Volume 26, Number 1    April 2004

CTA prisoners of conscience oppose SOA, U.S. militarism in Iraq

by Kathy Kelly

Yesterday, a friend joked about a cartoon he’d seen that showed “the boss” in jail and the unnerved assistants asking, “How long can we say, ‘Sorry, he’s away from his desk?’”

This weekend, I’m preparing to enter the Pekin federal prison in Peoria as one of several dozen people who crossed the line at the U.S. Army’s military combat training school in Fort Benning, Ga. With caring friends, I’ve shared gentle and sometimes nervous laughter as we try to make the best of a difficult reality.

My own logic tells me that U.S. troops crossed the line, in March 2003, into a sovereign country, Iraq, based on the theory and argument that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat to people in the U.S.. Now it’s clear that Iraq didn’t even pose a distant threat to people here.

At Fort Benning, Ga., we crossed a line onto two feet of government grass at a place where it’s beyond dispute that graduates of the military combat training school participated in torture, maiming, disappearance, massacre and assassination. The time-honored method of nonviolent civil disobedience has helped swell the numbers of people who clamor for closure of the SOA. I remember joining Roy Bourgeois and a dozen others at the gates of Fort Benning for a lengthy water-only fast in 1990. It’s been a relief, then and now, to feel that we’re trying our best to prevent any furtherance of the cruelty that has cost the lives of so many innocent people in Central and South America.

Almost every time I’ve crossed the border to leave Iraq, I’ve felt as though I’m leaving an enormoU.S. prison. It takes me about eight seconds to readjust to having electricity; I nearly genuflected in front of the thermostat when I returned home after a chilly stretch of weeks in Iraq last winter. At home, I never worry about bombs exploding nearby, nor do I wonder how to pay for food, clothing and rent. People in Iraq and in many of our neighboring southern countries must constantly preoccupy themselves with ways to survive circumstances over which they have very little control. Their lives are directly affected by our desires to be “better off” than the rest of the world, taking other people’s resources at cut-rate prices. We need to slow down, reflect more, learn to live more simply. Ironically, although the prison system is entirely wrongheaded and cruel, it will give me a chance to do just that.

From previous imprisonment, I recall a world of imprisoned beauty, and yet most of the women I met landed there because of ugly circumstances which they had tried to escape through drug use, drug sales, or both. Peace activists should cross lines into the prisons where we can better understand how the once lauded war on poverty has become a war against the poor.

Those of U.S. who ‘do time’ for crossing the line at Fort Benning will be away from our desks, but we won’t be away from our work.

Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness (www.vitw.org). To learn more about how to help close the SOA, visit www.soaw.org Kathy will also spend time in prison for crossing the line at Project ELF, a U.S. Navy nuclear weapons facility in northern Wisconsin which helped fast-track Tomahawk cruise missiles that attacked Iraq during the Shock and Awe campaign. For the campaign to shut down Project ELF, visit www.nukewatch.com

Write letters to prison

We invite you to write letters to the four CTA members who went to federal prison April 6.

Kathy Kelly received a three-month sentence for SOA plus one month for Project ELF:
Kathleen Frances Kelly
# 04971-045
FPC Pekin
PO Box 5000
Pekin, IL 61555-5000

Three others are serving six month terms.

Dave Corcoran is a hospital chaplain from Des Plaines, Ill.:
David L. Corcoran
# 90282-020
FPC Oxford
PO Box 1085
Oxford, WI 53952

Betsy Lamb of Columbia, Md., is a national board member of Witness for Peace:.
Betsy Lamb
# 92100-020
Danbury FCI
33 1/2 Pembroke St.
Rt. 37
Danbury, CT. 06811

Rich Wekerle is a retired New York City firefighter from Moscow, Idaho:
Richard J. Wekerle
# 92109-020
Sheridan FPC
PO Box 6000
Sheridan, OR 97378

For 23 others imprisoned for 2003 SOAW actions, see www.soaw.org