Our First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Is it fair, then, that peace activist and Catholic Worker Dennis Apel should go to prison on May 9 because he stepped over a green line at the front gates of Vandenberg Air Force Base? He did this on the anniversary of our nuclear attack on Hiroshima, which killed 66,000 innocent civilians, to peacefully say that the United States government should never use nuclear weapons again.
Dennis himself carried no weapons. He is a man of peace. His weapons are the words and actions he uses to wake our hearts and minds to the immorality of the nuclear weapons and warheads tested at VAFB, and ready to kill on command. His words and actions are directed at saving lives and not taking lives.
As a Catholic Worker, he spends his days feeding the poor and healing the sick in Guadalupe. Like Pope Francis, he sees this as key to his Catholic faith.
Fr. Daniel Berrigan, a great peace activist who just died at the age of 94, peacefully protested like Dennis with his brother Phillip, and woke the Catholic Church to the immorality of nuclear weapons and the horrors of our actions in Vietnam.
Like Dennis, he was willing to go to prison to shine a light on injustices done in our name.
Isn’t it ironic that war criminals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the architects of the death and destruction in the Middle East that still takes countless lives, have never been brought to justice, and will serve no time in prison for their crimes against humanity?
They crossed a line, through their lies and machinations, that has devastated the Middle East, killed more than a million innocents, and left us and the whole word less safe in its wake.
Instead of trying and punishing the real criminals in our midst, we punish a peace activist. This tells us who is really in charge.
In America, we create caged areas where protesters can gather, outside political conventions and all other events where Americans choose to peacefully assemble. The recent Occupy movement in New York is a good example. Peaceful protesters are treated like criminals, while the real criminals make their money and live free.
We look at China’s actions at Tiananmen Square as unjust and immoral. How is Dennis Apel different from the man who stood up to the tanks rolling in to disperse the peaceful protesters? He had no chance of stopping the Chinese Army that day, but with his body he said, “No.”
Dennis did the same thing at VAFB. He said “No” to the weapons that are now being moved to the Ukrainian border, aimed at Russia, and to all the testing at VAFB that supports their eventual use.
He said no to a probation that would have kept him from protesting at VAFB during that probation period.
But the U.S. government, our military, and a single judge have said “No” to Dennis, and to all other peace protesters. Like the Supreme Court, where Dennis stood in judgement not so long ago, the message is that the “free speech” guaranteed in the Constitution is trumped by property rights. And wherever VAFB draws the line of its base, and wherever they say you can protest, is the law of the land.
For Dennis, the probation board suggested 30 days in prison. The prosecutor asked for two months. But the judge laid down a heavier sentence that chills the air when it comes to peaceful protest. She gave Dennis four months in a federal prison away from his home and family and work for the poor in Santa Maria.
To add to the loss, they are taking away his Social Security payments for those four months, his family’s main source of income. That is the law.
My question is: Where is the justice here? Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela all went to prison for a principle. Like these leaders of the past, Dennis deserves our gratitude and respect for doing what we are not willing to do. That is, peacefully saying “No” to weapons of death and destruction in our midst, and being willing to go to prison to protest America’s unjust actions and laws.
Gale McNeeley is a Santa Maria resident. Send comments and questions to Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 12-19, 2016.
