Holy War in the Nation's Capital

( The author is a first-year Divinity School student and a resident tutor in North House. )

DRIVING south on Palm Sunday, most of us were a little frightened. We were heading toward Washington, and we planned to spend Holy Week fasting in the jails of the nation's capital.

The six of us from Harvard-Susan Jones from the Ed School, Bill Divine '71, and Charlie Schoenau, Bruce Frivatsky, Randy Fredrikson, and I from the Divinity School-were going to join with other seminarians, clergymen, laymen, and religious magazine editors. Together we would demonstrate a particular kind of meaning for Holy Week 1971 in a nation which is carrying out its own kind of crucifixion in Indochina.

Why had we decided to spend Spring break this way? What did we think we could accomplish? Why not wait until April 24 or Mayday to join mass protests?

Or why do anything?

Isn't this kind of demonstration its own middle-class breed of cop-out?

II

AS A GROUP, we intended to focus the moral conscience of this nation's religious community on American atrocities. We would voice an intense moral opposition to Nixon's Vietnamization-a policy which substitutes American technology for American soldiers, Indochinese corpses for American corpses and at the same time dares to allege the moral adequacy of such a policy. We would emphasize only what should be blatantly obvious, but which seems to be ignored: that the lives of Indochinese are as valuable as those of Americans and that any policy ignoring this fact is morally unconscionable-especially in a so-called religious community.

We hoped to emphasize the frightening analogy between the policy of this nation today and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. A crucifixion by imperial soldiers following the rule of distorted law and order in an occupied land. And we would point to the hypocrisy of the religion and politics of those who, like our First Family, "worship" in their Easter finery before a blood-stained flag and an open tomb, not seeing the absolute contradiction between the slaughter of a people thousands of miles away and the celebration of the 2000-year-old crucifixion and resurrection. In this country, in 1971, we saw fasting in jail as the most appropriate way to celebrate Holy Week.

Finally, we wanted this non-violent protest to illustrate that there are viable and active alternatives for the antiwar movement, other than waiting for the next election or bombing the White House. We wanted to exemplify a protest that would be morally and tactically justifiable to most people opposed to the war, workable on a relatively small organizational scale, and consistent with both a strong opposition to American policies and an abhorrence of violent activities.

III

WE JOINED the other demonstrators for the first time at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church for our own Palm Sunday evening worship service. Gene McCarthy and Pete McClosky were there as speakers.

That helped.

Maybe we were doing something significant.

Another speaker, returning after four years in Laos, described the damage our bombs are doing there. Babies with flesh burned away. Mothers with but one breast to nurse them. Thousands of people starving in caves because their food has been destroyed and their homes have been bombed into oblivion.

A huge lump was lodged in my throat. My eyes were full of tears ready to stream down my face. I had heard all of these things before. Never had they seemed so immediate. For an enduring moment, my whole being was pervaded by an overwhelming sense of despair and helplessness. I felt abnormally close to realizing what those endless statistics mean: a million dead, five million refugees, two and one-half times the number of bombs dropped on Europe in World War II. I could only reask the silent question for which there seems not even to be a silent answer.

"Why?"

With his own voice shaking slightly in anger and horror, betraying the tone of one who has seen almost too much, the speaker beseeched us not to cry. It was too late for that. He could ask only that we act. Perhaps that too was why we were here-to stand and scream "no" to something so horrendous it could not really be faced. Because only such a scream could tell us we were really alive ourselves.

IV

THE SERVICE ended, and we gathered at St. Augustine's. St. Augustine's is a small modern building in Southwest Washington that doubles as an Episcopal church and a Jewish synagogue. This week it would serve as our antiwar headquarters, We would sleep on the altar. It was carpeted. Some of us would send out press releases and coordinate activities with those in jail. Ninety-two of us-eight women and 84 men-planned to be arrested the next morning.

Our attorneys, Phil Hirschkopf and Ray Twohig, came to advise us: "The main problem will be the loss of communication... if you want to stay in jail, don't take in more than ten dollars-that's what collateral will probably be... the greatest con men in the world are the con men in prison, so don't take in anything you don't want to lose . . . you minister types will have to resist the temptation to try to convert everyone... drink plenty of liquids, or they may give you intravenous feeding... women, expect a vaginal inspection. . ."

By 3 a.m. we all needed some sleep. I was completely exhausted. But sleep came only after I was convinced I had memorized the lawyers' names and the telephone number at St. Augustine's. They were already written on the inside of my left arm, anyway.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, Lafayette Park, across from the White House, began filling with a conspicuous number of persons in black shirts and white collars. The Park Police were already hassling a priest carrying the six-foot high charred cross. (A large cross is not, after all, a typical sort of thing to carry on one's shoulders in Lafayette Park on a Monday morning.)

For a moment I thought our cross would be lost before we even began.

At about 10 a.m. we crossed Pennsylvania Avenue. We began our worship service on part of the sidewalk next to the Executive Drive. We were within a stone's throw of the White House.

Two hours after we began the service, police issued three warnings to clear the one-third of the sidewalk we were occupying. By the third warning the police had formed lines prohibiting pedestrian traffic on the entire block. One by one friends were helped from their kneeling positions and placed under formal arrest. The rest of us continued to sing. We were charged with what the police lines so successfully accomplished- "incommoding the sidewalk."

V

THEN the horror show began. We could only wait patiently, thinking of food and wondering where the next stop would be, while those in charge tried to figure out which way the slow rolling wheels of justice were to turn. If the confusion had not been so utterly pervasive I would have believed it was all an incredibly sophisticated plot designed to threaten the sanity of any person whose misfortune it is to be arrested. (As it was, I think that it was chaos and confusion completely out of control-though this made the situation no less tempting to madness.)

I was "booked" by a gum-chewing, shoulder-holstered detective who looked like he had seen too many TV thrillers. "Over here... Name?... Occupation?... How do you spell seminarian?... Never mind... s-t-u-d-e-n-t..." And Fingerprints. They get about twenty-five of those-that is, if the man doesn't smudge any. We didn't sign much. Somebody just put each of our ink-covered right thumbs on the bottom right-hand corner of everything. Then the mug shots-J. Edgar needs to keep up-to-date photos.

I was in my first cell. But there was another mistake, and I stayed only ten minutes. I was escorted up one flight of stairs and ordered to the end of a long row of cells. A very young looking officer then activated a switch, producing the grinding sound of metal sliding on metal. The sound culminated with a dull clunk. I walked through the door to join five friends in a five-by-seven cell containing two bare metal "bunks," a toilet, and a small sink.

With no great sadness, we left that cell about an hour later. A riot bus drove us to a new location. All the male demonstrators were now together, stuffed into the "bullpen" buried somewhere in the basement of one of the many D.C. courthouses. There were two stinking urinals, two plugged toilets, and, as I remember, no working faucets.

Food covered the floor of the cell. One of the U.S. marshals in an adjacent room explained that lunch had been served earlier, and that there had not been enough time to clean up before our arrival. We had not eaten for 24 hours. With 75 of us packed into this small room containing a single bench with seating capacity of 25, I was feeling nauseous at best.

So this was jail. Or, at least this was jail for a group of non-violent religious protesters. We had expected ugly and dehumanizing conditions.

That's exactly what we found.

And we were undoubtedly receiving special treatment-I doubt whether anyone actually considered us criminals.

I remember thinking about my childhood TV image of the good guys and the bad guys. At least in Washington, D. C.- and I doubt whether this is true only there-the marshals did not live up to my childhood images. They seemed bored and trapped. In their own ways, they were victims. Their condition differed only slightly from those of the prison regulars, the "bad guys." It was a sad spectacle. They sat, six to a desk, listening to the Senators' opener, waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. I began to feel we were witnessing one of the most significant rituals of their lives.

My thoughts were interrupted by the final cell transfer before our arraignment. Everything had been cleared up in the judge's chambers. The court procedure was mere formality-we would stay in jail until we could each post the necessary ten dollars for our releases.

Three cells and about eight hours later, nearly all the men had been moved to their particular sections of the D.C. jail. The women returned to the Women's Detention Center. Both places are appalling topics by themselves. I can't say much about them, though. I wasn't there.

Back in the bullpen, I became incredibly sick. Thanks to money from a cellmate, as well as the help of a sympathetic marshal, I was bailed out.

I spent the rest of the week making "pastoral" visits to inmates, hassling with the large court bureaucracy, dreaming occasionally of solid food, and helping to prepare for everyone's release.

A test case for two of our group was set for Good Friday. Photographs taken at our worship service were used as evidence at the trial and revealed that, contrary to police testimony, we had neither prevented pedestrian traffic nor posed a substantial threat to the peace and tranquility of the nation's capital. The two defendants were acquitted.

Nearly everyone held the fast until Easter, and the next week the charge of incommoding the sidewalk was dropped against the rest of us.

There would be time to reflect ret respectively on what it had all meant. There would be time to examine again our own motivations. There would be time to look ahead to the next action we would take.

This particular protest was over.

VI

IT HAD gone almost too smoothly. Now it all seemed nearly as unreal as had that crowded bullpen a few days before. I was not sure why it had been so difficult to decide to spend Holy Week fasting and protesting against a nation's policies which seem so ludicrous as to be figments of my imagination.

But each of us had, in a small way, been again confronted with the reality of these policies and some of their most obvious effects. It is horrifying and sad, but they are not figments of any imagination.

In protesting against foreign manifestations of a national sickness, we glimpsed at some of what that sickness means in this country-appropriately enough, in the nation's policy-making center. We were shamed at the realization of what unseen horrors this society has created, and what traps it has produced for men whom it insists on labeling as criminals. And we were confronted with policemen-so often chosen to symbolize all that is rotten in America-who too are frightened by the rapidity of incomprehensible change, the size of a "system" they can't understand but which they obediently serve, and their own rejection by others for what they must believe to be a genuine service to society.

I am trying, with great difficulty, to convey the ludicrous juxtaposition we saw. The almost farcical nature of our system of "justice," which confines both inmates and guards for almost incomprehensible reasons having to do with preservation of the myth of good order, and the government protected by that myth. A myth that kills and destroys in numbers and quantities which I fear the sane mind dares not grasp. In a new and penetratingly significant way, this experience led again to the realization that if "criminal" is associated with guilt, and if it bespeaks of injustice, then criminal can describe only those who promote our war in Indochina. And those who insist on the bars in the jails. And those who create the invisible bars in the heads of the people who keep the jails.

There is still an ambivalence within me about our particular action. It was primarily symbolic, and our use of a fast and jail depended in part for its impact upon the far greater sacrifices of others whose sacrifices are connected with those "symbols." And there is a recurring fear that my own motivation was partially narcissistic rather than a pure "other-directed" concern.

The struggle to know oneself and one's own motivation is always both difficult and important, whether its impetus comes from the admonitions of the Bible, Freud, or Fritz Perls. Perhaps for those of us who attempt by our own actions to change the perception and reactions of others, it is even more so. But despite the disadvantages of imperfect resistance tactics and despite the confusion I suspect many of us feel within ourselves, we must continue to protest against the outrageous. The war and the injustice continue. And while they do, only the most dexterous among us can successfully wash his own hands and afford the luxury of turning inward in isolation.

Dan Berrigan, both in his action and in his Germantown sermon, has indicated the necessity of resistance and some of the numerous means of carrying it out. "There are a hundred ways of non-violent resistance up to now untried or half-tried, or badly tried, but the peace will not be won without such serious and constant and sacrificial and courageous action on the part of a large number of good men and women. The peace will not be won without the moral equivalent of the loss and suffering and separation that the war itself is exacting."

Whether the specific kind of action which we undertook can be most effective in promoting the needed major changes, either in others or in the policy of this country, is a debatable point. What is not debatable, it seems to me, is whether only debating that point will itself be effective.

We will do nothing to change policy, to affect the thoughts and feelings of others, or to overcome our own sense of powerlessness, if we become paralyzed in the non-participatory search for the perfect solution to our ills. It seems that only in action can we promote renewed hope for better heads and sane policy.