It's official: prison for pilgrimage

BY DAN CARPENTER

In the end, protesters who were arrested for illegally entering a military facility in Columbus, Ga., chose prison over school as their sentence because they had come there as teachers, not pupils.

But prison offers much to learn as well, says Sister Kathleen Desautels, a 64-year-old Indianapolis native and Roman Catholic nun who will serve six months in a federal penitentiary for joining 34 others in the act of civil disobedience at Fort Benning, Ga.

"I'm a white, middle-class woman. I have a lot of privileges that it won't be easy to lose," the former college instructor and prison chaplain confided in a phone call to the Chicago social activism center where she works. "But I'm not fearful. You never know how to prepare for this, but I hope to find out about prison, to spend time with other women who have less support than I have and are serving longer sentences.

"My experience pales in comparison with the violence perpetrated by the School of the Americas and perpetrated on others in our prisons."

The interconnectedness of injustice against the poor, whether it's military repression of Guatemalan peasants or 30-year prison terms for drug users in inner-city Chicago, was the theme of the massive demonstration Desautels took part in last November and was sentenced for last Friday. She expects to be assigned to the federal correctional facility at Pekin, Ill., probably next month.

The School of the Americas is the former name of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a training school at Fort Benning for the Latin American military. The Pentagon insists the program educates our allies in democratic and humane practices, helping them turn away from their brutal history of dictatorship. Protesters say the bottom line is encouragement of military regimes that dominate even elected governments and treat their own people as the enemy.

U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth did not want to hear that debate. Compelling as it might be, he said, his job was to enforce the law against trespassing. He carried out that mandate after hearing statements of principle, most of them religious, from the 35. (Thousands more were involved in the demonstration, an annual event first held in 1990; these defendants not only crossed the line into the fort, but were repeat trespassers from past years).

The case took an interesting turn when the Rev. William J. O'Connell, a defendant from Berkeley, Calif., suggested to the judge that protesters be sentenced to six months in the military school so that they might assess it for themselves. Magistrate Faircloth responded that it sounded like a good idea. The defendants then talked it over. Their consensus was to say no.

"We were concerned whether the media would make the judge look more open when in fact he was not swayed by our arguments that the school violates international law," Desautels said.

"We would not be able to see and experience everything. It would be selective. We did not want to be on property where violence is taught and perpetrated. We are about abolishing, not reforming. This is not about how much better it is because they don't openly teach torture any more."

As she gets her affairs in order for six months away, the graduate of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College takes comfort from the support of her religious order, the Sisters of Providence, which is based at the Terre Haute school. She'll be traveling there, and visiting her four siblings as well, in the coming weeks. With trepidation for her welfare, they back her commitment to follow physically where faith leads.

"We each have a part to play. Mine is one not everybody can do, but it's just one."

Carpenter is Star op-ed columnist. Contact him at 1-317-444-6172 or via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Copyright 2002 The Indianapolis Star