Brisbane Anti-War Activists Continue To Oppose Aust Military Deployment To Iraq and Afghanistan

Well this was my last Enoggera anti-war vigil for a while. I'm back in Dublin for the release of a film doc about the nonviolent resistance at Shannon airport http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84775 and then off to London to join the Catholic Worker crew there www.londoncatholicworker.org

This weekly anti-war vigil grew out of some nonviolent resistance action taken at Easter
07 at Enoggera. I grew up on the back of Enoggera and am pretty
convinced that if you are seriously opposed to this expanding war you
should be standing with a sign somewhere at least an hour a week -
whether that be in Briz Vegas, Dublin, Shannon, Sydney or London.
This seemed to resonate with folks and we began gigging at the gates of
Enoggera on a weekly basis. We surprised everyone including ourselves
sustaining this witness for the past 6 months and it is ongoing.

Their
are 12 of us committed to sustaining the vigil and numbers rarely drop
below five on any given Friday between 4pm and dusk. Thanx to the
school run it is gridlocked traffic on the main road (Wardell) outside
the base, so there's plenty of time to read our signs!. When we hit the
critical mass of 5 vigilers, 2 head down Lloyd St to take up vigil at
the sentry gates to engage the soldiers.

Due
to our consistency and nonviolent discipline a growing respect amongst
those at the base has grown over the last 6 months. We have had a
number of opportunities to talk to soldiers who have returned form Iraq and Afghanistan. We encourage them to make contact with the U.S "Iraq Veterans Against the War" www.ivaw.org
to reflect on their experiences with those who have shared them. We
communicate to the soldiers that we respect them as people but oppose
how the government is exploiting them. We say that we are there to
support them and request that the refuse to deploy to these immoral,
illegal and unwinnable wars.

We
end the vigil with silence for e dead and go around the circle to share
updates and insights into the wars and news of nonviolent resistance to
them.

We are primarily, but not exclusively, a radical Catholic crew. Many of us from the Catholic Worker tradition www.catholicworker.org
have shared experiences of community life, working with the homeless,
arrest and incarceration for nonviolent resistance to the war machine
in the '70's , '80's, '90's and norties. Others were recently inspired
by the speaking tour of Fr. John Dear www.johndear.org and the work of Pace Bene. Another has been a local peace activist for many years.

Jim remains before the courts for his resistance at Pine Gap www.pinegap6.org
and Carole had her first arrest this year at Talisman Sabre. Response
to warshiip visits over the past year and solidarity wit Dr. Haneef
have sprung from the vigil.

To vigil is top remain a week while
society slumbers and drifts to danger. We hope you may consider
initiating your own vigil against this war as it escalates and expand. Awake, Arise, Rebel!
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________

I think the anti-Catholic Workers comment is a disgrace.

If you knew what kind and dedicated people they are -you

would not be writing that -shame.

I am not of their Religion -yet I know them ,they are my friends

and they welcomed me into their midst.

It doesn't matter what race,creed or religion you are-

when Peace is your joining belief.

 Frank Cordaro from the Des Moines Catholic Worker community is presently serving 28 days in an Iowa county jail for a nonviolent sit in against the war. He writes from jail......

 The Fish Bowl

Traditionally-called a holding tank, at Polk County Jail it is called "the Fish Bowl."  These cells hold inmates during the booking process.  Ostensibly inmates are to be held in these cells for a short time—no more than a few hours—while they are booked and then sent to a longer-term cell block or bonded out.  This is not the case at the Polk County Jail. 

Because of overcrowding and inmates being perpetual transferred between facilities, the Fish Bowl serves as a staging pen of comings and goings.  The shortage of bunk space exacerbates the problem and forces jailers to also use the space as overnight backup until bunks open up.  So, instead of a few hours, inmates routinely spend whole days and nights in these hard places.

The name, "Fish Bowl" is inspired by the large windows across the entire side of the cell that faces the booking area.  These windows allow officers a full of view of the holding area.  There is not much more than humanity in the 12- by 20-foot space.  Along two sides are cement shelves molded onto the cement walls for seating, a stainless steel sink and toilet in one corner shrouded by a waist-high concrete "privacy" wall, and two wall phones in another corner.  The space is a reasonable place to spend a few hours.  It is fair to call prolonged stays of 24 to 48 hours physical abuse.

It is most difficult in the Fish Bowl at night.  The lights are kept bright at all times, and the temperature at night is set very low.  For warmth inmates are issued only one thin blanket and only between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.  As the night slowly passes, more and more inmates are added to the space.  It is not uncommon for the number to reach twenty or more.  Frequently there is not enough room for all the inmates to lie down.  And, one unruly drunk can set the entire cell into chaos. 

Sleeping is the biggest challenge.  One must lie on one of the cement benches or on the concrete floor.  The blanket can serve as a pillow until it becomes too cold then it must become one's cover.  I tried using the plastic sandals I was issued as a pillow.  Rolling from side to side helps some to keep the cold concrete from becoming literally bone-chilling.  However, I will admit that by morning the olds bones and flesh throughout my body were impressively sore.

Our entertainment in the Fish Bowl was Johnny Smith.  Coincidentally, Johnny is a regular guest at the Des Moines Catholic Worker hospitality house.  Johnny picked me out of the crowd immediately and befriended me.  I knew he was a talker, but I had no idea how much of a talker he could be.  Except when he slept, he never stopped talking.  My night with Johnny allowed us some quality time.  I learned more of his story than I had all these years that he's been one of our guests at the hospitality house.  Johnny's habitual crime is public intoxication.  He is well-known by all the jailers and the only guy I know who owes Polk County more in fines and court costs than I.

After 22 hours, a short time by most accounts, I was moved to the Fifth Floor West Cell Block to share a cell with a young Mexican man waiting to be deported.  He was picked up for a traffic violation and is leaving behind his wife and two young children.

Anyone considering risking arrest during the SODaPOP effort should be prepared to spend at least one overnight in the Fish Bowl.  And, if you are lucky enough to be granted the experience, expect to find it enriching and well worth the time.

———-

You can donate to a fund for fees for those arrested through the Iowa Peace Network at the link below:

www.iowapeacenetwork.org

Or you can make donations to the Des Moines Catholic Worker at:

www.desmoinescatholicworker.org

Updates on the Iowa Occupation Project can be found on the web page:

www.schoolformoralcourage.com/iowaoccupationproject.html

Information about SODaPOP:

www.desmoinescatholicworker.org/sodapop.html

Frank, from the Des Moines Catholic Worker, is presently serving 28 days for a nonviolent sit-in against the war..... 

 
We Build
Them.  We'll Fill Them.

Polk County (along with most county jails in Iowa) has had an
over-crowding problem for years.  I
remember Blessed Bishop Dingman leading the community call to build a new
eight-floor jail in the 1970s.  I also
remember we Catholic Workers disagreed with the good Bishop on that call. (This
was one of a few times we've disagreed with Dingman.)

We told the Bishop that if we
built it, we would fill it.  Catholic
Workers believed that what we needed were more community-based correctional
options.  This was before the national
move away from a rehabilitation-driven prison system to one that is strictly
punishment-based.  It was also before
Ronald Reagan's war on drugs and the national push for mandatory sentences. 

Thirty years later, the war on
drugs has been lost; our justice protections have been gutted; and we have a
prison population that is exploding.  (In
fact, the prison system is one of a very few growth industries in Iowa.)  Local, County, and State governments continue
pouring our limited tax dollars into the bottomless hole of building and
maintaining more and more prisons.

It wasn't long after the 1970s
that the newly-constructed Polk County Jail was filled to capacity and that the
overflow of prisoners was then transferred to other county jails in Iowa.  This transferring continued until Polk County
figured it made more fiscal sense to add the Annex—an old warehouse located two
blocks from the "new" jail that was converted into additional
incarceration space.  This
"fix" didn't last long.  Soon,
both the new jail and the Annex were overflowing, and inmates were again being
transferred to other county jails.  They
were, that is, until it was discovered that it was cheaper to transfer overflow
prisoners out of state to a private, for-profit prison in Pattonsburg, Missouri.  The decision was such a hit that the Polk County Land and Leasing Group (LLC) built another for-profit
prison in 2004 in Bethany, Missouri.

My short stay in the Polk County
jail lasted for just two nights.  On
Sunday, October 7, I was loaded into a van with eleven other inmates and driven
to Bethany, Missouri, and the Bridewell Detention
Facility (www.bridewelldetention.com).  An hour and a half out of Des Moines, we were in Bridewell's Receiving and
Delivery Unit, where we were issued a new set of jail clothes, reporting to
medical staff, and assigned to a pod and bunk. 
I was assigned, then taken to Pod Two, Bunk 80.

I've spent time in many county
jails through the years.  They are all
fundamentally warehouses for human beings. 
Phil Berrigan used to call them "human dust bins."  Some are certainly better than others.  None of them are good. 

There are no educational
programs, no inmate work assignments (except for trustees), little or no outdoor
access or exercise space, limited religious services, and paltry libraries or
access to reading materials.  The food is
always poor and nutritionally inadequate. 
People are just stored in very small, crowded paces—locked down,
out-of-sight from the rest of society.

I would rate the Bridewell
Detention Facility on the high end of incarceration facilities.  A large, metal-framed, steel building, it
doesn't look like your typical jail.  It
sits just off Interstate 35 on the north side of Bethany in an industrial zone.  The facility has four separate wings called
"Pods" in which most inmates are placed.  Inmates can also be held in the
"Hole" (or the disciplinary cells) and lately in the recreation room,
a place for the overflow of inmates that Bridewell, too, is experiencing.

Each Pod has 32 steel,
two-tiered bunk beds and holds 64 inmates. 
Pod Two is 80-by-20-feet with a 20-foot ceiling.  There is a wall-mounted television and eight
steel tables with benches.  Each table
seats eight.  There is a row of eight
urinals and two toilets along the wall in one corner and six showers along the
other wall in the same corner.  There is
a bank of ten sinks that also serves as a four-foot partition wall for the
showers and toilets.  There are two
telephone polls with four phones on each. Each Pod has a door that leads to an
outdoor 20-by-40-foot smoking area. 
There is an Officers' Station in each Pod.

What first impressed me was the
Pod's cleanliness.  Each Pod is
well-lighted, and, with its high ceiling, you don't experience the
claustrophobia that usually comes with time in jail.  Bridewell provides plenty of clothing, i.e.
you get three clothing changes per week and a weekly bedding change.  Toilet paper and cleaning materials are
replenished promptly.

The food earns a poor rating (as
it does in all jails).  The meat is the
poorest quality.  There is far too much
starch in the diet, and nearly everything comes in a can.  The dietary highlight of the day is the
banana or orange served at breakfast. 

Those who receive money from
home (not all inmates do) can also buy things at the Jail Commissary.  The Commissary list is very limited, and
there are no healthy food items on it. 
It's also very expensive.  A
three-ounce bag of Ramen Noodles is $.75 and a stamped-envelope is $.60.  This routine pricing for jail commissaries is
also a way to unfairly tax or punish low-income families who send money for
these items to inmates—families who've done nothing wrong but care about someone
in jail.  Someone is making a lot of money
off of their love.  One good thing,
however, about the Bridewell Commissary is that inmates may place orders seven
days a week, and their orders are filled the following day.

The biggest plus--for most
inmates--that Bridewell offers are its liberal smoking privileges.  Inmates are permitted smoke breaks every two
hours between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. 
Since many facilities don't allow smoking at all (and while I don't
smoke, at least 80% do), the privilege is quite appreciated.  Add to this the cable television (of course
the only way to broadcast television inside any facility is through a cable
system), and daily movies (sadly the most popular films are also the most
violent); a lot of guys are doing rather well here.

The inmate-friendly policies, however,
are not driven by concern for the inmates. 
The motivation for these "liberal" policies is to create a
safer and more efficient environment for the guards.  A distracted and less-agitated inmate
population is easier to manage.

I am most impressed here by how
well the guards interact with inmates. 
They are friendly, professional, and always pleasant.  At least one guard is present in the Pods at
all times.  Usually, though, there are
more, especially at meal times, during head counts, and when clothing and
bedding are exchanged.  There is always
at least one guard on-duty in the smoke break area.  Since most of the guards are smokers, this
duty seems to have mutual benefit.

If there is any sign of trouble,
support guards are always on-hand to assist the guard assigned to the Pod.  So, far their tactics to maintain order are
effective without being Draconian.  Very
impressive.

There are downsides to being
held at Bridewell.  It is 75 miles from Polk County,
and the distance makes it harder for inmates to stay connected to their
families and support.  It's far more
difficult to do legal work for one's case or to have access to attorneys from
here.  Making the trip to visit is hardly
worth the effort, since the maximum length permitted for a visit is twenty
minutes and can be limited to as few as ten minutes.  This means a visitor would usually spend
between two and three hours on the road to spend a few minutes talking to
someone on the phone through a plate glass window. 

Not that the option of making
phones calls to home is a financially feasible one for many. The cost for phone
calls (which is typical of most jails and prisons) can be called immorally
obscene.  It costs a dollar per minute to
place a collect call (another way to burden families who are already
financially stressed).  Phone cards may
also be purchased through the commissary at the "bargain" price of
fifty cents per minute.

The comprehensive downside of it
all for Polk County is all about the money it's
costing all of us.  At it stands now, Polk County
is filling its own jail, its Annex, the two for-profit centers in Missouri, and still
farming out inmates to other jails as well. 
The County's present solution to the problem is the soon-to-be-completed
and second "new" jail on the north side of Des Moines.

Despite all the promises and hype made about the new
jail, we in the Catholic Worker community still maintain, "We build
them.  We'll fill them."

———-

You can donate to a fund for fees for those arrested
through the Iowa
Peace Network at the link below:
www.iowapeacenetwork.org

Or you can make donations to the Des Moines Catholic Worker at:

www.desmoinescatholicworker.org

Updates on the Iowa
Occupation Project can be found on the web page:
www.schoolformoralcourage.com/iowaoccupationproject.html

Information about SODaPOP:

www.desmoinescatholicworker.org/sodapop.html

The Defence Minister was apparently at Enoggera barracks today for a
parade for 515 soldiers heading to Iraq. See link and report below.
Daniel

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/02/2080070.htm?section=justin

Brisbane soldiers head to Iraq

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has farewelled a group of
Brisbane-based soldiers who are heading for southern Iraq.

Five-hundred-

and-fifteen personnel from Gallipoli Barracks in Brisbane
will soon replace a similar number of troops already in Southern Iraq,
who have been providing security controls as part of the coalition forces.

Some of the soldiers heading overseas are from the Light Horse Battle
Group who have not led a deployment on operations since the end of
World War I.

This morning Dr Nelson was guest of honour at a farewell parade and
says the soldiers are as important as those who fought in the battle
of Beersheba 90 years ago.

He told the soldiers Australia is proud of their committment.

"Your forebears in Beersheba, just over 90 years ago in clearing the
Turks from Palestine lay the foundations for the state of Israel and
the Middle East as we know it today," he said.

"You are playing no less a role in what you will do. On our behalf I
thank you very, much."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111107A.shtml

It was even posted by one Anarchynotchaos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntt3wy-L8Ok 

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=311218