Living by the Word (20 page)

But I think the primary reason that I feel so Central American/Caribbean is that when I look at those people—and even though I study but do not yet speak their language—I see myself. I see my family, I see my parents, I see the ancestors. When I look at Nicaraguans, at, for instance, the humble peasant woman being “interrogated” by a Contra carrying several guns and knives and three times her size, when I see and identify with her terror, when I look at the vulnerable faces of the nearly naked and barefoot children, when I see the suffering and pain on the faces of the men, then I am seeing a great deal of my own life.

I, too, was born poor, in an impoverished part of the world. I was born on what had been a plantation in the South, in Georgia. My parents and grandparents worked hard all their lives for barely enough food and shelter to sustain them. They were sharecroppers—landless peasants—the product of whose labor was routinely stolen from them. Their parents and grandparents were enslaved. To me, Central America is one large plantation; and I see the people’s struggle to be free as a slave revolt.

I can remember in my own life the days of
injusticia
that continue in so much of the world today. The days when children withered in sickness and disease (as I have withered) because there was no money to pay for their care and no concern for their health anyway, by the larger society. I myself have suffered the deprivations of poverty, so that when I look into the face of a Central American peasant, a Caribbean peasant, I see myself.

And I remember the years of fighting the white bosses of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, especially, and of occasionally winning our battles for dignity and bread against them—though at a cost (so many of the people we loved were brutalized or assassinated) that still bruises the heart. When I see the proud though weary faces of the Sandinistas, I see our own young faces. The faces that went south in the sixties to teach black people to read and write, to go out to vote, to stand up and be counted. And to keep the eyes on the prize.

It is the same spirit. The spirit of poor people who have been ground down nearly to a fine powder of humanity and yet who stand like rocks and refuse to be blown away.

I am Nicaraguan. I am Salvadoran. I am Grenadian, Honduran,
I chant to myself. It has almost become a mantra.

And yet, this year I paid more in taxes than my parents and grandparents together earned all the years they worked the land of the gringos of the South. And over half of that money will go to buy weapons that will be shipped from the Concord Naval Weapons Station at Port Chicago, California, thirty miles from my home, and used against these people that I think of as myself.

These were my thoughts a few days before I was arrested for blocking one of the gates to the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

It was a hot, dusty day, June 12, 1987, and I woke up thinking of all the things I needed to bring to the demonstration: a hat, sunblock, drinking water, food, spare clothing (in case we were in jail for longer than a day), whatever medical supplies I might need. I drove to the weapons station with the three other members of my affinity group: Robert, Belvie, and Paul. Belvie and I had designed beautiful turquoise-and-coral T-shirts with the name of our group (Wild Trees), a large mushroom cloud, and the words “Remember Port Chicago.”

For the past ten years I have shared my life with the writer and sometimes political activist (primarily in the Civil Rights movement and against the Vietnam War) Robert Allen, who all that time has been writing a book about the so-called accident at Port Chicago on July 17, 1944. What happened was that 320 men whose job it was to load the bombs being sent to use on Japan and other places in the Pacific were blown to bits (literally), along with the ships they were loading and much of the base and nearby town. Two hundred of those killed were black.

Because theirs had been the job of loading the weapons onto the ships, theirs was also the job of picking up the pieces—of men and debris—left by the explosion. When asked to continue loading the bombs after this horrendous experience, most of the men said no. They were threatened, imprisoned, tried for mutiny. Sentenced. Sent to jail. Released years later with dishonorable discharges.

My friend Robert has tracked down many of the surviving “mutineers” and, over the years, continued to wrestle with the implications of this event for America.

Port Chicago is now Concord. The name has been changed and the old town of Port Chicago completely destroyed, razed, in fact, by the government. But the weapons remain. Rather, they remain long enough to be shipped out—to Japan (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was shipped from here), Vietnam, Nicaragua, and now El Salvador.

A few days before the demonstration we—the organizers (The Pledge of Resistance), the news media, demonstrators-to-be, and I—stood on a hill overlooking the base. We could see the white trains—white to reflect the heat—going into bunkers built into the hillside. Inside those bunkers are some of the deadliest weapons ever devised. There is, for instance, something that sounds even worse than napalm: the white phosphorous rocket. The sparks from it burn through the skin and flesh and into the bone. It can take a week for the burning to be put out. I have seen photographs of children who have lost limbs to the sparks from this rocket. I have found unbearable the suffering and questions in their eyes.

The morning of the demonstration I dress in jeans, sneakers, sunglasses, and an old felt hat, and I carry with me a sweet-faced black doll with crisp, shiny hair. I’ve named her Windela after a newborn niece of the same name I have not yet seen, and because I want to symbolize the connection I feel to Winnie and Nelson Mandela and the common awareness that it is up to those of us who are adults to leave to all children a habitable planet.

During the previous week I have felt afraid. I have hardly been able to smile at anyone. Though I have risked arrest many times, while a student demonstrator at Spelman College, in Liberty County, Georgia, and in Mississippi as a civil rights worker, I have been arrested only once before, during a demonstration against apartheid at UC, Berkeley. I felt a light-hearted joy throughout that action; as I sat with other demonstrators I could not suppress smiles
and
song. I concluded that what was different this time was that I would be placing myself in such vulnerable proximity to an enormous pile of evil and death blandly passed off to motorists, who can actually see the trains and bunkers from the highway, as bucolic countryside: cows graze placidly in the grass about the bunkers, giving them the aspect of odd kinds of barns.

Still, as I filled my backpack with a toothbrush, aspirin, and fruit, I began to take heart, the image of the children, the trees, and the animals of the planet always before me. On arrival, we went immediately to the gate to be blocked. There were a few protesters, about a hundred, already there. Across a broad yellow line, soldiers dressed in helmets and camouflage fatigues stood spread-legged holding long riot sticks. Behind them stood a row of officers in khaki from the local sheriff’s department. Behind them another row of officers, presumably a SWAT team, in navy blue. The four of us walked up to face the soldiers, who were staring straight ahead. Between their row and that of the officers from the sheriff’s department stood a Catholic priest, a woman in her fifties, and two old people, a man and a woman. They were all white. It was then that I made an interesting observation: Aside from myself and two members of our affinity group, there were no other people of color there. The Army, represented by the soldiers standing in front of us, was much more integrated.
Merde!
I thought. What does it mean, that the forces of destruction are more integrated than the forces of peace?

Almost at once a white car carrying an official of the base arrived at the gate. We turned to face it, not permitting it to go through. The driver consulted with an Army officer, and the car slowly pulled away. Another and another vehicle appeared. They were not admitted. Soon a woman drove up and said she needed to fill a prescription at the base; it was spontaneously agreed that she should be let through. Many of us walked behind her car to close the space behind her. Soon a man who said he had gout and was coming to see his doctor appeared. He was also let through. A woman next to me said that in anticipation of our blockade the weapons trains and trucks had been busy all night long.

We were arrested because we went through the line of soldiers—all of them mere children and obviously poor (bad skin, crooked teeth, a certain ghetto street-corner patina)—and stood with the priest and the woman in her fifties, and the two old people. The old woman, Teresa, with a wondrously wrinkled face and bright white hair (a true crone), clasped me to her thin chest. The old man, Abraham (yes), half Jewish and half American Indian, looked fixedly into the crowd behind us and sang a frail but steady version of “Amen.” I felt very proud of our affinity group. Of Robert, who had joined this inner group first, of Paul, who had promptly followed, and of Belvie, who was now smiling and talking to Teresa as if they were old friends.

A lot of things went through my mind as I was being handcuffed. Would they take my doll, whom I’d managed to stuff under one arm? No, they did not. Had my statements to the press truly reflected my feelings about weapons and war? I had been asked why I was risking arrest and I had said because I can’t stand knowing that the money I pay in taxes and that my own family needs—not to mention all the other poor and sick people in this country and world—pays for weapons and the policy that maims, kills, frightens, and horribly abuses babies, children, women, men, and the old. I don’t want to be a murderer, I had said.

And once, as I was being lifted into the jail van, someone yelled, “What do you have to say now, as you go off to jail?” and I made a joke that was the truth: “I’m following my tax dollars,” I said.

My tax dollars. Really the crux of the matter. When will I have the courage not to pay them? I remember being audited by the IRS when my husband and I were in the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. I remember being audited here in California two years ago. It isn’t so much courage that I would need, as the patience to endure the grinding malice of bureaucratic harassment. (Meanwhile, my letter to my congressman about implementation of a peace tax—a peace tax would go to build hospitals, schools, houses, and to provide food for people—has not been answered.)

My thoughts, while I was being frisked, fingerprinted, and photographed (I liked my mug shot) by very cordial men and women, some of whom admired my doll, turned to food. Of which, because I’d left my well-provisioned backpack in the car, I had none. As a vegetarian, which I’ve now been for a good three months, I get hungry frequently. I think about oranges, almonds, apples—and, yes, a well-cooked piece of chicken. As soon as I’m seated fairly comfortably in the holding area—a large gray “cattle car” from the Port Chicago explosion days—Sallie, the woman in her fifties, breaks out her stash of oranges, Swiss cheese, and Triscuits, and offers me some. I think about how hard it would be for me to engage in any kind of action now for justice and peace with the remains of murdered flesh in my body. I’m tempted to wonder about the cows who “gave” the “Swiss” cheese, but don’t. I eat it with gratitude.

Apparently it is lunchtime for everyone. I look out the window of our cattle car and I see that the guards, the nurse, the people who checked us in (even the one black woman in a light-blue uniform, who asked for my autograph and said, “Oh, I’m
so
glad you’re here!”), all are eating. Since this is California, they are eating thick whole-grain sandwiches fluffy with fillings, trailing juicy tomato slices, lettuce leaves, and sprouts. As we all munch, they outside and “free,” me inside and “captive,” I can’t help a feeling of tenderness for them: the need to eat connects us. Perhaps that is why they have taken these jobs.

Though some of our demonstrators were brutalized by the police, we were not. In an effort to minimize the import of our action, the meaning of it, and to keep public anxiety about the close proximity of the nuclear weapons on the base as low as possible, they treated us, for the most part, courteously. In truth, many of them seemed bored, barely present in what they were doing. There are some demonstrators who feel it is best, as far as gaining publicity is concerned, to have at least some police brutality, but I am not one of those. The pictures of demonstrations that I like show the creativity as well as the determination of the crowd. I like costumes, slogans, effigies. I think if these things are true enough, the police can affirm them, too. The most encouraging demonstration picture I’ve seen recently is of a young Korean policeman, visor raised and shield lowered, smiling impishly at protesting students and giving them the victory sign. Of course, many policemen are brutal and take their position as guardians of the status quo seriously. Many of them are angry, because they feel they are poor and have to work while the demonstrators appear to be playing. I feel absolutely no anger toward the police just because they are police or toward the young men in the Army. The protection of evil must be the most self-destructive job of all.

The next day, freed, my doll Windela and I address a crowd of a thousand demonstrators, two hundred of whom will later be arrested. Among other things, I read a poem about a poor Salvadoran woman whose father, husband, and sons have been killed and whose remaining small children are starving; nevertheless she is paying her taxes. Later, I stand holding Windela beside the knee-high, coiled line of razor-blade wire, on the other side of which are the same young black, white, brown, and yellow recruits. They are, at the moment, receiving much shouted information from several huge Vietnam vets, so loud and intense they frighten me—“Why do you want to go fight their stupid war for them, huh?” “Here’s a body bag”—
plop
— “do you want to come back in one of those?” “I swore when I was in Nam that if I ever got out alive I’d never sit back and let kids like you go!” As I stand there, I suddenly feel a small stroking along my thigh. I look down into the large brown eyes of a small, gentle-faced olive-brown girl. She is playing shyly with Windela’s foot. I hand the doll to her, and she embraces it with joy. Beside her is her mother, holding an infant. She speaks to the little girl in Spanish. I ask the mother, who appears to be in her early twenties, where she is from. She tells me she is a refugee from El Salvador, that she lives in a refugee house in San Francisco. At some point in our halting conversation in her “leetle beet” of English and my truly tongue-tied smidgen of Spanish, I ask to hold the baby, a plump, six-month-old girl, who promptly yanks off one of my earrings and then, fortunately, has trouble finding her mouth. Her mother says she is looking for a job. Can I help her? I tell her I will try. But who will hire a young mother of two small children who speaks Spanish?