The Spire 4pm-6pm:Solidarity Vigil Anti-War Prisoners

by SOAW Wed Jun 23, 2004 23:46

www.soaw.org

by Jonah House Wed Jun 23, 2004 23:48

www.jonahhouse.org

by PSP Wed Jun 23, 2004 23:49

www.ploughsharesireland.org

by MK Wed Jun 23, 2004 23:51

www.freewebs.com/mary_kelly

by Vanunu Wed Jun 23, 2004 23:52

www.freevanunu.com

by FC Wed Jun 23, 2004 23:59

Paul Gallagher a Catholic Worker from Campaign, IL and Greg Boertje-Obed a Catholic Worker from Duluth MN will be tried together by Fed. Magistrate Judge Gossett in the Omaha Fed Court House on June 25th at 1:30 p.m. for misdemeanor trespass charges stemming form a March 14th demonstration at Offutt AFB.

Offutt AFB is the home of the Strategic Nuclear and US Military Space Commands. Gallagher and Obed were among eight Catholic Workers who crossed the property line at Offutt AFB's main gate and were arrested March 14th.

Misdemeanor Federal Trespass carry a maxim penalty of six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Chuck Hannan, from Council Bluffs IA will be their attorney. Hannan is a Roman Catholic Deacon from St Patricks Parish in Council Bluffs IA. Hannan says representing Offutt protesters is "part of my ministry."


Greg Boertje-Obed: 48 yrs.; Duluth, MN ; Ph (218) 728-0629;



Paul Gallagher: 42 yrs.; Campaign, IL; Ph (217) 355-9774;


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For more info and support contact

The Spirit of Peace Community
3218 Webster St., Omaha NE 68131
Ph (402) 991-4586
E-mail

The Phil Berrigan Catholic Worker House
713 Indiana St., Des Moines IA 50314
Ph (515) 282-4781
E-mail
DMCW Web Page



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Subject: March 21, 2004 Daily Nonpareil, C.B. IA Greg Jerrett Feature article on CWers

March 21, 2004
The Daily Nonpareil, Council Bluffs IA

Web Page Add:

100 years of peace: Human equity and personal sacrifice, CatholicWorkers and the peace movement go back nearly a century

GREG JERRETT , Staff Writer 03/21/2004

Staff photo/Greg Jerrett - During a break in the retreat, Frank Cordaro talks to an attendee of the annual retreat. Cordaro told The Daily Nonpareil that he and the other Catholic Workers live lives commissioned by the Gospels. On

Sunday, March 14, a total of eight Catholic workers and associates from across the Midwest crossed the line at Offutt Air Force Base in protest of United States foreign policy, nuclear proliferation and the war in Iraq.

Every few months, members of the Des Moines Catholic Workers go to Offutt and cross the line at the Kinney Gate. Nearly every time, southwest Iowa priest, protest organizer and spokesman Frank Cordaro is there. These people protest in the hopes of showing those in authority as well as the public that war is not a necessary evil, but simply evil.

It is not a popular position to take, but one they are willing to stand up for and learn about on a daily basis.

Catholic Workers are Catholic Workers 24 hours a day, not just once a year; but March 12-14 did mark the Second Annual Midwest Catholic Worker Resistance Retreat. This year's retreat was held at Holy Family Parish, 1715 Izard St. in Omaha.

Members gathered to share insights and philosophy as well as practical tips on living in accordance with Catholic Worker principles and what to do when you are arrested for trespassing on a federal facility to protest for peace.

When these protesters come, they are sometimes shown on local news programs, given a cursory treatment and allowed to say as many words as fit into a 10-second sound bite. At other times, they are overlooked completely.

Yet these protesters are different than many see on television. They are not college kids out for a lark engaged in the kind of socially conscious but trendy behavior one might expect of young liberals.

Many members of the Catholic Worker Movement would not describe themselves as liberal at all. They are devout believers in the Gospels. They believe strongly in the message of Jesus as delivered in the Sermon on the Mount.

They follow the teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly the writings of the early Fathers and the social encyclicals of the modern popes.

In short, they are working to bring about what they call on their Web site (www.catholicworker.org): "A new society within the shell of the old, a society in which it will be easier to be good. A society in tune with these teachings would have no place for economic exploitation or war, for racial, gender or religious discrimination, but would be marked by a cooperative social order without extremes of wealth and poverty and a nonviolent approach to legitimate defense and conflict resolution."

Yet the Catholic Worker Movement is not so much an organized movement with a central leadership as it seems to be a general philosophy around which like-minded people tend to gather.

There are 185 Catholic Worker communities around the world. Some are farms such as one in nearby Corning. There are houses such as the Bishop Dingman House in Des Moines where members work with the poor and organize social activism.

Community volunteers run soup kitchens, plant gardens, build parks and make no bones about opposing war, militarism, discrimination, extremes in wealth and poverty.

They often get their point across through the American tradition of civil disobedience. They cross lines frequently, bang on planes occasionally and they do hard time for it in federal prisons.

Cordaro has been protesting at Offutt for 25 years. He has spent nearly four years of his life in prison for various charges including trespassing, breaking a ban or bar from federal property and damaging government property once for hitting a bomber with a hammer.

He sees all of this not just as his choice, but as his duty as a Catholic.

"We're commissioned by the Gospels to do these things and follow in the footsteps of Dorothy Day," Cordaro said.

Dorothy Day is one of the founding members of the Catholic Worker. A journalist and convert to Catholicism, she devoted her life to various causes involving social justice and the welfare of her fellow man.

The Catholic Worker Movement began on May 1, 1933, when Day and a philosopher named Peter Maurin published the first edition of The Catholic Worker, a radical newspaper that promoted the Biblical promise of justice and mercy.

"We spend a lot more time talking about Jesus' life than his death," Cordaro said, adding that working for social justice is an unpopular path people in his organization do not choose lightly.

"The price of peace-making is the same today as it's always been: loss of good name, loss of reputation, loss of job, loss of property, loss of freedom and loss of life. If you name any of our heroes, they've all gone through that, and that's why it's unpopular."

The annual protest and line crossing during the Feast of Holy Innocents in December, the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August, are usually times of protest for the Des Moines Catholic Worker.

A relatively small number of protesters attend and as many as 10 protesters might choose to cross the line onto Offutt Air Force Base. In Cordaro's opinion, many more people should be present at the protests.

"We're easily discounted," he said. "It's not that people on the right or the militarists discount us, it's our own church that discounts us. It's the very local peace communities that should be backing us up that just don't deal with us. So when you are out there alone with no backing, it's easy to be discounted and look like a fool.

"Using 'The Passion of the Christ' as an example, Jesus worked on 12 guys for three years and he hung alone. Peace has never been a popular movement."

Cordaro takes a firm stance on right and wrong as it is preached in the Gospels and sees modern Christianity as failing in its essential purpose.

"It's a heretical Christianity that preaches from the top where you have power, oppression and wealth," Cordaro said. "And that's no fair reading of the Jesus of the New Testament, but it's the acceptable one because the kind of Christianity that George W. Bush espouses is the one that's been justifying the empire for as long as I remember all my life.

"Look at this community. This archdiocese raises its money for Catholic charities at the SAC Museum. They hold a banquet. They bless and glorifythe bomb as if it were a peace-maker and raise money for the poor. That's completely off base. It's idolatry, but nobody speaks to this. So when people come in to speak about what the Gospels are really all about, they don't like it."

Following in the footsteps of Day means a commitment to voluntary poverty, working with street people and the homeless.

"This is our everyday life; no one's making any money doing this, there's no salary, we don't do it as a commission from the institutional church, we do it as a commission from the Gospels," Cordaro said, noting another principle espoused by the Catholic Worker Movement, the notion that Americans as a people know a level of privilege unheard of in other countries.

"All of us come from privilege. We're no different from anyone else. We're just trying to make right for ourselves, just a little integrity is all we're looking for.

This year's retreat leaders were Bill and Sue Frankel-Streit who came from a community in Virginia. Bill is a former Catholic priest who has served time in prison for trying to disarm a nuclear-armed B-52.

He told The Daily Nonpareil that there are many people in the movement who have served prison sentences.

"There are a lot of ex-cons here," he said nonchalantly.

Between Bill and Sue Frankel-Streit, they have served four years in prison. This is not seen as a negative by anyone in the movement, but the point. The Frankel-Streit's also home school their three children, research bio-diesel and are working on building a straw-bail cabin.

It is not a conventional life, but that is the point. To a member of the Catholic Workers Movement, conventional life is akin to aiding and abetting.

As leaders of the retreat, the Frankel-Streits talked about their lives in the movement and shared ideas about living deliberately.

Ann Frankel-Streit said she bases her personal form of anarchism on something St. Augustine once said.

"I describe the life of an anarchist as 'love and do as you will,' not 'do as you will,' which is where anarchy is seen as a negative, but 'love and do as you will,'" she said. "And when you try to do that you find yourself facing the state and resisting oppression at every turn, which is crucial, but also because almost anything you try to do in a non-violent way is going to come up against these institutions that are trying to uphold the status quo."

In Virginia, home-schooled children must be taught by parents with a degree or a religious objection to public schools.

"We might be the first non-fundamentalist family to get a religious exemption in the state of Virginia," Sue said.

"We portrayed ourselves as Catholic anarchists, which really got a few heads turning," Bill said.

Sue said that what her family is trying to do is create an alternative to modern life dependent on the state. She joked that one day when the revolution happens, no one would know how to grow food or build a house, but she measures successes in much smaller units than revolution.

"In the winter, if we get the compost toilet to work and wood chopped, that might be all we get done, but we're processing our waste. That's revolutionary," she said. "We're turning our waste into dirt so it doesn't go back into the sewer system that goes into the water we drink."

It might seem like an odd choice today, but America's past has been littered with similar notions of rugged individualism and the kind of frontier spirit the Frankel-Streits exhibit.

Rejection of consumerism is a common theme among the Catholic Workers, who see it as a part of American life that adds to what they refer to as our lives of privilege.

Michael Sprong came from his home in South Dakota where he and his wife volunteer at Anathoth Community Farm to attend the Omaha retreat. In Sprong's view, many Americans are resistant to the ideals he lives by, but much of the world is not.

"We're behind the rest of the world on issues such as resistance to globalization, empire, dominance. Protests are huge in places like Milan and Barcelona," Sprong said, adding that many don't see how these issues effect America.

"The disappearing middle class is affecting the United States greatly. We work more than ever and have less than we've ever had. The point we're trying to make is there is this polarization that is growing. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer and they intend it to be that way.

"In the United States, we look at our own struggle on a daily basis to make ends meet. It's hard for us to think of ourselves as being privileged. As a nation we are, but as individuals, we really battle to make ends meet."

Sprong's home state of South Dakota is home to 10 of the poorest counties in the United States.

"All you have to do is go to Indian country and you are in the Third World," Sprong said. "All they need is to have the government off their back and they could succeed just fine, but there are all these rules set up saying what can and can't be done on Indian land that keep them poor."

Sprong said that "anarchist" is not a term he prefers to describe himself and acknowledges that it comes with some baggage.

"The term 'anarchism' is used frequently, but a lot of Catholic Workers shy away from it because of its negative connotations," Sprong said. "A lot of people say, 'you're a liberal' and I say, 'I'm a radical, not a liberal' so that's where we stand on the spectrum.

"There is no party line in the Catholic Worker, and that's where the 'anarchism' comes from. A term that is also used quite often is 'personalism.' Small groups of regular people can do much of what the state does, so we should just do it."

Sprong said that aspect of the Catholic Worker Movement sounds closer to the Republican Party line than leftist political philosophy.

"It's a radicalism that comes from wanting to be a go-giver instead of a go-getter," Sprong said. "There is also an emphasis that this is an act of faith. The Catholic Worker Movement is intentionally a non-organization. There's no central office, you could go home tomorrow, hang a sign on your house that says 'Catholic Worker House' and you'd be a Catholic Worker."

Non-violence, poverty, peace. These are all oddly loaded terms in the new millennium. Since 9/11, the United States has been on alert and protesting for peace seems outdated.

But it was co-founder Dorothy Day who found herself on the outs with common ideology when she opposed World War I. Frank Cordaro and the other members of the Catholic Worker acknowledge that wanting peace is not enough, that peace takes work.

"Until people who believe in peace start putting up a little human equity and personal sacrifice behind their words, ain't nobody gonna listen to 'em," Cordaro said.

For more information on the Catholic Worker Movement, visit the Catholic Worker online at www.catholicworker.org or at www.desmoinescatholicworker.org.

by Ithaca CW - Ithaca, New York, USA Thu Jun 24, 2004 02:19

ITHACA -- Four Ithacans accused of pouring blood on property at a military recruiting station during a 2003 antiwar demonstration learned Monday that they face prosecution in a federal court.

"We are willing to testify to what we know and what we've done, any place at any time," said Clare T. Grady, 45, a defendant.

District Attorney George Dentes informed Teresa B. Grady, 38, Clare Grady, Peter De Mott, 57, and Daniel Burns, 43, that he dismissed all charges pending in Tompkins County Court as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York agreed to begin prosecution.

The federal court judge still has the opportunity to review the case and decide whether to dismiss it or present it to a grand jury, said Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor who provided legal advice to the defendants.

"It's extraordinarily unusual for a district attorney to ask the federal court to take the case after admitting he doesn't think he would get a conviction," Quigley said.

The charges had been pending since a mistrial was declared in April when a Tompkins County jury could not reach a unanimous decision regarding third-degree criminal mischief charges that Teresa Grady, Clare Grady, De Mott and Burns faced. The charges stemmed from a March 17, 2003, incident in which the four defendants gathered at the military recruiting station at Cayuga Mall in Lansing to pour their own blood on a U.S. flag, posters, carpets and windows.

The four defendants, who used legal advisors as they represented themselves at the trial, relied on their own beliefs as they argued that their actions were done in hopes of ending the killings in Iraq.

After the mistrial, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the charges "in the interest of justice," Dentes said. Dentes responded by announcing that, at his request, the U.S. Attorney based in Syracuse had become involved in the case.

"He concluded that if we used the same evidence, and had the same rulings, during a trial in Tompkins County Court, we'd probably end up with another hung jury," Dentes said.

Although the charges at the federal level have not yet been determined, a trial at the federal level will likely focus on the defendants' intent to damage property during the demonstration. At the federal level, the judge may choose not to allow the defendants to use their political views in testimony, Dentes said.

"We think that the jury focused on the political ideology instead of the facts in this criminal case," Dentes said.

For a trial at the federal level, a jury would be convened from the area surrounding the federal court instead of Tompkins County. Although Quigley said a jury can affect a case's outcome, he added that the timing may affect it too.

"I think the situation in Iraq is less popular now than it was two months ago," Quigley said.

The defendants, who have not denied that they poured blood at the military recruiting station, said even at the federal level, they expect to focus their testimony on the suffering and lives lost as a result of the war.

"If there is a trial in federal court, we will explain to a second jury why we had a right and moral obligation to take nonviolent direct action against the war," De Mott said during a phone conversation Monday.

When the motions to dismiss the charges pending in Tompkins County Court was granted by Tompkins County Judge M. John Sherman Monday, the records of the trial and case were immediately sealed.

Contact: [email protected]