The Peacemakers

I didn’t know what to expect when I boarded the bus to D.C. last weekend, a ride I found over the internet, but I remain entirely humbled by the remarkable people I met and the experiences they shared along the way. Rita Hohenshell, bless her soul, was 76-years-old when she was dealt 3 months in federal prison for crossing the line at School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC). She dismissed words of sympathy with a casual wave of her hand calling her time served “a cakewalk” compared to the county jail time others have endured for the same action. She smiled and nodded yes when asked whether she’d be returning again this November. Ruth may be frail in body but she radiates the inner strength of a young warrior.

Chris Gaunt, another rider on the bus, is someone who served out a 90-day sentence in Harris County Jail in Hamilton, GA for crossing the SOA line and called the experience profound and life changing. It shocked her that in a predominately white county most of the prisoners were people of colour. She’d be the first to tell you her life circumstances enable her to take actions others cannot. It reminded me of Ammon Hennessy saying to Utah Phillips, “You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons. The weapons of privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege, economic privilege. You wanna be a pacifist, it’s not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving up the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that.” Chris does that and it brings her serenity.

Chet Guinn, the organiser of the bus, from an article in The New Republic, and from which Peter Beinart likely harvested information he uses to define Iowa as a state overrun by fanatical peace activists and therefore detrimental to Democrats and liberalism as a whole.

While Iowa is often described as isolationist, many of the activists here are in fact radically multilateralist. The morning after I met with Holveck, I stopped by a meeting of the leading Des Moines antiwar activists, a group of about ten who have dubbed themselves the Peace Committee. They meet regularly at the home of Chet Guinn, who lives in a large converted firehouse decorated with dozens of toy fire trucks and a working fire pole that he uses to drop down to the meetings from his upstairs living room. Guinn traces his political activism to the 1950s, when he was president of the local chapter of the United World Federation, a world-government group that thought the United Nations was too weak.

The firehouse Chet renovated. STAR* PAC is the political action committee Chet works with and endorses. This is an article on a protest Chet participated in at the Iowa State Fair in 2004 that also mentions Brian Terrell, another passenger on the bus to D.C., but who stayed behind to participate in the civil disobedience actions that took place on Monday. Brian was one of four Iowan peace activists served federal grand jury subpoenas by the Joint Terrorism Task Force on February 4, 2004 demanding they “submit records and testimony regarding their participation at an anti-war forum held at Drake University.” Brian recently had the opportunity to review all records pertaining to the investigation which were acquired through the FOIA. Not sure if that material’s been uploaded to the internet yet but here’s a link to an undercover police report(pdf)- a taste of what the gov’t considers worthwhile appropriation of resources to conduct in the name of national security – covert operations against peace activists holding workshops on non-violent resistance.

Fr. Frank Cordaro, mentioned in that undercover police report, is a member of the Des Moines Catholic Worker community and a long time peace activist. Some say he’s probably “Iowa’s best-loved convict.” He wasn’t on the bus but he wrote the following words about the exceptional woman standing to the far right in this photo. He did so from a cell where he was serving his “seventh prison stint for protesting weapons, war and the government.”

Three current members of the DMCW community come to mind when I think of the parables of the buried treasure and the pearl of great price. Carla Dawson’s journey to the DMCW reminds me of the parable of the buried treasure. Carla came to the DMCW as a guest with her infant son Julius in 1988. She wasn’t looking for any meaning and purpose in life. She just needed a roof over her head and a safe place to live until she could get set up on her own. That’s when she met Wendy Bobbit and Kay Meyer, two single mothers raising their children in the DMCW community. She became best friends with Wendy and Kay and fell in love with the Catholic Worker movement, especially the work of hospitality. When she was able, Carla moved out of the DMCW into her own place. But she could not stay away from the DMCW. She became a regular volunteer and eventually moved back into the DMCW to become a full time community member in 1989. Since then both Wendy and Kay have moved on, yet Carla has stayed, becoming one of the most valued and beloved members of the community. She holds down a full time job, is going to college part time, keeps the check book and pays the community bills, all the while raising Julius and her two younger sons, Josh and Jordan, both born in the community. She is a Super Mom, and she is basically the rock upon which the community rests. She is the person in the community we go to address the hard issues surrounding hospitality and community life because she really loves the DMCW and everyone associated with it: community members, guests, and volunteers. Through the years people have told Carla that she’s been foolish and reckless to keep living at the DMCW, especially when it came to raising her boys in a hospitality house. Their criticisms did not deter her from the joy and meaning she found at the DMCW. This spring marked a milestone in Carla’s life when her son Julius graduated from East High School in Des Moines. When Carla came to the DMCW as a guest, she found a treasure she was not looking for. It gave her great joy and once she found it, she’s gone to great lengths to keep it, even to the point of looking foolish and reckless.

These are the people snake oil salesmen like Beinart are determined to smear, jail and silence by any means necessary. It truly is an Orwellian world where murder is glorified and peacemaking is criminalised. More to follow another time.