 November 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
A Lesson for Martha Stewart -- And for Us All Stephen Kobasa is a New England writer and anti-nuclear activist. An earlier version of this article appeared on the Sojourner Magazine web site. When reflecting on her imminent imprisonment during a recent interview, Martha Stewart declared that "good people go to jail," offering Nelson Mandela, a man who was given a life sentence for his anti-apartheid leadership, and who spent most of his 27 years of imprisonment in solitary confinement, as a case in point. (20/20, ABC News, 7/16/04). Granted the breath--taking outrageousness of this comparison, her basic contention is indeed true: there are many moral, upright people imprisoned in this country and others, some of them for having acted morally. At the Federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia where Stewart has begun her five-month sentence, she does not have to look far for confirmation of this. Among the women there is Carol Gilbert, a Dominican nun who last year began her 33 months of imprisonment. Along with Sisters Ardeth Platte (sentenced to 41 months) and Jackie Hudson (a 30-month sentence), Gilbert cut through the fence surrounding a Minuteman III missile silo in Colorado. The three then poured blood on the massive concrete lid that covered the nuclear warhead. This provoked charges of "sabotage" from the federal government, and the attendant excessive punishments. As Gilbert said at her sentencing, "We know something is very wrong with a system that can incarcerate us for years in prison for inspecting, exposing, and symbolically disarming America's weapons of mass destruction." Stewart was convicted of "insider trading" of stocks. Such actions by those with privileged information leave small investors to bear the brunt of the losses when a stock value plummets, as it did in the case of the biotechnology company from which Stewart divested her fifty thousand shares. But the point here is not to adopt a morally superior stance; rather, it is to show the extraordinary inequities of sentencing that are characteristic of our justice system, particularly when we compare Stewart's case with that of the three nuns.
Perhaps Stewart -- and we -- will
learn from Sister Carol that the "good life" that Stewart
is anxious to return to at her New York estate will be lived under
the threat of annihilation posed by the 49 Minuteman III sites
in northeastern Colorado, 84 in southwestern Nebraska, and 17
in southeastern Wyoming. Perhaps she -- and we --
will ask why the willingness of any presidential candidate to
authorize nuclear war was never questioned or subject to debate
as part of this year's election campaign. Perhaps she --
and we -- will be moved to action by news of the Adopt-a-Missile
Silo pilgrimage by Citizen Weapon Inspection Teams in Colorado
on October 2 to mark the second anniversary of the three nuns'
witness of conscience. And perhaps she -- and we --
will do all that we can to reverse the injustice committed in
their case. To learn more about the Adopt-a-Missile Program or to write to Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert, and Jackie Hudson, contact Jonah House, 1301 Moreland Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21216; 410/233-6238; contactdisarmnow@erols.com; www.jonahhouse.org 
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