ANZUS Plowshares - As A Nonviolent Campaign
Part 4

This is the last part of an article originally written in early 1992. Ciaron
O'Reilly, Moana Cole, Bill Streit and Sue Frankel entered Griffiss Air Force
Base, New York State on the evening of New Years Day, 1991 with the intention
of some practical disarmament actions.  They were successful, apprehended,
tried and imprisoned.  Since this article was written, all have "served"
their time and been released.  Ciaron and Moana are out on bail and legally
resisting deportation home to Brisbane.

Sentencing
The sentencing was seven weeks later.  In the meantime, we returned briefly
to Syracuse for pre-sentencing interviews with probation.  They were confused
about our willingness to accept responsibility for the act, but the failure
to display remorse.

We arrived back in Syracuse four days before sentencing.  Local people had
taken responsibility for the final three events.  We met for the last time as
a community.  It would be a drag that we wouldn't be able to get together
again because of deportations.  We concluded that we wanted to bring a spirit
of celebration and resistance to the sentencing.

The last few days in Syracuse were to be a truly Pentecostal experience in
the deepest sense.  At a time when Pax Americana posed triumphant, the large
peace movement lay scattered, scores of military resisters imprisoned and
thousands of Iraqi children still dying from U.S. bombing... over 200 people
gathered with us to declare another history and claim another future.  The
variety of backgrounds, that people sprung from to stand in solidarity with
the witness spoke of the Gift of Tongues.  The Plowshares witness, universal
and true, understood by Christian, Jew, Rasta, Deadhead, churched,
unchurched, young, old, German, Pakistani, veteran, neophyte, artist,
pragmatist, friend, family, stranger... it spoke clearly and deeply and all
these people stood with it.

On Sunday sixty of us, mostly local Syracuse folk came together in a day of
reflection and to share Eucharist.  We shared our understanding of the war,
the meaning of the prophesy and where it was taking us.

Over the next twenty-four hours many friends rolled into town from throughout
the northeast.

On Monday night it was time to celebrate resistance, hope and community. 
Friends catered wonderfully for 150 locals, Catholic Workers and Plowshare
folks who turned up at St. Andrews.  "Donna the Buffalo" a six-piece band
from Ithaca arrived in their tour bus and soon the whole joint was jumping. 
After so many words, in court and out, it was wonderful to celebrate in such
a physical and rhythmic way.  It was a wonderful expression of community and
the power of the prophecy to reach out and connect with all sorts of people
and subcultures.

On sentencing morning, we gathered for a last liturgy and then headed to the
Armoury where the local Nonviolent Action Committee was hosting a march on
the Federal Building,  The Canadian Catholic Workers unfurled a gigantic "You
Can Jail the Resister, But Not the Resistance" banner, folks had collected
bunches of wild flowers from the side of the highway, there were heaps of
drums and 200 had gathered.  We eventually moved off.  It was wild, something
like a cross between a New Orleans funeral and one of the more bizarre scenes
from "Oliver".  Things got increasingly surreal as we passed a woman in
Armoury Square who was performing with an electric guitar and amplifier.  She
broke into that classic  60's, "Buffalo Springfield", hit-the-streets "Listen
children..." number.

When we hit the Federal Building the N.A.C.'ers quickly occupied the large
cubist sculpture in the courtyard, while a bunch of us swung into the Federal
Building that houses the military recruitment offices on the ground floor. 
It was such a confined area and there were so many of us - we sat in, spoke
out and delivered copies of the Harvard Medical report on the U.S. massacre
in the Middle East.  Two friends, dressed as cholera and typhoid, were making
quite a visual impact.

We moved through the corridors and emerged from the building as the
N.A.C.'ers began their theatre.  They had transformed the sculpture into
prison cells and read from Gandhi, Emma Goldman, Phil Berrigan, Eugene Dobbs,
Anne Montgomery and many other prisoners of conscience.  Following the
theatre, interrupted occasionally by edgy Federal Marshals, there was lots
more dancin', hollerin' and finally the blessing before we moved into court. 
It was very moving, Pentecostal and celebratory.

The Judge did some preliminaries and then Moana stood up holding a tennis
ball.  She said that this was the size of a Cluster bomblet, each one
contained 600 razor sharp metal shards.  A Cluster Bomb Unit contains over
200 bomblets.  It was the second most-used munition of the Gulf Massacre.  A
B-52 can carry 40 Cluster Bomb Units, of 8,080 bomblets and can destroy every
living thing in an area of 176 million square yards.  The B-52 was the
largest contributor to the Gulf Massacre, dropping 30% of all explosives. 
She said, "I go to jail in solidarity with my friends who refused to be
deployed in the Persian gulf, those sitting in military brigs because they
obeyed the command of Christ and conscience not to kill - Yolanda
Huet-Vaughn, Darwin Arola, Dave Bobbit, Doug De Boer and many others."

Sue was next to address Judge McCurn, "I must tell you, you missed an
incredible celebration last night.  I have come to court eagerly.  Not eager
to go to jail--there's a lot of other things I'd rather be doing--but eager
for the Kingdom.  And I know the Kingdom is present here, and whenever
someone enfleshes the words of Isaiah (to beat swords into plowshares)."

Bill spoke to the moral schizophrenia of the courts when it comes to serial
killing in uniform.  "A country that  is horrified by a serial killer (in
Milwaukee) who chops up people, but is not horrified when hundreds of
thousands are chopped up and maimed is a country that is totally blinded. 
Dropping bombs from an aeroplane is serial murder.  People are being killed
and as long as laws legitimize that killing we won't obey them."  Bill
concluded by inviting the Judge to come down and join us.

I basically told the Judge that we hadn't had a jury of our peers.  That
although I didn't expect to see dreadlocks on the jury, that the process of
choosing it was superficial and insufficient in a time of mass war hysteria
and deep antagonism against we who stood against the "popular victorious war
effort".  I said that we hadn't received a trial by jury.  That it should
have been a jury to decide if our defense fulfilled the requirements of
necessity.  Our witnesses, evidence and defense had been censored by him. 
The U.S. Constitution promises a trial by jury of a defendant's peers.  I
don't believe in the U.S. Constitution, but apparently he did, so he should
stick to its requirements in his courtroom.

I then turned to the audience and said, "Don't seek justice in this court or
peace in the military, but in community and continued resistance!"

As McCurn began to sentence, we moved into the middle of the courtroom and
said we couldn't accept his sentence as it criminalised peacemaking and
legalized massacre.  We dropped to our knees, circled and began the Lord's
Prayer.  We were joined by folks in the audience, who then continued the
witness with statements until the court was cleared.  We remained on the
floor as McCurn sentenced us all to a year and departed.

We were taken downstairs, shackled and put in a van to Oneida County Jail. 
It was great to be together as we entered the third stage of the witness. 
Rain was falling, we were all joyous and tired, and it was kind of cozy.

Prison
We had January and February to taste and experiment with the prison witness
as the massacre raged and we refused bail conditions - also, time to reflect
on it, with each other, in the meantime.  We all concur on the power of the
prison witness of others in our own lives and conversion.  As Phil Berrigan
says, "Brothers and sisters in prison speak to our consciences which is how
God speaks to us!"  We go along with the old I.W.W. maxim, "We re in here for
you!  You re out there for us!"  A recognition of solidarity and the
importance of work and struggle, inside and out.  Unfortunately the
mainstream peace movement in the first World lacks such an appreciation.

The people who paid the greatest price in resisting the U.S. Massacre in the
Gulf were military resisters, mainly Black and Latino.  The U.S. peace
movement, after issuing the call "not-to-go", failed these people miserably. 
They failed to organize seriously around their court-martials and present
imprisonment.  One reflects that where the Empire is most brutal and
resistance most serious - Northern Ireland, Salvador, Philippines, South
Africa - the prison witness is supported with much more depth by movements
for peace and justice.  We first-worlders are neophytes to serious struggle.

The  old prison maxim, "You do your own time" is true.  One has to organise
one's time to serve your purpose, rather than you serving the time.  In such
a total institution that is designed to dehumanize and disorientate, you have
to develop your own self-activating routine of prayer, study, exercise,
correspondence, social life and "visiting the prisoner".  Prison is the
setting where we can enter into the deepest solidarity with the poor.  To me
the bedrock of survival in prison is one's sense of spirituality and sense of
solidarity with brothers and sisters who continue the struggle for peace and
justice.

As I write, I'm half-way through my sentence, thousands of miles away from my
co-defendants in outback Texas.  I'm in a cage with twenty-four men who don't
speak English.  It's an interesting time, not at all what I expected or
planned.  The act of disarmament has been a beautiful gift.  I've sense the
ripples as close as my own family and as far as Australia, Europe, North
America, New Zealand, Iraq and the Philippines.  Like the loaves and fishes,
we offer the little we have and it seems to be mystically multiplied.
Ciaron O'Reilly,
Pecos Jail, Texas