wfn.org | UCC leader testifies before House committee

[powellb@ucc.org]

Sept. 21, 1999
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ
Rose Anne Grasty, press contact
(216) 736-2213
grastyr@ucc.org
On the web: <http://www.ucc.org>

National United Church of Christ leader testifies before House
committee

     WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The executive vice president
of the United Church of Christ's U.S. mission board today
(Sept. 21) testified before the House Government and Reform
Committee, which is investigating President Clinton's act of
clemency for 15 Puerto Rican prisoners.
     The Rev. Thomas E. Dipko delivered prepared
remarks titled, "A Plea for Reconciliation: In Support of
Clemency for the Puerto Rican Prisoners."  Below is the text
of his testimony.
     The United Church of Christ has 1.4 million members
and more than 6,100 local congregations in the United States
and Puerto Rico.  It was formed by the 1957 union of the
Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and
Reformed Church.

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[Here is the text of the testimony delivered today, Sept. 21, 1999, by the
Rev. Thomas A. Dipko, Executive Vice President of the United Church
Board for Homeland Ministries of the United Church of Christ.]

     "Good afternoon.  Thank you, Congressman Burton,
for giving me an opportunity to share with this distinguished
Committee why the General Synod of the United Church of
Christ supports the President's clemency for Puerto Rican
men and women imprisoned for their convictions and actions
for the cause of Puerto Rican independence.
     "Our support is neither naive about the suffering
caused by the FALN bombings nor callous toward those
victimized by them.  The members of the United Church of
Christ join me in expressing  sadness for what these victims
have endured even to this moment.  We abhor violence and
believe that compassion for the victims of violence is
foundational to the
justice system of any nation that calls itself a democracy.
     "At the same time, we live with the wisdom of Jesus
who condemned the retaliatory rhetoric of 'an eye for an eye a
tooth for tooth.'  The hope of the world for justice and peace
does not lie in the reactive carnage of vengeance or in punitive
sentences that place retribution above rehabilitation and
reconciliation.
     "We agree with President Clinton, Amnesty
International, and numerous voices of conscience at home and
abroad, who note that in comparison with the seven to twenty
year sentences generally served by people actually convicted
of murder in our nation, the more than 1,000 years of
incarceration imposed on these men and women, averaging
over 65 years in prison for each, constitutes excessive
punishment disproportionate to the crimes of  which they were
found guilty.
     "Contrary to those who contend that 'guilt by
association' justifies such harsh sentences  wherever the word
'terrorism' is invoked, we continue to champion 'due process'
and the presumption of innocence as twin cornerstones of our
American legal heritage.
     "We are a church of the dissenting Pilgrims and
Puritans who came to these shores in search of religious
liberty.  But we are also the church of the Amistad and its
Mende people who were lawlessly treated as slaves when, in
fact, they were free men and women from Sierra Leone, West
Africa.  Accused of mutiny and murder, their case pricked the
consciences of New Englanders unpersuaded by the sophistry
of the Mende's captors. Our solidarity with them brought their
case to the Supreme Court of our land and, with John Quincy
Adams, a former President and member of the House of
Representatives acting as our attorney on their behalf, they
were declared free.
     "Our church, whose members founded Harvard, Yale,
Dillard, Fisk and many other institutions of higher learning,
believes the promise of scripture that the truth will set us free.
We do our homework well.  At our best, and we are not
always at our best, we do not put a wet finger to the air to
determine where the winds of public opinion point on the road
through moral ambiguity to clarity of conscience before God.
     "These are some of the reasons why my church has
urged this controversial clemency since 1991.  For me, more
personally, my advocacy began in 1995 when I visited Dylcia
Pagan, Lucy Rodriguez and Carmen Valentin at the Federal
Correctional Institution in Dublin, California.  Whatever
reservations I may have had about the rightness of a call for
their release evaporated at that meeting and in subsequent
visits that included Alicia Rodriguez. I was moved by the
honesty of these women about their past, their gentle strength
and their desire to resume responsible lives in society as
persons who publicly committed themselves to nonviolence in
1997.  I count my visits with them as one of the most
transforming experiences of my life.
     "We implore you and your colleagues not to indulge
the hysteria that demonizes Carmen, Alicia, Lucy, Dylcia and
their colleagues.  They have served more than ordinary
sentences for the crimes involved.  Let us affirm their release
and address the causes that drove them to behaviors which
none of us can condone and which they themselves have
pledged not to repeat.
     "Thank you."
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