#Daniel Berrigan

[wearepaladin]

“One cannot level one's moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something and the difference between doing nothing and doing something is everything.” --Father Daniel Berrigan

#Paladin code #daniel berrigan #note: the man in question with eight others was a catholic priest who burned draft documentation for the vietnam war #for this he was the first priest to be in America’s most wanted list #because as he noted he’d rather burn paper than children #so Rest In Peace you legend

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Daniel Berrigan! (May 9, 1921)

A Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, Daniel Berrigan was born in Minnesota and raised in New York. A deeply devoted Catholic, Berrigan joined the Jesuits as soon as he finished high school, and after his ordination gained a reputation as a radical within the Church, devoting much of his energy towards fighting poverty. During the Vietnam War, Berrigan became a leader amongst the anti-war clergy, leading actions such as using homemade napalm to destroy draft files in Cantonsville, Maryland. For this Berrigan was sentenced to prison, although he spent some time on the run. He also traveled to Hanoi with Howard Zinn to receive American POWs released by North Vietnam. After the war was over, Berrigan began the Plowshares movement and continued his activism. He eventually died in 2016.

"Start with the impossible. Proceed calmly towards the improbable. No worry, there are at least five exits."

#birthdays #daniel berrigan

[victusinveritas]

Left side: In clockwise order from the top left, Dorothy Day (Catholic Worker Movement), Daniel Berrigan (Anti-Vietnam War/Ploughshares Movement/Peace activist, imprisoned for draft resistance activities), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Anti-German government from 1933-1945, when he was murdered by that same German government), and Oscar Romero (now a saint, human rights and social reform advocate in El Salvador (Liberation Theology adjacent), murdered with the approval of the CIA in 1981). And then MLK.

Right side: Christofascists you are probably very familiar with. The least persecuted people ever crying the loudest that they are being repressed. Fuck 'em all.

It's weird to think my dad knew Daniel Berrigan (fairly well, they were in the Jesuits at the same time and Berrigan influenced him to become a CO during Vietnam, though his draft number was never called (he ripped up his draft card when he received it, kept half of it in his wallet for a long time, I think it's now somewhere in his office)) and Dorothy Day (through folks who had been with CW for a long time, he said she was great but the way some Catholic Worker folks revered her was a little culty, and this was in 1960s-1970s San Francisco, where most things were a little culty to begin with) along with several people who knew Romero and Merton (not featured here but Thomas Merton is tops). Small world, I guess.

#catholic left #dietrich bonhoeffer #daniel berrigan #dorothy day #catholic worker movement #oscar romero #mlk jr #christofascists

[pendraegon]

— Ironies by Daniel Berrigan

#poetry #quotes #daniel berrigan #incunabula

[indizombie]

The radical Catholic priest, Daniel Berrigan, after traveling to North Vietnam with a peace delegation during the war, visited the hospital room of Ronald Brazee. Brazee was a high school student who had drenched himself with kerosene and immolated himself outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Syracuse, New York to protest the war. “He was still living a month later,” Berrigan writes. “I was able to gain access to him. I smelled the odor of burning flesh and I understood anew what I had seen in North Vietnam. The boy was dying in torment, his body like a great piece of meat cast upon a grill. He died shortly thereafter. I felt that my senses had been invaded in a new way. I had understood the power of death in the modern world. I knew I must speak and act against death because this boy’s death was being multiplied a thousandfold in the Land of Burning Children. So I went to Catonsville because I had gone to Hanoi.” In Catonsville, Maryland Berrigan and eight other activists, known as the Catonsville Nine, broke into a draft board on May 17, 1968. They took 378 draft files and burned them with homemade napalm in the parking lot. Berrigan was sentenced to three years in a federal prison.

Chris Hedges, ‘Aaron Bushnell’s Divine Violence’

#Aaron Bushnell #Chris Hedges #Catonsville #Daniel Berrigan #Vietnam #Ronald Brazee #USA

[whatevergreen]

"...Berrigan, who died in April at the age of 94, had just entered his 40's as the 1960s began. If somebody time-warped you back to FBI headquarters and told you to pick out the hard-core radical from a lineup of counterculture types, you damn sure wouldn’t stand and j’accuse the Jesuit priest and Ivy League academic (he taught at Cornell) whose fervent gaze and ascetic mane all but spoke aloud that here before you was the winner of the 1958 Lamont Prize of the Academy of American Poets.

I wouldn’t blame you. But I’d use hindsight to inform you that by the end of the decade, Berrigan would land on the cover of Time magazine for repeated acts of civil disobedience—“Rebel Priests” the headline read, over a portrait of Dan and his brother Phil, his co-religionist and co-conspirator. I would further apprise you that, by then, Dan had become the bête noire of none other than FBI director and chronically cranky lawman J. Edgar Hoover, who hated him both professionally and personally.

And with good reason.

Hoover loathed dissent and repeatedly proved he didn’t believe it to be protected by the Constitution. Worse, Hoover was Catholic. Given those combustible elements, the pomade in his hair must have spontaneously ignited when he first learned of the Berrigan brothers’ 1968 draft board raid in Catonsville, Maryland. A photo of it ran the next day on the front page of countless newspapers. It showed a pair of Catholic priests in Roman collar standing in prayer behind hundreds of Vietnam draft files they had just put to the match, using napalm as an accelerant, just like the U.S. Air Force had been doing to the jungles and the people of Vietnam. In short, the Berrigans used religious symbols to object to the war while destroying some of the records that kept the war going. How could Hoover not see that as a betrayal of all he held holy?

The Berrigans were joined by seven co-arsonists; together they were known as The Catonsville Nine. Their trial in Baltimore was a sensation. Anti-war demonstrators flooded the streets in solidarity with the defendants, while counter-demonstrators held up signs calling for the “traitor priests” to be hanged. (That polarized dynamic would follow Dan and Phil, who died in 2002, for the rest of their lives.) All were convicted and given prison sentences ranging from months to years."

"... rather than submit to his conviction for the Catonsville raid, he refused to report to prison. “I wasn’t avoiding punishment,” he later told an interviewer. “I was prolonging it and protesting the war.”

(Daniel) went on the run from the FBI in the spring and summer of 1970. He would punctuate the chase by popping up in a pulpit and then vanishing, or granting a lengthy interview on national TV. With each surprise appearance and escape, he reheated the pomade of the FBI director, who was not used to being taunted, let alone embarrassed." From a statement by the Catonsville Nine:

"We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor."

Daniel Berrigan in addition to being anti-war, was anti-racist, anti-capital punishment, pro-LGBT, for women priests, anti-capitalist and supported the Occupy movement.

He wrote such as this regarding the LGBTQ:

"The church rejects, ostracizes, places certain people beyond the pale; on a lifelong basis... I do not know, any more than you, whether church authority will renounce its sinfulness, will at last heal and bind up those it has wounded so grievously. (And so be healed and bound up, and acknowledge her own wounds.)...We must forgive, deepen our love, persist in our conviction that even the church can be redeemed from sin."

#daniel berrigan #church #war #capital #lgbtq #oh look... some decent christianity for a change #i went off on a tangent again #from what i was supposed to be doing

[apenitentialprayer]

The only message I have to the world is: we are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. [...] It's terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, "Stop killing." There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people. There are other projects I could be very helpful at. And I can't do them. I cannot. Because everything is endangered. Everything is up for grabs. Ours is a kind of primitive situation, even though we would call ourselves sophisticated. Our plight is very primitive from a Christian point of view. We are back where we started. Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today comes down to that - everything.

- Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

#Daniel Berrigan #Christianity #Catholicism #murder #human dignity #war #pacifism

[marcogiovenale]

'il verri' n. 83, ottobre 2023: "transocean (un)limited" _ autori statunitensi e italiani

cliccare per ingrandire sul sito del verri: https://www.ilverri.it/index.php/la-rivista-del-verri/edizione-dal-1996/transocean-un-limited-detail _

View On WordPress

#Alessandro Giammei #Andrea Cortellessa #Andrea Inglese #Anselm Berrigan #archivi #archivio #Barbara Anceschi #Cecilia Bello Minciacchi #Charles Bernstein #Chris Mustazza #critica #Daniele Poletti #edizioni del verri #gastronomia cannibale #Gianluca Rizzo #Gruppo 63 #i novissimi #ideologia #il punto #il verri #Ivan Schiavone #John Latta #La promessa di un’azione: dentro la macchina enunciativa di Stralunati #La ricomparsa del fagiano #Lamberto Pignotti #Laura Liberale #L’incubo dei Novissimi #lingua #Luigi Ballerini #Marco Berisso

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

INSIDE A BARN last month, a couple of hours after the rehearsal for the “Heart of the Matter” pageant, several dozen performers from around the world — paid puppeteers, interns, community volunteers — presented their proposed circus acts. Schumann typically reviews and critiques the sketches.

Most of the acts had a whimsical tone. A man imitating a bee (collapsing bee colonies the inspiration) did a frenetic waggle around a cardboard city that transformed itself into a tangle of dancing urbanites. An orca ambushed yachting billionaire puppets. When somber-looking tree figures appeared with a narrator reading facts about boreal forests versus the more flammable monoculture ones burning in nearby Canada, Schumann became agitated.

“It’s too cliché, something everyone already knows,” he shouted. “You have to stop using so many words and solve things puppetry-wise.” Then he jumped to his feet and started moving people and puppets around. He had puppeteers throw the trees and then dance with them, causing some confusion.

“It’s what you do, not what you say,” he said. “It’s puppetry, not preaching.”

He told them he would return in a half-hour to see a revision. Then, as dinnertime approached, he excused himself to help the kitchen staff make potato pancakes — a recipe from his war-torn childhood.

With admirable control, the puppeteers discussed how to rework their savaged piece, each giving the others time to suggest solutions. It was a utopian vision of collaboration, agile and practical — and typical of how the company functions.

“Peter has a strong directional voice,” said Ziggy Bird, 26, a company member who took notice of Schumann’s work in a theater history class at Temple University. “It’s never personal and some of the most beautiful moments come from frustration, which can be a kick in the pants.”

+

[from comments]

In 1970, Father Daniel Berrigan was on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for his anti-war activities which led to a conviction and then his failure to show up for prison. A major event supporting Berrigan, after he became a refugee, was held in Ithaca.

The FBI was there waiting. The question was whether Berrigan would appear and speak to the thousands in the audience.

I was a stage hand and watched Berrigan enter the stage, unrecognized as he wore a motorcycle helmet. He removed the helmet to cheers and gave a speech. The FBI probably figured that they would avoid a riot and grab him as he left the building.

But then, from the back of the huge arena (Barton Hall), came chanting, weird music and lights. It was The Bread and Puppet Theater to the rescue. The ten foot puppets moved about as weirdness took over. Berrigan was alone on the stage, when the giant puppets came on stage and swirled around him in a spiral. I think I was the only one who noticed, from my stage hand perspective, as Berrigan slipped inside one of the puppets as the swirl unwound itself and kept chanting as they left the arena.

It took the FBI another seven months to catch up to Father Berrigan and send him to prison. I believe that this was one of the greatest puppet shows in history.

Yet, this is a story that few know about. Berrigan really was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. and The Bread and Puppet Theater squirrelled him away to safety.

#Bread and Puppet Theatre #theatre #Peter Schumann #puppets #puppetry #story #storytelling

[moishe-pipick]

“The sponsors of war closely resemble the weapons they create. And smart bombs, depleted uranium, land mines, rockets and tanks, rather than protect 'widows and orphans and strangers at the gate', are designed precisely to create 'widows and orphans', to transform strangers into enemies and enemies into corpses.”

- Daniel Berrigan

[dailyanarchistposts]

Yesterday an active-duty Air Force soldier named Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy. His last words were “Free Palestine.” Of the cops responding to the scene, some pointed guns at him while others sought to extinguish the flames; the image of a cop pointing a gun at a man on fire is the most American thing I have ever seen.

On June 11th, 1963, a Buddhist monk named Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire in Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon). In South Vietnam, Buddhists were an oppressed majority, ruled by a Catholic minority—the Buddhist flag was banned, Catholics were chosen for all the better jobs, and protesting Buddhists were being murdered in the streets or sent to concentration camps.

So Thích set himself on fire and calmly burned in front of hundreds of spectators on a public street. There’s a film of it, and I’m not big into “watch people die on film,” but some moments in history are worth seeing. He didn’t cry out; he just sat in lotus position, engulfed in flames. Afterwards, the cops tried to take his remains, but thousands of angry protestors took him back, and they re-cremated him for a proper funeral. His heart didn’t burn. It solidified in the fire. Today it is today a sacred relic. I have no explanation for this.

Other monks in Vietnam followed his example. By the end of the year, the CIA led a coup and toppled the Catholic dictator of the country. This isn’t “the US being good,” mind you, they’d been propping the asshole up in the first place. Thích’s sacrifice is often credited as what brought down that regime.

Two years later, the first American set herself on fire in protest of the Vietnam war. Alice Herz was a German Jew, 82 years old. She’d seen some shit. She’d fought for feminism in 1910s Germany, helped bring about the Weimar Republic, fled Germany to France only to end up in a Nazi concentration camp. Survived. Made it to the US. Lived in Detroit and became a Unitarian. Then one day she wrote a letter about how horrible the Vietnam war was, went out to the street, and set herself on fire. She wasn’t the last. In South Vietnam and the US alike, Buddhists and Quakers and Catholics set themselves on fire in service of the same cause.

When a 16 year old Catholic named Ronald Brazee set himself on fire in October 1967, a Catholic Worker named Father Daniel Berrigan wrote a poem for him called “In the Land of Burning Children”

He was still living a month later I was able to gain access to him I smelled the odor Of burning flesh And I understood anew What I had seen in North Vietnam I felt that my senses Had been invaded in a new way I now understood the power of death in the modern world I knew I must speak and act against death because this boy’s death was being multiplied a thousandfold

The Dutch resistance to the Nazi Occupation was characterized by a unique nonviolence, focusing primarily on hiding Jewish people and acts of sabotage. This wasn’t necessarily an ethical or even strategic decision, but one forced onto them by circumstance—according to one resistance fighter, since the Dutch government maintained a firearms registry before the invasion, the Nazis were able to acquire that list and go door-to-door to disarm the Dutch population.

But what the Dutch resistance lacked in firearms it made up for in mass participation. Roughly a million people were involved in sheltering people, secreting people away, striking, or helping those who were doing such things. The two most active groups were churches and communist organizations.

The Nazis responded with collective punishment. The occupiers cut off food supplies inside the Netherlands, blockading the roads between farms and cities. The entire population of the country went hungry during what’s called the Hunger Winter of 1944-1945. Between 18-22,000 people starved to death. Four-and-a-half million people were living off of something like 600 calories a day each. A whole generation of children born or living at the time suffered lifelong ailments. Audrey Hepburn grew up in Occupied Netherlands (and as a preteen performed ballet to raise money to support the resistance). Her time in the hunger winter left her with lifelong ailments like anemia.

In case the parallel I’m drawing is not obvious, Gaza is currently being starved by the Israeli government.

Quite notably, quite worth understanding in the modern context, the Hunger Winter persisted despite relief efforts until the Allied forces liberated the Netherlands from the fascists in May 1945.

Aaron Bushnell was twenty-five years old when he died. He sent a message to media outlets before his act: “Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

He posted on Facebook: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

His last words, engulfed in flames, were “Free Palestine.”

I know that what stopped US involvement in Vietnam was the military victory of the Vietnamese people against US forces, combined with the direct action action efforts of the American Left that made the war harder to execute. I know what ended the Nazi occupation was the Allied invasion. I know what stopped legal chattel slavery in the US was the deadliest war in our country’s history. I also know that what stopped Jim Crow was… nothing. Nothing has stopped it, not completely. The long, hard, thankless work of a combination of reform and direct action has mitigated its effects somewhat.

I can’t say I think others should follow Aaron’s example. I doubt he wanted anyone to. An act like this needs attention, not imitation. What we can follow is the moral courage. What we need to decide for ourselves is how to act, not whether or not to act. I don’t have any answers for me, and I don’t have any answers for you.

I can say that he shouldn’t be forgotten, that he ought to be remembered when we ask ourselves if we have the courage to act.

I can also say that it takes an incredible number of people doing an incredible variety of work to effect change. That poet, Father Daniel Berrigan, did a lot more than write poetry. He and others in the broader Catholic Left raided draft offices and burned records, directly impacting the US’s ability to send young men off to die in an imperialist war. A group of people who came out of their movement (but were primarily Jewish and/or secular) raided an FBI office and uncovered the spying and disruption that was done of the peace movement under the name COINTELPRO.

A vibrant and militant counterculture sprang up, drawing Americans away from the clutches of conservative propaganda. They built nationwide networks of mutual aid and they helped draft dodgers escape the country.

An awful lot of American soldiers in Vietnam directly defected, enough that “fragging” entered the English language as a verb for throwing a grenade at your commanding officer.

As for the Hunger Winter, it was not ended until the Nazi party was ended through force of arms, but its worst effects were alleviated by the bravery and thankless work of uncountable people who cobbled together meals from nothing or who organized to bring food aid in across German lines.

In the US now we’re seeing a growing movement opposed to our country’s collaboration with the genocidal regime in Israel.

It’s impossible to know if it will be enough. When you pile straw onto the proverbial camel, you never know which straw will be the last. We just keep piling.

And in the meantime, we remember names like Aaron Bushnell, Ronald Brazee, Alice Herz, and Thích Quảng Đức.

#gaza #palestine #aaron bushnell #self immolation #child death #tw #death #military #protest #self harm #margaret killjoy #community building #practical anarchy #practical anarchism #anarchist society #practical #revolution #anarchism #daily posts #communism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #organization #grassroots #grass roots #anarchists #libraries #leftism #social issues

[ceekbee]

Xtra Thoughts

September 28

The gift we can offer others is so simple a thing as hope.

–Daniel Berrigan

Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time.

Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

–M. Scott Peck

“This above all; to thine own self be true.”

–William Shakespeare

The most important things in life aren’t things.

H = Help others develop their potential. The possibilities and rewards are endless.

E = Enlist people to help you. Having a support system improves your ability to get the results you want.

A = Action keeps you moving forward. Do a little bit every day and eventually you’ll get to your goal.

R = Reach deep inside to find your strength. It’s there if you are willing to be courageous.

T = Trust the process. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time to reap the benefits.

–Carol Gegner

Let there be more joy and laughter in your living.

–Eileen Caddy

[songpasserine]

rules: tag 9 people you want to know better and or catch up with then answer these questions below!

tagged by my beloved @moriondors (mutual meet up real!!!)

four ships: I have every disease. ummm catra&adora, percy&annabeth, gen&attolia, everyone in the lunar chronicles

last played: just a ton of Gaelic folk music, I’m going to Ireland this summer and couldn’t be more excited!

currently reading: To Dwell in Peace, the autobiography of Daniel Berrigan, first priest on the FBI’s most wanted list. unrelated but we’re also reading a case in crim law rn with him pouring his own blood on draft files during the Vietnam war and I’m just like. love him!!

last movie: the cinematic masterpiece that is Paddington. everyone go watch it right now and feel better about the world

craving: next week I am going to drink my weight in frozen margaritas and I will be dreaming of them every minute of every day

Tagging: @stories-dearheart @enthusiastic-french-toast @mariposasmonarch @peregreen @theworldiswhispering @songs-of-stones @ru-tabega @lindensea @bluebellwren

#about me #thanks annika! #i am kissing you gently on the forehead

[the-real-zhora-salome]

Daniel Berrigan’s 1973 prophecy: Israel is becoming ‘the tomb of the Jewish soul’ – Mondoweiss

https://mondoweiss.net/2016/09/berrigans-prophecy-becoming/

[uncarving-the-block]

“The following May, Philip Berrigan— out on bail in the Balince case was joined in a second action by his brother Daniel, a Jesuit pries who had visited North Vietnam and seen the effects of U.S. bombie They and seven other people went into a draft board office i Catonsville, Maryland, removed records, and set them afire outside i the presence of reporters and onlookers. They were convicted and se tenced to prison, and became famous as the "Catonsville Nine." De Berrigan wrote a "Meditation" at the time of the Catonsville incident

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of pope instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the che nel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise... We say: killing is dis order, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.”

-A People’s History of the United States, on the Vietnam War

[selenival]

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

" walks with his winter shadow. He is all hoar's breath, health; he strides, a visible heart, the sun's hair spring. Who calls him incomplete?

...

Who calls him man? ..."

Daniel Berrigan

https://youtu.be/NQSnO_mX8pQ