Will solitary confinement offer
activist a chance for Holy Week reflection?
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN
There’s always one small voice somewhere
saying “NO.” Albert Camus writes in “The Rebel”
that in every century there have been pockets of people saying “NO”
to whatever coercion exists in their situation. At least that’s
what I understood from that book. Listen to the voices of our times.
If you haven’t yet read “Hooked
by the Spirit: Journey of a peaceful activist” and “Other
Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison,” run to your
nearest bookstore (St. Martin’s Table) or library to get them.
They are beautiful books by women who’ve committed their lives
to the well-being of other people.
Both women have served federal prison sentences for crossing the
line at the School of the Americas (now renamed the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation—WHINSEC), protesting nonviolently
against this military institution that trains soldiers in torture
and assassination. In “Hooked,” South Minneapolis humanitarian
Sister Rita Steinhagen describes her six months at Pekin Federal
Prison Camp in Illinois. In “Other Lands,” Kathy Kelly,
most well-known for bearing witness to the suffering caused by the
sanctions and war against Iraq, describes her six months, also in
Pekin Prison —although she has been incarcerated other times
for SOA actions, her time at Pekin was actually for planting corn
at a missile base.
Every time I think about these giants of integrity
and compassion behind bars, I am grateful for what they have to
offer “inside.” They have a firsthand chance to make
a positive impact on the prison system.
Since 1990, when the SOA protests began, 183
protesters have served a total of 81 years in prison. This year,
on the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar
Romero, 39 people, ranging in age from 19 to 81, will serve between
one- to six-month sentences for “criminal trespassing”
at WHINSEC. Among them are a former alderman and WWII vet from Wisconsin,
a woman with multiple sclerosis, Pulse writer John LaForge and Minnesotans
Sam Foster and Steve Clemens. The latter will begin serving their
sentences during Holy Week. Clemens, like Sister Rita, is another
South Minneapolis peace and justice seeker. He will probably spend
his first two weeks in solitary confinement, which he would consider
a “gift.” During that time the prison will go through
the bureaucratic process of deciding things like whether it’s
safe to put him in the general prison population and what special
medical needs he may have, because those decisions were not made
ahead of time.
They are also going to prison right around tax
day. I can think of worse uses for our tax dollars than putting
up a bunch of principled protesters for a few months.
Despite support from people around the world, going to prison is
not easy. Clemens said he was relieved to get a three- instead of
six-month sentence. He spent three months in federal prison in Texas
in 1981 for protesting at the nuclear weapons plant Pantex. A lot
of things have changed since then. In 2006 the U.S. prisons are
seriously overcrowded, owing largely to longer sentences for drug
offenses, he said. He added that there is no longer even a pretense
that the purpose of prison is rehabilitation.
"We’ve been given a gift.
Many of us will be going to prison during Holy Week. Specifically,
it looks as though we’ll start our sentences the day that
the church commemorates Jesus’ own civil disobedience."
by Steve Clemens
Trial and Sentencing. I expected to receive the
maximum sentence of six months in a federal prison (for nonviolent
direct action at the School of the Americas facility in November).
My sentence of half that amount makes me feel like I got off easy.
The government prosecutors did not certify the prior arrest/conviction
records of defendants, and thus could not include them for consideration
at sentencing. Therefore, my life of “crime” was not
in evidence, other than my “Ban and Bar Letters” for
prior trips “crossing the line” at Ft. Benning, Ga.
It seemed at times that Judge G. Mallon Faircloth
had the Biblical disease of “a hardened heart.” For
six years he has heard testimony from principled resisters about
the nature of the school and about their witness acting on behalf
of the victims of torture. Hearing defendants of all ages (our group
ranged from 19 to 81 years old) speak from the heart about their
commitment to nonviolence, only to continue to send nuns, priests,
students, and others to prison must take a toll on one’s soul.
The Idolatry of the Law. The focus of the prosecutors was always
“Did you cross the line?” rather than “Why did
you cross the line?” The Government was only interested in
documenting illegal presence on the base, not whether something
illegal is being taught there. The judge made a pre-trial ruling
prohibiting defendants from using International Law and/or Necessity
as a defense, despite a well-reasoned 30-page brief from defendant
lawyers. What would he have said if principled resisters like Martin
Luther King or Susan B. Anthony or members of the Boston Tea Party
had stood before him?
The courtroom discourse of deterrence seems
to go hand-in-glove with our present national preoccupation with
the efficacy of terror and torture. Our empire threatens others
with nuclear weapons or economic destabilization or torture, hoping
they will conform to our policy demands. Yet this fails to work
against those who value freedom and conscience over intimidation
and bluster. So Fr. Jerry Zawada, a Franciscan priest, was sentenced
to six months in prison, and yet returned not once but twice more.
The defendants were not acting on a whim; they had counted the cost
carefully before deciding it was their turn to speak for those who
have no voice in the policies of the empire.
One defendant recalled the defensiveness of
her German cousins who lived in Germany during the Third Reich.
The guilt and shame of their silence could not be mitigated by the
refrain “But we didn’t know what was really going on.”
Yet there was Judge Faircloth doing his Pontius Pilate imitation,
insisting that it is the legislative and the executive branches
of government that sets policy regarding the operation of this “school
of the assassins” (not a term Judge Faircloth would use).
I reminded him in my statement at sentencing
that “German judges were also prosecuted at the Nuremberg
Tribunals for their complicity in War Crimes.” When will any
branch of our government stand up and say “no torture, no
rape, no disappearing, no murder” by agents of our government?
When told that one of our fellow defendants
was put in the “hole” for two weeks upon arriving at
federal prison because the necessary paperwork was not done at the
courthouse after sentencing, and that he had to remain on his bed
for seven consecutive days because his basement segregation cell
was flooded, the judge replied, “I don’t tell the Bureau
of Prisons how to run their prisons and they don’t tell me
how to run my courtroom.” Instead of being a check and balance
to the misdeeds of government, our courts are more likely to practice
cowardice, silent when torture is trumpeted by the present administration
in Washington, and deaf to the Sixth Article of the U.S. Constitution
which requires judges to honor International Treaties signed by
our government.
Article Six establishes the U.S. Constitution
and the laws and treaties of the United States made in accordance
with it as the supreme law of the land, and fulfills other purposes.
It reads: (All Debts contracted and Engagements
entered into, before the Adoption of the Constitution, shall be
as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under
the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United
States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties
made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United
States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in
every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution
or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned,
and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive
and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several
States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution;
but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification
to any Office or public Trust under the United States.)
Our prison sentences come less than a week after a military jury
in Colorado found a U.S. Army interrogator guilty of negligent homicide
in the torture and killing of a detainee in Iraq, yet decided not
to jail him. Two years after Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) members
reported on the torture and mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib
and other Iraqi detention centers, only a handful of low-level soldiers
have been prosecuted, while the architects of those policies (Donald
Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft and the President) are
off the hook. I pray that our actions and willingness to go to prison
sends a strong message to Iraqi citizens that there are some Americans
who denounce the practice of torture and murder.
Focusing on Empire through the School of the
Americas. Our witness is profoundly connected to the occupation
of Iraq. Meanwhile, out of the media spotlight, peace activists,
union leaders and others continue to be gunned down in Columbia,
the nation that has the largest number of troops presently being
trained at the SOA. Much of the recent destabilization in Haiti
can also be traced to graduates of the SOA. The SOA is a symbol
of an empire bent on world domination, whether that is achieved
by economic rewards and/or strangulation, mercenary armies or direct
military intervention.
How do we resist this march of the empire?
If democracy depends on the “consent of the governed,”
how do we withdraw that consent? Several defendants talked about
“speaking truth to power” in our trial preparations,
but I think we do more truth telling with our feet than with our
tongues. Kathy Kelly reminds us that “what you see depends
on where you stand.” When we sit in our new federal prison
homes in the next couple of months, what we will see is the underbelly
of the empire. When our nation spends in excess of $500 billion
this year for the military (not counting Veterans Affairs or war-incurred
national debt payments), there is no money left from the federal
coffers for education, the environment, health care, housing, or
other human needs. My protest against the SOA is also a cry of “nunca
jamas!” to empire and domination.
Our witness as privilege. I suspect there are
very few other defendants who come before this judge with a roomful
of supporters. I had four friends who traveled more than 1,000 miles
from Minnesota to stand with me, and two more who came from West
Virginia. As a wealthy, educated, healthy white male I expect to
be listened to, given the benefit of the doubt. Even though I chose
to represent myself in court (rejecting the fee imposed by the judge
on each defendant for using an “out-of-state” lawyer!),
I had ready access to lawyers if I had a question. Still, being
on trial at the “mercy” of the judge gives one a small
taste of losing some of that control, and it will be further challenged
when I enter the prison grounds. Still, I need to remember that
even this loss of control is the result of a deliberate choice I
made when I decided to cross the line.
On the airplane ride home from the trial (privilege
again!), the pilot walked through the cabin to greet several soldiers
dressed in desert fatigues returning from the war in Iraq. “Thank
you for your sacrifice,” was the refrain I expect they will
hear repeatedly as they try to re-assimilate into civilian life.
Warriors around the world hear the same from their supporters: Nazi
soldiers, Contras, Tamil Tigers, paramilitaries in Columbia, Mujahedeen
fighters.
People do sacrifice for their beliefs, and I
expect that we “prisoners of conscience” will also be
greeted with the same commendation when we walk out of prison. Yet
those going to jail are not necessarily more committed—it
is only one form of resistance. It may even be an easier route.
It will take the gifts and calling of all of us to shut down the
SOA: people demanding their representatives and senators to pass
HR 1217 to investigate the record of atrocities by the SOA; people
in the streets attempting to disrupt “business as usual”;
letters to editors and representatives; conversations with friends
and family; delegations with Witness For Peace and Christian Peacemaker
Teams; and other creative ways to add our “No!” to the
domination system.
Prison. We’ve been given a gift. Many
of us will be going to prison during Holy Week. Specifically, it
looks as though we’ll start our sentences the day that the
church commemorates Jesus’ own civil disobedience, when he
“cleaned money-changers out of the Temple.” Since Judge
Faircloth is choosing not to do pre-sentencing investigation reports
in advance on us, we are likely to spend Maundy Thursday, Good Friday
and Easter in “the Hole.” Although our “suffering”
will be insignificant in comparison with that of the original Holy
Week, or with the present day victims of those trained at the SOA,
it will provide us a better context for reflection during that sacred
time.
Our journey into “the belly of the beast”
will also coincide with the April 15 tax frenzy. We remind friends
of the cost to the taxpayers for our principled protest: as some
of us will likely be headed for penitentiary instead of work camps,
the per diem expense to harbor us will be even greater. Although
the waiting has been difficult for some of us, hopefully we can
use these next few weeks to prepare psychically for the journey
ahead. To enter prison with the knowledge and support of people
worldwide is a privilege few people have, so we are cognizant of
our responsibility to be present to those we meet “inside”
as we together struggle to recover the soul of our nation.
My report date is April 11. My place of service
for the next three months on behalf of “those who have no
voice” will be prison in Duluth. My Bureau of Prisons number
is 92565-020; if you wish to send me any mail after I arrive, it
can be addressed as follows:
Stephen D. Clemens 92565-020
FPC Duluth Federal Prison Camp
PO Box 1000
Duluth, MN 55814
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