1.

pros·e·cute (pròs¹î-ky¡t´) verb pros·e·cut·ed, pros·e·cut·ing, pros·e·cutes verb, transitive 1. Law. a. To initiate civil or criminal court action against. b. To seek to obtain or enforce by legal action. 2.a. To pursue (an undertaking, for example) until completion; follow to the very end. b. To chase or pursue (a vessel): “He held a dispatch saying that [they] had prosecuted and probably killed an Echo-class missile submarine” (Tom Clancy). 3. To carry on, engage in, or practice.

–American Heritage Dictionary

2.

“This whole thing about punishing people in past administrations reminds me more of a banana republic than the United States of America.

We don’t criminally prosecute people we disagree with when we change office.

There are lots of questions that could have been asked of the Clinton administration failing to recognize the war on terror. They did not. The Bush administration went forward and that’s the way our country should.

The president said he was going to be forward looking.  Now he has opened up a stab in the back.

I am saying that those who want to have public hearings and show trials in the United States Congress, such as may be in the House, would be following tactics that are more appropriate for a banana republic.

I don’t think the Obama administration wants to say the next time the Republicans get in control they will have show hearings-trials and try to institute criminal prosecutions against people who carried out orders of the Obama administration.

So I don’t think that the president or anybody in the administration wants to be caught in that action, and I think there must be a number of leaders and former leaders of Congress who are pretty nervous about having their authorizations and appropriations questioned as violating the law.”

–Missouri Senator Kit Bond, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, 4.23.2009

3.

The above response by Senator Bond is remarkable for its impromptu bluntness.

We don’t criminally prosecute people with whom we disagree; however, we have a responsibility to prosecute people who have committed crimes. For instance, torturing human beings.

Like any student of 20th century European history, Senator Bond surely must know that stating one was following orders constitutes no justification for committing crimes.

Bond’s rhetoric is a case study in defensiveness: “banana republic,” “stab in the back,” and “show trials.” Like “a number of leaders and former leaders of Congress,” Bond appears nervous about where all this could lead. This is worth noting.

4.

“I have to turn down your summons to duty. I won’t come along to squeeze the trigger on your behalf. Of course, I have no illusions. To you I am a buzzing gnat that you will swat and try to crush before striding on. You’ll find yourself another gunner, more obedient and gifted than me. There’s no shortage. Your tank will rumble on. One single gnat can’t halt a tank, certainly not a column of tanks, certainly not the entire march of folly. But the gnat can buzz, irritate, infuriate, occasionally even sting. Ultimately, more and more gunners, drivers and commanders, who will see more and more aimless killing, will also start thinking and buzzing. There are already many hundreds of us. Ultimately our buzzing will ascend into a deafening outcry that will echo in your years and the ears of your children, and on the pages of history for many generations.”

–Israeli Yigal Bronner, from his letter to an Israeli general on his refusal to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories

5.

President Obama said, “No one is above the law.” Those are easy words in the abstract. But one must apply those words to our particular context. Thus, to be specific, former president Bush is not above the law.

What does it say to our own youth as well as people around the world, that because a person is powerful, he or she need not be accountable when they violate the law?

For any American who believes in justice, Senator Bond has alerted us to the task ahead. We, the people, must push for prosecution of those high officials who instigated a policy of torture.

One or two gnats won’t bother Senator Bond and his past and present colleagues.

But it could be hard to ignore a hundred that “buzz, irritate, infuriate, occasionally even sting.”

A thousand could “ascend into a deafening outcry.”

1.

“The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is extreme and they were right to leave… Now I must assess my own position, because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and loneliness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”

–Jean Donovan, US lay missionary in El Salvador, raped and murdered by US-backed Salvadoran troops, 2 December 1980

“I’m having a hard time right now.   Just feel sick to my stomach from being doted on very sweetly, by people who are facing doom.  I know that from the United States it all sounds like hyperbole.  A lot of the time the kindness of the people here, coupled with the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me.  I can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry.   It hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be.”

–Rachel Corrie, US college student and activist in Rafah, Gaza, bulldozed to death by US-backed Israeli Army, 16 March 2003

2.

In the fall of 2003, I decided to take a sabbatical. Since I always encourage my Social Justice students to leave their comfort zone, I planned on doing the same: I worked with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For six weeks, I lived and worked in Rafah, Gaza, which had been the scene of many killings of Palestinian civilians and the demolition of hundreds of homes by the Israeli Army. While I was in Rafah, I thought many times of one of my predecessors there, an American college student by the name of Rachel Corrie.

On 16 March 2003 Rachel was killed by an Israeli soldier who bulldozed her as she tried to prevent a physician’s home from being demolished. The Palestinians considered her a shaheedah, a martyr, one who had died in the struggle against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. At our ISM office, we saw photographs and posters of Rachel Corrie in the full bloom of youth, with an exuberant smile, a bright future of promise in her eyes. When we met Palestinians on the street who wanted to know who we foreigners were, we would say, “ISM,” and they said back with effusive respect, “Yes, yes, Rachel Corrie, Rachel Corrie!”

One room of the ISM office in Rafah has a wall collage of shaheed posters, remembrances of those ordinary Palestinians (and a few internationals) who’ve been killed since the second intifada began in September 2000. These posters include young girls, teen-age boys, bookish-looking bespectacled young men, as well as confident resistance fighters posing with weapons that were unable to protect them from Israeli Apache helicopters or tanks. How many walls would be filled by all the martyr posters of this intifada? I could not imagine. And for each face there, I supposed that there were 10, or 30, or 60 family members and friends still reeling from the loss.

Early in my time in Rafah, our ISM team wanted to visit where Rachel Corrie was killed. Two white Mercedes taxis drove our group to the area where the doctor’s home still stood (it has since been demolished). When we got out and drew near to the site, our local Palestinian coordinator noticed an approaching Israeli jeep and a tank. He did not think it safe for us to stay and so he hurried us back in the taxis and said, “We will come another day.”

So instead we went to the nearby Al-Salaam neighborhood so we could inspect the damage caused by the recent Israeli Operation Root Canal. We got out our cameras and took video and digital photos of the massive home destruction. We also had a brief exchange with the family whose homes were blown up; they erected tents on their property and that’s where they were trying to live. One ISM volunteer, Kristi, age 26, and best friends with Rachel Corrie, began to weep at the misery before her eyes, the misery that also moved Rachel Corrie, day after day.

A few days later we made another attempt to see Dr. Sameer’s home. Many of our team were taking photos and video footage, but I didn’t have the heart to reach in my backpack to pull out my camera to document more devastation. Then we saw an Israeli tank in the distance coming toward us (they patrolled that area every 15 minutes, I was told). Our Palestinian guide insisted that we duck and run but some of us were not so quick in following his instructions. Live ammo came whizzing our way, ricocheting off the wall we had just passed.

In an email to her mother while she was in Rafah, Rachel wrote, “When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them - and may ultimately get them - on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity - laughter, generosity, family-time - against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death.… I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.”

3.

Not surprisingly, some people have demonized Jean Donovan and Rachel Corrie: Jean was a “Communist” and Rachel was a “terrorist,” with the imputation that they “got” what they deserved.

Yet, all over the world others have been inspired by their commitment to justice. They are witnesses not only to the horrors of injustice, so smoothly explained away by U.S. leaders; they are also witnesses to our capacities for accompaniment, risk taking, and solidarity.

As a teacher, I am grateful to so many former students whose commitment also challenges and inspires me. Some of them have chosen to work overseas, and have become able to recognize in the people with whom they shared their days and nights what Rachel simply called “dignity.” I am thinking of such people as Mary (Mozambique), Wendy (Cameroon), Marybeth (Uganda), Magan (Palestine), Bridget (Chile), Danielle (El Salvador), Laura (Bolivia), James (Nicaragua), Randa (Mali), Ginny (Mexico), Laura (El Salvador), Becca (Haiti), Colette (El Salvador), Elizabeth (Colombia), Anna (Poland), Kristen (Belize), Zeina (Palestine), Layla (Afghanistan), Josh (Bolivia), Matt (Mozambique), Christine (Mexico), Lauren (Uganda), Jen (Guatemala), Megan (Colombia), and Lala (Indonesia).

4.

“I look forward to seeing more and more people willing to resist the direction the world is moving in, a direction where our personal experiences are irrelevant, that we are defective, that our communities are not important, that we are powerless, that our future is determined, and that the highest level of humanity is expressed through what we choose to buy at the mall.”

–Rachel Corrie, email from Gaza

By ANNIE BOKEN

Last Thursday, about 140 people joined Saint Louis University professor Mark Chmiel, Ph.D., as they shared in the memory of the late Mev Puleo, a SLU alumna, at “The Impassioned Eye: A Reading of The Book of Mev.” Participants relived Puleo’s work as a photojournalist and student of theology, her passion as a social activist, her Catholic faith and her battle with cancer.

In The Book of Mev, which was published in 2005, Chmiel tells the story of his life with Puleo. She died in 1996 at the age of 32, 21 months after she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Puleo and Chmiel had been married for three-and-a-half years.

Thursday’s reading marked the first time that Chmiel, a professor of theology at SLU since 1997, held a reading of the book at SLU.

SLU students Jenny Thumann, Erica Irwin, Julie O’Heir, Tina Moode, and Poornima Shah, along with VOICES staff member Katie O’Brien and SLU alumna Anna Paszyna, took turns reading passages from The Book of Mev. All of the young women were, at one point in time, students in Chmiel’s Social Justice course. Their participation recreated the plurality of voices that come together to form the narrative.

“I didn’t want the reading to be just my voice. I have something to say, of course—I wrote a book to say it,” Chmiel said. “But I’m aware, when I’m in a group of that many people, I’ve got one story, and others have other stories.”

That’s why Chmiel invited the audience to talk with those around them, posing discussion questions before presenting each passage from The Book of Mev. The event was less like a book reading and more like a session of the popular, discussion-based theology course on social justice that Chmiel teaches.

“I wanted people to be thinking about their own experience before we shared ours,” Chmiel said. “That makes it more explicit, the linking of the reading with their own life. This is what we ought to be doing more and more of.”

Chmiel described the book as “multi-textured,” as its brief chapters jump from Chmiel’s memories of Puleo to excerpts from Puleo’s journal to transcripts from interviews that Puleo conducted.

“You certainly get my narrative, but you also hear her speaking to me,” Chmiel said.

The chapters also include accounts from friends and human rights activists, and all of these voices manifest themselves in different forms—prayer, poetry, conversation, love letters and eulogies.

Also essential to the book are the subjects depicted in Puleo’s photographs, whose faces speak of suffering and injustice, while conveying beauty and strength. Puleo used photography to connect the impoverished populations of the Third World to the affluent communities in the United States—like Ladue, where Puleo grew up.

“There are many people in that book’s pages,” Chmiel said. “It’s not just about a couple, the narrator and protagonist. It’s about different communities; it’s about people in other countries; it’s about saints; it’s about prophets.”

Chmiel said he had some difficulty finding cohesion and structure among all of these elements as he wrote the book, a process that took more than three years. The turning point in the process was discovering a structure used by two Latin American writers, Eduardo Galeano and Reinaldo Arenas, which yielded the “memoir-scrapbook-biography,” as Chmiel describes it on the book’s Web site, www.bookofmev.com.

The book’s chapters are arranged in chronological order and divided into three larger parts. The first part, what Chmiel called the “health” part, is the longest; it follows the development of Chmiel and Puleo’s relationship, their graduate studies in theology and their travels to, among other places, El Salvador and Palestine. The second part chronicles Puleo’s suffering and death, after she is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

In the third part, Chmiel copes with her death and gives thanks for her life.

One of the triumphs in completing the book was, Chmiel said, finding “an admittedly idiosyncratic way of telling a very simple story. You know, two people meet, they fall in love, they have a great time, something happens.”

And while there are so many extraordinary elements to Puleo’s story, the element of the commonplace also lends strength to the narrative and universality to her suffering. At one point during the reading, Chmiel asked that people raise their hands if a family member or close friend had battled, or died from, cancer.

It was difficult to find a hand that was not raised.

“What she went through and what she experienced strikes a chord with a number of people,” Chmiel said. “That pleased me a lot.”

Sharing the book with students, both in the classroom and in the readings that he has held, has given him hope, Chmiel said.

“So many of my students unwittingly helped me in my own healing,” Chmiel said. “That passion, that spirit, that fierce indignation … that love of life—for a while, I thought it just died…but it’s everywhere.”

Last Thursday’s reading, held in the Knight’s room in Pius XII Library before a standing-room-only crowd, was sponsored by VOICES, UNA, Amnesty, Pax Christi, Micah House, Halo and the College of Arts and Sciences.

This article was first published in The University News, January 26, 2006.

by Andrew Ivers
University News
January 19, 2006

In a recent discussion about his memoir-biography, The Book of Mev, theology professor Mark Chmiel compared the experience of creating this collection to the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—meaning that even though his (and his subject’s) name landed on the cover, hundred of other names and faces lay behind it.

For those who know Chmiel, the analogy isn’t surprising. Both in and out of the classroom, he almost always prefers to do things “with a little help from his friends,” as Paul McCartney sang.

In his popular social justice course, Chmiel asks that students make the same effort to understand each other that they make to understand the subject matter itself. And the two are often one and the same.

Indeed, most students find that the compassion advocated by Chmiel’s course readings comes alive in the little acts of community that crop up throughout the course—the conveying of personal stories, or the sharing of music, poetry or a short walk across campus, to name a few.

The same will be true for those who attend tonight’s Book of Mev reading at 7:00 p.m. in the Knights Room at Pius Library.

Designed to “reflect the polyvocal nature of the book,” as Chmiel put it, the reading will feature seven female students, as well as the author himself.

It will also allow for an intermission during which participants can mingle and share their thoughts with each other.

The story of Chmiel’s late wife, Mev Puleo—a SLU alumna, photojournalist and social justice activist—The Book of Mev is partly an elegy for a woman who died of a brain tumor at the young age of 32, partly a love story told in letters and memories, partly a catalogue of a blossoming life of faith and career in photojournalism told with her photographs and interviews.

Not only a celebration of a beautiful life, this reading, if it is anything like the two that have preceded it, will be a continuation of the communion that Mev’s legacy demands of those who read her words and view her photographs.

It might seem insignificant to some, but this kind of event is unique even at a place like SLU in that it radiates a compassion stronger than any prejudice, a patience that could cool any anger.

When we think of courageous underdogs, folks like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., often come to mind. Yet in a small way, the little acts of community building we engage in can be just as powerful, can just as completely change the lives of those around us by emiting hope and purpose in a seemingly-bleak world.

Two years ago, Chmiel spent 10 weeks in occupied Palestine. Upon returning to St. Louis, he gave a talk about his experience, in which he invoked John Donne’s famous “Meditation XVII.”

He sounded a single chime on a small bell, then let the tolling fade into the silence of the room.

Then he reminded us: “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

It’s a lesson that has stuck with me ever since—and one that will surely take me years to comprehend, let alone live.

Yet I have complete faith that each of us can strive to find that part in us that is connected to the larger human family, that part that states, as Donne did, “any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde.”

In short, we can all work in our own ways to fasten the bonds of compassion.

As Mev wrote, “I truly believe that my camera is an instrument of communication that can help build community.”

Most of us won’t be leading any great social movements this afternoon—or anytime soon, for that matter—but we can engage great tasks in little ways, one of which is attending what will surely be an energizing event—this reading that will remind us life is not about a single voice crying out in isolation, a single face floating through unfamiliar crowds, but a chorus whose members complement each other, a congregation of individuals who each mean something special to each other, and to the whole—which, if we look hard enough, encompasses every human being.

iversja@gmail.com

This commentary appeared in the Jan. 19, 2006 issue of The University News.