Pax Christi USA marks 25 years of activism - Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a speaker at the Washington, DC rally

National Catholic Reporter, August 29, 1997 by Patricia Lefevere

WASHINGTON -- Twice during the evening, the crowd of more than 800 peace lovers rose to give extended ovations.

The first time was after the surprise announcement that three Japanese survivors of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima were in the audience.

The second ovation occurred when former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (see interview, page 13), keynote speaker, asked all men to stand and to applaud their "mothers and all women in the world."

If the budgets of nations were in the hands of women, he said, "we'd see savings." Aristide said national budgets should be spent on education, development and health care, not on militarism.

The two ovations represented the span of concerns that have developed on the Pax Christi USA agenda during the past quarter century. The organization marked its 25th anniversary at a national assembly held August 8-10 at The Catholic University of America here. Veterans of the organization recalled the early days and the group's founding by a few professors, conscientious objectors and friends of the Catholic Worker's Dorothy Day.

It was started during a time of national seething over the Vietnam War and over the global arms buildup by the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. A quarter century later some of the same anger and dynamism was still apparent. Only the battles had changed to such issues as welfare cuts, Third World debt and global instability.

On Aug. 9, a dozen buses loaded with Pax Christi demonstrators -- from age two to over 80 -- headed not to the Pentagon but to the District of Columbia Control Board, the World Bank and the White House. At each stop, they hung banners, sang, prayed and criticized policies of the Clinton administration, Congress and the world's wealthiest lender, the World Bank.

At the Control Boardappointed by Congress to oversee district affairs, marchers - many of them among the 100 Washington volunteers at the assembly and many of them African-Americans - took issue with Congress' move to usurp some of the powers of Mayor Marion Barry, as well as Congress' lack of action in granting home rule.

Demonstrators' also protested the shortage of low-income housing, job-training programs, and the fact that half of Washington's children live in poverty. The capital ranks first among U.S. cities in infant mortality; 145 infants died there in 1995.

At the World Bank, Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Maura Browne of the African Faith and Justice Network scattered seeds on the sidewalk after asking God to "Clear the thorns of greed and fear, and make of the World Bank a place where increasingly the concerns of the poor take precedence."

At the White House, all the marchers scattered "seeds of compassion" after listening to Jesuit Fr. James Hug.

Hug, who directs the Center of Concern here, told those attending that they were standing "on the margins of power trying to speak from other visions." He urged them to go into the corridors of power as others may have been entering it at that moment, "even to unpack their bags in the Lincoln Bedroom."

Later, 69 of the marchers formed a standing cross on the no-go "postcard zone" of the White House, an area where protesting is prohibited.

Police gave the protesters three warnings to disperse and when they didn't, began to arrest them. Among the handcuffed were Kate Berrigan, 16, daughter of Plowshares activists Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, Manhattan College Professor Joseph Fahey, a Pax Christi USA founder; Hannah Landsel, 18, a first-time activist from the Deer Spring Bruderhof in Norwalk, Conn.; and Ellen Grady of Ithaca, N.Y., mother of three.

The graying of a major portion of the organization was evident, but so was the enthusiasm of teenagers and young couples with their small children.

Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Va., president of Pax Christi USA, called nuclear weapons the greatest risk to peace. Though the United States and Russia have downsized the numbers of weapons they array against each other, the spread of nuclear and conventional arms worldwide still forms a terrifying gateway into the 21st century, he told journalists.

"It's no surprise that the increase in arms and the increase of human enmity go hand in hand," he said.

A survivor of the first nuclear weapon ever detonated over humans, Keiji Tsuchiya, 69, told a reporter how, the day after the Hiroshima blast 52 years ago, he had come upon "carbonized bodies" whose gender and age were impossible to discern. I couldn't stop crying. I was wondering if there was really a God," said Tsuchiya, who suffered diarrhea, bleeding gums and hair loss after working near the irradiated bodies.

In his short talk, Aristide said that solidarity is what sustains Haitians. "Everyone works together to build the neighbor's house in exchange for shade at the end of the day."

To live in solidarity is "to see with the eyes of God," said the former Salesian priest. He pointed to Haitian women as "co-sharers" of the nation's economic burden, adding that women generate 80 percent of household income.