Father of Student Faces Jail for Protest

First-year Kate Berrigan is no stranger to familial instability. Her father has spent approximately 10years imprisoned, her mother four. She expects that on Monday her father will be sentenced to five more years, as he currently faces charges of trespassing, malicious destruction and conspiracy to commit malicious destruction. "I don't think anyone could tell you how many times he's been arrested," she said. However, Berrigan cherishes the radical political environment her parents raised her in and its consequent effects on her current political views.

On Dec. 19, 1999, Berrigan's father, Phil, accompanied by three others, cut into East Baltimore's Lockheed Martin Airfield in protest of the U.S. government's use of Depleted Uranium as a toxic weapon against civilians in both Iraq and Yugoslavia. Moreover, Berrigan outlined, the small group was protesting the U.S.'s constant military intervention in other nations' wars and its use of weaponry as an instrument of mass destruction. "Really they were protesting the fact that these weapons even exist at all when obviously their only purpose is to kill civilians."

Upon entering the base in the early morning of Dec. 19, Phil Berrigan and the three others accompanying him took hammers to the engine components and the pylons under the wings of two A-10 Thunderbolt planes, commonly called Warthogs. Symbolically, one of the protesters poured his own blood onto the engine. Before military officers came to arrest them, the gang of four had time to hang a banner on the site, reading PLOWSHARES VS. DEPLETED URANIUM.

The Plowshares have devoted themselves to the abolition of weapons and senseless imperialistic violence since their inception and initial agitation in 1980. Their first organized act of protest, now commonly known as the "Plowshares Eight," proved similar to their most recent activity. In this 1980 act of agitation, eight Plowshares entered a Pennsylvania-based General Electric plant, seeking to enact the Biblical prophesies of Isiah and Micah by "beating swords into plowshares," hammering on nuclear warheads and pouring blood on documents.

Since this initial protest, Plowshares agitators have orchestrated more than 55 separate acts of protest. A Plowshares website describing their disarmament actions emphasizes that normal people harboring an extreme devotion to the power of nonviolent love constitute the group's membership. "People who do plowshares action are ordinary people who, with all their weaknesses, are attempting to respond in faith to a biblical mandate which must be enacted in our violent world," it reads.

Phil Berrigan's career as radical agitator reaches further than just his Plowshare activity, however, as he began protesting in 1968, in the midst of a turbulent domestic environment due to the Vietnam War.

Berrigan said her father fully expected the arrest. "The point was to expose the evil of weapons - they were fully aware they'd be arrested, but there was no intent to run away from the consequences." Moreover, Berrigan supports her father's invocation of Thoreau's call for civil disobedience when necessary, saying, "You have to talk about why he's doing this, and the most effective way is to get the media involved and let people know he's willing to go to jail for this. In an unjust society the place for a just person is in jail."

Although her father has spent approximately half of her life in prison, Berrigan harbors no resentment or bitterness toward him. "Things have always been this way - I have a lot more respect for him and a spiritual connection with him because of what he does," she said. She detailed how her mother, also a devoted activist, agreed with her father upon the birth of their first child in 1973 that at least one of them would assume child-rearing duties while the other would continue with political activity.

Despite the physical distance her family has experienced throughout much of her life, Berrigan maintained that they never lost a more important spiritual connection. "We didn't concentrate on physical closeness all that much. The concept of family meant more," she said, describing her family's commitment to raising children in a society that doesn't pose the threat of nuclear warfare. However, for a family so devoted to humanitarian-inspired political agitation, hardships have been inevitable. "It's definitely been hard at times and my mom might struggle the most because she's usually the one at home," Berrigan said.

Berrigan emphasized that her parents did not place any pressure on her to assume a specific political stance, although their political radicalism has proved extremely influential on her own political beliefs. "It's not that my brother and sister and I had to grow up and hammer on things too, but they urged us to grow up and live out our beliefs." Moreover, Berrigan expressed satisfaction in knowing that her father would support the type of political activity she has become involved with in her first year at Oberlin. "I'm really satisfied with the kind of interaction I have with him, and to have him be more proud of me than just for my grades," she said.

Berrigan hopes that she can continue her father's precedent of effective political action through a series of small victories for humanitarian causes. "I'm a big believer in small steps and individual gestures," she said. Regardless of the difficulties faced by her father, Berrigan asserted that the whole of her family has remained supportive. "He couldn't really do this without our support." Moreover, Berrigan said she's never thought her father's political action excessively extreme. "We have enough belief in the reason for it that somehow we've been able to keep going."