Doing Time For Peace

There’s a passage in here where Robert Ellsberg (son of the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg) talks about why he joined the Catholic Worker movement. I found it humorous, because a century earlier you would never have seen left-wing activities among American catholics. The Catholic churches were, in the early 20^th century, some of the most conservative platforms in the USA. It shows you how much the USA had changed by the late 1960’s; the idea of disagreement with authority had become commonplace. But there is no guarantee that anyone would pay you any attention.

Doing Time For Peace consists of interviews with peace activists in the USA, most of them from religious groups. They all did short jail sentences for trespassing and obstruction of private and government business, over things like war industries, pollution, and businesses that can damage communities. I did wonder, after reading the story about Michele Naar-Obed, if all this was worth the effort. When you’re in a jail, you won’t have time for constructive work. Hearings can be delayed for a long time, and in the time you’re waiting for the judge to decide on how much bail you’ll have to pay, it makes more work for your lawyers.

As far as history goes, the earlier accounts are from the Vietnam era, when young people all over the USA voiced their opposition to the Vietnam War. After the Vietnam era, most of the activism concerned nuclear weapons, ecology, and by 2005 it was the war in Iraq. The 1980’s were an era when a lot of the activists were ignored, blame the Reagan administration for making Conservative outlooks popular. But in the 90’s, with draft-dodging Bill Clinton in office, and Forest Gump in the theatres, there was a renewed interest in the 60’s. All of the activists were stars again.

Today we have the Occupy Movement, which has pretty much fizzled, and the Tea Party movement, which kind of stopped itself once it made its point. Who says the right wing can’t be activists too?