Column Bushs war brings uncertain times for peacemakers
By DEMETRIA MARTINEZ
Marcus Page of Gallup, N.M., is a
committed pacifist with deep roots in the Catholic Worker movement. He hosts a
radio talk show called Cultivating Peace and has produced a radio
documentary about Catholic anarchist Ammon Hennacy. The 36-year-old radio
rebel, who wears his hair in a Mohawk, also works with community-oriented
micropower stations sometimes known as free or pirate radio.
Page is also affiliated with a number of peace groups. Among these
are the Nevada Desert Experience and the Global Network Against Weapons and
Nuclear Power in Space.
In May 2001 Page participated in a prayer action at Vandenberg Air
Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif. The largest space command facility in the
United States, Vandenberg is best known for its national missile defense tests
in promotion of Star Wars. Page described the action, which was
coordinated with the Los Angeles Catholic Worker affinity group, as a
prayer to sanctify the land and to stop the violence. He was subsequently
found guilty of trespassing and is serving a years probation.
Page recently drove to Tucson with two friends to record an
interview with me about my new book of poetry, The Devils
Workshop, and to check out our local peace fair. His pleasant visit took a
bizarre turn, however, en route back to New Mexico. He called me after
returning to Gallup to tell me what happened.
A police officer near Mammoth, Ariz., Page said, stopped the group
for allegedly speeding. Page, who was driving his friends car, concedes
he might have been going five miles over the speed limit. He gave the officer
his social security number, which was relayed to a dispatcher. But Page was not
merely ticketed. The cop proceeded to handcuff Page, justifying the action with
the claim that Page was affiliated with a terrorist
organization.
Page thought he was joking until a backup car and a canine unit
showed up. Not wanting to provoke the cop, Page did not inquire about the
terrorist organization. Instead, he made small talk with one of the
cops.
During our wait for the police to search everything, one cop
stayed with us and told us all about Jesus Christ the Savior in response to our
comments on Christian pacifism, said Page. The Christian cop
claimed that God ordains some governments to use violence, including the
U.S.A.
The group was let go within about an hour.
Im not one to ever admit being angry, but it did cause
stress, said Page. He told me that he is assuming the best: that the
police officer -- who struck him as fumbling, decent, not nasty --
confused the concept of an activist group with a terrorist group.
Pages interpretation is charitable, given our nations
dark history of repressing dissent. And now, one must wonder what activists of
all stripes will confront as President George W. Bush escalates his
anti-terrorist rhetoric.
Bushs problem is that he is waging war not on specific
criminals -- but with evil in general. And demonology makes for
irrational military policy. In Bushs worldview, dissenters are soft on
evildoers -- and should be dealt with by curtailing civil rights.
I described Pages experience to Betita Martinez, one of the
editors of the new publication, War Times, which comes out of San
Francisco.
People around the country know theyre not getting the
real story, she said, about the war abroad and against activists and
immigrants here at home.
Martinez said that the reaction to the February pilot issue of
War Times has been overwhelming. A first printing of 75,000 issues went
immediately; 25,000 more have been printed.
The issue includes articles about the costs of Bushs
permanent war, anti-war actions, and an interview with actor and
human rights activist Danny Glover. Half the paper is in Spanish.
The anti-war movement has tended to be middle class and white,
Martinez said. We have to get more people of color involved, she
said, explaining that we are the ones most affected by the scourges of wartime.
(To find out how to get bulk copies for your church or other groups, contact:
wartimes@attbi.com)
These days we need information as well as inspiration, which
together add up to hope. With this in mind, I urge readers to buy, borrow or
steal these two books: An Echo In My Blood: A Search for a Familys
Hidden Past, by Alan Weisman (Harcourt, Brace) and The Voice of the
Butterfly (Chronicle Books) by John Nichols.
Since he was a child, Weisman had heard his dad tell of how
communists in the Ukraine had murdered his grandfather. Years later, an
estranged uncle told a very different version of the story, compelling Weisman
to apply his formidable skills as an investigative journalist to his own
familys history. The reader accompanies the author on a quest in space
and time, from Russia to the social movements of the 1960s. Weismans
breathtaking story is a metaphor for the human familys struggle to know
itself and to know peace.
John Nichols is a photographer and novelist best known for The
Milagro Beanfield War, a tale of water rights and class war in northern New
Mexico. The Voice of the Butterfly is about Charley McFarland, an aging
60s radical who decides its time to rally the troops once again --
this time on behalf of a butterfly, the obscure Rocky Mountain phistic
copper.
McFarlands dysfunctional, yet oddly grace-filled Butterfly
Coalition had me laughing out loud. It made me aware once again of what
activists can accomplish, usually despite ourselves. As with Milagro,
Nichols empowers us with a heady mix of politics and humor, a tonic needed in
these times.
Demetria Martinez lives in Tucson, Ariz.
National Catholic Reporter, April 19,
2002
|