CATHOLIC WORKERS ARE NOT CANNON FODDER
March 2023
I am not in sympathy with the violent destructive means.
"These acts are not ours." ~ Dorothy Day
Say No To War ... stop the violence within yourself.
Some people are attempting to rationalize and promote property destruction as a political tactic. They are having difficulty connecting cause and effect. People rarely play this tape all the way through to logical conclusions. Thus, in denial we remain chained by a violent idea and oblivious to real consequences. Good people, even innocent people, get hurt.
Who are these Catholic Workers who believe property destruction is not violent? This is how truth gets sacrificed to ideology. Silence anyone in your circle who is not sympathetic, ignore/suppress/spin inconvenient facts, without evidence undermine the integrity of the American courts and investigative press, invent an ahistorical morality where the ends justify the means, and go underground to hide tactical discussions. Here's the truth: reality is greater than ideas. So, I am going to talk about realities.
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Pope Francis, EVANGELII GAUDIUM - page 175
There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.
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I am appalled that young Catholic Workers are being caught up, willfully or unwittingly, in a web of violence. Both women I identify to illustrate this problem are victims of an idea that Jesus suffered and died to oppose. Property destruction is a violent means to acquire power, the antithesis of love, forgiveness, and mercy.
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In Matthew 23:1–3 Jesus begins by acknowledging that the scribes and Pharisees carry a certain level of legitimate authority. They sit, metaphorically speaking, on "the seat of Moses." Jesus does not tell the people to rebel against these leaders. Rather, He warns Israel not to imitate their hypocrisy. This begins a systematic 7-point take-down of their heart motives and spiritual blindness.
I recognize seven important things Jesus taught us about violence:
1. Jesus teaches us how to prevent violence and seal it off at its origins by his teaching on love of enemies. (Mt. 5:43-45) By refusing to see anyone as an allogenes, an alien or enemy, the violence that begins in the mind through the act of labeling is stopped before it can fester.
2. When violence does break out he teaches us how to use transforming initiatives, how to intervene with practical, creative nonviolent practices that stop the escalation of violence. (Mt. 5: 38-42).
3. He shows us how to attack and overcome the structural causes of violence and suffering through civil resistance--nonviolent direct action. Jesus modeled how to go after causalities, not just presenting symptoms. (Mark 3:1-6; Luke 13; John 14:27; Mark 11: 15-17).
4. He teaches and models a way to reconcile a community after it has been ripped apart by violence and division. He teaches a way to bring a community back together again by giving agency to the victim, making the guilty accountable and through sublime acts of forgiveness. (Mt. 18: 15-17, 20; Mt. 18:21; Luke 23:14).
5. He demonstrates how to defend the innocent with nonviolent action instead of violence. (John 8: 4-10).
6. He shows us how to construct a community and culture of nonviolence as an antithesis to political change through violence.
7. He shows us how to live a life of nonviolence to the full and to the end.
The purpose of this article is to explore the underlying causes of conflicts, in order to promote deeper understanding and contribute to their resolution by setting in place virtuous processes. It is a critique of violence as a tactic by pointing out alternatives to the escalation of shouting matches and verbal violence that lead people to acts of property destruction and physical harm of self and/or neighbor. The evidence is the fruits of the Spirit. This discussion is focused upon the principles of nonviolent responsible dissent rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, the lives of Saints and the love that is Jesus Christ. The truth will set us free.
In 2016, Catholic Worker Jessica Reznicek took direct action to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. In November 2016, Reznicek and fellow activist and Catholic Worker Ruby Montoya burned a section of the pipeline at a worksite outside of Newell Iowa, punching holes in coffee cans, filling them with motor oil, and placing them inside cabs of machinery after being lit. Reznicek and Montoya held a press conference in July 2017, in which they announced they had sabotaged the pipeline over a number of years. Between March and May 2017, Reznicek used oxyacetylene cutting torches and gasoline-soaked rags to damage or destroy other sections of the pipeline around Iowa and South Dakota. It is estimated that their actions cost $6 million in damage by stopping 30 million barrels of oil. She was indicted by a grand jury in 2019 on nine federal criminal charges, to include setting 11 fires that disabled construction materials and machinery along a new pipeline route. In 2017, she publicly took responsibility for her actions at a press conference. She expressed regret that she did not do more to try and stop the pipeline. Federal authorities defined her actions as “terrorism”: a tag that could have nearly tripled the sentence to 35 years. In 2021 she accepted a sentencing deal where she pled guilty to a single count of “Conspiracy to Damage an Energy Facility.” On June 29, 2021, Jessica was sentenced to eight years in federal prison and ordered to pay $3.2 million in restitution. On August 11, 2021 she was incarcerated in Wauseca Federal Correctional Institute. In 2022 an appeals court upheld her conviction and continued to describe her as a “domestic terrorist.” I asked a few Iowa Catholic Workers, “Did you know before Jessica was arrested that she was destroying commercial properties?” They declined to comment.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16275693/united-states-v-reznicek/
Catholic Worker Maggie June Gates is charged with domestic terrorism. If convicted she faces up to 35 years in prison and may be liable for property damages. She is only 25 years old!
The Atlanta police are building a training center on land that formerly housed a prison. Some say it's about 40 acres of a 300-acre pocket of trees that will be clear cut. There are sustainable means to clear cut sections of forests. Ten percent of mature forests are clear cut and restored every year for the health of the environment. Wood products are less carbon intensive than alternative building materials. It's not a convincing argument, such a small number of trees to be clear cut for construction, certainly nothing to die for. The root of contempt is the accumulating evidence that some police use unnecessary force, resulting in deaths particularly among black men and women. The new police training facility will be located near a black neighborhood. They are asking the police to stop the violence.
Maggie maintains she was an innocent bystander arrested at a Cop City promotional concert held a mile from Cop City protests a day following conclusion of the three day eviction riot. The outcry among protestors to concert arrests is "police brutality" and excessive charges.
Some protestors stockpiled pyrotechnics and gas masks prior to execution of eviction notice. The organizers of Cop City protest claim the violent were people from out of state, absolving themselves of organizing responsibility during the three days of violence. It is reported that most protestors were from Atlanta and were peaceful.
The American Civil Liberties Union claims information contained in the arrest warrants indicate many of the people charged with domestic terrorism are accused only of trespassing or other minor crimes. Preliminary reporting suggests that nine of the 22 defendants charged with domestic terrorism would otherwise be charged with nothing more than misdemeanor trespass. Further, the ACLU argues the charges rely on speculative guilt by association. Instead of alleging a specific incident, the arrest warrants list crimes allegedly committed by members of the Defend the Atlanta Forest, and rely on circumstantial evidence, such as wearing a gas mask and sleeping in a hammock with another defendant. The decision to charge domestic terrorism on the basis of speculative guilt by association raises concerns surrounding First Amendment associative rights. The ACLU argues these charges dovetail with a broader attempt to smear protesters as national security threats.
According to police, Gates was identified as part of a group that threw “large rocks, bricks, and Molotov cocktails and fired commercial grade fireworks” at police officers. Three days of property destruction and physical violence erupted following a police court order to evict the protesters. Over this three-day eviction period, a handful of protestors set fire to trees, construction equipment, and a police car.
Environmental activist Manuel Teran was shot 13 times by a number of policemen. According to police, Paez shot and injured a state trooper with a handgun first. However, Georgia’s bureau of investigation – or GBI – has said the shooting was not captured on body camera. A second autopsy may indicate that he was in a sitting position with hands raised. The City of Atlanta released videos in which an officer suggests the trooper may have been injured by friendly fire. At present, we do not have enough information to be accusing anyone.
The police subsequently arrested 25 people and charged 22 of those with domestic terrorism, who they claim were already accused of violence in connection with the training site protests. The police claim to have video evidence that identifies the perpetrators of violence.
Video Footage
ACLU Letter
The burden of proof is on the State. If Maggie is guilty as charged or innocent, this will hopefully be revealed in a court of law and in the investigative press. Police are not denying the right to lawfully gather and protest. They have a right to enforse a court ordered eviction. Property destruction and attacking police officers with deadly forse are serious crimes. It is not unusual for prosecutors to throw the book, then offer a plea deal to lesser charges. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty and have a right to their day in court. Supporters are organizing a legal defense fund for Maggie with a whitewashed version of events. The Dayton Catholic Worker Movement pledges $100 dollars. I hope Maggie will be exonerated.
freemaggie | Twitter, Instagram | Linktree
At present, all I can reasonably conclude is that violence begets violence, people get hurt and somebody is not telling the truth. Both young women are either willful or unwitting victims of those who advocate property destruction as a political tactic.
45 states have considered anti-protest bills to severely punish political violence and over 20 have enacted them. From D.C. insurrection to Portland Black Lives Matter fires (93% of BLM protests were nonviolent), there is little public appetite for violent public demonstrations. The US Crisis Monitor — a joint project between ACLED and the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University — collects real-time data on these trends in order to provide timely analysis and resources to support civil society efforts to track, prevent, and mitigate the risk of political violence in America. Peaceful protests are reported in over 2,400 distinct locations around the country. Violent demonstrations, meanwhile, have occurred in about 220 locations. The sad thing is, both the Dakota Access Pipeline and Cop City protesters had the sympathies of very many North Dakota, Iowa, and Atlanta citizens, until the protests became violent.
Within the last five years I produced 26 documentaries and live stream events on climate change, mitigation, and remediation – focused through the lens of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si. It’s a very complex process, requiring global cooperation. I cover advances in theology, science, industries, and environmental law. I provide favorable coverage to several grassroots Catholic climate movements on five continents, to include the Laudato Si Movement, Franciscan Faith and Environmental Movement, Pax Christi International's Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, Global Sisters Report, Catholic Climate Covenant, 196 Catholic universities, the United Nations, USCCB and the Vatican Dicastery for Peace and Social Justice. There are a great many people working peacefully to help change course. And as a Catholic Worker, I stand in solidarity with peaceful community protests, constructive intergovernmental collaborations, multidisciplinary private sector efforts to create the circular economy and institutions of higher education on the cutting edges of science, technologies and faith.
I cannot help but choke on the bile of hatred that is property destruction. This behavior sets back the efforts of all people of good will. These episodes beg the question: where are the fruits of the Spirit? What does violence as a tactic have to do with the Sermon on the Mount? Why is a person who self-identifies as a Catholic Worker associated with any partisan political faction that mismanages, condones or aggrevates acts of violence?
From the Christian point of view, disarmament occurs when people lay down their weapons, not when their weapons are taken from them. That only moves belligerents to procure more and better weapons if they can. When activists destroy weapons, do they effect any conversion or change of heart in their opponents? Do they lead any to lay down their arms? Are such actions what we need? Jesus was nonviolent. Period. A nonviolent army has no cannon fodder.
I am appalled that our youth are being caught up in a web of violence. This is not the Catholic Worker aims and means. The problem, as I and very many Catholic Workers see it, is mission creep ... an intellectually and spiritually bankrupt radicalization of the Catholic Worker Movement that diverges from the Sermon on the Mount, which underlies the principles of nonviolent responsible dissent as delineated by Tom Cornell, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Ghandi and many other prominent theorists of peaceful civil disobedience. Responsible nonviolent dissent is not a tactic.
Property destruction is not a nonviolent responsible means to dissent. Carry a sign, cross a line, chain yourself to construction equipment, or simply pray on site; but do so with a peaceful loving heart. We have to trust God. It is a goal of some Catholic Workers to get arrested while engaged in peaceful nonviolent responsible dissent. In a court of law they accept responsibility for their civil disobedience and speak their truth to power by arguing a conscientious objection to participating in evil. They do their best to attract press attention at an emotional level, hoping to influence the soul of citizens. It is a “captious”art, inasmuch as it grasps people’s attention by appealing to stereotypes and common social prejudices, and exploiting instantaneous emotions like anxiety, contempt, anger and frustration. They are rarely the people knowledgeable and skilled to engage in constructive dialog with opponents. They spend days in jail for their performance art and pay fines to stand in solidarity with the poor who are harmed by injustice. Incarceration can be a spiritual practice, an exercise in humility. I have deep admiration for those who, following in the footsteps of Jesus, make this peaceful nonviolent responsible sacrifice of self to prophetically announce: "stop the violence within yourself." However, the theatrics get serious and morally questionable when protesters destroy property and/or deliberately attack opponents by violent means. This violent behavior has happened in Catholic Worker history and has always been condemned by level heads within Catholic Worker Movement leadership.
Both Dorothy Day and Father Daniel Berrigan are interesting character studies. Both move through stages of intellectual and moral development. Most people are marked by an early phase of unthinking conformity. Both find their minds opened by suffering. One moves through a philosophical phase of skepticism, akin to Socratic questioning rather than a cynicism rooted in relativism, which leads her to God. The other thinks in terms of violent political revolution; his iconoclasm also stems from a Christian conviction but sweeps away the nonviolent Jesus with a relativist argument to justify degrees of sin. He sees the world as radically inhuman and must be defeated in battle, imagining himself the creator of an autonomous spiritual world. The other starts with the objective order, recognizes above herself a higher power and joyfully works as a humble apprentice under God’s heaven, accepting that it was not she who created the world and that there can be no doubts about its foundations. Positive characters are drawn instinctively to this while negative characters suppress it in themselves and wish to destroy it in others. One accepts responsibility for nonviolent civil disobedience. The other destroys property and goes into hiding. Both mature throughout time and eventually stop the violence within themselves by eliminating fear. Fear and faith cannot coexist peacefully in the same heart. The paradoxical presence of authentically humane instincts in the ideologically fixated is precisely what makes them an interesting, often appealing figure.
Do the ends justify violent means? If we are to live in a state of fear, how can we be human? What does it mean to be a human being? Dorothy loved the Orthodox Russian writers. Realizing full humanity requires not only moral behavior but also the construction of a worldview supportive of such behavior, a comprehensive philosophy of life that considers the eternal questions of human nature, the nature of the universe and the source of all meaning. Dorothy breaks from her youthful Marxism. She now denies that justice is class based, now asserting that justice is the foundation of the universe and human beings are born with a sense of justice in our souls. Thus, she begins to believe that an objective moral order is built into our universe and there is an absolute distinction between justice and injustice, good and evil. This change of mind prepares her to go to the people, not with Marxist revolutionary shibboleths in mind but in the spirit of the longstanding Russian idea that the folk wisdom of the peasantry provides a reliable moral compass. She is drawn to God by a humble itinerate French Christian Brothers trained philosopher of Catholic Social Teaching, which provides a welcome contrast to the “how to acquire power” political philosophizing of her intellectual friends.
Dorothy defines the Catholic Worker means to be rooted in personalism (her and Peter's definition of Christian anarchism) manifest in acts of nonviolence, manual labor, the works of mercy and voluntary poverty. The aim of the Catholic Worker movement is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. Our sources are the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as handed down in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, with our inspiration coming from the lives of the saints. We must be prepared to accept seeming failure with these aims, for sacrifice and suffering are part of the Christian life. Success, as the world determines it, is not the final criterion for judgements. The most important thing is the love of Jesus Christ and how to live His truth.
Tom Cornell wrote firsthand: "Dorothy Day, the radical pacifist founder of the Catholic Worker, while not criticizing the Berrigans' publicly for destroying draft files, remarked pointedly: "These acts are not ours.” She repeated this position throughout the years. Property damage, in her view, was not part of the nonviolent arsenal. The Catholic Worker newspaper remained largely silent about the Catonsville action and the trial that followed, despite widespread coverage in the mainstream media. (An article in June 1968 was the lone exception.) And in the four decades that followed, Dorothy published virtually nothing on the Berrigans and the Plowshares movement that, in 1980, they would help launch. Then The NYC Catholic Worker newspaper gave over an entire issue to Dan Berrigan on his death." She remained friends with the Berrigans.
These acts may not be ours, but many of the people are, and so many of them so transparently genuine, loving people who are being led down the primrose path by a radicalization of the Gospels that fantasizes property destruction as a defiant political tactic ordained by God. Jesus provides no moral justification for violence as a tactic. Pope Francis scrapped Just War Theory. He declared on March 18, 2022, “... war is always – always! – the defeat of humanity, always." Regarding the ethics of war, Pope Francis stated the following:
"There was a time, even in our Churches, when people spoke of a holy war or a just war. Today we cannot speak in this manner. A Christian awareness of the importance of peace has developed. Wars are always unjust since it is the people of God who pay. Our hearts cannot but weep before the children and women killed, along with all the victims of war. War is never the way."
Invariably, someone will counter that Jesus overturned carts. They are asserting that Christians have to make Jesus like ourselves; angry and violent. There is nothing in the reading of these four gospel accounts that says Jesus was violent in his actions. No matter what Jesus did, no matter what He said, His character and conviction did not change. Jesus was still Jesus. Still acting and teaching the same message He had been teaching since the start of His ministry. And that was a message that included non-violence.
John includes some details that are not included in the Synoptic Gospels, such as Jesus making a whip and then drove out the animals. There is no mention of Jesus using it to drive out people. If you think that is an example of Jesus being violent to animals, ask any farmer what they use to get animals moving when they are comfortable where they are. Also, note what Jesus does to the doves. He doesn’t set them free to fly away. Jesus is still respecting the fact that these animals belong to someone. He tells the dove owners to get them out of the Temple.
If we want to start attaching attributes and attitudes to Jesus in this situation, try this: authority and power. When you are in your house, you don’t need to use violence. In your house, you have power and authority. This nonviolent protest in the house of his Father triggers his last act of mercy and forgiveness, the passion of Christ. Jesus does not attempt to defeat opponents by destroying their property. He tells Peter at his arrest in the garden at Gethsemane to put down his sword. In a total surrender of self to the Father, He takes it upon himself to forgive the sins of the world. There ain't no resurrection without that walk up Calvary.
Dorothy Day famously put this in perspective. “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?” It's a simple spiritual principle. Say No To War ... stop the violence within yourself.
"The basis of Christian nonviolence is the same premise that underlies all of the Church’s social teaching: that every man, woman, and child is created in the image and likeness of God ..." Thus Pope John XXIII, in his 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris, grounded his hope for peace in human rights. But how to establish and protect human rights? ... "Si vis pacem, para pacem – if you desire peace, prepare for peace...
... In struggle, the nonviolent activist does not seek victory but reconciliation, the redemption of opponents, never their humiliation much less their annihilation. Therefore, the nonviolent activist always allows the opponent a way to retreat with dignity, an honorable way out of any conflict. The principal weapon of nonviolence is dialogue. Genuine dialogue assumes the good faith of partners and avoids invidious language and ad hominem argument. Dialogue may be suspended at an impasse, but resumption is always a goal. The nonviolent armory includes protest, public dissent, noncooperation, and active resistance, but always with the purpose of re-establishing dialogue. Civil disobedience is the last weapon to be used, not the first, and should be undertaken after careful discernment under spiritual direction ... Christian nonviolence is a way of life, not a tactic.
Often adopting nonviolence is part of a conversion process ... "
~ Tom Cornell
https://www.lacatholicworker.org/2017/12/22/christian-nonviolence-theory-and-practice/
- co-edited from A Penny a Copy, an anthology of writings from The Catholic Worker by Tom Cornell, Jim Forest and Robert Ellsberg