By Shanna Shipman
Pekin Daily Times correspondent
June 13, 2006
PEKIN - An anti-war activist whose past protests led to her imprisonment at the Federal Correctional Institution-Pekin, drew parallels between her experience there and international issues as a “Walk for Justice,” made by an activist group called Voices for Creative Nonviolence, traveled through central Illinois Monday.
Kathy Kelly, author of “Other Lands have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison,” says problems within the federal correctional system stem from the same root problem as the international issues she touts: misuse of the nation’s resources.
“We think it is important to ask, where is the wealth and the productivity of the US being directed in our time, because we are all responsible for that Š Not just a few, but all of us,” Kelly said, stating that money spent on war weaponry or imprisonment, for instance, could be better allocated to programs such as education and health care.
Emerging from a painted bus with the words “Nonviolence or nonexistance” on its side, the group walked north on Route 29 before stopping for an hour-long vigil in front of the Pekin prison Monday. The group of about 10 protesters sang, prayed, and spoke of their own vision of justice.
Domestically, the group supports a “radical reformation of the prison system in the US,” according to walk organizer Jeff Leys. The walk, beginning in Springfield Wednesday and slated to end in Chicago on June 25, gives the group a chance to engage in dialogue on these and other issues, Leys said.
“Really, there is a lot we can learn from people in prison. In the Pekin prison I met kindly women, sensitive women,” Kelly said. Kelly claims that while 82 percent of the women in Pekin’s minimal security camp are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, one fourth of them are serving terms for 8 years or more. “That is a long time to be removed from your family. Has our society failed their children?” Kelly said.
Michael Weghorst of Pekin FCI said Tuesday that Kelly’s criticism that the federal correctional system focuses too heavily on punishment versus rehabilitation is not founded in reality. “From the moment they come here, we begin our reentry program,” Weghorst said. Classes and individual services offered the inmates are geared toward “helping them to live a better life once they reenter society,” said Weghorst.
Kelly was joined by other former inmates of Pekin FCI Monday. Pekin FCI security allowed demonstrators to gather along Route 29 in front of the portion of the prison that houses female inmates, although not allowing them to enter further on prison property. Security marshalls stood by during the demonstration and were also on hand Tuesday morning.
Demonstrators parked at Route 29 and VFW Road Tuesday around 9 a.m. and planned to stop briefly at the prison for a moment of silence before continuing their walk to Caterpillar Inc. headquarters to protest the company’s sale of earthmoving equipment to Israel. The group claims that Caterpillar bulldozers are being used to demolish Palestinian homes and tree groves.
Voices for Creative Non-Violence, based out of Chicago, espouses international goals that include ending the war in Iraq and pledging no unilateral action against Iran.
“From our experience in Iraq, it is not so clear that America is safer when we get involved in a preemptive war,” Kelly said.
The director of activist group Voices in the Wilderness, Kelly spent Monday evening at a Peoria Heights book store signing copies of her book that traces her group’s efforts to deliver medicines to Iraqi children while breaking the international embargo of Iraq in the late 1990s.
Voices in the Wilderness was founded in 1996 to protest United Nations sanctions against Iraq.
Kelly spent three months at Pekin FCI following her arrest in November 2003 while protesting at the School of Americas.
Renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” in 2001, the School of Americas is a United States Army facility at Fort Benning, Ga., that trains Latin American military personnel. Opponents frequently protest the school’s existence, calling it an example of U.S. support for regimes that infringe upon human rights. In an attempt to rectify this, the school has implemented a curriculum that includes instruction in human rights, but controversy continues with respect to the school and the actions of its graduates.
