By Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row:
BERRIGAN
Post-war peace and anti-war activist and former priest
Philip Berrigan has passed into the realms of eternity.
His history, and that of his brother, former Jesuit priest
Daniel Berrigan, has been a consistent ethic of peace over war,
community over chaos and justice over injustice. Their struggle
against militarism took them into draft-board offices, military
bases and courtrooms to bring forth a vision of the sacredness
of life. Inspired by the civil-rights movement bubbling up from
the blooded soil and people of the South, Philip Berrigan
became convinced that wider areas of American life needed the
fresh air of change. Popular historian Howard Zinn in his
acclaimed "A People's History of the United States" would
recall Philip's earliest days:
"In the fall of 1967, Father Philip Berrigan (a Josephite
priest who was a veteran of World War II) joined by artist Tom
Lewis and friends David Eberhardt and James Mengel, went to the
office of a draft board in Baltimore, Maryland, drenched the
draft records with blood, and waited to be arrested. They were
put on trial and sentenced to prison terms of two to six
years." ( p. 479)
In May of 1968, Philip would be joined by Daniel in an
action at the draft board office in Catonsville, Md. There
they, joined by others opposed to war, would scoop up records,
smear them with blood, or burn them. They came to be known as
the Catonsville Nine, and would be imprisoned for their
protests. Daniel would write of that action, in prophetic tones
reminiscent of King's oratory, calling it his
"Meditations":
"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good
order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering
of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnal house. We
could not, so help us God, do otherwise. ... We say: Killing is
disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness
is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we
risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men
can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public
risk, when the poor can die without defense." (Zinn, p.
479)
Philip and Daniel Berrigan would become the nucleus of a
divergent and dynamic anti-war, peace and social-justice ethic
that spread far beyond them, and radiated into the hearts and
minds of many.
Philip Berrigan, radicalized by the times, would come to
view all of American history through a new, clearer vista:
"The revolution in this Country was led by a nucleus of
tradesmen, bankers, shippers, big shots who were uptight and
furious about the imposition of economic control of their
wealth by a foreign power. They knew the resources of this
country. They knew its possibilities. And they didn't want
foreign control and refused to submit to it. They led the
nation into a fight for almost purely economic reasons. ... It
was an economic reshuffling rather than a true revolution."
(from James, Joy, "Prison Intellectuals," forthcoming,
2003).
Philip Berrigan, at 79, leaves this planet just as one of
the most-feared global wars is about to begin.
His cause has not died with him. It remains in the hearts of
countless many, whose flame has been lit by his passionate
adherence to the crucible of life.
Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
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