September/October 2005 Surveillance = Security? Thirty-five years ago, peace activist and Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan went underground. Berrigan, his brother Phil, and seven other Vietnam protesters had been convicted of burning government documents with homemade napalm on May 17, 1968, in a trial that became infamously known as the “Catonsville 9.” For four months, Berrigan lived “on the lam,” staying with friends and supporters around the Northeast US and “popping up” to denounce the war and the US government at antiwar ral-lies and religious services in various communities every couple of weeks. The FBI, frustrated and embarrassed by Berrigan’s antics, many of which were in plain sight, finally found and arrested him on August 12, 1970, on Block Island, where he was staying with his friend William Stringfellow. The two agents who found him were, according to Earl Crow, “inappropriately and maladroit-ly disguised, dressed in orange rain slickers, with binoculars, pre-tending to be bird watchers.” The four-month escapade and comedic arrest came to symbolize an “intelligence” agency that was more bumbling than powerful and all-knowing. Nonetheless, Berrigan went to prison for two years. The effort by the Berrigans and others to oppose the Vietnam war using dramatic nonviolent resistance was deeply influential for the progressive religious community in which I was raised. I was born in 1967, the year that the Berrigan brothers were both arrested for the first time for antiwar actions. It was the period when many social justice activists were becoming disenchanted with the nonviolent tactics of the civil rights movement, and join-ing new organizations that challenged racism and oppression through strident rhetoric and, occasionally, armed resistance. Over the next several years, the government’s COINTELPRO initiative worked to infiltrate, provoke, and break down leftist groups like the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Weather Underground. While nonviolent religious ac-tivists were not necessarily targeted with the same methods, they were still monitored closely because they threatened the authority and stability of the government. When I attended university in the late 1980s, our activist community on campus often found itself preoccupied by infil-tration: who was a stooge of the college administration, if not of governmental authorities? I remember a two-week takeover of the university president’s office in protest over its refusal to di-vest from companies doing business in South Africa, during which several late-night discussions focused on whether our com-ments were being recorded and leaked to unfriendly sources. Growing up in the era of socially-conscious hip-hop (before “gangsta” and materialistic stereotypes began dominating the culture), which often highlighted the targeting of young people of color by the police and government, it has been easy for some of us to get caught up in conspiracy theories. But we’re not simply being paranoid. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine being able to evade the US government for long. We live in an age when almost everything we do can be tracked. My credit cards monitor practically every purchase I make. Driving up from my home in East Harlem to the FOR office in Rockland County, my movements are recorded by an electronic “E-Z-Pass.” My cell phone provides an easy mechanism for following me around the country. I can’t get on an Amtrak train or a Grey-hound bus without showing identification. It would be very hard to escape from the government’s watchful eye. Could Daniel Berrigan have disappeared—in “plain sight”—for four months in the year 2005? I doubt it. How do we live in an age of surveillance, especially during the ‘War on Terrorism’? In this issue, Fellowship asks this crucial question. Edited by my esteemed colleague Rabia Harris, this is-sue highlights the government’s increased power, and our commensurately decreased civil liberties, in a post-9/11/01, PATRIOT Act world. We offer slices of FOR’s lengthy history of being closely watched by the government in the mid-20th cen-tury. (And we should note that this isn’t ancient history. A FOR international delegation was denied entry to Israel in 2002 due to its “dangerous” interfaith membership: the group included several Muslims along with several Jews. One of our senior staff has been stuck on a version of the government’s “no-fly list” for some months.) We report why you need to pay attention right now, since new forms of US legislation continue to take rights away from US residents—while our population hardly protests. It is an incredible honor for me to join the FOR staff as editor of Fellowship at this critical time, when in the midst of such challenges this organization stands tall in speaking truth to power. The aforementioned close friend of Dan Berrigan, the prophetic theologian William Stringfellow, challenged us to “live humanly in the midst of death.” Fellowship will continue to provide such a voice—to be a voice of inspiration, hope, and spiritual sustenance in a world of suffering and oppression. I look forward to serving you. —Ethan Vesely-Flad |
