🚀 go-pugleaf

Cross-posted to several lists -- please delete any duplicates you may
recive -- thank you -- John Wilmerding, CERJ

Last Thursday night I caught a bus to Washington, DC.  There was a massive
demonstration there -- Jericho '98 -- and I took
part in it -- but you wouldn't know it from the mass media.  It was the
'mass demonstration that never happened'.

The folks I rode down to DC with are by-and-large much more radical than I
am -- real far-lefters.  I can share their company
and enthusiasm for this issue though, even though I think of myself as a
pacifist and political centrist -- in particular, I
share their outrage with this fact:  the USA's policy of taking political
prisoners is not something that our government wants
us to think about or act upon.  In this respect, we are apparently no
different than the worst third-world dictatorships that
our big corporate government patrons want the US government to prop up in
power.  I am an American Patriot -- I love my
country and I have carefully raised, lowered, and folded its flag thousands
of times.  However, I returned home yesterday with
much less faith in the USA's system than I left with two days earlier --
and my faith was already severely shaken beforehand.

Why?  Well, you see, we virtually mobbed the city.  We were an eclectic
gathering of many, many thousands of people of all colors
and racial/class backgrounds.  We marched several miles through downtown
Washington DC and completely encircled the White House.
We sang, we shouted, we chanted.  We had many ranks of police arrayed
against us -- no violence, though, that I am aware of.  I
know of only one law being broken -- some demonstrators spray=painted the
slogan 'free all political prisoners' on a police car
as they passed!  We stopped traffic in downtown Washington, DC for hours.
From where I marched on the long, straight thoroughfare
we took to get downtown, you could see the broad avenue filled with people
as far as the eye could see in both directions!  The
media *were* there -- TV cameras, interviews, the whole ball of wax.

My part in it?  I carried a two-sided hand-lettered sign with the
politically-oriented saying "We are the prisoners of the
prisoners we have taken" -- a quote from the music of South Africa's
liberation from Apartheid -- and the Biblically-related
saying (which I made up on the spot) "This is Jericho -- Sound the
Trumpets!"  I didn't really make it all up -- it was derivative
-- the "This is Jericho" part, like the other, is also a quote from South
Africa's Johnny Clegg:

"This is Jericho, and the walls reach up to the stars!
Outside, we are singing psalms.
Such a strange, strange place,
for we are the prisoners of the prisoners we have taken,
and the prophets' dreams are all forsaken."

[Johnny Clegg and Savuka, from the CD/album Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World]

Many people asked me about my signs, and I explained that they were meant
to convey the moral imprisonment of the people of the
United States -- we are prisoners of a moral debt that is skyrocketing --
the debt incurred by our gross and pervasive violation
of the underprivileged ethnic groups and classes in our midst.  I also saw
part of the famous quote from my fellow Quaker and
socialist Eugene Debs: "As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it;
as long as there is a lower class, I am in it; as
long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."  How close I feel to
that sentiment today.  How it 'speaks to my condition'.

Then we went home (or in my case, to my host's home) and watched to see
some evidence that our protest 'counted' -- watched to
hear our hoarse voices and see our sunburned and/or deeply pigmented faces
on the news.  We watched the national network news
and there was nothing.  We watched the local Washington DC news, and there
was nothing.  Nothing.  There was NOTHING on the news.

Nothing about the dozens of political prisoners being held for excessively
long prison sentences in this country -- many of them
certified as political prisoners by Amnesty International.  Nothing about
Merle Africa, who died in custody a couple of weeks ago
under circumstances of obvious neglect.  Nothing about Fred Hampton, Jr.,
whose father, a Black Panther, was murdered in bed
years ago by the police and who now languishes in a US prison.  Nothing
about the Puerto Rican independentistas who have been
rotting in prison for decades.  Nothing about Mumia Abu Jamal, a deeply
articulate journalist and political resister imprisoned
for murder whose case certainly warrants a new trial at the very least.
Nothing about Leonard Peltier, the Lakota (Sioux)
activist who was apparently framed for shooting a policeman while engaged
in a militant American Indian Movement action in South
Dakota.  Nothing about the dozens of people whose names were cried out
inanguish in the air of the Nation's Capital by thousands
of people who are deeply concerned for their well-being and devoted to
their freedom.  Nothing about how these thousands of
people were bussed in from all over the country -- from California to the
New York island, from the redwood forests to the Gulf
Stream waters -- we, the people, who brought this concern to the rest of us
-- the people of this country -- by bringing it to
the Nation's Capital.

No, the media (and/or their corporate owners) don't seem to care.  More
than that, they apparently don't want you to care either.
They don't want you to know, or to care about, the fact that this society
is an oppressor -- perhaps the grossest and most
massive of oppressors in the world today.  If you simply count non-violent
resistance to this oppression, then perhaps you can
agree with Amnesty International that the USA has imprisoned dozens of
political prisoners.  If you count politically-motivated
violence, then perhaps you will agree with those who count scores of
political prisoners in the USA.  And if, as I do, you count
the modern-day POW's -- the victims of the Drug War -- then you must admit
to hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in
this country, with hugely disproportionate numbers of African-Americans and
hispanics among them -- and most of them far too
young for such a drastic societal response to its problems.  Genocidal
numbers and percentages of 'minorities' in prison,
despite the conclusive research -- even by right-wing conservative
institutions -- saying that sending people to prison only
causes more crime when they get out -- and that substance-abuse treatment
is far superior to incarceration in preventing
re-offending -- and is vastly superior to three-strikes-you're-out and
mandatory minimum sentencing.  And that any kind of
approach that is community-based is much better than the same or similar
methods in a prison setting.  Not that it matters,
because there's no more prison-based rehabilitation anyway -- it's been
done away with by the Newt Gingriches of this country
in a fit of political pique.

No matter what your count of how many political prisoners there are, there
were many thousands of people marching in the streets
of the Nation's Capital on Friday, March 27, 1998, protesting the fact that
there are political prisoners in this country, and
asking for their release.   Regardless of the other gross human rights
violations being perpetrated in the name of justice in
this country, such as state-sponsored retributive homicide (the 'death
penalty') -- evan regardless of all of these facts, these
thousands of people were peacefully petitioning their government for a
redress of grievances -- a right guaranteed by the US
Constitution.  Where is the response?

Such an obvious story for the media -- on the very day when President
William Jefferson Clinton, on a supposed 'good-will'
visit to South Africa -- was escorted by that country's President (whom the
Sohth Africans, black and white alike, call
'father of the nation') -- Nelson Mendela -- to the very isolated cell
where he spent so very many years as a political
prisoner of the former Apartheid (racist) regime.  There were images of
Clinton grasping the bars of Mandela's former
cell and peering out the window, stories of him hearing about how the only
furnishing in the cell was a rusty bucket for
the President-to-be to defecate and urinate into -- and marveling that
Mandela emerged from this most horrible of
experiences still whole -- still able to lead a revolutionary nation into a
new millenium.

Was Clinton, who is in fact my distant cousin, truly trying to get a
feeling of what it must have been like for Mandela
to experience his life and his youth rotting away in that stinking hole?

Is it any wonder that so many thousands of young men and boys do not leave
our prisons whole -- if they manage to leave alive?
Why do we send our most troubled youth to prison, at ages when their lives
and personalities are still being shaped by their
society and their immediate surroundings -- at ages when they are supremely
vulnerable to the cultures of violence and
addiction that exist in our prisons?  Again I say this country is engaged
in a violent genocidal war against its most
underprivileged classes, and against its youth -- our only hope for the
future.  As the world champion of empire-building,
we are experts at having others fight our battles for us -- and the Drug
War is just one more proxy war that we are
prosecuting against a nearly-helpless people who are being pushed far, far
beyond the limits of human endurance.  The Drug
War is the supreme poetic irony -- it is America's War Against Itself.

One very important thing happened to me there -- I wanted you to know about
it.  An angry hard-bodied young man with deeply-
pigmented dark brown skin came up to my friend and was talking with her.
As I moved closer to hear what he had to say, he
looked at me somewhat derisively  -- me, the overweight, out-of-shape,
middle-aged, pale creature fresh from a long Vermont
winter and endless hours in front of the computer, me sporting my
lobster-like sunburn and blistered feet, and said to her:
"The only reason I come down here is to tell people like you that something
has to change NOW, or else I'm ready to start
snapping the necks of people like you.  People like this (he nodded at me)
who just come down here because they think this is
'something', y'know ... there ain't nothing more for me to do but just
start snapping your necks, and I'm ready to start doing
it right now."

That is why I can say to you that my activism for social justice is no only
because of my compassion for those suffering under
the injustices -- it is also a deep concern for people of my own class and
ethnic background, increasingly outnumbered, who are
assuming a greater and greater moral and economic burden for the ignorant,
fallacious and destructive public policies being
foisted upon us by a cynical and self-centered political 'leadership' and
the baldly system-centered (and now also profit-
centered) criminal injustice system.  We have a choice -- to struggle for
what's right -- struggle non-violently and perhaps
save many lives, as Gandhi did in India; as King did in Birmingham -- or to
resign ourselves to all-out violent revolution
and increasing conflict in the streets -- it's already happening, folks --
tell me, what is the most compassionate response?
And what is the most politically pragmatic response?  And no matter how you
cut it, aren't they exactly the same thing?

"Love becomes suffering love because love which leads to Shalom (justice,
peace, and salvation) is active, engaged love.
Jesus suffered and died in part because he challenged the elite and their
structures.  So, too, if we struggle for Shalom,
we shall suffer because we are actively confronting and resisting the
structures of oppression and working for the liberation
of powerless and oppressed people.  Shalom love is not love at a distance,
not love in the abstract, not love in the rocking
chair -- it is the love of confrontation, of strike, of protest, and of
disobedience to the structures of violence.  Shalom
love is suffering love because it is a love manifested in struggle and
opposition; it is embodied in conflict with the forces
which hold people in bondage.  Shalom love is suffering love because it is
militant love struggling for human liberation,
justice, and Shalom which is G-d's will for our world.  Suffering love will
not stop until this struggle succeeds." [from
Shalom: the Bible's Word for Salvation, Justice, and Peace; by pacifist and
Mennonite Christian Perry B. Yoder, 1987, Faith
and Life Press, Newton, Kansas.]

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John Wilmerding, Gen'l Secretary |  E-Mail:    <info@cerj.org>
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We are the prisoners of the prisoners we have taken - J. Clegg