Doing Time for Peace: Resistance, Family, and Community by Rosalie G. Riegle

Author:Rosalie G. Riegle [Riegle, Rosalie G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, General, Political Science, Peace, Religion, Religion; Politics & State
ISBN: 9780826518712
Google: jIbFGaxhrysC
Goodreads: 15864410
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 2012-01-15T08:16:59+00:00

Michele Naar-Obed and Mike Walli with defaced sign, 2005. (Photo by Bob King/Duluth News Tribune.)

So the most nonviolent thing at that point was to leave, because in staying we were doing more harm to each other and to Rachel, who was caught in the middle. It was . . . it was one of the most painful decisions I’ve ever had to make. So Greg, Rachel, and I moved to the Duluth Catholic Worker in June of 2002, two years after I was released from Alderson.

You can’t help but come out of prison kind of changed. In prison you have to guard yourself from being chewed up because that’s what the system is designed to do. And so you’re really working on every possible inner resource, to keep yourself from being chewed up like everyone else. When you do a Plowshares action, you come into it with time to prepare and time to build up your internal resources. And external resources, too, so you have a lot of things going for you. But still, I don’t know that you can come out not feeling battered by the whole thing.

I think Phil had a way of sloughing all that off, and he expected everyone else to slough it off, too. You don’t whine about your prison experiences, you just get right back on the horse again and go do another one! He’s a very stubborn, stoic German kind, you know, and that’s how he dealt with it. I guess there are times I probably felt expected to live up to those expectations, to jump right back into things.

When I got out of Florida from the original sentence, I just wanted to go home and be around people that I loved and people who loved me and to be healed. So to go through that extra time of being not allowed home and then another twelve months in prison, it was just . . . it was like being smacked down onto the ground.

Ro: Michele, lately you’ve been spending more of your time in Iraq rather than in prison, haven’t you?

Michele: Yes, but I go to Iraq as an act of resistance, too. I try to do actions here in Duluth that won’t get in the way of my going there again.

You know, before I moved to Jonah House, I qualified as a pathologist’s assistant. A few months ago, I saw an ad for one and wondered what it would be like to go back to work as that. But more people are inclined to do that work than resistance work. If we were in a better place in our world, I would probably be doing pathology, but the times are what they are and I don’t feel I can.

I think for families, particularly, there’s a real crossroads. A lot of people think that if you take the responsibility of having a family, doing resistance as we do is irresponsible. Maybe there’s some truth to this, but there’s another truth that says

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