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Note #7343 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

16-July-2002
02252

Presbyterian pastors sentenced

Peace protesters get prison terms for trespassing on Army base

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Two Presbyterian ministers have been sentenced to serve time in a federal penitentiary for participating in a non-violent demonstration at a Georgia military base last November.

The Rev. Chuck Booker-Hirsch, 41, of Ann Arbor, MI, was sentenced to three months in prison and fined $500. The Rev. Erik Johnson, 58, of Maryville, TN, got a six-month sentence and a $1,000 fine.

The sentences are to begin in six to eight weeks.

They were charged with trespassing after they entered Fort Benning, near Columbus, GA, during an annual demonstration against a combat training facility there long known as the School of the Americas, but now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). The facility, which offers training to Latin American military officers, is accused of offering instruction in such techniques as extortion and torture.

Training manuals discovered in the early 1990s  proved that allegation; since then, the government insists that the school's curriculum has been changed.

More than 10,000 people took part in the protest last Nov. 16-18, which marked the anniversary of the 1989 slaughter of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. More than 100 entered federal property, inviting arrest. Forty-three were later indicted, and 37 were tried last week in Columbus.

Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth of the U.S. District Court handed down three-to-six-month sentences for 29 protesters on July 12. One was found not guilty and seven were put on probation.

Booker-Hirsch was a first-time offender, a category that has not been prosecuted in the past.

"The penalties are severe ... when the maximum penalty is six months in prison and-or a $5,000 fine," said Booker-Hirsch, who added that activists are interpreting the decision to prosecute first-time offenders as an attempt to deter future protests. "I'm almost certain it will have a backlash effect," he said.

He added: "I am thankful that the prosecution brought the 37 of us together for this time of intense community-building and testimony-sharing."

Booker-Hirsch said the case dramatized the hypocrisy of the United States in making war on terrorism abroad while refusing to acknowledge its own involvement in terrorism. "It's the log-and-speck analogy all over again," he said.

The prosecutor's office did not return calls from the Presbyterian News Service.

Both Presbyterian ministers are longtime activists for peace in Latin America and for aid to refugees in the United States who fled violence there.

Johnson told the judge that, when he became a baptized Christian, "the whole world became my family through faith in the One who is life," and that, during his 33 years as an ordained PC(USA) minister, he has taught his parishioners to respect the "sanctity of all life" and to expose "injustices, in the hope of making them just."

"I have consistently advocated peacefully against violence and injustices on behalf of the sacred lives of the poor and oppressed in the human family, including my sisters and brothers in Latin America, whose lives have been brutalized and shortened by the violence directed toward them by graduates of the School of the Americas," he said. "These members of my extended family are not obscure and nameless. I see their faces in my heart."

Johnson said his congregation has extended "an outpouring of love" in support him and his family.

"I'm feeling very good about my choice," he said. "I'm living day by day with the knowledge that all of us ... have to give some account of ourselves and how we live non-violently in a massively violent world. That's both a comfort and challenge to me. ... The One I serve is a crucified Lord."

Johnson, co-chair of the Peacemaking Committee of the Presbytery of East Tennessee, is interim pastor of the Church of the Savior, a United Church of Christ congregation in Knoxville, TN.

Johnson said his time in jail will give him the opportunity to develop deeper spiritual habits and to reflect on alternative ways of living.

Booker-Hirsch is pastor of Northside Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. Several ministers in his presbytery have offered to fill his pulpit pro bono during his absence. His wife, Amy, is also a Disciples of Christ minister.

"Ninety days is a small expense to pay," said Booker-Hirsch, given the issues involved. "Our biggest concern is our five-year-old, Drew, being away from his daddy that long."

He said that his indictment has prompted some acquaintances who had little knowledge of the school to begin raising some hard questions.  "That's what we want," he said.

Defenders of the school argue that its curriculum no longer includes instruction in abusive practices and that each class includes a human rights component. But the School of the Americas Watch, the organization that stages the annual protest, contends that those changes are only cosmetic.
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