Crossing the Line: Nonviolent Resisters Speak Out for Peace
Edited by Rosalie G. Riegle
2013, Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
402 pages, $44 paperback

“I listened to learn from people who have refused to be helpless in the face of a violent world, people who say with their bodies that they do not accept the status quo of permanent war and preparation for war, and in doing so, risk going to jail or prison...mostly by crossing the property borders that protect weapons and their delivery systems.” —Rosalie Riegle

What a fabulous resource Rosalie Riegle’s work is, for activists, social scientists, and the curious who want to read how nonviolent direct actions against weapons and war come together and how nonviolent people deal with trials and prison. Riegle is a colleague of mine on the War Resisters League National Committee, and many of the subjects are acquaintances or friends too. Rosalie interviewed 173 people between 2004  and 2008 to compile the material for both Crossing the Line and for the earlier family-focused Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family and Community (see WIN, vol. 29 no. 4).

Crossing begins with World War II conscientious objectors and comes forward in time, addressing the mostly quiescent fifties and refusal to hunker down in civil defense drills. The book is full of reminiscences of inspiration from the indomitable Dorothy Day, Viet Nam era draft resistance, and the development in the 70s and 80s of residential or regional resistance communities inspired by Liz Mcalister and Phil Berrigan and the others at Jonah House in Baltimore. The book continues through the U.S. and European Plowshares movement to dismantle weapons beginning with the Plowshares Eight in King of Prussia, PA, in 1980 to an examination of the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) movement begun by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois to oppose the U.S. Army School, which trains Latin American troops who carry oppression back home with them.

After the chronological focus, the last part of the book catches up on topics needing more attention: activist priests, war tax resistance, more jail commentary, and general musings on the unexpected relationships and challenges to state and other authority in which activists find themselves.

Many of the interviewees don’t hold back and are very honest and open, indicative of both Ro’s gentle technique as well as her being part of the movement. The pain and difficulty of prison are here, up to and including prison rape, which was initially totally demoralizing in the case of Richa Chandler, but now he not only bravely tells a difficult story, but is also a counselor for rape survivors, both men and women.

There is honesty about the serious chauvinism and misogyny in earlier years even among iconic Catholic left leaders like peace dynasty patriarchs Phil Berrigan and John Grady. Several women speak who did the almost entirely female Daddy Warbucks action in NYC of hiding in an office building and occupying a draft office overnight, where they shredded files they later threw as confetti in a street action. They make it very clear how hard it was for women in the movement against the Viet Nam war to step out on their own, how disrespected they were, and how sexist the media coverage was. The investigating grand jury could not imagine the women had not been directed by men, and badgered them to tell. None of the women would testify, though, and the authorities were nervous about more publicity for the movement, so the case was eventually dropped. In a brief aside late in her interview, Maggie Geddes sadly notes that the just-burgeoning feminist movement also disrespected the Daddy Warbucks women, sneering that they should have just left the male-dominated peace movement and focused totally on finding themselves as women.

One young couple in the School of the Americas section speaks honestly but chooses to be quoted anonymously, Rosalie notes for fear of “professional reprisal,” but also perhaps for fear of repercussions from the movement because they are rather critical of the long-established and now fairly formulaic SOAW protest, and bring up other touchy subjects. They mention feeling disapproval for their mildly more confrontational action of trying to break into and lock open the Fort Benning gate, always closed to the SOAW activists since 9/11. They also wonder about peace activists and terrorists both claiming a higher justification for breaking the law, and the cultural narrowness of mostly white, mostly educated, privileged people making nonviolence perhaps an idol and excluding other people.

War Resisters League folks are well-represented in this book, with Ralph DiGia, Grace Paley, Juanita Nelson, and Randy Kehler—both as a draft resister and a tax resister—all given their due. Included are Ralph’s poignant stories of going on strike to desegregate the Danbury Federal Correction Institution dining hall, and being recognized as a friend of Dave Dellinger at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary before he even met him. Grace recounts her whole life really, as a mother, poet, teacher, and of course as a resister, as a “combative feminist and cooperative anarchist.” She too, like the Daddy Warbucks women, notes that the women’s movement was seen as deeply insulting to men even in the peace movement, and that the 1980 Women’s Pentagon action with intentionally no speakers and no men infuriated WRL men. Juanita Nelson, discussing living simply, boldly proclaims, “...War is not the problem. It’s all the things we go to war for, all the oil, all the ‘stuff!’” and Randy humbly recounts basically stumbling into Congress of Racial Equality organizing in Harlem for the 1963 March on Washington, and that same summer meeting Max Sandine, resister to Czarist Russian and U.S. military service, featured in one of WRL’s now-discontinued yearly calendars.

My principal criticism of this book is that it seems biased towards faith-based activists. Even though Rosalie quotes accurately, I ssume, the comments of many who say their motivations are not from faith or religion, she seems to be tone deaf to those words. Throughout the book she generalizes that her subjects are “Catholic Workers and other faith-based resisters whose narratives I collected” and who “form a loosely connected but cohesive group of progressive faith-based activists with a unity which transcends sectarianism.”

Sigh. I think I am now beginning to more clearly perceive a problem which I have recognized from the earliest days of my own activism. It seems that those of us distinctly not faith-based have been misunderstood because we have not vehemently opposed or stood aside from prayers and scripture-reading from the faith-based. We let them say their prayers in our presence, so we have been assumed to agree with them, even receiving “compliments” that we are such good activists we must really be faithful and just don’t know it.

But those of us who aren’t faith-based come to Catholic Worker communities or Faith and Resistance retreats for the actions, not the faith! I personally deeply respect those motivated by faith to work for peace and justice, and am fine with standing quietly as they pray. And just for practicality’s sake—as someone who really would like to maybe change a few hearts and minds in our nation’s deeply terrorized, disempowered, apathetic populace—I am willing to work alongside religious activists because I recognize the persuasive power of religion in the U.S. public. So I’m fine with marching behind such banners as “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” But organizing in coalition with faith-based activists does not mean I’m a believer. Please stop complacently assuming I am!

For all my frustration about the over-emphasis on faith, it hasn’t kept me away from acting with the faithful and it certainly does not lessen the value of this book. Having this marvelous history, the collected words of too many sadly deceased friends and colleagues, is precious.

Included are the words of Grace and Ralph, of course. But there are also accounts from Sisters Jackie Hudson and Ann Montgomery, as well as Father Lorenzo Rosebaugh. The latter I never got to meet but he did a trespass action at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, which is where I got my start as an activist. So I have always had a warm spot in my heart for him, which this book only deepens. I was deeply moved to see that Rosalie dedicated Crossing to Mary Moylan, who was the “unremembered participant in the Catonsville Nine draft board raid, in hopes that she will someday be written into history with a book of her own.”

Thanks, Ro.

Baltimore-based Ellen Barfield is a member of the War Resisters League National Committee and Administrative Coordinating Committee. She has been an activist for nearly 30 years, since finishing college with Army money. She works primarily with WRL and Veterans For Peace, and has over 100 arrests on her record.