RELIGIOUS PROTEST
THEN
JEAN GUMP
We carried three hammers, a wire clipper, three baby bottles with our blood, papers with an indictment against the United States and against the Christian church for its complicity.
It is going to be the citizens that will have to eliminate these weapons. They were built by human hands. People are frightened by them, yet view them as our Gods of Metal. It is a chain-linked fence with barbed wire on top. We have become so accustomed to these monstronsities that there are no guards. It is nondescript. If you were passing it on the road, you would see this fence. The silo itself is maybe a foot or two out of the earth. It looks like a great concrete patio. It’s very innocuous.
To get through the fence, we used a wire clipper. We had practiced in the park the day before. Once we were in, I proceeded to use the blood and I made a cross on top of the silo. Underneath, I wrote the words in black sparay paint: DISARM AND LIVE. We sat down and waited in prayer. We thanked God, first of all, that we were alive. We expected a helicopter to come over and kill us terrorists. We thanked god for our successful dismantelling, more or less, of this weapon. We assumed the responsibility for our actions and we waited to be apprehended.
They put the men up against the fence in a spread-eagle position. They asked the female—myself—to “take ten steps and stand with your hands raised.” I did it for a few minutes and my fingers were beginning to tingle. I put my hands down. The soldier said, “you must put your hands up.” I said, “No, I have a little funny circulation.” He said, “You must put your hands up.” I said, “No, I have a little funny circulation. He said, “You must put your hands up.” I said, “Shoot me.” He choose not to, which I thought was good.
By this time, the area was filled with with about eight automobiles. FBI, local sheriffs, and so on. They took us into this armored vehicle. On its right-hand side was a big sign: PEACEKEEPER. I said, “Young man, have a chance to read Orwell’s 1984." He said, “I’m not allowed to talk to you.” I said, “I’ll talk to you, then.” He said, “If I had my uniform off, we could talk.” I said, “Maybe we’ll meet and have coffee someday.” My one daughter graduates from the University of Califormia. I will not be there. My other daughter is getting married. I will not be there. I want more than anything in the world to be there. These are my children and I love them. But if they’re going to have a world, we have to stop this madness. I think they understand that as much as as I want to be with them and my loving husband--- He wasn’t with me on this at first, but now he’s all the way.
About three weeks ago, I had asked for certain things to be done. I wanted our power of attorney for all our property to be in his hands. As he was going out the door, he said, “Jean, you’re planning to die, aren’t you?” It startled me because I’d been thinking about that. I thought it was something that could happen. Hearing him say it made it very real. I said, “Yeah Joe.” So we took up our lives again and our love affair has never been nicer.
Jean Gump protesting in 2003 as a part of the "Women in Black" pacifist movement. Photo by the Kalamazoo Gazette
It is going to be the citizens who will have to eliminate these weapons. They were built by human hands... [we] view them as our Gods of Metal.
NOW
WILLA BICKHAM AND BRENDAN WALSH
Willa: I don’t think religion was the center of our motivation at all…it was more about Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day.
Brendan: it was more about nonviolence; that united all the faiths it seemed to us.
Willa: There was a Baltimore City councilman who decided that they were going to arrest people who sleep out, anybody asleep on benches. So what we did is we organized a whole bunch of people, and we all slept out in front of city hall. That was the night before the bill was introduced, and all the press were there.
Brendan: For about five and a half years we were just in this building, and it was a shelter for women and children. And it so happened that a family that was staying with us at the time of Christmas—the woman just had her baby. Her name was Tara… Anyway, we planned to have a nativity scene down at city hall. And you’re too young to remember, mayor Schafer used to have these signs all over the city, “We’ll have this fixed before you can say William Donald Schaffer and the citizens of Baltimore.” So we went down to city hall, we built a cardboard box, and Tara agreed to sit inside the cardboard box--with the baby! And we had a nativity scene. So we had about, I think close to one hundred people who were a chorus, and then we remade Christmas carols, to the tune of like…
Willa: Silent night was like, “homelessness homelessness where will we sleep?”
Brendan: All, “round yond harbor the poor have great need but the mayor he pays them no heed.” And so we depicted the two Baltimores, you know they keep insisting there’s one Baltimore for everybody, we said, “well, there’s really two, there’s people who are in at the Mayor’s Christmas open house, and then there’s the people who were on the street! And there was no open house for them.
As far as anti-war, we would go down to the Pentagon, I went down on Valentine’s Day with four or five other people, and we had with us blood and ashes. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Pentagon, but back then, you would go in, I think the D.C. metro pulled up right in there and there would be stores, you know, you would be shopping, you know restaurants and everything like that, so we had a demonstration going in there, and then at some point we would throw blood and ashes on the floor signifying what the Pentagon was really all about. And then they would arrest you and everything like that. It was taking it inside.
Willa: For sixteen years we stood on Mondays in front of the city jail, across the street from central booking was death row, that was where all the death row prisoners were, protesting the death penalty. Actually, it’s about the only thing we’ve won, because in Maryland the death penalty has been abolished. But we were there for all the executions, we were there as a vigil, and it was a really good place because that’s where everybody from downtown’s getting on the Falls way and everything, so we could do a lot of leafleting and signs and everything.
Do you vote for a candidate based on that candidate’s personal morals or policy?
Brendan: The main thing we think is true is one of the quotes Phil Murray said, if voting could change things, in this country, it would be illegal, because there’s very little. The people who run for office, even including Bernie Sanders, who I will vote for, but probably won’t get further than the primary, everybody else represents a whole different class of people, and a whole different bankroll of people that will get them elected. And they have no contact with a good seventy percent of the country, really. I mean, the one percent has so much wealth, and the ninety-nine percent does not. When you break it down to neighborhoods like this, it means having nothing. So there’s no way…really the majority of people in the country are actually given a voice by the candidates that we have.
Willa: And the power is not in the presidency, we’ve seen that with President Obama. I mean he can’t do anything; it’s big business, corporations run America.
Brendan: and the military tells him what they’re gonna do. I mean, it‘s really that crass, but that’s really what’s happening.
Willa: Usually, we don’t vote. We would vote on issues, civil marriage and things like that, but then we did register to vote the last couple years, not that we believe in changing anything by voting for president or something, but you see what the civil rights struggle for the vote was, and you think, just out of respect for what they suffered and the people who died to have the vote
Brendan: It’s voting out of respect, but not out of any hope.
Willa: As Catholic workers, we’ve always come from the philosophy that you vote with your feet, if you want to make a change in this world you go to the demonstrations, you protest this; you work hard to eliminate bad housing in your neighborhood, that’s a more effective way to vote.
Brendan: That’s really all you have left.
Click below to hear a snippet of Willia and Brendan's interview.
Willa Bickham and Brendan Walsh
For sixteen years we stood on Mondays in front of the city jail, across the street from central booking was death row, that was where the death row prisoners were, protesting the death penalty.