'Mom and Dad Are in Jail'

Our children, 7 and 9 years old then, were spending three weeks of their summer vacation with my parents in New York, attending a day camp there. One day the other children at the camp were talking about what their parents were doing for the summer. Some had parents who were vacationing in Europe; others had different stories to tell.

When our children were asked where their mom and dad were, their reply was, "In jail." Many of their new friends were shocked, but it did not seem to upset our children. They had grown up amid the civil rights and peace struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. For them, this was not such an unusual statement.

However, having parents who periodically feel called to civil disobedience does have its effects on children. Jail, portrayed so gruesomely on television, may seem a fearsome place where parents could be hurt. And what about the children themselves when parents can't come running home in an emergency? They must live with the question of what will happen to them if they get sick and need their parents. And children are not the only ones involved when one feels called to do civil disobedience. There are one's spouse, parents, siblings, and friends, as well as one's employer.

Over the past 24 years of working for peace and being part of a family, I have learned many things. I still feel committed to civil disobedience as one option for change but feel that it is not something to be undertaken lightly: too many other people are involved in the consequences of the decision.

During the early years of my marriage, I felt caught between my desire to participate in actions that required civil disobedience and my definition of the role of "mother." This pull led to conflicts within me and between me and my friends who were not tied down by responsibilities to children and home.

Civil disobedience is attractive to me partly because of the strong impact that the Holocaust had on my life. As a child I challenged the adults around me who seemed to have gone on with their lives, while in Europe all hell was breaking loose. I kept wondering why there weren't people who were putting their bodies on the railroad tracks when the trains carrying human cargo went to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson.

Now I was an adult, and trains and ships were sending their deadly cargo to Southeast Asia. Was I not part of that silent majority I had condemned unless I took dramatic action to protest? Although intellectually I knew that there are many ways to work for peace and justice, the drama of putting my body where my mouth was had a very strong pull.

I was also attracted by the camaraderie of those who participated in civil disobedience. At times when our friends left home for a nonviolent campaign that involved civil disobedience and I was left home with our young children, I felt left out and deeply resentful. I could not validate the role of nurturing our children as really important. I wanted to be part of the community of meaningful action - not driving children to this or that friend, doing laundry, shopping for food, mediating arguments. The daily grind of life paled when compared to blockading ships and speaking and acting for justice.

The attitude that those who did civil disobedience were "really committed" made behind-the-scenes work for peace and justice hard. The implication was that those who "held down the fort" were not as committed.

I was once in Washington, D.C., working all night as a volunteer nurse at a rock festival held for young demonstrators against the war in Vietnam. Someone had laced some wine with a dangerous drug and passed it around the crowd. Those who drank were hallucinating, vomiting, and crying. It was a nightmare of sounds and smells for us caregivers. At 4:30 a.m. I left that scene, and drove home to Philadelphia to be there when the children woke up.

Later that morning I was greeted with a call from a friend saying she had just heard that members of our intentional community had been arrested for a peaceful demonstration in front of the White House: wasn't it wonderful how committed they all were? I did not tell her that while those who were arrested were sleeping comfortably the night before, a lot of other people had been up all night doing the unglamorous work of calming and cleaning up after young people who had overdosed - and weren't we committed too? At the time, comments like that of my friend were terribly hurtful.

As my husband, Dick, and I began to share more of the responsibilities with our children, some of my tension lessened. I had a chance to more publicly act out my commitment to peacemaking. We tried to make sure that both of us had chances to participate in demonstrations, including ones that involved civil disobedience.

Once, after I had participated in a civil disobedience action, a prison matron commented that I was an unfit mother and that she would see to it that my children were taken away from me. I explained that I was an eminently fit mother and that my responsibility was not only to my own children but also to other children around the world. I knew that my children were safely and happily with my parents and that their lives were not being disrupted unduly by our being in jail. I knew that we only had a 10-day sentence and that it was summer so they were not missing school.

However, the matron's comments made me face the fact that had I not had such welcoming and loving parents, this experience of even 10 days might have been far more traumatic for the children and us. They also made me aware that never again while the children were young should Dick and I both risk arrest at the same time. We could not guarantee that a civil disobedience action might not result in more time in jail and more disruption in our lives than we could anticipate.

Having made the decision to have children many years ago, we had to fulfill that responsibility and not subsume our children's interests in preference for the children of the world. We did have other options, ways of being both good parents and responsible world citizens. Our decision meant more planning, taking turns participating in actions, and living simply to make up for times when we might not be able to earn the usual salaries we received. It meant talking more to the children and taking their feelings into consideration.

I still think that there are times when civil disobedience is the right option for a particular person, including myself. However, I continue to feel strongly that a great deal of planning needs to take place if the action is going to be creative and not violent in spirit to those who do not participate in it. Some recommendations I would make include:

- talking with partners and children to find out their needs and then planning ways to try to meet those needs;

- making sure that there is as strong a support community for those not in jail as for those who are;

- strongly validating all the ways to work for peace and justice, some of which are public and dramatic and some of which are behind-the-scenes but no less important than civil disobedience;

- thinking through job responsibilities - both jobs within the home and outside the home - and making plans for who will do them.

As the world experiences more shortages of food, housing, and health care and an increasing buildup of arms, I foresee that there will be more and more opportunities for creative nonviolence and civil disobedience. May each one of us within the context of our own stage of life and responsibilities find the most meaningful ways to work for peace and justice. May we not judge one another as being more or less committed but may we support one another in our own callings. And may we together find ways to nurture our families, our immediate communities, and the world community.

Phyllis Taylor was on the board of Amnesty International and worked with the Nurses' Alliance for the Prevention of Nuclear War when this article appeared.