Moral Force: The St. Patrick's Four beat federal conspiracy charges ..

[struggle4progress]

.. they say were brought to chill dissent


Photograph by Alicia Solsman

By David King

On St. Patrick's Day 2003, three days before the first American blood was shed in Iraq, Peter DeMott, 58, Daniel Burns, 46, and Clare and Teresa Grady, 48 and 40, respectively, got into two Volvos in Ithaca, N.Y., and drove to a nearby recruiting center. They were not going to sign up to fight in Iraq. Three of them had already been to Iraq on a "peace and mercy" mission. None were carrying health records or letters of intent. Nor were they carrying handcuffs, chains or other means to block people's entry to the recruiting station. All they carried was four ounces of their own blood.

Ithaca's Cayuga Mall, which houses the recruiting station, rests between a mess of tangled interstate access ramps across from busier strip malls in Lansing, a nearby suburb. The four knew the way, because months before, they had been part of a sit-down protest in the same center. The parking lot is usually home to more litter and potholes than shoppers and cars. One sign stands out over any other sign in the plaza. It reads, "Army and Marine Recruiting Center" in a harsh red set against the fleshy color of the building. There, in the small office among the cardboard stand-ups of proud Marines and the recruiting literature decorating the bleach-white walls, the four carefully poured their blood, drizzling it like melted chocolate over the door, the carpet and the American flag.

"Killing is not with Christ. Our apologies, dear friends, for the fracture of good order," began the statement the four had prepared and then read. "As our nation prepares to escalate a war on the people of Iraq by sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers to invade, we pour our blood on the walls of this military recruiting center. We mark this recruiting office with our own blood to remind ourselves and others of the cost in human life of our government's war making. Killing is wrong. Preparations for killing are wrong. The work done by the Pentagon with the connivance of this military recruiting station ends with the shedding of blood, and God tells us to turn away from it. Blood is the symbol of life. All life is holy."

As their own blood caked and crusted, they knelt and prayed. <snip>

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/10.12.05/four-0541.html

[RoyGBiv]

1. These people are heroes ...

It chills me that they are being all but ignored, not only by the MSM but by many activists that one would think would support their cause. I've been trying to follow their story, but it's been a bit hard to gather good information lately.

I'm happy the conspiracy charge did not stick but more than pissed the so-called lesser charges did when the defense strategy they had used in a previous trial to beat those charges (the illegality/immorality of the Iraq war) was thrown out. That ruling was tantamount to saying the truth is no defense.