What happens when compassion dies?
By Kathy Kelly
Pekin Federal Prison, Peoria, Illinois, June 14— I’ve
always liked the restful quiet of an empty classroom. Maybe this is
why the large room where we wait to start mealtime duties, here at Pekin
Federal Prison, feels comfortably familiar. During breaks, in the dining
area, I’ve spent many hours reading, writing, studying Arabic,
and staring out the window.
Today, looking out the window, I watched Kim Lagore crossing the compound,
flanked by Ruth and Malika.
Yesterday, when I left the dish room, I sensed something was radically
wrong. Clusters of women were gathered, many already puffy-eyed and
tearful. “It’s Kim,” I was told. “Her other son
just died.”
On March 21, 2004, Kim Lagore’s younger son, Dustin, was killed
in Iraq. He was a 19-year-old US soldier who had tried his best to stay
out of combat. 72 days later, Sean, Kim’s older son, age 29, died
from complications following back surgery. Ruth and Malika, who also
lost children while in prison, have been like guardian angels for Kim,
holding and helping her through this wretched grief.
Every person in the prison camp yearns to spin a protective cocoon around
her. The authorities couldn’t do much. The system traps their compassion
too. They allowed Kim extra phone calls and submitted a furlough request.
I feel sure that they each wished for swift procedures to re-sentence
Kim to home confinement during the remaining three months of her sentence.
Who wouldn’t want to respond humanely to a woman who has lost both
of her children within three months time while forcibly separated from
her relatives and her hometown community? But the system’s wheels
turn slowly, very slowly.
“I know many of you don’t know what to say,” Kim wrote
on a card posted in the laundry room of our dorm. Thanking us for surrounding
her with kindness, she added, “To be honest, I don’t know
what to say either, except that we’ll make it through.”
I remember my first conversation with Kim, about three weeks after Dustin
was killed. Having learned that I had been in Iraq many times and lived
there during the “Shock and Awe” campaign, she came to me
with his picture and an article she’d written reflecting her pain
and confusion. She still has not been able to learn any details about
Dustin’s death other than that, after two weeks in Samarra, a city
north of Baghdad, he was killed in a training accident. “I want
to go with you to Iraq,” said Kim. “I want to tell Iraqi parents
that my son Dustin never wanted to hurt anyone. He never wanted to kill.”
Kim is here for a “paper crime,”a first time offender, she
was convicted of a nonviolent and “victim-less” crime. In
her former job as a bail bondswoman, she had been anxious that a particular
client might not return for a court date, and she insisted that he pay
her in cash if she posted bond for him. A prosecutor then accused her
of accepting drug money, and Kim was convicted of money laundering.
Kim believed she wasn’t responsible to determine how her client
had raised the money.
Enron, Halliburton, Boeing and Dow Chemical CEOs adeptly cover and shield
themselves from harm when accused of shady dealings. I haven’t
kept informed about their most recent appearances in courts, but I don’t
want any of them to go to jail. I do want the court of public opinion
to regard peddling weapons, designing massive machines for destruction,
ravaging the world’s ecosystems, and poisoning our environment
as criminal behavior. Would these CEOs ever refuse clients who declare
foreign wars to exploit other people’s resources? Would they ever
insist that their clients stop making war against the biodiversity of
Mother Earth? What would their thoughts be if they heard Kim’s
story?
June 26, 2004 is Prisoner Awareness Day in the US. We’ve thought
of inviting our network of friends outside the prison to observe the
day by making advance agreements to completely suspend all communications
with loved ones, friends, and household members for just one day. No
phone calls, emails, visits, or conversations. At the end of the day,
participants could write about the experience to elected representatives
or local media, voicing concern over the isolating and long sentences
imposed on US prisoners. The action could give a brief glimpse into
the dark frustrations felt by women and men whose contact with loved
ones hangs on the slimmest and most fragile of threads. Our society
desperately needs the social imagining that could envision alternatives.
But for now, Kim’s own words and the wordless comfort brought to
her by her fellow “criminals” hold enough for a long lesson.
Who are the criminals? What are the most serious crimes? And what happens
when compassion dies?
Source: Counterpunch
Guatemala and the forgotten anniversary
By Arnold J. Oliver
June 18— Democracy has been much in the news of late. At the
G-8 Summit in Georgia, one of the main items on the agenda was the democratization
of the Middle East, and the recent commemoration of the D-Day anniversary
and the passing of President Reagan both generated discussion concerning
the defense and spread of democracy.
But amidst all the hoopla, the anniversary of a decisive event in the
modern history of democracy has somehow escaped notice. Fifty years
ago, in June of 1954, the government of the United States overthrew
the legitimate and democratically elected government of Guatemala. It
was the Central Intelligence Agency’s first major covert action
in Latin America, and by leading to the rise to a series of military
regimes across the region, it changed the course of history.
What was done to Guatemala in 1954 was criminal, and because the US
government committed the dreadful deed, American citizens are obliged
to remember.
After throwing off dictatorial rule in the 1940’s, Guatemala had
several democratic elections that culminated in 1950 with the selection
of Jacobo Arbenz as president with 65percent of the popular vote. Arbenz
was committed to modernizing the country. He pushed for more labor rights
and higher wages, more spending on infrastructure and education, and
land reform. The latter was a kind of Central American “trust busting”
— an effort to break up large uncultivated land holdings to create
thousands of family farms. President Arbenz himself lost 1700 acres
to the reform program.
Unfortunately for Arbenz, his reforms ran up against a powerful multinational
corporation, the United Fruit Company, which owned over a half million
acres of land in Guatemala and controlled the country’s telegraph
and rail systems, as well as the only Atlantic sea port. The company
was well connected in Washington. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
and his brother Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, both had extensive
financial ties to United Fruit. They both bitterly opposed the Arbenz
government’s proposal to nationalize and distribute 390,000 acres
of uncultivated land owned by the company.
United Fruit spent heavily on public relations, and alleged that Guatemala
was under the control of communists. Reader’s Digest, The Saturday
Evening Post, and NBC News — among others — joined in hyping
the red scare. But the truth was that, while the communist party was
legal in Guatemala, its membership never exceeded 4,000 in a nation
of nearly three million people. In Arbenz’ governing coalition,
only four of fifty-one deputies were communists, and none were cabinet
members.
“Operation Success,” as the CIA coup was called, removed by
force the Arbenz government in June of 1954, and installed its hand-picked
“Liberator,” Castillo Armas, who promptly cancelled the land
reform program, imposed press censorship, banned political parties,
outlawed most labor union and leftist political activity, and re-hired
the chief of the secret police from the old dictatorship. Book burnings
soon followed. The US ambassador presented to the new government a list
of names of Guatemalans that had been marked for immediate assassination
by the CIA.
For a short time after the coup, US officials seemed to be committed
to improving the lot of the Guatemalan people. Visiting Guatemala in
1955, Vice President Richard Nixon declared that it was important for
the new regime to “do more for the people in two years than the
communists were able to do in ten years.”
To say that Nixon’s goal was not met would be an understatement.
On the contrary, more than thirty years would pass before Guatemala
would again have reasonably democratic elections. The CIA coup ushered
in a long night of torture, repression and state terrorism that has
taken the lives of close to two hundred thousand Guatemalans. Among
the victims have been nuns, priests, teachers, students, labor unionists,
indigenous Mayans, and others labeled as “subversives.” Throughout
the decades of repression, US government officials supported the terror
with arms, training, diplomatic cover, and intelligence. State terror
escalated to genocide in the 1980s as entire Mayan communities were
wiped off the earth with the active connivance of the Reagan administration.
These were among the findings in 1999 of a United Nations sponsored
truth commission.
Although President Clinton apologized to the Guatemalan people in 1998
for the US government’s earlier backing of abusive regimes, the
legacy of the coup and the decades of violence continue. Amnesty International’s
2004 report declared that “human rights abuses in Guatemala reached
levels not seen for many years.” The victims now are mostly journalists,
legal and human rights workers, and campesinos involved in land disputes.
Adult illiteracy is at 25 percent, poverty is rampant, and Guatemala
is now one of the most unequal countries in the world. Washington seems
satisfied.
Guatemala in 1954 was a precedent. Elected governments in Brazil, Chile
and Nicaragua later met a similar fate, and others including as Argentina
and Uruguay fell indirectly.
What might properly be called “The Really Bad Neighbor Policy”
continues. Recently, the US government has subverted or grossly interfered
with democratic processes in Haiti, Venezuela, and El Salvador.
Remembering Guatemala is good, but not sufficient. The US national security
elite really needs to change its ways of giving mere lip service to
democracy while subverting it in practice. For openers, perhaps we should
stop honoring the smug suits in Washington who have shown such scant
respect for democratic institutions. Maybe if their retirements were
not so comfortable, they might think twice.
We need indictments. We need trials both in the United States, and before
the International Criminal Court.
This we owe to Guatemala.
Source: CommonDreams.org
