When I graduated from Duke in 1981, I did not think that some day I'd be back in North Carolina--only this time in jail. There were some things I didn't learn at Duke, some lessons I grasped only over time, as I grappled with the realities of war and injustice.
While at Duke, I majored in history, joined a fraternity and cheered on the basketball team. In the years that followed, I worked among the poor and homeless in Washington, D.C., and New York City. I taught high school students, wrote books on peace and was ordained a Jesuit priest.
In 1985, I lived and worked in a church-run refugee camp in El Salvador in the middle of a war zone. U.S. bombs fell on the surrounding villages while U.S.-trained death squads roamed the countryside. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans, including six Jesuit priests whom I knew, were killed during that war. Later, I traveled into Third World war zones of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Philippines and saw the reality of war and injustice which afflicts most of humanity.
Slowly, I realized that most of the sufferings and problems around the world have their roots right here at home, and that if the poor of the world are ever to know justice, the American people will have to dismantle their nuclear arsenal completely and spend their resources on human needs.
But the United States has no intention of disarming and promoting justice. Even if all the nuclear arms treaties are implemented, the United States alone will still have 20,000 nuclear weapons, the equivalent of 20,000 Hiroshimas, and it is intent on maintaining these evil weapons.
At 4.7 percent of the world's population, the United States consumes over 60 percent of the world's resources. U.S. militarism fuels the 40 wars currently being fought around the world. While 40 million people die each year from starvation, the United States spends nearly $300 billion annually on war.
How does one respond to such overwhelming evil? Do we throw up our hands in despair and declare that there's nothing we can do--or do we take responsibility for our nation's destructive violence and commit our lives to the nonviolent struggle for justice and peace?
Somewhere along the way, I realized that the best thing I can do with my life is dedicate myself to this work of nuclear disarmament, justice and peace.
On Dec. 7, 1993, with Philip Berrigan and two friends, I entered Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, near Goldsboro, North Carolina, and hammered on an F15-E Strike Eagle nuclear bomber. These weapons of mass destruction killed thousands of Iraqis during the Gulf War, stand on alert to kill Bosnians and are ready at a moment's notice to start a nuclear war. We face 10 years in prison for this nonviolent protest. We simply follow the biblical mandate to "beat swords into Plowshares" and "love our enemies."
Being in the Edenton jail now, awaiting trial, is the price we pay for beginning anew the task of disarmament. We all need to speak out publicly and get involved actively for peace and justice.
As Martin Luther King, Jr., said on the night before he was assassinated, "The choice before us is no longer between violence and nonviolence; it's nonviolence or nonexistence."
The question is: Will we spend our lives making a positive contribution to the nonviolent transfiguration of the world, or will we selfishly pursue career and money at the expense of suffering humanity and allow the world to disintegrate before our eyes?
As one of the Salvadoran Jesuits put it, the only way to be truly human in the world today is to dedicate ourselves to end poverty, oppression and militarism. As we learn to say "no" to war and death, we will discover the meaning of peace and life.
John Dear, Trinity '81, is currently in the Chowan County Jail in Edenton, N.C.
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