My Night in the Las Vegas Jail

 By John Dear

  On Holy Thursday, April 9, at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, fourteen of us walked on to the Creech Air Force Base near Indian Springs, Nevada (about an hour northwest of Las Vegas) to pray and speak out against the U.S. unmanned drones which take off every two minutes in practice runs for bombing raids in Central Asia. After three hours, we were arrested, put in handcuffs and chains, then jailed for the night in Las Vegas. When we were released on Good Friday morning, we did what any normal Christian would do: we went back to the scene of the crime and continued to pray and speak out for an end to U.S. warmaking.

The Nevada desert is stunning in its stark beauty. The drive out to Indian Springs is a meditation in itself, into the world of yucca plants, Joshua trees, and barren sandy landscapes, with towering snow-capped mountains in the distance.

 Our nonviolent action was beautiful, but dangerous. Praying and singing, our little group walked down the main driveway past the main gate onto base property carrying white roses in honor of the White Rose movement of Germany, the small band of students who were killed for leafleting and speaking out the Nazis. We also brought bread and water as gifts to the soldiers, signs calling for an end to the drones and U.S. bombings, and a letter to the base commander. Behind the little brown building ahead, a unmanned drone warplane took off on the runway and circled out over the distant mountains, preparing for the kill.

 Of course, it is illegal to walk on to the base. It is a “deadly force zone,“ where soldiers are “legally authorized” to shoot and kill trespassers on site. It’s possible our action was the first protest ever at Creech, certainly its first civil disobedience action. They might have been expecting us to cross the line on Good Friday, so our surprise Holy Thursday presence may have caught them off guard. In any case, they were absolutely unprepared for the blessing of our peaceful presence.

Immediately a scared, young Air Force soldier approached us, started yelling at us, and ordered us to turn around and leave the base immediately. He swung a huge machine gun at us. We started to sing and continued to walk. He shoved one friend, then me. Three other soldiers approached, all carrying machine guns, but this one particular wild-eyed soldier was furious. So we knelt down. The soldiers continued to shout at us, but we responded that we were unarmed, nonviolent and peaceful, as we offered our white roses. Our fearless, nonviolent refusal to leave, our civil disobedience to their orders, left them completely befuddled. They simply did not know what to do with us. Should they yell louder, or just shoot us? Meanwhile, an unmanned drone bomber flew over us.

 So we knelt and sat down on the driveway for several hours until the Nevada State highway patrol and the Las Vegas Metro Police Department arrived. They arrested us, first putting plastic handcuffs on us, then actual metal chains around our wastes with metal handcuffs attached to our sides.

 As we sat on the ground waiting to be handcuffed, with the mean-looking soldiers in army fatigues and machine guns standing about ten yards in front of us, the lead police sergeant told our group that if we had continued to walk just a few more feet, the soldiers would definitely have opened fire and shot us. “And they would have been authorized to do so,” he said with a big smile, “but it would have been a shame.”

 Most were placed in police cars and driven one hour into Las Vegas. The last to go, my friends Fr. Jerry Zawada, OFM, Brian Terrell and I had to wait an additional hour for a van. We sat on the ground in our chains, surrounded by police officers, as the sky turned pink and orange and the desert sun slowly set in the distance.

The police van was quite an experience. It was dirty, white metal, with metal benches and chains on either side, and a narrow metal wall down the middle. So we three squeezed in down one side, were buckled in, and driven off to Vegas in our chains. Jerry, Brian and I prayed out loud for a good while—for our friends and supporters; for an end to the drones and U.S. wars; for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; for the church’s conversion to Holy Thursday nonviolence.

I will never forget riding down the Strip in Las Vegas, chained with my friends, in that police van. We drove right into the towering bright likes of the casinos, the shows, the strip clubs, and the restaurants. The streets were mobbed. It was dazzling. But we couldn’t quite get a clear view because of the metal mesh blocking our windows, an appropriate perspective for the Christian in such a culture. Eventually we arrived at the Clark County Detention Facility—the Las Vegas Jail—located right in the belly of casino-land.

For the next five hours, we sat in a large room with everyone else arrested on the streets of Las Vegas that night, as one by one we were fingerprinted, photographed, and booked. Our property was taken and documented. A nurse examined us and took our blood pressure. (Mine was very high, but “You’re under a lot of stress,” she said. She had no idea.) Around midnight, we were split up. The men were put in one large concrete cell, and the women down the hall in another cell. There we remained until 7:30 a.m. on Good Friday morning, when we were kicked out onto the streets of Las Vegas, which were now barren and empty.

By and large, the police were much friendlier than the Air Force soldiers. They asked us why we were protesting. Most of them vehemently disagreed with us, but they seemed likeable enough. Most of them had spent many years in the army or the marines, and defended the warmaking system. Two officers yelled at me and threatened to keep me in just because I sat in the wrong seat or looked the wrong way, but by and large, we were alright. Yet all of us were moved to see the many others who were most likely heading to prison.

These actions and experiences are bearable because of the prayer, our intent and the friends. I felt blessed to be with many close friends and heroes, like Jerry and Brian, but also Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ, Fr. Louie Vitale, OFM, and the great Kathy Kelly of Voices of Creative Nonviolence. We caught up with our lives, lamented the suffering of the world, kept an eye on each other, and tried to lift each other’s spirit. Louie, at 77, was featured that morning on the front page of the L.A. Times in a glowing profile. We celebrated his great life witness.

When we were released, we learned that the women had gone right to sleep on the concrete floor of their cell—after, of course, Kathy Kelly, entertained them with a rousing song and dance routine that cheered them up. They accused us, the men, however, of carrying on a party all night long in our cell, because they could hear us talking and laughing the entire night.

Alas, it was true. Steve, Louie, and most of our group never slept. I got about two hours of sleep on a tough wooden bench. Around 3 a.m., when our nerves were shot and exhaustion had set in for us all, Steve told a silly joke that left us in stitches. We all cried we laughed so hard. The women and the guards did not know what came over us. We shared many stories about our life’s work for peace, and found our spirits buoyed by the good company—but it was a grim dungeon and a difficult night, to be sure.

Kathy Kelly and friends from Voices for Creative Nonviolence had kept a permanent peace vigil outside the gates of Creech AF Base since April 1^st, in an effort to raise public awareness about the increasing use of the drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those arrested besides Kathy, Steve, Louie, Jerry and Brian were: Dennis DuVall, Renee Espeland, Judy Homanich, Mariah Klusmire, Brad Lyttle, Elizabeth Pappalardo, Megan Rice, and Eve Tetaz.

Our modest gesture was an act of prayer. I was mindful of the millions of people across the country attending Holy Thursday Mass, and the contrast of sitting in metal chains in the county jail. Some of us spoke of trying to be with Jesus who was arrested on this holy night. We reflected on his last words, “Put down the sword! Stop, no more of this!,” a message we had brought to Creech AFB. We felt the loneliness of his arrest, jailing and trial, and also felt grateful that we could taste his experience. Our nonviolent action, in the end, was a poor, but noble effort to follow Jesus and carry on his campaign of nonviolent resistance to empire.

Upon our release, we were ordered to appear in court on June 9^th. Then, we went right back to Creech AF Base in time for the Nevada Desert Experience’s annual Stations of the Cross. With sixty folks, we read and prayed through each modern-day station, learning how Jesus is condemned and crucified all over again in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan because of our weapons and wars. We prayed, sang and reflected along the towering chain fence of the military base—and were interrupted repeatedly by the drones flying overhead.

We saw with our own eyes that these drones are real, that our country is dead set on killing, that these weapons are no joke. We tried to take action, to say as Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemani, “Stop, no more of this!” Tomorrow on Easter Sunday morning, we will gather for Mass at the Nevada Test site, then walk on to that military base to offer the risen Jesus’ gift of resurrection peace and get arrested all over again. So it goes.