Resisting the Reign of Death

On October 30, I was one of nine people arrested at Beale Air Force Base for trespassing onto federal property in protest of the drones that are stationed there.  I'll write more about this later, but for today I want to make clear how this particular action fits in with other actions I've taken and my life overall. 

I have a long history of writing, speaking, and acting for peace, justice, and the environment.  Most recently, I have specifically focused on foreclosures, climate change, and the drone program.  What ties all these issues together?  I see them as various expressions of a global system that is working at cross-purposes with Love. 

I see my life work as preaching the gospel of peace, justice, and earth-healing in the midst of  a corporate-dominated global system that is idolatrous and violent to the core.  My book, Shaking the Gates of Hell:  Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization (www.shakingthegatesofhell.org), proposes a way to respond to the growing power of corporations and their domination of the worlds' cultures, governments, and global institutions.  Part I, "The Gates of Hell:  Undoing Creation," outlines the various global challenges we face today as a species, and makes the case that if we don't turn things around we face a living hell on earth of pollution, global warming, runaway technologies, poverty, inequity, violence, terror, and war.

The term "Undoing Creation" comes from theologian William Stringfellow:  "Violence describes all of the multifarious, inverted, broken, distorted and ruptured relationships characteristic of the present history of this world.  Violence is the undoing of Creation... Violence is the reign of death in this world..."

The gates of Beale, home to the global hawk drones, symbolize the gates to a hellish future.  For me, our nonviolent action there was a statement of hope for a transformed world.  Saying "no" to the Reign of Death is a way of saying "yes" to life.  

http://www.nukeresister.org/2012/10/30/9-arrested-blocking-gates-of-beale-air-force-base-in-drone-protest/#more-3313