It was a clear but cold autumn day in East Hartford Connecticut. Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, the biggest employer in the area, was celebrating their 50th anniversary by hosting a gala open house which would draw 400,000 people during the days of October 4 and 5. Pratt and Whitney builds engines for airplanes. Most of their work is building engines for military aircraft and the list of warplanes for which Pratt and Whitney takes credit includes the B-52, the F-15, the F-111, the F-14A Skyhawk, the F-8 Crusader, and the A-6 Intruder -- all used by the U.S. government against the people of Indochina.
These and other planes were put on proud display for all to see. The message of the day was Pratt and Whitney’s slogan, “The Eagle Means Business.” The crowds filed past these awesome symbols of might and power, seemingly filled with wonder and offering an almost religious response of respect and excitement. One observer likened the scene to some sort of pagan ritual where homage is paid to great metallic gods under whose protection we may feel safe and secure. Colorful displays, young models clad in hot pants, laughing children, balloons, and music lent a festive spirit to the occasion as streams of happy people bustled beneath these gleaming weapons of war.
Also present was another message -- a counter-message. A small group of people gathered early in the morning to share a simple liturgy. A number of the peace militants were from Jonah House in Baltimore. They then proceeded to Pratt and Whitney where some joined the lines of people waiting to peer inside the impressive cockpits of bombers and fighter planes. After waiting patiently for their turns to come, they reached the front of the lines and then poured blood over and into the cockpits of the planes. Others painted “death” on the fuselages of planes while still others passed out leaflets and carried signs with the words, “The Eagle Means Death Business.”
Their expressed intention, in these dramatic actions and in their words to the crowds of people, was to bring an awareness of the purposes and consequences of the machines of destruction that everyone had come to see and to celebrate -- the products of Pratt and Whitney were the instruments of death and its anniversary celebration was a ritual of death. The crowds grew angry and violent, the police moved in, and the protestors were arrested.
On that same day, another group of peacemakers in the inner city of Washington DC also gave witness to life against death by feeding the poor in the street-front sanctuary that is called the Zacchaeus Soup Kitchen. The soup-makers are from the Community of Creative Non-Violence whose daily vigil for peace and justice is lived in response to the most basic needs of the poor for food, shelter, health, community, love. A few weeks later, the soup-makers joined the East-Hartford blood pourers in digging graves in the White House lawn, again in protest of the U.S. government’s “nuclear madness,” carrying signs which read “Disarm Or Dig Graves.” Again, all were arrested.
These are extraordinary actions -- to expose the profits and purposes of war industry, to resist the plans of the military and the authority of the state, to confront the values of the nation, to make community with the poor, to put oneself in positions of danger, vulnerability, and insecurity. But, then again, they are in response to extraordinary circumstances and conditions -- billions and billions of dollars and the greater portion of national energy and brain power poured into ever-more sophisticated and lethal machines of death; countless numbers of people rejected, forgotten, discarded, and consigned to poverty and hopelessness; a public conscience numbed to the corruption and brutality of official power and to the destruction and suffering that are its consequences.
These are high-risk actions -- they promise to bring legal prosecution, time in jail, time away from husbands, wives, children and friends, loss of jobs, real possibilities of suffering violence and brutalization, threats of fear, loneliness, and despair. But the loss of conscience may be a higher risk -- the moral and spiritual paralysis that accompanies silence and complicity in the face of evil.
It seems more than coincidence that these who undertake such extraordinary actions, these who accept risk, are those who are possessed with a vision that itself is extraordinary -- a radical allegiance to the kingdom of God. They are those whosoever of life arises out of simple obedience to One who risked all, suffered, was rejected and crucified for the sake of the world.
It is the madness and moral folly that becomes “normal” to the world which must be protested. It is the being comfortable with “acceptable levels” of destruction and brutalization that is challenged by those who risk their own comfort. It is the active presence that reminds the world of its worldliness and witnesses to the kingdom of God, that is the source of the world’s true life and hope. All this is the substance of genuine prophetic action which is intended to grow out of the life of a people whose corporate existence in itself represents a judgment upon the world and an alternative demonstration of a new order in history.
Jim Wallis is the editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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