Obituary
'Beating swords into plowshares'
Philip Berrigan: (1923-2002)
Philip Berrigan -- former priest, pacifist and celebrated activist in the American anti-war movement -- died of cancer on 6 December in Baltimore. He was 79.
Spanning over four decades, Berrigan's struggle inspired generations of dissenters and has ultimately contributed to fueling and strengthening the US protest movement. At his funeral on Monday, fellow peace activist Tom Lewis recalled their common struggle in the 1960s. "At the time we were involved in a genocidal war against the Vietnamese. Now we're about to enter another genocidal war against Iraq," said Lewis.
Surrounded by family and comrades, Berrigan passed away at Jonah House -- the commune he and his wife former Catholic nun, Elizabeth McAlister, co-founded in Baltimore in 1973. In a last statement given to his wife, Berrigan said, "I die with the conviction held since 1968 that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth. We have already exploded such weapons in Japan in 1945 and the equivalent of them in Iraq in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Afghanistan in 2001. We left a legacy of deadly radioactive isotopes -- a prime counterinsurgency measure. The people of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be battling cancer, mostly from depleted uranium, for decades."
A cult figure to some and a "misguided anarchist" and "terrorist" to others, Berrigan has paid dearly for his activism -- spending 11 of the past 35 years behind bars. "He's the patriarch of the Catholic anti-war movement and he's paid for his right to speak with hard time in jail," commented the Baltimore Sun.
His reference for activism has always been the Bible. "You know you learn all the time," he said shortly before he died. "We get up in the morning here [at Jonah House] and we go through the day's scripture. Then we meditate and discuss those readings and their contemporary application."
The young Berrigan acquired his political training in the civil rights movement. In 1955 he was ordained as a priest in the Josephite order, which has a special mission to serve the economically depressed African- American community. The church assigned Berrigan to teach in an African-American inner city school in New Orleans. There he became a follower of Martin Luther King. "Martin Luther King began to evolve his own philosophy of resistance from Jesus and Ghandi. I used to attend all these sessions and I joined all those folks and they taught me something I didn't know at all and that was non- violence," recalled Berrigan in an interview with the Baltimore Sun.
Practising non-violent opposition to legalised racism during the civil rights movement, Berrigan developed and fine-tuned other non-violent forms of struggle during the early Vietnam War era. Besides leading protest marches, teaching and writing extensively, Berrigan's resistance was defined by civil disobedience. But his criticism went beyond the realm of what he called the "American Empire". "Phil and Dan (his brother) themselves embodied the 1960s early movement from 1950s conformism to direct questioning of the purpose and premise of essential institutions," wrote Berrigan's biographers Murray Polner and Jim O'Grady.
In a scathing indictment of institutionalised religion, the then Catholic priest denounced the American religious establishment for their stand during the Vietnam War. "We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of this country's crimes," Berrigan said at the time. "We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war and is hostile to the poor."
In October 1967, he engaged in his first high-profile action of civil disobedience. Accompanied by three comrades, Berrigan went to a Baltimore draft office, symbolically poured blood on draft files and burnt them. But the Baltimore incident was only to serve as a dress rehearsal for the group's most dramatic and publicised action that became known as the Catonsville raid.
In May 1968 Philip Berrigan, his brother Jesuit priest Daniel and seven other activists invaded a Maryland Selective Service Board office, grabbed hundreds of draft files, carried them outside in wire mesh baskets and ignited them with homemade napalm. The Catonsville raid was to become a model for resistance, inspiring similar actions in New York City, Milwaukee, Boston, Chicago and other cities. "The tactic became a sort of calling card for the ultraresistance," recalled the National Catholic Reporter.
Arrested with his comrades and tried for "sedition, conspiracy and destruction of government property", Berrigan received a six-year jail sentence in federal prison. He remained undaunted. Since Catonsville, Berrigan has faced more than 100 arrests and spent an additional five years in jail.
The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 did not conclude the struggle. In 1980, Berrigan founded the "Plowshares". The aim of the group was to attack military installations and damage hardware. Berrigan got the idea from the Old Testament. "I was going over the prophecy of Isaiah in the second chapter. He speaks of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. God says the time of peace will come where the nations will destroy the implements of war and we won't train for war again," Berrigan explained. Since the group was established there have been more than 100 Plowshares actions across the US.
The trend was set in 1980, when Berrigan was jailed with seven others for breaking and entering into a nuclear facility in Pennsylvania and damaging nuclear missile cones. In 1988 he was jailed for pounding on cruise missile launchers aboard a destroyer at a Virginia naval base. In 1993 he was jailed for damaging an F15E fighter in North Carolina. In 1997 Berrigan's group broke into the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, and boarded an Aegis destroyer. Using household hammers as weapons, they managed to destroy the ship's control panels before facing arrest.
Defended by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, 76-year-old Berrigan received a 27-months sentence. Unfazed by Clark's argument that international law and moral imperatives justified the protesters' action of destroying weapons of mass destruction, presiding judge Gene Carter slapped Berrigan with the maximum sentence under the law. As always, Berrigan remained undaunted. "We need to say no," he simply said.
Paying tribute to Berrigan's indomitable spirit, historian Howard Zinn described this spirit as ultimately defining the Plowshares' empowerment -- against the "American Empire" and its military-industrial complex. "While the energy of the 1960s began to dissipate and the civil rights movement foundered and the war in Vietnam ended, a lot of people didn't find a very powerful central issue to occupy their energies. But the Berrigans -- and the religious community of pacifists -- just continued, they didn't stop."
By
Faiza Rady
