaded prison-industrial complex,
we can point to a radically countercultural departure from accepting
the status quo that now exists in the U.S.
Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness
(www.vitw.org), a
campaign to end U.S. economic and military warfare against Iraq. For
information about the SOAW campaign, mentioned in this article, visit
www.soaw.org. To learn about war tax refusal, please consult www.nwtrcc.org.In
a very real sense, our dangerously over-consumptive lifestyles were
on trial, just as much as U.S. readiness to use threat and force, overwhelming
military force, to protect the American way of life.
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