Thursday, November 20, 2008  

A Momentum of Its Own
by Elaine G. McGillicuddy

It took me three years -- since it's such a nasty thing to face -- to want to listen to Sr. Diane Ortiz’ audiotape “Torture in the 21st Century, Is There a Christian Response?” Francis had bought the tape after taking her workshop at the annual CTA Conference in Milwaukee. I had also avoided National Catholic Reporter's cover story when it came out on January 13, 2005, -- “The Torture Endangered Society”1.

So when Francis and I started a weekly vigil in Portland Maine, it did not begin as an anti-torture vigil. In my mind it was an impeachment vigil.

Outrageous events had been piling up for a long time. The Downing Street Memo2 gave hard evidence it was lies that got the US into the Iraq war. The New York Times' article3 about the National Security Agency's (NSA) wiretapping scandal (held back for a year, until after the election!) revealed President Bush had explicitly authorized illegal spying on American citizens in violation of the 1978 FISA Act. Such violation is a felony punishable by five years in prison. When signing the McCain Amendment against torture President Bush declared he was not bound by this law, something he did through "signing statements" with 800 other laws, repeatedly asserting he is above the law! This disrespect for and undermining of our Constitution led even a mainstream newspaper like the Portland Press Herald to warn, in a June 10 editorial, “Congress fiddles while democracy burns,” – “This is a very scary and dangerous time for our democracy.”

We were caught up by the groundswell for impeachment. Not only was that groundswell measured by a November, 2005 Zogby poll revealing that 53% of Americans favored impeachment, but by March 2006, many articles and books were published like Lewis

1 http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006a/011306/011306a.php

2 http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1

3 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1216-01.htm

Lapham's “The Case for Impeachment”4 in Harpers, Elizabeth Holtzman’s “The Impeachment of George W. Bush”5 in The Nation, and The Legal Arguments for Removing George Bush From Office by Dave Lindorff & Barbara Olshanshky – see Baltimore Chronicle article by Lindorff, “A Popular Groundswell for Impeachment”6. Then 15 people were arrested in front of the White House, including Art Laffin of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker and Susan Crane. We knew Susan well, having taught her yoga in the Cumberland County Jail in 1996 after her participation in the "Plowshares Five" action in Bath, Maine.

Our own response was a vigil during lunchtime, in the heart of Portland. Monument Square on Wednesdays is also a choice time and location. It's across from the public library on Portland's busiest, -- Congress St. And it's the day and place the Farmer's Market people set up their stalls in summer months. We were standing back to back near their flowers, plants and vegetables, on the other side of the Civil War Monument. I had visualized an approach whereby we would gradually vary our signs citing reasons for impeachment. With signs, we would visually build up a case for impeachment, and torture was at the head of the list, I thought.

I had been deeply moved by a web article7 of Garrison Keillor's. He wrote:

“Wiretap surveillance of Americans without a warrant? Great. Go for it. How about turning over American ports to a country more closely tied to 9/11 than Saddam Hussein was? Fine by me. No problem. And what about the war in Iraq? Hey, you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie. No need to tweak a thing...But torture is something else. When Americans start pulling people's fingernails out with pliers and poking lighted cigarettes into their palms, then we need to come back to basic values...It goes against the American grain and it eats at the conscience of even the most disciplined, and in the end the truth will come out. It is coming out now.”

Yes, we would begin with torture. Our first signs read: "Bush approves torture/Torture is wrong/Impeach Bush" At our first vigil on March 7 we were three people and a dog, -- Francis and me, and Tim Blanchette with his trusty Wiggins by his wheelchair side. Wiggins wears a sign too. The following week we were nine people. Besides other Pax Christi members, Tom Ewell former executive director of the Maine Council of Churches showed up. Cushman Anthony came too. He's the attorney who had represented two Catholic young men opposed to participation in the Vietnam War whom Francis (as a priest) had supported in court in the early 70's. Represented by "Cush," they became the first Catholics in Maine to obtain CO status.

Within three to five weeks the focus of the vigil got reshaped by those who joined us. In inviting members of his Unitarian Universalist community to participate,

Cush referred to it as "the anti-torture vigil," so I began calling it the anti-torture vigil too. Members of Amnesty International and Friends' Meeting expressed gratitude that someone had started an anti-torture vigil. Seeing that the vigil had taken on a (Spirit-led?) momentum of its own, I revamped the signs, omitting the impeachment part and focusing all 10 of them on torture, e.g. "Torture is wrong." "Torture is terrorism," and "Fear and silence make torture possible." The last two ideas come from Sr. Diane Ortiz' audio-taped workshop.

The following Wednesday two lawyers from the Maine Civil Liberties Union arrived during their lunch hour. They made a sign right on the spot, right there on the sidewalk: "Stop torture: Close Guantanamo." Why of course! Why hadn't I thought of that before?!

From the beginning, the great majority of passers-by express agreement. Yes, a small minority reacts angrily, but week after week as vigilers who come when they can assemble with our core group, I am moved by the expressions on people's faces. There's relief, joyous surprise, gratitude. They wave from their bikes, toot their horns, yell from their cars, smile, give us the peace sign, or come personally to thank us for being there. One Vietnam Vet in a wheelchair returned to talk a second time. He said he was so distraught by the loss of life when Lebanon was bombed, he needed to come, - "to be in the company of like-minded people."

I sense the Hamdam Supreme Court Decision has made a bit of difference in the level of fear (see Amnesty International’s reaction8 and New York Daily News editorial9), in spite of the questionable recent terror plot in London. But the battle against torture is not at all won. It was learned within days of the decision that a new maximum-security jail was just opened at Guantanamo Bay and that, “Far from winding down, the controversial US detention center is expanding” (see news article10 in The Independent). Not only that, but administration lawyers are trying to get Congress to make legal what the Supreme Court declared was illegal (see news article11 in the Washington Post). Thomas Jefferson said “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” So we will keep our vigil, -- for our own sake and our children's sake, and for our brothers' and sisters' around the world.

Elaine G. McGillicuddy is a member of Pax Christi Maine.

For more information on the work of Sr. Diane Ortiz, including links to some of her video and audio presentations, please visit http://www.creighton.edu/ml/events/ortiz/ and for more information about her work as Director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, please visit http://www.tassc.org/ .