Activist with Baltimore roots languishes in Georgia jail
By PATRICK O’NEILL
BALTIMORE SUN |
SEP 06, 2019 | 6:00 AM
Many Baltimore
readers older than 60 will likely be familiar with the names Elizabeth
McAlister and Philip Berrigan, who founded Jonah House, the Baltimore-based
resistance community that’s long served as a training ground for scores of war
resisters. The former priest and nun joined forces in the 1960s to form one of
most potent and creative anti-war duos this nation has ever seen.
Many who
followed their high-profile law breaking — which for Berrigan included setting
fire to draft records in Catonsville with eight others in 1968 — viewed them as
extremists. Others, myself included, saw the McAlister-Berrigan team as the
prophetic couple that changed the way people of faith resisted war, violence
and corporate sin.
Berrigan is credited with taking nonviolent direct action to another level as
the mastermind behind the Vietnam era draft board raids and again, in 1980,
with the inception of the Plowshares movement against nuclear weapons and war
in general (today, there have been more than 100 Plowshares actions around the
world).
At his death
in 2002, Berrigan had spent 11 years of his life behind bars for his antiwar
efforts. He married Liz McAlister while imprisoned in 1972, and both were
excommunicated from the Catholic Church when he was released and the marriage
legalized the next year. After Phil died, Ms. McAlister kept up her work for
peace at Jonah House, and she has remained a mentor to many.
The
Catonsville Nine
Tom
Melville puts more fuel on the burning draft cards at the Selective Service
office in Catonsville on May 17, 1968. (William L. Laforce/Baltimore Sun)
Today,
Ms. McAlister, 79, sits in the Glynn County Detention Center in Brunswick, Ga.,
a miserable Southern jail. She has been there since April 4, 2018, when I
joined her and five other Catholics in a Plowshares action at Naval Station
Kings Bay. The Atlantic coast home port of Trident submarines, the Trident
II-D-5 missiles collectively include enough nuclear fire power to kill 14
billion people and make Earth uninhabitable.
Calling
ourselves the Kings Bay Plowshares, the seven of us
entered the base on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King's
assassination. We carried blood, hammers and crime scene tape with us to expose
the evil of Trident. The federal government has charged us with three felonies
and a misdemeanor.
After seven
weeks in jail, I joined four of my co-defendants in accepting bond conditions:
$50,000 and house arrest with a requirement that we wear electronic ankle
monitors. Ms. McAlister, and two others — Fr. Stephen Kelly of the Society of
Jesus; and New Haven, Conn., Catholic Worker Mark Colville — refused those
conditions and have remained in jail.
The Glynn
County jail, where I was also held, is, like most jails — a hell hole used
primarily to hold poor people, the mentally ill and those with addictions. The
diet is poor, and on the weekends, the jail serves just two meals. Supper is a
bag “lunch” with a sandwich as the main course. “Outdoor” exercise is limited
to a once or twice a week trip to a crypt-like cement enclosure with a roof
covered with a steel fence. Mail includes only post office-issued white post
cards. Jail officials frequently withhold books and magazines or return them to
senders.
Jail visits
don't exist. A loved one can sit at a jail computer monitor and speak for 15
minutes per week to an inmate, who also sits at a computer monitor in his or
her cellblock. Catholic priests are not permitted to celebrate mass for
inmates, while evangelical ministers are permitted to conduct Sunday services
inside the cellblocks.
In early
August, we appeared in federal court for oral
argument. Because our judge does not allow us to meet together to prepare a
common defense, it was the first time the seven of us met since last November.
Despite her
legacy as a Catholic leader of the peace movement for almost 60 years, Ms.
McAlister has now spent more than 500 days and nights in jail in relative
obscurity; her sacrifice for nuclear disarmament unknown to most Americans.
Sadly, our
hopes of Ms. McAlister being freed without having to post bond or wear an ankle
monitor were dashed when U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood denied her
request for release on her own recognizance. It was a decision of enormous
judicial cruelty. Most lawyers working on the case believe Ms. McAlister has
already served more time in jail pretrial than she would get if she is
convicted.
Our trial date
is Oct. 21, so Ms. McAlister could spend several more months in jail depending
on the outcome of our case.
Ms.
McAlister’s suffering is selfless, and prophetic. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus
said, "blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Patrick
O’Neill (pmtoneill@aol.com) is among the
seven “Kings Bay Plowshares” activists facing federal charges for breaking into
a nuclear submarine base in Kings Bay, Ga., last year.
Copyright © 2019 by Baltimore Sun
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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