January 2006

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Address to the ICPJ on the Occasion of its 20th Anniversary
by Lou Hammann

I hope you don’t mind if I take a little liberty with my assigned topic this evening: The history of peace and justice activism in Adams County.

Memory Shadows

I have some memory shadows that go back to the beginning of the peace and justice movement in Adams County, and I know, from tracking those shadows and from talking with Elaine Jones and Mac Albright, among others–I KNOW something about how things began here–but not with enough clarity or accuracy to pose as a fully reliable source. But since I have to start somewhere, and for the sake of history, I’ll begin my ruminations about six years before the Interfaith Center began its career.

The hostage crisis in Iran was in 1979–along with at least one revolution in Central America (namely, Nicaragua). The aftermath or backlash of those events surely had something to do with the election of Ronald Reagan–or at least with the defeat of Jimmy Carter.

That was the year that the US began to realize that there were Muslims in the world–especially the Shiite variety–and that Communism was still alive and well in Latin America, even after Cuba. Reagan, employing the logic of other kings, heads of state and presidents, began to beat the drums of war and called for a vast military buildup. Again following the logic of imperial administrators, he opposed nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties and talked about fighting and winning a nuclear war.

This kind of behavior gave extra incentive to the Nuclear Freeze movement. I know Patricia took our youngest daughter to NY and joined the one million people who rallied in Central Park in 1982 to call out their protest. The memory of that event still resonates in our family.

I’m not sure of the exact sequence, but I know that Mac Albright and members of the Redding family and others had already formed in Gettysburg a group that called itself Apple Core to maintain at least a semblance of protest against nuclear weapons. That happened sometime between 1978 and 1980.

Now according to Elaine (see next article): The nuclear freeze movement began to ebb in 1984–how short our memories and how flimsy our consciences are! In response she began to meet with other activists to establish a permanent peace center. The core group reached out to churches to cultivate broad support in the county–and this led to the creation of the Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice. Its goal was, as Elaine puts it, “to make certain that peace concerns remained front and center in our county, no matter what the political climate was.” Maybe this talk and this celebration tonight is evidence that such a hope remains among us.

Eventually, as I remember, the Interfaith Center acquired 501(c)3 corporate status and therefore began to veer away from the kind of citizen activism that was the original driving energy of the movement. Its not-for-profit status prohibited any semblance of partisan political activity. And all that nuclear protest had been, presumably, “political.”

Has It Been Worthwhile?

My wife and I, with many other folks, have tried to keep ourselves active in the peace movement–a generalized citizens’ effort to keep hope and civilization alive. Over the last couple of years this has meant following and participating in public demonstrations wherever we could find them.

And after so many years of demonstrating, I want to step back and wonder why we have done it and what have been the results.

Pondering these questions, while riding to D.C. in the bus with 40 other friends on September 24 I had a kind of epiphany–a minor revelation. We were on our way to a grand demonstration against the war in Iraq. For some reason, the question came to my mind while it was idling and I was just looking out the bus window: Why do I do this? Why have I done this more times than I can remember? And then the question of questions: Has it been worthwhile? Has it had any influence on my country or even on the world?

Now I have driven to D.C. many times for various kinds of protests and demonstrations. I have also been to St. Paul, MN, New York, and other local venues for such demonstrations, but my epiphany is specifically related to being on that bus to D.C. on September 24. Then I suddenly realized that I couldn’t quite figure out where I was on the trip. That is, suddenly it all seemed strange out the window. I did not recognize the passing scenery. It was an alien landscape. Driving down Route 15 and then I-270–where was I? When I was driving those same roads to D.C. to participate in the Jubilee demonstration, and a variety of other protests, the road was totally familiar. I always knew where I was. Now it all seemed unfamiliar. Why? Maybe because I wasn’t behind the wheel.

Then the epiphany. When I was moving myself, when I was driving, when I was in charge of what I was doing and where I was going, when I had gotten up early and headed under my own steam to the site of the peace demonstration or protest, I was traveling through a familiar world. I was in that world by personal intentions, for reasons that were vividly my own.

Now in the bus, someone else was driving. I was going with other people. And that shift of perspective changed the whole scene. Someone else was in charge. My participation was less than direct. I was not alone. And for a very clear moment I realized–what?

Why we have joined so many protests and demonstrations: That is what I realized. Because, voluntarily and intentionally joining that vast throng of people of conscience, I felt that I was doing something–that I was doing something I wanted to do and that needed to be done. So my original questions come back to the surface: Why do I do this? Why have I done this more times than I can remember? Has it been worthwhile in influencing my country?

The sad answer to the last question is: I am not so sure. Think of the long agony of anti‑war demonstrations during the Vietnam era. And think of the slow and halting and strange processes that finally brought that war to an uncertain end. Did the protests and demonstrations and riots have any influence in bringing about the terrible end of things in 1975? I just do not know. But surely those actions gave the participants, otherwise helpless spectators of a catastrophic drama, a sense that they were involved in the life of the nation.

I felt the same thing on September 24–by the time we finally arrived at the Ellipse to join the other 300,000 souls marching and demonstrating there for peace and for the end of the Iraq war. We were involved!

However, I don’t know how to avoid the question: Was it worth the effort? The system–or what we used to call the “establishment”–seems disinterested, even oblivious. So all those well-intentioned folks, on the ground, in the streets, on the stage, might just as well have stayed home and tended their gardens. The war goes on, the killing persists, though there is evidence that popular opinion is shifting: Many people seem less sure of the virtue or merits, or even the strategic purpose, of the war in Iraq.

And what about all those other times that we spent a day or two or three in NY or D.C. or wherever? Did we have anything to do with stopping the madness? When we returned home, did we even dare to ask: Was the war that we demonstrated against really madness? Isn’t it just human nature, whether you are leading the national parade or are at home and school or in your neighborhood? Isn’t it just part of the human condition for nations and tribes to fight and kill their enemies? Isn’t it folly to pretend to stand up against such forces–to swim against the very tide of human history?

I wish I had a final answer to that question, but I don’t. At least I don’t have a grand, universal, all-inclusive answer to the question. But at the moment of my epiphany I realized that–however futile in the short run, however uncertain in the mid‑run, however problematic in the long run–participating in such protests and demonstrations has two practical results:

1. For me, personally, I have a clear conscience. I did what I felt and thought my conscience required me to do. However, I do not think this simply as a Lone Ranger. It is not a strictly solo realization. It is part of the conversation that goes on constantly with others–whether in silence or in noisy discussion.

2. And I had overcome the normal, usual, casual, easy sense of inertia in face of the catastrophes that rack our world: I participated in a moment–in a movement–that had its own momentum. I was there. I was awake, I was not asleep. I tried. I played out a role–an active role–in the world that prefers that I remain aloof and just wait for the end, whatever that might be.

Were all our efforts just self-indulgence? Is it just a feeble, ineffective effort to make myself feel good, even to feel better than others? After all, the dramatic–even the practical–effect of such behavior is at best problematic. Did/do the people in power care what ordinary or even extraordinary citizens do in their spare time? Sometimes I think I know and other times I know that I do not know what goes on behind the political façade.

In the end, by an act of will, we throw ourselves into the breach and hope that a clear conscience is its own reward, and we hope as well that the cumulative effect of joining with the other thousands of like‑minded souls at least keeps the reality of a human conscience alive and well.

In these reflections I have tried to avoid any romantic illusions of how we live in our world, about what we accomplish by our stubborn persistence “To Be There.” But I have tried to demonstrate also that the only anodyne to the pain of war is personal will and universal hope.

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