THE DAY THE EMPIRE FELL

VINCENT SCOTTI EIRENÉ

Foreword by Mark Vender Vennen

a
Barbary Shore
book
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-
No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Published by Barbary Shore, Pittsburgh.

http://barbaryshore.com
barbary.shore@gmail.com
This book would not have been
possible if it was not for the love
of my family: Rebecca, Caitlin
and Chenoa.
THE DAY THE EMPIRE FELL
 CONTENTS

i. Foreword by Mark Vander Vennen

1. Molly’s Clear Broth Chicken Soup

7. Uncle Joe Goes To The Circus
11. 1968: What 35¢ Will Buy You
13. I Thought You Had The Handcuffs!
17. On The Road
25. The Children Of Edward Abbey
31. The Brains Of Auschwiz
43. Olympic Reflections
51. Caitlin Is Born
55. Crime And Punishment
59. Italian Toast, Margarine On The Side, Please
63. Winking At Fallujah
67. Empty Playgrounds
71. The Last Visit To My Father
75. From Pittsburgh To New Orleans
79. Malik Rahim
91. Community and Nonviolent Confrontation
101. Pilgrimage to Los Alamos
Foreword: The Art of Peacemaking
Mark Vander Vennen

The Day the Empire Fell is a remarkable book,

and I am delighted to commend it to you.
Vincent Scotti Eirené is a consummate
storyteller. In this book he offers poetic vignettes
about his family and his lifelong journey into
nonviolent peacemaking. Along the way he takes
us across the country, from Pittsburgh to Chicago,
Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, the
White House, New Orleans, Atlanta, and even
beyond, to Fallujah and Baghdad. We meet an
assortment of colorful characters, people like

i
Grandma Molly, Phillip Berrigan, Hungry Bear,
Uncle Joe, Black Panther Malik Rahim, Martin
Sheen, judges, lawyers, activists and others.
Stitched together, the stories serve as a striking
miniature of our age. They form a snapshot of a
time in American history, flashes of what Jack
Kerouac did for an earlier era with his book On
the Road.
Throughout these finely rendered stories,
Vincent’s reflections are tender, and his
juxtapositions are startling. For me, all of them
come together naturally in one theme: the art of
peacemaking. And at least two aspects of that
theme stand out.
The first is humor. These vignettes illustrate
that humor is at the core of Vincent’s
peacemaking. Humor is not an interesting add-on,
nor is it simply an endearing aspect of Vincent’s
personality. On the contrary, humor is an essential
tool by which we creatively engage people. It is
the door into building respectful and genuine

ii
relationships with one’s opponents, without which
peace is impossible. I know of no one who knows
this—and practices it—better than Vincent.
Vincent is to peacemaking what Patch Adams is to
medicine.
The second theme is nonviolence, and it is this
which is the central plea of the book. Violence is
nonpartisan. It runs underneath the polarizations of
our age, such as the Left and the Right. Vincent
uses poignant stories from his own family to show
that the confrontation between violence and
nonviolence lies within our own hearts. This book
serves as a clarion call: perhaps at no time in
American history is nonviolent direct action, in the
spirit of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King,
more desperately needed than today. History has
done its cruel work of largely sanitizing the
legacies of Ghandi and King. Daniel Berrigan has
pointed out that while the remnant of the peace
movement attempts to assess the damage done to
Iraq, it has avoided assessing the damage done to

iii
our moral conscience that will allow the next war
to occur. Today an ideology of fear and hate has
sanctioned, without questioning, unprecedented
economic and military violence, done in our
names, even in the name of Christianity. But Jesus
calls us to love our enemies. Nonviolence
introduces an incisive, comprehensive alternative
to the “logic” of self-interest and the cynical,
reactive patterns of violence. It throws up a mirror
that forces us to confront ourselves.
On these pages Vincent tells stories; let me tell
two stories which illustrate that Vincent walks
what he talks. In the early 1980s, at the height of
the Cold War, Vincent and I participated in
Christian Peacemakers in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Christian Peacemakers undertook
nonviolent civil disobedience at the U.S. Steel
Building in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
then headquarters of Rockwell International, the
third largest military contractor in the United
States. At one such witness, a police officer

iv
dragged Vincent away by his hair. Though in
obvious pain, Vincent responded beautifully, in
accordance with our training in nonviolence: he
did not resist. An anti-war bystander, a self-
described Leftist, ran up to the scene and yelled,
“Hey listen, he’s a human being, you [expletive]
pig!” Later, when Vincent told this story to his
close friend Phillip Berrigan, I remember Phil
laughing, laughing and laughing some more, his
laughter deep and free.
In the 1990s Vincent was falsely accused of
assaulting a police oficer at a demonstration. The
reverse had actually happened: a number of
policemen had viciously assaulted Vincent. A
crucial character witness in Vincent’s defense was
the retired Head of Security at the U.S. Steel
Building. Vincent had developed such a mutually
respectful and genuine relationship with him over
the years that the Security Head was delighted to
testify on Vince’s behalf (as were Phil Berrigan
and actor Martin Sheen). The testimony of the

v
police was such that at various points during the
trial the spectators, jury and judge broke out into
laughter. The jury rightly declared Vincent
innocent of the trumped-up charges.
Finally, a word of advice. Never let Vincent
leave a restaurant ahead of you. At the door, he
will turn and address the entire restaurant with an
enthusiastic “good night everybody”. In the time
that it takes the patrons to turn towards the door,
Vincent will have left, leaving you to face the
crowd.
In a manner not unlike that scene, this book
sets up a confrontation. Like nonviolence itself, it
throws up a mirror. I invite you to look steadily
into it and ask whether its reflections give a more
accurate picture of ourselves and of contemporary
America than the narratives given by pundits and
academics, stories emanating from the false
polarizations of Right and Left.

vi
 I am convinced that out of this difficult but
courageous personal confrontation with violence,
comes peace.

Mark Vander Vennen is the co-author of Hope in

Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global
Crises, Foreword by Desmond Tutu (Baker, 2007).

vii
Molly’s Clear Broth Chicken Soup.

Molly married my grandfather in a small town

outside of Naples, Italy when she was a teenager.
She was brought to America one year later
pregnant with no knowledge of English or the
American way of life.
Molly lived in the United States until she was
79 years old. She died only knowing a small
handful of English phrases and never having
learned how to drive. She had a tremendous fear
of outliving her husband. She knew nothing of the
world outside of her Italian neighborhood; her
grocer and butcher both spoke Italian. Yet this

1
humble woman raised and cared for her husband,
four sons and two daughters.

For my grandmother, whom we called Molly, it

was time to be strategic if her family would be fed.
It was after World War II and food and other items
were rationed so that the government could feed
the armed forces. To obtain these basic needs,
ration stamps were issued according to the size of
your family. Taking advantage of this small
opportunity, Molly applied to run a small produce
store out of her garage. Back then the feds allowed
a 15% spoilage rate. Even when there was not 15%
spoilage, she would take it. At the end of each day
she would close her makeshift store and allow
other mothers with large families to come into the
garage. She would lock the door and they would
divide the spoils of war.
Even before I was born, my father placed
boxing gloves over my bedroom door. When I was
4 or 5, he started to throw balls at me. I had no

2
idea what he was doing. He never realized that I
was a southpaw, and kept trying to make me a play
ball as if I was right handed. For all I know, if I'd
played right, I may have become the next Mickey
Mantle. This was not meant to be.
Upon realizing I would never be a boxer or
basketball player like him, he would go into
violent rages and beat me. Knowing that there was
no way to meet this problem head on, Molly asked
if she could babysit me every Saturday.
I loved our Saturdays together. Molly took me
shopping in Market Square, a small shopping
district in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. We
would shop for fresh meat and produce, staples
and bread. Upon arriving home she would cook,
and cook and cook... she would dramatically hold
up a green pepper and say to me, Oh VJ, this
pepper is a work of art! How can I bring myself to
cut this up?
I was so skinny that she would try to feed me
for eight hours each Saturday. She would put

3
honey in a double boiler and throw in tufts of
pastry dough, then pour out the cooked nuggets
and honey onto the cutting board. She would
explain, saying, look VJ, this is struvoli.
When I finally escaped my embattled home
life and went to school at Ohio State University, I
missed Molly the most. I would call her each
Saturday, and her voice was soothing in such
violent times. In the spring of 1970, all it took was
twenty eight seconds of gun fire – four dead and
ten wounded – to sound the end of Hope and the
sixties at Kent State. The campuses went up in
flames, and over 250 schools were closed.
It would take another five years until the war
was slowed down to the point that the US lost. In
April 1975, the world's mightiest military was
pushed out of a country the size of New Jersey.
Over 3.2 million Vietnamese had died in this
undeclared war.
For Molly it was another war that ended her
life. Her sons had formed a construction company,

4
V. Scotti and Sons. The new-found wealth of this
first generation Italian-American family tore them
limb from limb. There were divorces and
accusations of theft. The attempt to pass the
concrete construction business to the grandsons
failed.
They say Molly had a soft heart and that is
why she died in 1973, but I knew differently. It
was the obscenity of her sons fighting over money.
It broke her heart.
Months before she died, I called her and asked
her to share an old family secret. Molly, I asked,
how did you make your chicken soup broth clear?
She answered, well VJ, let me tell you: I strain
the broth through asbestos cheese cloth.
Well, I thought, we can’t all be perfect.

5
Uncle Joe Goes to the Circus.

Light years before the Pentagon was levitated,

or Timothy Leary was kicked out of Harvard for
proclaiming far and wide the benefits of LSD, or
the armies of the night thrust flowers into the
barrels of M-16s at the Pentagon, or the Black
Panthers initiated their breakfast program... way
before Abbie Hoffman ordered us to shoot our
parents or the Pieman took aim at the homo-
terrified orange juice queen Anita Bryant... before
the Yippies hatched the idea to throw dollars onto
the floor of the stock exchange or Vietnam
Veterans threw their Purple Hearts on to the steps

7
of Congress... before Martin Luther King went to
Memphis, Uncle Joe took us to the circus.
It was 1958 and after much booming, millions
of post-war babies were let loose onto the world.
Here in the USA, in Pittsburgh, the Scottis were
doing their part; they had conceived thirty-three
first cousins (including the Navarros, Della Gattis,
Zaccharos and the Della Vecchias) into this
blossoming Italian-American family.
With great expectation we sat in darkness on
dirty bleachers, with an offensive acidic smell in
the air. From the sky came a single beam of light
that landed on a little man with a big manual
megaphone to announce the night's activities.
Women and men flew through the air, human
cannon balls crossed the sky, elephants moved to
their knees and gave out an other worldly bellow,
tigers leapt through flaming hoops. A little car
screamed across the big top floor and crashed into
a pole and out of the cracked shell of the car
emerged a thousand clowns.

8
 When my father, Adolfo, returned from WWII,
he and his father Vincenzo were asked if they
could pour cement sidewalks. They were amused
by the question and answered in the affirmative.
Then father and son were asked if they could
construct all of the sidewalks in Mt. Lebanon
Township. What had been an unobtainable treasure
could now be gained by crisscrossing a sea of
suburban green lawns with concrete paths. That is
when the trouble began.
As the iced Cokes and pillows of cotton candy
were passed down the row to legions of squealing
boomers, my father bent way down and whispered
in my ear: Look at Uncle Joe. I looked over, his
body shaking with laughter, he was imitating one
of the clowns. He had a fist full of dollar bills,
which he passed out to us...
See Uncle Joe, my father said. He will never
amount to anything.
Do not be like Uncle Joe! Save your money
and make something of yourself!

9
 Epochs before the John and Yoko bed-in for
peace I realized who I was to be like, that I must
run away and join the circus and that I must never
never save my money. For Uncle Joe showed me
that money is only valuable when given away.
Uncle Joe died in 1984, outside the favor of his
nuclear family. At the time of his death, he was
volunteering his time teaching concrete
construction to convicts at Pennsylvania’s Western
Penitentiary.

10
1968: What Thirty-Five Cents Will Buy You.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out thirty-

five cents. I had a decision to make: should I buy a
pack of Larks? Buy lunch? Skip school and take a
trolley downtown? As I climbed aboard the South
Hills/Drake Line trolley the driver looked upon me
with suspicion. Why was I not in school?
Weeks before as we were sitting in class, we
watched curiously out the window as local police
arrested some college students for trespassing on
school property. We rushed to the edge of campus
to meet these intruders, college students, anti-war
activists, and were met with people just a few

11
years older than us. They were dressed in army
trench coats, with patches that seemed to mock the
military garb. They told us of a demonstration
against the war, calling for a ceasefire, a
moratorium. Behind the eyes of these Pitt students
was a wild desperation. I promised myself I would
go.
As I left the trolley for downtown I was
confronted with tens of thousands of suits, dresses
and construction workers. Soon I found out that a
moratorium against the war meant folk took the
day off of work to demand an end to the killing.
There was not a hippie in the crowd.
This was Pittsburgh and people, normal
people, were angry. Enough people had died.
Enough had been killed. The buttons of that day
screamed:
Out Now!

12
I Thought You Had the Handcuffs!

With Phillip Berrigan we planned various acts

of civil disobedience. The beauty of this type of
witness is that it pulls the opponents into a drama
that they have no interest in being part of. This is
an effective and faithful way to break up the false
consensus that surrounded the building of five
nuclear weapons a day, the US contribution to the
nuclear arms race.
As Phil spoke, we dutifully filled the keyholes
of a half a dozen handcuffs with hot wax, making
it virtually impossible for the police to unlock
them.

13
 Trying to appear normal as we entered the
White House tour provided the day’s only comic
relief. No matter how you dressed up these nuclear
resisters we just did not fit in. We tucked our hair
up under our hats, put on sports coats and dresses
and “blended in.” On cue we made a break with
the tour and sped across the White House lawn for
our goal post, the White House fence. This was not
part of the plan. The previous week a man had
been killed by the Secret Service for running
towards the White House swinging a pipe.
Federal marshals were chasing us across the
lawn and warned us that we should halt or they
would shoot. We ran forward even faster, as if we
could outrun even a speeding bullet.
Upon reaching the White House fence, we
stood there in disbelief that our support people
were nowhere in sight. Phil, upon hearing we were
running across the lawn, pushed people out of the
way to see if we were alive.
Finally, someone appeared and threw the

14
handcuffs over the fence. They fell a bit short of
their mark - the handcuffs landed at the feet of the
police. The police smiled and assumed the gig was
up. But somewhere deep inside of us, the anger of
being reminded of our mortality, and of our future
being taken from us, gave us the strength of
survival and, possessed by God’s will to preserve,
we wrestled the police to the ground and tore the
cuffs from their hands.
We snapped the handcuffs shut around the
White House fence.
Unknown to us, Jimmy Carter and concerned
congress people were watching this entire fiasco.
They were in the middle of a secret meeting,
plotting the demise of this unpopular weapon. The
international media moved in, shoving for a good
shoot of the unwanted White House guests.
Several hundred miles away Adolf Scotti, my
father, had sat down to his traditional Sunday
spaghetti dinner. As the spaghetti sauce dripped
onto his freshly pressed, starched white shirt, the

15
TV screen at the end of the table filled up with his
son’s face and long curls. He sat there in disbelief
as I shouted: Just as these chains are being cut, so
we must free ourselves from the chains that bind
us to this nuclear madness!
My father swung toward the TV and spat out:
And for this I sent him to Ohio State?

16
On the Road.

In the Hebrew Scriptures much is written

about Sabbath, meaning “rest of God.” Believers
in antiquity were even instructed to allow their
fields to lay fallow so they could be naturally
replenished. So too, with the human heart, one can
only witness so much suffering before they
themselves become unresponsive. After a fourth
person in my neighborhood of Manchester on
Pittsburgh’s North side died from gang violence,
those who support my hospice for the homeless
insisted that I take a sabbatical.
With much trepidation I handed the sanctuary

17
for the homeless over to another community. I
reduced my possessions to three boxes, including
my pastel art, videos of various peace actions, my
scrapbooks and manuscripts. A bit unnerved, I
released them to a friend, who periodically
assured me that they were safe under her bed. I
bought a three hundred dollar Dodge Aries, met a
young hipster named Blackwater to share
expenses, and we headed to points unknown.

The first stop was Chicago. I visited a friend,

who is a radical feminist visual artist. We made it
just in time for her art opening. Once there I was
overcome with this sinking feeling in my stomach
that my time on the road was a mistake. I was
surrounded by the most arrogant people, dipping
their strawberries in fresh whipped cream. Facing
the gang wars in Pittsburgh seemed more
advantageous.
Our next step: Boulder, Colorado. Here we
stayed with some Gothic Death Rockers. Even

18
these pale bohemians would have tested the
patience of Manny Theiner, Pittsburgh’s best
known music/culture revolutionary. How many
times can one listen to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead?”
Walls were painted black, and a cage was filled
with screeching exotic parrots, unnervingly
imitating the high-pitched shrill of a smoke
detector.
I was told that tonight the Zombie Tribe would
assemble for some home-grown entertainment. As
Lurch played the hurdy-gurdy out came a rendition
of belly dancing only to be matched by Laurel and
Hardy. Now I was absolutely convinced that I had
made a big mistake leaving my home town. Yet
Blackwater convinced me to push on to the West
Coast.
If one is to survive economically on the road
food is a big issue, so preached my back-to-the-
Earth guru and co-pilot. I was, literally, spoon-fed
millet day and night. Millet is a lot like the manna
that fell from Heaven and caused the Israelites to

19
go insane, to turn their backs on God and engage
in less than kosher feasts. Millet, millet, millet...
millet cereal with honey, millet patties, millet stew
with onions and spices. I am a vegan, but I could
see the pagan fires in the distant night, beckoning
me to infidelity.
No road movie is complete without an
encounter with the enemy of the road, the state
police. Just outside of Denver we were stopped by
a policeman who had a remarkable resemblance to
one of the corrections officers in Cool Hand Luke.
My mind raced, my heart pounded.
At the time, there was an active warrant out for
my failing to appear at a trial for blocking the
doors at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software
Engineering Institute (SEI) last August 6th,
Hiroshima Day. Would the computer reveal my
fugitive status?
But running my plate would have followed
linear thinking, and this situation would not yield
to that.

20
 In an unprecedented move the cop asked me to
come back to his car.
He asked, where are you going?
His knuckles had turned white from the the
crushing grip on his gun handle.
I would not answer.
Then he s pi t out , Why did you leave
Pittsburgh?
I obtained a glimpse of what Kennedy and
Khrushchev must have felt during the Cuban
Missile Crisis, face-to-face, staring eyes painfully
dry. So I blinked and mischievously told him the
truth. I told him about my need for time off, this
fall and winter national speaking tour, about the
fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. I told him of my plans to cross the
fence at Los Alamos National Labs in January
1995.
The state policeman ever so slowly removed
his sunglasses to reveal a fresh black eye. As if
speaking to an annoying dog, he simply

21
exclaimed: “Geeeet out!”
Twenty-six hundred miles and thirteen tanks of
gas later, we arrived at the West Coast. Out of the
car I stepped into Eugene, Oregon’s festive
Saturday farmer’s market. There my eyes met a
large, hairy man with dreads. His eyes revealed a
young man I’d not seen since the raging peace
marches in 1991 against the first US killing in
Iraq. We laughed at this serendipitous path
crossing.
He was now Hungry Bear, a hemp advocate.
He sat me down and told me of the West Coast
criminalization of the homeless and harassment of
colorful people. He led me to various people who
are fighting against this injustice.
So I traveled to San Francisco, LA, Seattle,
Portland, Sacramento and San Diego. I zig-zagged
up and down the coast in disbelief of the darkside
of paradise, all victims of America’s last cottage
industry, tourism. The unsightly were arrested for
sitting or sleeping in public. Riot police were

22
arresting people for running a restaurant without a
license (feeding the homeless). Monthly sweeps of
the city in which anyone not fitting into the social
landscape (anyone other than the hipwazee, in their
shorts and sunglasses) was arrested. This was an
ugly side of America, unseen in the conservative
east.
Contrasted with the West Coast's response to
the homeless, Pittsburgh seemed like the city
where you should wear flowers in your hair when
visiting. The previous winter members of the
city's police force, homeless advocates and the
media searched the streets, saving the lives of our
city's lesser members by finding people under
bridges, in parking lots, in alleys and taking them
indoors before the life-threatening blizzard hit.
While in Eugene, Oregon, some environmental
warriors invited me to drive nine hundred miles to
a march against logging in central Idaho. The
logging industry was clear-cutting hundreds of
acres of our last and largest wilderness areas, and I

23
wanted to see this first hand. They warned me of
the danger involved in a proposed march through
logging country, and then we dumpster-dove for a
load of not-so-perfect peaches.
My next stop was Dixie, Idaho, to join Earth
First!

24
The Children of Edward Abbey.

Edward Abbey was an American iconoclast.

Born in 1927 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, he has
been called the “Thoreau of the American West”
for his book Desert Solitaire (1968). He liked to
bait environmentalists, shooting guns into the air
and tossing the empty beer cans out of his truck as
he barreled down America's highways. “What the
hell?” he asked me once, before his death in 1989.
“The highways are much worse than the litter.”
His best known book, The Monkeywrench Gang,
was a send-up of all the aspects of the
environmental movement, and it was an early
inspiration for Earth First!

25
 In 1994 I left my shelter for the homeless,
Duncan and Porter House, to see the United States.
I had been living in Manchester, on Pittsburgh's
North Side, for a number of years, and I needed a
sabbatical. All the people killing each other in my
neighborhood, the Crips and the Bloods and the
drug deals gone bad were beginning to take its toll.
I went on the road for almost two years, ending
with my imprisonment for crossing the line at Los
Alamos in 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In doing so, I would face
“the Guns of Navarone,” the M-16s there, and I
wanted to make sure that I saw some of the world
before I was possibly killed. I traveled from
Pittsburgh to Denver, from Denver to Eugene,
from Eugene to Seattle, and finally back to Eugene
to live for a while with Hungry Bear, a hemp cook
and farmer, and an advocate for medical
marijuana. When the time came for me to leave
Eugene, I met a woman who asked me to drive
with her to Dixie, Idaho, where Earth First! was

26
fighting the loggers.
I said, well, isn't Dixie, Idaho a long way from
here?
No, she said, it's not that far. And it turned out
to be some nine hundred miles.
The philosophies of the various members of
Earth First! and myself were much different. On
one hand, these folk were picking up where we left
off in the sixties and seventies, after decades of
violence inflicted upon the Earth. On the other
hand, they seemed to be reacting to the activism of
the sixties and their parent's nonviolence. And a lot
of them were acting very macho, and talking like
thugs, and they were talking about blowing this up,
and getting guns for the revolution, and blowing
up dams and burning up condos and trashing
SUVs, and it was all very offensive to me.
From Dixie, we hiked seventy-five miles into
central Idaho. When we reached the forest that was
earmarked for destruction, I could see that the
anger of my friends was more than justified. We

27
lived outside and we ate outside in the most hostile
environment imaginable. Like the civil rights
movement in the sixties, the people living in this
area couldn't hide their contempt for us. One
would have to travel sixty miles for gasoline, forty
miles for supplies. There was a lot of hostility
directed at the environmentalists. People had been
shot at, people had been injured doing this. And
where they did the clear cutting, it looked like the
moon – there were no trees at all, and black flies
everywhere, biting us – and we realized that this is
what the lumber company wanted to do to the
entire region.
William Stringfellow, an Episcopal theologian,
once said that in the future – and of course, that
means now – “every relationship, whether between
nations, states or our relationship with ourselves
would be marked by violence.” The destruction of
another country through war, and the destruction
of the environment, the trees, which allow us to
breathe, all of this is being done just so people can

28
make money. This destruction seems to be
employed in every aspect of our lives. So I felt that
the sabotage, the monkeywrenching that was
happening was wrong. I felt, and I still feel, that
our action, and our activism, must come from a
place of love and respect, like Gandhi driving the
British out of India.
This led to some very long late-night
discussions.
And Gandhi, too, used to get in trouble for this.
He would stay up late at night, talking to the
violent anarchists. He enjoyed their company, and
he felt that their anger and passion were more in
line with his desire to see change than the passivity
of his religious friends.
It took us about twelve days to reach our
destination. When we arrived, almost immediately
we received word that we had won, that this
lumber company would be pulling out of the
forest. As we hiked, a lot of attention had come our
way: there were articles in the New York Times, the

29
lumber company was being sued, and all the
people who were clear cutting this forest couldn't
handle the controversy. That is the beauty of this
type of action: it draws the other side into a game
that they are incapable of playing. Here I was in
the forest with these people who had been talking
about the acts of sabotage that they had been “not
committing” for years, and we were employing the
nonviolent method of an open air march.
And we won.

30
The Brains Of Auschwitz.
Interview by Claire P. Rivlin in The Student
Union.

How long have you been an activist?

I have been engaging in some form of activism
since I was sixteen, in 1968, the Vietnam era. For
the last thirteen years I have attempted to speak
some truth to the powers about the nuclear arms
race, and I have been in and out of prison,
believing it's only by transgressing the law that we
can get to the heart of the injustice.

31
What do you know about Carnegie Mellon
University’s Software Engineering Institute?
How would you characterize it?
SEI is not some computer engineering firm. It
is central to enhancing every aspect of military
software and is central to the Department of
Defense. SEI is the brains of Auschwitz.

What do you mean, "the brains of Auschwitz?"

What I mean is that there were a lot of people
involved with the genocide of the Jews in Nazi
Germany who felt they were not responsible for
the hideous crimes because they were not
"directly" involved in the actual murders of
innocent people. But in fact everyone was guilty,
from citizens all the way up to those who turned
the valves releasing the gas and those who fired
the ovens. Nuclear holocaust is even worse
because it is not simply racial genocide, but the
killing of every living thing. So whether we pay
our federal taxes that enable our country to make

32
five nuclear weapons a day or work at SEI or
Pittsburgh’s Rockwell International (the third
largest military contractor in the United States), we
all stand before history as premeditated murderers.

What about the SEI statements that they are a

software research organization, simply doing
research to discover information which could
lead to anything?
Almost all of its funding comes from the
Department of Defense (DoD). Now if they aren't
doing anything for the DoD, why are they being
funded?

Well, they say the National Science Foundation

is unable to fund them.
I don't want a society organized like that. I
don't want the DoD enhancing software for a
trauma center at a hospital as they said they're
doing. That's the job of Health and Human
Services, the old HEW-Health, Education, and

33
Welfare. You're not going to tell me that the
military, the DoD and all the military brass, are
running in and out of SEI, that there is no type of
military value. That's not double-speak, it is
beyond double-speak. It is a lie.

So what's the solution, to burn down the

building to stop it from functioning?
The answer, I believe, is a very thoughtful,
very loving and systematic nonviolent disruption
of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and SEI. I
still believe that my ideas are not obtuse. Now
here's a problem. We are not Gandhi's Indians, we
are not Martin Luther King's blacks, we are not the
early union people, we are not even the protesters
of the Vietnam war. But the mere survival of
humanity depends on the white educated middle
class throwing off its selfishness, because in reality
we have no aggressor. We are not an occupied
country, we are not being racially discriminated
against, we are not being shut out of the

34
workplace; so it's dependent on us. That's why
some type of miracle has to happen. We have to
act on something beyond self-interest.

Do you feel that your attention-getting methods,

such as your vigils, have gotten through to the
CMU administration and/or SEI?
I have talked to people that work at SEI, to
professors and faculty, administrators and students,
and I feel that slowly but surely by developing
relationships with people here, that it will be a
combination of the general populous and the CMU
community that is going to bring about the
disarmament of CMU. We just have to do what's
right because it's right, not because it works.

Now you were fined for dumping 100 pounds of

ashes on the steps of SEI...
If we could go back a bit, it's been since
September first of last year that as a community
we have focused on SEI. And so, when we came to

35
campus a year ago, to leaflet, the police told us
that we would face arrest for trespassing on private
property. When I told them that we would stop
leafleting, they proceeded in asking me for ID.
When I refused ID, they said they were going to
arrest me.

And did they?

No. I produced some ID and was escorted off
campus. Since then, the campus policy has
changed. So, a year ago I came here and leafleted
every week, up until December 11th, which was
the grand opening of SEI: I knelt down in front of
the oncoming traffic that was going into the
parking lot of SEI, to pray for peace, and was
dragged around several times and then finally
arrested for obstructing traffic. I spent ten days in
jail for that.
The third act of civil disobedience was in
remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki day, once
again vigiling on the steps of SEI, sleeping there

36
overnight, trying to be thoughtful and mindful of
the future that has now become possible. On
August 9th, we dumped a hundred pounds of ashes
on the front steps of SEI in order to symbolize
what people were turned into at Nagasaki.
Now the symbolic aspect of it is very
important. A symbolic action is a lot like sign
language-if somebody can't hear you, then it would
be a disservice to speak to them as I am speaking
to you now. So you speak in sign language to a
society that doesn't hear, to a society that is deaf. I
think that it's a disservice to concentrate on the
normal methods of raising consciousness, because
raised consciousness is not a changed heart, it is
not a changed life. Somebody could be aware of an
injustice, but that has nothing to do with
interdicting that injustice, with engaging the
darkness. But if we go back to the dumping of the
ashes, I think it was a sign pointing towards a
deeper truth. I think we have forgotten how to
think, how to speak.

37
Have a lot of CMU students been supportive of
what you're trying to do?
I find people this year to be a lot more
responsive than I have ever found people, and that
gives me a lot of hope. It doesn't mean that
somehow there's going to be some type of massive
nonviolent confrontation against this injustice. But
at least the openness and the curiosity and the
willingness is there. So what I did was I had a sign
which said, "SEI WAR" and I leafleted and found
the students to be very, very, responsive, asking
when the next demonstration would be, and I was
really caught off guard. This new openness gives
us a better chance to speak to the travesty of a
university like CMU engaging in such destructive
activities as opposed to creative ones.

What about the argument, "Well, somebody's

got to do it?"
Yeah, someone has to destroy humanity. That's
just sick. If we're ever going to have love counter

38
this hate then we've got to speak some type of
truth...people are telling me about M&M's and the
moon and Johnny Carson, and the reality of the
matter is that we're twenty minutes away from our
own extinction and that we have to find a moral
equivalent to nuclear war. And hopefully, that will
be found through some nonviolent battle to purge
the evil from our society that has allowed our
culture not to even care about the extinction of its
own species. Even animals protect their young and
we are one step below that...we have not even
given the children of society the basic security and
right to have a future.

Anything else?
I think this year will be a significant year in
terms of expressing our hearts against the
darkness, those representing SEI. I am hopelessly
enthusiastic.

39
In a broader sense, what can people do about
this "darkness?"
I think that in the time we live in, people
should make time. And I think that they should
make time for the care of present victims of
nuclear war, for the poor and oppressed, the
homeless and the physically and mentally
disabled. That we should spend our time serving
and loving these people, and being their friends
and developing non-paternalistic answers so that
the poor are not the victims of our concern. And
that people should somehow creatively and
contemplatively confront the nuclear arms race,
live simply in community, that we should share the
majority of our money, time, and energy with
those who have none.
We need to move to the margins of society if
there is ever to be any world for those who have
not chosen the destruction of our society, if the
children are ever to have a future. We need to take
this very, very, seriously and yet not hold onto it so

40
much that we choke the truth out of it. We need to
leave a legacy for the future generations that some
people were not afraid.

41
Olympic Reflections.

It was late and my article about my trip to the

1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta was not
happening. Then the news broke about a pipe
bomb exploding at the Olympics during a free
concert, with Daddy Mac and the Heart Attacks.

Violence is so gray. Anonymous violence is

insidious, no preparation can absolutely prevent it.
There is no defense. No marching army can defeat
terrorism. Like the first Gulf War news reports, the

43
more we are told about the terror at the Olympics,
the less we know.
If only the late-breaking news response to this
act of terror was applied to the displacement of the
poor of Atlanta. Over 15,000 poor people were
forcibly removed to make way for the Olympic
games. To the disenfranchised people of Atlanta,
the Olympic chaos was like the aftermath of a war.
Never would the light of TV cameras report this
“Olympic defeat.”
Food Not Bombs held its Third International
Gathering in Atlanta to unmask the Olympic
games for what they really were, corporate greed
at the expense of the poor of the city. Food Not
Bombs has grown to over 130 autonomous
chapters throughout the world since it’s inception
in Boston in 1990. This anarchistic collective was
formed in direct response to the US war in Iraq.
Food Not Bombs employs public feedings of the
homeless as public commentary on the neglectful
violence of poverty and the waste of military

44
spending.
Olympic security forces being housed at
Morehouse College (ironically the alma mater of
Martin Luther King) had already demonstrated
their professional readiness by arresting 74 local
residents in the Morehouse College community the
week before the Olympic games started. With the
added urgency of this news, I planned my
Greyhound bus trip down south.
There is no fear like the venture into the South
for a northern activist. The accents are unnerving.
The journey conjures up images of Bull Connors
unleashing dogs and hoses on Civil Rights
protesters in the 60’s. The closer I got to Atlanta
the more my anxiety deepened. I kept seeing flash-
backs of “Deliverance” in my mind. I was weary,
tired from recent construction work and the mental
exhaustion that comes from living communally
with our homeless men. These men are elderly,
mentally sick, with one lovely, determined man
dying of AIDS. I slept all the way to Chattanooga,

45
Tennessee.
Leaving Duncan and Porter Hospitality House
for the Homeless made me feel a bit like a
representative of some obscure banana republic.
Six to nine million homeless are a small nation
within America — a nation without a homeland,
without a flag to burn, without borders to violate,
no history, forgotten — forever wandering. Its
citizens remain uninvited to the Games of
established nations.
Finally, my nineteen-hour journey was over
and I found myself asking a security guard,
dressed in an unmistakably brand new uniform,
directions to the city’s capitol building. For a
moment after the directions were politely given
there was a blank, hostile, lingering stare. He and
others were alerted to the impending protest.
It was nine blocks to the capitol building, a
brisk walk, welcome after sitting for so long. As I
approached the capitol I came upon a gathering
crowd, a mix of dirty punk rockers, Food Not

46
Bombs people and old African American Civil
Rights activists. This desperate remnant watched
as famed civil rights activist Hosea Williams put
an Olympic-style torch to the Georgia state flag.
The state flag has included the confederate state
flag in its design since 1956 in defiance of a court-
ordered integration.
T h r o u g h a b u l l h o r n t h i s e l d e r l y,
statesman/activist shouted, We are not burning the
Georgia state flag, but this enslaving Confederate
symbol. The nylon flag did not burn, but sort of
shriveled. I suggested that the next time they did
this it would help to apply a thin layer of sterno.
The Georgia state trooper standing by nervously
laughed. This was the first day of the Centennial
Olympic games.
I must admit that I am not comfortable with
protests that include burning: book burnings, cross
burnings. These seem to better reflect the
intolerant hate of our opponents.
It is now Sunday, July 28th. I call down to

47
Atlanta. Food Not Bombs is on their way to the
center city, an area called Five Points, to feed the
homeless another vegan meal. Part of their
nonviolence is to not use any animal products in
their meals, another expression of compassion for
all living creatures. People are anticipating arrests
for feeding in downtown Atlanta, because of new
security measures since the terrorist bombing at
the Olympics Saturday.
I saw a report in which Atlanta officials are
claiming that this year five times as much money
was spent on the homeless as in previous years. Of
course the City Fathers of Atlanta fail to tell the
world that Urban Redevelopment money intended
for urban renewal (read: removal) was used to tear
down a shelter and several businesses, to relocate
people from housing projects and to build Olympic
housing This new housing will be used after the
games to attract productive city dwellers. These
model citizens will be able to move into the
temporary Olympic shelters (now a glorified

48
efficiency) for a mere $85,000.
Since the explosion there have been 125 bomb
scares due to copycat psychos and fearful visitors
frightened by unidentified packages. Today
security forces at the White House were called to
investigate a suspicious package. They cleared the
area only to discover a little child’s discarded
lunch.
It seems that all we have holding us together in
America is our fear of each other.

49
Caitlin Is Born.

On June 4, 1998 at 6:49 PM my wife Rebecca

gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Caitlin Greer
Scotti Eirené was born 7 pounds 9 ounces.

After nine months Rebecca went into labor.

We called the midwife center and informed them
of our imminent arrival. Bored with timing
contractions we took a long ride in our 1979 Ford
Ranger pick up truck; this rough ride caused
Rebecca’s water to break. Finally this eyesore of a
work truck had earned its keep! Rebecca was
already packed, and I put a few pair of underwear,

51
socks, and t-shirts in a Giant Eagle blue bag and
soon we were at the urban zoo hospital.
We had chosen the contemporary room at the
midwife center, complete with an adult size
swimming pool/bath tub. Joseph and Mary never
had it so good.
As Rebecca employed every method of
encouraging birth, I dove into a thousand page
biography about Ché, the revolutionary from the
1960’s. As Rebecca paced the halls and listened to
the comforting words of the midwives, Ché was
landing in Cuba with Fidel, accompanied by a
handful of rag-tag revolutionaries, overthrowing
the Batista regime. As we breathed through
contractions, the U.S.-backed regime fell. As many
attempts were made to bring this pregnancy to
term, Dr. Guevara was making his historic
motorcycle ride through the mountains of Bolivia.
But alas, the best efforts seem to only prolong
the birth pangs. We held on to each other, waiting
for sleep that would never come, as Ché fought

52
with Fidel and his brother Raoul… the
“revolution” was reflecting the very state-ism,
reflecting the very system that they had fought so
hard to dismantle.
As the doctor dug his heel in and pulled her out
with forceps, our first and new daughter made her
appearance. The doctor commented on how alert
she was, hence her middle name “Greer,” which is
Celtic for alert.

53
Crime and Punishment.

I have sat down to write this several times but

given the atmosphere of hostility and apathy it
seemed pointless. After the brutal murder of 11-
year-old Scott Drake by Joseph Cornelius, a
Pittsburgh homeless man, I even found myself
cringing upon seeing the homeless. It was the
news that Pittsburgh’s Mayor Tom Murphy created
a commission in response to this inexcusable
murder that shook me from my fears. This was the
same Mayor who attempted to have a high school
youth group arrested for “enabling” the homeless
by feeding them on a cold winter Sunday morning

55
and distributing blankets downtown. He went on
record as stating, “let the homeless go to Mount
Lebanon if they want cared for.” Five years later,
the same Mayor approved the arrest of Food Not
Bombs members for distributing food in Market
Square. Tom Murphy has created and encouraged
this hostility toward the homeless and those who
would provide “aid and comfort.”
Neglect is violence. In Pittsburgh we have the
fourth poorest African-American community in the
country. It is not a harsh judgment to say that this
has not been mentioned from many, if any, pulpits.
The homeless have fallen out of favor with the
general public. This “issue” no longer inspires
people to action. People mistake panhandlers for
the homeless. After four years of being panhandled
on Forbes Avenue students of the University Of
Pittsburgh are drained of compassion. Neglect
moves to hostility as Scott Drake’s parents petition
the public to clear the streets of Pittsburgh’s North
Side of the unsightly forgotten. Members of the

56
media asked me to be silent for fear that our
homemade sanctuary for the homeless would be
shut down… or worse.
The moment has passed. Joseph and Scott have
fallen from the front page and therefore from the
short-term consciousness of Pittsburghers. It is no
longer news. So here is what I would have said if
the media had called: This tragedy is but a dress
rehearsal. You cannot cut millions off of welfare
and say it has had no effect… such a statement
shows the company you keep. We must open our
homes to the sick, the destitute, the criminal. If we
do not extend this hand of justice the forgotten will
visit us and it will not be to thank us.
I do not side with Joseph Cornelius, who will
surely face capital punishment for his crime. My
heart is with the parents of Scott Drake. If
retaliation would bring back his son I would be the
first to strike a blow. But revenge will not give the
peace the Drakes so desperately seek. After 23
years of caring for the homeless, I have never felt

57
more determined to bring the hidden to light. Let
us pray to God to show us a way out of this
endless spiral of crime and punishment.

58
Italian Toast, Margarine On the Side, Please.

When I need to think, I go to a little diner that

my brother Victor and I used to visit. As a rule, we
would go out no earlier than four a.m. Three
months ago, in August 2003, he took his own life.
As I make my way there after some late-night
shopping, I stop to get a Post-Gazette. The man at
the 7-Eleven informs me that even though it is
three a.m., Monday’s paper has not yet hit the
stand. I must have flashed a great sense of
disappointment because he proceeded to give me
Sunday’s paper for free. People are always giving
me stuff.

59
 As I settle into the diner for Italian toast and
coffee, I am offended by the spin on the war and
the cartoon-like announcement that Billy
Graham’s son is going into Iraq with all his
resources to help rebuild Iraq. It was reported that
more Iraqis have died during the aftermath of
“liberation” than during the war itself. There is no
clean water, no electricity and bombed-out
hospitals. Even the world’s oldest museum was
looted, almost a means of self-ethnic cleansing.
Where four religions claim that civilization started,
at the Tigris and Euphrates, the scene looks like St.
John’s vision of the end of the world.
The Marines have been informed their stay in
Iraq is indefinite.
Finally my Italian toast arrives; it smells like
the freshly baked loaf of Italian bread grandma
Molly used to make. I raise my tired eyes to the
waitress. Her eyes fly open and she takes a step
back.
After regaining her equilibrium she says,

60
you’re Victor’s brother. Then she stops herself,
pauses and disinterestedly asks if I want more
coffee. It seems that folk don’t want the
responsibility of remembering.
And the war goes on...

61
Winking At Fallujah.

As the journalistic delegation made its way to

Fallujah, a city north of Baghdad, the landscape
seemed to change. I was informed that we were in
Sunni country, an anti-American stronghold.
As we made our way to this complex of big
thick colorful pipes I was amazed at how such a
small water purifying station could supply water to
over 60,000 people. The Vietnam Veterans Against
The War financed its rehabilitation to the tune of
$22,000, and seeing this made the whole trip worth
it.
Whether the water treatment station was a

63
target of the last two wars or whether it fell into
disarray because of the US / UN sanctions does
not matter. The end result was the same; without
the station, there was no clean water. This was a
violation of the Stockholm Convention, a treaty
signed by the US which states that to destroy
facilities like this amounts to destroying a nation's
infrastructure, a violation of international law. This
atrocity is unimaginable to those of us in North
America, a city without clean, drinkable water, and
the disease and social upheaval that comes from
such a shortage.
But my moment of Zen at Fallujah was
interrupted... one driver excitedly suggested we
were in danger and that some Sunnis were
gathering across the street. I told him that it was
not true... in fact, I said, one of the Sunnis just
winked at you. He actually jumped backwards at
the suggestion!
As we rode up and down the highway with
Fallujah to our back, the other driver and

64
translator, Mahr, mockingly winked at him and we
all laughed hysterically.

65
Empty Playgrounds.

It is a sort of unwritten principle by radical

Catholic Workers that we need not go to war zones
to document the suffering. We can see plenty of
suffering in our own communities, with the
abandoned, those locked away in hospitals, and
with those given just enough by the government to
starve. Visiting, it is said, is not only a misled act
but wasteful. Perhaps that is how we lost the wars
in Latin America and South America: everyone
came back with his or her obligatory little slide
shows, a form of radical voyeurism, a poor
substitute for resistance. What was needed was to

67
disrupt and dismantle the war machine. To this
day, people suffer in Nicaragua, Honduras,
Guatemala, but the Left has moved on to other
issues, more fresh and relevant crusades.
After being to Iraq I feel that this principle,
that we should not venture forth from our
communities, is wrong. No photo, article, video
clip or audio interview could capture what I
perceived in Iraq, that which cannot be
electronically rendered. I had witnessed the utter
humiliation of the Iraqi people, the shame that they
could not stop their country from being destroyed.
They simply could not stop the lives of those
around them from being ruined.
We met a psychologist at the Artist Café in
Baghdad. As he talked, and talked, and talked, I
zoned out and allowed others to hold the
microphone. Upon reviewing his interview I heard
what he said but I was still too distracted by the
necessary insane pace we kept.
Weeks after arriving home I was watching my

68
children play in a playground. Suddenly, I went
into convulsive weeping. I remembered the words
of the shrink at the Artist Café, that he was seeking
funds to counter the “delayed stress syndrome” of
the Iraqi children. When Iraqi children were placed
in a room with toys they did not play with each
other. Fear of the future bombings have left
children terrified of the openness and vulnerability
of going to a playground.
My children are safe, but the children of Iraq
have been robbed of a future and of the simple
joys of childhood.

69
The Last Visit To My Father.

My family told me not to come but my

intuition whispered, go now.
I slipped my hand down to his and grasped it.
I stroked his gray hair. He winced in pain...but he
was relieved I was there. After having half his
cancerous vocal cords removed, he looked strong.
Except for the 24 years difference in age, we could
have been twins.
Even before I was born, my father put boxing
gloves above my bedroom door.
When I was young, my first memory of him
was seeing him laugh... as children we all loved to

71
laugh. Also I remembered my father would throw
all these balls at me, I was too small to understand
and would usually fall backwards trying to catch
them. As the years went by, Dad could not believe
the only thing I threw was a frisbee.
When I was eleven I was told it was time to go
to work. I would work construction every Saturday
and summers until I was 22.
We had a large extended family, with 32 first
cousins on one side. We were the baby boomers.
My father would come home from work, shower,
eat dinner and go off to build us a house, on land
purchased from some farmer. When we finally
moved in, the neighbors were horrified that these
wild Italians had arrived in this quiet suburban
neighborhood. The green lawns were filled with
children. After playing one day I came home and I
told my mom and dad some guys roughed me up
and said I worshiped Mary.
My parents stood silent then quietly cried; they
had hoped that Upper St. Clair would save me

72
from such base prejudice.
One night as we watched our black and white
TV, a bare-chested man with long bushy hair came
on with war paint and a big rifle and screamed,
shoot your parents!
My Dad said, don't you get any ideas... and we
laughed for a long time at our first encounter with
Abbie Hoffman.
My father would become angry as we watched
children being knocked to the ground while
protesting segregation in Birmingham. He would
sit silent as scenes of the war poured into our
living room, as we ate off our TV trays. To my
surprise he was enthusiastic when I told him I was
applying for conscientious objector status with the
Selective Service... I had wrongfully assumed he
was for the war.
Once during college I asked my Dad if he
could help get me some wheels so I could get
around at college. He said yes, and shipped me a
one-speed bike. I would come home from Ohio

73
state for the holidays and he would ask me to get
my hair cut. I never did.
Now the winking and blinking of various
machines connected to a tangle of tubes woke me
up; he had throat cancer. He had never smoked a
day in his life. Stubbornness and his strong body
would pull him through this.
I unclasped my hand and he pulled me back, so
I stayed for a long time...

74
From Pittsburgh To New Orleans.

The light from the fire was unable to pierce the

darkness around us. No matter where you sat, the
smoke drifted straight towards your eyes. My new-
found comrades were drinking what they called
“flood water booze." It was presented to me as
being a necessary ritual after a day of hurricane
clean-up. Yes, you could only find it searching
through abandoned homes, but what a prize!
People were thrusting these nameless mold- and
dirt-encrusted bottles in my face and offering me
their newly found stash. I do not drink, so I faked
it.

75
 There was a sense of peace in the midst of this
post-apocalyptic scenario, as people loaded pieces
of what used to be their homes on the fire. It was
very late when the party was over and it was time
to make it back to St. Mary of the Angels Primary
school, abandoned after Hurricane Katrina and the
scene of a dramatic rescue; and now our home
away from home. The school houses hundreds of
volunteers gutting area homes seven days a week.
As we slowly walked back, the "war-zone"
landscape became acute – metal and wood and dirt
in an upheaval, forming twisted sculptures. One of
my fellow volunteers, and a bona fide local, Eli,
was talking about the trouble he was having with
the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) as we passed through a never-ending
corridor of utterly destroyed houses. When we
finally arrived at St. Mary's, the only sound was
that of the diesel generators droning away,
bringing the barest of lighting to our base of
operations. The hallway was lit just enough for me

76
to find my way back to what was once a
classroom, and now a mass bedroom. I quietly
crawled into my bottom bunk, and quickly fell
asleep. This was my first night in what used to be
the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. I was a guest of
the Common Ground Collective.
I have been running the Second Mile Light
Hauling and Handyman Service or, should I say, it
has been running me. I perform odd jobs – moving
furniture, cleaning out basements and taking junk
to the dump. The work is hard, but being outside
and searching for the perfect vegan breakfast
makes it worthwhile. More importantly, being self-
employed is the springboard for freedom to act.
Since Hurricane Katrina, I have heard talk of
Malik Rahim, former Black Panther and Common
Grounds Collective co-founder. I want to meet him
and get the story of the collective's extensive relief
operation.

77
 This was my third trip to New Orleans. And in
just over two months, hurricane season would
descend upon the Gulf Coast once again.

78
Malik Rahim.

Throughout the hero-shy anarchist community,

the name of Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther,
has come up over and over again. My curiosity
was piqued, so I made my way to the Common
Ground Collective Relief Operations press
conference. We had arrived a bit early and were
dismayed at the lack of turnout from the press.
Nevertheless, up to the stage lumbered a large old
man with graying dreadlocks. I introduced myself
and asked if I could interview him after the press
conference.
He threw back his head and laughed and said,

79
why not now? As I set up my equipment we talked,
like old friends, having much in common from our
varied experiences from the Sixties. But more
importantly we were still active almost forty years
later. We’ve burned too many bridges. Selling out
is not an option.
Malik was original equipment, he was for real,
and as I realized this, I relaxed and a wonderful
conversation flowered amid the rubble.

Malik, talk to us about when you were young

and started to become active.
My activism started in 1962 or 63. I saw a very
courageous hero of mine, Reverend Avery
Alexander, sit at a counter in New Orleans City
Hall cafeteria. For that he was jerked off the
counter and dragged up two or three flights of
stairs to the mayor's office.
Then after they talked to the mayor about how
he had the nerve to go into the lunch counter, he
was dragged back down the stairs. The only reason

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why this was happening was because he was
black. At that time it truly opened my eyes to just
how blatant the racism was. I knew that I had to
make a choice, y'know. So my awareness basically
started then. My activism itself started in 1970
when I joined the Black Panther Party.

Tell us about the Black Panther chapter here.

The party was started here by a person named
Steve Green who came down under the direction
of Geronimo Pratt from Los Angeles to organize,
not necessarily a chapter, but to organize.
Steve came down with 300 papers, met two
brothers and from there they started selling the
papers and just going out and raising awareness. I
found out they were doing this maybe a month,
month and a half after they started. That's when we
started what was known as the NCCF: the National
Committee to Combat Fascism.

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There's a lot of talk about violence and
revolution, revolutionary violence and class war
– it goes on and on and I'm sure you're
surrounded by this talk.
I was part of it. I was entrenched in it as a
member of the Panther Party. We were armed and
we advocated self-defense.
One of the greatest, most profound events that
ever happened in my life took place when the
police came to raid our office and the community
surrounded our office. Men in public housing, in
the Deep South, surrounded our office and told the
police you will not raid this office. What they did
was an act of nonviolence, civil disobedience.
The police were trying to tell the people to get
out of the way, and I'm not talking about ten or
twenty or one hundred or two hundred. I'm talking
between two to three thousand people surrounding
our office to prevent the police getting in. I
thought a shootout was going to happen and I
figured they'll probably kill us and we'll get some

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of them. But it's not justice, you know, it might be
revenge but not justice. Every act of violence will
be just to the winners and unjust to those who were
being victimized.
There's no justice in it and without that there
can be no peace. I believe that everything I've been
doing in the 36 years I've been involved in the
struggle for peace and justice --it's all been a
glorious experience. I believe I've been blessed to
meet some of the greatest people that I would want
to meet in my lifetime.

Would you mind speaking a bit on the origins of

Common Ground?
Common Ground came out of Hurricane
Katrina. Scott Crow and I founded Common
Ground on September 5, 2005. So what you have
seen has happened since September 5. At the time,
at our kitchen table Sharon Johnson, my partner,
had thirty dollars and I had twenty, and with that
fifty dollars we started Common Ground. Then we

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started contacting activist people we knew on the
phone and over the Internet. I even called other
people to contact activist people I did not know.
Through that chain and the wonderful efforts of
Scott and Brandon Darby, we went from four
people to twenty. Then one day, I was walking my
dog and as I was coming home, I said to myself,
what in the world is going on? There were sixty
people standing on my porch.
Ever since then we have grown. Since
September 2005, we have had well over seven to
eight thousand volunteers. During spring break we
have had over 2,700 volunteers. They have gutted
out over three hundred and fifty houses that are
now ready to be rebuilt. It will take ten to twelve
years to rebuild New Orleans, but it must be
rebuilt, in every aspect, by the people of peace and
justice. We have done what the government refuses
to do and is not capable of doing.

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We have been shown around to the different
aspects of Common Ground and are amazed.
There is so much going on and it's a lot more
about justice than about disaster relief.
Disaster relief organizations basically deal with
natural or national disasters. But see this wasn't a
national or natural disaster – this was a national
tragedy. People came down because of the tragedy,
because of the injustice. We didn't make a call just
to those who believe in bringing relief. We made a
call to those who stood for peace and justice to
come down. Our advocacy is paramount.
I told you about what happened with Rev.
Avery Alexander. The only other time in my life I
saw such an event was in ‘63 or ’64, and then in
2005 when I saw African Americans being denied
access into another parish just because they were
African American and coming from New Orleans.
Nothing in my history prepared me for the fact that
here in a state of emergency, with people fleeing
for their lives, in America, that one section of

85
America would be denied access to another
population of Americans simply because they are
the wrong color.

It's obvious that rebuilding is going to take

more than a year of two. It's will take a long
time to wrench out of the system the injustice it
has done. It seems like there's going to be a lot
of work for a lot of years.
Oh yes, oh yes. The rebuilding of New Orleans
will probably take somewhere between ten or
twelve years. That's if New Orleans is ever rebuilt,
because the first thing we have to do is start
thinking smart. We need to stop thinking about
preserving or rebuilding levees. We need to start
restoring and preserving our wetlands. That's the
first thing we need to do. And we need to be
talking about really building a strong protection
system, one that works with nature rather than
trying to control nature. Then we can rebuild our
city --a great city, a progressive city, I believe one

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of the most progressive cities in the world. And I
believe we can. We have opportunities here, such
as the opportunity to break the shackles of our
fossil fuel dependency. We need to explore this
and encourage and implement. No other city has
these opportunities. We have the opportunity to
turn this big lemon into real lemonade... and I don't
believe we can do it unless the activist community,
those who truly stand for peace and justice,
wherever they are, come and do the work. And
that's what I see here.
During spring break more than 2,800 students
came from 200 universities, and from 8 countries.
I mean they came down, answered our call, and
they did a wonderful job. They gutted almost 300
homes. Then we did churches, businesses
including Kohlman's, and we're doing another one
further down the street. We operate three health
clinics, one has become a permanent health clinic.
All this has happened in seven months, and the
only reason why this great phenomenon has

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occurred is because of the greatness of the
American people. Not the government. I think we
have a rich government, a powerful government,
but I don't think we have a great government... but
I do know the greatness of the American people
and of those who really stand for peace and justice.
Years after I'm dead and gone, when people
think about what happened in New Orleans, they'll
always think about the courage and fortitude of
those who have made such sacrifices to come
down and help in the rebuilding of New Orleans.
We have done what the city refused to do, and I'm
not talking about the work. I'm talking about
bringing people together. For the first time in
history of this city you see whites in the Lower
Ninth Ward working side by side with African-
Americans, in many case whites working inside
the houses of African-Americans, to help people
get there lives back in order. Just think what that's
doing to the racism that's here. Seeing this in the
Deep South, I'm telling you this is not someplace

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else. During Slavery, half of the slaves who were
brought into this country came straight through
New Orleans. But now you see people coming and
trying to break the edifice we've built to separate
ourselves.
And it's done more for race relations and
offered hope. Our health clinic in Algiers, the first
one, started off as a first Aid station. Now we're a
fully accredited health facility. We're hoping that
one day that health clinic can blossom into a
solidarity hospital. We have offered new health
services in a community that has been absent of
health care for at least the 58 years I've been on
this earth. Now they have a permanent health
center – and we're doing it, no one but the activist
community.
When I say 'we', I don't mean just Common
Ground, I mean the activist community that is
down here, whether people are working for the
People's Hurricane Fund, SOS, or other
organizations. The great sacrifices they are making

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for peace and freedom can't be ignored. You can't
ignore the positive change.

Well, Malik, it was great to finally meet you.

Thank you for your time.
Thank you, man. Listen, it's the alternative
media that make the difference. There's always
been an alternative media in Louisiana, in
America. The reason slavery ended is because of
the alternative party. Workers' rights are due to the
alternative movement. There has always been
alternative media to expose the lies of the
mainstream and force them to tell the truth. So I
thank you.

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Community and Nonviolent Confrontation.

It was once said by lawyer/theologian, William

Stringfellow, that in our age, “every relationship
whether between nations, states, or our
relationship with ourselves would be marked by
violence.”
I live in a community that does hospitality for
the homeless. In the last months of 1993, on the
1300 block of Sheffield Street where I live, we
have seen unprecedented violence. Because of a
drug deal gone bad, a 14-year-old girl drew a
shotgun and killed her drug contact. Not even a
week later, a young man died in a drug overdose.

91
Recently there was a drive-by shooting less than a
block from my home, which severed the spine of
an 18-year-old man as he stood on the steps of a
church — all this witnessed by a busload of
elementary students. Countless times the
neighborhood drug task force has broken down
people’s doors, in the vain hope of finding drugs.
Within our home for the homeless we have
seen the fruit of years of neglect and abuse that
leaves men in their twenties with no hope for the
future. Vietnam veterans and people who are
physically or mentally ill, upon their arrival, look
as if physically beaten-up. This violence is the
result of being forced to call the streets one’s
home.
They say if an individual feels no remorse after
killing someone, that person is insane. Even
though we have experienced 3,000 dead in
Panama; well over 300,000 dead in Iraq; over
$200 billion spent for operations Just Cause,
Desert Storm, and Restore Hope; the military

92
intervention in Somalia; and the threats of air
strikes on Bosnia and a military restoration of
democracy in Haiti, the list of our enemies still
seems endless. After years of confronting the
military contracting done at Carnegie Mellon
University (CMU) and its Software Engineering
Institute (SEI), I was told that calling into question
the relationship between academia and the military
was an obscure approach to peace-making.
Documentation has confirmed ties between the
Computer Science department and Operation
Desert Storm. Adding insult to injury, CMU is now
peddling to research bomb damage assessment
done by its “intelligent” bombs.
Insanely, no remorse is felt! The tragic
injustice of such a slaughter transpired and
transpires at the very cradle of civilization, the
Tigris and Euphrates. This moral amnesia of a
blind society is indicative of a nation that refuses
to see the suffering that it has caused and continues
to inflict through sanctions that deny very basic

93
food and medical supplies to reach an estimated
750 children under the age of five dying every day
in Iraq.
Dan Berrigan, a Catholic priest and anti-war
activist, has stated that while the remnant of the
peace movement attempts to assess the damage
done to Iraq, it has avoided assessing the damage
done to our moral conscience that will allow the
next war to occur. With that thought in mind, I
would like to recognize four activities/attitudes
much needed by those people who try desperately
to be compassionate.
First, we need to build community and not
organizations. If, in fact, our times are marked by
violence and our relationships are broken, then
within our fragile relations, and within ourselves,
we must concentrate our energies to be a
community and not concern ourselves with the
logistics of building an organization. Once trust is
established, the necessary organizational structure
will follow. If we are going to capture peoples’

94
imagination, surely it is not to be through boring
routines of meetings, panel discussions, lectures,
demonstrations, and fund-raisers. There must be a
way to build community through creatively
confronting the system, the collective mirror of our
fracturedness.
This might at first appear as impractical
idealism. But one has only to attend these
repetitive activities to know these boring routines
only inspire pettiness and infighting among
groups. Perhaps we need to seek the counsel of
those in the arts, the visually oriented, and those in
literature, who can teach us about the imagination.
Perhaps it is in the context of these communities
that we can learn new ways of capturing people’s
imagination, which is so desperately needed, as
opposed to mastering Robert’s Rules of Order.
Secondly, we must bury our glorification of
violence and experiment with nonviolence to
confront the injustice of war. During the ‘60s I was
kept awake countless nights by people who talked

95
about violent revolution. One time Gandhi did say,
“It would be better to pick up a gun than to give
way to the cowardice of inactivity,” but of all the
hundreds of people I have worked with over the
years, not one of these “violent revolutionaries”
has ever picked up a gun against an oppressive
government or a police force. If you are
approached by people who express the necessity
for violent revolution while, ironically, employing
the tactics of nonviolent demonstrations, tell them
this story.
Once Malcolm X was confronted by the unjust
arrest of two young black men in Harlem in the
early ‘60s. He took with him fifty young black
men down to the police station. They asked for the
release of the two young men, much to the surprise
of the all-white police force. Emphatically, he
stated that they would not leave until these men
were released. He then stated that each member of
the group was willing to be arrested himself, if the
police did not meet their demands. There was

96
Malcolm X, the man who said, “By any means
necessary,” employing a nonviolent tactic to
confront the injustice of the Harlem police. This
was a man who at the end of his life refused to call
white people devils, and was murdered for this
unorthodox belief. Suffice it to say the two men
were freed.
There is enough hate in the universe. Those
who call themselves activists should not add to this
through empty violent words. The time for talking
is over. Action is needed. Are there fifty people
today willing to stand nonviolently in the way of
this oppressive nation before it kills again?
Thirdly, we must learn, we must struggle to be
with the people, the oppressed. Those deemed
useless by society must be our closest friends. Our
world-view must be completely developed by
seeing through their eyes. We don’t do this out of a
sense of paternalism or superiority, but out of a
sense of solidarity with those who have been
abandoned by this dying culture. Tangibly, this

97
means to move into areas of a city where the poor
reside, to travel to parts of the world where the
victims of our violence lie, ultimately to become a
refugee, an outlaw. Though we will never
experience what it is like to be a Salvadoran, a
Palestinian, a Vietnamese, an Iraqi, a Native
American, a Somali, a Bosnian, to have the daily
experience of guns shoved in our faces, to be
constantly reminded of the effect of the
“intelligence” of U.S. Bombs.
Because the oppression of the poor and the
victims of war is always legal, we must relinquish
our privilege, let no luxury be enjoyed until every
need is met. We leave behind forever all academic
activism that has us standing detached from the
harsh realities we claim to be confronting. Put
simply, we no longer call these people “homeless”
or “oppressed,” but we call them by name, for they
have become our closest friends.
Fourthly, and finally, a much-neglected aspect
of activism is healing. If we open our hearts to the

98
realities around us, our most natural response, and
I dare say most healthy, is despair. There is in fact
something to be depressed about. In our attempts
to fight this rotten system we will become
wounded. These uncharted waters must be
explored if our community and our activism are to
reflect any type of longevity in the face of
insurmountable odds. We must not give in to our
fears. Only love can drive out the fear that has
caused us to lack the courage it takes to confront
the system of hate. It would be collectively that we
discover the nonviolent miracle that will
overthrow this murderous empire.
My reflections are in the context of the
violence within our home for the homeless and on
my very block, and of the indiscriminate, senseless
murder of our nation’s international meddling
coming home. This is why nonviolent
confrontation is nothing less than courageous.

99
Pilgrimage to Los Alamos.

Conventional wisdom said that our collective

nuclear nightmare was history. The Berlin Wall
had come down, the Soviet Union’s economy had
collapsed, and so ended the nuclear arms race.
The year 1995 marked the 50th anniversary of the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I had spent the last two years on the road,
soaking in the beauty of America before facing the
guns of Los Alamos, the birth place of the atomic
bomb. Years ago in the New York Times I had
stumbled across the fact that Los Alamos National
Laboratory was the only place in the country that

101
assembled the plutonium triggers for both old and
new refurbished nuclear weapons. So I made the
decision to make a prayer pilgrimage to the labs
of Los Alamos as a way of marking the
commemoration of the unthinkable.

Los Alamos is located in northern New

Mexico, atop the Pajarito Plateau in the Jemez
Mountains. Almost one and a half miles above sea
level, the air is thin and the water boils at 200°F.
The flora of the high desert is unusually beautiful,
lending a metaphysical aspect to the landscape.
The beauty of the ride up the mountain road, the
steep walls of the mesa that houses the secret city
cannot be expressed in words. You see the sienna-
colored mountains, the gnarled junipers and the
wisp of clouds as you ascend the only road to
where the Navajo once lived, evidenced by the
Tewa Pueblo ruins – abandoned cliff dwellings
dating from about 1225 AD. You only have to look
east at sunset, to the Pajarito, and Sangre de Cristo,

102
to see why the mountains were once called "the
blood of Christ." Robert Oppenheimer, the father
of the nuclear bomb, had envisioned a laboratory
in a beautiful setting that could be an inspiration to
his scientists.
After witnessing the first nuclear explosion,
named Trinity, on July 16th, 1945, he famously
quoted the Bhagavad-Gita:

If the radiance of a thousands suns were to

burst at once into the sky That would be
like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am
become Death, The destroyer of Worlds.

Being in this violated paradise I could not help

but recall the old story of the Tower of Babel:

And they said one to another, Go to, let us

make brick, and burn them thoroughly.
And they had brick for stone, and slime had
they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us
build us a city and a tower, whose top may

103
 reach unto heaven; and let us make us a
name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the
face of the whole earth.

At sunrise on January 2, 1995, the first

working day of year, I made my way through the
driving snow to Area TA-55. As I approached the
entrance to the plutonium pit, the only sound was
the snow crunching beneath my feet. finally, I
came to the road that led to Hell's Kitchen. Once
upon the facility, I walked towards the line of
vehicles waiting to gain entrance for another day
of work. There were two sets of gates. The
vehicles were being locked in between them as
security searched beneath and around them. As the
next automobile entered, I slipped in and let the
door come down behind me. Then I knelt down to
pray for peace. Immediately, a female guard turned
around and asked me what I was doing.
Looking up through the driving snow, I
replied: I have come here to pray for peace. In a
professional manner, the guard cried out, oh, shit!

104
As if on cue, thirty-six guards appeared, lined up
and pointed their M-16s at me. And then we
waited. After a very long time the Los Alamos
police department arrived. They were visibly
frightened. From a safe distance, they slowly
asked me if I spoke English, deliberately
pronouncing each syllable: Do... you... speak...
English? Very carefully, I responded in this same
strange lilt: yes... I... do...
The female cop asked if I was wired with
explosives, pointing to the bulge under my army
coat. I assured her that it was only my stomach and
she laughed; Khrushchev blinked. The tension
melted away and I was cuffed, placed under arrest,
and taken to jail.
Because of my intrusion all hell had broken
loose. I was later to learn that I was the first person
to intentionally cross the line at the labs, that no
one present knew how to react. The fact that I was
able to enter the premises of this highly secured
area (one of the most secure places on the planet)

105
unmolested made my incursion a breach of biblical
proportions.
After hours spent at the police station (this was
before computerized background checks) I was
brought before Judge Elaine Morris. Given the
number of people in the courtroom police, security
personnel, federal agents and several unidentified
suits, the court room was tortuously quiet. I sat
there, smiling, not participating in the legal
proceedings. Finally the judge asked in quiet
frustration, why have you come to Los Alamos? I
replied, I got here as soon as I could! The
courtroom burst into nervous laughter and I was
taken to the local pokey with an entourage rivaling
that of a visiting dignitary. Refusing to pay the
thirty-five dollar fine, I began what would be
ninety-seven days of free room and board.
The local peace community was very
welcoming and supportive. Helen Caldicott, an
international anti-nuclear celebrity, went out of her
way to visit me during my incarceration. Letters

106
from all over the country started pouring in from
peace folk, and journalists from all over New
Mexico made their way up the mountain to meet
the intruder. The guards at the facility were
puzzled by this unprecedented period of activity.
They could not understand why I would choose to
remain.
Through the Catholic Worker grapevine,
Martin Sheen had heard that I was facing a lot of
jail time. He called and, surprisingly, the warden
gave me five minutes to talk. When Martin told me
that he wanted to help, I asked him to attend the
trial in April. He assured me that he would be
there.
At 4:00 AM on the morning of the trial, April
11, 1995, one of the guards woke me up, shouting:
= Martin Sheen is here... he flew in on a Lear Jet!
So the media circus began.

The courts forced a local lawyer on me, Dana

Kanter Grubesic, and we got along famously. I told

107
her that we were not going to present a legal
defense, but that we were going to have a lot of
fun. She laughed, saying that she liked my non-
legal strategy.
The court was tailored made for kangaroos.
Martin Sheen kept the focus of his testimony on
the continuing nuclear nightmare. High school and
college classes were brought in by their teachers,
there were lots of federal and nuclear security
officials and a gaggle of local peace people. The
entire jury of my "peers" consisted of Los Alamos
Labs employees. In a letter to the editor of the
Albuquerque Journal, a lab employee wrote that
the trial was a waste of public money. I replied in
my own published letter that the trial was not to be
missed, and would be well worth the price of
admission.
During the proceedings we were prevented
from addressing the work that was being done in
the labs, in the interest of national security. Martin
Sheen's Oscar-worthy performance, however, went

108
uninterrupted. Afterwards, the D.A. approached
him for his autograph. At one point during the trial
I was pulled into a room by the FBI. Is it your
intention to reveal the security procedures of the
lab? I was asked. Every one of them! was my
reply. We laughed a long time, and then I asked
them if they could send me home by train.
Upon being found guilty, the prosecution asked
for the maximum sentence of 364 days in jail and a
$1,000 fine, but the judge refused, saying that she
doubted that more jail time would do me any good.
I don't think that remorse is something we're going
to see here, she said at the sentencing. I don't think
that's even a factor. I have no doubt that you'll
soon be back doing these kinds of things. With an
admonition to never return to Los Alamos, I waved
to the bewildered feds as the train pulled away.

Conventional wisdom said that with the end of

the Cold War, so ended the nuclear nightmare.
What we didn't know was that in January, as I

109
began my third week in jail, the world had come
within minutes of nuclear war. In the middle of the
night, Russian radar detected a nuclear missile
launch from an American submarine heading
towards Moscow. Then-President Boris Yeltsin
activated the "nuclear briefcase," the first step
towards launching the country's some 2,000
nuclear weapons that remain pointed at the United
States. Luckily, before he could finalize his
decision, the misidentified Norwegian research
vessel (which the Russian military had been
warned of in advance), plunged safely into the sea
and World War III was once again avoided.

110