New Quaker Notebook

No cake for Joseph Gerson. On Tuesday, June 14, police in Cambridge, MA, arrested seven protesters on Cambridge Common during the US Army's 230th birthday party and remembrance of General George Washington's first command of the Continental Army on the Common in 1775. Joseph Gerson, director of programs for the American Friends Service Committee in New England, was there in protest and was arrested by Cambridge police along with 6 other peace activists.[1] His account of the arrest and events leading up to the protest includes:

I found myself near the stage where the Secretary of the Army, a poor 11 year-old boy whose father was killed in Iraq, and others would be speaking. I stopped and stood with my protest sign. I wasn't blocking anything, but I could certainly be seen. Others saw and joined me with their peace signs. Then the first of several soldiers and police came ordered us to move.

I responded that I am a resident of Cambridge. The Common is public space. I was peacefully protesting a criminal war, and I was not about to move. Then came the final order to leave. Many protesters stepped back. Armed police started pushing us forcefully from the other direction. I decided not to be pushed, and sat down. A colleague did the same. Soon the police were nearly breaking our arms, painfully smashing handcuffs on our wrists, and dragging us away. A photographer knocked down in the commotion was also cuffed and arrested.

Others soon joined us in our cell blocks—four young men and women who had planned creative and apparently unwanted guerilla theater about the human costs of the war.

Gerson's account of his arrest, "Why I was Arrested (On Cambridge Common) For Protesting the War," is available at several media sources.[2]

1. Cambridge Chronicle, June 16, 2005.
2. Versions of "Why I was Arrested (On Cambridge Common) For Protesting the War" are available at Boston Independent Media Center, June 16, 2005; American Friends Service Committee; Common Dreams News Center, June 20, 2005. The 11-year-old boy was David Smith, son of Sgt Paul Ray Smith, who died fending off an Iraqi attack on Baghdad Airport. Sgt Smith received the Medal of Honor posthumously; his son, who recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the event on Cambridge Common, was given a key to the city in a small ceremony the day before "inside the power outage-darkened office of Mayor Michael Sullivan." A fire nearby had shut down the electricity. See Cambridge Chronicle, June 16, 2005.

American Christians must release the scales from their eyes, remove the fingertips from their ears, and uncover their mouths. Our federal government is apparently topfull with lies and misinformation. Here are some more examples.

In his testimony to Rep John Conyers on the Downing Street memos, journalist Greg Palast delivers a shocking timeline for what was really a secret plan to seize Iraq's assets and oil and make it all look like a humanitarian military mission to free the Iraqi people—and this all began as early as February 2001, a mere one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration.[1]

Two weeks ago, despite amazing evidence to the contrary, the vice president told CNN's Larry King that the insurgency in Iraq is, well, "in the last throes"[2]—a poetic assessment that could well be added to the list of other festering phrases about Iraq, such as "weapons of mass destruction," "yellow-cake uranium," "al-Qaeda connection," "mission accomplished," "we did the right thing in Iraq," "bring 'em on."

And then, of course, there is the recent disclosure that American officials lied to British ministers over the use of napalm bombs in Iraq. In January UK Defense Minister Adam Ingram assured parliamentary members that US forces were not using the incendiary weapon MK77 (an "improved" version of the loathed Vietnam-era napalm) in Iraq. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position," Ingram confessed in a private letter to Labor MP Harry Cohen. According to Ingram, US officials finally admitted that 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between March 31 and April 2, 2003.[3]

But we also should not forget these words, spoken yesterday in the President's Radio Address:

"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens."

So long as American Christians listen to such lies and do not speak out against them, they will become more and more debauched and ever more closely conformed to the pattern of this fallen world.

1. The timeline is at Greg Palast's June 15 blog on "The OTHER 'Memos' from Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue."
2. CNN, May 31, 2005. See also ABC correspondent Terry Moran's futile attempts to get Scott McClellan to make some sense out of "last throes" in a transcript of the daily White House briefing at Editor & Publisher, June 16, 2005.
3. See "US Lied to Britain Over Use of Napalm in Iraq War," Independent News (UK), June 17, 2005. The news article is archived at Truthout.org.