- from southern US jails
by J. Patrick Liteky

I am but one of a growing number of nonviolent resisters going to prison for such protests as those against the U.S. Army's School of the Americas. These thoughts I'm passing along are being penned from various southern fried pokeys along the never direct route along the con-air/bus/van/sedan trail back to my "home" federal prison camp at Sheridan, Oregon. Call this piece an "apologia of a retiring, but not shy, resister." Retiring, but only insofar as "hard time" is concerned. I can still lick envelopes when I finish in 20 months. Due to health and, more importantly, the gratifyingly swelling numbers of "co-conspirators" across the country and world who are telling truth to all kinds of tribunals, I'm "shifting my emphasis." These thoughts are my own, but forged from personal experience based on shared commitment. I don't see prison witness as a "career" for myself, as I started relatively late and will, God willing, walk just after my 60th birthday, in mid-2000.

While I emphatically recommend we drop, for the moment, all accolades such as heroes, prophets, martyrs and saints when referring to nonviolent peace and justice activists, reverential acknowledgment is due with full celestial fanfare for those who have gone before, some of whom still walk with us. And name-dropping always runs the risk of leaving out pillars and paradigms of resistance to the beast.

That said, I'd have to mention, in passing, the Berrigan brothers, Dan and Phil, who electrified for me, still a conservative, stick in the mud seminarian in the sixties, the notion of standing there, doing something. But I made the mistake early on, of putting them way up there, certainly not of my league, and thus subtly letting myself off the hook as far as any nascent stirrings of revolt. "I'm not a hero, ergo, I can't do such deeds of daring." Wrong! Jesus, who's a ten, certainly, on that tired scale, put it succinctly: "Come, follow me." And then came the hosts, over centuries, up to and including this morning, and the months to come. Word has it there will be 5,000 at the S.O.A. Watch's gathering near Ft. Benning in November... Fill in the names here of the heroes, martyrs, prophets and/or saints you know, who even now are inviting us to join them, to get up from our ample tables and comfortable, secure beds to walk a few miles along prison halls for the cause of justice and peace.

I believe that unless and until we swell the prison walls from the inside we're not going to turn the beast around anytime soon. Just about anyone can and ought to consider a stint in the stir, a "walk in the yard," some time in solitary. To leave it to the heroes/heroines while we finish our quiche and surf the net or channels for something "relevant" on the media is to miss the message... If we leave it to the current roster of prophets, we risk, no, we forfeit the game, the credibility of what we're about...

The S.O.A. continues its half-century long third-world war, a "low intensity war" on 21 countries whose elite troops our troops are training to knuckle under their civilian "elected" governments, which in turn knuckle under to good old Uncle Sam. Same old-same-old tortures, assassinations, intimidations, murders and disappearances. Millions of genocide victims since Columbus stumbled upon the islands of innocents in this hemisphere looking for gold and instant Christians, and the band plays on.

So, we who nonviolently go up against this 220+ year old beast named after another Italian explorer have our work cut out for us still. We're the barely clad Davids going up against the armored Goliath who eats us for lunch. Is it worth it? This time we surrender, these seemingly wasted days and months in jails and prisons across the land, with their dangers, deprivations and humiliations. Is it "effective?" Our sacrifices are real, but cannot begin to compare to the torture chambers and killing fields in the 21 countries of Latin America served by the elite academy of coups and cruelty - the School of the Americas...

Pat Litekey is serving a two year sentence for actions at the Pentagon and Ft. Benning, Georgia to close the School of the Americas.