My hometown heroes are the defendants ? Ellen Dienger, Sister Mary Evelyn Jegen, the Rev. John Rich, Barbara Wolf, and Greg Flannery from CityBeat – who were arrested at Representative Steve Chabot’s office in December, trying to stop the war in Iraq.
It was the second time for Barb and Greg, both good friends of mine. They were arrested the day the war started, mostly because they were too shell-shocked by the fact of the war itself to be able to understand exactly what the police officers were saying, or to process the information in their own normal ways. That protest just happened.
This protest was planned and I think they knew ahead of time they would likely be arrested. Their defense is that they trespassed while trying to stop the war – in my words, trying to stop the train wreck that is Iraq from causing more of our soldiers to die, and more despair and depression among the rest of us.
I truly believe the reason we are all not protesting is simply despair. We’ll know hope is alive again in America when we do hit the streets.
I expect that to happen in June or July.