ANGELS OF C A T H O L I C - Los Angeles Catholic Worker

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Graphic by Rufo Noriega
AGITATOR
INTERVIEWS
JULIAN ASSANGE
PFC. BRADLEY MANNING, JULIAN ASSANGE, EDWARD SNOWDEN:
ANGELS OF
TRUTH
INCREASED COMMUNICATION MEANS YOU HAVE EXTRA FREEDOM
ANGEL
OF
TRUTH
CATHOLIC AGITATOR INTERVIEW WITH:
WIKILEAKS’
JULIAN ASSANGE
By JEFF DIETRICH
I
t was a chilly May evening in
London, and security around the
building was very high as two
polite but insistent officers from
the Metropolitan Police escorted
me to the front door of the Ecuadorian Embassy, where I, despite my
intimidation, spoke firmly into the
intercom. “My name is Jeff Dietrich. I have an appointment with
Julian Assange.”
My friend, London Catholic Worker Ciaron O’Reilly, had arranged
the meeting for me while I was on a
recent speaking tour in England. I
had fully expected Ciaron to go with
me. However, at the last minute he
explained that it was not possible.
Now I was on my own to meet with
the man some have called the “most
wanted fugitive in the world.”
I was a little nervous, after all I am
not ABC or BBC or CNN; I am just
the Catholic Agitator. A pleasant
young woman met me at the door as
the security guard patted me down.
Almost immediately Julian Assange
came down a side corridor in his
stocking feet to greet me. He and
the young woman escorted me into a
comfortable sitting room and a few
minutes later she brought us a pot of
tea and a plate of snacks.
The first thing I noticed about Julian is that, while he has quite a light
complexion, he is not the washed-out
vampire some news photos make
him appear. The other thing is that,
despite descriptions of him as introverted and difficult, he is quite the
opposite—cordial if not jovial, and
certainly friendly and welcoming.
Yes, he was aware of the Catholic
Worker and appreciated their support
of the movement, and yes he had
seen our Jesus Wikileaks bumper
sticker and had sent some to friends.
Unfortunately, I was not able to
bring in a camera or tape recorder.
Some portions of this article are
quoted from Julian’s new book Cyberpunks.
As I began the interview, Julian
explained that the so-called “rape
charges” pending against him in
Sweden had been repudiated by the
two women involved in the case and
yet the Swedish government refuses
to drop the charges, refusing as well
to interview him in England rather
than demanding extradition. I asked
him if the U.S. government was pressuring Sweden. He said that it does
not work that way. The majority of
those in power in Sweden are conservative, many of them having
The first thing I noticed
about Julian is that, while
he has quite a light
complexion, he is not the
washed-out vampire some
news photos make him
appear. The other
thing is that, despite
descriptions of him as
introverted and difficult,
he is quite the opposite—
cordial if not jovial, and
certainly friendly and
welcoming. Yes, he was
aware of the Catholic
Worker and appreciated
their support of the
movement, and yes he had
seen our Jesus Wikileaks
bumper sticker and had
sent some to friends.
attended school in the U.S., and also
the American conservative Karl
Rove is an advisor to the government. “There is no overt pressure,”
he said. “It’s just that friends know
what their friends want.”
He went on to say that the press
and the U.S. government have done
everything possible to demonize
him. “They have called me every
name in the book. I have been called
anti-Semitic and pro-Zionist; I have
been called a terrorist, a communist,
and anti-capitalist.” This demonization and character assassination is,
in fact, as we have seen with Edward
Snowden, a well-coordinated and
well-organized government policy
purposefully designed to diminish
public support for whistle blowers
and deflect attention away from the
government’s own wrongdoing.
Regarding his personal security at
the Embassy, Assange told me that
recent elections in Ecuador re-elected the anti-American government
that supported him and originally
gave him asylum, so that for the time
being he feels pretty secure. However, on a darker note, he told me that
Wikileaks had recently gotten wind
of a British commando plan to raid
the Embassy and extract him. When
news of the raid was posted on the
Internet, the response, particularly
from British ambassadors, was outrage because they know the security
of every British embassy around the
world would be jeopardized if the
asylum rights of the Ecuadorian Embassy were so egregiously violated.
It was not surprising that Assange
has a well-formed reflective ideology about the practice of democracy
and the need for transparency. He
noted that historians have all of the
information and documents needed
to write a truthful articulation of the
past, but this kind of information is
not available to contemporary writers: “Increased communication,” he
says, “means you have extra freedom relative to the people who are
trying to control ideas and manufacture consent. Increased surveillance
means just the opposite” (Cyberpunk, p.21).
Assange stated that the Internet is
an invention equivalent to, and even
transcending, the printing press,
which precipitated the Protestant
Reformation, the Russian, French,
and American Revolutions, and
every revolution since. It freed the
manacled mindset of humanity and
allowed individuals to conceive of
possibilities beyond slavery and serfdom.
Continued on page 2
JULIAN HAS A WELL-FORMED DEMOCRATIC IDEOLOGY
CATHOLIC AGITATOR / 1
PFC. BRADLEY MANNING, JULIAN ASSANGE, EDWARD SNOWDEN: ANGELS OF TRUTH
SUPREME COURT
RULES IN FAVOR
OF
L.A. CATHOLIC
WORKER
SHOPPING CARTS
By JEFF DIETRICH
O
n June 24, the highest court
in the land ruled to let stand
the Ninth Circuit Court
decision protecting the
property rights of homeless people,
including their right to possess the
red shopping carts the L.A. Catholic
Worker has been purchasing and giving to homeless people for the last 15
years.
Despite rulings by the local Federal Court, the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals, and despite numerous dismissals of city requests for
“relief” from the original injunction
by Judge David Gutierrez, and now,
finally, a ruling by the U.S. Supreme
Court, our shopping carts continue
to be confiscated and the personal
property of homeless people continues to be seized.
Oh, to be sure, the LAPD does
indeed abide by the injunction; they
no longer seize the so-called “unat-
DIETRICH, cont’d from p.1
For better and worse, the Internet
has only begun to set fire to the
human imagination. It has ignited
the desire for inter-communication
around the globe, the desire for
unity amongst all of humanity that
transcends national borders, national
controls, and sovereignty. That is
why every state spies on its citizens and every other national and
corporate entity in the world. That is
why every state wants to control the
Internet; within its open realm they
see the real possibility of their own
demise.
Governments want to control and
neutralize this technology before
it makes them superfluous and
antiquated. According to Assange,
governments “see the Internet like
an illness that affects their ability to
define reality, to define what is going
on.” “We need to control it totally
(they say), we need to filter, we need
to know everything they do…and
that is what has happened in the past
twenty years. There was massive
investment in surveillance because
people in power feared the Internet
would affect their way of governance” (p. 23).
Cyber spying has become extremely
ubiquitous. Assange writes, that
“...now it is being done by everyone
and by nearly every state, because of
the commercialization of mass surveillance. And it’s totalizing now,
because people put all their political
ideas, their family communications
and their friendships on the Internet…there is a battle between the
power of this information collected
by insiders, these shadow states that
are starting to develop, swapping
with each other, developing connections with each other and with the
private sector, versus the increase of
the commons with the Internet as the
common tool for humanity to speak
to itself” (pp. 21-22). Just as the
common lands of medieval Europe
were common to all people, so too
do Assange and his “cyberpunks”
conceive of the Internet as a “commons.” But unfortunately most of us
are so infused with the notion of private property that we do not understand that the radio and television
airwaves belong, not to commercial
2 / AUGUST 2013
tended” property of the homeless as
they eat, shower, or relieve themselves.
However, that does not mean that
such actions no longer happen. Almost
immediately after Judge Gutierrez’s
federal court ruling, the LAPD did
desist from taking LACW shopping
carts as well as the personal property
of homeless street people, but their
surrogates, the “Red Shirts,” private
security guards employed by the
business community, boldly carried on.
The “Red Shirts” had three of our
legal shopping carts, filled with the
possessions of the homeless, stashed
in their pick up truck, right at the
corner outside our soup kitchen.
Like Joan of Arc I felt emboldened,
not by a message from God, but by
Judge Gutierrez’s recent ruling. I
was emboldened by the power of
the U.S. Constitution. “Those are
my carts,” I said. “You are stealing
my property. Take them off of your
truck immediately.”
“I am sorry, sir. This is abandoned
property and our regulations do not
allow us to remove property once
it is on our truck. You will have to
come to our warehouse in order to
claim your property.”
In the meantime, the actual owners of the property in our carts, who
had been eating at our soup kitchen,
showed up clambering for their
possessions. Further emboldened, I
hoisted my senior citizen body onto
the truck and put my hand on what
was actually the property of the
LACW. A young security guard was
behind me and said that I was trespassing on his truck. In a moment
of inappropriate outrage, I looked
him in the face and said, “Yeah, well
what are you going to do about it?”
He pulled out his handcuffs and
called out to his companions, “Alright, take him down.”
Fortunately his comrades were
slow on the uptake and with the
assistance and victory cheers of the
homeless, I pushed the carts off of
the truck and into the hands of their
proper owners.
Thanks to Judge Gutierrez, I was
able to do what U.S. citizens are
supposed to do: protect and defend
the Constitution on the streets of Los
Angeles.
The “Red Shirt” security guards
believe that the Ninth Circuit ruling
applies only to the 50 square blocks
of Skid Row. However, I sat in the
courtroom for all Ninth Circuit
Court proceedings in this case.
And the court was in fact reluctant
to rule on the issue, because they
recognized that the real issue was
about distinguishing between what is
trash and what is personal property.
This is why they requested that the
City and homeless advocates submit
the issue to arbitration. The City
refused to arbitrate and the Ninth
Circuit Court reluctantly ruled
against the City. The court also
understood that their ruling would
affect every man, woman, and child
in the entire Southwest region; that
it had ramifications for drug cases,
terrorist cases, lost luggage, and
Paris Hilton’s personal bed frame
deposited in front of her Beverly
Hills home: Is that trash, a souvenir,
or personal property? They did not
want to open that can of worms, and
neither did the U.S. Supreme Court.
However, City Attorney Carmen
Trutanich did. He did not care to
negotiate trash and non-trash and
thus he opened the entire city and all
of the cities in the Southwest region
from San Diego to San Francisco,
from Los Angeles to Albuquerque
to the problems of a few hundred
people on LA’s Skid Row.
Thank God the Ninth Circuit Court
Justices and Judge Gutierrez thought
that the Fourth Amendment rights of
a few hundred people pushing shopping carts on Skid Row was worth
all the cans of worms in the cities
and states where they will indeed be
opened. And now all we have to do
is to finally persuade the LAPD and
their “Red Shirt” surrogates to recognize the law of the land instead of
the law of handcuffs and badges. Ω
entities, but to all citizens within
every nation.
Assange explains that rather than
an Internet commons, “the natural
efficiencies of surveillance technologies…will mean that slowly we will
end up in a global totalitarian surveillance society” (p. 62). He says
that “communications is at the core.
Your private life now moves over the
Internet. So in fact our private lives
have entered into a militarized zone.
It is like having a soldier under the
bed. This is the militarization of civilian life” (p. 33).
We know from the work of Wikileaks, now confirmed by Edward
Snowden, that meaningful oversight of this technology is virtually
impossible because the legislators
and judges who are supposed to be
in control have virtually no technical
background and often do not have
a clue what they are signing. This
is made even more complicated by
the technology, which allows an
operator, with the flip of a switch, to
easily obtain private and personal information that obviates the need for
an old-fashioned warrant. Snowden
has made it clear that he could obtain
the personal information of even the
President of the United States.
Assange argues that “this is a
really big threat to democracy and
freedom all around the world that
needs a response, like the threat of
atomic war needed mass response, to
try and control it while we still can”
(p. 47). I do not hold out much hope
for large numbers of U.S. citizens
to rise up in a mass movement to
protest the loss of their basic human
rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In fact, polling results indicate that the majority of Americans
are comfortable with bureaucrats and
so-called experts being the arbitrators
and dispensers of their Constitutional
rights.
I can recall scores of times over the
past forty years of anti-war protests
where I have been confronted by enraged veterans and active duty service personnel with the same mantra:
“I really disagree with you, but I
fought for your right to say it.” Yes,
there are many who have served and
given their lives to protect our Constitutional rights from the intrusion
of nefarious foreign powers. However, very few of those individuals are
willing or even able to protect those
rights from the intrusion of what is
possibly the most nefarious power of
all: our own government.
Assange writes of once walking
past a U.S. gun shop. The words under the large neon sign GUNS said:
“Democracy Locked and Loaded.”
While Republicans and gun advocates are willing to go to the mat for
the Second Amendment, they are
willing to roll over like wimps on
issues of Habeas Corpus, the Fourth
Amendment right to security in your
person and property, and frankly the
entire Bill of Rights.
It is probably trite to mention that
what we are up against makes 1984’s
Big Brother look like a benign kindergarten teacher.
According to Assange: “There
has been a shift in the last few years
from intercepting everything going
across from one country to another
and picking out particular people you
want to spy on and assigning them to
human beings, to now intercepting
everything and storing everything
permanently…just record everything
and sort it out later using analytic
systems” (p. 38). That means the
government stores the dates and
times and content of every phone
call, every internet session, every
Google query, every Facebook entry,
and every e-mail on mega computers at a secret location in perpetuity. Unfortunately, I fear that most
people in this country are not overly
concerned, thinking that “if you
haven’t done anything wrong then
you have nothing to fear.” However,
if you merely voice opposition to
government policy, such opposition
could easily trigger a search through
all of your personal life information
as you come under investigation for
sedition or even terrorism, which
is exactly why we have a Fourth
Amendment right to security in our
“person, property and papers,” to
protect us against just such intrusion
by government or corporate entities.
When George Orwell wrote his
novel 1984 in the year 1949, the
technology to keep constant surveillance over millions of individual citizens, as well as the ability to reach
into the mind of a particular individual in order to recognize their most
secret phobia seemed impossibly far
off. Well, it is time to say hello to
Big Brother. We must not forget the
entire reason for 24/7 surveillance in
the novel was the eternal and neverending war on terrorism—a war
without end, perfect for the growth
of the state, the war machine, and the
total surveillance of all citizenry.
Over half a century ago, the antitechnology prophet Jacques Ellul
observed that one of the essential
characteristics of technology is that it
C A T H O L I C AUGUST 2013 Vol. 43/No.4
Editors: Jeff Dietrich, Martha Lewis, and Mike Wisniewski
Managing Editor: Donald Nollar
Staff: Faustino Cruz and Rev. Elizabeth Griswold
The Catholic Agitator (ISSN-0045-5970) is published bi-monthly
February, April, June, August, October, and December for $1 per year by the
Los Angeles Catholic Worker, 632 N. Brittania St., Los Angeles, CA 90033-1722
•••••
Periodical Postage paid at Los Angeles, CA
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
The Catholic Agitator, 632 N. Brittania St., Los Angeles, CA 90033-1722
The LACW is not a 501(c).(3) non-profit organization and donations to the LACW are not
tax-exempt. Editorial communications, new subscriptions, and address changes to:
632 N. Brittania St., Los Angeles, CA 90033-1722
323-267-8789 • http://lacatholicworker.org • info@lacatholicworker.org
Jeff Dietrich is a Los Angeles Catholic Worker community member and
editor of the Agitator.
Continued on page 6
THE TRAYVON MARTIN MURDER
Previous experiences of being presumed guilty had so affected his trust in white people, in the world
really, that Zimmerman following him struck the wrong chord: a dangerous chord. And Trayvon,
a child who felt pursued and trapped, believed he had no choice but to confront his aggressor.
STRIKING CLOSE TO HOME
am sickened by those who want him
to feel that he did nothing wrong.
Our justice system is all too eager to
convict him of his innocence. But if
he has a heart, if he has a soul, if he
has a conscience, he would know that
Trayvon’s blood is on his hands.
Ω
By DAVID OMONDI
“F
reeze! Put your hands
in the air!”
It was late at night
and the CVS Pharmacy
in Columbus, Ohio only had three
people in it: my brother Samuel,
the cashier, and the police officer
Sam had noticed in the aisles. The
cashier had just wrung up his items:
milk for the cereal in his dorm room
and a hole punch to complete an architecture portfolio he was working
on late at night while other students
celebrated Thanksgiving with their
families. He was reaching for his
wallet when the command paralyzed
him—the policeman had his gun
pointed directly at him, Samuel.
Pointed at my brother, a hardworking architecture student at OSU.
Why? Because, he was obviously
about to rob the store, being black
and all. The policeman searched my
brother, found nothing, and told him
he was “free to go.”
Not the same outcome as Trayvon, thankfully, yet the similarities
are too eerie: young black man
buying groceries at night, suspected
of criminality simply due to his existence. It was a harrowing experience
for Samuel, something akin to mortal fear; it strikes hot in your veins
and grips your chest like a vice. And
then easy dismissal with no apology,
as if you are somehow not so human.
After that comes relief, disbelief, anger, then an enduring pain and sadness. This whole Trayvon Martin
saga just strikes too close to home.
“Hey You! Come here!
Even before hearing those words, I
knew the policeman was coming for
me. Walking up the front steps of
the house, which belonged to a longtime friend of our family, I wondered
why there was a police car screaming down the main road of a residential area, a well-to-do subdivision in
northern Indiana, and the thought
entered my mind that it might have
something to do with me. It had
seemed strange, the SUV going up
and down the block earlier as I sat
outside in the yard, slowing at certain points, and then pulling slowly
into a garage a few houses away.
When the police car screeched into
our cul-de-sac, it was no longer just
a thought.
Sure enough, the vehicle stopped
outside the house my family was
staying in over Easter weekend. My
back was turned to the street as I
reached for the screen door to enter
the house, anger already on the rise,
just trying to keep composure. The
policeman slammed his door shut,
issued his command, and I turned to
meet him on the steps as he rushed
up the driveway. “Who are you?
What are you doing here? Do you
know the owner of the house? Is he
home? I need to speak to him, let’s
go in the house and talk to him.”
“Can I just go in the house and get
my ID and come show it to you? Or
get the owner…”
“No! That’s not possible. I need
to see the owner. Let’s just go in the
house now and find him…come on.”
My body shook with anger as
officer J. Beck escorted me through
the door, down the corridor, into the
living room where my mother and
brother were seated. I said nothing,
David Omondi is a Los Angeles
Catholic Worker community member.
WE WERE JUST
SITTING THERE
TALKING
Trayvon Martin
Trayvon Martin
while my mother asked what the
struck the wrong chord: a dangerous
problem was. “There’s no problem
chord. And Trayvon, a child who
Ma’am. I’m just wondering if you
felt pursued and trapped, believed
know this gentleman?”
he had no choice but to confront his
“That’s my son.”
aggressor.
Officer Beck thanked her, said that
George Zimmerman is guilty—at
would be all, and left without any
least guilty of precipitating the conwords in my direction. Never mind
flict that ended Trayvon Martin’s life.
that he never had a warrant to enter
He profiled him through and through
this private residence. Never mind
and followed him on foot without
that my mother is not the owner of
identifying himself, which is against
Neighborhood Watch protocol. He
the house—she is white, and that
was infected by stereotypes of
seemed to make all the difference.
criminal black youth, infected with
Turns out the SUV was owned by a
the deluding power of the gun, and
member of the Neighborhood Watch
infected with his own selfish desire
who had reported a suspiciousto be a hero.
looking person walking around the
Yes, there’s a larger context inhouse. I am ‘suspicious,” like Trayvolved, beginning with seven robbervon, but my mother is not.
ies in the neighborhood. However,
This is the reality of the United
the truth is, our whole fucking
States of America in which we live.
society is guilty. We have a justice
Entire classes and races of people
system that looks backward instead
are every day denied dignity and
of forward, seeking to ascribe legal
excluded from equality in basic
guilt, which is by far not the same
respect. Over one lifetime, it can
thing as moral guilt, and assess the
breed anger, bitterness, and serious
appropriate amount of pain to the
violence. Over generations and genperpetrator. Rules and intentions are
erations, it breeds rage and loathing,
given more significance than actual
which unfortunately are most often
outcomes. That is, it is more importurned inward.
tant that Zimmerman was defending
There is no doubt in my mind that
himself and seeking to “protect” the
Trayvon was responding to Zimneighborhood than that he took the
merman with a similar kind of rage
life of an innocent seventeen-yearthat I felt towards Officer Beck on
old child. What would restitution
Good Friday, with the same frustralook like here? What is justice in
tion that propelled Samuel’s gallon
this situation?
of milk onto a pharmacy wall in
I do not wish death or prison upon
Columbus.
this man. I pray for his awakening to
Previous experiences of being
the rotten nature of the justice system
presumed guilty had so affected his
and the fallacy of his supporting it,
trust in white people, in the world reof his pretense to being a protector. I
ally, that Zimmerman following him
By DOROTHY DAY
W
e were just sitting there
talking when Peter
Maurin came in.
We were just sitting
there talking when lines of people
began to form, saying, “We need
bread.” We could not say, “Go, be
thou filled.” If there were six small
loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread.
We were just sitting there talking
and people moved in on us. Let
those who can take it, take it. Some
moved out and that made room
for more. And somehow the walls
expanded.
We were just sitting there talking
and someone said, “Let’s all go and
live on a farm.”
It was as casual as all that, I often
think. It just came about. It just
happened.
I found myself, a barren woman,
the joyful mother of children. It is
not easy always to be joyful, to keep
in mind the duty of delight.
The most significant thing about
the Catholic Worker is poverty, some
say.
The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone
anymore.
But the final word is love. At times
it has been, in the words of Father
Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing,
and our very faith in love has been
tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we
love each other. We know Him in
the breaking of bread, and we know
each other in the breaking of bread,
and we are not alone anymore.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where
there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the
only solution is love and that love
comes with community.
It all happened while we sat there
talking, and it is still going on.
Ω
Postcript from The Long Loneliness.
EASY ESSAY
By PETER MAURIN
SHARE YOUR WEALTH
What we give to the poor
for Christ’s sake
is what we carry with us
when we die.
As Jean Jacques Rousseau says:
“When a man dies
he carries
in his clutched hands
only that
which he has given away.”
Ω
CATHOLIC AGITATOR / 3
PFC. BRADLEY MANNING, JULIAN ASSANGE, EDWARD SNOWDAN: ANGELS OF TRUTH
The truth is not a secret. It cannot be hoarded and doled out as a common tyrant’s treasure trove. Its value, like love, lies only in the sharing, and
increases as more people discover it, own it, and join to it. But lies require darkness, and the more pernicious the evil, the blacker the darkness.
SAINTS, WHISTLEBLOWERS, AND ANGELS
By FAUSTINO CRUZ
L
et us speak of saints,
whistleblowers, angels,
devils, and mortals. As
this issue goes to press,
the United States Army lawyers
prosecuting Bradley Manning are
putting the final touches on their
case. I confess that I am having
some trouble following the endless legal maneuvering, as brief and
counter-brief, motion upon motion,
pile up. However, I do understand
that Judge Colonel Denise Lind’s recent ruling, allowing that Wikileaks’
involvement in the publication on the
internet of top secret files provided
by Manning most assuredly qualifies
as aiding and abetting the enemy,
does not bode well for PFC Bradley
Manning.
And yet even stuck in jail these
past few years, Manning, truly, does
remain free. Perhaps not physically, but whether imprisoned, holed
up, exiled, or in limbo, he, Julian
Assange, and Edward Snowden are
quite free to complete their lives
knowing that they are among the
ever-so-few who can claim a clear
conscience. Indeed, they can lay
claim to that elusive Freiheit sought
by all other nonviolent resisters
whose words and more importantly
deeds echo the statement of the
members of the White Rose: “We
will not be silent. We are your conscience…[we] will never leave you
alone.”
We have arrived at the apex of
the North American and Western
European good life. So how is it
that every year over 30,000 U.S.
citizens kill themselves, including
eight active duty personnel suicides
each week and another 22 veterans
every single day? Add to this the
16,000 murders, and 40,000 drug
overdose deaths (22,000 using their
own prescription drugs). It turns out
that modern “civilization” is not only
adept at slaughtering its foes, but
also, it seems, at killing its own.
The deepest despair has settled in
on those who have lost hope of ever
living that oh so authentic life. It
has been said that every cup of coffee has a drop of peasant blood in it
(Juan Valdez not withstanding). So
I ask you, how much blood in a gallon of gas or a quart of oil or in that
onion, tomato, melon on your dining
room table, or that factory-fresh cut
of rib-eye on your plate? How much
pain and suffering is staring back at
you from the Ipod screen? And do
you really think you can avoid having others’ agony seep seamlessly
into your psyche?
We don’t like death, especially if it
is messy, yet as finite bodily beings
we have become adept at dealing
with it. With disastrous results we
have come to fully embrace the
moral reality of death. And death
does indeed reign apparent, most
cruelly, most wantonly, in all its sickening glory together with its consort,
that filthy monstrous lie which hotly
contends that nothing can be done,
that all that is holy and powerful
wants us to live this way.
Yet hope in the distance appears.
Before deliverance, had not the
Israelites forgotten God and the truth
that God wanted them free? Something was stronger than Pharaoh and
4 / AUGUST 2013
empire.
Nuclear secrets, trade secrets,
secret kill lists, military secrets,
classified top secret, NSA (No Such
Agency) secrets have all conspired to
hide the biggest secret of all: We, as
a nation, a global alliance of nations
and the powerful, deal strictly in
death, a veritable culture of death.
The numbers are mind-boggling.
Our military can kill millions and
sustain thousands of dead, tens of
thousands of horrifically wounded,
and hundreds of thousands more
(nearly one-third of all combat veterans) mentally and emotionally traumatized. Our military can apparently tolerate countless rapes and sexual
abuses, illegal killings, friendly fire,
green on blue attacks. But what our
vaunted weapons systems and armies
cannot survive is one single nobody
low-level intelligence analyst spilling
the beans. Nor can the spectacularly
bloated, multi-billion dollar bureaucratic minions of the NSA combat
one fellow saying what everybody already knows: Your own government
is spying on you!
Those in power are adept at cleaning up the bloodstains and moving
on, shoveling the dirt over the now
silent bodies. They can get along
just fine without any of those people,
and even though they do not like
it, they can even put up with those
misguided suicidal impulse mass
murderers who might visit your local
school hallway, theater, or fast food
restaurant.
Yet try defying the collective
mindless nattering of a million tiny
voices whispering, “You don’t matter. Join us in death and murder.”
Still the mighty voice of conscience roars truth, and God and life
reverberate like thunder in a refreshing rainstorm. I AM returns again
to break iron bonds, to tumble down
crowns and kingdoms, to lead his
people to freedom. The truth is not
a secret. It cannot be hoarded and
doled out as a common tyrant’s treasure trove. Its value, like love, lies
only in the sharing, and increases as
more people discover it, own it, and
join to it. But lies require darkness,
and the more pernicious the evil, the
blacker the darkness.
Passage 21 of the Tao Te Ching: “At the center of everything is
the life force. And at the center of
the life force is truth.” That ancient
awesome living wisdom echoed in
the voice of the prophets counters
the modern madness which counsels, “Don’t be a fool; don’t lift your
head; do as I do; say as I say; look
down and despair; join the others in
a sea of desperation, an uninspired
trail of terror and tears. There is no
hope, no chance of reform or change.
You’re only throwing your life
away.” Quite an insistent chorus of
“It won’t make a difference” versus
the nobility and the bravery of the
few determined to overturn this slavering death-dealing beast, to strike
down the many lies which buttress
this merciless culture of death.
Regarding Manning, Assange, and
Snowden, they have done their part.
But what will you do in service of
the truth and defense of the Lamb’s
own to help end this murderous reign
which feasts on the innocent poor,
the weakest, the marginalized, the
little ones?
Continued on page 6
THE TRUTH SHALL
SET YOU FREE
EDWARD SNOWDEN
HUNGER
STRIKERS
GUANTANAMO
and
CALIFORNIA
By MIKE WISNIEWSKI
By HEATHER MOLINE
O
But I do understand that Judge Colonel Denise Lind’s
recent ruling, allowing that Wikileaks’ involvement
in the publication on the internet of top secret files
provided by Manning most assuredly qualifies as
aiding and abetting the enemy, does not bode
well for PFC Bradley Manning. And yet even
stuck in jail these past years, Manning,
truly, does remain free. Maybe not physically,
but whether imprisoned, holed up, exiled, or
in limbo, he, Julian, and Edward are quite
free to complete their lives knowing that
they are among the ever-so-few who
can claim a clear conscience.
n June 6 and 7 of this year,
something significant happened in this nation that
had some people reeling
in shock, while others slipped into
strong resentment and vindictive
anger. Yet others, like myself, had
our long-held suspicions confirmed:
Our government’s secret data mining
and Internet surveillance program
encompasses nearly every person living in the U.S. and untold numbers
of people and governments around
the world, both friend and foe alike.
The National Security Agency
(NSA) has kept track of all our
phone calls (both landline and cell),
text messages, e-mails, posts on
blogs and social networks, and queries on search engines like Google.
Moreover, with the Apple Iphone,
they have been able to track where
our cell phone calls and text messages originate and even keep a record
of our location. Nothing, repeat
NOTHING is secret nor is anything
private. Not one service provider
has resisted government pressure;
all (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, et al)
have willingly provided our personal
information when asked by the NSA
or other government agencies, with
or without a FISA court (Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act) search
warrant. Apple, Google, Microsoft,
Skype, and Yahoo, among others,
have been equally forthcoming.
The person responsible for revealing this information, which many
consider to be the most important
government leak in U.S. history, is
whistleblower Edward Snowden,
a 29-year-old high school dropout
turned CIA and NSA analyst and
employee of private security specialist Booze Allen Hamilton (whose
current vice chairman, Mike McConnell, is a former NSA director).
Snowden spent nearly a decade in
the U.S. intelligence world.
He lived his younger years in Elizabeth City, North Carolina; then his
parents moved to Maryland, near the
NSA headquarters in Fort Meade. In
2003, he enlisted in the U.S. Army
and began training for the Special
Forces. During training, he had an
accident and broke both his legs,
which earned him a discharge.
A short time later he was hired as
a security guard at the University of
Maryland, an NSA covert operations facility. From there he went
to the CIA, where he worked on IT
security. His extensive computer
programming background and his
understanding of the Internet enabled him to rise in position fairly
quickly.
By 2007, the CIA stationed him
with diplomatic cover in Geneva,
Switzerland, where he gained clearance to access a wide range of classified documents. That access, along
with nearly three years of association
with CIA officers, led him to begin
questioning the legality and morality
of what he observed.
In 2009, he left the CIA to work
for a private contractor that assigned
him to an NSA facility on a military
base in Japan. Over the succeeding three years, he learned the deep
functioning aspects of the NSA’s
surveillance programs and realized
they were an existential threat to democracy. Snowden discovered that
what U.S. intelligence was doing to
terrorist suspects around the world,
it was also doing to nearly three
hundred million unsuspecting U.S.
citizens here at home. The militaryindustrial, intelligence-industrial
complex has turned our nation into a
massive surveillance state by bringing home the intrusive techniques
of a militarized empire, with its
hundreds upon hundreds of bases
and special-ops forces garrisoned in
dozens of countries.
The U.S. government can keep
the warrantless data collected on its
citizens forever and do with it whatever it deems necessary as long as it
obtains a follow-up warrant from the
FISA court, which has granted nearly 100% of the warrants requested.
Some consider the FISA warrant as
an unconstitutionally sweeping warrant because of the court’s secrecy.
The FISA court is always in session,
yet its proceedings are always secret.
Therefore, no real guidelines exist as
the government moves from collecting data to spying on citizens with
no oversight and no accountability.
It has been likened to a “kangaroo
court with a rubber stamp.”
The Obama administration, under
Attorney General Eric Holder, has
charged Edward Snowden with
three felonies, including two under
the Espionage Act, the antiquated
1917 statute enacted to criminalize
dissent against World War I. Before
Obama’s presidency, there were three
prosecutions of leakers under the
Espionage Act, including the case
against Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked
what became known as the “Pentagon Papers” during the Nixon years.
However, during Obama’s tenure,
there are now seven such prosecutions—more than double the number
under all his predecessors combined.
How is this justifiable? Especially
by a politician who, prior to his
inauguration, made repeated pledges
of transparency and vows to protect
“noble” and “patriotic” whistleblowers—both in government and the
corporate world?
It is certain that Snowden kept
close watch on those prosecutions,
as well as on Bradley Manning’s
torturous treatment and military
trial. Snowden wanted to be certain
he did not endure Manning’s fate,
saying: “I carefully evaluated every
single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the
public interest. There are all sorts of
documents that would have made a
big impact that I didn’t turn over, because harming people isn’t my goal.
Transparency is.”
He thought long and hard on how
Continued on page 6
A
t first I felt superfluous,
brandishing a CLOSE
GUANTANAMO sign,
edges worn, outside the
federal complex in downtown L.A.
Lexus and BMW’s spewing exhaust,
hardly hotter than the air, and trash
trucks forcing their refuse up my
nose in airborne particles, glided
carelessly past. My blackened feet
and resolve wobbled with every gust
of automobile wind.
Catherine Morris, whose witness
makes me feel very small, may have
sensed my uncertainly. She leaned
towards me from the stubborn sidewalk place on a black stool she has
staked out every other day for forty
years, where she thrusts her JESUS
LOVES WIKILEAKS sign onto oncoming traffic. “You know, on the
100th day of prisoner fasting, we did
a special vigil for the detainees, and
the prisoners in the federal detention
center behind us were rattling their
slit windows and shining light from
their mirrors onto the street. Prisoners understand prisoners. They
wanted us to know we were not alone.”
Those who suffer understand each
other. This is the beginning of radical compassion. And the struggle for
justice is unified across geographical
and thematic boundaries. On July 8,
30,000 California prisoners began a
hunger strike in protest of inhumane
conditions. Two weeks later, 2,300
continue their strike, organized by
a leading group at Pelican Bay State
Prison just south of the Oregon border. They are demanding an end to
indefinite stays and tortuous practices of solitary confinement, which
includes isolation for 23 hours each
day, including the single hour permitted outside. They are demanding an end to group punishment, by
which members of an individual rule
breaker’s racial group are all punished for his violation.
And some have affirmed that they
are fasting in solidarity with their
unjustly detained brothers in Guantanamo Bay.
Previously, on May 17, the LACW
and other peacemakers across the
country and world united in fasting
and activism, honoring 100 days
of hunger strike by more than 100
GTMO detainees, who are protesting their continued detention without
charges, 11 years after the founding
of the prison and six years after thenPresidential hopeful Barack Obama’s
initial promise to close it. For the
United States public, and for Congress in particular, how to “deal”
with the prison, a topic that has all
vestiges of the human suffering it
implies, has become an exasperating
tug-of-war at best. President Obama
has signed two unfulfilled executive
orders regarding the prison, both of
which have imploded in legislative
complexities.
In April 2011, suspected September 11 collaborator Khalid Sheikh
Continued on page 6
CATHOLIC AGITATOR / 5
PFC. BRADLEY MANNING, JULIAN ASSANGE, EDWARD SNOWDEN: ANGELS OF TRUTH
DIETRICH, cont’d from p.2
is “monistic,” meaning that it is of a
single piece and the various pieces
cannot be separated. “Every technical application,” he says, “presents
certain unforeseeable secondary
effects which are more disastrous
than the lack of the technique would
have been” (p.105 Propaganda,
Vintage Books, 1964). Of all of
Ellul’s difficult concepts, this one
is the most difficult for people to
grasp, because we are under the
illusion that technology is a neutral
tool that can be used for either good
or evil. However, Ellul tells us that
all individual “tools’ are inescapably integrated within the totality
that he calls the “technological ensemble,” which has its own gravity
and sets its own direction, and we
cannot separate the positive aspects
of technology from the negative
aspects. For example, the invention
of the automobile is experienced
as positive, but its positive elements cannot be sepa-rated from
its negative elements: air pollution
and traffic fatalities that outnumber
deaths from heart attacks and cancer, and of course, endless wars in
the Middle East for control of oil.
When I think of loss of privacy and ubiquitous spying, I am
reminded of one of my favorite
poems by the environmentalist/
farmer Wendell Barry who wrote:
“As soon as the generals and
politicals can predict the motions
of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a
sign to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox who
makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection” (“Manifesto: The
Mad Farmer Liberation Front”).
Generally speaking, I am a fan
of practicing resurrection; but
for those who seek more tangible
approaches to our surveillance
problems, I suggest that the outlook
is not all that bright. The best hope
we have to protect our rights is
a bunch of anarchist cyberpunks
on the front line—which is like
saying that our best hope for ending nuclear weapons is a bunch of
Catholic Workers and Plowshares
activists on the front line. We are in
big trouble.
On the other hand, the Pentagon,
as well as the NSA and the CIA,
have recruited 50,000 “cyber warriors” since 2001. The only people
who are capable of engaging them
in cyber warfare are hackers who
break into Pentagon and corporate
computer systems just for fun.
Government officials have noted
that this demographic is prone to
non-authoritarian tendencies, a less
than patriotic attitude. What they
do not say is that they have grown
up, like Edward Snowden, admiring
Julian Assange. So there is indeed
some hope that many more of these
young, anti-authoritarian “hacktivists”
will come forward with further revelations about government spying. Ω
Jeff Dietrich is a Los Angeles
Catholic Worker community member and editor of the Agitator.
CRUZ, cont’d from p.4
Oh, yes, I know you. I see you
death and you are not God. You are
a lie, a demon, a figment, a terrible
illusion.
As for the showcase trial—a
greater exercise in futility I know
not of—for Manning is guilty…
guilty of telling the truth!
All our lives we want to do great
things, but of course it is the little
things that matter the most! Wait
for your own opportunity to do
good, to serve truth like the prophets
6 / AUGUST 2013
of old, and remember to hold fast,
even if the powerful and the rulers
of this world will have none of it.
Darkness cannot abide light at all,
for even the smallest spark or the
tiniest sliver of truth exposes it for
what it truly is. It is light and truth
that overcome darkness. Darkness
added to darkness is darker still, but
one flash of light is enough to bring
hope, and as it has been written,
“All that is hidden will be made
known; all that is dark now will
be revealed,” and “What you have
heard in the dark, proclaim in the
light. What you hear in whispers,
shout from the housetops.”
Ω
Faustino Cruz is a Los Angeles
Catholic Worker community member.
WISNIEWSKI, cont’d from p.5
to distribute the documents he
would release, how to convey his
own motives before the government
and corporate-owned and controlled media initiated their smear
campaign against him. His choice
was constitutional lawyer turned
journalist Glenn Greenwald, with
The Guardian of London. Immediately after the first stories broke,
a twelve-minute interview with
Snowden was released. In the interview he explained in detail how his
choice was based on basic theories
of civil disobedience: that the
powers-that-be who control the law
have become corrupt, that the law
in this situation is a tool of injustice,
which compelled him to break the
law in order to expose these appalling acts and facilitate public debate
and possible reform of what is now
referred to as an “executive coup”
against the U.S. Constitution.
Over the past few years, Snowden
has been very open with his friends
about his troubled conscience concerning his intelligence work and its
violation of the Constitution. The
system he was part of, he believed,
is incompatible with the democratic
model. He observed, from the
inside, how the system was growing
more oppressive and he knew he
could not remain silent and continue
in his position. And as with all people of conscience, he took a huge
risk and carried out an extraordinary heroic act that now forces him
to live under the pressure of fear, a
fear that would cause most of us to
lose our bearings.
Snowden made a solitary decision
and sacrificed a prosperous stable
career earning about $200,000 per
year and a very comfortable home
in Hawaii that he shared with his
fiancée. He severed ties with a
family he dearly loves for the sake
of principles that all who value personal autonomy should respect. He
stated: “The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to.
There is no public oversight. The
result is people like myself have the
latitude to go further than they are
allowed to. I’m willing to sacrifice
all of that because I cannot in good
conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet
freedom, and basic liberties for
people around the world with this
massive surveillance machine they
are secretly building.” Snowden
did what he did because he knows
that the largest and most secretive
surveillance organization in the
U.S. is the NSA, and he recognized
the NSA’s surveillance programs for
what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity that runs very close
to a form of fascism.
He has repeatedly insisted that
he has no desire to be in the media
spotlight; rather, he wants everyone
to know what the U.S. government
is doing. “I know the media likes
to personalize political debates,
and I know the government will
demonize me. My sole motive is to
inform the public as to that which is
done in their name and that which
is done against them.” His biggest
fear “is the harmful effects on my
family, who I won’t be able to help
anymore. That’s what keeps me up
at night.” When asked why he did
it, Snowden said: “There are more
important things than money. If I
were motivated by money, I could
have sold these documents to any
number of countries and gotten very
rich.” After the first weeks into the
political controversy he said: “I feel
satisfied this was all worth it, I have
no regrets.”
Snowden has revealed, through
Glenn Greenwald, that if anything
should happen to him, enough information will be released through various sources “that would cause more
harm to the U.S. government in a
single minute than any other person
has ever done in U.S. history.” He
has very sensitive “blueprints”
detailing the inner workings of the
NSA that would allow someone who
studied them to evade or duplicate
NSA surveillance.
The thousands of documents involved constitute “the instruction
manual for how the NSA is built.”
These documents, which have been
encrypted for safekeeping, would
not be made public unless something happens to Snowden that
would incapacitate him. This is his
insurance policy.
Snowden also has documents
that detail how the United States
captures transmissions in Latin
America and the programs used in
this practice. “This is accomplished
through an undisclosed telephone
company in the U.S. that has
contracts with telecommunications
companies in most Latin American
countries.” This information is what
prompted several Latin American
nations to dare challenge the U.S.
and offer Snowden asylum.
Critics of Snowden insist that he
has “greatly exaggerated the amount
of information available to people
like him.” Glenn Greenwald recently responded to this by stating,
“I defy the NSA to deny Edward
Snowden’s most radical claims
under oath.”
Snowden, as of this writing,
was granted asylum in Russia for
one year. He remains “calm and
tranquil” as he now considers his
options. He hopes to travel, unimpeded under international law, to a
Latin American nation, most likely
Venezuela, where he has already
been granted conditional asylum.
However, it is worth noting that the
U.S. tends to treat international law
as binding on everyone except the
U.S.A. (and Israel). This has forced
Snowden to have a deep concern
about traveling since the plane carrying Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, was forced to land in Vienna
and held for 14 hours on July 2, on
orders from the U.S., who (wrongly)
believed Snowden was a passenger.
With the government and media
lambasting his behavior, it is clear
his real crime was humiliating the
State. He stood up to power and
embarrassed it. For this, Snowden
will be remembered in history as
one of the United States’ most consequential truth-tellers. Please keep
him, and all whistleblowers, in your
prayers.
Ω
MOLINE, cont’d from p.5
Mike Wisniewski is a Los Angeles
Catholic Worker community member and an editor of the Agitator.
Heather Moline is a 2013 summer
intern with the Los Angeles Catholic
Worker.
Mohammed was returned to GTMO
for trial, a move The Washington
Post called “the effective abandonment of the president’s promise to
close the military detention center.”
In January 2012, the State Department shut down the office of the
envoy for closing the prison. More
than 100 prisoners began their strike
in February 2013. The strike revitalized U.S. consciousness about the
forgotten torture chamber.
On May 23, in response to public
solidarity with the suffering prisoners, the President renewed his
promise to close the prison during
a national security speech. A new
envoy was appointed in June 2013,
three days after an overwhelming
vote in the Republican-controlled
House to keep the prison open.
However, for the 166 detainees,
the tug-of-war is no congressman’s
quibble; it is a fatal pendulum. More
than half of the prisoners, due to
the lack of an approved relocation
system, have been cleared for release
but are denied that right. The
number of detainees finally slated
for trial has dropped from 36 to 20.
More than a third of the 120 hunger
strikers are being torturously forcefed through nasal tubes, an action
which, together with Koran defamation and cruel punishments instigated by U.S. troops during the past
11 years, has been condemned as an
egregious violation of human rights.
It is now late July 2013, marking five months of fasting, and the
month of Ramadan, during which
Muslims everywhere testify to their
faith by abstaining from food from
sunup to sundown. However, these
detainees are (supposedly) criminals
in a system that swallows rights and
opposition. They had no right to
justice, nor to practice their faith.
In fact, according to an Oakland
attorney, some hunger strikers have
dropped their fast “because they
have been threatened with deprivation of the right to perform special
communal Ramadan prayers if they
do not eat.”
As conscientious citizens we are
once again exposed to the mayhem
of power, to the illusion that democracy is a fair synthesis of all voices,
that distant political agendas have
room for the marginalized.
As Christians we mourn with our
brothers in GTMO, in whom Christ
voicelessly waits, as long lines and
red tape threaten to—or already
do—erase them. We recognize the
illusion of the political system, the
buffoonery of those four bold words
imprinted mindlessly on our daily
transactions, IN GOD WE TRUST.
And so, on my first day as a summer intern, instead of humoring
the fleeting credo of a dollar bill, I
clenched a poster-board and stood
quietly on a sidewalk, amid the
busyness of daily citizenry. I felt
less alone when I glanced upward
toward the three-inch glass slits in
the federal detention center fortress
walls. My sweat and salvation, I
realize, are tied to theirs, and to all
those who inconvenience or sacrifice
themselves for the forgotten. I wonder if those inside, whether behind
me, at Pelican Bay, or condensed
into an empire’s dubious stronghold
in Cuba, can hear my prayer, as Jeff
Dietrich daily intones, “...that what
we do may in some small way furΩ
ther your Kingdom.”
ON
THE LINE
TRANSFORM NOW
PLOWSHARES UPDATE
Sr. Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed,
and Michael Walli, currently are in the
Irwin County Detention Facility awaiting their sentencing on September 23,
2013. (See page 2 of June 2013 Agitator.) You can write to them at:
Sr. Megan Rice 22100
Irwin County Detention Center
132 Cotton Drive
Ocilla GA 31774
Gregory Boertje-Obed 22090
Irwin County Detention Center
132 Cotton Drive
Ocilla GA 31774
Michael Walli 4444
Irwin County Detention Center
132 Cotton Drive
Ocilla GA 31774
Be sure to include your entire return
address on the outside of the envelope. No staples or paperclips can be
included in your mail; no oversized
envelopes. Magazines and books must
be sent directly from the publisher or
Amazon.com Photocopies of brief
articles are likely to be permitted. If
you include inappropriate material or
fail to comply with these rules, your
mail will be returned to you.
PROVOKING CHINA
The United States Air Force will dramatically expand its military presence
across the Pacific this year, sending
jets to Thailand, India, Singapore and
THE
HOUSE
JOURNAL
Young Maria Zamora, more than
twenty-four years after her initial time
with us as a young guest with her
family, has flown the coop for greener
pastures in Bailey, Colorado, where
she will begin nursing school.
Grace, Jayme and Jeremy Kronmiller also moved on after an extremely helpful residence with us. They are
off to the heartland where they will
tend mother and hopefully not get too
wilted in the 100° Kansas heat.
We scored a cool batch of youngsters
for our summer intern program from
various locales throughout the nation.
Dave Hayes, a local yokel out of Victorville, has put truck driving school
on the back burner while he learns
the intricacies of our weekly donation
pick up at Little Sisters, in San Pedro.
David also enjoys food flow and cart
repair, as well as sautéing mushrooms,
eggplant, potatoes, and snicker bars.
Australia as bases are being prepared.
The so-called “pivot to Asia” is
very real. And the idea behind its
pivot is simple: surround China with
U.S. and allied forces. In Australia, for example, the Air Force will
dispatch “fighters, tankers, and at
some point in the future bombers on a
rotational basis.
In addition to the Australian deployments, the Air Force will be sending
jets to Changi East air base in Singapore, Korat air base in Thailand, a site
in India, and bases at Kubi Point and
Puerto Princesa in the Philippines and
airfields in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Navy and Marines have already
started their pivot to Asia, with the
Navy basing combat ships in Singapore and the Marines sending troops
on their aforementioned deployments
to Australia.
Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is
also refurbishing old World War II
airfields on Pacific Islands.
—stripes.com
CLIMATE CHANGE
The world’s climate is changing 10
times faster than at any other point in
the past 65 million years, Stanford climate scientists Noah Diffenbaugh and
Chris Field have found in a new study
published in Science Magazine.
If climate change continues at this
pace, temperatures will jump 5 to 6
degrees Celsius by the end of the century, placing ecosystems and species
around the world under severe strain
and forcing them into a struggle for
We also picked up another nearby
neighbor, Jedidiah Poole, who
was kicking it with Occupy Santa
Ana, where he became interested in
advocating for the homeless. After
spending some time picking up skills
in electrical work and sales, Jed found
his niche as an audio engineer for
both studio and live sound. He enjoys
chopping onions, serving oatmeal, and
toasting bagels on our kitchen grill.
Young Erin “Killer” Kast pines for
a position in some priestly or veterinarian school. He currently attends
Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
An avid “Cheesehead,” giggler, and
a cat-snuggler, Erin loves learning
everything he can about cooking, and
does a fine job of cleaning up everything afterward.
Betsy Schmitz has temporarily left
her job as a professional cheerleader/
dancer to attend Loras Lorax College.
Betsy’s gifts include smiling, dancing,
singing, gardening, and promoting
world peace. The job she likes best
on our breakfast line is passing out
sweets to the sweets.
Heather Moline recently returned
from Nicaragua, where she perfected
her Spanish and helped youngsters to
enjoy reading and writing. After an
idyllic childhood spent in McMinnville, Oregon, Heather attended LMU
on a full scholarship, majoring in English. She dances as if she were a native
Brazilian and plays both the guitar
and the conga drum. At our kitchen
Heather’s favorite job is wiping tables,
sweeping up and offering a compassionate ear to our guests.
MacBride Loftin, sporting a tengallon hat over his Hollywood coif,
moseyed in from Houston. Mac now
attends Boston University where he
has perfected his chip n’ dip and has
become a salsa dance aficionado. A
junior mop and mom boy, as well as,
survival.
The study shows that the world is not
only going through one of the greatest
climate shifts in the past 65 million
years but is hurtling towards this
warming at an ever-accelerated and
troubling speed. —sciencemag.org
OMAHA CW SENTENCED
Omaha Catholic Worker Jerry Ebner
was sentenced to six months in federal
prison on July 25 for a line-crossing
on Dec 28, 2012, the Feast of Holy
Innocents, at Stratcom at Offutt AFB
near Omaha, Nebraska. Jerry will
self-surrender at an assigned prison
within 30 days.
TWENTY-FOUR ARRESTED
IN KANSAS CITY
On July 13, over 80 people sang and
prayed at the entry road to a new
facility in the U.S. nuclear weapons
complex. By 10:15 a.m., two-dozen
protesters had crossed the property
line and were arrested. The fivebuilding facility will soon house the
operations of where 85 percent of the
non-nuclear parts for U.S. nuclear
weapons are made or procured. Of the
24 arrested, 14 are Catholic Workers
from across the nation.
FAST FOOD WORKERS STRIKE
Thousands of low wage fast food
workers showed that they are ready for
a fight as they walked off their jobs in
seven cities across the nation from
a prolific napper, Mac aspires to be a
future desperate house-husband or an
Episcopal priest.
Joyous news reached the Karan
Benton household with the birth of a
bouncing baby boy, London Michael,
six ounces and twenty inches weight.
Grandma was able to spend a good
ten days helping feather the nest and
get mom and baby settled in. We offer
heartfelt congratulations to Karan and
her family.
L.A. Catholic Worker historian
and Episcopal priest, Larry Holben,
keeps getting better and better as he
refines probably the best talk ever on
the means and motivations of Dorothy Day and Peter Marin, founders
of the Catholic Worker movement. A
gifted celebrant, Larry also led a fine
Wednesday evening liturgy. Standouts
Reverend Heidi Gamble, Fathers
Tom Rausch, Vince Schwan, and Chris
Ponnet, with our own Patty Carmody
and Martha Lewis rounded out a fine
summer line up of liturgical excellence.
Rebecca joined long-time friend and
kitchen volunteer, Pat Bonner, on a
Witness for Peace trip to Colombia,
where the effects of the U.S.’s failed
drug war and the notorious Plan Colombia continue to have disastrous consequence for the indigenous peoples and
forests of South America. We are grateful for all of Pat’s hard work on behalf
of the forgotten victims of U.S. hubris.
In June and July, visitors Anne
and Manuel Beyer-Rogers, from the
Hamburg Germany CW, joined us for
a week, as did Emma, from our sister
house the Open Door in Atlanta.
Former community member Sarah
Fuller, back from an extended stay at
the London Catholic Worker, unleashed a wave of nostalgia during a
three-week stay with us. Also stopping
by for a visit, former community member Sheena Tseko, with cutie pie-curly-
July 29 to August 1—the largest strike
by fast food workers in U.S. history,
and part of a growing movement calling for a living wage and the right to
unionize.
This is a mammoth industry and it
will not concede quickly or easily.
Therefore, we will see these types of
actions continue to escalate, according to representatives of the Service
Employees Int’l Union (SEIU)
Workers in retail chains across New
York City, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit,
Milwaukee, Kansas City and Flint
staged actions Monday through Thursday.
—democracynow.org
HUNGER STRIKER DIES
On July 22, 32-year-old Billy “Guero”
Sell was found dead in his cell at
Corcoran State Prison, in California,
the first apparent casualty of a widespread hunger strike organized by
state prisoners. Sell’s fellow prisoners
reported to outside advocates that he
had been asking for medical attention
since July 16. He died six days later.
The strike was in its third week
when Sell was found. It began on July
8, when more than 30,000 prisoners
throughout California refused meals
and more than 3,000 refused to attend
work or educational programs. The
combined strike and work stoppage
spread across a full two-thirds of California’s state prisons.
—thenation.com
On The Line is compiled and
edited by Mike Wisniewski.
haired Ian in tow, delighted all with
reminiscences of old times and details
of her life in Mexico.
Josephine Burns and chant master Rufo Noriega organized several
evenings of salsa dance instruction in
preparation for an evening of fun filled
festivities at the sizzling Salsa Night
at the Gene Autry Museum. Interns
Heather, Mac, Betsy, and friends of
the community, Jennifer and Susan
Anderson, and I joined Rufo, Josephine, and Sarah as we kicked up
our heels and loosened our hips to the
rhythms of live Latin music. A fantastic time was had by all.
We were overwhelmed by a generous
and heartfelt presentation from friend
and artist John August Swanson.
John, and the chaplains at St. Camillus, prepared a stunning visual display
of his most eye-catching work. We
give thanks for the gift and inspiration
that John’s life has been for so many
years and wish him continued joy and
success.
Nearly to the day of the sixty-seven
year anniversary of the infamous Able
Baker double nuclear bomb detonations at Bikini Atoll, theologian Ched
Meyers, and Dennis Apel, from
our sister house Guadalupe Catholic
Worker, teamed up on a presentation
detailing the systematic human rights
violation of the indigenous people
of the Marshall Islands. These longsuffering Islanders have been subject
to forced evacuation from their home
islands, now made uninhabitable by
nuclear radiation on land and in water.
Join us as we protest this unconscionable abuse of power at the gates of
Vandenberg Air Force Base and pray
for an end to the scourge of nuclear
weapons.
House Journal is written by
Faustino Cruz.
CATHOLIC AGITATOR / 7
• CHANGE OF ADDRESS •
If you move or change your mailing address, PLEASE notify us before the change
occurs, or as soon as possible, to save us return postage. With each issue this has
been a drain on our finances. We would like to use the money you donate for more
important matters rather than unnecessarily giving it to the USPS. Thank you.
NEEDS
We are in need of the following toiletries: Bar Soap; Lotions; Shampoo; and Toothpaste, which can be either personal size, similar to items found in hotels, or large
size, both are needed— also needed are Anti-Fungus Cream; Toothbrushes; Maximum Strength Antacid Tablets; Multi-Vitamins; as well as small and medium pill
containers; NEW Reading Glasses; and Mens White Socks (Medium and Large).
Please send or bring them to Hennacy House. Thank you. Many Blessings.
JOIN US
FOR OUR WEDNESDAY EVENING LITURGY
If you are not aware, or aware but never seriously thought about it, or have not attended
in awhile, we invite and welcome you to join us for our ecumenical home liturgy every
Wednesday, 6pm at Hennacy House, followed by a potluck dinner. Our liturgies vary from
having ordained ministers/priests presiding or a lay presider depending on availability of
our ordained friends. Our homilies/sermons are shared participation, which means
everyone is welcome (but not obligated) to briefly share their thoughts and insights on the
scripture passages used. After liturgy we socialize over dinner. It is a pleasant and
rewarding evening. A good way to spend Wednesday evenings this summer...and beyond.
632 N. Brittania St., Los Angeles, 90033 • Phone 323-267-8789
HELP NEEDED
Veterans for Peace, who each weekend, just north of the Santa Monica pier, set up Arlington West, a stunning and moving memorial for U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, desperately needs
volunteers to help erect and take down the thousands of crosses and other symbols and memorabilia that remember and honor the dead. Please consider giving some of your time for this meaningful and momentous
project. See: www.arlingtonwestsantamonica.org for more info.
C AT H O L I C
AUGUST 2013 Vol. 43/No. 4
SISTER HOUSE NETWORK:
LOS ANGELES CATHOLIC WORKER:
http: //lacatholicworker.org
1. Ammon Hennacy House of Hospitality
632 N. Brittania St., Los Angeles, CA 90033-1722
(323) 267-8789
2. Hospitality Kitchen
821 E. 6th St., Los Angeles, CA 90021
(213) 614-9615
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY
500 W. VanBuren Ave., Las Vegas, NV 89106
(702) 647-0728
ISAIAH HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY
316 S. Cypress Ave., Santa Ana, CA 92701
(714) 835-6304
SADAKO SASAKI HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY
1321 W. 38th St., Norfolk, VA 23508
(757) 423-5420
HOUSE OF GRACE CATHOLIC WORKER
1826 E. Lehigh Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19125
(215) 426-0364
PETER MAURIN CATHOLIC WORKER
1149 Crestwood St., San Pedro, CA 90732
(310) 831-3480
KIERAN PRATHER HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY
672 2nd Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066
(650) 827-0706
BEATITUDE HOUSE
4575 9th St., Guadalupe, CA 93434
(805) 343-6322
ST. BENEDICT HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY
4022 N. Cheryl Ave., Fresno, CA 93705
(559) 229-6410 — lizaOSB@aol.com
HIGH DESERT CATHOLIC WORKER
P.O. Box 3157, Apple Valley, CA 92307
(760) 247-5732 - sbremser@charter.net
CASA COLIBRÌ CATHOLIC WORKER
http://casacolibrimx.blogspot.com
011-52 - 386-744-5063 - jmhe76@gmail.com
HALF MOON BAY CATHOLIC WORKER
160 Kelly Ave., Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
(650) 726-6621 - ericdebode@gmail.com
BURDOCK HOUSE
Anderson, IN 46016
(765) 274-1776 - http://burdockhouse.org