Frida Berrigan., Author at Toward Freedom

Judge Jails Anti-Drone Granny

Frida Berrigan. August 19, 2014 Frida Berrigan.

A 58-year-old protester is sentenced to one year.

“This has got to stop.”

Judge David Gideon’s words refer not to the use of drones, but the activities of anti-drone activists. He has uttered this phrase from the bench repeatedly in recent months as activists have appeared before him, and the words must have been echoing through his mind as he sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores, a 58-year-old grandmother from Ithaca, New York, to one year in prison on July 10. Her crime? Participating in a nonviolent anti-drone protest at an upstate New York military base after being ordered by the local courts to stay away from the site. The base is used to train drone pilots and technicians, and to control drone surveillance and strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere. read more

How can we reclaim the holiday season from corporations?

Frida Berrigan. December 24, 2013 Frida Berrigan.

Source: Waging Nonviolence

Seamus is covered in peanut butter and dragging a cell phone charger around while he carries a box of tampons in the crook of his arm. Not exactly photo-finish perfect parenting, but okay. He is fully occupied for the moment, and nothing he is holding can do him harm, right?

He is headed for the bathroom. My one concern is that he will decide to store his now-precious items in his favorite place — the toilet. Is the lid on? I think so, but the little genius can open it, no problem. I am listening for the splash. I think the charger would be okay, the tampons not so much. I am not even sure where he found them; I am almost seven months pregnant and haven’t had much use for them recently. But I don’t want to see them wasted either — they are too expensive to get waterlogged in an open toilet by a 16-month-old. I am encouraging his independence and curiosity, so I don’t get up to check on him. read more

Coming Out as an Activist

Frida Berrigan. April 8, 2013 Frida Berrigan.

Source: Waging Nonviolence

I trudged down the side of the road carrying a small sign: “I am waiting for YOU to shut down Guantanamo.” We were marching toward the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Conn., on Good Friday. I was grateful for the orange jumpsuit that added a layer of warmth and the black hood that blurred my sight. Not because I like not seeing, but because it was nice to not be seen. Not just yet.

This is not my normal M.O. at demonstrations. I like to be out and about; I like the give and take with passers-by. In New York City, where I was an activist with the War Resisters League and Witness Against Torture for 12 years, I often opted to pass out leaflets or hold a lead sign. I even honed an outgoing, chatty, aw-shucks persona that helped me greet everyone with enthusiasm and openness. read more

Elizabeth McAlister, Philip Berrigan and the author (on knee).

Frida Berrigan: Stories from an Insurrectionary Childhood

Frida Berrigan. October 24, 2012 Frida Berrigan.

I was born into and brought up at Jonah House — a nonviolent resistance community grounded in its founders’ Catholic faith and built for the express purpose of nurturing and sustaining resistance. It was formed in the early 1970s, when the war in Vietnam was effectively off the front pages and effectively over in the minds of most people as a result of Nixon’s Vietnamization of the war. The anti-war movement had been killed off, bought off, turned off or sent off to jail.

Militarizing the Border

Frida Berrigan. April 16, 2007 Frida Berrigan.

The sun was strong and so was the rhetoric, as President George W. Bush headed to Yuma, Arizona on April 9 to tackle the problem of illegal immigration. Flanked by uniformed border agents, national guardsmen and members of local law enforcement whose stiff formality emphasized his bare-armed enthusiasm, the president asserted that "securing the border is a critical part of a strategy for comprehensive immigration reform Congress is going to take up the legislation on immigration. It is a matter of national interest and it's a matter of deep conviction for me."

Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran

Frida Berrigan. March 4, 2007 Frida Berrigan.

The Bush administration is very focused these days on Iran's nuclear program. This focus has only sharpened in the aftermath of the International Atomic Energy Agency's recent report that Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of a UN Security Council demand.