Kathy Kelly in Iraq 2003
Photo by Lorna Tychostup
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Kathy Kelly is a long-time activist and teacher. She was instrumental in launching Voice in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the United Nations / United States sanctions against Iraq. She also helped initiate the Iraq Peace team. In October 2002, Kelly joined the team in Baghdad. She was present when the U.S. launched their invasion in March 2003.
Kelly has been a Nobel Peace Prize nominee on three occasions. She has taught at Chicago-area community colleges and highschools since 1974. Active in the Catholic Worker movement, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including: The Dan Berrigan Award from De Paul University, the office of the Americas Peace and Justice Award, and the Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Award.
On November 23, Kelly attended the School of the Americas protest at Fort Benning, Georgia. The school trains Latin American soldiers in counter-insurgency, infantry tactics and commando operations. It has been cited for committing war crimes, including the murders of four Church women in El Salvador (two of whom were Maryknoll sisters). Kelly was arrested with other activists when she entered the army base. I spoke with her in Chicago a few days after she was released on bail.
Gerry McCarthy: Do you think there is any possibility the U.S. Army School of Americas, now called the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security and Co-operation (WHISC), will be closed within the next two years? I understand 100 U.S. Congressional Representatives have signed on to a petition asking for this to happen.
Kathy Kelly: In the past there was effective lobbying work done. In the sense that many elected representatives were sensitive to the clamor for closing down the school. But a small handful of lobbyists have an extraordinary influence over elected representatives (although these defense lobbyists make up the largest lobby on Capitol Hill). These representatives are intimidated and fearful about disobeying the desires of people who contribute huge amounts of money to their campaigns. Defense lobbyists wield a great deal of influence over how various bills and perks are going to be distributed.
GM: So is there any hope we might see the school closed soon?
KK: The thing to concentrate on is that every year at Fort Benning many thousands of people (including thousands of young people) have the experience of coming together for an extremely well-organized and non-violent protest that includes the risk of civil disobedience and occasions a great deal of teaching. It gives people an ever-growing sense of solidarity and introduces young people to the kind of non-violence that I'd like to see growing in the country. It's a wonderful teaching tool. It doesn't diminish the horrors inflicted on other people in other countries by people who've been trained at WHISC. These people are going back into their countries and using tactics far worse than what we experienced during the processing on Sunday (after our arrest). On the other hand, the protests are a great gain that's been accomplished through means that are completely consistent with non-violent theory and development.
GM: Can you talk to me about what you experienced after you were arrested at the WHISC protest in Fort Benning on November 23?
KK: We were arrested and brought to a big warehouse where there were stations set-up for processing. The first station was for searching us. It seemed like an airport search. I did as I was told. First, I stretched my arms out and spread my legs apart. I hadn't spread them widely enough apart, and a young woman really barked at me saying: "Put your legs further apart." Another one was telling me: "Look straight ahead." Then I turned my head toward the women who had screamed at me to ask her what I had done to make her scream. At that point both of them were screaming.
As orders were screamed and the search began --it was a woman searching me-- things became very aggressive. I was told to lift one leg and I almost lost my balance. At that point I thought: Why am I co-operating with this? After another minute of this very aggressive poking and jabbing I thought: I can't in conscience co-operate with this. It's dehumanizing. I lowered
myself and put my arms to the side and said: "I'm sorry I'm not able to co-operate with this any longer." Then within seconds I was on the floor. I have a black eye now from being thrust downward. There were five military people squatting on the floor. One woman referred to me as "this f---ker."
Then my legs were bent up so my ankles and hands --which were cuffed-- were bound together (they call this "hog-tied"). One soldier's knee was on my chest. He leaned on me so heavily I couldn't breathe. That's how I received the pulled muscle (or it might be a fractured rib). I started to moan: "I can't breathe." Nothing was happening. Eventually I became pretty nervous, because I couldn't get a full breath and it hurt quite a bit. Again I said: "Somebody please help me I can't breathe." Then I finally managed to say; "I've had four lung collapses before." At that point the soldier leaning on me eased up. Then I was carried --face and belly down-- by four soldiers to the next processing station for interrogation. I was propped up in a kneeling position still bound. At this point I politely answered questions.
There was one soldier standing to my left who said to me: "Ma'am I'm going to have to move your hair from in front of your face so your picture can be taken." And I said: "Yes I'd be grateful for that." He kept his right hand on my left shoulder, and he did this in a reassuring way. He said: "Don't worry those cuffs are tight, but soon they'll be cut off." And they were very tight.
At the next station one of the soldiers --who was part of the assault-- knelt down next to me and said that, because I was so combative, if I didn't follow every order as issued (so they could un-cuff one hand and fingerprint me) he would use pepper spray on me.
Then they fingerprinted me and carried me to the next station. At this point, I was unbound and they placed the wrist and ankle shackles on me. From then on I was treated like the rest of the prisoners.
Upon reflection, I think it's important that I had a glimpse into the kind of tactics used for crowd control --and intended to intimidate. I wonder why these tactics were used against people who posed absolutely no threat of being uncontrollable. In 13 years of protest at Fort Benning there's never been a disruption of the arrest and incarceration process at the U.S. Army's School of Americas at Fort Benning. I think under Homeland Security funds are being directed to train military and police groups in methods of crowd control. They are practiced by the military police to inflict very serious intimidation on civilians. This is what we're paying for with Homeland Security. And I don't think we should feel more secure by any means.
GM: A United Nations food agency says hunger is on the rise again around the world. Some 842 million people --the majority in Africa and Asia-- go to bed hungry every night. What are some of the things Western nations could be doing to address this problem more?
KK: The five veto-bearing members of the United Nations Security Council currently control 85 percent of weapons sales in the world. Huge amounts of desperately needed resources are being directed to buying more and more weapons while ignoring the needs of people who --as they face starvation and death-- are likely to become aggressive in trying to meet their most basic needs. It's an incredibly foolhardy system. We should be able to rely on the United Nations to direct resources toward solving human problems. It should never be used --as has been the case in Iraq under economic sanctions-- as a tool to implement economic warfare against innocent civilians.
Bans on weaponry should be imposed. Here we have a country (the U.S.) --which is probably the most powerful in the world-- also being the country that has developed, stored, sold and used more weapons (including weapons of mass destruction) than any other country on earth and in history. We have to wean ourselves off this addiction to war. We have to look at the pattern of our addictiveness to works of war rather than works of mercy.
When you look at the shadow of the mushroom cloud in World War II --when we were ushered into the Atomic Age and the Cold War-- we have a list of wars that goes like this: Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Gulf War II, and an ongoing war in Colombia. Hot war after hot war, and they're like brush fires that the peace movement scrambles to try and put out. And they should do this with all possible effort. But we'd be delusional if we thought we could just step on the gas pedal, pick up momentum, and outstrip the warmongers. Because underlying all of these hot wars is the ongoing text of another quieter, but continual war of Western culture against the biodiversity of the planet. Along with that is a war of U.S. culture against weaker countries whose resources we want to control and exploit. The common denominator in those wars is our culture.
Ultimately we have to change our culture. We in the U.S. have to find ways to wean ourselves off of expecting that we get to consume 30 to 40 percent of the world's resources (by conservative estimates) even though we're only 4 percent of the world's population. We also have to wean ourselves from thinking we have some kind of God-given automatic right to take other people's precious and irreplaceable resources at cut-rate prices. And to practice our levels of consumption while other people bury their children due to starvation and water-born disease.
So it's a change in the culture that's needed. It's the religious leadership that we can look to with some optimism. Because tantamount to the vision of every major denomination and faith practice is a belief in a love of neighbour and love of our enemy. If we had the courage of these convictions --which are taught, handed down and enshrined in liturgies-- along with an infused will to practice them, I think vast changes would occur. But instead, so many people are like me: They almost dread the onset of the Christmas season, because it abuses any notion of celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace into the world, and recognizing his impoverishment and oppression. Instead we just see it as an excuse to further exacerbate the abuses of the national religion of shopping.
GM: The Bush administration says they are handing over Iraq to Iraqis in June 2004. What are some of the things you would be concerned about in this "transition?"
KK: We're particularly worried that the U.S. is going to rely on strong-armed enforcements that would be enacted by Iraqis who are approved and put in place by the U.S. government. These are people who do not necessarily have the trust or the backing of ordinary Iraqi people. We're particularly concerned about recycled boss party strong-arms.
For example: The same Minister of Culture who was in charge under Saddam Hussein is still in charge of the Ministry of Culture now. This is the same minister who forced Iraqi poets and playwrights to write poems of paeans to Saddam Hussein. Initially they tried to maintain the same Health Minister too. Then Iraqi doctors went on strike and said: We won't work for this man. Two hundred and fifty Iraqi police had a riot about 10 days ago at the Baghdad Security Council compound --because they said that three of the main new security chiefs are former corrupt forces. It seems the U.S. wants to replace Saddam Hussein's control with control that is in the direction of the occupying forces. Because it's not popular to have a U.S. occupation there now, they'd like to quickly transfer the power to people who do know how to use strong-arm, brutal, ruthless, and police force tactics. That's what we're seeing happening. Rather than an effort to help create circumstances whereby there would be a transfer of power to a neutral third-party group. This would help sustain some kind of governance in Iraq, until such time as Iraqis would move toward a self-governance that would be suitable to them.
GM: Many social activists despair today --saying their efforts are paltry compared to the work of people like you. But Alice Walker once said this is "the tragedy of the world." How do you approach people who feel their small actions are of no significance?
KK: We do live in a celebrity culture where people think there are individuals with big names and a lot of power --and the rest of us who don't really count. This is not true when you look at efforts that ended the Vietnam War, and prevented escalation to use of more hideous weaponry that had been contemplated. It was the efforts of ordinary people who were consistently out on the street and protesting that made a difference. The New York Times was certainly correct when it referred to the world's only other superpower: Public opinion. That was because the antiwar movement had almost reached their critical mass where they could prevent a war before it started. That's been a wonderful accomplishment.
In 1990 I could spell Kuwait and find Iraq on a map. That's really all I knew. It was intimidating to inch into a world where many people had so much knowledge, expertise and understanding than I did. Often I was blushing with shame realizing what I didn't know or understand --or the blunders that were made. But what we're all about is the further invention of non-violence. That means mistakes along the way. Almost predictably when people become hooked with "us" stories of a group of people --almost anywhere in the world-- they will become moved and not be able to walk away from that story easily. It's like when you spread the peanut butter too thin the bread rips. You can't be trying to solve every problem that comes across your radar screen. But each of us can probably do more than we're already doing to withdraw our consent and support for policies that we know are wrong and harmful. Whether they're domestic or international.
In the U.S. (and I don't want to say this about Canada) we have to ask ourselves what does the U.S. government want from us. By and large they don't want our bodies on the line in combat. I know National Guard Reserves are being called up now. But mainly what the U.S. government wants from average Americans is our consent and money. We have to recognize that people pay for these wars. People pay for Homeland Security. People pay for FBI and CIA abuses. We have to ask ourselves: Do we want this to be part of our personal budget? Most people would say no. Then we need to ask ourselves: What's the next step? So I ask people to consider war-tax refusal. We do need to increase the level of risk that we're willing to take, because we love our children. Many people think that they can't take the risks, because they have to think of their family. But look at the inescapable terror that threatens the next generation. For example: We can't escape what we're doing to our water, land and air. When you look at the repercussion of that, then love of family, immediate neigbours and security almost demands that we take upon ourselves more risks while building the communities that can sustain that level of risk-taking.
It certainly shouldn't be a feeling that this is something a Phil Berrigan or Dorothy Day can do --because these were people whose life circumstances were so exceptional they could take these steps. We wouldn't have Christianity today if the earliest Christians hadn't decided to part from their predictable experiences and try to make something new. At any rate, we shouldn't use this celebrity culture idea as an excuse not to act. I'm just one drop in the ocean, but I do have responsibility for my drop.
GM: The Bush administration is engaged in a long list of social injustices on the home front (environmental havoc, corporate welfare etc.) But they continue to be successful at manipulating public opinion. Are they politically vulnerable next year?
KK: This doesn't directly answer the question, but there are two things I wanted to point out. In 2005, the U.S. and U.K. military will culminate exercises, practices, and routines that have begun now in a two-year stretch of joint transatlantic military exercises to prepare for a radiological attack on a Third World country. As part of those exercises, they'll plan for how to separate out those people who are contaminated. Also: They're looking at how to destroy the communication facilities of that country and the surrounding areas --and to use non-lethal weapons for crowd control.
School children in Iraq
Photo by Paul Chan
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They're beginning that process now. Regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in office, those processes will continue. Five hundred thousand children died in Iraq while the Democrats were in charge. I don't want to be pulled by electoral politics in one direction or another. Or persuaded that if the Democrats were in charge these injustices at home wouldn't have happened. The burgeoning prison industry --which now leaves us with millions of people incarcerated-- happened under Bill Clinton's watch. The main problem is that if we ask ourselves what was Bill Clinton's major downfall, people think it's that affair he had with Monica Lewinsky. It's a perversion to think his personal choice for sexual behaviour was the greatest scandal that happened during his administration. The greatest scandal was that --on his watch-- hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died because of economic sanctions that his administration used to maintain the status quo. And that failed abysmally.
I'm hoping that people in the U.S. will focus on the main issues that affect all of us. Not to think the silver bullet answer is to put a Democrat in power.
GM: Where do you see signs of hope today?
KK: I find a great deal of hope in the Catholic Worker communities in many parts of the world. Certainly there are many of them in the U.S. and Canada, but in other parts of the world as well. You see people deliberately practice simplicity, service and sharing of resources. They also promote non-violent direct action and a reverence for all life.
What I see in Iraq --every time I go there-- are constant lessons in exactly those measures: How to live more simply. Now it's been enforced in Iraq. But I see families and communities living simply and yet maintaining enormous dignity, and ready to extend hospitality to people like me and other Voices in The Wilderness members (as well as other Westerners). I know that's changing and I feel deep sadness over that. But I have learned more about forgiveness while in war zones than I could have ever hoped to learn in a lifetime. It's very impressive.
I draw hope from young people. Most of the people running Voices in The Wilderness are people under 30. They're very dedicated, and they don't ask for much more than the opportunity to feel like they're accomplishing something --and doing so as a community dedicated to ideas they hold dear.
I found a similar community of young people in Iraq immediately after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled. A group of young people felt they could start to practice freedom of expression. They came over and started working with a young Iraq Peace Team member. They did extraordinary things. For example: Creating their own newspaper. There are always reasons to find hope. Particularly in the pure goodness of people who say --as the Quakers do-- that they're going to trod gently over all the earth seeing God in everyone.
No matter where you are --and no matter how bad things are with injustices-- you can still see goodness in other people and look to draw that out.
When the U.S. military and marines arrived in Baghdad we were holding banners on the second floor of the Al Fanar Hotel. We looked down and could see the soldiers who looked pretty thirsty. I mentioned this to Cynthia Banas who is my 73-year old friend from upstate New York. She went out with two heavy 6-packs of bottled water. I followed with other provisions. We then mingled and gave out the supplies. Their response to us was one of extraordinary regard for our point of view. They regularly came up to us and said: Would you just tell us your side of the story? One fellow put his hands into my friends' hands and said: Would you pray with me?
These kinds of things impress me and give me hope. When we keep trying to further this invention of non-violence, we make gains along the way. Sometimes we can't always calculate how far those gains go. In scripture you repeatedly have the idea that courage is the ability to control your fears. Jesus says many times: Don't be afraid. He doesn't say nobody feels fear. He says: Don't be afraid. Don't let that be where you end up. How do you control your fear? You catch courage from one another. We should be catching courage from the earliest disciples.
Gerry McCarthy is Editor of The Social Edge
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