Street SpiritJ U S T I C E N E W S & H O M E L E S S B L U E S I N T H E B A Y A R E A

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by Terry Messman

Jim and Shelley Douglass helped toorganize one of the nation’s most sig-nificant campaigns of nonviolent

resistance when they uprooted their lives,left their home behind, and literallymoved right next door to Ground Zero ofthe nuclear arms race, in a home adjacentto the Bangor Naval Submarine Base inKitsap County, Washington.

Their new next-door neighbors were afleet of Trident submarines and anunimaginably destructive stockpile ofTrident missiles in weapons bunkers.

In an interview, Jim Douglass starklydescribed the genocidal power of thisweapons system. “A single Trident subma-rine could destroy an entire country. A fleetof Tridents could destroy the world.”

Lockheed missile designer RobertAldridge had visited the Douglasses towarn them that Trident missiles were first-strike nuclear weapons due to their pinpointaccuracy and cataclysmic firepower, andwould be based on Puget Sound nearSeattle. In response, the couple moved onto3.8 acres of land bordering the Bangornaval base on the Hood Canal.

They founded the Ground Zero Centerfor Nonviolent Action in December 1977.Jim Douglass explained that they could notoffer genuine resistance to Trident by orga-nizing protests from the outside, so the cou-ple moved next to the naval base andbecame part of the very fabric of the com-munity in Kitsap County. There, as neigh-bors, they began reaching out to the navalemployees working at the Trident base.

Their new home sat on a piece of land

that shared 330 feet of fence with theBangor naval base. On one side of thatfence, the U.S. Navy was equipping a fleetof Trident submarines with enough fire-power to incinerate millions of civilians in aradioactive firestorm and destroy everymajor city in every country in the world. Onthe other side of the fence, the Ground ZeroCenter began building a nonviolent move-ment based on the teachings of Martin

Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi.On one side, U.S. marines with shoot-to-

kill orders guarded nuclear warheads instorage bunkers. On the other side, activistsheld nonviolence trainings and prepared togo to jail for obstructing the arms race.

Ground Zero members gave leaflets tothousands of workers entering the Tridentbase every week for several years.

Activists by the hundreds were arrest-

ed for climbing the fences surrounding thenaval base, walking inland to pray forpeace at high-security nuclear weaponsbunkers, blocking trains carrying hydro-gen bombs into the base, and sailing theirsmall boats in a peace blockade of themassive Trident submarine protected byone of the world’s largest naval forces.

Life at Ground Zero of the Nuclear Arms Race

The USS Ohio (shown above) was the first in a fleet of Trident submarines. A single Trident sub has theexplosive power of several thousand Hiroshima bombs and could destroy every city in an entire nation.

Photo credit: www.naval-technology.com

Story and photo by Carol Denney

Sitting is not a crime in Berkeley.Loitering and sleeping are also notcrimes in Berkeley, at least not yet.

But the “ambassadors” hired by theDowntown Berkeley Association (DBA)freely admit and even formally presentthemselves as monitoring and curbing thesebehaviors, as witnessed by those attendingthe Peace and Justice Commission in ataped hearing on Monday, May 4, at theNorth Berkeley Senior Center.

The DBA’s ambassador program hasapparently unilaterally determined, inde-pendent of any law or community standard,that these legal behaviors are “inappropri-ate.” DBA ambassadors are walking aroundin the dubious authority of their brightgreen uniforms curbing the behavior ofpoor people, panhandlers, and people whoappear to be homeless — absent any basisin law, any probable cause, any authority ofany kind, and without any oversight.

The ambassadors are putting on a pub-

lic display of institutional discriminationso visible and obvious that they made itpart of their public presentation on May 4before Berkeley’s Peace and JusticeCommissioners, many of whom seemedunderstandably appalled.

The DBA staff and ambassadors didnot mention even once that they are the“eyes and ears of the police,” as theirwebsite states. The ambassador who wastheir primary presenter at the meetinggave a lengthy view of himself as abenign presence on the streets.

It was a highly revealing moment, forhe spoke just before a citizen read an affi-davit by someone who witnessed the sameambassador abusing a senior homelessman with threats and profanity onlyweeks before.

Even on the occasions when ambas-sadors manage to refrain from threats andprofanity, it is absurd that a small, unrepre-sentative landlord’s lobby — the DBA —

Time to Abolish Berkeley’s Ambassador Program

Two ambassadors (seated at left) join Lance Goree and John Caner of the DBA indescribing the ambassador program to Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission.See Abolish the Ambassadors page 10

See Life at Ground Zero page 5

How Jim and Shelley Douglassnonviolently confronted theAuschwitz of Puget Sound.

June 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T2

A Column on Human Rights

by Carol Denney

Service providers train likeOlympic athletes for the momentin spring when the City ofBerkeley allows the sweet smell

of a small pot of money to drift undertheir nostrils. Coupled with a city manag-er’s dry recommendation that their pro-gram get zero funding, any previouslyvocal political opposition to repressiveanti-homeless policies starts to get thesoft-pedal in case it can save their alreadycut-to-the-bone program and an alreadyscrambled handful of jobs.

Berkeley consistently brags about itssomewhat mythological tradition of com-passion for the poor, a compassion notentirely extinguished. There are still a hand-ful of shelter beds, yet it adds up to a prettystagnant, inadequate number in a landscapewhere people have come to assume theirparks, freeway overpasses, and any vacantspace will inevitably become, at least tem-porarily, somebody’s home.

Officials in Utah announced recentlythat they had reduced their “chronicallyhomeless” population by 91 percent witha Housing First policy which gave peoplehousing and social work assistance at acost of $11,000 annually, much less than

the $17,000 estimated price of hospitalvisits and jail and court costs. ButBerkeley officials are strangely silent onHousing First policies.

It isn’t that the efficacy of Housing Firstdoesn’t shine like a diamond in the sea ofineffective and broken policies related topoverty, joblessness, homelessness, mentalillness, drug abuse, etc. The Berkeley CityCouncil is no different than other city coun-cils nationwide. Its members are a relativelyintelligent crew, even compassionate ifyou’re willing to include slipping a dollar (awhole dollar!) into the new “PositiveChange” donation boxes downtown.

But the entire “service provider” net-work is designed to help people get offthe street, maybe get a bowl of soup, andfind housing somewhere else in someother town — but not in Berkeley.

The little donation boxes downtown?Free bus tickets — out of town. Evictedwith nowhere to go? Service providerswill help you find scarce shelter space —in Richmond. People put through the tra-ditional police wringer who find them-selves either in the court system, or themental health sleighride, or both, will findthemselves in Oakland or Dublin — not inBerkeley — which makes them somebodyelse’s problem.

Our present housing policy angles

toward housing for a group that makes$74,000, or 80 percent of an AlamedaCounty Median Income listed as $92,900.

Whatever housing crisis is faced by the$74,000-a-year crowd, it hardly comparesto having all your worldly belongingshurled into a trash compactor because youmade the mistake of finding a real bath-room in which to pee and wash up, as hap-pens consistently to people in Berkeley.

It’s pretty simple, really. If you’re on theCity Council, you align yourself with theservice providers who have learned that theonly acceptable thing to say about peopleshipwrecked on our streets is what a shameit is when they spend money on booze — asthe shrewd service provider says whilehoisting a trendy cocktail with theDowntown Berkeley Association (DBA) attheir ghost town of an annual meeting sothat you have some political cover.

From there you barely have to say a

word. You’ll be surrounded with develop-ers and property owners (the majority of theDBA board) who will even write the nextround of anti-homeless laws for you as theyjust did with the upcoming anti-blanket law.Because they care, they really care — aboutturning our common spaces into flowerpot-pocked Disneylands while convertingwhat’s left of our housing to condos.

Berkeley’s commitment thus far is tonod vigorously at the practicality andmorality of Housing First policies, and to“ooh” and “aah” over Utah’s andArizona’s successes, while making surethat any actual housing produced in thecity is limited to the not-quite-in-our-ech-elon-yet-but-trying crowd stuck at around$75,000 a year where season tickets to thetheater compete with the family reunion atLeech Lake. You’re not there yet? Well,then, best of luck. And if not, see youunder the bridge!

Op-ed by Sally Hindman

The City of Berkeley has the choicebefore it this year, and over thenext three years, to either approach

community change taking place in SouthBerkeley with respect and deep concernfor its longtime residents, or to let the“market” drive out programs that serveour poorest citizens, allowing the neigh-borhood’s face to be redrawn by the high-est bidder. All of us can play a role in thatbattle of choices this June!

The City’s two-year CommunityAgency funding recommendations arecurrently slated to cut funds by $250,000for ten South Berkeley nonprofits servinghomeless and other underserved people,including youth and people with mentalhealth challenges.

Unless changed, the recommendationszero out funding for Youth Spirit Artworks,significantly cut monies to Berkeley Drop-In Center, and reduce dollars to Life LongMedical Care, East Bay Community LawCenter, Through the Looking Glass, ABetter Way, Ephesians Children’s Center,Bay Area Outreach and Recreation, McGeeAvenue Baptist Church and South BerkeleyCommunity Church.

Despite the direction these recommenda-tions could take us, a clear-sighted coalitionhas formed, made up of both long-timeSouth Berkeley elders and neighborhoodnewbies, set on righting the course.

Organizers first coalesced at meetings

this spring held as part of the AdelineCorridor Planning Process, which has thegoal of creating a blueprint for growth anddevelopment in South Berkeley for thenext ten years. Realizing at the first meet-ing that most long-time neighborhood res-idents did not seem to be in the room,these decent people with a moral compassimmediately began to ask questions.

Within days, leadership in the planningprocess had been sought that includedcommunity outreach by young peopleinvolved with Youth Spirit Artworks.Other important steps were taken by thecitizen group to demand deep neighbor-hood inclusion.

Much to the chagrin of these “Friendsof Adeline,” as the South Berkeley plan-ning process progressed, members learnedthat simultaneously as they engaged inefforts to plan the neighborhood’s future,some of the very groups making up thefabric of the social services safety net inSouth Berkeley were being edged towardelimination in the newly proposed Citybudget. The group again sprung to action!

On May 26, Berkeley’s City CouncilPublic Hearing on the Budget was jammedwith more than 75 people concerned aboutthe inequitable direction our communitywas going, both related to South Berkeleyagency funding, as well as with the inter-connected issues of proposed new lawscriminalizing homeless people, and down-town development favoring the rich.

The month of June will be critical to citi-

zen organizing efforts to right Berkeley’scourse. At the City Council meeting onTuesday, June 9, at 7 p.m., Berkeley willhold its Public Hearing on youth and home-less services budget items.

At that meeting, and at its followingCity Council meetings in June, our repre-sentatives will need to add these funda-mental social services programs BACKinto the budget. They will need to vote ona community agency funding package thattruly reflects our commitment to equity inproviding services to Berkeley’s mostunderserved citizens.

To make your voice heard on thisissue, and be a part of shaping the futureof South Berkeley toward honoring andrespecting long-time residents and theirfamilies — here are three things that youcan do to help:

1. Call and leave this message formembers of the City Council with yourname and indicate that you are a local resi-dent: “I support restoring full funding toSouth Berkeley community agencies inBerkeley’s new two year Budget!”

Mayor Tom Bates: 981-7100—MostImportant!

Darryl Moore: 981-7120 District 2South/West Berkeley-2nd most important!

Lori Droste: 981-7180 District 8Campus, Elmwood & Claremont

Linda Maio: 981-7110 District 1North/West Berkeley

Laurie Capitelli: 981-7150 District 5

Solano/Thousand Oaks/North EastBerkeley

You can email this message to all CityCouncil members at: Council@cityof-berkeley.info with a copy to: friendso-fadeline@gmail.com

2. Sign the petition at: http://peti-tions.moveon.org/sign/berkeley-city-council-1?source=c.em.cp&r_by+672297

3. Attend the Public Hearing onTuesday, June 9, at 7 p.m.__ Arrive at6:30 p.m. Text 510-282-0396 to check thelocation in case its moved from ShirekOld City Hall at 2134 MLK Jr. Way. Andif you can, please speak, to make yourvoice heard.

Help our community to be its best,most compassionate and caring! Takeaction this June supporting SouthBerkeley residents through restored com-munity agency funding!

Housing First —But Not in Berkeley

Berkeley brags about its somewhat mythological tradition

of compassion for the poor. Evicted with nowhere to go?

Service providers will help you find shelter — in Richmond.

Vigilers protest the criminalization of sleep and blankets in Berkeley. Lydia Gans photo

Vitally Needed Programs in South Berkeley Face Cuts

Proverbs 3: 1-35 My child, do not forget my teaching,

but let your heart keep my command-ments, for length of days and years oflife and peace they will add to you. Letnot steadfast love and faithfulness for-sake you; bind them around your neck;write them on a tablet of your heart. Soyou will find favor and good success inthe sight of God and man. Trust in theLord with all your heart, and do not leanon your own understanding...

June 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

by Carol Denney

The “Berkeley Cares” voucher pro-gram was launched in 1992. Thevouchers came in designations of

25 cents and theoretically could be usedfor grocery, laundry and transportationexpenses. The purchase of alcohol andcigarettes was prohibited. The public wassupposed to buy them at participatingmerchant stores or the Health and HumanServices Department and hand them topanhandlers instead of real money.

Except that lots of stores wouldn’t takethem and redeeming them through the citywas a pain. Cash drawers and countershad no space for them or their explanatorydisplays. The vouchers themselves wereflimsier than real money, tore easily, andwere hard to manage since each one wasonly worth a quarter.

Cities that adopted “Berkeley Cares”vouchers as a model have all ended theirprograms for the same reason Berkeleydid: It didn’t work.

My favorite “Berkeley Cares” momentcame when the University of California’sMilton Fuji arranged a presentation on“Berkeley Cares” for a southside neighbor-hood coalition and asked a local homelesswoman to explain the program to the group.

The woman was gracious, clear in herpresentation, and thorough enough tomention that she couldn’t seem to getstores to honor the vouchers for diapersfor her child, or formula. As she listed themany things she couldn’t use vouchers for— basic things which any mother mightneed — Fuji’s face went bright red.

What she unintentionally made clear inher presentation that day was what every-body eventually and quietly agreed byending the program: nothing works likemoney. Voucher programs get brassy NewYork Times coverage until they fail, andwhen they fail, they fail in quiet obscurity.The big brass band has gone home.

The Downtown Berkeley Associationis still reeling from the viral video of oneof its “ambassadors” beating up a home-less man while another “ambassador”offered no objection. But it apparentlystill thinks it is the best steward of fourcash boxes planted around downtown, thekeys to which will no doubt be in thepockets of the same “ambassadors” whosetraining video didn’t manage to clarify tothem that they can’t just beat people up.

The Downtown Berkeley Association’sCEO, John Caner, neglected to mention inhis press release that San Diego, one ofthe cities mentioned in his press release as

also having “Positive Change” boxes, hascommitted to Housing First as a strategy.

Housing First—San Diego is a three-year homelessness action plan developedby the San Diego Homeless Commissionin November 2014.

Housing First—San Diego plans torenovate the the historical Hotel Churchillto create 72 affordable studios for home-less veterans and youth aging out of thefoster care system. It will also award $30million over the next three years to createpermanent supportive housing that willremain affordable for 55 years.

The San Diego plan will also commit

1,500 federal housing rental vouchers andinvest up to $15 million from the federal“Moving to Work” program to providehousing for homeless individuals andfamilies. Finally, it will dedicate 25 unitsof the Homeless Commission’s own unitsto provide transitional apartments forhomeless individuals and families.

The success of San Diego’s commit-ment to ending homelessness, if it comes,may have a little more to do with the pro-grams listed above than the spare changefrom “Positive Change” cash boxes as fil-tered through the dubious hands of theDowntown Berkeley Association.

John Caner stands next to his Positive Change box on the pole. Canerhas been instrumental in developing anti-homeless laws in Berkeley.

Carol Denneyphoto

Déjà Vu All Over Again“Positive Change” Boxes in BerkeleyRepeat a Failed Model from the Past

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.

Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb designer: Jesse ClarkeHuman rights column: Carol Denney

Contributors: Claire J. Baker, RebeccaByrne, James Douglass, Carol Denney,Lydia Gans, Ground Zero Center forNonviolent Action, Sally Hindman,

All works copyrighted by the authors.The views expressed in Street Spirit arti-cles are those of the individual authors,not necessarily those of the AFSC.

Street Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, artwork, poems and photos. Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.org

Contact Street SpiritVendor Coordinator

The Street Spirit vendor program ismanaged by J.C. Orton. If you havequestions about the vendor program,please e-mail J.C. Orton at noscw@sbc-global.net or call him at (510) 684-1892.His mailing address is J.C. Orton, P.O.Box 13468, Berkeley, CA 94712-4468.

by Rebecca Byrne

Homeless and low-income peopleface a unique set of challenges inthe legal realm. Simple actions

such as sitting on curbs seem innocuouscoming from other populations, yet some-how become problematic when homelessand low-income people need to sit down.

While this is a confusing discrepancy, itis the reality of the legal climate inBerkeley. Unfortunately, homeless andlow-income individuals can face legal prob-lems simply from engaging in the afore-mentioned activity, namely sitting on acurb. In addition to these kinds of stressfuloccurrences, legal problems can arise withpublic benefits as well. These as well ascountless other problems contribute to theunique legal troubles of the homeless andlow-income population.

However, there are resources providedby organizations which work with thehomeless population to aid them in combat-ing these problems. These resources arereadily available and several organizationsin the East Bay are eager to help, but lots oftimes people are unaware of them. My aimwith this article is to draw attention to theorganizations, as well as highlight theissues that they generally deal with.

While there are far more resources thanthe following, I have provided informa-tion about these services because I findthese ones to be particularly helpful forthe clients we serve in the Suitcase Clinic.It is likely that they provide more servicesthan I will mention; however, we tend torefer clients to each organization whenthey are having a particular problem.

So, while they might be great at pro-viding other types of services, I am goingto include the specific types of serviceswe continuously refer clients to seek fromthem because previous clients have hadhelpful experiences with them.

The East Bay Community Law

Center (EBCLC) is a very importantresource that provides a plethora of differ-ent legal services. The three we mostoften refer clients to at EBCLC are thegeneral legal clinic, the debt collectiondefense clinic, and the clean slate clinic.

The general legal clinic and the debtcollection clinic are both held at theEBCLC’s Shattuck location (3130Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley). As quotedfrom their website, the general clinic dealswith legal problems involving “homeless-ness, consumer law, DMV problems,small claims cases, and tort defense.”

The debt collection clinic provideslegal assistance and information aboutproblems involving credit cards and debt.

EBCLC’s clean slate program specifi-cally helps individuals who are facinglegal issues and barriers because of pastincarceration and, as a result, are havingproblems re-entering society. This clinicis located at their other location (2921Adeline Street). It is important to note thatEast Bay Community Law Center canonly provide assistance to low-income cit-izens of Alameda County.

The Homeless Action Center (HAC)is another amazing resource in the EastBay. We tend to send clients there specifi-cally when they are having problems withpublic benefits. HAC provides legal assis-tance to persons who receive SSI, SSDI,GA General Assistance, CalWorks, Medi-Cal, Food Stamps, etc.

Clients who have seen the staff at HAChave most often come back with theirpublic benefits problems resolved. LikeEBCLC, HAC can only take clients whoare citizens of Alameda County.

HAC has an office in Berkeley as wellas one in Oakland. Their Berkeley officeis located at 3126 Shattuck Avenue andtheir phone number is (510) 540-0878.The Oakland office of HAC is located at1432 Franklin Street and their phone num-ber is (510) 836-3260, ext. 301.

The People with DisabilityFoundationis an additional excellentresource for those having problems withSSI/SSDI. They are particularly helpfulwith issues of underpayment and overpay-ment. In addition, they can help with theappeals process if you have been deniedfor one of these benefits programs. Theyhave two phone numbers: (510) 522-7933(East Bay) and (415) 931-3070 (SanFrancisco).

There are many organizations whichspecialize in helping homeless and low-income persons with different legal prob-lems. So it can be very helpful to consultwith Suitcase Clinic’s legal sector to findthe resource which can be most helpful.

We are available at the General Clinicwhich is held on Tuesday nights at theFirst Presbyterian Church of Berkeley(2407 Dana Street, Berkeley).

While we cannot provide legal advicebecause we are not attorneys, we’re wellversed in many of the resources availablein the Bay Area, and particularly in theEast Bay, and with this information, weaim to provide helpful legal resources toany clients that come to see us. So, ifyou’re having legal problems, a goodplace to start is to consult with the legaldesk and get some helpful resources.

A Helpful Guide to Legal Resourcesfor Homeless People in the East Bay

Underdogs' Anthemby Claire J. Baker

We risked our worthy livesin war machine's endless mess —that perpetual psycho.Now no right to rest?!Street people share prayers and food.The City says "No good."Being human we get sleepy.If we sleep we're kicked as creepy.If we rest we might get stronger —maybe not homeless any longer.But most don't care if we rise —seen as "useless" through narrow eyes.

June 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T4

To All Those Concerned:

As Berkeley and Bay Area clergyand religious leaders of diversefaith traditions, we stand lovingly

and firmly united in opposition to newproposed laws criminalizing homelesspeople. As we describe in this letter, wedo so through our shared, deeply held reli-gious convictions calling us to compas-sion, justice and stewardship of resources.

The new homeless laws violate ourdeep conviction to express compas-

sion for all living beings.We share a deep commitment to seeing

and respecting the wonder of humanity ineach of our brothers and sisters dailythrough the choices we make and the actionwe take to honor the dignity of these neigh-bors. Thus, of course, we oppose the crimi-nalization of homeless people. We believethat the new proposed laws will withoutquestion, increase ticketing and arresting ofhomeless people. We cannot support thisapproach to solving the problems of home-lessness because it is demeaning and dam-aging to people’s fundamental well-being,and self-esteem.

We are concerned that an indirectimpact of these laws will be that, in orderto make commercial areas “more civil,”homeless people will be shuffled fromone street corner to another, by threats ofreceiving citations, a practice that is cruel,when the deeper needs of these individu-als for shelter, housing, jobs and otherresources remain inadequately addressed.As many have pointed out, there is a two-year waiting list in Alameda County foraffordable housing, which means mostpeople on the street literally have no alter-native options indoors, except possiblyemergency shelter.

We cringe at the inhumanity that this“clamping down” on the rights of the poor-est people comes at a time when market-rate housing is at an all-time high in theBay Area. We believe these punitive laws— with the extreme difficulties people faceduring this period — is both ill-timed and,additionally, cruel. As clergy and religiousleaders, we can never condone such anapproach that is tantamount to “kicking ourbrothers and sisters when they are down.”

The proposed new laws are unjustand violate our shared spiritual call

to seek justice.All of the great religions ultimately

teach us to co-create a just world. As reli-gious leaders, we know and hold dear theScriptural teachings of Micah 6:8, Luke10: 30-37, and the Qur’an Sura 4: 135-136, among many others, to be remindedof our call to justice.

By making illegal multiple new behav-iors in commercial areas, the 2015 pro-posed laws almost certainly guaranteeunequal enforcement of the law. If a non-homeless citizen pauses for a moment’srest on the edge of a planter, for example,what are the chances that person will be“moved along” with the threat of a cita-tion? These new numerous laws — in alllikelihood to be selectively enforced —are plain and simply wrong.

Additionally, regardless of what dollaramount the City of Berkeley spendscumulatively on resources for homelesspeople, we know that Berkeley still has ahuge shortage of daily shelter beds, a dra-matic shortage of permanent affordablehousing units, and long waiting lists forexisting housing programs, as well as longwaiting lists for securing case manage-ment, and no in-patient detox program forpeople struggling with addiction. So pun-

ishing anyone who has failed to get offthe street, would be difficult to justify.

If Berkeley had adequate resourcesavailable to serve the chronically homelesspopulation, we believe that veteran socialworkers and street chaplains, devoted tobuilding long-term relationships of trust,would have qualitatively better results ingetting these often hard-to-reach citizensinto services — far more so than citation-minded police, or other less committed out-reach people, acting in accordance withthese new and inhumane proposals.

As relates to homeless youth, we areaware that, despite the estimated average of400 homeless young people on any givennight (which includes “couch surfing”), thiscommunity continues to have shockinglyinadequate services. Berkeley has no fund-ed drop-in program for homeless youth andtherefore no place for homeless young peo-ple to go during the day.

The City has the sum-total of 25 tem-porary youth shelter beds, for six monthsof the year and, in wintertime, the YEAHshelter is open from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.Additionally, Berkeley has a total of 15units of permanent youth housing, and 28units of transitional housing. That is it.

There is a huge waiting list for homelessyouth case management. How could wepossibly punish young people who arehomeless, instead of focusing our collectivecivic energies on creating a real communitysafety net for these vulnerable citizens?

Thus, with such an appalling lack ofadequate services for homeless adults andyouth in our immediate community, asreligious leaders our devotion to the idealof social justice compels us to the hardwork of creating these desperately neededsocial programs, in order to serve andempower the homeless population, andparticularly, youth. The glaring inadequa-cy of our resources painfully makes thecase that it is unjust to threaten and/orpenalize homeless people for simplybeing alive and among us!

The proposed new laws demonstratepoor stewardship of resources, violat-

ing our commitment to cherish &love the earth.

Especially in these challenging eco-nomic times, we must focus carefully onthe ways we use our precious resources oftime, energy and money so that what wedo is efficient, and demonstrably effec-tive. As clergy and religious leaders, webelieve the new proposed laws poorly usepolice resources, resources of the courtsand the legal system, taxpayer dollars, andimportant community input.

Police resources are woefully compro-mised, if not wasted, through enactmentof these unneeded proposed laws, sincelaw enforcement is already stretched thinin daily dealings with larger communityproblems. We believe it is poor steward-ship to divert police attention from otherareas of need.

The new proposed laws further demon-strate poor stewardship since they createnew unneeded laws when Berkeleyalready has twelve good laws that can beused to insure safe and clean commercialareas, and appropriate behavior by allindividuals on the sidewalks.

Moreover, research on similar “anti-homeless” laws in San Francisco andother cities has shown them to be ineffec-tive in meeting the goals of creating morecivil common areas. It is safe to say, then,that these new laws will also prove inef-fective. Any monies spent in pursuit ofsuch misguided practices would be awaste of taxpayer dollars better allocated

toward proven solutions to the problemsof homelessness.

For the above-mentioned reasons, andmore — namely the overarching humancalling to compassion, to love our fellowbrothers and sisters — we strongly opposeany new laws targeting homeless peoplein Berkeley.

Given the enormous needs of homelessand underserved people in Berkeley andthe greater Bay Area, we challenge allthose who care deeply about poverty toinstead redirect whatever available ener-gy, creativity, and resources that can bemustered toward these real solutions thathave been found to work in solving theproblems of homelessness: permanentaffordable housing, adequate emergencyshelter, jobs and job training drop-in cen-ters, drug and alcohol treatment programs,and case management support.

We urge the City Council to give mostserious consideration to the concrete alter-native proposals which have been submit-ted for consideration responding to thesechallenges such as the YEAH/YouthSpirit Artworks Youth Housing SubsidiesProposal and the YEAH/YSA Drop InJobs Training Proposal, as well as theforthcoming recommendations byBerkeley’s Homeless Task Force.

Sincerely,List of Signers

Rev. Rachel BaumanMinister of Community LifeFirst Congregational Church of Berkeley

Board of Directors of Berkeley OrganizingCongregations for Action (BOCA)Member Congregations:Berkeley Chinese CommunityBerkeley Fellowship of Unitarian UniversalistsCongregation Beth ElCongregation Netivot ShalomEpworth United Methodist ChurchFirst Congregational Church of BerkeleyLiberty Hill Missionary Baptist ChurchLutheran Church of the CrossMcGee Avenue Baptist ChurchNewman Center Holy Spirit ChapelNorthbrae Community ChurchPhillips Temple CME ChurchSt. John’s Presbyterian ChurchSt. Joseph the Worker Catholic ChurchSt. Mark’s Episcopal ChurchSt. Mary Magdalene Catholic ChurchSt. Paul AME ChurchSouth Berkeley Community ChurchThe Way Christian CenterTrinity United Methodist Church

Rev. Alexandra ChildsUnited Church of ChristTraveling Minister of the Arts

Rabbi David J. CooperKehilla Community Synagogue

Rev. Mary McKinnon GanzFaithful Fools Street Ministry

Sally Hindman, MA, M.Div.Executive DirectorYouth Spirit Artworks

Rev. Sandhya JhaDirector of Interfaith ProgramsEast Bay Housing Organizations

The Reverend Jeff R. JohnsonUniversity Lutheran Chapel of Berkeley

Rev. Earl W. KoteenCommunity Minister, Berkeley Fellowship ofUnitarian Universalists

Rev. Jeremiah KalendaeAffiliated Community MinisterAdmissions and Recruitment DirectorStarr King School for the Ministry

Rev. Kurt A. KuhwaldUnitarian Universalist Community Minister

Rabbi Michael LernerBeyt Tikkun Synagogue Without WallsEditor, Tikkun Magazine

Bruce H. Lescher, Phd.Jesuit School of Theology Santa Clara University

Rabbi Rachel Jane LitmanCoastside Jewish Community

Rev. Dr. Gabriella LettiniDean of Faculty, Aurelia Henry ReinhardtProfessor of Theological EthicsDirector of Studies in Public MinistryStarr King School for the Ministry

Laura MagnaniProgram Director for Healing JusticeAmerican Friends Service Committee

Rev. Bob MatthewsUnited Church of Christ

Marc McKimmey, M.Div.Diocesan Coordinator, Catholic Campaign forHuman DevelopmentCatholic Charities of the East Bay

Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, PresidentStarr King School for the Ministry

Carl MagruderQuaker Chaplain

Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, EditorAmerican Friends Service Committee

Jim Neafsey, Phd/M.Div.Homeless RetreatsIgnatian Spirituality Project

Pam NortonPresident, Berkeley Fellowship of UnitarianUniversalists

Rev. Kit NovotnyYoung Adult MinisterFirst Congregational Church of Berkeley

Geraldine OlivaTeacher, Berkeley Zen Center

JC OrtonCoordinator, Night on the Streets CatholicWorker

Peace, Earthcare and Social Witness CommitteeStrawberry Creek Monthly MeetingReligious Society of Friends

Dr. Liza J. RankowDirector, OneLife Institute

Dr. Clare RonzaniLecturer, Christian SpiritualityJesuit School of Theology of Santa ClaraUniversity

Bernard Schlager, Phd.Dean, Pacific School of ReligionExecutive Director, Center for

Rev. Hozan Alan SenaukeBerkeley Zen Center

Rev. Sharon StalkfleetLutheran Church of the Cross

Rev. Brian Stein-WebberActing Chief AdministratorPacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

Dr. Laura Stivers Dean, School of Arts, Humanities and SocialSciencesDominican University of CaliforniaAuthor of Disrupting Homelessness-Alternative Christian Approaches

Nichola TorbettFounding Director, Seminary of the Street

Rev. Lauren Van Ham, M.A.Dean, Interfaith Studies, Chaplaincy Institute

Frances H. TownesFounder, Berkeley Ecumenical Chaplaincy tothe Homeless

Rev. Dr. David Vasquez-LevyPresident, Pacific School of Religion

Louie Vitale, O.F. M.

Rev. Dr. D. Mark WilsonSt. Mary’s College and UC BerkeleyYouth Program Director, Pacific Center

An Open Letter from Religious LeadersDo Not Criminalize Homeless People in Berkeley

To support these efforts, call: Mayor Tom Bates at: 981-7100 orDarryl Moore at: 981-7120 Leave this message: “I oppose criminal-izing homeless people. I support the twoalternative City Council proposals beingconsidered for funding this year for youthhousing subsidies and youth job training. I support the Homeless Task Force’s rec-ommendations!”

June 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

Ground Zero’s campaigns attempted toencompass all the dimensions of Gandhi’svision of nonviolence, from militant con-frontation with injustice, to reverence forthe lives of people on all sides in the con-flict, to education and dialogue.

At times, that made their actions seemalmost like a contradiction in terms. Foreven as Ground Zero organized some ofthe most militant acts of anti-nuclearresistance in the nation, it also stronglyembraced the ethical values of nonvio-lence taught by Gandhi, King and Jesus inthe Sermon on the Mount.

The same activists that were pushingnonviolence to its outer limits by stagingincreasingly radical confrontations withthe U.S. military, were also highly com-mitted to recognizing the humanity of thenaval base workers, both civilian and mil-itary. They spent hundreds of hours tryingto create a dialogue with Trident base per-sonnel and refused to see them as the ene-mies of peace.

MILITARY CHAPLAIN RESIGNS

Ground Zero’s adherence to nonvio-lence and its sincere and friendly attemptsto communicate with base workers influ-enced many naval base employees toresign for reasons of conscience. This ledto the highly visible resignation of thechaplain of the Trident base, Father DaveBecker, who decided he could no longerattempt to be “the chaplain of theAuschwitz of Puget Sound.”

The Ground Zero Center also inspiredactivists in hundreds of communitiesaround the nation to hold vigils on rail-road tracks to block the White Train ship-ments of nuclear warheads from thePantex hydrogen bomb assembly plant inAmarillo, Texas, to the Bangor base.

One of Ground Zero’s most far-reach-ing successes was the enormous impact ithad on the nation’s faith communities.Countless bishops, ministers, priests, rab-bis and nuns were directly inspired byGround Zero’s nonviolent campaigns tobecome personally involved in speakingout against the nuclear arms race.

Jim Douglass was an influential theolo-gian and former professor of religion atNotre Dame and the University of Hawaii,and the author of such renowned books ofpeace theology as The Nonviolent Crossand Resistance and Contemplation. ShelleyDouglass also was a theologian and an elo-quent writer on nonviolence, and severalother members of Ground Zero weredeeply involved in Protestant and Catholicchurches and Buddhist orders.

Ground Zero activists had intensivelystudied the movement-building strategiesand ethical values of Gandhi’s satyagrahacampaigns and the U.S. civil rights move-ment, and their commitment to principlednonviolent actions enabled them to have aprofound impact on faith communities.

Undoubtedly, the most inspiring reli-gious leader who worked closely withGround Zero was Seattle ArchbishopRaymond Hunthausen, one of the mostcourageous and radical opponents ofnuclear weapons. The archbishop wasdeeply supportive of Ground Zero’s nonvi-olent protests, and, in turn, Hunthausengreatly inspired Ground Zero and the peace

movement as a whole when he became oneof the nation’s most outspoken voices forpeace and disarmament.

Hunthausen electrified the conscience ofa nation when he denounced the Tridentsubmarine as the “Auschwitz of PugetSound” and called for massive civil disobe-dience and tax resistance to what hedescribed as “nuclear murder and suicide.”

His call to rebellion against the armsrace, “Faith and Disarmament,” was givenon June 12, 1981, to the Pacific NorthwestSynod of the Lutheran Church.

With the fiery urgency of a prophet,Hunthausen told the Lutheran clergy,“First-strike nuclear weapons are immoraland criminal. They benefit only arms cor-porations and the insane dreams of thosewho wish to ‘win’ a nuclear holocaust.”

AN OCEANGOING HOLOCAUST

In the immediate aftermath of the arch-bishop’s uncompromising call to resis-tance, many Catholic bishops, Protestantministers and Jewish rabbis were movedto speak out against nuclear weapons.

And the peace movement found newhope. At last, someone with the power tomake his voice heard had the courage tocall the Trident nuclear submarine what ittruly was: an oceangoing Holocaust, anunderwater death camp loaded withweapons of mass incineration that couldignite a firestorm and slaughter millions.

Most importantly, Hunthausen didn’tmerely call for a lukewarm set of reforms.He called for immediate nuclear disarma-ment and massive civil disobediencebecause of his conviction that nuclearweapons are criminal and immoral.

During the first years of the Reagan era,when many progressive voices were muz-zled or ignored, Hunthausen called for theoutright abolition of nuclear weapons.

The archbishop said, “The nuclear armsrace can be stopped. Nuclear weapons canbe abolished. That I believe with all myheart and faith, my sisters and brothers!”

What in the world could have ever ledan American archbishop to denounce aU.S. weapons system as the Auschwitz ofPuget Sound? We must retrace an amaz-ing series of historic events that began in1945, when Nazi Germany’s leaders wereput on trial for crimes against humanity inthe town of Nuremberg, Germany, thesymbolic birthplace of the Nazi Party.

During the Nuremberg trials, new causefor hope began to emerge from the destruc-tive fires of war, and crucial principles ofinternational law began to arise out of theashes of Nazi concentration camps.

In the autumn of 1945, a few weeksafter the end of World War II, Alliedforces held a series of trials for political,economic and military leaders of NaziGermany. In the first trial, 23 top officialsof the Third Reich were charged by theInternational Military Tribunal with warcrimes for their roles in planning unpro-voked wars of aggression, and operatingdeath camps where millions of civilianswere systematically exterminated.

THE NUREMBERG PRINCIPLES

Twelve subsequent NurembergMilitary Tribunals were held fromDecember 1946 to April 1949, where anadditional 185 Nazi defendants were pros-ecuted, including doctors accused offorced euthanasia, judges who implement-ed racial purity laws, officials in charge of“racial cleansing and resettlement,” direc-tors of the Krupp Group who manufac-tured armaments with a brutal system ofslave labor, and directors of the companythat made Zyklon B, the poisonouscyanide gas used to murder countlesscivilians in concentration camps.

The Nuremberg Principles that resultedfrom these trials defined crimes againstpeace, war crimes, and crimes againsthumanity. They are now foundational prin-ciples of international law, and have servedas models for The Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, The Genocide Conventionand the Geneva Convention.

Nazi officials had been put on trial bythe victorious Allied forces, and yet inter-national law is just that — an internationalset of principles that applies to all nations,not just to nations that lose a war.

WAR CRIMES IN VIETNAM

Only 25 years after the Nuremberg tri-als were held, the U.S. government itselfwas being accused of war crimes inVietnam when hundreds of thousands ofdefenseless civilians were deliberatelymassacred in saturation bombing cam-paigns, and targeted with napalm, AgentOrange, and anti-personnel weapons.

One particular protest against warcrimes in Vietnam is the next step in thishistoric chain of events that connects theNuremberg trials with the Trident subma-rine in the waters of Puget Sound.

In 1972, Jim Douglass, then a professorof religion at the University of Hawaii,committed civil disobedience based on theNuremberg Principles by pouring his ownblood on top-secret electronic warfare doc-uments. Electronic warfare and anti-person-nel bombs in Vietnam indiscriminatelyslaughtered children and civilians and thusconstituted a war crime.

In a stunning historical twist, two of

The USS Ohio was the first Trident Ballistic Missile Submarine in 1982. Shown above in 2008, it became the first Trident toundergo a billion-dollar conversion into a guided missile submarine able to launch 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

A Trident missile is fired from a Trident submarine. Their accuracy and explosivepower give the Trident missiles a first-strike capability.

from page 1

See Life at Ground Zero page 6

Life at Ground Zero of the Nuclear Arms Race“First-strike nuclear weaponsare immoral and criminal.They benefit only arms corpo-rations and the insane dreamsof those who wish to ‘win’ anuclear holocaust.”

— Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen

June 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T6

the U.S. attorneys who prosecuted Nazisfor war crimes during the originalNuremberg trials, traveled to Hawaii todefend Douglass after he was arrested fordestroying files on electronic warfare atHickam Air Force Base.

Mary Kaufman and Benjamin Ferenczwere prosecuting attorneys for the UnitedStates at the Nuremberg trial, and nowacted as defense attorneys for Douglass,citing international law in arguing that hewas acting in obedience to the NurembergPrinciples by pouring blood on top-secretfiles in order to bring war crimes to theattention of the American public.

Nuremberg attorney Mary Kaufmansaid Douglass’s trial had “the most star-tling testimony ever given in a U.S. court-room on the war in Vietnam.” A formerAir Force sergeant testified that while hewas stationed at Hickam Air Base inHawaii, he had witnessed “the deliberatetargeting of a Laotian hospital for obliter-ation bombing, as well as the targeting ofnumerous other civilian objectives.”

WAR CRIMES AT LOCKHEED

A key person who attended this trialwas Lockheed missile designer RobertAldridge. When Aldridge heard theNuremberg attorneys describe the natureof war crimes, he was stunned to recog-nize that his own life’s work in designingfirst-strike Trident nuclear missiles alsoconstituted a war crime, and in the after-math of that realization, he decided toresign from Lockheed Missiles and SpaceCorporation for reasons of conscience.

It is striking how this single act of con-science by one lone individual wouldaffect the course of the anti-nuclear move-ment in the United States.

After the trial, Aldridge visited Jim andShelley Douglass and warned them thatthe Pentagon was developing a submarinethat would be the most lethal weaponssystem of all time. Trident’s accuracy andexplosive power made it a first-strikeweapon — and therefore a war crime.

In response to Aldridge’s act of con-science, Jim and Shelley launched theGround Zero Center for Nonviolent Action.In that way, the Nuremberg trials had setoff a chain reaction of conscience thatreached all the way to Puget Sound — thehome port of the Trident submarine.

Then, this chain reaction continuedonward, as the anti-nuclear resistance car-ried out by Ground Zero influencedArchbishop Hunthausen to publicly declarehis support for these acts of civil disobedi-ence — a bold and highly controversialstep for a high church official to take, espe-cially since the archbishop’s pastoralresponsibilities included thousands ofemployees at the Trident base.

Finally, the chain reaction of con-science that began with the Nurembergtrials in 1945 came full circle when theSeattle archbishop declared that theTrident submarine was a crime againsthumanity comparable in magnitude to theAuschwitz concentration camp.

The next step in this historic dramawas not long in coming. A year of so afterHunthausen condemned the Trident sub-marine, the archbishop was on a boat withother religious leaders in the waters of

Puget Sound, a seafaring prayer vigil thatwas offered in support and solidarity forthe nonviolent activists who had launchedthe Trident peace blockade.

The confrontation between theunarmed power of nonviolence and theAuschwitz of Puget Sound came to a headat the Trident peace blockade on August12, 1982. Jim Douglass and the GroundZero Center were instrumental in organiz-ing this dramatic and risk-filled blockadebecause of their determination to offertheir lives in nonviolent resistance to theUSS Ohio, the first Trident submarine.

My then-wife Darla Rucker and I livedfor two weeks on board a small sailboat,the “Lizard of Woz,” with Jim Douglass,captain Ted Phillips and his wife Eve, andseveral other activists who had preparedfor a boat blockade of the USS Ohio.

A PRE-EMPTIVE ATTACK BY A

MASSIVE COAST GUARD FLEET

In the predawn hours of August 12, wereceived word that the USS Ohio wasseen approaching the Hood Canal. Thewaters were suddenly swarming with afleet of Coast Guard cutters that launcheda pre-emptive attack on our tiny peacefleet. It was David vs. Goliath on thewaters of Puget Sound.

The Trident submarine was truly abehemoth — four stories high and 560feet long (the length of nearly two footballfields) — and it was protected that day bya fleet of 99 heavily armed Coast Guardships, a fleet larger than nearly everyother navy in the world, as Seattle news-papers reported.

Our ragtag little peace flotilla had onlytwo small sailboats and 20 tiny rowboats.Striking suddenly in the gray dawn, CoastGuard cutters rammed our sailboats, andthen armed officers boarded the boats andpointed machine guns and M-16 rifles atour heads. From their ships, they trainedhigh-intensity water cannons on us andshot our rowboats out of the water.

The Seattle newspapers called it “TheBattle of Oak Bay,” and published pho-tographs of Coast Guard boats attackingour fleet with water cannons. The nextday’s Seattle Times pictured me in mywetsuit swimming in the cold waters ofPuget Sound after the water-cannonassault had capsized my boat.

Ruth Nelson, age 78, had been the sub-ject of a film documentary, “Mother of theYear,” and she was arrested that day withher son Jon Nelson, a Lutheran minister.Our oldest peace blockader, Ruth Nelsonstared down the Coast Guard’s water can-nons. She said, “Whether I was throwninto those cold waters, whether it would

have meant my life, I had to put my lifeon the line.”

In the days leading up to the boat block-ade, we had trained with Greenpeace volun-teers who warned us that if we were sweptinto the cold, turbulent waters of PugetSound, we would be at risk of death. All 46activists who agreed to take part in theblockade knew we were facing 10 years inprison — and serious risks to our lives.

In his article, “The Peace Blockade andthe Rise of Nonviolent CivilDisobedience,” Matt Dundas interviewedboat blockaders Kim Wahl and ReneeKrisco about those risks. Their responsesrevealed the attitudes shared by the peaceblockaders on the eve of the confrontationwith the USS Ohio.

“WE THOUGHT WE’D DIE IN THE

WATER”“Despite threats of ten years in prison

and a $10,000 fine, none of the protestersbacked out.” Wahl added, “I just knew inmy heart that I had to do it.” Lookingback later, she asked her friend and fellowblockader Renee Krisco why they hadn’tthought much about the potential reper-cussions. “Because we thought we’d diein the water,” said Krisco.

No one lost their life that day, althoughour boats were rammed and sprayed withwater cannons that sent us flying into thewaters of Puget Sound. We were fishedout of the water with long metal pikes,then arrested at gunpoint.

One reporter wrote that the arrestswere so volatile, with so many heavyweapons trained on protesters, that “had afirecracker gone off at a critical moment,

a massacre could have resulted.”One of the most moving occurrences

on a day that was packed with inspiringmoments was the vigil held on a prayerboat in solidarity with our peace blockade.That boat carried Archbishop RaymondHunthausen and 12 bishops and churchleaders from six denominations of theChurch Council of Greater Seattle.

The chain reaction of conscience hadtraveled through the decades, person toperson, from the courtroom in Nurembergto the waters of Puget Sound.

“THE CHALLENGE OF PEACE”As Jim Douglass explained in his inter-

view with Street Spirit, ArchbishopHunthausen’s uncompromising condem-nation of nuclear weapons had sparkedpriest after priest, bishop after bishop, tocondemn the arms race. That chain reac-tion eventually resulted in the entire bodyof the U.S. Catholic Bishops releasingtheir pastoral letter on nuclear weapons,“The Challenge of Peace” in 1983.

“The Challenge of Peace” brokethrough the public silence surroundingnuclear weapons in a major way, and gavea great deal of hope to the movement fornuclear disarmament. Douglass said,“Hunthausen played a huge role in theprocess that resulted in the bishops’ state-ment. Hunthausen played a HUGE role.He would never say that, obviously.”

Jim and Shelley Douglass played aHUGE role in the process that resulted inArchbishop Hunthausen’s own acts ofconscience and resistance. They wouldnever say that, obviously.

Trident protesters on a freeway overpass: “Create A Peaceful World For All Children.” Photos courtesy Ground Zero Center

Activists from the Ground Zero Center call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

from page 5

Life at Ground Zero of the Nuclear Arms RaceRuth Nelson, age 78, stareddown the Coast Guard’s watercannons. She said, “Whether Iwas thrown into those coldwaters, whether it would havemeant my life, I had to put mylife on the line.”

June 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

Interview by Terry Messman

Street Spirit: While you were a pro-fessor of religion at the University ofHawaii in the late 1960s, you becameactive in the movement to end the VietnamWar. What led you to become involved inantiwar resistance in Hawaii?

James Douglass: Before living inHawaii, I lived in British Columbia inCanada for two years, writing my bookThe Nonviolent Cross. So I was out of itin terms of resistance in the United Statessince I wasn’t living there. Going toHawaii meant beginning to teach in a con-text which was also the R&R center forthe military in the Vietnam War.

Spirit: Hawaii was a major Rest andRecreation center for troops during theVietnam War?

Douglass: Yeah, a main one, and italso was a major training ground for sol-diers going to Vietnam. The SchofieldBarracks in Honolulu, Hawaii, had a jun-gle warfare training center. The peoplewho were responsible for the My LaiMassacre trained there, as well as peopleinvolved in many other atrocities in theVietnam War. I had walked through it.

Our community, called CatholicAction of Hawaii, walked through the tun-nels beneath the model village in the jun-gle warfare training center.

Spirit: The U.S. military had builtmodels of tunnels like the Viet Cong wereusing in Vietnam?

Douglass: Yes. It was set up in such away that people being trained for Vietnamwould envision each Vietnamese villageas one that had tunnels everywherebeneath it, and every hut, every placewhere people were living, was Viet Cong— the two were equated in the junglewarfare training center. So that’s the con-text of where I was teaching in Hawaii.

It also had Pacific Air Force headquar-ters. It had CINCPAC — Commander inChief of the Pacific Command. Hawaiiwas where the planes took off for bomb-ing Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, andwhere the planes got their targeting.

So teaching in that context meant thatyou either were totally complicit by ignor-ing this source of atrocities — ongoingatrocities — or you engaged in nonviolentdirect action. It was that simple inHonolulu, Hawaii, from the time I firstarrived there in 1968 to the time I was lastthere in 1972.

Spirit: You were teaching at theUniversity of Hawaii during that period?

Douglass: I was a professor of religionat the University of Hawaii’s Oahu campus.I taught at the University of Hawaii from1968 to 1969, and then I taught at theUniversity of Notre Dame from the latterhalf of 1969 to 1970, and then, before Iwent back to Hawaii in 1971, I spent a yearwriting Resistance and Contemplation. So Iwas in Hawaii for a total of three years. Thefirst period in 1968-69 was a period whenthe ground war in Vietnam was heavy andthe second period of a year and a half waswhen the air war was becoming mostintense under Nixon.

Spirit: You were in Hawaii during thetime when opposition to the Vietnam Warwas at its most intense, and the CivilRights Movement was at a flash point.

Douglass: What happened was that onApril 4, 1968, Martin Luther King wasassassinated. At the time, I was teaching acourse on the Theology of Peace. It was aseminar, a very intense group, and severalof the students came in late during thefirst class after King’s murder, and

announced that they had burned their draftcards across campus at a gathering.

They were forming what becameknown as The Hawaii Resistance, andthey invited me to join their group. I did. Iwas being confronted by people who weretaking seriously what we were exploringin our readings and discussions.

Spirit: So your own students inspiredyou. In some ways, were you being taughtby your own students?

Douglass: I was totally inspired by twosources: Martin Luther King, who was theinspiration for my students and myself, andmy students taking his death so seriouslythat they made a commitment to going tojail for years. They were responding in likefashion to the stand he took. Some of themdid go to jail for sentences ranging from sixmonths to a couple years.

Spirit: King was murdered and inresponse, your students become draftresisters and were sentenced to long jailterms. What impact did that have on you?

Douglass: Soon I went to jail as aresult of being part of their community ofresistance. The Hawaii National Guardwas called up within a month after the for-mation of the Hawaii Resistance follow-ing King’s assassination. We had todecide how we would respond to troopsbeing taken on trucks through Honoluluon their way to Schofield Barracks wherethey would be trained at the jungle war-fare training center.

Spirit: You mean that members of theNational Guard were actually beingtrained and sent as troops to Vietnam?

Douglass: That was not what was said.What was said by President LyndonJohnson was that they were being calledup to respond to the Pueblo crisis — aU.S. intelligence ship that received somefire when it came close to the mainland ofKorea. But we suspected — rightly —that those National Guard troops wouldwind up in Vietnam. And they did.

[Editor: In May 1968, troops of the299th Infantry Regiment of the HawaiiArmy National Guard were called intoactive duty, and an estimated 1,500National Guard soldiers from Hawaiiwere sent to fight in the Vietnam War.]

Spirit: How did you respond when theactivation of the National Guard broughtthe Vietnam war to the streets of Honolulu?

Douglass: We discussed how torespond to that into the early morninghours prior to the troops being transportedthrough town on their way to SchofieldBarracks. I argued strongly against civildisobedience. We did not have a consen-sus process, so we voted, and the vote wasagainst civil disobedience. But some ofthe members of the Hawaii Resistancesaid they were going to do it anyhow.

Spirit: Why in the world were youagainst civil disobedience? I mean, youhad just written The Nonviolent Cross,with the subheading “A Theology of

Revolution and Peace.”Douglass: I think I had thoughts like,

“This will alienate people. This is not thetime or the place.” And I’m certain thatbeneath all that was, “I don’t want to doit.” [laughing]

Spirit: Jim Douglass, the heraldedauthor of The Nonviolent Cross, wantedto sit on the sidelines? [laughing]

Douglass: I didn’t want to walk thetalk of our classroom or of Martin LutherKing, for that matter. [laughing]

So the next day, we stood as a groupalong Kalakaua Avenue in downtownHonolulu, as the National Guard trucksroared past on their way to Fort De Russy,an open fort in the center of Honolulu.

I was holding a sign saying, “WhatWould Jesus Do?” He’d do more thancarry a sign, by the way — you can putthat in the interview. [laughing]

Spirit: Will do. So did any of you domore than carry a sign?

Douglass: It was obvious that weought to do more. So we walked down toFort De Russy where the troops beganparading back and forth in front of thegovernor’s stand. John Burns, the gover-nor of the State of Hawaii, was reviewingthe troops. We walked onto the field up tothe governor and I told him why we feltthis was wrong: These men were going totheir deaths and to kill others in an unjust

Confronting the ‘Auschwitz of Puget Sound’The Street Spirit Interview with James Douglass

“When scientific power outruns spiritual power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.” — Martin Luther King

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 8

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action still continues to be very active in working for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

June 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T8

war. And it was wrong. We were quickly ushered out of the

fort. Then we were standing where thetrucks would soon be loaded up with thesoldiers. There were motorcycle policerevving up their motorcycles and prepar-ing to depart. You know the phrase,“moved by the Holy Spirit.” I rememberstanding with everybody on the sidewalk,and then I remember us all sitting togetherin front of the police and the trucks.

We were photographed, identified andpulled out of the way. We weren’t arrest-ed on the spot, but a couple days later, apolice officer showed up at the door ofmy apartment, and I was arrested andcharged. And we soon went to trial.

Spirit: You had thought earlier thatthis wasn’t really the right time to do civildisobedience, but you suddenly foundyourself sitting in front of the troop trans-port trucks. What took place within youthat put you in front of those trucks?

Douglass: I felt a part of a communityof great people and we were making deci-sions together, or just instinctively doingthings together. I felt no reservation what-ever in working with this inspired com-munity. And I am so glad that I was bap-tized by the holy movement of the Spiritin the Hawaii resistance.

Spirit: Why are you so glad that youwere moved to take part in this action?

Douglass: Well, it changed my wholelife. Can you imagine being a professortalking about nonviolence and the VietnamWar and not doing anything in Honolulu,Hawaii? What kind of a nightmare is that?So, we went to trial and were, of course,found guilty of what we obviously weredoing. The judge, very ironically, sen-tenced all the students to a day or so, andthen looked at me and said, “Since youwere the ringleader, I’m giving you twoweeks in jail.” [laughing]

Spirit: Yet you were really only thering-follower!

Douglass: I was the follower of my stu-dents and he gives me two weeks in jail!Anyhow, that was a further good experi-ence, because in jail I then saw who wasn’tpresent in my classes at the University ofHawaii. There were almost no Hawaiianstudents, but I was surrounded by them inHalawa County Jail in Honolulu.

Spirit: That’s where you met somenative Hawaiians?

Douglass: Yes, they were all aroundme. It wasn’t because native Hawaiiansare criminals. It’s because the society Iwas living in was an occupied zone.Hawaii would be a free country of its ownhad the United States not occupied it andtaken it over.

I was part of the Hawaii Resistance fora year and a half, and then I left to teach atthe University of Notre Dame in the pro-gram for the study and practice of nonvio-lence. By the time I got back to Hawaiiafter a further year of writing Resistanceand Contemplation, it was the air war thatwas escalating.

Spirit: How did the Hawaii resistancerespond to Nixon’s escalating bombingstrikes on Southeast Asia?

Douglass: We formed a group calledCatholic Action of Hawaii and chose, asour focus, a Lenten campaign in 1972 atHickam Air Force Base, which has thesame runways as Honolulu Airport. At thattime, it was Pacific Air Force headquarters.

Every day during Lent in 1972, our littlegroup of 10 people was in front of HickamAir Force Base passing out a new leaflet toworkers going into Hickam. We knewfrom members of the Air Force in Hickam

who talked with us that this was the plan-ning center for the air war in Vietnam.

We began to do nonviolent civil disobe-dience by walking into the base and goingto the different buildings inside and pass-ing out our leaflets, and, of course, beingarrested. One day, I was driving out to theHickam base to do our leafleting in front ofthe base and I got into the wrong lane oftraffic and drove onto the base.

Spirit: You were actually able to driveright onto the base where the top-secretair war in Vietnam was being planned?How could that happen?

Douglass: As I was driving in, eventhough I had no sticker on the front of mycar, the guard waved me in. I guess hemade a mistake. So I parked my car at themain building of the Pacific Air Forceheadquarters, and I thought, well I’ll do alittle experiment with truth, usingGandhi’s term. I walked inside andnobody stopped me.

I saw a directory on the wall and I sawthat one of the rooms was “Directorate ofElectronic Warfare.” We knew what thedirectorate of electronic warfare meant.We had a slideshow on electronic warfare.The Air Force could send out planes androbotic devices that would drop terribleweapons onto the jungles which couldspray tiny pellets over an area the size ofseveral football fields. And, of course, theelectronic devices could be activated byan animal passing by, or a Viet Cong sol-dier, or a child going to get some water.That was a crime and a sin.

Spirit: Didn’t your attorneys laterargue in court that this form of electronicwarfare was a war crime under theNuremberg principles?

Douglass: Sure. That’s a war crime thatwould cause the obliteration of civiliansindiscriminately, just by the nature of theweapon. There was no knowledge whatev-er as to what they would be bombing. Itwas all done by these electronic devices.We knew the results of that bombingbecause of people who were talking to thevictims. So we knew all about electronic

warfare in Vietnam and here was the officefor electronic warfare in the Pacific regionin this very building.

So when I came out of the building andwent back to our group, we decided totake a further step. We donated blood, andthree members of our group, JimAlbertini, Chuck Julie and I, drove intothe Hickam Air Force Base one day, andJim Albertini and I went into the samebuilding. He went into one office and Iwent into the office that said “Director ofElectronic Warfare.”

When I came into the office, there wasa major at a desk. His name was MajorLaFrance, as I learned when he testified atthe trial. I gave him an envelope with ourstatement inside explaining why we werepouring blood on these files. Can youimagine writing this statement with theprayerful hope that we would be able todo that action? How on earth were wegoing to do that?

He took the envelope. It was addressed“Commanding Officer, Directorate ofElectronic Warfare.” And he walked intothe next office. I looked behind his deskand there was a huge file cabinet. It said,“Top Secret” across it. I had my briefcasewith a coke bottle full of blood in it. Thefile cabinet was wide open. There was a biglock on it but it was wide open. So I justwalked back and poured the blood all overthe files. The next thing I knew, I was lyingon the floor and he was choking me.

Spirit: Pouring blood on top secretdocuments must have been controversialat the time. What was the symbolism ofpouring blood on the military files?

Douglass: Because the files alreadyhad blood on them — the blood of thepeople of Vietnam. And we wanted tomake clear that the blood of the people ofVietnam was our blood as well, and theywere connected with our lives.

Spirit: It must have been very startlingwhen the major knocked you to theground and began choking you.

Douglass: He had come from behind. Ididn’t see him coming, and then he had

thrown me down and was choking me.We had role-played it earlier in a sessionwith our group. We spent all day roleplay-ing all kinds of things, and that was one ofthe things we roleplayed: if somebodythrew you down. I knew both instinctivelyand by our roleplaying, that it was time torelax. And I was happy because I neverimagined that we would actually be ableto do this action.

He let up because I don’t think hewanted to choke somebody. Then I real-ized that there was a group of quite a fewpeople standing around us in a circle. Allthese other people had come from nearbyoffices after hearing the commotion. Thenhe stood over me and he told me, “Wipe itup — there’s blood all over.”

I said, “That’s impossible.” He knew immediately what I meant. He

said, “Don’t give me any of your philoso-phy.” What an insightful person! [laughing]Then he picked up my legs and he used myhair as a mop to wipe up the blood.

Strange as it may seem, I wasn’t arrest-ed. I was released and I was back teachingat the University of Hawaii the next day.

Spirit: Did they ever arrest you orprosecute you for this action?

Douglass: When I came back to ourhouse in a low-cost area of Waikiki afterteaching during the day, I had walked inwithout noticing that there were a coupleof unusual cars outside. They broke downthe door and came in and arrested me. Iwas taken and charged with destruction ofgovernment property and conspiracy andso forth — several felony charges.

Major LaFrance may be retired, andfor all I know, he’ll read this article andsay, “I remember that!” If so, God blessyou, Major LaFrance, you were myfavorite witness at the trial.

Spirit: Why was the major yourfavorite witness?

Douglass: Because in the trial, I was myown lawyer and I was responsible for ques-tioning Major LaFrance. So I asked him

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 9

Street Spirit InterviewWith James Douglassfrom page 7

Ground Zero organized faith-based resistance to a national-security state based on nuclear weapons. From left to right, Utsumi Shoenin, Jesuit Father Bill Bichsel, Sr. Denise, Shelley Douglass, Jim Douglass.

Photo credit: GroundZero Center

It was an extraordinary connection to have Bishop Matthiesen at one end of the tracksencouraging workers at the Pantex plant to resign their jobs and take more peaceful occupa-tions, and Archbishop Hunthausen at the other end of the tracks at the Trident base takingthe step of tax resistance and denouncing Trident as the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.

June 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

just to describe what happened that day. Hewas quite truthful. He said exactly whatoccurred and then he got to the point whereI was wondering if he was going to beexplicit about picking me up and wiping thefloor with my hair. [laughing]

When I asked him what happened next,he said, “I performed a symbolic action.”

Spirit: He must have read your book.He took a page out of it.

Douglass: He was taking off from ourdescription of our action. He performed asymbolic action! He was a great witness.

Spirit: What was the trial’s outcome?Douglass: The judge at our trial, Judge

Martin Pence, was a very conservativeman. We discerned he was not going toallow us to examine the evidence againstus. The evidence against us, of course,were the bloody files, and that was ourevidence against the government becausewe were claiming those files containedevidence of U.S. war crimes.

So for our trial preparations, we wereplanning to use an international lawdefense: We were blocking a war crime.We invited experts from the NurembergWar Crimes Tribunal to come toHonolulu, Hawaii, and two of them did.[Mary Kaufman and Benjamin Ferencz,two of the prosecuting attorneys for theUnited States against Nazis accused ofwar crimes at the Nuremberg War CrimesTribunal after World War II, agreed to actas co-counsel at the trial.]

In preparation for the trial, we antici-pated that the government was going totry to circumvent that defense by notbringing in the [military] files, and thatthe judge would rule in their favor. Whenthat was about to happen in a pretrialhearing, the entire community was pre-sent. It extended beyond the 10 or somembers of our Catholic Action group.The courtroom was packed.

So when the judge began to say thatthe government didn’t have to bring thefiles into court — which was in violationof the rules of evidence — people in thecourtroom began to protest to the judge.He lost control of the courtroom and hefinally cleared the court so there wasnobody left there except for the judge andthe defendants.

We were also outside the court everyday fasting and with signs protestingagainst this withdrawing of the files andbeyond that, protesting the air war inVietnam which was the ultimate purposeof all of this — and not whether we weregoing to go to prison, as we expected to.

Judge Pence then withdrew from thecase, which was amazing.

Spirit: Why did the judge withdraw?I’ve almost never heard of that happeningin a civil disobedience trial.

Douglass: He had lost control of thecourtroom and so he withdrew from thecase. I don’t have a very good explana-tion, to this day, except that the Spirit wasworking. He was replaced by JudgeSamuel King, a man who had just beenappointed by President Nixon, and ourtrial was his first case as a federal judge.

He changed the ruling and said we didhave a right to examine those files.

Spirit: It was an almost unbelievableturn of events that let the truth get out.

Douglass: I don’t know how all of thiscame to pass, but it did come to pass! Thegovernment then was on the horns of adilemma. They were about to drop thewhole case.

Spirit: Because the federal govern-ment didn’t want to release in a publiccourtroom the military documents that

you had poured blood on?Douglass: They weren’t going to dis-

close those files in the court. They didn’twant us to examine those files and make acase against them with experts in interna-tional law coming to Honolulu. This wasall over the front pages of the newspapers,and it had become an important issue inHawaii. So we had already gotten to thefirst purpose of our campaign, which wasto break through the silence.

[Editor: Judge King allowed all of thewitnesses to testify for the antiwar defen-dants. Nuremberg attorney Mary Kaufmancalled it “the most startling testimony evergiven in a U.S. courtroom on the war inVietnam.” At the trial, a former Air Forcesergeant testified that while he was sta-tioned at Hickam Air Base in Hawaii, hehad witnessed “the deliberate targeting of aLaotian hospital for obliteration bombing,as well as the targeting of numerous othercivilian objectives.”]

Spirit: At that time, peace activistswere trying to awaken the public aboutthe full extent of the saturation bombing.

Douglass: The bombing of Vietnam,Laos and Cambodia was going on silently,in terms of the connection betweenHonolulu and Indochina. So we had bro-ken through that silence with our trial. Butwe wanted the trial to continue.

The government prosecutors withdrewthe felony charges which would have beenfive years apiece for conspiracy anddestruction of government property, for atotal of 10 or 15 years. They lowered thefelony charges to misdemeanors. So sixmonths became the maximum sentences.We went to trial and, of course, werefound guilty.

Spirit: You were sentenced to sixmonths in prison?

Douglass: Yes, we were sentenced tothe maximum six months, which was sus-pended on condition of our paying finesof $500 each and reporting to our proba-tion officers and fulfilling all the condi-tions of probation — none of which wedid. We noncooperated with everythingwe were given.

As part of that noncooperation, I hadalready resigned my job at the University ofHawaii in preparation for going to jail forseveral years for these felony charges. Myresignation was effective at the end of thefollowing semester, so Shelley and I movedback to our home in British Columbia.

I had already refused to pay the $500fine, so by moving I was in violation of theprobation order that you’re not allowed totravel without permission of your probationofficer. We just went ahead and moved.Prior to that, I had made a trip toCopenhagen, Denmark, in violation of trav-el restrictions, to participate in an interna-tional war crimes tribunal that focused onthe U.S. bombing of Indochina. And thiswas all done publicly. They tried to ignoreit, but it was done publicly.

Spirit: They were trying to defuse theimpact of your resistance by ignoring thenoncooperation? Did they ever arrest you?

Douglass: By the time Shelley and Imoved back to British Columbia, a war-rant was issued for my arrest. So, for thenext several years, we lived in Hedley,this little mining town in BritishColumbia, while I worked on anotherbook, Resistance and Contemplation.Anytime I went across the U.S. border Iwas liable to be arrested. And I wasarrested eventually, of course.

The Hawaii action took place in 1972and I was arrested in 1975. Shelley and Ihad gone to the Los Angeles CatholicWorker to speak at a Day of Nonviolenceheld down there, and they advertised it pub-licly. But the FBI was a bit late. They camea few days after I’d been there, and by thattime we were back in British Columbia.

But the following year, in 1975, I wasinvited to speak in Los Angeles at anotherDay of Nonviolence and this time, when Iwas speaking in the auditorium, a groupof men in suits walked in from the back ofthe auditorium and announced that theywere members of the FBI. I asked them toplease sit down because I wasn’t goinganywhere. They did sit down and I gavemy talk against the Vietnam War.

Then they came up and arrested meand took me out to their waiting cars. Bythat time, the audience was well organizedand they blocked the cars for about half anhour, and they had to call in the LosAngeles Police Department to get out ofthe parking lot. I was then taken back toHonolulu for a resentencing for my viola-tions of probation.

The day I was arrested in Honoluluwas the same date as the last demonstra-tion against the Vietnam War at the WhiteHouse at which Shelley was arrested.

When I went before the judge, thecourtroom was filled with friends andthey were again prepared to noncooperatein some way when the judge sentencedme to six months in prison, just as theyhad when we originally were on trial.

Judge King said, “For your failure to ful-fill the conditions of your probation, I sen-tence you to an unconditional probation.”And he walked out of the courtroom! Thatwas the end of that! [laughing]

Spirit: When you learned in 1977 thatthe naval base in Bangor, Washington,would be the home port for Trident sub-marines, were you guided by Gandhi’svision of nonviolence in forming GroundZero Center for Nonviolent Action?

Douglass: Yes, we were very specifi-cally guided. We studied Gandhi, and webased everything in the Trident campaign,and then in the succeeding Tracks cam-paign, on the Gandhian understanding of asatyagraha campaign.

When Narayan Desai (Gandhi’s secre-tary and biographer) came to visit us, itwas at a critical moment when we werestruggling with all of that. We sought at

every step of the way, from the beginningof the campaign, to recognize that thepeople on the other side of the fence — inthis case, quite literally, the fence betweenGround Zero Center for NonviolentAction and the Trident submarine base —were our brothers and our sisters.

In those days, it was always, “TheRussians! The Russians! They’re theenemy.” So that justifies weapons thatcould destroy all of humanity to “deter”the other side by fear — the Russians.

The nuclear weapons in our midstthreaten us as much as they do the otherside. There’s nothing more suicidal than anuclear weapon. We have to build a cam-paign to overcome our denial of the reali-ty of nuclear weapons, and our denial ofhow they function to create fear in ourown lives and fear of the so-called enemy.

Therefore, we organized a campaignaround a base that was invisible, eventhough it’s only about eight miles acrossthe water from Seattle. We tried to bringhome to all of us what this nuclear basemeans. So we lived next to it. That’s thenature of Ground Zero, and that’s thenature of Shelley and my moving into thelast house alongside the railroad tracksgoing into the Trident submarine base.

Spirit: Out of all the issues of war andpeace you might have focused on, whatled you to focus so wholeheartedly onresistance to the Trident submarine?

Douglass: One person: Robert Aldridge.Unless I say the name Robert Aldridge,none of it makes sense. Aldridge was a keydesigner of the Trident missile system atLockheed Missiles and Space Corporationat the Sunnyvale Plant in California.

He met with Shelley and I in Honolulu,Hawaii, when he came to support us in theHickam Three trial. When we met him,we did not know he was a key designer ofthe Trident missile system.

While attending a public forum duringthat trial, Robert Aldridge was asked tocomment on the statements made by theNuremberg prosecuting attorneys whocame to help us in the trial. Mary Kaufmanand Benjamin Ferencz, two of the attorneysduring the Nuremberg War CrimesTribunal, defended us at our trial becausethey said we were acting in obedience tothe Nuremberg principles by pouring bloodon top-secret electronic warfare files inorder to bring them to the attention of theAmerican public.

Robert Aldridge was struck silent at thatforum, and we never asked him about it.But several years later, when he came tovisit us in our home in Hedley, BritishColumbia, he told us he had recognizedthat he was a war criminal by what theNuremberg prosecutors said in that forum.

Spirit: What did the Nuremberg attor-neys say about war crimes that had such adeep impact on Robert Aldridge?

Douglass: They said that first-strikeweapons and weapons that directly violatea civilian population were war crimes inviolation of the Nuremberg principles.Those Nuremberg principles, which are afoundation of international law, are violat-ed both by electronic warfare — which iswhy we poured our blood on the files forelectronic warfare — and also by theTrident nuclear missile system, which iswhat Robert Aldridge was building.

Spirit: So when Aldridge visited youand Shelley, he actually told you that hehad become aware of his involvement inwar crimes during your trial in Hawaii?

Douglass: Yes. And we were not theonly part of this process. His daughter, asa high school student, was beginning todemonstrate against the Vietnam War, andshe told him one time after dinner, “Dad, Imay be demonstrating against your worksoon.” So the combination of what heheard from both his daughter in high

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 10

Street Spirit InterviewWith James Douglassfrom page 8

Were you guided by Gandhi’svision of nonviolence at theGround Zero Center forNonviolent Action?

Jim Douglass: Yes, we werevery specifically guided. We studied Gandhi, and webased everything in theTrident campaign, and thenin the succeeding Trackscampaign, on the Gandhianunderstanding of a satya-graha campaign.

June 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T10

school and the experience at our Hickamtrial moved them to hold a retreat withtheir 10 children the following Christmas.And the family reached a decision thatDad — Bob — had to resign his job, andthe whole family would have to take thecut in income and lifestyle. And all ofthem would have to take on the responsi-bility to change their lives.

So, at the age of 49, Robert Aldridgeresigned his job after having worked atLockheed Missiles and Space Corporationfor his full adult life.

When he came up to our home inCanada to tell us about all that, we thenasked, “Well, what’s Trident?”

He said, putting the map on our kitchentable, “It’s the submarine missile systemthat will be based right here.” And hepointed to a spot that wasn’t very far fromus on the other side of the border(between the U.S. and Canada). That wasthe beginning of the Trident campaign.

Spirit: I understand that first-strikeweapons of mass destruction are warcrimes under Nuremberg principles. Butwhy did Aldridge conclude that Tridentwas a first-strike weapon?

Douglass: He was designing the part ofTrident that was specifically for a first-strike capability: the targeting. He wasdesigning the targeting instrument thatwould allow a Trident missile to hit sodirectly on an underground missile silo inthe Soviet Union as to destroy it before itwas launched. And do you design a weaponto destroy an empty missile silo?

No! That kind of accuracy was neededin order to destroy a missile silo beforethe weapon is fired from the silo. RobertAldridge was a smart man, and he realizedthat means a first-strike weapon.

So he identified all of that in hearingthat a war launched by the Nazis fit thesame category of war crimes as theVietnam War, which his daughter wasdemonstrating against, and the missilesystem that he was designing atLockheed. It all fit together.

Spirit: Along with the first-strike accu-racy of its missiles, the Trident submarinealso has a destructive power that wouldindiscriminately kill millions of civilians.

Douglass: Yes, even if you hit allthose missile silos that were necessary ina first strike, you would also destroy over100 million Soviet citizens. That’s a warcrime in another sense, and in the mostdevastating sense of all.

Spirit: You wrote in Lighting East toWest that a single Trident submarinecould incinerate millions of civilians andhad as much destructive power as hun-dreds of Hiroshima bombs.

Douglass: A single Trident submarinehad 24 missiles, and each missile wascapable of carrying eight independentlytargeted nuclear warheads — meaninghydrogen bombs. Doing the math, eighttimes 24 is 192 warheads on one subma-rine, and each of those hydrogen bombshad 38 times more destructive power thanthe Hiroshima bomb.

One Trident submarine can destroy acountry, even a huge country like the SovietUnion. At that time, 20 Trident submarineswere scheduled to be built, and then youhave a weapon that is capable of destroyingthe world many times over.

And that was before we even took intoconsideration the concept of nuclear win-ter. Through the use of nuclear weaponsin a first strike, or for that matter, in anyattack, we would create a nuclear winteraround the globe, destroying the capacityfor any human life at all to exist.

Spirit: So after Aldridge alerted youthat Trident submarines would be basednear Seattle, what were the first steps inplanning a campaign that could resistsuch an overwhelming weapons system?

Douglass: Number one, every workeron the Trident nuclear submarine base isRobert Aldridge.

Spirit: A potential Robert Aldridge,meaning a person of conscience?

Douglass: Yes, potentially. Thereforewe must respect, understand and grow intruth through dialogue with every worker,and every civilian military employee on theTrident nuclear submarine base. We livedalongside it and worked alongside it.

So everything we did had to fulfill thatpurpose. On the one hand, we had to blockthe system — that systemic violence we’retalking about. That’s the Trident systemwhich could literally destroy the worldthrough nuclear fire and radioactivity. Wehad to block that through nonviolent andloving resistance.

And secondly, we had to engage in dia-logue and respectful relationships with thepeople who were involved in that system,just as all of us were, and are, involved.

We are all involved. That goes frompaying taxes, which we all do, even thoseof us who are military tax resistersbecause they collect the taxes in otherways. And through our silence, which weall do to the extent that we all aren’t con-stantly out there speaking against the evilsin our society. And the number one evil isour capacity to destroy all life on earth,since we are U.S. citizens with the mostpowerful arsenal ever devised.

So on the one hand, resistance. On theother hand, dialogue.

Spirit: Let’s look at these two dimen-sions — resistance and dialogue. Whatforms of resistance did Ground Zeroorganize in confronting an entire fleet offirst-strike nuclear submarines?

Douglass: Well, we decided in our lit-

tle group, the Ground Zero Center forNonviolent Action, to create our ownnavy to block the U.S. Navy that wasbringing the submarines into the Tridentbase. Our navy consisted of two sailboatsand 20 rowboats. You know all about this,to put it mildly, because you were thereon the boat. [laughing]

We had the Pacific Peacemaker, a sail-boat that had come all the way fromAustralia to join the boat blockade, andthe Lizard of Woz, a trimarin sailboat.The Pacific Peacemaker and the Lizard ofWoz were the two larger boats, and wealso had 20 rowboats, most of them to bestrung out behind the Pacific Peacemakerand a few to be thrown into the waterfrom the deck of the Lizard of Woz.

Our basic strategy was to block theTrident submarine with this small navy.But all our boats were stopped by theNavy’s pre-emptive attack.

Spirit: The Navy and Coast Guard sent99 ships to attack our little boats when wetried to block the USS Ohio. Seattle news-papers reported they had sent out a largerfleet than most of the navies in the world.

Douglass: Well, the 99 Coast Guardboats were all the Coast Guard boats onthe West Coast of the United States. Theydidn’t have any Coast Guard boats any-where else on that day. They had them allin the area of Seattle in order to stop ourragtag fleet.

That was our first major experimentwith truth on the waters of Puget Sound.They did a pre-emptive attack before theTrident sub reached our blockade. Weknew it was coming because of a goodbunch of Paul Reveres who were sta-tioned along the Hood Canal at the end ofthe journey, and also through the Strait ofJuan de Fuca going out to the PacificOcean. And we had observers all the waydown the coast and through the PanamaCanal. So we knew when the Trident sub-marine was coming to the day.

Spirit: I’ll never forget when it cameover the horizon in the dawn hours ofAugust 12, 1982.

Douglass: It came in the dawn hours.And they did pre-emptive arrests of all ofus on those two flagships before the subwas in our immediate vicinity. We wereput into a little camp by the Trident base,and felony charges were filed against allof us, and within a few days the chargeswere dropped.

Spirit: There were two different felonycharges filed, so we faced at least twofive-year prison sentences, as I recall.

Douglass: Yes, and in fact, you and Igot a couple of the heaviest penaltiesbecause we were charged with attacking amember of the U.S. Navy or somethinglike that, because after we had alreadybeen arrested and handcuffed, we tried tojump off the boat to swim in front of thefleet. [laughing] You were charged with a

higher one and so was I.

Spirit: All we were trying to do wasjump over the side and swim to block theTrident. We didn’t try to attack a guard.

Douglass: No, but we were chargedwith that felony.

Spirit: Did you ever figure out whythey dropped the felony charges againstall the defendants?

Douglass: Well, because they didn’twant to engage us in court, where wewould bring up everything to do with theTrident submarine, and Bob Aldridgewould have come and testified. The wholeissue would have been publicized in a bigway in Seattle, just as the Hickam actionhad become front-page news for a fullweek in Honolulu.

Spirit: Also, among the defendants wehad people like Ruth Nelson, a 78-year-old woman who had been named Motherof the Year.

Douglass: Oh, Ruth Nelson was abeautiful woman.

Spirit: They didn’t want to have peo-ple like that on the stand talking abouthow the Coast Guard had used machineguns and water cannons to arrest us.

Douglass: They certainly did not.

Spirit: The U.S. government also creat-ed a new “national security” felony that ifyou were within 1,000 yards of the subma-rine you could be sentenced to five years.

Douglass: It was created specificallyfor the purpose of stopping the Tridentpeace blockade.

Spirit: Ground Zero also organizedseveral massive demonstrations wherehundreds were arrested for climbing thefence into the Trident base.

Douglass: Yes, there were literallyhundreds who did that on several occa-sions. There were huge demonstrationsinvolving thousands who came to the ral-lies and then hundreds who climbed overthe fence.

Spirit: In October of 1979, thousandscame from all over the country to commitcivil disobedience at the base.

Douglass: During an earlier demonstra-tion, the base chose to arrest one person inparticular — it happened to be me — and toavoid arresting the hundreds of people whowere inside the white line. In other words,they did a selective arrest process. The peo-ple who had crossed the white line werearrested and taken into custody and thenreleased without being charged.

Spirit: How did Ground Zero respondto the selective arrest?

Douglass: In a second huge demon-stration several months later (on October28, 1979), having recognized what wasgoing on in the first set of arrests with thecharges being dropped, they all came backafter they were released and got arrested asecond time. So the selective arrestprocess didn’t work. On that occasion wehad a mass trial.

There were about 200 people arrested.At the mass trial, a lot of those people weregiven minor sentences or paid a fine. Manyof them paid the fine because they lived sofar away they couldn’t come to the trial. Asyou know, some people like you and I weresent to jail for six months. And that’s whereTerry Messman and I spent quite a bit oftime together. By the way, for all of youwho are out there, he’s the same guy that’sinterviewing me now. [laughing]

Spirit: You and I and Karl Zanzig,who was also arrested at the Trident base,all served six-month sentences in Boronfederal prison. Karl and I took a class innonviolence you gave at the prison.

Douglass: You have a better memorythan I have! [laughing]

Spirit: I’ll never forget it. You wereteaching the insights that later appeared in

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 11

Street Spirit InterviewWith James Douglassfrom page 9

has somehow conferred upon the ambas-sadors the unjustified opportunity to makeup arbitrary standards of behavior in atown which once had a city-sanctioned“How Berkeley Can You Be” parade andmade tie-dye a global fashion.

It goes without saying, especially afterthe cascade of personal testimony beforethe Peace and Justice Commission regard-ing the prevalence of discriminatory andsometimes abusive practices of the ambas-sadors, that people on the streets often seea side of them that is far from benign.

The ambassadors of the DowntownBerkeley Association are, in short, anabsurd gang of civil rights violators. Poorand homeless people are in the worstposition to try to combat this kind of

institutionalized discrimination. Absent any responsible oversight from

the City Council, this role is sadly fallingto beleaguered, overworked city commis-sioners. And city commissions have toolittle influence over the council and thecity manager to truly protect the public— even the public which might be pooror homeless — from absurd, artificialstandards of behavior invented out ofwhole cloth by a private gang of greenshirts to try to turn public streets intosome peculiar version of Disneyland.

Berkeley citizens need to see the veryreal, inevitable results of the city’s poorplanning when it comes to housing policy.They need to know when people are inneed, or cold, or hungry. Chasing poor andhomeless people off the streets or into theparks is an irrational response to the emer-

gency we face, thanks to a City Councilmajority which refuses to address a lack ofshelter, low-income housing, and a needfor public campgrounds.

We’ve already had several acts of bru-tality committed by the ambassadors sentroving through our streets by the land-lords’ lobby known as the DBA.

It is time to call for a complete suspen-sion of the ambassador program until allvoices are equally represented on the boardof the DBA, until its programs honestlymeet true community standards, and untilthe DBA recognizes its role in creating thecrisis in housing which represents the trulyinappropriate behavior — leaving familiesto suffer in the streets.

Both the Peace and Justice Commissionand the Homeless Task Force have nowcalled for the termination of the ambas-sador program with respect to its interac-tion with poor and homeless people.

Abolish the Ambassador Programfrom page 1

June 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 11

your book, Lightning East to West. You saidthat nonviolent movements needed to dis-cover the moral equivalent of Einstein’sequation for converting matter into energy.Then, just before I got out of prison in July1981, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausenlikened the Trident submarine to Auschwitz.

Douglass: The most important resisterin the Trident campaign — to single outone person other than Robert Aldridge —was Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen.

Spirit: Why was Hunthausen such asignificant voice in the movement fornuclear disarmament?

Douglass: He gave a speech in whichhe stated to a very large number of reli-gious leaders gathered in Tacoma,Washington, that Trident was the“Auschwitz of Puget Sound.” And he tooka stand of refusing to pay his incometaxes in order to resist Trident.

Spirit: After he made that statement,we invited him to speak at the PacificSchool of Religion in Berkeley where heurged hundreds of religious leaders toresist nuclear murder and suicide.

Douglass: Yes. And as a result, rough-ly six months later, he actually stated pub-licly, “I have now decided to stop payinghalf of my taxes” — the half of his taxesthat would have gone to military appropri-ations and nuclear weapons.

Spirit: It was such an important turn-ing point when an archbishop actuallycalled for massive civil disobedience.

Douglass: Yes, and he not only calledfor it — he did it! His tax resistance wasnonviolent civil disobedience in the mostradical sense possible.

Spirit: When Archbishop Hunthausendeclared that Trident was the Auschwitzof Puget Sound, what effect did it have onyour work at Ground Zero? And whateffect did it have on the general public?

Douglass: It electrified the generalpublic. And it profoundly encouraged us.

We all knew Archbishop Hunthausen.We’d known him for years and he’dalready done all kinds of things to supportour work. He supported a 30-day fast thatwe engaged in. He sent information on theTrident campaign to his entire body ofpriests and religious leaders in the diocese.He brought over to Ground Zero all of hisadministrative leaders in the archdiocese fora retreat on the issue of Trident.

He’d done everything he could — upto refusing to pay his own taxes — beforehe took that step. So we were one in com-munity with Archbishop Hunthausenbefore he took that further step.

Spirit: What was the response of theChurch hierarchy to Hunthausen’s callfor massive resistance to the arms race?

Douglass: Well, I would say it was amixed response. A number of Catholicbishops within the United States madestatements of their own against nuclearweapons in the months followingArchbishop Hunthausen’s statement.

I think they were to some degree, if notlargely, inspired by his courage. I foundthat remarkable because there had been somuch silence before then.

Spirit: Silence from church leadersabout the threat of nuclear weapons?

Douglass: So much silence from reli-gious leaders across the board, and cer-tainly from Catholic bishops. So I foundthat very encouraging. I would read onestatement after another about nuclearweapons, and that led up eventually to “TheChallenge of Peace,” the Catholic bishops’pastoral letter on nuclear weapons.

Spirit: The bishop’s letter gave so much

hope to the peace movement in 1983. Andyou believe that Hunthausen’s statementplayed a role in inspiring the bishops’ pas-toral letter on nuclear weapons?

Douglass: It played a huge role in theprocess that resulted in the bishops’ state-ment. Hunthausen played a huge role. Hewould never say that, obviously.

Spirit: In what way did Hunthausen’sstatement play such a huge role?

Douglass: There was nothing vaguelylike Archbishop Hunthausen’s statementbefore him. And following his statementthere were many!

The only bishop in the U.S. who close-ly paralleled Archbishop Hunthausen, andactually became a very good friend of his,was Bishop (Leroy) Matthiesen inAmarillo, Texas. And of course, theywere bishops at the opposite ends of thetracks of the White Train.

Spirit: So the Pantex plant in Amarilloassembled the hydrogen bombs in BishopMatthiesen’s diocese, then shipped themto Hunthausen’s diocese near Seattle?

Douglass: Amarillo is where thePantex plant exists, and that is the finalassembly point for all nuclear weapons inthe United States. It was an extraordinaryconnection to have Bishop Matthiesen atone end of the tracks encouraging workersat the Pantex plant to resign their jobs andtake more peaceful occupations, andArchbishop Hunthausen at the other endof the tracks at the Trident base taking thestep of tax resistance and denouncingTrident as the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.

The two of them came to our house atthe end of the tracks and held a retreat for agroup of us one weekend as part of theTracks campaign. That was very inspiring.

Spirit: It must have been amazing tohave both Hunthausen and Matthiesenwith you at Ground Zero. They wereheroes of the peace movement — two ofthe most courageous voices we ever had.

Douglass: And they sent out a letterover their signatures to all of the Catholicbishops in the dioceses along the traintracks. And it resulted in 11 or 12 bishopsalong the tracks joining in their statementencouraging people to take a stand againstthe nuclear arms race and the train ship-ments. When the bishops made that state-ment together, it was reported on the frontpage of the New York Times.

Spirit: Archbishop Hunthausen notonly influenced Catholic leaders. Whenwe invited him as a keynote speaker atPacific School of Religion, he inspiredhundreds of Protestant church leaderswith his call to resistance.

Douglass: Archbishop Hunthausen real-ly was a catalyst in a movement of religiousleaders, not only Catholics but others aswell. Remember that the statement in whichhe began to become so prominent wasmade to the Lutheran leaders of the PacificNorthwest. He wasn’t speaking toCatholics; he was speaking to the Lutheranleaders who had invited him to speakbecause he had already become a leader onthis issue. That’s when he made the state-

ment that gained national attention.He had an effect on everybody. In the

Pacific Northwest, especially, he was meet-ing every week with all the other key reli-gious leaders. They ate breakfast together. Ijoined them a number of times so I metthese people and Archbishop Hunthausenwas the most prophetic voice and the inspi-ration in their midst. These were all themost prominent religious leaders at thattime in Seattle and everyone at these break-fasts was very supportive of ArchbishopHunthausen. The Jewish leaders were verysupportive of Archbishop Hunthausen. So itwas right across the board that religiousleaders said, “This man is speaking out in away that is both prophetic and pastoral.”

Spirit: I understand his prophetic role,but what were they referring to in sayinghe was also “pastoral” in regards to thenuclear issue?

Douglass: They meant the way that heresponded to people who were critical ofhim. He came over to the areas rightaround the Trident base and went to thedifferent parishes and listened to all thepeople who were wondering why he wasmaking such statements. He, of course,explained that this is the way he under-stood the Gospel, but he said that verygently and compassionately and listenedto everything that they had to say.

Spirit: Did Archbishop Hunthausen’scall to resist the arms race have mucheffect on workers on the Trident base?

Douglass: I will give an example ofthe impact he had. I was passing outleaflets in front of the Trident base, as wedid every week to the cars and the driverscoming into the base, and a man with aclerical collar on stopped as I was hand-ing him a leaflet. He said, “I want to havedinner with you.”

Well, that was an unusual response. Hehad dinner with us a few days later. He wasthe Catholic chaplain of the Trident nuclearsubmarine base, Father David Becker. Sohe came to dinner at our Tracks houselocated alongside the Trident base wherethe railroad tracks go in.

When Father Dave Becker came in, thefirst sentence he said after he sat down onthe sofa was, “I want to understand fromyou what it means to be the chaplain ofthe Auschwitz of Puget Sound.”

Spirit: What a question! How couldyou even answer a question life that?

Douglass: We just had dinner togetherand talked. And that process was the dia-logue that Gandhi talked about as theexperiment in truth with the person on theother side of the fence — which was thepoint of our whole campaign.

And through that dialogue, FatherDave engaged in a dialogue with hischurch. And where were the people of hischurch? On the Trident base! On oneSunday, alternately, he would preachabout Trident as he was learning to under-stand it, and the nature of Trident, whichwas to threaten and eventually, if carriedout in its purpose, to destroy the world.

On the following Sunday, he would dia-

logue and very peacefully engage in con-versation with his church community. Hewas doing the same thing in his church thatwe were doing in relation to the wholeTrident process. He was confronting andresisting the evil, and dialoguing with all ofus who are involved in that evil.

Spirit: What was the outcome of hisspeaking out against nuclear arms while hewas a chaplain on the naval base?

Douglass: He resigned his commissionand his chaplaincy on the base, and thenbecame a priest in the diocese outside thebase. That was, of course, from the inspi-ration of Archbishop Hunthausen.

Spirit: So he resigned when he real-ized that a chaplain at Auschwitz was notwhat was needed. What was needed was aconscientious objector.

Douglass: Now let me tell you the rea-son why he asked me that question as hewas driving into the base. He had justreceived a full copy of ArchbishopHunthausen’s address to the Lutheranleaders in Tacoma, Washington.

Archbishop Hunthausen sent the state-ment to every priest in the diocese and, ofcourse, one of them was the chaplain ofthe Trident base, Father Dave Becker.

Well, Dave Becker got his copy insidethe Trident base. It went right through themail into the Trident base. He read it inhis office and he was electrified, as wereall of these other people outside the base.

Then he asked himself, “My God, whatdoes it mean for me to be the chaplain ofthe Auschwitz of Puget Sound?”

So he resigned his commission and hebecame a pastor in a church outside thebase. He is an example of dozens of peo-ple who did that and who then subse-quently became extended members of theGround Zero community.

Spirit: So there were several otherconscientious objectors who resigned?

Douglass: There were several otherCatholics who were deeply influenced byArchbishop Hunthausen and who resignedfrom the Bangor Naval Base. ArchbishopHunthausen was the voice that they werelistening to especially. Many of these peo-ple, including Father Dave Becker, didinterviews with us.

We would interview these folks whoresigned their jobs and then we would putthose interviews in our Ground Zero news-paper and leaflet that newspaper to the2,000 Trident employees who took ourleaflets every week. It was a circularprocess. They stopped working at theTrident base and stated publicly that theywere taking that step. I’m not even count-ing the people who never let us knowabout it. I think there were far more thanthose who did let us know about it. Weknow of about a dozen who left.

Spirit: It must have been a great sacri-fice for them to resign. Are there any com-pelling stories that show why they wouldtake such a difficult step?

Douglass: Every one of them is a com-pelling story. Let me give one example.

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 12

Street Spirit InterviewWith James Douglassfrom page 10

Einstein’s formula changed the world by showing the conversion of mass to energy. Sculpture of Einstein’s formula in Berlin, Germany

June 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T12

Mona Lee was a worker on the Tridentbase, as was her husband, and she livedalongside the Trident base. She hadreceived many of our leaflets as she wasgoing into the Trident base.

One day in the Trident base, she wasgiven a tour with other base employees ofthe Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific,the highest security area where the nuclearweapons are located. Mona touched anuclear weapon that day and she suddenlyrealized, as she put it: “This is real.”

From that point on, her life moved in adifferent direction. She was, and is, aQuaker. Her Quaker beliefs had never con-nected with nuclear weapons until shetouched one. She became a person atGround Zero in dialogue with us. She didan interview with us. She resigned her job.

She became, years later, a leader in theWTO demonstration in Seattle,Washington. [Editor: On November 30,1999, tens of thousands of people stagedmassive street protests of the World TradeOrganization (WTO) in Seattle.]

Spirit: What a journey she took.Douglass: She became a leader! Many

other people congregated around her andher new husband. Her old marriage ended.She also became a leader in creating thetransit system between downtown Seattleand Sea-Tac Airport — a beautiful lightrail system. Then she and her husbandstarted a coffeehouse right alongside it.

Spirit: Many nonviolent campaigns donot develop an ongoing dialogue with thepeople on the other side of the issue. Canyou describe how you created a dialoguewith workers on the Trident base?

Douglass: We leafleted every week.The fence between our side of the issueand their side of the issue — the fencebetween the Trident base and Ground Zero— was being overcome by our dialoguewith those workers, and by the leafletingwe did every week, to a point where 2,000people a week were taking our leaflets. Asa result, there were a series of resignationson their part. That’s how a real nonviolentcampaign advances.

In the course of that process, the baseauthorities, and the naval authoritiesabove them, tried to stop our leafleting byarresting us when we were inside thewhite line for trespassing on the base. Sowe leafleted outside the white line and wewere then arrested by the county sheriffsfor endangering traffic. And we couldn’tleaflet in mid-air, so we were alternatelyarrested by the base authorities for tres-pass on the naval base and by KitsapCounty sheriffs for blocking traffic.

Spirit: How did the workers going intothe base respond to your leafleting?

Douglass: The number-one thing wasthat when we were arrested, civilianworkers at the Trident base who were get-ting our leaflets when they were drivinginto the base, testified at our trials in oursupport. And they were risking their jobsand their security and everything else.

Spirit: It seems amazing that workersat the Trident base would break thesilence by testifying during your trial.

Douglass: As a result of that process,the Kitsap County sheriffs who were partof the testimony at our trial — they had tocome in and testify against us — the samesheriffs who were arresting us, and insome cases literally cursing us as theyarrested us, became our good friends.

We had to sit around together in all ofthis process of going through the trial, andwe talked together and dialogued together.And then they would testify that we werestanding in such and such a place, and we

were found guilty in all of those instances,and the judge would send us to jail.

Spirit: Well, since their testimony sentyou to jail, in what way are you sayingthey became friends?

Douglass: Because eventually the sher-iff refused to cooperate with the Navy!

Spirit: That almost never happens in apeace action. In what way did the sheriffsrefuse to cooperate with the Navy?

Douglass: The key moment came whenwe were charged in a further act of civildisobedience with blocking a train. We satin front of a train carrying nuclear weaponsgoing into the Trident base. We werecharged with conspiracy to block a train, aswell as being charged with blocking a train.So in the course of the trial, which was in aKitsap County courtroom before a KitsapCounty judge, the sheriffs had to testify toprove the charge of conspiracy.

They described all the meetings theyhad with us, because we told them every-thing we were going to do about blockingthe train. We didn’t want the train to runover us, and they and we — together —planned how we would block the train insuch a way that the train would stop, andthey would arrest us. In other words, wetried not to create a situation where eitherthey or we would get run over by a train,which had almost happened at the demon-stration before that one.

So in the course of the trial, it becameobvious to the judge and the jury that atthe heart of the conspiracy were theKitsap County sheriffs!

Spirit: Because they were involved inplanning the action with you? So what didthe judge do when he realized that?

Douglass: The judge dismissed theconspiracy charge! Because everythingthat we did, the sheriffs were doing —except sitting in front of the train at theend. But so far as conspiring, planning theaction, they did it as much as we did.

That’s the whole nature of the Trident

campaign: to work together with the otherside. We were working together with thesheriffs. Now some people in the move-ment hated that because they said, “Youcan’t do anything with the other side.”

And we said, “Well, of course, wehave to. We don’t want them to get runover by a train anymore than we want to.And you all saw that in the last demon-stration we had, it got out of hand andpeople were almost literally killed.”

Spirit: Did the judge throw out all thecharges or just the conspiracy charges?

Douglass: He dismissed the charges ofconspiracy. Then the jury heard all theevidence for why we were blocking thetrain, and they found us not guilty. Wehad confessed to everything about block-ing the train, and the jury found us notguilty! How did they manage to do that?

Spirit: Obviously, that’s my next ques-tion too. How did the jury manage to findyou not guilty?

Douglass: Number one, these were allKitsap County people on the jury. Wedidn’t try to knock off people in KitsapCounty who, of course, are all involvedeither directly or indirectly in the Navybase. We didn’t try to block any of thosepeople from the jury. And they found usnot guilty! How did that happen?

Well, one of the jurors testified at ourforum after the trial. She said, “We justhad to find a way to find you not guiltybecause it was obvious that you weren’tdoing anything wrong.” Then she said, “Isuggested a way.”

Spirit: I wish more jurors would find away. So how did she explain the jury’splan to find you not guilty?

Douglass: This was a woman who hadher home right by the Hood Canal. Shesaid, “One day, the oysters in the water atthe edge of my property were being takenfrom my property by some people whocame along the water and took the oysterson the beach area that I owned.”

She called the police and told them thatpeople were trespassing but the policeignored this. She said, “I told the jury: ‘Icalled the police about trespass on my prop-erty and they did nothing. Now they’re try-ing to put these people in jail for trespassingon federal property — which is all ourproperty. That’s not fair.’ ”

The jury agreed with her. And theyfound us not guilty.

Spirit: Do you trace that back to thedepth of dialogue that Ground Zero estab-lished with naval base workers?

Douglass: We were living in that com-munity. We were living in Kitsap County,Washington. Why? Because in our formerresidence, we were coming from the out-side and then saying to the people on theinside (of the base), “This is wrong.”

Thomas Merton said we cannot engagein nonviolent transformation from the out-side. It is impossible. You have to be on theinside. He meant that in two senses: withinourselves personally, and communally.

In the communal sense, we had to live inKitsap County to truly engage in dialoguewith any of those people. So we’re not onlypassing out leaflets. We’re living in thecommunity of people we’re trying toengage in dialogue. They’re living allaround us. We were part of the community.

Spirit: What was that like for you andShelley on a personal level?

Douglass: Our son was the person weworried about most in this processbecause when we moved down in 1977,Tom was six years old. So what aboutTom? We’re moving down there to bepractitioners of nonviolence in ways thatwe can maybe deal with better; but he’sgoing to be in the midst of a school inwhich all the other students are the sonsand daughters of Trident sub workers inthe Navy or Trident sub people in thecivilian population.

So when Tom was going to his soccergames, we would cheer on the sidelineswith — who? All the Navy people![laughing] And when we went to a librarymeeting, all the parents in the librarymeeting were naval base people.

Thanks to Tom, we were parts of thecommunity in ways that we wouldn’thave been if we didn’t have a child inschool. And through the providence ofGod, the teachers that he had in thatschool system, all the way up until highschool, were, one after another, remark-ably supportive of him and his parents.

At the very end of that process, on thegraduation day of his high school, we cameinto the auditorium with all the Buddhistmonks in their yellow robes, immediatelyidentifying themselves as the people whowere sounding their drums for peace out-side the base as we were blocking trains.And, of course, Shelley and I were identi-fied as being very visible people at GroundZero Center for Nonviolent Change.

At that graduation ceremony, the grad-uating class stood up and sang their cho-sen graduation song, which was“Imagine” by John Lennon.

Spirit: Wow! They chose a peaceanthem for their graduation?

Douglass: It was the greatest peaceanthem I could have IMAGINED them tosing at that moment. The students chosethat song. Some of them, including ourson, had chosen to identify themselves asconscientious objectors.

Next month, in the final part of the StreetSpirit interview with Jim Douglass, GroundZero mobilizes activists and train buffs inhundreds of communities to block the WhiteTrain carrying nuclear bombs. Jim andShelley Douglass open a Catholic Workerhouse of hospitality for homeless families inBirmingham, Alabama. Then we follow JimDouglass on Middle East peace actions inPalestine, Israel and Iraq.

Street Spirit InterviewWith James Douglassfrom page 11

When Father Dave Becker came in, the first sentencehe said after he sat down on the sofa was, “I want tounderstand from you what it means to be the chap-lain of the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.”