A peacemaker's passing

From Linda LeTendre's Waging Peace blog :

Peter DeMott was one of the waging-peace type of people I promised to write about when I started this blog. Unfortunately, the first thing I have to tell you about him is that he died on Feb. 19 during emergency surgery after suffering an accident.

He fell out of a tree while trimming it.

He was one of my heroes and I had the great honor and blessing of witnessing with him a couple of times.

Peter was one of the “St. Patrick's Day Four” and even The Daily Gazette mentioned this group.

On March 17, 2003 (two days before the illegal U.S invasion of Iraq) four peace witnesses from the Magnificat Catholic Worker in Ithaca entered a local recruiting station and poured small amounts of their blood around the vestibule of the building as a symbolic protest to the imminent invasion of Iraq and as a portent of the death and destruction to come. They were alone and prevented no one from entering or leaving the center.

They were all arrested and charged with criminal mischief and trespassing. A trial in county court, where the defendants argued that their actions were consistent with international law and the Nuremberg Principles, ended in a hung jury with nine of the 12 jurors favoring acquittal.

The Nuremberg Principles of international law is one of those civic lessons that is conveniently overlooked in our public education system. They state that individuals have international rights and duties to prevent crimes against humanity which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.

I attended the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School system (which touts itself as one of the finest in the nation) from K-12 and I never heard of the Nuremberg Principles until this past year when I got involved with the national Campaign for nonviolent Resistance last year. I would like to note that my esteemed alma mater did, however, have recruiters a aplenty in the school. Sadly, BH-BL is an all too typical school in this regard.

Anyway, after losing the trail, the district attorney decided it was too expensive and time consuming to retry the four defendants.

That's when the Federal Government (translation: Bush Administration) stepped in.

Bush & Co. pressed federal conspiracy charges, as well as criminal damage to property and two counts of trespass against the four Christian witnesses; marking the first time they had done this against civilians who were protesting the Iraq war. The felony charge carried punishment of up to a $250,000 fine and six years in jail, with the other charges punishable by two additional years in jail.

Bill Quigely, a public interest lawyer and law professor, who acted as legal advisor to the defendants, said at the time, “Federal intervention in this case represents a blatant act of government intimidation and will have a chilling effect on expression of the first amendment rights of any citizen to protest or speak out against their government.”

Which of course was the whole idea.

The four were found guilty of the charges and the U.S. attorney demanded that they be sentenced at the conclusion of the trial. The presiding judge would have none of that and set a sentencing date so that the four could put their affairs in order.

I believe they spent six months in jail.

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