Protesters Put Themselves At Risk As Civil Resisters Breaking The Law To Spur Social Change.
“It Felt To Me, As A 79-year-old, That I Should Stand Up And Speak Out.” Fred Brancel, Who Was Arrested And Sent To Prison After A Protest At The School Of The Americas In Georgia
Originally published in the Wisconsin State Journal :: FRONT :: A1 [1]
Thursday, September 21, 2006
by SANDY CULLEN
At age 79, Fred Brancel crawled under the sharp barbs of a wire fence at a controversial Army training camp and was arrested. Months later — just five days short of completing a three-month prison sentence — the former missionary awoke to find a razor blade stuck in his neck after offending a fellow inmate.
Though steadfast in his commitment to the principle of nonviolent resistance, the Monona resident struggles with whether he will break the law again to protest “the military-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower cautioned us.”
Brancel and others committed to nonviolent civil resistance say such extremes are necessary to shift public policy and spur social change.
“Our dissent has to be strong,” said Joy First of Monona, who has been arrested twice in Washington, D.C., and several times in Madison for nonviolent civil resistance in an effort to end the war in Iraq. “We’re trying to go up against the big powers in this country.”
First, 52, will participate in nonviolent civil resistance planned for today, International Peace Day, at the Madison office of U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, and Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, D.C., as anti-war activists push for Congress to end the war.
After attending two protests at the Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly called the School of the Americas, in Georgia, Brancel decided to take part in the nonviolent civil resistance at the annual vigil that drew an estimated 19,000 demonstrators last November. Critics say dictators, death squad leaders and others trained at the facility have tortured, raped and murdered hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans.
“It felt to me, as a 79-year-old, that the time was right and I should stand up and speak out,” said Brancel, who was among 41 protesters arrested at the school he associates with a growing national deficit and increasing economic disparity as a result of military spending.
Brancel, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, said he was inspired by a church book study, where he read “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” by Jim Wallis, who “wrote about changing the direction of the wind.”
The Conservancy Creek condominium Brancel shares with his wife, Mary Ann Litwiller, is decorated with peace doves and other artwork from their travels to Africa and South America.
His wife gave her “full support” for his action, said Brancel, who doesn’t know if he will repeat his resistance at the annual protest in November.
“Some of my closest relatives and friends feel there are better ways of using one’s time, and they might be right,” said Brancel, whose frailty of age is overshadowed by the strength of his beliefs shaped by nearly 20 years of missionary work in Zimbabwe, Zaire and Angola, where he was imprisoned for three months then deported.
‘It’s scary’
First, a mother of five grown children and grandmother of three, recently completed a doctorate degree in women’s studies at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, and is eager to begin a new career working to prevent child sexual abuse. But before doing that, she is committed to working full time to end the war in Iraq.
“A shy, quiet kind of person” by her own description, First said she had to do a lot of “personal work and healing” to get “the strength to be able to go out in public and speak out strongly against the war.” She stepped into the realm of resistance as the possibility of war in Iraq surfaced.
First distinguishes civil disobedience, or breaking a law that is unjust, from civil resistance, which involves breaking a law that might be just in an effort to change public policy.
“It’s scary doing this. I don’t do this because it’s easy or it’s fun,” she said. “I feel I’m doing important things that need to be done.”
First was among 51 protesters arrested last March after scaling a fence Pentagon police erected to thwart their attempt to deliver an anti-war message to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The previous September, she was one of 371 arrested for sitting down outside the White House gate after hanging up posters of people who have died in the war following an unsuccessful attempt to meet with President Bush.
In Madison, First has joined others in blocking access to military recruiting stations and Truax Field, where the Wisconsin Air National Guard is headquartered.
All of First’s arrests have resulted in fines. “I hope I never have to go to jail,” she said. “If it comes to that … that’s what I will do.”
Resistance community
Longtime anti-nuclear activist Bonnie Urfer had to leave Madison to find the support she needed to live a life of resistance.
Urfer, 54, who has been arrested “close to 100 times” and has spent a total of about four and half years behind bars, now lives at Anathoth Community Farm in Luck, in northwest Wisconsin. The community is specifically designed to allow its nine members to do nonviolent civil resistance.
“It’s knowing that I have a home to go back to,” Urfer said.
Anathoth’s five homes are heated with solar energy and wood cut by community members, who make and sell maple syrup and grow much of their own food in a 2-acre garden, Urfer said. When one member is in prison, others pitch in to do their work.
Everyone in the community works a part-time job, but they keep their earnings below the poverty level to avoid paying taxes that support the military, said Urfer, who works in the office of Nukewatch, an environmental and peace action group based at Anathoth that works to abolish nuclear power and weapons.
“Everybody in that community has been in prison or jail at least one time,” said Urfer, who served six months in federal prison for sawing down three poles at a former Navy antenna site in northern Wisconsin in 2000, and an additional five months for refusing to pay restitution to the government.
“I don’t dwell too much on the consequences,” she said. “My decision is to do the action because it’s the right thing to do.”
Enormous consequences
The consequences of resistance can be enormous for both participants and those affected by their actions.
Mary Beth Schlagheck, a longtime Madison area peace activist, with her late husband, Jim, spent 15 years caring for seven children, six of them developmentally disabled, adopted by Helen Woodson after Woodson’s arrest for damaging the cover of a nuclear missile silo in 1984.
Woodson was sentenced to 18 years in prison — much longer than anyone had anticipated. Paroled in 1993, Woodson used an unloaded starter’s pistol to get money from a teller at an Illinois bank, then set the money on fire on the bank floor. She remains in a Texas prison after sending threatening letters to federal officials and pouring red liquid on a security station at a federal courthouse when paroled again in 2004.
“Within the movement, Helen is kind of an anomaly,” Urfer said. “She renounced her commitment to nonviolence, which is extremely unusual. In the movement in general, commitment to nonviolence is crucial.”
Like Brancel, Schlagheck, 68, remains faithful to the movement, though she has chosen not to participate in civil resistance.
“I think we have to think about in advance the consequences of an action when they relate to other people,” said Schlagheck, now married to John Marhoefer, who designed their Windsor home to allow sunlight to stream in through its high ceilings.
“I am not going to risk putting him at any emotional discomfort with what I might be doing,” Schlagheck said. “As people of resistance, the idea of turn-taking comes to mind.”
Instead of taking part in the nonviolent civil resistance planned for today, Schlagheck will be joining others in a 27-hour fast and vigil outside at Sen. Kohl’s office.
“We will be in solidarity with one another,” she said.
Peace vigil
A 27-hour fast and vigil calling for an end to the war in Iraq will take place today and Friday in front of the Madison office of U.S Sen. Herb Kohl.
The vigil will begin at 2 p.m. today on the sidewalk outside of Kohl’s office, 14 W. Mifflin St., with a candlelight observance from 7 to 10:30 tonight.
The fast and vigil will continue overnight at Grace Episcopal Church and resume outside Kohl’s office Friday morning, concluding at 5 p.m.