In custody

McGowan, Jo

OF SEVERAL JO MCGOWAN THE INAUGURAL SARAH SMITH CONFERENCE ON MORAL LEADERSHIP; IN CUSTODY When jailers resort to violence W hen my seventeen-year-old daughter first saw the photos of...

...Unlike their fellow citizens at home, though, these young recruits have been given a chance to do something about it...
...Catholic bishops' interim statement Catholics in Political Life, which was approved in a 183-6 vote at their June meeting...
...My Seabrook story doesn't end with the fingerprinting episode...
...The sexual nature of the abuse re-minded me of a scene twenty-five years ago when I was arrested at the construction site of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire...
...Since 9/11, a culture of intolerance in the United States has been systematically encouraged and sustained...
...One can only imagine what sort of things they must have been told in basic training, or how many half-truths they heard about Arab terrorists, how many twisted versions they were given of Iraqi plans to take over America...
...My friend was the picture of calm, however...
...Everyone knows it, but at least it is seen as criminal...
...My husband, who is brown-skinned and bearded, now refuses to travel to the United States—he has heard too many stories from similar-looking friends of the harassment encountered in American air-ports...
...I was in tears at that point, but worse was to come...
...Commonweal 7 July 16, 2004 fact is that it was almost inevitable...
...Koch, who is Jewish, says he once asked a Catholic law partner why O'Connor would not let prochoice Catholics speak at the cathedral and yet "he never hesitates to invite me...
...My jeans were ripped on the way down the bus stairs, and my arms got bruised...
...Of the 1,414 protesters arrested, a small number, my-self included, were noncooperators...
...That meant going limp when asked to leave the site, refusing to give our names or be fingerprinted, and fasting until re-leased from jail...
...to he annuurGnd roe raork IN1/O9ATION vigil The event begins with an evening reception and talk on Thursday the 16th...
...Yet if the bishops follow through on this passage, it could have significant consequences for the everyday inter-actions between Catholic organizations and elected officials...
...Al-though it does not figure in convention-al history books, war crimes, often against civilians and particularly targeted at women, are commonplace...
...You're invincibly ignorant and therefore you're excused," his partner explained...
...This interdisciplinary cunfcrcnco will draw an a wide variety of ficlde incIndiniEt theology...
...The beynolc speakers arc Baroness Onora O'Neill...
...And while condemnation of the reported torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners is almost universal, even in the United States, the S E P T E M B E R Good loaders strive to he trustworthy and to create_ institutional cultures anti str1 rot woo that Mister helot among Mien ,tab;eholdeis...
...The policeman who dragged me out of the bus had been up all night and was in no mood for extra effort...
...Training is everything...
...I'm grateful," Koch said, "but I don't understand...
...I never found out who he was, but I am willing to bet that he had loving parents who taught him from childhood all the true, right things: that everyone has feelings, that bullies are cowards, that you have to stand up for what you believe...
...A line of young National Guardsmen leaning against a wall watched me, exposed and humiliated, and laughed...
...Koch says the cardinal "roared with laughter" when he heard a phrase from moral theology textbooks applied to his friend, the mayor...
...Training is everything...
...It was a mild incident, certainly nothing close to torture...
...When they did in fact move toward me, something amazing happened...
...From the racial profiling of air travelers to the suspension of normal criminal-justice procedures for prisoners from the war in Afghanistan, every effort has been made to deny the humanity of anyone even vaguely considered a threat to American interests...
...After they had gotten my prints, I was dragged to another area to wait my turn to be hauled in front of a judge...
...Patrick's Day Parade...
...This is part of police and military training, and comes as no surprise...
...After he had bandaged the man who had been hit by the rock, examined those who had been sprayed with bits of glass, and sat down again beside me, I asked how he had stayed so calm...
...One policeman pulled me to stand in such a way that my T-shirt went up around my neck while the other one painfully rolled my fingers in the ink and pressed them onto the form...
...You learn to stay focused on what needs to be done...
...Imagine if I had been a street-smart black teenager...
...Trust is central to the luncbonin...
...That meant being separated from my support group for the entire arrest procedure...
...Part of being a surgeon...
...When we got to the National Guard armory where we were to be processed, everyone else filed off the bus nicely, except for me...
...So was I. The delight the American soldiers seemed to take in the humiliation of helpless men was disgraceful and depraved, as well as pathetic: while they evidently believed that this proved their power and might, it proved just the opposite—they were bullies and cowards...
...Paul Moses VINCIBLE IGNORANCE The bishops on prochoice politicians dward I. Koch, the former mayor of New York City, says he sometimes wondered how he had managed to have such a good relationship with the late Cardinal John O'Connor despite their opposing views on abortion rights...
...on (Germany...
...Outer speakers and work hop leadoff...
...Each time the group went forward, I was left behind, only to be dragged ahead by an increasingly irate police-man...
...He was not cruel, but he was not gentle, either...
...Principal of Newnham Colk:go of the Uniiyurrsity of Cambridge (En,glandi and author of A Question oI Tr nod Jiirgen Moltmann, bmerituic profcscor of systematic theolo y un the Protestant Faculty of the Univcirsi fy of Tulin...
...Koch told me that story when I asked him about a passage in the U.S...
...I refused to walk...
...He thought for a moment and said, "It's just training, I guess...
...War is another matter altogether...
...Before they had a chance to react, and in front of all his friends—the same ones who had been laughing minutes before—he scooped me up in his arms like a baby, carried me into the courtroom, and de-posited me gently into a chair...
...They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions...
...Because there were hundreds of us, we had to keep moving from one spot to another as we waited our turn in the line...
...This particular route went through an area where bandit attacks on trains and buses are not uncommon, and people re-acted with screams and panic, expecting worse to follow...
...philosophy, tinniness_ and politics...
...At the fingerprinting table to which I was next dragged, I again said I wouldn't cooperate...
...Koch basked in O'Connor's praise and friendly barbs when he sat in the front row at midnight Mass, and they greeted each other heartily on the steps of St...
...They have been part of the wide-scale indoctrination, the paranoia, the fear—just like everyone else...
...But it indicated the prevailing values of the police and the National Guardsmen and the inability of most people within the system to step outside of it and see a prisoner as a person...
...In this particular war, though, the rules governing acceptable behavior seem to have been crafted in the deepest recesses of hell...
...It's hard to imagine that the sort of public friendship Koch and O'Connor enjoyed could flourish if the bishops enforce this paragraph...
...A very young, very skinny National Guards-man darted across the room and reached me just seconds ahead of them...
...I was by now a wreck, trembling uncontrollably and terrified at the thought of those two policemen coming to get me again...
...Patrick's Cathedral during the St...
...Conquering armies the world over mark their territory through rape, looting, and burning...
...They even E Commonweal 8 July 16, 2004...
...It was my bad luck to be the first non-cooperator to be arrested, and the last person on a bus already filled with co-operators...
...These young men and women have heard about the enemies of the American way of life busy planning mass-destruction attacks on the country, who must be stopped before it is too late...
...His easy air of authority reassured those around him, and gradually the atmosphere became less frenzied...
...Midway through the journey, someone outside hurled a large rock through a window, shattering the glass and injuring several passengers...
...Because it was peace time, and because the prisoners at Seabrook were mostly white, middle-class, educated kids, the treatment I got was actually quite lenient...
...IN CUSTODY When jailers resort to violence W hen my seventeen-year-old daughter first saw the photos of tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners in the Times of India, she put the paper down and said, "I'm ashamed to be an American...
...The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles," the bishops wrote...
...When I refused to stand for my photograph, he called another officer for help and the two of them yanked me to my feet and slammed me against a wall, then pulled my hair to hold my head back for the photo...
...He stood up quietly and after instructing people to close their curtains so as not to present an easy target, he quickly surveyed the compartment to assess who was most badly injured and whom he should assist first...
...This paragraph has gotten relatively little attention because news accounts focused on the hot-button political topic of whether bishops can deny Communion to prochoice Catholic politicians...
...You take care of yourself now," he said fiercely...
...of alb ,hoes of life...
...Just training...
...A few months ago, I was traveling to Delhi by railway with a close friend who is a pediatric surgeon...
...As he turned to go, I saw that his eyes were full of tears...
...The soldiers who were sent to Iraq in the latest phase of the "war against terror" have lived in the United States since September 11 and, along with everyone else, have listened to the increasingly strident rants of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld about the need to "destroy" those who oppose the United States in Iraq and other parts of the world...

Vol. 131 • July 2004 • No. 13


 
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