Spirit.14 Narrative, Metaphor and Spirituality - Part 1

Spirit.14.120: Barry Kort (moulton) Wed, 03 Sep 1997 09:21:05 CDT (44 lines)

My friend John Hines, a Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at
Southern Maine University, has been keeping me posted on his continuing
visits with Phil Berrigan and the other Prince of Peace Plowshares at the
Cumberland County Jail.  On his last visit, he brought his 16 year old
son, Johnicholas (Jn).  John has given me permission to reprint his
messages here...

Johnicholas and I went to jail this morning. . .just four visitors. .
Jn had some complaints about 'politeness', the politeness of the
plowshares actions--such as turning their backs to the judge (a move
he discovered developed by the IRA for their British court trials). .
the boy went one-on-one with Steve Baggarly the whole hour. . .what a
gift! By my lights that's the way to raise a kid in this culture.

Phil and I were one-on-one for much of the hour too. . .he asked
about my course, and I asked his advice. . .he suggested I discuss
violence and its history as the hidden kernel of American life which
kids never hear about in schools. . .the violence of all our wars, the
authors-resistors to that such as Thoreau, John Wolman--the little
hunch-backed Quaker who walked about the South visiting Quaker
slave-holders telling them to free their slaves, William Lloyd
Garrison, M L King, a little of Emerson, and some forgotten-by-me
others.

In the jail this morning the three of them were urging us to risk
getting arrested to fill the jail with their orange-suited supporters
at the sentencing. Oh my. . .he's been so good to me, I might have to
try.

Yesterday he mentioned an interesting historical incident: James
Farmer of CORE asked him to integrate the black lunch counter at the
Jackson,MIssissippi. . .he tried to get his brother, Dan, to go with
him, but Dan's Provincial superior wouldn't allow him. So he got a
Jospehite to go with him. . .everything was to be on the hush, but
Farmer was a publicity freak and whispered to the NYTimes. The two
priests were met at the airport by a reporter--"no comment" their
reply. They flew to Atlanta where a Delta clerk met them and rushed
them to a telephone. . .to speak with their Josephite order Superior
who forbade them to continue. The racist bishop of Mississippi, Bishop
Giroux, had heard of their approach and warned their superior he would
remove every Josphite priest working in Mississippi if these two
priests tried to integrate a blacks only waiting room at the airport.
They had to turn around and never got there. (Another noble moment in
the Church's history.)

Spirit.14.121: Barry Kort (moulton) Wed, 03 Sep 1997 09:31:36 CDT (30 lines)

Here is another selection from my corresondence with John.  It begins
with a quote from The Merton-Milosz Letters (a book that John is
currently reading).

John, quoting Milosz: "It all lies in the secret that love has an
infinite power, and its power, once released, can in an instant
destroy and swallow up all hatred, all evil, all injustice, all that
is diabolical. That is the meaning of calvary. I don't expect to wake
up one morning and find that I am doing this all by myself."

Barry's response: It's not that I don't believe that theory.  But I
sure would like to see some instances of it enacted during my watch.

John's rejoinder: I mentioned this quote and your response to Phil at
the jail this morning. . .and he just smiled that big smile and
paused. . ."sure there are lots of instances all over the world. .
.the Berlin Wall fell, South Africa humanized, Gorbachev refused to
play Reagan's game. . ." and there must be instances in microcosm all
around us. . .the underground railway, civil rights. . .Barry Kort!

Barry's lament: But none of those instances occured on my watch, on
my witness.  I need some sign that my own witness is yielding some
good.

John's response:  And, by the way, about your watch, and mine. . .
This meeting with Phil has been an astonishing -- physical, tangible
-- act of grace. . .for both of us, I hope. . .and that means, doesn't
it, something awesome and numinous, has indeed been happening on your
watch. It never shows in the shape you expect it to take. . .you're
not in charge.

Spirit.14.122: Barry Kort (moulton) Wed, 03 Sep 1997 09:35:56 CDT (32 lines)

Here is yet another installment from John...

A couple of stories from jail on Monday. . .

I think I mentioned Phil as seeing American violence as the hidden
kernel of the problem, and his response: the urgency to love our
enemies, that means we need to resist them to identify their own
corrupting actions to themselves. He illustrated this with a story
about Nixon speaking at Syracuse University--Nixon didn't know the
damage his bombers were doing until this ragtag band of students
resisted him in a speech and--they were the first ones--told him.

Another story. . .Libby asked him if his three kids ever revolted
against their parents. Phil said no. She asked why. He replied that
the kids were really raised by their community--in fact there was one
three month period when they had spilled blood on the gates of the
Pentagon and been arrested--both parents were in jail at the same
time. And their community always had wonderful people moving through
it, praying with the kids, teaching them their larger vision. All
three kids are now resistors. Phil said there was one moment when Liz
was in jail in West Virginia when he and the three kids traveled back
and forth once a month to see her--Katie was only four at the
beginning of that--and each month the pain and the difficulty he had
in explaining to the kids why they had to be so rudely pulled away
from their mom every month. Katie was five when she was first
arrested. The family went with their community to the Johns Hopkins
weapons laboratory--one of those Washington hell-holes--and in the
snow they put a ladder up on the roof and held up their signs of
resistance. Katie and the kids were all dressed up in her snowsuit.
The police came with a cherry-picker to take them off the roof. And
then Phil with a great glimmer in his eye--who said resistance can't
be fun too?

Spirit.14.123: Moonbeam (nanwill) Wed, 03 Sep 1997 17:30:21 CDT (8 lines)

>> John's response:  And, by the way, about your watch, and mine. . .
This meeting with Phil has been an astonishing -- physical, tangible
-- act of grace. . .for both of us, I hope. . .and that means, doesn't
it, something awesome and numinous, has indeed been happening on your
watch. It never shows in the shape you expect it to take. . .you're
not in charge. <<

John is a wise, observant and loving human.

Spirit.14.124: Barry Kort (moulton) Wed, 03 Sep 1997 17:47:17 CDT (1 line)

NFP's make great friends and confidants, don't they?

Spirit.14.125: Helcio (helcio) Sun, 14 Sep 1997 11:49:30 CDT (1 line)

NFP's?

Spirit.14.126: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Tue, 16 Sep 1997 15:35:48 CDT (3 lines)

Barry..should I plan to visit you in jail when I get to Portland?
I'd be glad to do so even if I am working for JHU at the time. Are
you going to participate there?

Spirit.14.127: Barry Kort (moulton) Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:49:42 CDT (4 lines)

I dunno if we'll be arrested for the march and vigil tomorrow, but if
we are arrested, please feel free to drop by and visit.  In any event,
you should visit the other Plowshares who may still be in the
Cumberland County Jail.

Spirit.14.128: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Thu, 18 Sep 1997 18:24:43 CDT (3 lines)

Barry, I would visit you because you are my friend. I am an active
supporter of the Aegis program so it prob would not be appropriate
otherwise.

Spirit.14.129: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 06:51:41 CDT (11 lines)

Maureen, why does the US spend over $250 billion annually on
defense, more than the next 7 countries combined?  Each Aegis
destroyer carries over 50 nuclear tipped Tomahawk missiles.  Who
are we going to launch them at?  Why does the US have nuclear
missiles aimed at over 12,000 sites around the world?  We are the
planetary leader in nuclear terrorism.  And that saddens me.

And why is the Aegis destroyer, reportedly designed to withstand a
direct nuclear hit, so poorly designed that one man wielding a
hardware store hammer can damage it to the tune of $41,000 in just
a few minutes?

Spirit.14.130: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 15:01:33 CDT (18 lines)

Why do we spend that amount on defense? Because it is the amount
appropriated by the leaders elected by the people.

"Who are we going to launch them at?  Why does the US have nuclear
missiles aimed at over 12,000 sites around the world? "

Who? Who knows..today's targets are one matte; tomorrow's another.
Even if I did have that information, I would not be discussing it
here.

A hit with a hammer on a 100k automobile would probably be as
costly, proportionately. A couple of hits on an expensive computer
would be costly too etc etc

Barry, you know I would never try to stop you in your beliefs; go
forward with your heart and soul. This is a much more valid fight
imho that the previous matter with the Condo fees.

Spirit.14.131: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 15:31:07 CDT (6 lines)

I will tell you who will die when those nuclear missiles are
launched, Maureen.  Children will die.

Maureen, children are going unfed, unclothed, and uneducated
because of the obscene $250B that the US is spending on weapons
systems.

Spirit.14.132: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 15:34:20 CDT (4 lines)

Today, Ted Turner gave a billion dollars to the UN for humanitarian
causes.  The US hasn't even paid its own dues, because as a nation, we do
not respect international law.  Good for Ted Turner.  Shame on the US
government for being a deadbeat.

Spirit.14.133: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:12:24 CDT (15 lines)

Children and adults DO die in war.

 "children are going unfed, unclothed, and uneducated
because of the obscene $250B that the US is spending on weapons
systems." Barry I believe these are two facts..the un-everythinged
children..and the defense spending. And I do NOT think that one
is the cause of the other.

I have no belief that the american public would ever care enough to
spend it on children..We talk that talk, but we do not walk that
belief. Look at individual families..are children cared for? Throw
more dollars at the problem? I disagree completely. Make a difference
in a child's life and that child will go on to be an adult who makes a
difference in other childrens' lives. The more money, more programs
models haven't worked.

Spirit.14.134: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:30:35 CDT (7 lines)

The resources diverted away from taking care of people to produce
weapons of mass destruction are inextricably linked, and no amount
of rhetoric will change that reality.  It's guns or butter.

Forget the American public, Maureen.  What do *you* want *your* tax
dollars spent on?  Weapons of mass destruction, or food, clothing,
and education for children?

Spirit.14.135: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:33:46 CDT (7 lines)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms
is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children."

                           --Dwight D. Eisenhower

Spirit.14.136: Moonbeam (nanwill) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:58:22 CDT (1 line)

Powerful words. And from a General, too...

Spirit.14.137: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 17:40:16 CDT (1 line)

And a Republican one, at that.

Spirit.14.138: Helcio Tonnera (helcio) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 18:49:48 CDT (16 lines)

Although I agree in some points with both Barry and Maureen, I believe
nodoby should have the power to destroy the world 50 (?) times.

Yes, Maureen, at the end of the day you are right:

Saving money on weapons would not necessarily mean that the human
passions (which brought into existence "arms of mass
destruction"...and the values associated with them...) could be
easily redirected into something less harmful and more gratifying.

Do you love life enough to say nobody should be able to destroy the
planet... not even a brave and fair american soldier?

We should not be discussing the money... We should be discussing the
sheer stupidity of mantaining enough nuclear weapons to wipe of the
planet.

Spirit.14.139: Barry Kort (moulton) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 18:54:08 CDT (4 lines)

It is stupid, immoral, unwise, foolish, unnecessary, ridiculous and
lamentable.  The Soviet Union went broke in the arms race.  The
workers at the Bath Iron Works can make hospital ships or ferries as
easily (actualy more easily) than making Aegis destroyers.

Spirit.14.140: Moonbeam (nanwill) Fri, 19 Sep 1997 20:04:05 CDT (13 lines)

Yes, it is all of those things and worse.

And those elected public officials who persist in financing a defense
system that can destroy the Earth so many times over are also supposed
to be representing me and Barry and thousands of other voices that
persist in saying, "Stop! Look at the destruction you're doing in the
name of peace! We will not support it any longer."

>> We should not be discussing the money... We should be discussing
the sheer stupidity of mantaining enough nuclear weapons to wipe of
the planet. <<

Amen.

Spirit.14.141: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Sat, 20 Sep 1997 21:11:29 CDT (13 lines)

 "What do *you* want *your* tax dollars spent on?  Weapons of mass
destruction, or food, clothing, and education for children?"

I want a good portion of my federal taxes spent on a strong defense.
And obviously we disagree with what that should be. I'm not trying to
change your opinions. If you disagree with your elected officials
votes, vote that disagreement.

The other programs I believe should be mandated back to the states
and each can choose to spend state taxes as each state chooses. I am
increasingly in favor of taking the federal government out of any
program that is actually done on a local level (with a tax cut that
would in effect raise state taxes).

Spirit.14.142: Barry Kort (moulton) Sat, 20 Sep 1997 23:05:37 CDT (5 lines)

Is a strong defense equal to enough Aegis destroyer firepower to
annihilate 2500 continents?  The earth only has a dozen to be
incinerated, including Antarctica.  Why in God's name do we need all
that destructive firepower?  We can't possibly use it without
destroying ourselves, too.

Spirit.14.143: Helcio Tonnera (helcio) Sun, 21 Sep 1997 16:52:06 CDT (10 lines)

Maureen,

How strong is a strong defense?

I believe since independence Americans never had to defend their
"soil" from foreigners... with the only (?) exception of Pearl
Harbor... that, by the way, was not an invasion...

Are you arguing for a "strong defense", or just for being "the
strongest"? ... just in case you need it one day...

Spirit.14.144: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Sun, 21 Sep 1997 22:40:47 CDT (7 lines)

How strong is a good defense policy? I leave that answer to
professionals in that field. What is a strong educational policy ?
I leave that to the professionals in education.

I am not arguing Helecio for any particular concept. I don't think
the US expects to have a physical invasion of people; I do think
we prepare contingency plans for acts of agression however.

Spirit.14.145: Barry Kort (moulton) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 07:58:27 CDT (23 lines)

I am a 32-year professional in research and leadership on
identifying, addressing, and solving problems of national interest.

When I worked at MITRE, a Federally Funded Research and Development
Center (FFRDC), I identified on behalf of the US Government the top
six threats that the US would face in the 1990's and into the 21st
century.  They are:

1.  Terrorism

2.  Health threats from diseases (including AIDS and cancer)

3.  Drugs entering our porous borders

4.  Inner city violence and domestic violence

5.  Environmental damage

6.  Breakdown of public schools

These, Maureen, are the threats to our national well-being that
remain uppermost since the end of the cold war.  No amount of
nuclear firepower will make the least dent in any of those problems.

Spirit.14.146: Barry Kort (moulton) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 08:02:51 CDT (41 lines)

Here is today's missive and narrative from John, posted after his
visit yesterday with Phil Berrigan, Steve Kelly, and Steve Baggarly...

-----------------

Barry,

At the jail. . .and greetings from Phil and Steve who will write you
notes. . .the cracked object was indeed a track ball, evidenced at
the trial in photos from three angles. . .the Plowshares' position
on the damages: they won't contest them, because they won't agree
the ship has any value at all. . ."just a piece of deathly trash". .
Phil repeated this several times. . .

At least that's the position of five of the Plowshares. . .Tom Lewis,
who is not interested in jail, might take a different view. . .

The general murmur among the others at the jail: A wish that they
could use this politically--Howard Reben suggested the strategy: they
are already ripping us off by having us pay for these ships, but then
they are further ripping us off by having us pay unfairly for them.
His point: the $3700--$100 contrast might have solid rhetorical value
with the general citizenry who don't quite understand the Plowshares'
protest.

I sent a copy of the letter to Bill Slavick, head of Pax Christi
Maine, who can command lots of ink at the Catholic World, the local
archdiocesan newspaper. Actually he requested a copy.

Phil speaks in bright similes: The lawyer--"she's like a dog with a
bone. . .she just won't let go."

There was also a comic telling of John Wirtz's story--trying to put
up huge letters on the parking garage, "build for peace not war",
they were gluing huge letters on the top of the garage, when, just
as the police were arriving, the 'w' drifted down and away. . .there
was a mean cop and a friendly cop. . .the latter directed him to the
office at city hall that gives permits for signs on the garage.

His telling was much funnier than mine.

Spirit.14.147: Barry Kort (moulton) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 08:09:38 CDT (11 lines)

By the way, I agree with Phil Berrigan that the Aegis Destroyer is a
worthless piece of deathly trash that brings us no authentic security
and which has no value at all in solving the real threats to national
welfare.  Nonetheless, the US taxpayer is being milked and bilked to
the tune of $250 billion a year for the production and deployment of
such worthless deathly trash.

The Track Ball Story is a fine illustration of the fraud which the
defense industry is perpetrating upon the US public who are so afraid
of perceived enemies that they mindlessly acquiese to this continuing
and costly obscenity.

Spirit.14.148: Maureen McCarron (msazadi) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 12:26:41 CDT (9 lines)

"When I worked at MITRE, a Federally Funded Research and Development
Center (FFRDC), I identified on behalf of the US Government the top
six threats that the US would face in the 1990's and into the 21st
century.  They are:

1.  Terrorism"

This is still accurate tho the type of terrorism is probably a little
different than what you may have proposed at Mitre.

Spirit.14.149: Helcio Tonnera (helcio) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 17:06:10 CDT (13 lines)

>>How strong is a good defense policy? I leave that answer to
professionals in that field.<<

There are cases that such an attitude is clearly the best.

Maureen,

Are you sure this is one of them?

Are you really putting on the hands of the warriors the final
decision about making war?

I can hardly imagine them doing anything but deciding for war...

Spirit.14.150: Moonbeam (nanwill) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 18:08:19 CDT (1 line)

...and thereby leaving the blood on *our* hands.

Spirit.14.151: Frank Vehafric (fvehafric) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 18:38:48 CDT (6 lines)

Terrorism is the number one threat to the US? Paranoia strikes deep
indeed.

My vote goes to the presence of an impoverished and permenant
underclass and the extremely unequal distribution of wealth. Recipe
for massive instability.

Spirit.14.152: Barry Kort (moulton) Mon, 22 Sep 1997 21:36:23 CDT (9 lines)

The list had more to do with the difficulty in solving the problem.
I listed terrorism because almost none of our conventional means of
defense were of any use in dealing with terrorism.  But Maureen is right. 
I was envisioning international terrorism, not domestic terrorism
perpetrated by disgrunted US citizens including former members of the US
Military.  We have many problems, like poverty, for which the solution
is a no-brainer, but requires a change in political conscience.

Spirit.14.153: Barry Kort (moulton) Tue, 23 Sep 1997 21:17:51 CDT (23 lines)

Here is tonight's missive from John...

> We're gonna turn the corner on this one, John.  Just you watch.

Barry,

That comment right there--plus the beautiful insights into
Isaiah--is/are one/some of the reasons I love you! Great spirit!

From Phil's letter received this morning:

"Our point is a simple Biblical one--The State and its law are
one. And if the State is an institutionalization of rebellion
against God--the law is a legalization of rebellion. Of course,
all laws aren't bad, but laws legalizing BIW are bad. And one
can't change the State without changing its laws. I think
Thoreau sensed this in writing: "Dissent without resistance is
consent."" (Essay on the Duty of C.D.)

Let's hang with this one like a dog with a bone--we'll gnaw on it!

J

Spirit.14.154: Barry Kort (moulton) Thu, 25 Sep 1997 08:53:42 CDT (86 lines)

This week's US Mail brings two letters from the Cumberland County
Jail -- one from Phil Berrigan, one from Steve Kelly, who write me
to comment about my reportage here on Cafe Utne of their struggle.

The letters are written in pencil.  Prisoners are only permitted
to have stubby pencils because pens and long pencils are
classified as weapons.  Phil's letter is written on the back of a
copy of an Op-Ed piece that he wrote for the Portland Press Herald
last May 16th.  Steve's letter is written on the back of a
perfunctory letter from the Clerk of the Court regarding the
status of pending Motions.

--------------------------------------------------------------

September 21st

Dear Barry,

John Hines sent the track ball data on -- also your letter to
Judge Carter.  Thanks very much.  Maybe that controversy will get
the item off its dime, and the next debacle staged.  I anticipate
more wrangling.  I agree -- the display was pathetic.

Actually, Carter could have heard the prosecution out and then
ruled.  On every issue, Steve Kelly called California and had a
lawyer there investigate a Supreme Court decision (1996) which
gave federal judges considerable discretionary power on
sentencing, supervised probation, fines, and restitution.

Through the trial and since, we've found the prosecutor, Helene
Kazanjian, obsessive.  She's like a puppy worrying a bone..  And
it's a sensitive issue, challenging her because she's a woman in a
male bullpit.

Anyway, our gratitude.  We send you peace and warm regards,

Fraternally,

Phil -- for the Prince of Peace Plowshares.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, September 19, 1997            Maine's summer making a
Mild Temperature                      gentle leaving, giving way
Blue Sky                              to another equally distinct
Bright                                sister-season.

Dear Barry,

My prayers for you, God's every blessing.

John Hines, I believe it was, passed on copies of your 1) letter
to Judge Carter regarding the BALL, 2) E-Mail containing the
description for Internet.

Very grateful am I for your efforts and observations and
participation.  I don't know what justice your mailings to the
Court will get since Truth gets victimized on a minute by minute
basis.  But you give encouragement.  Especially liked reading of
your Courtroom review since I wasn't there; besides the short
notice -- another unjust and backfiring maneuver by Judge Carter.

Please know our gratitude and know too that the Law poses a paper
tiger threat of a barrier to all of us socially -- i.e. protects
the bomb, and personally -- i.e. intimates against civil
disobedience.  Please consider breaking the barriers -- personally
goes with socially.

Shalom Y'shuah,

Stephen M. Kelly, SJ

-------------------------------------------------------

Utne Cafe readers who would like to correspond with Phil Berrigan,
Steve Kelly, Steve Baggarly, Susan Crane, and Mark Colville -- the
Prince of Peace Plowshares -- can mail their letters to any of
them at

         Cumberland County Jail
         50 County Way
         Portland ME 04102

From time to time, John and I also extract postings from Cafe Utne
and print them out for the Plowshares, so feel free to express
your public sentiments here.

Spirit.14.155: Damon Gardenhire (dgarden) Thu, 25 Sep 1997 10:57:22 CDT (9 lines)

I'm completely new to the entire Cafe Utne thing, but isn't this
area supposed to be about spirituality? I realize that on some level
this entire discussion about guns and butter has something to do
with spiritual issues, i.e. God and the state.  But isn't this all a
little off the direction this posting area was supposed to go in?
Just a thought.

Spirit.14.156: Barry Kort (moulton) Thu, 25 Sep 1997 11:08:51 CDT (1 line)

It comes from the Isaiah prophecy, Damon.

Spirit.14.157: Moonbeam (nanwill) Thu, 25 Sep 1997 11:13:58 CDT (2 lines)

Thanks for posting their address, Barry, and for sharing their spirits
through their words.

Spirit.14.158: Barry Kort (moulton) Sun, 28 Sep 1997 20:40:55 CDT (59 lines)

Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 12:50:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Jail This Morning
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Kiddo,

Eight of the wimps auxiliary visited three plowshares prisoners this
morning. Phil's spirits were as usual shining like this bright Maine
morning sun. We joked around for a bit and laughed and then someone
asked what his present concerns were and he mentioned a Plowshares
woman (sorry I didn't get her name) who had a very young child. . .two
years in jail, a child of two years. . .who was about to be released
from a Tallahassee prison on November 3d, but the Feds, as a way of
harassment, won't let her return to live at Jonah House--the community
of resistance the Berrigans founded--in Baltimore. . .they want her to
spend her three years of probation away from that community, and house
which she physically helped to build. It seems a Fed strategy to
break-up this community of resistance. Phil wants her to test the
Feds, with Ramsey Clark as her lawyer, but she's alone and in deep
anguish because she doesn't want to spend any more time in jail away
from her child. This woman is all alone without a community in jail
because although she did a Plowshares action with three others, they
copped a plea, pled guilty, and were released. And Phil finds that at
least unacceptable--they absolutely aren't guilty. When we pressed him
further on how she ought to handle it. . .he said she was alone with
God, and that had to be enough.

Libby asked him what was his worst moment in prison. . .and he
responded with a story about imprisonment in Fredericksburg where ten
prisoners shared a small twelve by twelve cell. And with an experience
he could only acquire in prison, he remarked that druggies had hearing
losses. .  .and they insisted on keeping the television cranked up to
its loudest. .  .he and a fellow Plowshares prisoner could hardly
converse with one another let alone pray and study. Phil said he was
about to lose it.  They asked to be put in solitary, but the warden
said they had to do something to be put there. One of their fellow
Plowsharesmen in another cell did in fact totally destroy a television
set in protest. Finally the jailers recognized the problem and sent
them to Alexandria to serve out their term in a quieter jail.

In another conversation Nancy asked Steve Baggarly how his family was
doing at home, and Steve expressed some anguish about the other
residents of his Catholic Worker House. Part of the work of the house
entails inviting the homeless to stay in the house for varying
periods. . .they regularly have five or six living with them. . .but
when Kim, his wife, came up to visit Steve for about five weeks,
nobody was invited to live at the House. . .so there are leadership
problems in his absence.

There were many other conversations flowing around me. . .that's about
all I recall. . .they have heard nothing from the court about the
hearing on the costs of the damage, or on the next sentencing date.

That's the news from the jail.

Take good care,

John

Spirit.14.159: Barry Kort (moulton) Sun, 05 Oct 1997 15:46:12 CDT (86 lines)

Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 12:25:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Quiet Day at the Jail
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Barry,

Just back from the jail. . .Today's Phil Berrigan's 74th
birthday. . .he says he's okay with being in jail for his
birthday because he doesn't like all the fuss of cards and
cakes and gifts. . .somehow the topic rolled to making people
saints and the foolishness of it. . .Phil mentioned how Dorothy
Day disdained even the thought of canonization. . .it's an
issue that distracts from the core of the Church's work. . .

We were sitting with some Jewish friends who mentioned this
week's news: the bishops urging parents of gays to treat their
children kindly. . .a big nothing announcement for them, but
Phil pointed out the barrier the bishops had broken to
acknowledge the problem at all. . .he told the story of Bishop
Sullivan, one of the six or so Catholic bishop peaceniks (out
of over three hundred!) who would reliably speak out against
war. . .Sullivan had a priest in one of his parishes who
supported a gay organization (I think it was called 'sanctity')
but Sullivan was being investigated by Rome because of his
support for peace issues. . .the gay organization was
discovered and he was pressured to evict it which he did. . .
the priest, one of Sullivan's best, left the Church over the
issue. . .

The Jews asked about the election of the next Pope, and Phil
remarked on how carefully the nations of the world will
scrutinize that election. . .lest this sleeping giant of a
billion people wake up and start genuinely following the gospel
and  transform the world.

On the legal side, the Plowshares had written the Judge and the
US Attorney expressing their positions as clearly as possible:
they have no money to pay restitution, and even if they did
they would refuse to pay it. . .they think the ship they
entered should be cut up for scrap. .  and they will not
observe supervised probation. . .they will not be rehabilitated
by punishment. . .they still oppose these deadly weapons. .
.Phil said the US Attorney wrote back as if she hadn't even
read the letter. . .she continues to act like that puppy
worrying its bone. . .Phil sees her as a woman in a male pit. .
.she has to act tough. . .the Plowshares won't attack her. . .
but they have a Supreme Court case on their side. .  .the judge
who sentenced Rodney King's attacker (Kuhn?) in LA ignored
federal sentencing guidelines. . .the Supreme Court said he
only had to have reasons for bypassing the guidelines. . .but
Judge Carter and Attorney Kazanjian seem to be ignoring the
Court's decision on that one. Their case hasn't moved at all. .
.though the ten days of submitting evidence about the damages
ended on Wednesday, the judge took another week, one of his
many, off last week.

There was a moment when we were discussing the Catholic Church
and reasons for fidelity to it--because it's where my roots
are, because I'm not going to let them take it away from
me--when Phil mentioned the extraordinary place of Catholics in
the peace movement. . .Catholics were foremost on the
barricades in much of the Vietnam war resistance. . .and
recently at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning (Phil
calls it the School of the Assassins) a hundred people
were arrested, twenty five of them nuns who went to jail rather
to be released on their own word. . .and he and we mentioned
the beautiful fidelity of many nuns to the Gospel and to
resistance. He mentioned the many arrests over the Cassini
launching at Canaveral.

One intense moment of conversation intrigued me. . .about the
'rapists, cheats, thieves, egoists, murderers' who are running
and ruining Washington and this country. . .Phil, this
peace-loving man spoke of them with passion and fury. . .'this
is my country and I've served it well and these people are
distorting it.'

Otherwise, sunny, funny, smiling, happy--the paradox of the
freest man I have ever known in jail--a man full of joy, Phil
Berrigan. What a privilege to spend a Sunday morning hour with
him.

Peace, big guy,

John

Spirit.14.160: Moonbeam (nanwill) Tue, 07 Oct 1997 13:26:25 CDT (2 lines)

Barry, thanks again for posting John's letters -- I really look
forward to reading them.

Spirit.14.161: Barry Kort (moulton) Tue, 14 Oct 1997 07:52:49 CDT (91 lines)

Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 12:11:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: Sunday morning--jailtime
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Barry,

Coming home from the jail feels like coming from a seminar on waging
peace.

First the news: The Prosecutor and the Judge are holding the line on
all of their demands, namely on the costs of the damage, their
insistence on restitution and supervised probation. The judge called
for an evidentiary hearing on October 21 but the prosecutor can't make
that--has to go to a seminar in Washington. So they are moving this
hearing up to October 17th. They are calling it an evidentiary hearing
and don't expect sentencing, but sentencing could happen then. It's
slippery. The Plowshares are not asking any supporters beyond Maine to
come.

Then the conversation: This week I read a comment on the Berrigans
that Peter Steinfels had made. He was once the editor of the Catholic
weekly Commonweal and now holds a religion reporting job with the New
York Times. Knocking the Berrigans, Steinfels said the slow ponderous
SALT talks had disarmed more warheads than all of their blood-spilling
tactics. When I asked Phil what he thought about this remark he said
Steinfels hadn't done his homework and hadn't read deeply enough into
what the SALT talks were all about. "They are, in fact, a cover for
the United States' re-arming itself with nuclear weapons. SALT II is
evidence of that. It created loopholes for the Cruise missiles to be
built." Steinfels, representing the Catholic right of center, has
never taken kindly to the Berrigans. Phil thinks the SALT talks are
simply covering the truth of the nation's re-armaments program.

I asked Phil about truth, about how one knows they are in the truth.
He started responded by staying on his familiar turf: "By reading
scripture and by living it". But then he added: "you have to stay with
the good people who are informed and who you trust." Daniel Elsberg
paid a terrible price in jail and harassment for telling the truth. .
.he's paid the price for years, and when he comments on something you
can trust him. "When I need the word on something, I call Dan and
listen to him." Jim Douglas is another person you can trust. Noam
Chomsky. . .

We talked about Chomsky a bit, how he has a cadre of graduate students
who screen the world's newspapers, cut columns, and comment on their
content for him. Noam has a great mind to absorb material and write on
it. He believes in building a massive movement to change the culture,
but he doesn't understand resistance. He doesn't understand any of the
techniques of resistance. But he works toward understanding  the truth
although he waffled on the Kenneday assassination and accepted the
Warren Commission Report.

In the context of telling the truth, Phil has been reading a book
about the Kennedy assassination and doesn't believe that any of the
three patsies, Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, or James Earl Ray executed their
man. He remarked that Earl Warren in a private conversation admitted
the cover up: "The country couldn't stand the truth. . .it would tear
us apart. But the country was already torn apart, and no amount of
lying is going to bring it back together again." Phil insists on
truth.

In an issue germane to the Plowshares, the government will not allow
Michelle Naar-Obed to return to her normal home from the Tallahassee
prison where she is serving time for a Plowshares resistance action.
Michelle was living at Jonah House, the community the Berrigans
founded in Baltimore. But the government must be worried about their
resistance because it is trying hard to breakup their community --
disallowing Michelle to return home is one of their tactics. Phil
wants to test this because it forces her to find a new home and then
to find a job to support it--precisely what the government wants. If
they succeed with her, then they won't let Phil or Steve or any other
of the Plowshares people to return home thus breaking into their
resistance.

Phil said the government has used plants, surveillance and dirty
tricks to attack their community. Their cars were destroyed three
times. A friend who works at the FBI crime lab saw pictures of this in
her ordinary duties but wouldn't testify because she would lose her
job.

The courts, the law, the corporations all weave a fabric to protect
the weapons systems. It's all of a piece.

And a tough fabric to cut.

Steve Baggarly and Steve Kelly send their love,

Take good care, and work for peace,

John

Spirit.14.162: Barry Kort (moulton) Tue, 14 Oct 1997 07:56:07 CDT (41 lines)

Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 10:38:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: kids with me today
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Barry,

Holiday visits at the jail today. . .the kids came along, Johnicholas
a little reluctant--he disagrees with the Plowshares' impolite
tactics--and Sarah, especially willing because I'm her
amanuensis-partner writing her twenty page English paper due tomorrow.
Just two other visitors besides us with three of the Plowshares.

The conversation in front of the children was lighter and a bit more
rambling.

They're not sure of the Friday the 17th date for the evidence hearing.
. .right now it's tentative. . .and the tactics of the judge are such
that he keeps bafflement high, because he feels deeply uncomfortable
with all of the courtroom observation the Plowshares bring with them.

John Burke was wearing the FBI sweatshirt he had bought on a lark for
a quarter at a yard sale yesterday. . .talk swung to J. Edgar Hoover
and how much he wanted to arrest the Berrigan brothers thirty years
ago for conspiring to destroy Selective Service draft records in the
major cities of the East Coast. Phil laughed: "The indictment was
exactly right. We were trying to destroy those records."

We laughed a bit and told horror stories of their fellow prisoners,
the drunks and alcoholics they live with.

Someone mentioned John Denver's death, and Phil in his deep humanity
winced at all the senseless death around us.

Otherwise, they urged us to get arrested at the hearing to support
their protest.

It's a tough moment for me, facing them.

Peace, kiddo,

John

Spirit.14.163: Barry Kort (moulton) Mon, 20 Oct 1997 10:03:51 CDT (123 lines)

Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 11:53:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: Sunday morning's jailhouse conversation
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Barry,

Every Sunday morning I come away from jail more deeply touched, more
deeply taken by the beauty of these men and the dignity of their
cause.

This morning I first sat with Steve Baggarly and we bantered about his
haircut--a seventy year old barber holds the jailhouse monopoly, four
bucks out of his commisary money for a job that looks like it's been
done by an old man with plastic scissors, and indeed it has.

Then we talked about how he and Kim founded the Catholic Worker House
in Norfolk. They apprenticed after college in the Los Angeles C W
House. Kim had a remote connection there, a second cousin from a
branch of the family long ago gone west from Virginia who had worked
there for twenty-five years. So Kim worked there for a summer, while
Steve worked in a similar Franciscan house in North Philadelphia. They
married, spent some years together in the LA house and then moved back
to Kim's native Virginia to found the CW house in Norfolk.

They bought an abandoned boarded up house in a poor black neighborhood
for 36 K of scrounged money, spent three months making it livable and
began their ministry. I don't have the complete story yet, but what I
know is this: They run a daily food line which they set up at the end
of a street by a cemetery near an employment bank. They try to give
workers a breakfast to get them through a day, to enable them to work.
They rise early, cook at a church, with volunteer help.

Steve says jail has been the first break from the routine he's had in
eight years. He, Kim, and Daniel, the family, eat from the food and
dress in the clothes they beg.

We asked Steve about the anger of the poor, and he acknowledged he
always sees it. The CW House had for a spell served breakfast inside a
building, and paradoxically, though the poor appreciated the sheltered
eating more, they showed much more of their anger, guns and knives and
bluster, inside the building than out.

Their house sits in a 120 acre neighborhood recently upzoned by the
city to single family dwellings, a gentrifying re-zoning the Catholic
Worker House opposed because it drives the poor out of the small
spaces they can afford in the neighborhood's cut-up and partitioned
dwellings.

In their house they have three rooms set up on the ground floor with
five beds where they invite street people whom they know from the food
lines to come and live awhile until they can get it together. They
usually live at the house for a short time, but one mentally disabled
person has lived there now for three years. They have a rule in the
house that people get out during the day to look for opportunity and
housing, but, Steve said with a kind shrug of his shoulders, we have a
pretty constant failure rate at that.

I had some sense of the weight of the massive project Steve was
describing with some great sighs, eight years of food lines, eight
years of life with the poorest among us. He mentioned twice how much a
relief, a break from that life, jail was for him. He's a beautiful
guy.

The seating then shifted, and I sat closer to Phil Berrigan and Howard
Reben, a local labor lawyer. Howard represented the Bath Iron Works
guards in contract negotiations. The principal BIW tactic for two and
a half days was to say how expensive the guards were to them--they
could hire rent-a-scabs and save a million and a half a year. Howard
only represents about fifty people, but he had lined up the other BIW
unions to support him. It's fascinating to him how much the guards, as
workers, are company men--all in support of BIW, and then what an
education they receive in negotiations to realize how little the
company reciprocally cares about them. The guards finally understand
in contract negotiations bottom-lining is the name of the game. BIW
hires a skeleton crew of guards, a crew so slim that when a worker
calls in sick, the company 'forces over' a guard from the current
shift to cover, an eight hour day extended to a sixteen hour day.

Howard had just finished reading Phil's autobiography and asked him
what other books he recommended. Phil suggested Howard Zinn's People's
History of America and Jim Douglas' Resistance and Community though
I'm not precisely sure of the latter title.

I mentioned Bishop Gumbleton's speaking about Phil and the Plowshares
in Pittsburgh, and Phil responded he hopes Gumbleton will come to
Jonah House and live and work with them when he retires. Then Phil
told a Gumbleton story. Phil saw him in Philadelphia after Gumbleton
had spent a morning at a Jesuit High School (in Toledo?). The Bishop
had spoken his usual talk about American violence and the poor and the
students were quite resistive. They didn't want to listen to such
stories, and then Gumbleton had the insight: We are teaching sin, we
are teaching social sin, channeling these students right into the
system of power and violence without ever questioning that system. It
struck Phil powerfully. Major catholic universities, Notre Dame,
Fordham, and Georgetown, bowing to the rich. Georgetown gave the Shah
of Iran and his Empress honorary degrees. To the Shah!

Phil said they met a Persian poet, Rezobar Hena, who had been jailed
in the Shah's prisons. The Shah emulated Darius the legendary Persian
emperor. Darius would receive a messenger coming to report a loss or a
negative event with a single command: Eat him! And the messenger would
be served in the soup that evening. In prison Hena saw people
disappear and then that evening the soup would taste strange. The
cannibal Shah and Georgetown!

One of the visitors asked Phil whether he had contacted Pacifica
Radio, but Phil hadn't. The radio has one of those answering machines
not at all suited to a prisoner calling from a jail phone. But the
discovery here was that the media can call in to talk to Phil. It
takes two phone calls. The first to Captain Pike, at 207-774-5939, to
set up an appointment, and a second to keep the appointment.

When the hour was ending I asked Phil to pray for a young colleague
terminally ill with bone cancer. Phil was touched and genuinely
interested in him. He winced again 'these cancers are epidemic!' What
a good man!

The evidentiary hearing is on Tuesday morning at 8:30 am.

Take care, work for peace,

John

Spirit.14.164: Moonbeam (nanwill) Mon, 20 Oct 1997 10:57:30 CDT (3 lines)

Once again I am awed and humbled by Phil Berrigan and the other
Plowshares, and by John's and your commitment to getting the story
told. I am so blessed by reading John's reports -- thank you, Barry.

Spirit.14.165: Barry Kort (moulton) Mon, 20 Oct 1997 22:19:43 CDT (11 lines)

I am in Maine tonight.  Tomorrow morning, John and I will attend the
Evidentiary Hearing in Federal District Court.  The Assistant US
Attorney, Helene Kazanjian, will present her arguments that the actual
damages to the USS Sullivans exceeded $40,000 (rather than the $28,000
established at trial), and hence the Plowshares Defendants should receive
proportionately larger sentences.  To do this, she has to prove that the
Navy actually paid $3700 to replace a damaged computer track ball that
any civilian can buy at retail for under $100.  It should be easy for her
to prove that the Navy actually did pay $3700, as it is well documented
Navy practice to expend large sums on otherwise inexpensive items.

Spirit.14.166: Barry Kort (moulton) Tue, 21 Oct 1997 09:19:33 CDT (1 line)

I have posted my report of today's hearing in Posting:Spirit.56.331.

Spirit.14.167: Impressions from John... (moulton) Tue, 21 Oct 1997 10:25:31 CDT (77 lines)

Dear Barry,

I want to describe my experience in court this morning at the
evidentiary hearing for the Plowshares.

As I walked to my seat the bailiffs were removing handcuffs from Steve
Baggarly and Phil Berrigan-that wrenched my guts-the martial power of
the state treating good people as its worst enemies. Good people! Phil
Berrigan, castigated in the Vietnam era for burning selective service
records, deserves now public accolades for shutting down that war. He
was exactly right on the issue, we all know that now.

Out on the street after the brief hearing Claudia Sharon, the
Plowshares' standby attorney, described their initial arrest last Ash
Wednesday. She and the six Plowshares were standing before Judge
Fields in the courthouse in Bath, a group of drunken fishermen,
intensely confused by the proceedings, were awaiting their moment
before him, the Aegis destroyer that the Prince of Peace Plowshares
had attacked was screaming out in full view in the windows of the
court room, and Judge Fields was speaking with tears in his eyes of
Phil as the conscience of the nation.. He was the judge's boyhood
model. The judge dismissed the state charges, the Feds picked up the
case, and that eventually led us all to the courtroom this morning,
nine months after the action in Bath.

The hearing was to determine the amount of damages. The US Attorney
had wanted to claim more damages after the trial in which the
government without any cross-examination on the part of the
defendants, claimed over twenty-eight thousand dollars. A lot of money
to wipe up some spilled blood!. The defendants let the government
stipulate the damages because they claim the ship has negative value.
They claim the monetary value is all bogus. But as you know, Helene
Kazanjian, the US Attorney, was out to win every possible day in jail
she could get for them. She said that beyond BIWÕs charges, a tracking
ball Steve Kelly had banged on with a hammer hadnÕt been calculated in
the original trial because it was a Navy charge, not a BIW charge. And
this tracking ball cost $3700.

Well, Barry, you and I know the intervening story. How you intuited
that the "tracking ball" was in fact a track ball. You with your
computer hardware experience knew the most expensive track ball in the
world cost no more than a hundred and twenty-five dollars. You also
knew the government does not design, it buys off-the-shelf. You sent
letters to the Judge and the defendants telling them that.

So, congratulations man, all of that led to the results of this
morning's evidentiary hearing. BIW, strangely BIW and not the Navy,
caved at the last minute. Last evening, BIW reported to the Attorney
it could not testify on costs because it would hurt its competitive
position in winning contracts to build ships. Egg in the face of the
Attorney and Judge. BIW did not want to get tested on this issue in
public. This company which had just begged three million dollars a
year from poor Maine taxpayers for the next twenty years could not
reveal how much it in fact runs over true costs. It had just
successfully bilked the citizens of Maine. It couldn't reveal it bilks
the federal government too.

So in effect nothing more happened at the hearing than the
government's open embarrassment. Even if these ships weren't the
heinous weapons of human destruction they are, even if they were
necessary, we discover the government and BIW in collusion to cheat
us. Cheating and lying-the tactics of the war machine.

As we left the courtroom, too bad, the bailiffs were handcuffing these
good people again. The Judge says heÕs finally ready to get on with
sentencing. We'll know before the end of the day when next week this
will happen.

So the damages are set at 28K plus, the judge will determine how
responsibility for this will be apportioned among the six Plowshares.

I was glad to see you before the Channel 8 cameras after the hearing.
You were showing a trackball, and telling the camera the truth.

Thanks for telling the truth,

John

Spirit.14.168: Moonbeam (nanwill) Tue, 21 Oct 1997 11:08:56 CDT (4 lines)

All right!! Truthtelling, on the street, up close and personal -- film
at 11...   THANKS!

((((((((((Barry and John)))))))))))

Spirit.14.169: Message from John... (moulton) Thu, 23 Oct 1997 14:03:08 CDT (133 lines)

Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 23:56:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: A Special Wed Eve Jailhouse Visit
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Barry,

The judge set sentencing for Phil Berrigan, Steve Kelly, and Mark
Colville on Monday, and for Susan Crane, Steve Baggarly, and Tom
Lewis-Borbely on Wednesday, each separately at 10:30, 1:00 and 2:00
each day.

I'm writing this letter late at night, after coming home from the
Wednesday evening visiting hour, a time I hadn't visited the jail
before, a difficult time. All four of the male Plowshares come out
instead of just three on Sunday morning, many more people crowd into
the visiting room, and the background noise rings. Phil, already a
little hard of hearing, several times asked people to speak up so he
could hear them.

The late hour and the strange set of people visiting seemed to show
Phil much wearier than I ever saw him before. Weary, but smiling,
joyful, upbeat, kind. . .not bad for a fatigued seventy-four year old
man! Among the people visiting were a tennis pro, out of his element
there with the Plowshares, and the mother of our former tenant who we
just evicted for abusing drugs in the apartment. The lady's a little
daft herself and kept moving around to the few visitors' chair trading
seats with this person and that. It was a little unsettling. One of my
friends said it felt psychologically uneasy, and for me and perhaps
for Phil, indeed it was.

But there was wonder and grace as always. I asked Steve Baggarly
whether the hearing yesterday was hard for him. These men, who could
be released in a moment for simply signing a personal recognizance
note to the judge, were shackled hand and feet to be transported from
the jail to the courthouse. Steve said the shackling wasn't bad,
indeed the trip was wonderful. He hadn't been out of the jail since
May, not outside once, and so what a joy for him in those five steps
from van to courthouse to breathe the first air, to look up at the
open sky.

We commented on the fascism of the courtroom scene. Architecturally
the interior of the courtroom looks like a church with pews facing the
front for the faithful, choir benches on the sides for the bowing
media monks, and a great dark high altar desk for the judge. At the
appointed hour, with the courtroom duly hushed by the armed, mightily
armed marshall acolytes of the great high priest, Judge Carter bursts
pompously, in the full arrogance of armed power, through the rear
center door and straight to his desk, where, instead of greeting the
Americans gathered in his courtroom, he speaks. Good Morning, Counsel,
as if nobody else, no other persons deserving of his recognition, were
in the courtroom. It would be fascinating to know how much firepower
lurks in that room up sleeves, strapped to chests, hidden beneath the
bulky suits. The firepower is the pretended strength of this religion.
. .believe, obey, or we'll kill you.

And so the Plowshares give the high priest fits. They disdain his
weapons, in fact they even spill blood on them. They desecrate the
idols that fuel the great fascist religion, the gods of the war
machine. The Plowshares gave Judge Carter his moment in the sun. . .an
American judge could have spoken with the voice of Nuremberg against
the madness of hair trigger nuclear weaponry, but alas. . .this
fascist is arrogant. Henri Nouwen saw it. 'Isn't arrogance putting
yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as you see yourself? Isn't
arrogance, in the final analysis, just another way of dealing with the
feelings of worthlessness?'

This evening when I asked Mark Colville how he was doing he told about
the guards chastising him for his wife's breast-feeding their nineteen
month old infant while she visited him. They even when the family sat
in a corner of the room by the glass to the empty corridor went out
there to spy on her. They threatened him with lockdowns and solitary.
. .for his wife's breast-feeding their infant! Such muscled irritants
are the stuff of life in the jailhouse.

I asked Mark how he could have joined the plowshares action with kids
seven, five, and the infant at home, and he responded, as Thoreau did,
How could I not? He had known of the plowshares when he was single,
but not until he had children did he see the imperative of defying
these weapons. Mark too, lives and works in a Catholic Worker House,
this one in New Haven where he regularly lives with and feeds the
poor.

I spoke to Phil about a student, a young man who just today told me of
his cancer diagnosis, hodgkins disease. Phil told about the seven year
National Cancer Institute study of the effects on Americans of the
nuclear fallout from the Nevada bomb tests. The study was suppressed
when it finally found results. Finally, twenty times Chernobyl was
leaked, every American exposed to the equivalent of two hundred chest
x-rays.

The seating shifted. . .it shifted often on this unsettled evening. I
sat with Steve Baggarly and asked him to finish telling his story of
the Norfolk Catholic Worker House. The greatest difficulty, abrading
them constantly, is not the poverty but life in community. That's
hard. They do vigils at the Navy base. . .the major one of these is to
offer an alternative to the Easter Sunday Sunrise Service on the deck
of an aircraft carrier. They live on about twenty-five thousand
dollars a year, all of which they raise with two or three begging
newsletters.

Phil's Jonah House people did annual actions at the Norfolk Navy
bases, and they asked the Norfolk Catholic Worker House to support
them. At first Steve didn't agree with the destruction of property,
but finally Phil's point. . .it's not property. . .made sense and
Steve became a recruit in waging peace.

Mark told me how Judge Fields released them after the Ash Wednesday
attack in Bath, let them walk right out the back door into the parking
lot, because the judge so much admired Phil, the conscience of a
generation. Later in a week or so, federal warrants were put out on
the four who were released. . .Steve Kelly and Susan Crane were jailed
because they had violated probation from an action in California on
the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima. The four evaded arrest,
traveled to Maine together, attended a worship service here in
Portland at Sacred Heart Church, walked the beaches, then the next day
attended a peace vigil at Bath Iron Works where the Bath police
arrested them.

Sitting shifted. I sat with Steve Kelly and asked him what the future
looked like for him. He said as long as there are nukes, he's going to
be attempting to disarm them and facing the consequences in jail. His
long term strategy is to leaven the churches, their members the only
people of the spirit, to move them to disarm. He's quite clear-headed
and insistent on this vision.

Leaving the jail's a grand moment. . .we all give the plowshares great
bear hugs. So that's it. . .I'm not sure I've told it all, but I'm
tired, man.

Peace,

John

Spirit.14.170: Letter from John to Phil (moulton) Thu, 23 Oct 1997 14:13:43 CDT (92 lines)

Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 09:55:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: It's a Public Witness Wow
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Barry,

I know you've been posting my letters from jail all over the net, and
that feels a little strange to me, but the effort of the Plowshares
is to end the silence, and I want to share in their spirit.

And so, I'm including a little personal note I sent to Phil this
morning about our conversation last night in jail.

....................

Dear Phil,

Last night's visit, with all the background noise, with the fatigue
of the day setting in, with a old conflict with X live in memory,
made that jailtime difficult for me.

In talking about radiation and cancer last night a memory came to me
but evaporated before I could say it. At Georgia Tech a number of
years ago I arranged a forum to speak about the dangers of nuclear
weaponry. One of the members of the faculty was a gung-ho ex-Army
colonel. I didn't want him to speak. But we had several conversations
during which I discovered he had volunteered to serve in Nevada when
they tested bombs with Army personnel up close in trenches. They
wanted to discover how close to that ghastliness they could put
troops. I asked the guy about that: what was it like? 'It was
nighttime, they were deep down in the trenches, eyes covered. . .he
said it was the brightest blindingest light he had ever seen.'

In the pitch dark of night,
         we marched our platoon to a trench
         dug deep in the desert floor
We lay
         clothed in layers
         helmeted heads
         eyes covered and closed
Like children hiding in a closet
Damned dark!

Then seared,
Scratched like viper fangs
Assaulted by light!

I asked him about the skin cancer I knew he had. He said that wasn't
connected with the bomb. . .he had just spent too much time in the
sun in El Paso. I said, yeah right. He didn't speak.

| | | | | | | | | |

About X: How remarkable she was there! We had recently evicted her
daughter, xx, from the apartment we rent. The daughter is. . .we
weren't told. . .diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder, manic-depressive
stuff which is medically controlled but the medicine makes the kid
feel flat and she craves those manic highs. So she goes off her meds
or. . .in our case. . .overdoses on them. Under that influence xx
was, in the middle of the night, sharing her prescription drugs with
kids in the neighborhood. So we had to evict her, and in the process
X got angry at me for not giving xx a recommendation to a subsequent
landlord. . .that is, for not lying.

Now here's the wonderful kicker last night. I had written my morning
prayer as a meditation on 'forgive us, as we forgive them.' And
perhaps more clearly than at any other time, I understood what the
prayer 'forgive us, forgive me' means. It means that I'm praying for
you to forget I ever did that, forget my offense, just treat me now
as if I had never been so stupid as to offend you like that.
Forgiveness has always been a tough notion for me, but yesterday
please forget it' was pretty clear. Then, whammy, in the evening, I'm
tested precisely on that prayer. I was supposed to forgive X, forget
the negative stuff, forget the offense. It wasn't easy for me. At
first I resented her presence, especially when she moved out and sat
down on the floor between me Mark and you. But do you know as the
evening wore along I kept trying and started to get it. It's my guess
she a little loopy, but I was trying to include her into the
conversation.

Anyway, good man, I'm so grateful for all your long thirty years of
peace work. I've been watching you from afar, and that's impressive,
but up close, it's transforming.

Thanks, Phil,



PS  I sent E-Mail to Noam Chomsky passing along your invitation to
him to come up for the sentencing, assuring him we could not assure
his testimony before this judge.

Spirit.14.171: Messsage from John (moulton) Fri, 24 Oct 1997 09:30:35 CDT (37 lines)

Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 19:37:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: The Plowshares Make Me Think
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Barry,

Now that the sentencing date has come up, we were asking the
Plowshares where and when they thought they'd be going. The timing at
the jail for federal prisoners lately, the pause between sentencing
and leaving the county, seems to be about two weeks. So that's about
all the time we have left to visit with them here. The mode of
transportation is, well, FedEx! Not the package company but a similar
process. As I understand their description, the prison system runs an
airline replete with hubs! From here they channel prisoners to a
nearby hub, for example one in New Hampshire, and then from there on
to the wide world of federal prisons. Sometimes, Phil said, a prisoner
will ride to Florida by way of California. Imagine the numbers of
prisoners it takes to maintain a system like that! Anyway, there's no
telling with this FedEx. The Plowshares are actually a little restive
anticipating the next stage of their imprisonment.

Connections. . .Andrea, a friend, and I were talking about the
Plowshares. She visited them just once. When there, she spoke to Phil
and told him she supported his cause, but she was a singer. She really
could only sing for him. She asked him his favorite hymn to sing it
for him. Phil answered 'Be Not Afraid.' She promised.

Andrea had lost a brother to a motorcycle accident seventeen years
ago. He was a teenager, it was a painful loss the family still mourns.
Well, just recently in a small town up toward Augusta, the family
celebrated the seventeen year anniversary with a liturgy. And the
priest asked them to sing 'Be Not Afraid.' There are connections.

Take good care,

John

Spirit.14.172: Moonbeam (nanwill) Fri, 24 Oct 1997 11:16:36 CDT (2 lines)

"Be Not Afraid" is one of my favorite hymns, too... I will sing it for
Phil and the Plowshares, and for all of us. Peace.

Spirit.14.173: Barry Kort (moulton) Sun, 26 Oct 1997 11:00:55 CST (70 lines)

John and I are back from Sunday morning visiting hours at the
Cumberland County Jail.  As I write, he is on the other computer,
composing his impressions, which I will post as soon as he forwards
them along to me.

The day was bright and cold this morning as we scraped the frost off
of John's van, worrying that we might be late and have trouble getting
in to see the Plowshares if too many visitors showed up on this day
before the sentencing.

About 12 of us were admitted to see Phil Berrigan, Steve Kelly, and
Steve Baggarly this morning.  We were in an ante-room, apart from the
main visitor's room, just the Plowshares.  Phil Berrigan, still spry
at age 74, started unstacking the extra plastic chairs to accommodate
the visitors.

I sat first with Phil Berrigan, renewing my acquaintence with him, and
getting caught up on news.  He spoke of the symbolism of spilling
blood upon the war machines, how blood evokes the essence of the
Covenant, and how the spilling of blood in anger breaks the Covenant.
He told of how the Plowshares managed to obtain blood bags, liberating
a case or two of the bags from the vans at corporate blood drives
around Baltimore.  Drawing blood is a risky business.  A bubble of air
accidently introduced into a vein while drawing blood can cause a
deadly aneurism.  He pointed a finger at his head and make a clicking
sound to illustrate the message.

Phil also told of stories of sit-ins and demonstrations at Marquette
University and elsewhere, confronting the ubiquity and placid
acceptance of war-making as an everyday industry in America.  Phil has
little regard for intellectuals who lament our excesses in defense
spending, but take no real action to stop it.  I muttered the phrase
"intellectual masturbation" and his nodded and smiled.

Steve Baggarly was entertaining a visit from his brother-in-law, so I
didn't get to spend a lot of time with him.  It is ironic that Steve
and his wife Kim are very committed to peace work, while her brother
is baffled by their tactics which lands them in jail.  There is a
disconnect betweem Kim and her brother that would be interesting to
explore more deeply.

Steve Kelly again urged me to get arrested so I could join them for
their seminars in the Cumberland County Jail.  I'd rather see them set
free so we can have open seminars with more people, including those of
us in the Wimps Auxiliary who aren't ready to spend 3 years in jail.

I learned from the other visitors that Channel 8 did carry the clip of
me exhibiting the infamous computer track ball and explaining what it
was and how much it cost.  At tomorrow's sentencing, we shall see if
Judge Gene Carter accepts the testimony from the original trial in
which Bath Iron Works estimated the damages at $28,000, or if he goes
by the actual damages proven, which was El Zippo de Nada.  When it
came time to prove the actual damages, the government's star witness,
Bath Iron Works, suddenly got cold feet, saying they didn't want to
disclose the breakdown between actual labor costs and profit.  To
reveal that "proprietary information" would put them at a competitive
disadvantage, permitting their rivals to take away future contracts.

The Navy did not put the repair work out for competitive bidding, and
instead gave BIW a $37,000 sweetheart contract to mop up a pint of
spilled blood and to retouch some chipped paint on the deck of a
destroyer designed to withstand a nuclear hit and keep on fighting.

As 'victim' in this case, the Navy hardly comes to court with clean
hands.  If this were an insurance damage case, the insurance company
would be screaming fraud and abuse and taking the so-called victim to
court for collusion and profiteering.

Tonight, Dan Berrigan speaks at Peace and Justice Center, and tomorrow
at 10:30 we will be there for Phil Berrigan's sentencing.

Spirit.14.174: Today's Message from John (moulton) Sun, 26 Oct 1997 12:41:14 CST (88 lines)

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 13:19:45 -0500 (EST)
From: John Hines <jhines@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>
Subject: Toward a Final Plowshares Sunday Morning
To: Barry Kort <bkort@atto.ee.usm.maine.edu>

Dear Barry,

Phil, Steve, Susan, Steve, Mark, and Tom get sentenced this week.
Although they may be here for a bit longer while the government
shuffles papers on them, this morning in jail felt touched with the
ending of this era.

After we greeted the three men, Phil, Steve Baggarly, and Steve Kelly,
with the usual plowshare bear hugs for their visitors, they separated
and we, the wimps auxiliary, sat with them in three different nests of
conversations. I at first sat with the Jesuit among them, Steve Kelly.
I'm not sure whether Steve's sense of law is jesuitically connected,
but he is more attuned than the others to the precision of the law. He
spoke again about the Supreme Court ruling in the Koon case. Remember,
Koon was one of the cops who thugged Rodney King. The presiding judge
ignored federal guidelines to sentence him with a mere slap on the
wrists. The sentence was challenged in the Supreme Court. It supported
the ruling thus opening up federal sentencing once again to the
discretion of the sentencing judiciary. Gene Carter, the judge in this
case, claims he is unfree and must abide by the guidelines.

It fascinates me how old stories are relived. The judge is acting like
Pilate washing his hands of culpability. The plowshares are pushing
this point at their own risk, setting the judge free of guidelines
might entail longer not shorter sentences for them, but they want to
clarify personal responsibility here. Judge Carter, ignoring natural
moral law, international law, and the Nuremberg precedents, is the
man. He's personally responsible for putting these good men on ice.

Someone mentioned to Steve the good news of the Navy killing the
Arsenal Ship yesterday, but Steve wisely noted that such mega-weapons
projects are not so easily put away. Special interests politically
pressure the projects' revival. Bath Iron Works and General Dynamics,
which were craving the work, will influence their return.

Steve spoke about the movie, King of Prussia, which dramatizes the
trial of the first plowshares action in Pennsylvania. The Puerto Rican
Bishop who gave character witness at that trial, he simply would not
be stopped by the objections of the defense attorneys or by warnings
of the judge. He ram-rodded his words through to the court, which
finally sat back and could only listen. Steve urged us all to see it,
but we can't find it. Miriam owns a copy!

Then I shifted down to sit with Phil, and much of the conversation
went over the same ground we have talked about before. That's all
right. This big gentle gruff common man is the patriarch I've found, I
choose him, this older wiser man whom I can trust to tell the truth to
a painful world, a man who acts on good passion against the war
machine, who acts for children and the poor. I enjoy sitting in his
presence, listening, memorizing the lines of care on that kind and
weathered face.

I asked him if he was ever afraid. He said when the sentencing date
came down he felt dread, but then he prayed about that, prayed through
it, trusted, and the dread passed. I asked him if he were ever roughed
up, and he told us about civil disobedience at the Pentagon. They used
to chain up the doors to one of the main corridors of entry, which
swung automatically open and shut to receive the stream of people
coming to work. Then the Pentagon responded by removing the
convenient-to-chaindoor handles. So about ten protesters physically
put their bodies against the doors, and then Monahan, a three hundred
pound ex-football player, came out. His fury raised, he would pick
people up and heave them ten feet away. He once picked Phil up and
three times consecutively threw him to the ground. People started to
talk to Monahan: "Hey man, you're getting carried away. Calm down."
Amazingly no one was ever hurt by that roughhousing.

Toward the end of the hour, realizing we had never prayed with him, I
asked him to pray with us. So there in the jailhouse, Phil held hands
with four of us wimps auxiliary and prayed a simple generous prayer.
"For us, for the jailers, for the judge and the prosecuting attorney,
for all the crews working the ships of destruction at sea, for the
hurt and the lame, for the poor and children" a simple prayer in
Christ's name that moved me to tears. When I asked him how his
expectations had worked out since Ash Wednesday when he came up to act
against that Aegis destroyer. He said they had largely worked out as
expected, but the one huge difference in this action than in others
has been the people of Maine. They have surprisingly, quite openly,
awakened to welcome the Plowshares' cause.

Peace, man,

John

Spirit.14.175: Barry Kort (moulton) Sun, 26 Oct 1997 21:07:10 CST (12 lines)

At tonight's pot luck dinner before tomorrow's sentencing, the
supporters of the Plowshares gathered to meet Dan Berrigan, the other
half of the legendary Berrigan Brothers who first came to fame by
burning draft records in Catonsville MD during the Vietnam War era.

During the inevitable story telling period, Mimi Wirtz told a great
story about another chance meeting among visitors to the jail.  A
woman showed up at the appointed hour and introduced herself to John
Wirtz, one of the Plowshare supporters, asking him if he was there to
visit them.  He said yes, and asked if she too had come to see the
Plowshares.  "Oh no," she replied, "I'm here to see my husband who is
a common criminal."

Spirit.14.176: Moonbeam (nanwill) Mon, 27 Oct 1997 01:07:30 CST (4 lines)

"Be not afraid,
I go before you always,
Come follow me,
And I will give you rest."