When I look into the eyes of Eugene Hasenfus, I see a man who is scared, helpless, and trapped. Eugene Hasenfus [was] the first American caught in the net, the first American who [fell] into the pit we dug in Nicaragua...[and he wasn't] the last.
Economic Justice
Dennis Marker 2-01-1987
For the past six years, Ronald Reagan and his administration have virtually controlled Washington.
Vicki Kemper 1-01-1987
Like salt in a wound, news of the shipment of official U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras has been painful for many of us.
Dennis Marker 12-01-1986
On October 2 the Washington Post published a story describing a Reagan administration campaign of deception designed to make Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi think that, among other things, he was about to be attacked again by U.S. bombers.
Jim Wallis 10-01-1986
Albertina Sisulu is, after Winnie Mandela, the best known woman in South Africa.
Joyce Hollyday 8-01-1986
A nationwide rise in vindictive activity toward death row prisoners and their advocates seems to confirm a trend of opinion about the death penalty in the last two decades.
Vicki Kemper 7-01-1986
At the time of the interview, Peggy Hutchison was a United Methodist, director of border ministry for the Tucson Metropolitan Ministry, a graduate student in Middle East Studies at the University of Arizona and married to Michael Eisner. —The Editors
Sojourners: What kind of experience has the trial been for you?
Peggy Hutchison: For me it's been like a tragedy and a comedy. There are times when I've laughed so hard I'd cry. And there are times when I have literally cried. Probably the most painful part has been sitting there silently while the refugees have to testify. They are robbed of all their emotions, all of their humanity. They aren't given any dignity and respect. And we had to just sit there silently and not say anything. That was very painful.
I don't like being there. I didn't choose it; none of us did. And though we're 11 defendants, we're very different—theologically and politically. The one thing we have in common is our concern about refugees. The government brought us together, and that's been difficult, to be honest with you. But it's been a blessing, and I think we've learned from it.
Some of the things that we've struggled with for many years working in sanctuary are the same things we continue to struggle with in the context of the courtroom. Through this trial experience, I've relearned the importance of interpersonal relationships. I think that those of us in sanctuary, as well as other movements of the church or of the religious community, have tried to be there with each other when one of us has fallen on the sidelines. We have tried to be present with each other along this struggle.
Vicki Kemper 7-01-1986
JIM CORBETT started bringing Central American refugees into his home in 1981, after discovering that U.S. immigration officials regularly detained and deported them. Corbett shared his experiences with John Fife, and in 1982 the "underground railroad" became the public sanctuary movement. A Quaker and a Harvard-educated philosopher, Corbett was forced into early retirement from ranching by severe arthritis. —The Editors
Sojourners: What are your feelings about the trial?
Jim Corbett: The trial is thoroughly rigged. I don't think they could find another judge in the Ninth Circuit who would be as firmly against us and determined to gain a conviction at any cost as is Judge Earl Carroll. But even if we do get convicted this time, juries down the line will find out the truth.
The strategy that the government has had to rely on involves keeping the jury from discovering what is going on. The government has had to abandon all those tape recordings that were made and use as its star witness a person who is reporting on conversations in English that he admitted he couldn't understand very well. The government has done all that because it could not afford to let the jury discover what is happening. And I think that a strategy based on suppressing the truth is a flawed strategy.
What we're in the process of doing now is establishing a new tier of legal order, one that was mandated at the Nuremberg trials [of Nazi officials] but which has never been systematically established on any kind of institutional foundation. The institution in this case is the church, and the mandate is that communities and individuals are responsible for the defense of human rights, above all when their own government is violating human rights. Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor when the Nuremberg tribunals opened in 1945, emphasized that it's essential to hold ordinary citizens responsible for compliance with human rights and international law when their own government is in violation of those rights. As he pointed out, the only way states have of enforcing international law against one another, when you come right down to it, is through warfare. So if we're going to have a peacemaking expansion of the legal order to include an international legal order, we're going to have to rely on ordinary citizens in communities to do that.
Vicki Kemper 7-01-1986
JOHN FIFE had been pastor of Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church for 17 years when this article appeared. —The Editors
Sojourners: What kind of experience has the trial been for you, and how do you feel about it?
John Fife: The trial has lasted six months, four days a week, in that courtroom. It's been a very technical legal process, and those of us who are not attorneys don't have a solid understanding of what has gone on. I've dealt with it, these long six months, by trying to be involved, trying to learn about the practice of law, and trying to understand the fine points of what the attorneys are doing and what they're thinking strategically. That's the way I've dealt with it emotionally and in terms of boredom, day in and day out, just sitting in that courtroom.
The most difficult part about it for me was to realize at the beginning that there was absolutely nothing I could do. The attorneys were going to take the case, and we were going to sit there. It's difficult, when people are playing with your life, to just sit and watch all the maneuvering and strategizing that goes on in that arena, to realize that you're just a spectator and you don't have any control over your life during the many months it's going to take for this to play itself out. It's hard to accept that somebody else is really going to make a determination that's going to profoundly affect your life. I'm not one who needs to be in control, but I'd sure like to be a player.
Vicki Kemper 7-01-1986
During the long, exasperating, painful experience of the Tucson sanctuary trial, several sanctuary workers found themselves turning to their Salvadoran and Guatemalan brothers and sisters—the very refugees they were on trial for helping—for advice and comfort. "How did you react when you were unjustly treated?" they would ask the refugees, who had endured torture, imprisonment, death threats, and the killing of family members. "Were you able to love your enemies, your torturers? It is so hard," the sanctuary defendants would confess to the refugees. Then they would cry together, pray together.
It was as if the suffering and the compassion had, through the trial, come full circle. One refugee, while testifying on the witness stand, was asked to implicate the woman who had helped him. Pointing to 26-year-old defendant Wendy LeWin, he said, "Yes. I remember her with much love."
Out of their common suffering, their common sacrifice, and their common love and respect for one another, both refugees and sanctuary workers found new life, new hope, and new strength for the struggle—even as the sanctuary workers faced possible prison sentences and the refugees faced probable deportation to certain violence and danger in their homelands.
It is such spiritual bonding between North American sanctuary workers and Central American refugees that U.S. government prosecutor Donald M. Reno Jr., who throughout the long trial continued to refer to it as a "simple alien-smuggling case," failed to understand. And it was that quintessential failure, the government's refusal to acknowledge and its inability to grasp the spiritual foundation and glue of the sanctuary movement, that caused its extraordinary attempt to squash the movement not only to fail but to backfire.
Vicki Kemper 7-01-1986
In 1985 and 1986, the U.S. government spent an estimated $2 million to prosecute 11 church workers for offering sanctuary to refugees from the U.S.'s "dirty wars" in Central America. After a trial in which defense attorneys were not allowed to introduce evidence of the refugees' or defendants' motives or information on the 1980 Refugee Act, eight defendants were convicted. —The Editors
What is a registered Republican who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 doing in the sanctuary movement? Living out her faith and doing what has to be done, says Kay Kelly, the 62-year-old widow and grandmother who was put under house arrest for her refusal to testify as a government witness in the sanctuary trial.
"I was not a political activist looking for a cause," Kelly says, explaining how she got involved in refugee work. "But when you see these people coming in and you hear their stories...to me it's just the thing to do. All through life I've been taught that you love your neighbor as yourself, you help them, you do whatever is necessary."
Kelly began attending Southside Presbyterian Church with her husband and mother in 1981, shortly before the congregation voted to make the church a public sanctuary. After both her husband and mother died and she had been forced into early retirement from her job at the University of Arizona library—all during the last eight months of 1983—Kelly told Rev. John Fife that she needed something to do. In January 1984 she began working with refugees.
Danny Duncan Collum 4-01-1986
Last July, in the midst of the TWA hijacking crisis, Congress was seized by a fit of Rambo-mania.
Vicki Kemper 4-01-1986
So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. --Isaiah 59:14-15