COVID-19 and the Wasting Disease of Normalcy

“But what of the price of peace?” asked Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, writing from federal prison in 1969, doing time for his part in the destruction of draft records. “I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction read more

A Tale of Two Stockpiles

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Anniversary of his Murder in a Pandemic Year

April 4, 2020

The United States Strategic National Stockpile of essential medical supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seems unable to respond to the present COVID-19 crisis.  There is much discussion in today’s news about who is responsible for the shortcomings. Did Trump find the shelves empty or full when he took office after President Obama? Is the stockpile meant to read more

A Perspective from a Respectful Distance

Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph (2020)

Reviewed by Brian Terrell

Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph, is billed as “the first full-length biography of its subject in forty years.” It is also significant as the first such work by authors who are not a part of the Catholic Worker “family”, but who are principally biographers of a wide range of subjects. While their work read more

Saudi Warships “Keep America Safe”?

an invitation from Voices for Creative Nonviolence to walk from Green Bay to Marinette, Wisconsin, September 9-15, for peace, in defense of the earth, and against Saudi war crimes and human rights violations.

Last December, the U.S. Navy awarded a Lockheed Martin-led team a multi-billion dollar contract to construct four warships for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) ships will be constructed at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Marinette, read more

A Doubtful Proposition

A reflection on the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7

By Brian Terrell

“Whether nuclear weapons are actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in this case,” so ruled Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, late on Friday October 18. This last minute order, restricting the defense of seven antinuclear activists at a trial that began Monday morning the 21st, read more

The United States Air Force at Incirlik, Our National “Black Eye”

Current events concerning Turkey and the Kurds in Syria remind me of a conversation I had with a US Air Force colonel almost 17 years ago in a courtroom in Des Moines. To refresh my memory, I dug deep into my closet and dusted off the transcript of the case, “STATE OF IOWA, plaintiff vs. CHRISTINE GAUNT et al.,” in which I was a defendant, heard in February, 2003, the month before the US invasion of Iraq. The following quotes from that dialogue are verbatim per the transcript.

The case concerned read more

How the Catholic Worker is and isn’t an Institution and How an Anti-Racism Statement can be Racist

A response to Lincoln Rice and “The Catholic Worker as Institution”

Brian Terrell, Strangers and Guests CW Farm

Lincoln Rice and Maria Bergh presented a powerful roundtable discussion at the national Catholic Worker gathering in Rochester this summer concerning racism and the CW movement. This followed a similar discussion with several Midwest CWs at Mary House in New York last year. Good advantage was taken of these opportunities for meaningful and constructive dialogue. I was particularly read more

Ending the War in Yemen- Congressional Resolution is Not Enough!

November 15, 2018

On November 14, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives blocked a resolution that its supporters say would end U.S. participation in the war and famine in Yemen. It is unclear, however, what effect this resolution would have on the ground even if it were passed into law. It imposes no limits on arms sales to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It does not propose any oversight or limitation of activities CIA or of private contractors from the U.S. in read more

Come to Nevada- Walk for Peace, Resist Nuclear Weapons, Stand for Indigenous People’s Rights and Fill the Jails!

An invitation from the Nevada Desert Experience, April 13-19, 2019

On Indigenous People’s Day, formerly known as Columbus Day, October 8, 2018, Nye County, Nevada, prosecutors and Sheriff’s deputies ended a three decades old policy concerning arrests of protesters at the Nevada National Security Site, NNSS, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, 60 miles from Las Vegas.

From 1986 through 1994, two years after the United States put a hold on full-scale nuclear weapons testing, 536 anti-nuclear read more

Catholic Support for War- Another Child Abuse Scandal

On August 14, a report from a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania identified 300 Catholic priests across the state who had sexually abused more than 1,000 children. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades,” the grand jury wrote in one of the broadest inquiries into church sex abuse in U.S. history. Five days earlier, on August 9, in northern Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit read more