DPOR Margaret Knapke - Journal Entries

Prison entries from Federal Prison Camp,
Lexington-Atwood, Kentucky, summer/fall 2000,
Margaret Knapke (Registration Number 89762-020).

(The following journal excerpts were first printed in the
UD Quarterly, a University of Dayton publication for alumni.)

There is a prison etiquette here that discourages the asking of too many questions. Nevertheless some women ask me what I'm "in for," and I answer "Pure stubbornness, I guess." When I go on to explain that Judge Hugh Lawson gave me and the other first-time SOA-10 defendants an option -- namely, that each of us could do time in prison and pay a fine, or by promising never to return to Ft. Benning we could receive a lighter penalty of probation and a fine -- and I chose the time, they are incredulous. And I must admit, my first evening here I also doubted the wisdom of my choice.

But even during that first emotionally difficult evening, I knew that if Judge Lawson were to walk up and make the same offer of probation, I'd have to turn him down again. Because agreeing to mute my criticism of the School of the Americas, in order to reclaim the comforts and richness of my usual life, would compromise me to the quick -- especially when civilian death tolls continue to mount in Colombia and Chiapas due to the military campaigns being waged there.

So here I sit, sharing a decrepit dormitory-type facility with 250 women, 13 of them in my bedroom! This federal prison sits about an hour east of a Trappist monastery I have visited and loved for years, and they share the same green, rolling, wooded terrain. So I have dubbed my home for the next three months The Noisy Cloister, and I intend to practice here the same calm attentiveness that the monastery is designed to elicit.

In fact, this prison too is an intensely spiritual place, but more -- I think -- by a core survival strategy than by design. I am not referring to the numerous religious practices that rub elbows in the chapel, but to the genuine kindness and patience practiced by the women -- perhaps especially toward bereft newcomers. Women serving long sentences, estranged from their families and even their young children, opt away from bitterness and self-absorption and instead extend themselves toward each other -- and toward me!

In our respective ways -- they with their compassion, I with my pure stubbornness in denouncing the School of the Americas -- we inmates are nurturing core values. I remain uncompromised, but truly the kindness of these women has humbled me to the quick.

I have long felt an affinity and love for Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and I was heartened to find her image in our prison chapel. I had fled there the first day, consciously hoping to find quiet and solitude, but perhaps subconsciously seeking Her solace. That day I told myself that if I needed to be estranged from my family and community for three months, I would nevertheless learn to recognize these woman as my extended family. After all, we do have the same Mother ! And underlying our class, race, religious, age and cultural differences is the far deeper and stronger family resemblance we have inherited from Her.

I like to remember that Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe incorporates the Aztec Mother, and I regret that I cannot recall that difficult name for Her. But I do recall that the indigenous name translates into Spanish as "Ella que viene volando de la luz como un aguila de fuego." She who comes flying from the region of light like an eagle of fire! Also known as the Mother of the Americas, she is greatly loved throughout Mexico, Central and South America, a kind of supermaternal icon prefiguring Liberation Theology's "preferential option for the poor."

Today, 30 August, President Clinton goes to Colombia, and I am heartsick. To honor that increasingly besieged population, I have spent the morning reviewing documents from Human Rights Watch and the Colombian Commission of Jurists / United Nations. I can only see Clinton's visit there as an escalation of the war against the poor of Latin America. Having waived the Congressional human rights conditions, he will bestow $1.3 billion in mostly military aid, allegedly to fight a drug war.

But all the evidence suggests that it is the same sad story, one of old-fashioned profit-sharing among elites. U.S. corporations ... do business with Colombia's elite, which in turn delivers the nation's human and natural resources for a significant cut of the (violent) action. The U.S. government trains and equips a repressive military apparatus (using the U.S. Army School of the Americas, along with other military programs), even as it ratchets up the peace rhetoric. Finally the repression of the Colombian people is taken all the way to the bank.

Often the fact of confinement feels like a large hand squeezing my heart! Then shortly thereafter I will be walking with a woman, or perhaps standing in one of the many lines with her. She will be telling me her story, and I'll feel my heart expand as if it might pleasurably explode, feeling such gratitude for being here to hear her story.

I have also found that consciously situating my prison experience within the collective SOA-10 witness -- recalling my dear co-defendants, now Prisoners of Conscience throughout the country -- always eases the grip of this place.

And further contextualizing our joint witness within the broader movement for economic and political justice allows for a further felt expansiveness that is deeply rooted in history.

I have been pondering something Judge Lawson said to us. He called me and my co-defendants "self-righteous" at our sentencing, which really surprised me, as three months earlier at our trial he'd declared us "admirable" for our strong principles. Yes, we think we are right and even obligated to press for closure of the School of the Americas. But far from feeling prideful about our advocacy role, we tend to feel deep regret at having arrived at that role many thousands of lives too late !

But if we are not self-righteous, undoubtedly we are passionate and stubborn, and unapologetically so. Our passion is equal parts compassion for those who suffer, and a keen desire for deep dialogue as a way of discerning social truth.

The body politic, of course, is always abuzz with conversation ! But there remains the question of how honest we are -- whether we allow ourselves to chatter superficially in comfortable fictions and half-truths, or rather follow the deeper conversational strains toward an understanding of privilege and oppression. I continue to believe that deep, honest dialogue can move all of us beyond shallow self-interest, toward a deeper consensus about how to organize our political and economic relationships to truly serve all. Certainly no system that serves an elite at great cost to the many can suffice -- hence our stubbornness!

There are unexpected comforts for me at this prison camp. The sunsets are astounding. I don't know if they are really more beautiful here than in the neighboring state of Ohio where I usually observe them, or if I just need them to be extraordinary. No matter. Also, because I am here at the close of summer and through the autumn, I get to experience the migratory excitement of the birds, which seems to crescendo just before sunset. I have noticed that whenever the geese fly overhead I feel a flutter under my breastbone, as if some part of me remembers that life and would join them but for my bulky humanity. And the other is a nighttime comfort. When the winds are very strong, this old building doesn't whistle or whine in the usual high-pitched way. Rather it makes a loud, low hum which sounds for all the world like free-form Gregorian chant. I can listen to it for hours at a time, and do, and sometimes pretend that the nearby Trappist monks are singing me to sleep.

The feminist Margaret Atwood has said in one of her poems: "The facts of this world, seen clearly, are seen through tears." It is true that anyone alive and awake to the world has to grieve and be angry. I enter every day with a litany of atrocity being murmured in the back of my skull, and I know that the responsorial moments are mine.

200 children will die in Iraq today because of economic sanctions, and 200 more tomorrow, along with an untold number of parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Indigenous people are displaced and dying in Mexico and Colombia as governments, corporations and their allied militaries maneuver for the oil reserves under their sacred homelands. Women, children and some men are battered by those who claim to love them. Hunger, environmental degradation, and the list goes on.

Such atrocity is a fact, but it's a humanly contrived fact. And if there is extra tragedy in this atrocity being wholly unnecessary, there is also hope and joy in its being alterable! Twenty years ago my political work in opposition to US intervention in Central America was driven by grief and anger, but I didn't feel entitled to the joy. Now I realize that I was listening to only half of my heart -- but this awareness came slowly, initially due to the gentle remonstrances of some Salvadoran refugees.

I especially remember Fernando, who had been imprisoned and tortured for organizing labor in El Salvador, and he had lost loved ones to the repression there as well. But Fernando nevertheless radiated joy and humor. When he chided me for my seriousness,
I -- somewhat exasperated -- demanded of him: "How do you do it? I know what you've been through! How can you be so happy?" He laughed and responded: "We could not begin to do our work, our work for a just society, if we did not remember every moment why we are doing it."

Of course! Life can be violated precisely because it is precious, and so it must be worthy of celebration even in its precariousness. Thanks to Fernando and many other teachers, my heart is now intact and fully heard. And I can say with all my heart that doing this advocacy work for the people of Latin America, the rigors of court and prison notwithstanding, gives me great joy.