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Ain’t Gonna Study War No More
Delivered by
Bruce Arnold, September 28, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
In the late '60s, no one was without an opinion on
the Viet Nam War. Some
supported it. Some opposed it.
The numbers of those who opposed it grew steadily, from a
ground-swell of grass roots resistance to, eventually, the highest office
in the land, when Lyndon Johnson initiated peace talks in
Paris
in 1968.
Peace talks or not, the fighting continued for years.
So did division at home. The
riot at the Democratic National Convention in
Chicago
in 1968 was an outstanding example of this, as police and protesters
clashed in the streets.
Some were against the war for political reasons.
Some were against it for reasons of humanity.
Some opposed it on religious grounds.
And for many if not most, there was a combination of these.
Among
those who resisted the war for both humane and religious reasons were two
brothers, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan.
Daniel was a Jesuit priest, and Phillip was a Josephite priest.
Early in 1968, Phil Berrigan and 3 others poured blood on draft
records in
Baltimore
. While out on bail for that
act, they joined with Daniel Berrigan and six others to burn draft files
in
Catonsville
,
MD
, in May of 1968. They waited
in prayer for officers to arrive and arrest them.
It was a symbolic act of protest, like Gandhi’s Salt March, not a
crime which they hoped to get away with.
The
symbolism of pouring blood and napalming draft files rang clear and true
across the nation. Remarkably,
there were very few copy-cat protests, but other people were inspired to
make their own stands in their own way.
Draft card burnings - a federal offense - which had occurred for
several years, increased in numbers and frequency.
A group of famous politicians, authors, and musicians called for a
moratorium on the war, to be held in the fall of 1968, when people would
not go to work or school but would meet instead to seek a solution to
America
’s involvement in
Southeast Asia
. Marches were held.
Sit-ins were sat. This
was not all a direct result of the Berrigan’s actions, but the trial of
the Catonsville Nine was certainly a well-publicized and influential
event.
(Daniel Berrigan’s book “The Trial of the
Catonsville Nine” was published by the UUA publishing house, Beacon
Press.)
In 1968, such remarkable events were not confined to
the
USA
. the worker/student uprising
in
Paris
, the “Prague Spring” in the formerly communist state of
Czechoslovakia
, protests at the Olympics in
Mexico City
, were all part and parcel of a world-wide shift in consciousness.
I was going through my own political awakening at
this time. The events of those
days and the values that I formed have left an imprint that remains to
this day, 40 years later.
One question that faced all young men at that time
was, what about the draft? While
some who labored over this issue were simply cowards who could not stomach
taking a risk for their country or for their beliefs, many if not most
were asking, how can I take part in a war I know to be unjust?
I’m aware today that the issue was far more complex
than most of us appreciated. Without
the benefit of maturity, or of the hindsight that sees the evils which
followed in the wake of abrupt American withdrawal from the region, we
were nonetheless forced to make choices which would affect the rest of our
lives.
Some went and came back, confident they had done the
right thing. Some came back,
sickened by what they had seen. Some
came back mutilated. Some did
not come back.
Some did not go.
Some got deferments. Some
went to
Canada
. Some had medical conditions.
Some faked medical conditions.
Some just didn’t get called.
And some, like me, made the difficult choice to take
a stand on principle. We
applied for conscientious objector status.
If you were a member of one of the traditional pacifist churches,
such as the Quakers or Amish, it was usually granted and, if drafted, you
did alternative service in a hospital or other public service capacity.
In my case, I knew that my local draft board had
never granted C.O. status to anyone. If
my number came up, I would be faced with prison.
It wasn’t a choice. My
decision was based on a firm moral position.
I had studied the lives of Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Thoreau.
I had watched the civil rights movement unfold.
I had studied Biblical scripture on peace and justice.
And I had seen the Berrigans calmly awaiting arrest, trial, and
imprisonment.
Fast forward many years, to the early 80s.
The
Viet Nam
war has been over for Americans - for years.
The Carter years have come and gone.
Mr. Reagan is in office. The
Cold War is heating up.
Maturity and appreciation have changed my view of
much of the Reagan presidency. I
now give him full credit for some great accomplishments.
On two counts however, I still cannot condone his policies:
development of nuclear weapons, and support of dictatorships in
Central America, South America, Africa, and
Asia
.
In an oddly-named town called
King of Prussia
,
PA
, there was a plant where nuclear warheads were manufactured for missiles.
One day, Phillip Berrigan and 6 others walked in with hammers and
began pounding on warheads, in reference to the scriptural passage “they
shall beat their swords into plowshares.”
Again, they prayerfully awaited arrest.
I was deeply involved in the nuclear disarmament movement at the
time. When Berrigan and
several others made the call for activists to come shut down the Pentagon,
I answered the call. Early one
morning, we drove out to the Pentagon, chained doors shut, and sat down in
front of them. As employees
arrived, they found they could not get in.
Some took it in good humor and talked and joked with us.
Others were angry and abusive.
The police were professional. I
was sitting there with Phillip literally in my lap.
When an officer came to arrest us, he took us each by an arm and
pulled us up. Our pre-arranged
strategy was not to tussle with the cops.
That kind of adolescent rebellion had failed in the 60s and 70s.
We were not at odds with the police, but with nuclear
proliferation. So we rose and
followed him. He took us aside
and, without even putting plastic ties on our wrists, said “Wait here”
and went to arrest a couple more. Phillip
and I looked at each other, laughed, and went to sit back down in another
spot. Not hassling the police
was one thing. Missing the
chance to draw out the protest was another.
It was that kind of spirit that characterized Phillip
and his brother Daniel: thoughtful,
mature, poised, and faithful on the one hand; playful, spritely, and
irreverent on the other. There
was no posturing, no needless drama. Their
actions were fully thought out. They
were based, not on emotion or impulse, but on the most deeply-held
convictions, and with full acceptance of the consequences.
And yet for all the seriousness, there was always a place for a
smile, a wink, a laugh.
Phil, and his wife Elizabeth McAlister, a former nun
just as he was a former priest, and a lady of spirit, strength and wit,
continued to work for peace and justice at the Jonah House in Baltimore.
I never saw Phil again after I moved from DC in 1984.
He died of cancer in 2002.
Usually in this series of sermons on
Eureka
moments, I’ve had a lesson to share or a moral to draw.
Not this time. Just
a personal reminiscence of someone who touched my life long before I met
him, who was exactly what I expected when we did meet, and whose memory
touches my heart and my life now and into the future.
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