Author Archive for Jack & Felice

Civilians John Heid, Jean Boucher and Dennis DuVall converse with military police. Photo by Bob Carney.

Following Tucson’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day march on Monday, January 17, 10 people carried Dr. King’s message to nearby Davis–Monthan Air Force Base for a peace vigil to honor his legacy twenty years after the United States began its war against Iraq.

Three men – Dennis DuVall, John Heid, and Jean Boucher – walked into the base with messages for base personnel opposing depleted uranium munitions and armed drones.

They were stopped at the gate by military police who repeatedly asked the men to turn around and leave. When each of them declined, Tucson police were summoned.  Duvall, Heid, and Boucher were arrested, taken into custody, and later released on their own recognizance from the Pima County Jail.  They have March court dates.

Published on Wednesday, December 29, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

by Leah Bolger

Imagine you are taking a walk in a park and you witness a mugging.  What would you do?  Would you look the other way or would you try to stop it?   If you are one who would try to stop it, then what would you do when it is your government that is committing the crime?  As citizens we are told that we should call our Congressman or write a letter to the editor when we are dissatisfied with our government.  But writing a letter to the editor is no more effective at stopping the crimes of our government than it is at stopping a mugging.

On December 16th, 2010, I participated in an act of civil resistance in an attempt to stop my government from continuing to commit crimes—namely the ongoing wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  In the middle of a heavy snowstorm, I was arrested along with 130 other people in front of the White House who refused to move off the sidewalk when ordered to by the police.  We were not violent, we carried no weapons, and we damaged no property.  We were, however, willing to disobey the police as an act of resistance to our government; as a way of saying “No” to the senseless slaughter of innocent people; “No” to outrageous war profiteering, “No” to our government’s flagrant disregard of international law, ”No” to the squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars.  

Reflection by Sue Frankel-Streit in collaboration with Bill Frankel-Streit

New Year’s Day 2011,

Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm, Virginia, USA

I don’t know what effect hammering on a B-52 bomber actually had on the first Gulf War (other than that particular bomber not bombing). But I know that the effect that action had on me was immense; likely immeasureable. I don’t think about the ANZUS Plowshares action that often. I don’t speak about it unless someone asks. It was 20 years ago, after all. There have been so many creative, risky, beautiful acts of resistance before and since,  that I don’t dwell often on that one.

Still, though, those few solid thwacks of my hammer on that huge plane in the early hours of the New Year 1991, and all the preparation leading up to them, and all the court time and, most especially, all the jail time that followed, have pretty much informed every aspect of my life since.

by Anabel Dwyer

http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/dwyer/

Pray! Mourn! Organize!
“Woo???!!!”
This we still refuse to learn:
Our legal system “protects”
with useless fences
non-existent, classified “property”
belonging to US
“missioned” for genocide
from a Sister, two Fathers and
two Grandmas
who walk with and in love and beauty.

Disarm Now Plowshares and their banner “Trident: Illegal and Immoral” say it all. Stunning whistleblowers:  Sr. Anne Montgomery, 84;  Fr. William Bischel, 81;  Susan S. Crane, 65; Lynne Greenwald, 60 and Fr. Steven Kelly, 60, pointed out, with boundless kindly courage, the grotesque Trident plans and preparations for nuclear extermination
that clearly violate peremptory rules and principles of humanitarian law, U.S war crimes (18 USC 2441) and Genocide (18 USC 1091) statutes and military law.

REFLECTION FROM THE ATLANTIC LIFE COMMUNITY RETREAT

by Martha Hennessy

Earlier this fall the Atlantic Life Community held a Labor Day weekend retreat at the Romero Center of St. Joseph’s Parish in Camden, New Jersey. Camden, scorned among many other great, fallen American cities, struggles to regain it’s dignity and right means of livelihood after moving from a war economy of the shipyards in the 1960s to very little economic opportunity today. The state has taken over failed school systems and local government from the people here. Yet we were heartened by the attempts of both St. Joseph’s and Sacred Heart parishes in the rebuilding and reclaiming of their neighborhoods.