Special
Report Teens grapple with U.S. role in conflict
By ARTHUR JONES
Ventura, Calif.
Two hours after the first airliner slammed into the World Trade
Center in New York on Sept. 11, the International Day of Peace, 24-year-old
Leah Catherine Wells walked into her classroom at St. Bonaventure Catholic High
School in Ventura, Calif., with a huge challenge before her.
For the next 50 minutes, Wells, a Georgetown graduate, former high
school English and French teacher turned nonviolence advocate, was supposed to
teach her daily class on nonviolence.
It never happened. The half-dozen-plus students who showed for the
elective class were off the wall, said Wells. It was bedlam.
They were chatterboxes. Did you see this? Did you hear that?
Wells, a staff member of the Santa Barbara-based Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation, decided too much was still happening to make classroom discussion
possible, so she folded her group into the world history class so they could
watch developments on television.
Her class homework assignment that night was simple: Be patient,
be kind.
Wells herself had an evening appointment in Los Alamitos (see
related story).
The following day, Wells students had calmed down. They
faced three questions on the chalkboard: What were your reactions
yesterday? How do you respond nonviolently to a situation like this? And WWGD
(what would Gandhi do?)
NCR sat in on the class with this understanding: no
photographs, no last names. There were two Lisas, one in red, one wearing a
lei, two Davids, one in red, one in white, Jeff, Paul, Veronica, Debby and
Alyssa (with a Mike and a Drew arriving very late indeed, carrying excuse
notes).
There were opening prayers, including one for a dad on military
high alert.
In class, the talk went straight to television news reports on
Sept. 11 following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Students talked about how life had changed the previous day --
cops everywhere in cities around the country, tanks stopping people at the
nearby U.S. Naval Base, Ventura County, in Port Hueneme.
Tanks! exclaimed one student.
Dave (in white) said watching television was like watching a
movie. The news coverage seemed like the end of the movie Fight
Club. An unanswered question Wells posed was: How can this be real if
its like a movie?
Debby, whose dad is a firefighter, was mindful of the missing
rescue workers. I thought, That could have been my dad if it was
here, she said.
Wells eased the conversation toward nonviolence. Veronica found it
weird that the attacks could occur on American soil. I wonder
why they did it, she said. Because they are getting back at us?
They wouldnt bomb us for no reason.
Paul thought it was a power play, an attack on the strength
of the United States.
They want the power of knowing they can beat us, the power
to say, We attacked the U.S. Were so cool.
Wells asked these sophomores, juniors and seniors, Where has
the United States bombed or invaded or stationed troops in your
lifetimes? Various places in the Gulf area, Iraq and Kuwait, Sudan and
Afghanistan, all made the list.
When Wells told them that the United States had bombed Iraq this
week and killed eight innocent people, students said, We did?
No way.
Lisa (with the lei) talked about the inevitable violent reaction:
Now well go kill them. I can understand where thats coming
from, the pain and fear. But if you stop and think about it, thats doing
the same thing were so upset about.
Dave nodded, and added, but you cant just sit here and
do nothing.
But Wed be attacking innocent people, too,
countered Lisa (in red).
Patriotism comes into it -- playing songs, people waving
American flags, she said. Were proud of the country. But
thats assuming the people who did this are foreign.
Alyssa asked: When we first decided what nonviolence meant,
didnt we say nonviolent people were strong? So wouldnt being
nonviolent be the strong thing to do?
David (in red) echoed the 20th-century American theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr in his next remark. Being a nonviolent person,
thats between you and other people, he said. Its
different for nations to be nonviolent when faced with violence. This is actual
war. He speculated on the obstacles to nonviolent government.
Lisa (in red) said that responding with weapons is going to make
people so mad. Its like getting out a map and saying, Oh,
weve bombed them before, and theyve been in our path so lets
just bomb them again.
Drew, however, didnt think America should just bomb. It
should then go in and set up a proper government there. Then there
wont be as much poverty and stuff like that.
The buzzer sounded. Class was over. The questions remained on the
board.
Arthur Jones is NCR editor at large.
National Catholic Reporter, September 21,
2001
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