FUSsa-talk Mailing List: Closing Statement at the "Alternative RNC 8" Trial‏ in St. Paul

[MADELINE SIMON (madeline-mpls]

>From David Harris, one of "The Other RNC8."
 
Peace,
Madeline
 

Hi Folks,
    Here is the entire closing statement I wrote early this morning before the 
conclusion of our trial. I sent a copy to Colleeen Rowley for the Huffington 
Post. I actually only read a portion of it, in order to avoid being cut off 
again by the judge or the prosecuting attorney.
    As you probably know, all 8 of us were found guilty, given a "slap on the 
wrist sentence" plus 1 year prohibition from participating in another civil 
disobedience action, althought the penalty for doing so was not explicitely 
stated.
 
David Harris
 

                        Closing Statement before the Trial Concludes

                                                            David Harris, Sept. 
17, 2009
 
You who are not on trial may not have noticed that we defendants in being sworn 
in all chose to take a secular oath, not to invoke the name of God. This was a 
mutual decision out of respect for our different belief systems. Many of my 
fellow defendants have spoken eloquently about their faith, and how it guides 
their actions. I have avoided this until now, because I believe that faith is a 
private matter. But I feel that it is important now for you to understand how 
my faith influences my behavior.
 
Like my fellow defendant, Joel Weisberg, I am Jewish. I was raised in an 
orthodox household and, as St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I thought like a 
child.” That is, I accepted most of what I was taught unquestioningly. But, one 
of the best things about Judaism is that there is no Pope, no one who has the 
final word on what is right. During my last year in high school, I began to 
grow up and question more. I read the New Testament, the Christian addition to 
the Bible, for the first time. When I read “The Sermon on the Mount”, it was 
like being struck by lightning. Not only must you welcome the stranger, as in 
Judaism, but you must love even your enemies. Jesus teachings became 
inspirational for me. Of course, he went a little overboard when he said, “Be 
ye … perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect.” But he also displayed 
his humanity by saying, “Why do you call me good? Only my father in heaven is 
good.”
 
So I decided for a time that I must become a minister and preach the Gospel. 
But I soon realized, while studying religion and history and politics in 
college, that I was much too ignorant to be preaching to others. My choice and 
good fortune at being able to become a physician enabled me to learn ever more 
about who we humans are, to see and talk with people who needed to trust me, 
because they were suffering. 
 
When I was in Nicaragua some years ago (I have worked and traveled in Latin 
America about 23 times as a physician and as a human rights worker), I met two 
elderly nuns (very like my dear friends Betty McKenzie and Mary Vaughan) on a 
bus on a day when the newspaper reported that a 12 year old Nicaraguan boy had 
been killed by a land mine made in America. I asked them why such things 
happened, why is the world so cruel? 
One of them said she thought it was because we need new martyrs from time to 
time, because we forget. At the time, I was angry and felt this was a very 
unsatisfactory response. But maybe she was right. We forget easily, especially 
in an age of short attention spans where many of our children, lacking adult 
role models, are never taught in the first place.
 
The problem of human suffering, why we treat each other so badly, has been my 
preoccupation as well as my occupation all my adult life. I have read and 
reread the Biblical story of Job and comments about it by many writers, and I 
refuse to accept the premise that human suffering, or for that matter suffering 
of anything that lives, is a mystery in a whirlpool beyond human understanding. 
I believe that most of the suffering and cruelty around the world is the result 
of human actions, and I refuse to blame God for it. This means that we humans 
must stand up for those who are in pain, and this is a world in great pain.
 
We know what we must do. The Story of the Good Samaritan is the story about a 
stranger who came to the aid of his traditional enemy, a Jew, while the rabbis, 
busy with more important matters, walked past him. I believe that the 
Holocaust, where all of my wife’s grandmother’s Polish relatives were 
obliterated in the concentration camps, so wounded the Jewish survivors that 
they lost the long-held Jewish tradition of living in peace and projected their 
fear and hatred and despair into the formation of a new and militant nation, 
the State of Israel. I believe that it is the suffering of the Palestinian 
Arabs, at the hands of people of my own faith tradition, that must shame and 
ultimately redeem the Jewish people. I also believe that it is the suffering of 
poor and disempowered people around the world that must be recognized by we who 
live in relative wealth and security. I believe that building walls, whether in 
Israel on the West Bank or in the United States in gated communities or along 
our southern border, will not bring us security. I believe that economic and 
military action, whether under former President Bush in Iraq or under President 
Obama in Afghanistan, can never make us safe.
            I believe, as my hero Martin Luther King, Jr. said shortly before 
he was murdered, “The greatest perpetrator of violence in the world is my own 
government.” We will find safety and security when we learn to love our 
neighbors, to be responsible for those who suffer, to renounce violence as way 
of solving problems and disagreements. 
            This is a moment, an opportunity, not only for us the defendants, 
but for all of you listening, Your Honor, Judge Wilson, Mr. Prosecuting 
Attorney, people in the jury box and people outside the jury box, to help 
communicate our ultimate message which we tried so hard to deliver on August 
31, 2008, that war and violence are wrong, that truth and justice and love must 
become our guiding lights. And if we are found guilty by defining the law 
narrowly, it will not be the last chance for you or us to think further about 
the meaning of our existence and to work for a better world.