PEACE WITNESS AT THE ELF SITE, WISCONSIN
STANDING UP TO THE POWERS OF THIS WORLD

May 16, 2004
By Liz McAlister

A year ago today, Dominican Sisters Ardeth Platte and Carol   Gilbert came home to us. (Jackie went to her community at Ground Zero) On April 30, they were released on PR after almost 7 months in a dungeon in Georgetown CO where they never saw the splendor of the mountains that surrounded them (except when driven back and forth to court in Denver). They accepted PR as a consequence of our plea to them - to take time for farewells, for breathing, preparing, communicating, celebrating and mourning before going to prison. The judge was circumscribed by Federal Sentencing Guidelines even if his heart were not several sizes too small. Under pressure he sentenced them to 41, 33, and 30 months, 3 years supervised probation and restitution. Theirs was an enactment of a Citizens' Weapons Inspection – cutting the fence to expose the presence of a first strike nuclear weapon on high alert status.

Their conviction was a flagrant miscarriage of justice. They did not do sabotage; they did not do felony destruction. There was no evidence for either. The judge and prosecutor coddled, coerced and lied to the jury that they might convict with no understanding of what they were convicting the nuns of doing.

For me it was the fall of the other shoe of my beloved Phil Berrigan's dying. We have loved so deeply, worked so hard, conspired, prayed and been through so much together. Now we are separated by years of prison.

Their trial and sentencing require a lot of reflection. Perhaps they are a mirror of our times, a mirror into which we must look long and close to better understand the nature of this empire and what we stand for and what we stand against.

What I find myself reflecting on most is the long view – and it is a tough perspective for North Americans who have yet to learn that the quick fix is neither. So I look at the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and Nelson Mandela's 27 years in prison. In the last years of his imprisonment, that struggle – seemingly so hopeless - was carried on on the back of children 9 years of age. I look at the struggle of the Palestinians whose ties to the land go back centuries and whose children can see only giving their lives in that struggle. I look at the Colombians and the peasants of Central America who have to renew their strength every day and every generation. And I look at the history of our own country and the struggle of working people and people of color and women. We need to learn that none of these struggles is ever won; each   must be borne daily. We need to learn that we don't get everything we struggle for but we have to struggle and fight for everything we get. One of the tragedies in this country is the sense that freedom is a possession we can own. It has made us the most pathetic and enslaved people of the world.

In his last major talk, Phil pleaded with the thousands assembled: Don't get weary! So I want to echo Phil today: Don't get weary in the face of a world that has embraced endless war and bankrupting military spending ($12,000 ever second of every day), a world where lies pass for truth, sound bites for   wisdom, arrogance for understanding.

And don't get weary as citizens of the premeinent rogue state - rife with deceit and treachery where leader follows leader from bad to worse, as though by a malign law of nature. One ruler, evil or stupid or violent, breeds another more evil or stupid or violent. This may explain our periodic nostalgia for the likes of L.B.J. We've even found ourselves longing for Dick Nixon!

Social critics, politicians, religionists multiply moral and political confusion. Wearyingly, they advocate verbal drugs, promises of relief, formulas of salvation, invocations to the god of the moment, pointing fingers at enemies – immigrants, the poor in our midst, the axes of evil. Political and military "experts" push their wares: violence, domination, prospering of a few, misery for multitudes. And the people, stuck fast in falsehood, are urged: "Go out and buy! See and enjoy this great country!"

All of the above are forms of practical idolatry, though they commonly go under more acceptable names like patriotism. But they are evidence of the spirit of death at large in the world, hidden persuaders, beckoners of the mighty, urging them to further unconscionable folly. In our day, the same powers legitimate the "law of the land," act as guardian spirits of "justice systems" and world banks and prisons and torture chambers and death rows. They normalize the excesses of the Pentagon, the military budget, the necessity of military intervention. They grease the wheels of the domination system.

We have to be about something utterly different. We have to give the diagnosis of a skilled surgeon of the spirit. We have to learn to touch all the places where spirit joins flesh and name them aright. The disease is sin and high crime. The times are circular and closed. The society is ill; its illness is genetic. This analysis, woeful as it is, is a unique gift of people of conscience.

The hope we have to offer is a literal hope against hope, promulgated in the teeth of the worst times. With a sense of lively contempt, it is up to us to shuck off the victim role; cease to be mute, passive, resigned, otherworldly - roles urged (no - imposed) by the culture

Our claims may be crusty, at times they may seem even morbid, curmudgeonly. But we are living a hope that overrides historical failure. Our hope is concrete, of this world, and offered against the despair of present circumstances. I think we can grab it only if we grab the despair and if in that despair we are driven deeper – into to something, somewhere, someone . And, from that geography we are able to hear and realizethe promise of justice; the promise of a newness wrought precisely in extremis, in exile, in moments when, it seems, there is little we can do but cling there.

And you know what – it is happening: It is happening here today/ among us. It is happening in D.C. and other major cities and backwater towns. Things are way more dynamic and alive that those in power calculate. Those in control are deceived. They can choose their full moon timeline, but people rise up unaccountably in the streets. They can shred the fabric of international law and find themselves utterly exposed. They can perform a precise military victory celebrated live on primetime, and find that it marks the onset of their unraveling and collapse.

           We are in a period of struggle with a movement spiritually deep and broadly connected – and a movement that knows it has to go deeper and broader yet. And we need to keep connecting across barriers of faith and ideology. The good news is that we have not collapsed or imploded with despair at this war! Many of us understand that a deeper resistance is summoned of us. We are trying, praying, working to be strategic, to be faithful, to be human. And we know that we must keep at it:

conspire the next steps
be in conversation
be in community
be in the streets
refuse taxes
refuse to fight
disrupt business as usual
prefer poetry to ideology
pray for victims before nations.

           The powers of death and destruction appear to reign. But they are undone. In short, dear friends: Be not awed by the mayhem with which the powers of this world would bamboozle us. When you light a candle let it mean intransigent resistance. When you pray imagine a new world is possible. And then live it.