I am a regular attender at the Brandywine-sponsored Good Friday demonstration at Lockheed-Martin (and was arrested there on Good Friday a few years ago). Something unusual happened this year, as explained in the following letter that I wrote to the leaders of the Brandywine Peace Community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Good Friday observance at Lockheed Martin was meaningful for me today as every year. I am writing about one particular occurrence, unique in my experience, which happened today.<\/p>\n
A policeman was harassing a demonstrator to require him to show a permit for the concealed weapon he was apparently carrying.\u00a0 There was intense conversation, with the subject insisting on his legal right not to show a permit. This was a distraction to the purpose of the Brandywine observance, and so I ignored it, while others filmed it. Eventually, the individual produced a permit for the police.<\/p>\n
Apparently this individual attended for the first time, as part of a group of four. They seemed to be well-versed in the legalities of carrying concealed weapons, while at the same time they appeared to be committed anti-war activists. \u00a0This all made me feel very uncomfortable for the Brandywine Peace Community. In discussion at the conclusion of the service, members of the group defended their right to carry weapons for self defense, including a readiness to defend themselves at peace demonstrations. They pointedly said that the police overseeing the demonstration were armed, as an argument in their justification. One of the group described how peace activists in Arizona had dealt with this issue some decades ago and were accepting of armed anti-war activists at their rallies. \u00a0(Personally, I can\u2019t use the term \u201cpeace activists\u201d in this context. \u00a0Guess things happen differently out west.)<\/p>\n
Brandywine Peace Community is an inter-faith community with its founding faith principle being that of nonviolence. \u00a0Most fittingly for this particular Good Friday event, Jesus himself explicitly told the disciples to put away the sword at the time of his arrest. That makes the inappropriateness of today\u2019s situation perfectly clear.<\/p>\n
It is important that anti-war groups include a range of views and opinions.\u00a0 Beth expressed it best when she told one of them that, had she known about this, she would have asked that they leave any weapons in their car before joining the Brandywine activities \u00a0\u00a0Brandywine does not have a \u201ctest\u201d of the nonviolent beliefs of those in attendance, but does expect that any of those participating in activities of the Brandywine Peace Community will be prepared to demonstrate adherence to the nonviolent tenants of the Community during their active participation.<\/p>\n
Brandywine has a 32-year history of Good Friday observances based on principles of nonviolence. And it will have many more.<\/p>\n
Peace, Paul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am a regular attender at the Brandywine-sponsored Good Friday demonstration at Lockheed-Martin (and was arrested there on Good Friday a few years ago). Something unusual happened this year, as explained in the following letter that I wrote to the leaders of the Brandywine Peace Community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-peace","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}