Truth to Power

Truth to Power

The temperature was almost sixty degrees, sunny, with a light breeze. A perfect day to get arrested, Babette thought as she parked her car, hurried across the road, greeted Naomi, and eagerly waited for more people to arrive. She felt certain she was ready this time. Her hesitation and anxiety were gone, probably because she had been honest with Gregory about what she planned to do.

Although Gregory had watched the video she made of the civil disobedience arrests last Good Friday, his image of protester confrontations with police came from the slides of civil rights battles in his slide show. Water cannons, police dogs, beatings with nightsticks, and jail cells packed with protesters were stuck in his mind. He did not want to think of Babette beaten, bitten, or imprisoned. Nor did he want to imagine how he would explain to Nicholas why ‘Mommy won’t be coming home for a while.’

Babette reassured him several times that Eirene protests were different. She had seen three and they were all orderly, peaceful, and respectful. She had no reason to anticipate that the Good Friday civil disobedience would be any different. There was always the possibility the police would change their tactics. Perhaps they would punish the arrestees or make an example of them to scare off future protests, but it seemed unlikely.

Her earlier anxiety had been transferred to Gregory. He contained his worry and reluctantly agreed not to argue with her. Deep down, Gregory shared Babette’s concern about nuclear weapons. He understood why she wanted to protest, but felt afraid the price of her protest could be awfully high. It could cripple their family, maybe tear it apart. Gregory fervently hoped he would see Babette again at the end of the day.

Babette stood by the road and held one end of the large ‘AI is making a killing’ banner. She felt far away from the older man holding the other end. The passing traffic was noisy and they could not converse. He had introduced himself as Gary. She thought she recalled him from the nonviolence training she attended before the Martin Luther King Day action. Babette wanted to ask him whether he was going to get arrested. She wanted to talk about what she was going to do but did not know what the etiquette was about such conversations. Maybe people preferred to keep their intentions private.

Babette held the banner and remained quietly in the moment. She had no camera or video recorder this time and had to use her powers of recall to ‘record’ this experience. She noticed the bright blue sky, sprawling mall, adjacent parking lot, four-lane roadway, passing cars, and pedestrians crossing the road at the traffic light.

She also thought about Good Friday and the Crucifixion and recalled what she learned at last year’s witness. She had never heard of the Stations of the Cross before. It seemed a silly name for a religious ritual. Radios and railroad lines have stations, she thought. Prayers don’t.

She wondered if Carl planned the same ceremony for today’s service and looked around to see what Carl had brought to the event. There was no large cross this time. She spotted a pile of smaller crosses near Carl’s ubiquitous folding card table next to the microphone stand and sound system. She wondered what he would do with all the crosses and what music he would play today.

Babette had never thought about it before, but realized Carl (or someone else in Eirene) had an admirable sense of ritual and theater. They knew how to put on a show. She had filmed many protests and recognized that most were shows, more or less. It was the way people got attention. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. Eirene’s ‘shows’ obviously worked. Everyone who participated- even the police and security guards- played their roles perfectly. That was what she hoped would happen this time. The police would not come up with new roles, or alter the way they dealt with the arrestees, one of which was going to be her.

She was startled out of her reflections by someone who came up next to her and asked to hold the banner.

“What?” Babette said, absently.

“Naomi sent me over. It’s time for the meeting,” the woman said.

“Oh, thanks,” Babette replied. She handed the banner to the woman, walked toward the table, and noticed Carl, Naomi, and a few others moving toward the corner of the property. Babette wondered how Naomi knew she was planning to participate. She had attended the meeting a week ago when people gathered to plan the action. Babette guessed Naomi assumed she was not going to chicken out this time. She walked over to the small group and joined the circle.

“Okay, you all know the scenario for today, right?” Carl asked. Most people nodded. A few looked puzzled. The group had chosen a ‘planting’ theme for the action. They were going to symbolically reclaim the land on which the Allied Industries plant sat. It had been a farm before AI built their weapons factory. Protesters were going to scatter seeds as they walked toward the top of the hill where AI Security and the police waited.

People who wanted to were free to kneel and make small openings in the soil so they could drop the seeds into specific holes. They were just flower seeds. Birds would likely devour them as soon as the protest was over. No one cared. Everyone just wanted to send a message.

Spring was the time of rebirth. That was the message of Resurrection. It was time to convert the factory of death to a place of life. The seed of resurrection was planted on the first Good Friday. The arrestees were symbolically sacrificing themselves, as Jesus did, in the hopes that their sacrifice might somehow save the world. It was a long shot, to say the least, but if they did not do it, who else would? Babette recalled the obscure words of Daniel Berrigan, ‘It was something we could not not do.’

That was how she felt. This had become something she had to do, that she could not avoid doing. She did not know why she felt that way. Others mentioned all kinds of reasons for their actions: to save the world, or their families, or their souls. Babette agreed with those justifications, but none of them was compelling enough to place her life on the line, however symbolic her action was.

She felt acutely aware that she was about to defy authority, to say ‘no’ when a policeman told her he would arrest her if she did not obey him. Babette had never before defied authority. She was not slavishly obedient, either. Mostly, she took authority seriously and behaved respectfully.   

Babette’s entire life might be about to change. She was moments away from doing something that had been almost unthinkable before she met Carl at that antinuclear demonstration outside City Hall a couple of years ago. Their short conversation stirred something deep inside her. She still did not know what it was and wondered if she was finally about to find out. Maybe everything would become clear to her after her arrest. Well, okay, then. Let’s get on with it, she thought.

Babette did not pay much attention to the service. It featured the usual liturgy and reflective readings. Some were from the Stations, others described the military contracting done by AI at this facility.

Once again, Carl linked the cross with ‘the toll of war, of human neglect and environmental indifference, of the greed and violence summarized daily, and made corporate in Allied Industries. This cross represents the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ today,’ as Babette read in the litany. After each reading, someone hammered a little wooden cross into the ground along the road. A line of crosses stretched for twenty or thirty feet. It resembled a strange out-of-place graveyard.

“11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross,” someone read at the microphone. The announcement startled Babette out of her reverie. She knew this was the final station before the civil disobedience and listened as carefully as she could, partly to absorb the words, and partly to distract herself from her rekindled anxiety. Babette felt certain this time she would not ‘chicken out.’ She would follow through, but felt scared nevertheless.

“Non-cooperation with evil, Gandhi preached, is as essential as cooperation with good,” the person read. “There is an uncompromising difference between the privileged wealth secured through every weapon built by Allied Industries and the faithful demands for justice and peace. It is nothing less than the difference between crucifixion and resurrection, cooperation and resistance.”

The reader paused to turn the page. Babette allowed his words to sink in. She wanted to clearly remember these last few moments before she acted in a way she would have never dreamed of only a couple of years ago.

The uncertainty of the coming change almost overwhelmed her. She calmed herself by repeating the final juxtaposition just read out over the microphone: ‘the difference between crucifixion and resurrection, cooperation and resistance.’ Babette was about to move from one side of the equation to the other. She was about to stop cooperating and start resisting.

The reader went on. “We stand in resistance to Allied Industries. We embrace the nonviolent cross of our time: resistance to war and militarism, the works of peacemaking and service to the victims of war, resistance to the injustice that is Allied Industries, the face of war-making today. Today, in mourning and resistance, we remember Jesus’ words: ‘Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give to you. (John 14:27)’” He stopped reading. Naomi approached the microphone. Just as she was about to speak, Babette felt someone tap her on the shoulder. She turned and saw Peggy Haas, the older woman who provided child care at the monthly Eirene potlucks, smiling at her.

“This is your first time, isn’t it?” Peggy asked, softly. Babette nodded. “Stay with me,” she added. Babette immediately felt safe. It was all still a scary unknown, but she no longer feared it. She welcomed it.

“12th Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross,” Naomi read. Babette knew her time had come. She recalled the moments just before she gave birth to Nicholas. So much was happening all at once. Pain, worry, fear, exhilaration, and confusion overwhelmed her. The sole thought at the back of her mind was ‘this is the most important moment of my life. It will change me forever.’ She would never again not be a mother, no matter what happened after the birth. She wanted a healthy, happy baby and a safe secure household for her baby with Gregory the father. Babette would still be Babette, but she was about to become ‘Mommy.’ She had hoped she was ready then.

She hoped she was ready now.

Naomi began the final reading before the civil disobedience. “In the shadow of the cross,” she read and then paused. “Please read it with me,” she urged. Everyone looked down at the litany and started reading aloud together. “We remember and mourn all the deaths and human tragedies of war. In the shadow of the cross, we stand in mourning and nonviolent resistance to the economy and culture of militarism and greed in which many suffer and die here and around the world so few may profit. In the shadow of the cross, we insist that reconciliation, reconstruction, and justice replace war and militarism. In the shadow of the cross, we know that to stop the war, we must resist the war-makers.”

Everyone stopped reading. The instructions in the litany said, ‘Period of silence/Adagio for Strings.’ The crowd settled into respectful, anticipatory stillness and waited. After a hushed moment, Carl clicked on the tape player. String music swelled from the speakers. Peggy took Babette’s hand. “Here we go,” she whispered. She handed Babette a small potted plant. Babette noticed Peggy carried a large bag of seeds.

They walked toward the bottom of the small hill. Babette did not look around but knew other protesters were also walking in the same direction. She concentrated on her feet and tried not to think about anything other than walking, one foot at a time, toward the Authority figures waiting at the top of the hill. Her anxiety vanished now that she was moving. They started to climb the hill. Peggy dropped seeds as she walked.

Babette looked to her right. Several others proceeded up the hill. A couple sped ahead and neared the top. One of them got close to the police and then knelt, potted plant in hand, and began digging in the soil. The police watched. Babette did not want to reach the top too fast. She took a final step and then knelt on the cold ground. “See you soon,” Peggy whispered as she continued up the hill.

Babette noticed more protesters above her on the hill. She had somehow veered left and was a little distant from the main group. Good, she thought, we’re spread out. That’s better. She dug a shallow hole, pushed her flower into it, tamped down the dirt around it, and admired her work. The flower seemed more beautiful than any she had ever seen, perhaps because of where she had planted it, perhaps because she planted it to redeem this godforsaken place that manufactured the machinery of annihilation.

She should have felt enraged by what they did here but felt a strange sense of peace. Perhaps it was because she was kneeling. It was something she never did at home and had not done regularly since she was a child. Her parents often dragged Babette and her brother John to church on Sundays. She stopped going as soon as she was old enough to stay home alone and never missed it. In later years, when she thought about church, she wondered what the purpose of religion was. What made her parents go? Was it guilt, or was it God?

She never thought about God. As far as she knew, Gregory was like her. They had never discussed religion. They might have to as Nicholas got older and began to meet churchgoing kids at school. He might wonder what those children were talking about and they might have to come up with an innocuous explanation.

Babette knelt and waited. She assumed they would arrest everyone quickly but that did not happen. She began feeling rooted to the spot just like she hoped her little plant would be.

Then she felt something else: what it was like to see and feel the world from a kneeling position. Despite her years as a photographer and filmmaker, she rarely experimented with different positions to view the world. Now she held no camera. There was just sky, grass, and music in the distance. Babette was startled to discover she felt completely at peace and it occurred to her that this might be what the presence of God felt like.

The security guard approached her, stopped, loomed above her, and spoke. He seemed uneasy. “You’re trespassing on Allied Industries property, miss. Will you leave? If you refuse, you will be arrested.” Babette thought of getting to her feet, smiling at the guard, and walking away politely. She felt she had already learned what she needed to learn and experienced what she needed to experience and the arrest would just be extra. But she had come to get arrested, to resist, as Carl’s litany put it, and she had prepared herself. Perhaps the experience of the peace of God was extra, and the arrest was the point.

“No,” she said. The guard summoned a policeman. He walked over.

“You’re under arrest,” he said and asked her to stand. She wanted to make this as easy as possible. Babette did not want them to think she was a defiant person who hated the police. She stood up.

“What’s your name, miss?” the guard asked. She told him. The officer took her arm and pushed her toward the top of the hill. “Watch your step.” She sensed he was more nervous than she was.

A police van waited at the top, its back doors open. Several protesters waited outside. She saw a few sitting inside. Two police officers directed people into the van. The officer holding her arm pulled her in a different direction. She was about to panic. He walked her to a police car where another cop waited.

“They’re almost full,” her cop explained.

“She can go in here,” the waiting cop replied as he swung open the door. “Watch your head, miss,” he said. Babette sat and waited. Soon, a couple of other protesters entered the car. Babette greeted them. They smiled at her.

They watched the police van pull away, and then a cop came to their car, got in, and started it. He did not seem to notice them in the back. He followed the van to the police station. Everyone rode quietly. Her sense of peace had not left her. She wondered if it would fade or if it was a permanent part of her now.

Babette hoped it was.