Ash Wednesday Nonviolent Action

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO PROTEST GUANTANAMO AND TORTURE; ENVISION NONVIOLENT SOCIETY BASED ON TRUTH AND LOVE

We'll mark Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25TH, by protesting the indefinite detention and inhumane treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp and other U.S.-sponsored detention facilities. We are members of Kairos Chicago, an Edgewater-based nonviolent community of faith and resistance. We'll be holding vigil, distributing fliers, and engaging in creative, nonviolent street theater in between classes.

YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN US AT ANY TIME!
TIME: Wednesday, February 25: 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Outside CFSU near the Ash Tray

“The season of Lent is an opportunity for Christians to repent of their participation in sin—both personal and social,” said Luke Hansen, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic and graduate student at Loyola University. “What we have done at Guantánamo is illegal, immoral, and unjust.”

Even though President Obama has issued Executive Orders to close Guantánamo and to end “harsh interrogation techniques,” the indefinite detention of over 200 men at Guantánamo, 600 men at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and thousands more in Iraq continues to this day. So does the practice of force-feeding prisoners, a cruel and coercive treatment that amounts to torture. The students’ street theater will involve both denunciation and annunciation. On one side, students will demonstrate force-feeding—inside a “Guantánamo cage,” as a narrator reads prisoners’ testimonies. On the other side, students will share a great banquet—signifying the Kingdom of God and “the beloved community”—while a narrator reads from Hebrew Scriptures, Christian Scriptures, and other religious texts.

“When we gather and build community with each other at the banquet table, we experience a call to find ourselves in others—to realize that we are the detainees and the interrogators,” said Jerica Arents, a graduate student at Loyola University. “We are one humanity, one body. We cannot sit complacently as men continue to be tortured.”

Kairos Chicago, a nonviolent community of faith, resistance, and Gandhian “experiments with truth,” meets twice each month in the Edgewater/Rogers Park neighborhood. An intergenerational community, Kairos Chicago brings women and men together to celebrate Good News, identify signs of hope in our communities, and to pray, study and act in resistance to the violence and injustice in our world. Its members are committed to faith and conscience, learning and scripture study, and nonviolent direct action.

FROM FEBRUARY 28TH TO MARCH 7TH, TEN MEMBERS OF KAIROS CHICAGO WILL TRAVEL TO WASHINGTON, D.C. to participate in the 100 Days Campaign to Shut Down Guantánamo and End Torture. More information on this campaign can be found at http://www.100dayscampaign.org/.