A few miles away, another group of folks gathered on that same Good Friday outside the headquarters of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms contractor. We walked the stations of the cross, one by one, remembering our lover Jesus. And we heard stories of suffering – stories of God’s little ones groaning in the midst of killing, displacement, torture. We heard statistics about weapons manufacturers like the one on whose property we were standing. And again we read the passion narrative. This time as we listened to the words, it seemed that we could almost hear the wailing of women in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine, women like Mary.
As we approached the final station of the cross, about 20 of us crossed onto the property at Lockheed Martin. I bowed on my knees and began to pray the Lord’s prayer … interrupted by a police officers who placed me under arrest. As I stepped into the police van, smiling faces lit it up … there was a solemn sense of peace. It was the right place to be. It was a magnificent thing to hear folks honk and wave as they went by. We even had a police officer who had arrested us thank us for our witness and decry the evils of violence and war.
As I sat in silence that night after a long day, I recalled the words of one of the preachers that had spoken earlier with that historic black-church fire: “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.”
It was legal to kick black folks out of stores and buses because of the color of their skin. But that didn’t make it right. It may have been legal to take slaves from Africa and treat them like property. But that didn’t make it right. Maybe it was legal to take the land from natives, but that didn’t make it right. And it may be legal to sell handguns in bulk to “straw” buyers who sell them on our streets, but that doesn’t make it right. It may be legal to make weapons that can kill 100,000 in one blast, but that doesn’t make it right.
Tuesday 21 April 2009
Why I Got Arrested on Good Friday ☀
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