By Brian Terrell
April 9, 2010
Des Moines—On Wednesday afternoon, April 7, Christine Gaunt, 53, of Grinnell, Iowa, and Frankie Hughes, 12, of Des Moines, were arrested for trespass in the Des Moines offices of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Chris and Frankie were in Harkin’s office as participants in the Peaceable Assembly Campaign (PAC), a national campaign seeking an end to the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and an end to U.S. support of the continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. Each Thursday afternoon since October 29, Iowans participating in the campaign have hand delivered petitions to the offices of Senators Grassley and Harkin encouraging them to sponsor and vote for legislation consistent with the campaign’s goals that include ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, ending military aid to Israel and converting excessive military spending to human needs abroad and in the U.S. 
Photo by ANDREA MELENDEZ/THE REGISTER
Frankie’s and Chris’ quiet presence in Senator Harkin’s office was one of a series of actions in the offices of the two senators since February 22, when two citizens, including Chris were arrested in Senator Grassley’s office and three others, including Renee Espeland, Frankie’s mother, in Senator Harkin’s office for refusing to leave until the senators agreed to stop funding these wars.
Chris returned to the federal building and the senators’ offices several times to continue to wait for their replies and was arrested again on March 11, this time in Senator Harkin’s office, where she held a “one woman die-in” saying “I was serious about not leaving the building without a response.”
On Wednesday, April 7, Chris, carrying a sign that read “NO MORE $$$ for WAR” returned to Harkin’s office, accompanied by Frankie, Renee and me. Frankie introduced herself to the senator’s staff and showed them a letter dated March 10 from Senator Chuck Grassley in answer to her previous visits to his office. While Grassley’s response to reiterate his support for what in an Orwellian twist he calls “the United States’ role in facilitating peace throughout the world” i.e. wars of aggression, it was at least a response and Frankie suggested that she deserved as much from Harkin.
Before the office closed, Chris’ sit-in became a die-in and when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement police (ICE) who provide security for the federal building told the protestors that they had to leave or face arrest, Chris and Frankie choose to continue to wait there for an answer from the senator.
ICE police demanded that Renee tell her daughter to obey their order to leave the office, and Renee replied that she had to respect her daughter’s choice. “It was an act of conscience” Renee later told the Des Moines Register. “I didn’t tell Frankie to do this. I went with her. To be civically involved, it was impossible for me to intervene at that point.”
Chris and Frankie were removed from the building by officers of the Des Moines Police Department, Chris with both federal and state misdemeanor citations and Frankie was informed that her case would be referred to Polk County Juvenile Court.
The next morning, the other shoe dropped when Renee was called in to the Des Moines Police Department and was issued a criminal citation for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
The police report alleges that Renee “knowingly encouraged and contributed to her daughter’s arrest” and that she “told police she wasn’t going to tell Frankie to leave, and ‘felt it was important for her daughter to be arrested for the cause,’” a statement that Renee emphatically denies making. “How crazy,” said Frankie, in an interview with The Register when she learned after school that her mother had been charged. “She didn’t contribute to anything. I did what was in my heart. No one suggested I do what I did.” She told the reporter, “The police officer who arrested me told me that my brain is not developed enough to know what I am doing but my brain is developed enough to know that killing innocent people for no reason is wrong!”
Des Moines Police Sgt. David Murillo’s statement to The Register: “I understand and fully appreciate a person’s constitutional right to free speech. However, this was a case of bringing a child into a criminal arena,” might be understood one of two ways. What is the “criminal arena” that Sgt. Murillo refers to? It might be that considering Senator Harkin’s record of voting to fund illegal, senseless and unwinnable wars, his office is the criminal arena. Or, it could be that since in these terrible times free speech and responsible citizenship is so rarely practiced that when he does see it, it looks criminal to Sgt. Murillo.
“I think they are trying to put a scare into the peace movement,” Prof. Sally Frank of the Drake University Law School told The Register. If this is a scare tactic, it will fail. “Thanks to Frankie for the courage to walk into that ‘criminal arena’ and call it what it is,” says fellow activist Elton Davis. If acting as a responsible human being is now delinquency, many of Frankie’s peers in the peace movement, of all ages and around the country and beyond, would be proud to think that, along with Renee, we might have contributed to her delinquency. If such be the case, I know that Frankie’s youthful courage definitely contributes to the delinquency of this adult, at least!
On April 16, when Renee goes to court to answer for her “crime” of responsible parenthood, she will be accompanied, in spirit, at least, by many friends and supporters. She will be in good company historically as well. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was similarly smeared with the libel that he had “contributed to the delinquency of minors.” On May 2, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, in a demonstration called by King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 6,000 children marched to demonstrate against segregation. 959 of these children were arrested and the next day, as volunteers gathered in a church, police barred the exits, and fire hoses and police dogs were turned on the teen-age demonstrators.
It is widely acknowledged that these events and the responsible citizenship of these children and of their parents and pastors who respected their consciences and allowed them to act as they knew that they should, was a real turning point in the struggle for equality in this country.
“Peaceable Assembly” demanding that funding for war be turned to pay for real, urgent human needs will continue. Children and parents will be inspired and encouraged by Frankie’s and Renee’s good example.
Brian Terrell can be contacted at 641-785-2321 or at terrellcpm(at)yahoo.com
