Collaring the Peacniks in Iowa

February 11, 2004

It’s get­ting “scary in Amerikkka when they start round­ing up peaceniks in Iowa”:www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/national/10PROT.html
bq. To hear the anti­war pro­test­ers describe it, their forum at a local uni­ver­si­ty last fall was like so many oth­ers they had held over the years. They talked about the non­vi­o­lent philoso­phies of Mahat­ma Gand­hi and the Rev. Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to con­vey their feel­ings about iraq into acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. But last week, sub­poe­nas began arriv­ing seek­ing details about the forum’s spon­sor — its lead­er­ship list, its annu­al reports, its office loca­tion –and the event itself.
Mild-mannered pro­test­ers wear­ing 1980s-style Guatemalan cloth­ing, talk­ing about Gand­hi and climb­ing the fences of Nation­al Guard bases are not a threat to state of Iowa. But this kind of strong-arm tac­tic is a clear threat free speech and a clear act of intim­i­da­tion to those who might join the peace move­ment. How sad. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I know lots of peo­ple who are already afraid to speak out to loud­ly – this will silence at least some of them.
Of course, it’s hard to get too worked up about Iowa sub­poe­nas, when much more seri­ous civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been going on since the start of the Afghanistan War. The “pris­on­ers of war” down in the Amer­i­can base at “Guan­tanamo Bay have been held with­out charge or tri­al for two years now”:http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng.

Sheen: Appealing to almighty God

November 14, 2003

In the Bruder­hof mag­a­zine, an “inter­view with actor Mar­tin Sheen”:www.bruderhof.com/articles/sheen.htm?source=DailyDig. It’s a pro­file that focus­es not only on his act­ing fame or activist caus­es but on his reli­gious faith and how it under­pins the rest of his life. Read, for instance, Sheen on civ­il disobedience:
bq. It is one of the only tools that is avail­able to us where you can express a deeply per­son­al, deeply moral opin­ion and be held account­able. You have to be pre­pared for the con­se­quences. I hon­est­ly do not know if civ­il dis­obe­di­ence has any effect on the gov­ern­ment. I can promise you it has a great effect on the per­son who choos­es to do it.
Sheen’s rad­i­cal Catholic faith is not a super­fi­cial con­fes­sion that pro­vides him with a place to go on Sun­day morn­ing, and it’s not pas­sive iden­ti­ty from which to do polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing. Rather, it’s a rela­tion­ship with God and truth that demands wit­ness and sac­ri­fice and suf­fer­ing. It’s the faith of some­one who has per­son­al­ly gone through the depths of spir­i­tu­al hedo­nism, and who has watched his coun­try become the “most con­fused, warped, addict­ed soci­ety,” and who has found only God left standing:
bq. God has not aban­doned us. I don’t know what oth­er force to appeal to oth­er than almighty God, I real­ly don’t.
I could quote him for hours, but read the interview.