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Festival of Hope / 2
in support of Mary Burton Riseley, Betsy Lamb and Father Jerry Zawada

On Sunday 18 November 2007 - following quite literally in the footsteps of Fathers Louie Vitale and Steve Kelly - Mary Burton Riseley, Betsy Lamb & Father Jerry Zawada crossed the line at Ft Huachuca to demand an end to torture by the US military and the Bush administration.  Their act of conscience resulted in their arrest and trial on charges of tresspass, failure to yield to orders to halt, and conspiracy - combined convictions having a potential sentence of years in a federal penitentiary.

This is part 2 of the the Festival of Hope which took place on 3 February 2008 at St Mark's Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ - the eve of their trial in Tucson Federal Court.  In addition to the Festival itself, there was a gathering on the steps of the Tucson Feral Courthouse in support of the defendants.  Click here for Part 1.

Unfortunately, Lamb and Zawada were unable to attend as they were incarcerated without bail at the time of their arraignment in early December due to violations of previous probabtion and bail restrictions from previous protests.  Neither was Riseley able to attend as she was severely afflicted with the flu though she was able to appear at the trial the next day and, though weak, spoke eloquently and forcefully on the reasons for her actions.  Read her statement here and view her RFS! post trial interview here.

The Festival was a show of support by the Tucson activist community - organizers of the Ft Huachuca protest - and guests including...

• Col (Ret) Ann Wright
  A career officer in Army intelligence and subsequently a diplomat in the State Depart for another 13 years, Col Ann Wright resigned her commission in protest on 19 Mars 2001 - the day of the US assault on Iraq.

• Bill Quigley
  Professor of law at Loyola University, Quigley is long known for his support of causes of justice and has been kept very busy by the tumult of Katrina's aftermath in his home of New Orleans.  He was lead attorney and had previously defended other Tucson activists over the years.

• Jack Cohen-Joppa
  Jack was MC and has been a primary organizer of the support group for the three defendants and for Father Vitale and Kelly who will soon be released from their 5 month sentneces in feral prison for their similar acts of conscience the previous year.

• Dan Gregor, Rachel Wilson, Meredith Little & Andy Silverman
  These fine attorneys were all part of the legal team.

• Ted Warmbrand and Charlie King
  "Old Folkies" and longtime activists in Tucson and across the country lead the crowd in song in the spirit of union and civil rights struggles of previous eras.

• Carlos Maurico
  Survivor of torture by US backed military death squads in El Salvador during the Reagan era dirty wars throughout Central America.  Carlos now heads the Stop Impunity Project to bring torturers and war criminals to justice worldwide.

• Felice Cohen-Joppa
  Read Al Jazeera journalist Sami Al-Hajj's selection from Poetry from Guantanamo.  Al-Hajj was held 6 1/2 years - most of that in Guantanamo - before release with no charges ever being files.  She also read the statement of Fathers Louis Vitale & Steve Kelly - now released but still  incarcerated in federal prison at the time for a similar action the year prior.

• Brother David Buer
  Franciscan and worker for social justice.He was a primary contact and coordinator for support of the three defendants and for Vitale and Kelly.

• Father Bob Carney
  A priest firmly commited to social justice, He led the group in prayer as they entered the courthouse.

It must be noted that Tucson has been a hotbed of activism since the Contra War era and birthplace of the Sanctuary Movement which served as a modern day underground railroad conducting Central American refugees - many of them victims of torture by US supported death squads - to safety in, ironically, the United States.  See the RFS! program The Sanctuary Experience for an interview with our own Dorothy Pine who aided refugess at the risk of a federal prison sentence.

The trial took place on Monday 4 February 2008 in Tucson feral court and though found guilty of trespass and failure to yield, the more serious charge of conspiracy was dropped.  During the sentencing portion of the procedure, the defendants were permitted to speak on the reasons for their civil disobedience and acts of conscience.  All spoke movingly of their commitment to justice and when questioned as to whether he would violate the orders of the court or his sentencing conditions, Father Zawada refused to say that he would not do the same thing again if his conscience so dictated.

At the conclusion, Zawada & Lamb were released from custody and all three were sentenced to two years probation and a $5000 fine that could be paid by 500 hours of community service at a value of $10hr.  The judge went further to state that she would review the evaluations of their probation officers and that they would be allowed to perform their community service for anti-torture or other activist organizations so long as they broke no laws.

The now annual demonstration at Ft Huachuca has occurred for four years and is inspired by and in solidarity with the much larger annual demo at the gates of Ft Benning, GA.  That demonstration began 18 years ago and now brings over 20,000 citizens to call for an end to torture and US policies of war and oppression.  

Ft Benning is the home of WHINSEC, formerly the School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation but it continues to be known as the School of the Assassins.  This is where the US government recruits succeeding generations of young army officers in countries throughout Latin America and indoctrinates them in the US policy of hemispheric domination and the use of the most brutal means of suppressing, disappearing, torturing and killing their own fellow citizens in the interest of US policy.  The list of those that have commited the most bestial acts in their home countries is heavily weighted with SOA graduates and the influence of their training on the military forces of their home countries tilits the political balance toward perpetuating the oligarchies that have long afflicted Latin America and impede the development of true democracy.

Carlos Mauricio (see his RFS! interview) spoke in harrowing detail of his disappearance and seemingly miraculous reprieve from a death squad dungeon in Part 1.  His story, as he describes, is not his alone, but that of hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans similarly treated by the US backed death squads.  The ultimate horror of these crimes is that they are being repeated by US forces and their proxies routinely and without accountability on a worldwide basis today.  What was done to Carlos and others 25 years ago is now being done to Iraqis and anyone else who falls within the grasp of the US military, intelligence, contractor/mercenaries, and proxies in 3rd countries throughout the world.  We now know the horrors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo but have forgotten that these same crimes were the methodology of the Reagan era Contra Wars and have been used against millions throughout our history.

Ft Huachuca is the home of the Army Intelligence Center which is responsible for all manner of hegemonic methods but is particularly noted here as the place where the curriculum for the School of the Americas is devised and where the Army interrogators / inquisitors of the US War of Terror are trained.  The Tucson activist community has undertaken confronting this menace in conjunction with the School of the Americas Watch which organizes the annual demonstration at Ft Benning as well as promoting human rights here and abroad year round.

Click here to watch or here to listen.

• Festival of Hope / 1
• Carlos Mauricio Interview
• Mary Burton Riseley interview prior to arraignment
• Mary Burton Riseley Interview after the trial
  Audio Only
• SWW / Fife & Norgard
• SWW / Hinde & Bradley
• Jerry Wharton / 2006 Fort Huachuca Protest
• Dorothy Pine on The  Sanctuary Experience