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Books by Philip Berrigan
Widen the Prison Gates: Writing from Jails /
Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary /
The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence
No More Strangers /
The Eight Beatitudes and Nuclear Resistance /
Disciples and Dissidents
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WHEN I
LAY DYING . . . of cancer
Philip Berrigan
PHIL'S STATEMENT 5 December 2002 (via Elizabeth McAlister)
Philip began dictating this statement the weekend
before Thanksgiving. It was all clear - he had it written in his
head. Word for word I wrote...
I die in a community including my family, my
beloved wife Elizabeth, three great Dominican nuns - Ardeth
Platte, Carol Gilbert, and Jackie Hudson (emeritus) jailed in
Western Colorado - Susan Crane, friends local, national and even
international. They have always been a life-line to me. I die
with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that
nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them,
manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God,
the human family, and the earth itself. We have already exploded
such weapons in Japan in 1945 and the equivalent of them in Iraq
in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Afghanistan in 2001. We
left a legacy for other people of deadly radioactive isotopes -
a prime counterinsurgency measure. For example, the people of
Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be battling
cancer, mostly from depleted uranium, for decades. In addition,
our nuclear adventurism over 57 years has saturated the planet
with nuclear garbage from testing, from explosions in high
altitudes (four of these), from 103 nuclear power plants, from
nuclear weapons factories that can't be cleaned up - and so on.
Because of myopic leadership, of greed for possessions, a public
chained to corporate media, there has been virtually no response
to these realities...
At this point in dictation, Phil's lungs filled; he began to
cough uncontrollably; he was tired. We had to stop - with
promises to finish later. But later never came - another moment
in an illness that depleted Phil so rapidly it was all we could
do to keep pace with it... And then he couldn't talk at all. And
then - gradually - he left us.
What did Phil intend to say? What is the message of his life?
What message was he leaving us in his dying? Is it different for
each of us, now that we are left to imagine how he would frame
it?
During one of our prayers in Phil's room, Brendan Walsh
remembered a banner Phil had asked Willa Bickham to make years
ago for St. Peter Claver. It read: "The sting of death is
all around us. O Christ, where is your victory?"
The sting of death is all around us. The death Phil was
asking us to attend to is not his death (though the sting of
that is on us and will not be denied). The sting Phil would have
us know is the sting of institutionalized death and killing. He
never wearied of articulating it. He never ceased being
astonished by the length and breadth and depth of it. And he
never accepted it.
O Christ, where is your victory? It was back in the mid
1960's that Phil was asking that question of God and her Christ.
He kept asking it. And, over the years, he learned
· that it is right and good to question our God, to plead
for justice for all that inhabit the earth
· that it is urgent to feel this; injustice done to any is
injustice done to all
· that we must never weary of exposing and resisting such
injustice
· that what victories we see are smaller than the mustard
seeds Jesus praised, and they need such tender nurture
· that it is vital to celebrate each victory - especially
the victory of sisterhood and brotherhood embodied in loving,
nonviolent community.
Over the months of Phil's illness we have been blessed a
hundred-fold by small and large victories over an anti-human,
anti-life, anti-love culture, by friendships - in and out of
prison - and by the love that has permeated Phil's life. Living
these years and months with Phil free us to revert to the
original liturgical question: "O death, where is your
sting?"
Contact: www.annefeeney.com
unionmaid@earthlink.net
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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