Friends,
I got a call from the White House, as it seems the president is
quite concerned about my criminal career. [Not really.] The minion who called indicated
there was a discussion about revoking my citizenship. So why not
self-deport to Poland? My response is that there is much for me and
others like me to do as fascism is knocking on the door. He responded
that the president is not going to like my response.
Below are some of the good times that I and many others needed to do to speak out against injustice. These acts of resistance are accompanied by great memories of so many good people who had the courage in trying times to say Not in My Name. Many of them are no longer with us, but I will always try to remember what they did while they were with us. Living in the US Empire means there will always be times to conspire, which means breathe together, and engage in nonviolent civil resistance. Did we accomplish very much? I will let others answer that question. The policies of the Trump administration will offer many risk arrest opportunities. Kagiso, Max
On April 9, 2024, sixty three members of Christians for a Free Palestine were arrested in the Dirksen Senate Office Building cafeteria and charged with Obstruction. Sixty one of them paid $50 to end the legal case. Janice Sevre-Duszynska and Max Obuszewski requested a trial. This was one of the longest legal experiences for Obuszewski in his career of resistance, as the two activists were convicted on January 23, 2025. They were sentenced as follows: ninety days of unsupervised probation, $50 Victims of Violent Crime free and suspended sentences of thirty days for Obuszewski and five days for Sevre-Duszynska.
On July 18, 2019, 70 people, mostly Catholic, were arrested by the U.S. Capitol
Police for “unlawfully demonstrating in the rotunda of the Russell Senate
Office Building.” The Franciscan Action Network, a Catholic human rights
group, planned the protest calling the border facility
conditions a human rights violation and "contrary to religious
teachings." Most of the arrestees held pictures of children kept in
deplorable and unsanitary conditions, without access to showers for weeks, and sleeping
on concrete floors without blankets, and being detained incommunicado.
Sixty people paid $50, a chance to end the legal process.
The other ten, including Janice Sevre-Duszynska, Max Obuszewski, Ardeth Platte,
Carol Gilbert, Kathy Boylan and Michael Walli, requested a trial. The Anti-Trump Ten were scheduled
to be arraigned in D.C. Superior Court on August 21. However, the government
later decided not to prosecute.
On
October 2, 2004,
some twenty two members of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance were arrested on the
Ellipse for protesting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Max Obuszewski,
Maria Allwine, Ellen Barfield and others were charged with “closures and public
use limits. “ Twenty one defendants were convicted on March 16, 2005. I
filed a continuance as my brother Kenneth died. As result of this motion,
the judge dismissed my case.
On March 1, 2003, eight members of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance,
including Max Obuszewski and Maria Allwine were arrested inside the Towsontown
Center in Towson. We were handing out leaflets condemning an upcoming
invasion of Iraq in the food court. Later we discovered that a number of
Baltimore County police officers in the National Guard were in Kuwait preparing
for an invasion. For that reason, we were incarcerated much longer than
necessary. I had one wrist handcuffed to the wall for sixteen
hours. I was uncuffed to go to the bathroom and to be interrogated by the
Baltimore County Red Squad.
We were never brought to trial, but
we did appear in court on February 10, 2004 before District Judge Bruce Lamdin
for a stet hearing. Normally, this is a simple pro forma matter.
The prosecutor simply indicates the government’s decision to place the case on
the stet docket, and the defendants agree. Finally, the judge
acknowledges that the case is being moved from the active to the inactive
docket.
However, Judge Lamdin was intent on
establishing that he was in charge, as he became verbally belligerent and said
there will be no statements “in my courtroom.” He threatened to arrest us
or to place us on trial. There was no reason for his threats, and two of
us filed letters of complaint with the administrative judge. So it was
not a surprise to discover that others were outraged by Lamdin’s courtroom
demeanor. Having appeared before hundreds of judges in my cases starting back
in 1984, generally the judges are respectful. However, every so often I
would appear before a judge who can be cantankerous.
On July 20, 1994, Max Obuszewski was arrested for
leafletting at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory indicating
his opposition to nuclear weapons research. On January 9, 1995 Howard
County District Court Judge Louis Becker sentenced him to 30 days in jail and
ordered him to report to the Howard County Detention Center on Martin Luther
King’s birthday. When Max goes to jail, he fasts from any solid food.
On July 15, 1991, five members of the Baltimore
Emergency Response Network were arrested in Senator Paul Sarbanes’ office in
Baltimore urging him to vote in favor of cutting off aid to death-squad El
Salvador. Arrestees included Michele Naar, Greg Boertje, Mike Bardoff,
Carol McKusick and Max Obuszewski. While they were arrested and spent a night
in jail, the senator’s office declined to press charges.
|
On April
27, 1987,
we closed down the Central Intelligence Agency as 560 of blocked three
entrances and were arrested. I was in an affinity group with Phil
Berrigan, and in waves we blocked the main entrance. For whatever
reason, Phil was released and I was charged with obstruction of free
passage. I then was taken to the Fairfax County Detention
Center. I think I spent three days in jail with George Figgs, john
Heid and many others. Dan Ellsberg was also arrested. I was released
from jail, and never called to attend a trial. Presumably, the court
would have been overwhelmed if the government put several hundred protesters
on trial. |
Size |
On April 27, throngs
protesting U.S. Foreign Policy snarled traffic in McLean, VA. The actual
number of protesters was estimated to be 1,500. The nonviolent protesters, well
organized remnants of the tens of thousands who gathered in Washington over the
weekend for a "Mobilization for Justice & Peace in Central America
& Southern Africa" were met by more than 200 Fairfax County and
federal police, many dressed in riot gear and carrying chemical Mace. Waves of
singing and chanting activists, many of them students and clergymen, linked
arms and sat cross-legged in the access road leading to the Central
Intelligence Agency's gates while police methodically dragged or carried their
limp bodies into waiting wagons. The result was a strikingly cordial display of
civil disobedience, with most protesters and authorities cooperating in an
orderly process of arrests, handcuffings and bookings that began in the predawn
chill shortly before 7 a.m. and was over four hours later. A handful of minor
scuffles occurred, but order was quickly restored and no serious injuries were
reported.
The target of most of
the protesters was U.S. policy in Nicaragua, where the Reagan administration
has pursued a "secret war" against the Sandinista government through
funding and covert aid to the antigovernment contra rebels. In addition, the
protesters took issue with the American government's policy of "constructive
engagement" with the minority white regime in South Africa. Many of the
activists, who regard those stances and the accompanying violence as immoral,
spent the weekend in the capital calling attention to their issues with a
benefit concert Friday night, a march of 75,000 Saturday and a special
interfaith worship service Sunday. They arrived in busloads from around the
nation, a cross section of trade unionists, clergy, liberal activists, blacks,
whites, Hispanics, middle-class Americans and the homeless. Most of those
arrested were charged with "obstruction of free passage" by Fairfax
police, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a
$1,000 fine. The activists succeeded in blocking vehicles from entering the main
CIA gates at Dolley Madison Boulevard and Georgetown Pike, and the cheering
crowds chanted, "Hey, hey, CIA, you didn't get to work today."
The protesters started
gathering around 6 a.m. in a staging area at Langley Fork Park, next door to
the agency about six miles from Washington. Organizers using bullhorns ,issued
final instructions to the milling demonstrators who stood in knots under oak
trees at the side of the main entrance. It was a predominantly young and almost
entirely white crowd, with a large contingent of students and a smattering of
clerics. Marching over to the main agency gate, police helicopters hopping the
air overhead and a half-dozen robe-clad Buddhist monks thumping "prayer
drums" long the route. Shortly before 7 a.m., with a few straggling demonstrators
still arriving and CIA employees unable to get into the facility from the south
entrance off Dolley Madison Boulevard, traffic in the area slowed to a crawl,
backing up on the George Washington Parkway and Georgetown Pike. When
organizers announced over the public address system that roads in the vicinity
were snarled, the demonstrators whooped and clapped their approval. The worst
of the tie-up was over in about an hour, according to authorities.
One Fairfax County
policeman, a veteran of the "May Day" disruptions in 1971 in which
hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War protesters converged on Washington, said
the contrast with yesterday's affair was sharp. "That was different,"
said Officer D.A. Stopper, who was at the McLean District station where 262 of
those arrested yesterday were taken and processed. "That one was more
frightening. These are just regular people." Several in the crowd carried
signs imploring the Reagan administration to "boycott South Africa, not
Nicaragua." Others paraded gruesome photographs of maimed youngsters in
Central America, the victims, according to the demonstrators, of CIA
intervention in the region. Others carried placards around their necks with the
names and dates of those killed, maimed or missing in Nicaragua, El Salvador
and South Africa. Across the road from the mass of protesters at the main gate
were three college Republicans from Towson State University in Baltimore
County, bearing a large American flag and demonstrating against the
demonstrators. "They're willing to get arrested and I'm willing to lay
down my life," said Karl Strohminger, who wore a button proclaiming
"I'm a contra too"-a reference to the U.S.- backed rebels who seek to
over- throw the government of Nicaragua.
On September 29, 1986, fourteen anti-apartheid advocates
were arrested on Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus. The Baltimore
Anti-Apartheid Coalition worked closely with the student group, Coalition for a
Free South Africa, at Johns Hopkins University. On April 10, 1986, the student
coalition erected a shanty on the lower quad on the Homewood Campus. The
anti-apartheid coalitions were in the midst of a struggle to get the university
to divest from its stock portfolio any companies doing business with apartheid
South Africa.
Three right-wing students
firebombed the shanty. This convinced the administration to take it
down. A group of students and community activists sat around the
structure to prevent it from being bulldozed. Some 14 were arrested, mostly
Hopkins students, but also two community activists, Mary Benns and Max
Obuszewski, and a Morgan State student. Baltimore state's attorney Kurt Schmoke
decided not to prosecute the protesters.
April
14, 1986
was a national day of protest against “Contra” aid. And 43 members, including
Max Obuszewski, of the Baltimore Emergency Response Network marched with 1040
forms stating no tax dollars to the Contras taped to their shirts. They
performed a die-in outside the Fallon Federal Building, and were arrested.
Philip Berrigan was wiring a wire, as he was miked for an upcoming episode on
“Sixty Minutes.” That segment was about the Plowshares movement, and also
included ?Dan Berrigan.
A
trial was scheduled for June 4, 1986. However, it was cancelled as
allegedly there were police errors.
Oct. 29, 1984—I engaged in my first political
arrest at the White House gate with Peter DeMott, Bob Burkett, and Jim
Berrigan. Bob had heard that people were being arrested for
praying. However, a Park Police officer indicated if we did not leave, we
would be arrested for incommoding. So Bob dropped out, another protester
knelt and all four of us were arrested. I would find out years later that
the person who replaced Bob was a drug dealer who shared his profits with the
peace community. He met Phil & Dan Berrigan in the federal prison in
Danbury, CT. The three others paid the $50 citation, while I went to
trial in D.C. Superior Court. In a bench trial, I was found guilty and
paid a $50 fine.
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski,
Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD
21212. 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
