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Robert is an acclaimed artist and draft resister who risked prison for his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1946, Robert is best known for his portrait series “Americans Who Tell The Truth” which he began as a personal response to the U.S war against Iraq.

He has painted 100s of Americans who he sees as beacons for truth. People like Amy Goodman, Edward Snowden, Joanna Macy, Noam Chomsky and Pete Seeger.  Robert has travelled the world as part of the Americans Who Tell The Truth project and he has now started a non-profit organization that encourages students to explore models of courageous citizenship.

I met Robert at the World Fellowship Center, a renowned social justice retreat and conference center in New Hampshire that was founded in 1941 as a place of sanctuary and recreation for people of all religions and races.  Robert, who now lives in Maine, shared his fascinating life story with me including incredible stories of the pressures he faced resisting the Vietnam war, the death threats he received as a young teacher in rural West Virginia, his decision to join the back to the land movement and how he became a self-taught artist.  Robert spends his time highlighting the courage of others and it was a privilege for me to make time to highlight his courageous journey.

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The Love and Courage podcast

The Love and Courage podcast features interviews with inspirational people who are making a real difference in the world today. Guests are typically people passionate about social justice, and who have demonstrated courage and conviction in their lives.

Host Ruairí McKiernan is leading Irish social innovator, campaigner, writer and public speaker. He is the founder of the pioneering SpunOut.ie youth organization, and helped set-up the Uplift and the A Lust For Life non-profits. In 2012 the President of Ireland Michael D Higgins appointed Ruairí to the Council of State, a national constitutional advisory body whose members include all current and former leaders of the country. Ruairí is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright fellowship, and he contributes regularly to the media on youth, health, community and social justice issues.

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Transcript

 
[00:03:28] RM: Robert, thanks so much for joining me on the Love and Courage podcast. We find ourselves here in the World Fellowships Center. And I’d love, to start, if you could tell me about how you found yourself here, and what your relationship with the center is, and how far it goes back.
 
[00:03:46] RS: I became… I came here, the first time I think is maybe seven or eight years ago. A friend of mine from Maine – my best buddy, a man named Doug Hendrick – called me up one day and said: “I hear Noam Chomsky’s speaking at the World Fellowship Centre in New Hampshire.” I had never actually… I mean, I had read Noam Chomsky, and I had actually painted his portrait as part of the work I do, which is had done from photographs – but I had not met him. I had idolized him. And that’s quite a hike for us, from the coast of Maine. It was about a four-and-a-half- or five-hour drive to get here to hear Chomsky. And so, we came to this place that turned out to be a little funkier than I expected, and they had cleaned out the dining hall to allow for as many people as possible to be here to hear him. And just as, in a kind of tribute, a homage to him, I brought my portrait of him to hang up during the time that he was here. And Andy Davis, who was the head of it then, saw the portrait and suggested that, maybe, the next year I would bring back some more portraits, and they would actually put them up. And that’s the way it happened, then. Afterwards, the next year, they did invite me to come with six or ten portraits, and hang them up for the summer, and then come back myself and give some talks here. And it’s become a regular thing, and it’s become, also, a very important part of my summer. I mean, I… Well, like a lot of people, I imagine, do the thing I do: you never know when to stop. You just… There’s always this feeling, like: “I could be doing more. If I only did a little bit more, maybe things would actually change.” [Laughter]. And so, I come here, and I stop for a bit. It’s fun to meet all the amazing people you meet here, and give a few talks – but really, just to go down to the pond and kayak around, or go on hikes with various people you meet, and relax. It’s a significant and important thing to do.
 
[00:06:06] RM: Have you always struggled with that, with the need to relax? Have you always been a go-go-go all your life?
 
[00:06:14] RS: I think I have been a go-go-go person, but it came right out of my childhood. My father, who was a man of some integrity, was also a man who told his children that what counted in your life was not the grade you got, but the effort you put in. So, everything was based on effort. And I, from a very early age, began to try to live that way. In school I worked hard to get good grades, and I tried to work really hard to be a good athlete, and do everything that was expected of me. It was a number of years before I realized that the only problem with that is that I hadn’t taken any time to get to know who I was. I was doing what other people wanted me to do, and working very hard at it. And I began to understand that I had to be doing other things in order to find out who I was. But I never let go of the sense of how important it was to work hard. And so, there’s that nagging Puritan ethic in me, which says: “Work harder. Work harder.” And the truth is, I think I enjoy working hard. I mean, I enjoy taking the time to try to make something of value by working hard on it. I mean, that’s the real thing. It isn’t just for the sake of working hard, it’s for the sake of making something of value – whether it’s in a relationship, or it’s a painting, or a poem. Whatever it is, to really put in the time.
 
[00:07:51] RM: And you mentioned that idea of getting to know yourself. Around what age did you start to develop an awareness of that?
 
[00:07:59] RS: That happened in high school, I think. There was a period when… I had been going through all these motions, and achieving. I also lived in the kind of family where you received love based on achievement, not just who you were. And I started to read a lot of literature. I wasn’t interested in art at that time, it was all literature. I read poetry and novels and things. And I was beginning to get this sense that there was a lot more to life, and other people, and myself, than I had any idea of. And I started to write, myself. And I think it was through writing poetry that I began to find a voice – or at least a way of looking inward, which I hadn’t done before. It was all looking outward, and modelling myself on other people’s expectations – and now, I was beginning to look at myself, and through that process, I could face my own insecurities, my own questions, my own confusions about who I might be, and what I might want to really do. And then, some very personal things happened in high school, where there were some really exceptionally brilliant kids in my school who I noticed that the teachers were insecure with. They didn’t… They were too smart for them. And I think they put the teachers on the defensive – and they often participated in a kind of heckling of these kids. And I thought: “Wow, I think I need to take a stand with those boys.” Who were so vulnerable, really – they were not the kind of kids who knew how to stand up for themselves. And by doing that, I separated myself out from the group that had been my peer group. In the process of that, I understood that I had not just the ability to explore myself, but – by acting a certain way in the world, by choosing sides, sometimes – that I could have a significant effect on the way other people might be treated. But I could also… But I was defining myself by doing that, in ways that I had not anticipated at all. Just a simple action of standing up for a couple of kids who I admired and thought were being mistreated, I had defined myself, and to myself, in a way that I was surprised by. But what happens is, you do one thing like that, and then you realize: “Well, there are a hundred other things I could be doing.” And then, you… Each one of those kinds of actions gives you permission to begin to act differently in other aspects of your life. And I think it’s that giving of permission which is the real lesson that I learned at that time.
 
[00:11:28] RM: Yes, it strikes me that there was, almost, an awakening to a moral code, or a sense of right or wrong, there. Was that something that also ran through your family? A sense of justice?
 
[00:11:39] GL: It was. My family… My father was a corporate executive, but today you would say that – and, well, probably then, too, if you wanted to – would be highly suspect, in terms of a moral code. But he was a man of great integrity. And I remember, he was still alive in the 1990s when the celebrity salary was really getting rolling in the corporate world. People paying themselves huge amounts of money, and huge bonuses, and becoming multi-multi-millionaires. He was appalled. His sense of being a corporate – you know, a fairly well-paid corporate – person was mostly the responsibility that entailed. How much you then had to give back to your community, because you had been privileged to receive that kind of payment for what you did. And I was very moved by that. As I mentioned earlier, he was a lot about working hard, but he was also about working hard with a set of values that justified your success.
 
[00:12:58] RM: So, I’m imagining this young Robert with his poetry book in hand – was he part of an emerging beatnik generation? Were you part of a wider movement, do you think, around that time?
 
[00:13:11] RS: You know, I don’t really know to what extent I was part of something else. At the time, it was very, very personal. I wasn’t aware of a lot of the movements going on in this country. I grew up just outside Cincinnati, in southern Ohio. I wasn’t really aware of the beatniks, I wasn’t aware of, even, I don’t think I was very aware of the beginning of the Vietnam War, and the protests. It became, actually, a huge part of my life shortly after that – but at this point in high school, I was mostly aware of personal achievement in school, and playing sports, and meeting girls, and starting to open up a sensitive side of myself by writing poetry. Things changed a lot, though, for me in… I graduated from high school in 1965. My brother, my older brother, was already in college. And he was… In 1964, he went to Mississippi as part of their Freedom Summer. That was a shock to me – I didn’t know what this was all about. And I was stunned to see the uproar that happened in our house, and in our community, because of his doing that. And that was a huge awakening for me. For him to try to explain what was going on in the world, and what was going on in Mississippi, and why he needed to be part of that – and then the discussions we had around American history, and race, and what our responsibility was to get involved. That opened my ideas, much more than myself as a potential young poet, myself as a person inheriting a legacy of racism in this country, and as a white person having some responsibility to become involved.
 
[00:15:17] RM: And from there, did you go on to university or college?
 
[00:15:22] RS: I did. I left Cincinnati in 1965, and went to Harvard. And immediately began to be involved in both civil rights work and then, probably a year or two later, in anti-Vietnam – or peace –work. And so, as much as I was engaged in studying, and having that whole world open up for me – that kind of intellectual world, which was not really part of my upbringing, and was very exciting – was also getting engaged in the big movements of the time. I mean, those were the movements that defined that generation. It’s interesting to me, the way the sixties are now talked about – and were shortly after talked about, as though this were an era of irresponsibility, in a way. The hippies, and the drugs, and the counter-culture – it didn’t seem like that to me. To me, it was… And the people that I was around – even though, obviously, there were a lot of hippies – but the way that they defined themselves, to me, was really in taking responsibility for what the world was, at that time, and trying to change it. And being much more open, emotionally and physically and spiritually, to what the possibilities of being a human might be were a huge part of that. But that wasn’t hedonistic, it wasn’t irresponsible – or it didn’t seem, to me. It was actually trying to discover what the responsibility of each of us is, as a human being, to become a full human being. And I don’t think that we really solve the problems in the world if we haven’t tried to understand what that is. It’s like: the first duty of a teacher should be to help each student become the person that that student could be. Not in terms of becoming a gear in the globalized economy – but you’ll be a successful person, a successful citizen, a successful…anything you do, the more deeply you know your own self. And that should be the first tenet of education: help the kids become themselves, discover who they really are. And in a way, that seemed to be one of the things that was really taking place in the sixties, and was so important – people who had come out of this, actually, very conformist and repressive culture trying to discover: well, who the hell really are we? What does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to be in relationship with other people, and with the environment? How do we then act? We were inventing that. Which doesn’t, as I said, mean being irresponsible – it means exploration. And that had to happen. And that exploration was coupled with all this awareness of social justice, and how one needed to act in relationship to other people.
 
[00:18:56] RM: How much of that do you think was a reaction to Vietnam?
 
[00:19:01] RS: Well, it was a huge part. And Vietnam was this cloud that kept getting darker and darker, and more and more oppressive. I felt, because I was a student – and I don’t know how many people remember the history, exactly – but if you were a student in the United States during those years, you got what was called a 2S deferment. You didn’t have to go fight. And as long as you could stay in school, you could stay out of it. That seemed, to me, a totally immoral privilege. I mean, if a country gets to the place where people are having to not just risk their lives, but risk taking on the burden of killing other human beings for the protection of your society – which is the way it has to be framed – if you’re doing that, why in the world should it only be poor people, or people who can’t afford to go to school, or dropouts, or whatever it is, that have to bear that burden? This should be a burden that everyone takes on equally, or it’s corrupt, it’s immoral. And I couldn’t abide having that deferment. It also turned out that I was…the more I thought about it and studied it, the more opposed I was to the war itself. I mean, it wasn’t just a question of having a deferment while other people fought – it was a question of them fighting in a war that shouldn’t have ever been fought, that was a war of imperialism. And a war of geopolitical gain that nobody should be dying in. So, I turned in my draft card and thought I would go to jail because of it. It meant that much to me. I just couldn’t’ live with myself, otherwise – being in that kind of privileged situation.
 
[00:21:05] RM: Do you remember the moment of receiving your draft card?
 
[00:21:09] RS: Well, I remember, I was still in high school when I got my draft card. I didn’t actually, at that moment, I don’t think I was… The world of Vietnam and where it might take me, or what it might ask of me, didn’t seem…it wasn’t present. It was just a thing that 18-year-olds did – you got this card, and it was almost like a rite of passage. You accepted it as: “Oh, now I’m potentially grown up, in a certain sense.” It wasn’t until I got in college, and started really realizing this was about me, and this was about war – and this was an opportunity to take a stand or not, about how I was going to respond to having that card. That was the thing that I became aware of as it went along.
 
[00:22:03] RM: Did you have friends and family, friends or family, that went to Vietnam?
 
[00:22:10] RS: In college, I had… I knew people who went. And I didn’t have family who went. That was… But it was so omnipresent – there were people all around, whether I knew them well or not – who were making these choices. And it was a topic of conversation constantly amongst people. You know: “How are you going to deal with this?” And people were making all kinds of decisions, for all kinds of reasons. Some people, it was only: “Why should I let this war interrupt my life? Why don’t I go to Canada, and get away from this?” It wasn’t so much that it might be a bad war, or an unnecessary war, or an immoral or illegal war – it was that: “I don’t want this to have that control over me.” Or… And then, people were doing things like getting a doctor to say that they’re mentally unstable, or they’ve got some injury that… That seemed a bad way out. I mean, this was a war… It was a situation where you had to face it squarely. You had to… The decision had to be ethical, rather than escapist. And that’s what I felt: that the only way to respond to it was to do something like what I did. Either go, or resist. You had to make those kinds of choices – anything else was morally sloppy, I thought [laughter].
 
[00:23:58] RM: And you did so with the awareness and understanding that that could end up in prison.
 
[00:24:02] RS: I did. Yes, I had no… I certainly had no idea what that might be like for me. Up to five years in prison, which was the penalty for resisting the draft. But it seemed like, if this war was going to be stopped, it was going to have to be not because poor people were refusing, but because privileged people were refusing. I mean, that’s where the greatest pressure would come down on the government, I thought, was when families like mine got upset about it, and said… It’s like, my father would say: “My son’s in prison – we’ve got to stop this war.” [Laughter].
 
[00:24:58] RM: So, what happened next? Did you end up in prison?
 
[00:25:04] RS: No, no, it was interesting – one of the worst days of my life, ever, was when I was… Because as soon as you turn in your draft card, you get classified 1A, which means they’ll take you any time. And then, I was called for induction, and I went to the Boston Navy shipyard for the induction one day, at 5 o’clock in the morning, or whatever they did. These busloads of kids would come in, and then go through the physicals and everything. And the last thing you’d do at the physical is have to sign a loyalty oath. And I refused to sign it. And everybody else went home – and I was the only one, that day, that refused that. And I was not emotionally prepared for what this was going to be like, I had no idea. I just knew I was going to do it. So then, they kept me for hours, grilling me, with these army, navy intelligence people. Alone in a room, being asked all these questions about: “Well, who put you up to this? Why are you doing this?”
 
[00:26:02] RM: You’re in your early twenties, at this stage, are you?
 
[00:26:04] RS: No, I was – yes, maybe 19 or 20. 20, maybe. I was not… One, for some reason just physically – it was probably the stress – I had an intense headache. I felt awful. And it just went on, and on, and on. They just kept asking these questions – and it was an interrogation. And I was exhausted by it. But I just was straight with them: nobody had put me up to it, all that kind of stuff. But it was exhausting. And then a few days later, the FBI came to my college dorm room – two agents came to interview me, and ask me the same kinds of questions. I mean, suddenly you’re aware: you take a step like that, and you suddenly realize the power of the state to come down on you pretty hard, and turn up a certain kind of pressure. It’s very easy, at some point, to say: “OK, I’ll do what you want [laughter]. Just stop doing this to me.” And it created enormous consternation around me, with other people that I knew – my roommates, my friends. A lot of people wanting to know what was really going on, here, and why was I doing this? The school newspaper did an article about it, and stuff. And I was… But it’s funny, it’s one of those things where – which is often, I think, the way people get through certain kinds of events, where they have taken a stand – if you’ve done the first action, if you can just hang on, other things will then fall in place. And you can get through it. It’s making that first decision which is the hardest one. “I’m going to do this. I’m going to turn in the draft card.” I had gone down to Yale – [inaudible 00:28:11] was speaking, encouraging people to turn in draft cards. I had turned mine in. There were hundreds of kids there doing it. The moment you do that, you’re with a lot of people – there’s a certain strength and power in that. But all of a sudden – later, when you’ve done it – you’re totally isolated, and it’s all eyes on you, and asking you to respond in a way you had never expected to be dealt with. So, it was fascinating – and very hard, for a while. And then, nothing happened. I mean, I exchanged letters frequently with my draft board, and told them…kept them up to date. I kept trying to send them stuff about the war, and why I didn’t want to go, and what was wrong with it, and why no one should go, and all that stuff. And they ignored me, and I kept sending them stuff. I was just trying to slow it down. I was in no hurry to get into jail – I just wanted to resist. And then, I was graduating from college, and nothing had happened. So I went down to West Virginia with my… I got married right out of college, and we went to West Virginia, taught school in little mountain schools, and then the lottery came… I don’t know if you remember – or anybody remembers – that one of the ways that they dealt with the draft, towards the end of the war, was to give people lottery numbers. And if you had a low lottery number, you could be drafted. If you had a high lottery number, chances are you wouldn’t be. I was given a high number – but it wouldn’t have made any difference, because I was delinquent anyway. But then, they didn’t come after me. I don’t know why. It was strange, the whole thing was strange. But I was not going to commit myself. If they weren’t going to get me… “If they’re not coming, fine.” And I went along with my life.
 
[00:29:29] RM: Can you tell me about your life in that rural school in West Virginia? And you say you were married at the time, as well? What was life like?
 
[00:30:09] [Pause]. [00:30:12] RS: West Virginia, in the 1969 and ’70 – rural, mountainous West Virginia, southern West Virginia where I was – there was a… I think, after a couple of months there, I thought that everything else in my life up to this point, in terms of education, had been irrelevant. That I was finally up against a kind of cultural and physical reality which was going to teach me lessons about life, and who I was, and also how I could be…what I could be doing in a situation, that I would have learned in no other way. I mean, whether I was growing up in Ohio, or in Cambridge going to school, compared to the life of people living in the mountains in West Virginia, it seemed unreal – totally unreal. These were… The people I was involved with were what are often called hillbillies. These are Anglo-Saxon people – a lot of them Scots Irish – been there for a long time, often very, very poor, having all kinds of family, and job, and… There’s enormous problems, there. And also, a fascinating culture. But my wife and I, coming from Cambridge, we had no idea what we were getting into, in a sense. We thought that it was a good idea to go up into this area, and then live with the people we were teaching, where we got these jobs. And so, we lived in a little shack up in the mountains. What we didn’t realize is: people in the communities around us, the more well-to-do people, thought that was really suspicious. You know, why would people with good educations come to places like that and live with a bunch of hillbillies? And teach them in school? And the only explanation they had was: well, you had to be a Communist. And so, even though we were trying to be as apolitical as possible – you know, I had short hair, and shaved off my beard, said nothing about politics, and just spent time with kids and their parents – what we didn’t realize was, at the local revival meetings and stuff, they were very shortly preaching that somebody ought to do something about the Commies up in the hills. And that was us. And it… We hadn’t been there too long when we started getting death threats, which escalated to a point – after a year – that our neighbors said we were… It was unsafe for us to be there. And it happened – people came to the house with guns. Which was a very curious confrontation [laughter], which we survived. But anyway, that kind of thing was going on there all the time. But it was so… Do you know the books of Cormac McCarthy, by any chance?
 
[00:33:33] RM: Yes.
 
[00:33:35] RS: Some of his early books are set in places like where we were, with just this intense mixture of religiosity, superstition, violence, and ignorance – but machismo, too. And it’s a very curious and volatile mix, and very hard for somebody who likes to think of himself as a rationalist to get into, and understand what the thought patterns are. And people are often talking to you in ways, in a kind of language that, to you, is coded. You don’t really get what they’re saying, or what their intentions are. And it took us a long time to… We never cracked the code, in a way – but we did understand that it was happening, after a while. That there was a kind of communication going on, which we couldn’t read, that was going to come down heavily on us in that situation. And it was fascinating. I remember that time of my life intensely, almost day-by-day, much more than almost anything that’s happened since then. Because it was so startlingly new to me. And there isn’t time, now, to talk about all the details of that, but it was a fascinating time.
 
[00:35:20] RM: And from there, did you stay in the world of education? It sounds like you had…
 
[00:35:24] RS: No – what I didn’t tell you in all this was that I… Coming out of college, I had gotten to this point where I – amongst all the other things, the civil rights, and the Vietnam, and everything – what I really wanted to do was be a visual artist. I had studied English Literature, and thought I was going to write and teach. Now, what I wanted to do was draw and paint. And I was… I also thought that acting in the world, like this teaching in West Virginia, was an important thing to do. But I was also… When I had the energy, in between the teaching and the things we were doing, I was starting to draw and paint. In 1970, we left West Virginia and moved to Maine, because I – we – liked being in the country now. We just didn’t like the political climate of the south. And we moved and I did 11 years of the back to the land movement in Maine, living off the grid, raising my two kids, building gardens, building a house, cutting wood, digging clams on the Maine coast to survive. And, by kerosene light at night, teaching myself how to draw. And that became my central passion, for years… What I discovered was that the way into myself was no longer through words – it was through images. And I was fascinated with learning the discipline – which I didn’t seem to have any real aptitude for, it wasn’t like I was a natural artist – the discipline of looking out at the world, and then trying to reproduce it with some aesthetic quality. With lines, at first, just lines – no color, just lines. I loved drawing. And that took years, to get to a place where I thought I was actually sufficient enough, and had developed enough skill, to try to become at least somewhat professional in it. And I began my illustrating for little farm and garden books, drawing pigs, and chickens, and broccoli [laughter]. But it was a way to develop a language, like you would develop, enlarge, your vocabulary to become a poet. I was developing a visual language that, eventually, would allow me to explore who I was as a person through images.
 
[00:38:06] RM: I’m curious about the back to the land aspect, particularly in the context of talking to friends in New York, or Boston, and also back home in Dublin. It’s now at the point where it’s almost become impossible for many people to live in a city or an urban environment without a lot of hardship and mental stress. And yet, we have these vast swathes of land – particularly in Ireland – that are unoccupied, and rural depopulation, which I know is also happening, still, in parts of Maine. Do you think that notion of “back to the land,” as it was as a movement, could become more relevant again, today? And what was involved in that journey?
 
[00:38:51] RS: It’s already becoming more relevant in Maine. There was a period, there, were there was this wave of people who came in, in the late ‘60s and ‘70s’, into Maine. I wasn’t even aware of that – and for us, it wasn’t that we were necessarily fleeing urban life. We thought we were doing the logical political step, in a way. That one of the things that was the problem with civil rights, and the problem, particularly more, with Vietnam – the problem with the American political structure – was that it was essentially unrelated to nature. And that re-establishing a relationship with nature was a very political thing to be doing. And so, it wasn’t just because I thought that I would really like the taste of a carrot better if it came out of my own garden. This was a statement to make. Like resisting the draft was a statement, going back to the land was a statement. It was also, for me, a thing about discovering what’s real. I mean, you can grow up in a middle-class environment, probably anywhere in the world, and if you really look at it, you feel: “There’s something slightly unreal about this. I don’t know what it takes to survive in the world.” Here we live in this little, tiny speck in the cosmos – and shouldn’t we know, get as close as we can to reality? What is it where the rubber meets the road? How do you put a roof over your own head? How do you take care of your essential needs yourself? Grow your own food, cut your own wood, put a roof over your head and your family, and care for yourself in the world. And it can be very exhilarating, as well as stressful, as you go through that process. What’s interesting to me… Because that came as a wave, and then it sort of petered out. All those people stayed, and became very important in local cultures, and a lot of them moved out of that lifestyle. At least where I live in Maine, now, it’s all coming back again – with a different intent, though. People are coming back not just as isolated individuals trying to get in some closer relationship with nature, but they’re coming as whole communities of young people, who have skills, and they’re building what we used to call communes, except they’re much better at it than, I think, we were in the ‘60s or ‘70s. Because they have professions. In the town I live in, there’s a group of young people who are making some of the best bread in the world. And they’re also musicians, and they also don’t allow drugs, and they are very focused about the way they shape their lives, about the way they interact with the larger community, the fact that they take responsibility for making enough money to care for their basic needs. And then they do all this cultural stuff in the larger community, really integrating into the full community, rather than isolating themselves from it. It’s another way to do this, that I think a lot of people didn’t recognize in the ‘60s or the ‘70s. And so, it’s very exciting to see that. What’s interesting, I think, in relation to your question, though, is that vast parts of the United States, now, this could be done in. In the Mid-West, say, where property values – unlike in the cities and on the coast – are actually going down. Where jobs have left, and communities are kind of desolate, often – they really need people to come in and reinvent what it means to be a community, reinvent what it means to be “local.” The kinds of things that young people can do in a community, outside large systems that we have developed for the way we live. The food systems, the transportation systems, the education systems, the financial systems – some of these are very hard to fight against, and to interrupt, their size and power. Food, though, is one anybody can take control of, if you are imaginative and willing to work hard. You can actually change that system – and when you change the way we eat, and the way we grow our food, and the way we interact around it, you can change a whole lot about the culture and the politics. And I think that’s something that could be happening on a much larger scale – and probably will happen. But we’ll see.
 
[00:44:10] RM: So, your resistance to war, and your opposition to war, didn’t end with Vietnam. And nor did American wars end with Vietnam. And I know that the Iraq War, in particular, spurred you into action, and that’s where your “rubber hits the road” in relation to your anti-war position and your painting came together, in what is now your current project. Can you talk to me about that?
 
[00:44:40] RS: Definitely. I, in that gap between the back to the land, Vietnam and what I do now, I gradually developed a voice as a surrealist print-maker and painter. And actually got to a point where I could support myself and my family making art. And I also thought I was doing… I mean, I think a lot of people, we don’t often think – or we’re not asked to think – whatever profession you choose, what is the cultural significance of that? What is the communital significance? What are the ethics, for instance, of being a plumber, in a society? Or being an electrician, or being a teacher? What does that mean about what is being asked of you, in relation to other people, because of the profession? It’s certainly not asked for many artists. Who are you in relationship to society, because you choose to be an artist? Are you just the outcast who assumes the freedom to make pictures while other people work 8-hour days? For me, it was always important to think about that. To think about: what is my role I’m playing as I’m making these pictures about mystery and ambiguity? And I thought: “Well, what I’m doing is, I’m challenging people to go deeper into their own lives, to use their imaginations and their experience to ask some fundamental questions about who we are as human beings.” That was, really, the primary motive behind what I was referring to as surrealism, was not just to be irresponsibly dreamlike, but to ask significant questions – and use that as the method of getting there. To me, it was like visual poetry, and asking serious questions. In the run-up to the Iraq War, right after 9/11, that all changed for me. It was plain to me, as it should have been to a lot of people, that the government was lying, and the media was going along with it. And it was a crisis for me. I thought: “Either I respond to this with the thing that I do best, which is making images, or I should probably leave this country – because I can’t stand being here, and be alienated and voiceless at this moment. I’ve got to respond in some way.” I didn’t know what to do, though. I was filled with rage, I was filled with grief for all the victims there were going to be, I was… It was a hard time for me. But it took me several months to come up with something which was actually very simple – that I would respond, in terms of art, by surrounding myself with people I admired from this culture. Rather than feel further isolated by just ranting through my art about what was wrong: that these were lies, the policies were immoral, blah blah blah. That instead, I had to use that energy – of all that anger and grief – to do something positive. And what that turned out to be was by painting portraits of people I admired, sort of reattaching myself to the best of this country, and its history. Rather than feeling totally alienated from it. And I wanted to paint the people who had insisted – and it’s been an enormous struggle, and it continues – that the country live up to its professed ideals, rather than live up to the myth of itself. Because the myth of itself is a very dangerous thing – it’s full of [laughter]… We call ourselves a democracy, but the myth of ourselves is all about exceptionality – and the two things are oil and water, they don’t mix. But we keep pretending they do. “We are an exceptional people – we believe in democracy.” Not true. And unfortunately, we are controlled by people who – or the government is controlled, politics are controlled, corporations are controlled – by people who believe in that kind of entitlement, which is anathema to the idea of a democratic republic. [00:49:08 track ends]
 
MONO-001
 
[00:00:01] RM: So, can you tell me about how the project has evolved so far, Robert, and perhaps some of the people that you’ve met and painted along the way?
 
[00:00:09] RS: Sure. I had a little epiphany one day, that I would – it really struck me, I didn’t know exactly where it came from – but it was the answer to what I was looking for, in terms of a way to use the energy of my anger and grief. It was that I would paint 50 portraits – I had never painted a portrait at this point. I would paint 50 portraits, I would call them ‘Americans Who Tell The Truth,’ and then I would give them away. And that last part was… I don’t know why, that just suddenly happened. I just said it to myself: “I’m going to give it all away.” And I think I had a premonition that the people I would paint would be people who had given so much of their lives – sometimes, often, their lives – to the ideals of this country, and freely. They were not being paid to do it. And they would… And so, whatever I did as an artist had to be a metaphor for the lives of those people. So, if I was going to paint Frederick Douglas, I couldn’t sell Frederick Douglas [laughter]. You understand the irony of that – I mean, here’s a man who was a slave. If I was going to paint Susan B Anthony, or Mother Jones, or Jane Adams, I couldn’t sell these people. I couldn’t make their images and sell them – I would have to give them away. And just the idea that I would embark on a project that I actually had no idea how long it would go, or whether I would actually do it or not – but that it would suddenly separate myself from the commerciality around art – made me feel free, for the first time in my life. Totally free. Even though I had tried to be free as a surrealist – now, I thought, I can say whatever I want, I can make the pictures I want to, and no matter what happens, I will be free. And I set out to do that. And I painted Frederick Douglas, I painted Sojourner Truth, I painted Harriet Tubman, I painted all the women from the women’s movement in the 19th Century, and the labor leaders. I began in the 19th Century, and [00:02:35 stumble] iconic figures in American history – although, when you go into schools and the media, you find out that people know very little about these people. Even though they may know the names, they have no idea what they were really up against, what kind of courage they had, how they were treated, what their struggles were, and how much their own lives today depend on what those people did. We’re not taught that – and we’re not taught to even remember that at all. It was fascinating, to me, what I was learning. I was just astounded at the lives of these folks. Because I was reading biographies, and histories, and interviews, and suddenly felt I was on a vertical learning curve in terms of history, and citizenship, and responsibility – and power. So much of it was about power. Who has the power? How do you get power? What is the relationship of money to power? Why is there so much resistance to people living out the ideals that we claim we all embrace? And gradually, after a couple of years of doing this, pretty much in isolation, people started to take notice. And by then, I was actually moving up into the early 20th Century, and I was collecting portrait after portrait after portrait. I think the first couple of years, I painted more than 20 a year. And also doing all the research around the history and the biography. And then, people started to ask me to talk. I never expected that – I just thought I was doing this thing that was important to me, but I didn’t realize the educational potential of it. And then, I started being asked to talk in schools, and talk to community groups, and talk in libraries. And the project began to blossom, and we formed a non-profit so that we could accept donations to keep the project going. And then, people were asking me: “Well, I want to show the pictures in Ohio.” And I live on the coast of Maine, so it means shipping paintings. It was expensive, and how do you afford to do all that? So, we needed to start to raise money. It’s interesting how things like that suddenly develop, and what starts as a very personal statement, and important therapeutic [laughter] process for myself, then becomes an educational project. And I think it’s partly because what was going on in me was going on in millions of other people. You know: “What is this country? How do we live here? Who are the people we should really be listening to at this time? Should we be listening to Howard Zinn more than George Bush?” And each painting, though, I knew – besides the importance of the portrait – what I did to make it very pointed was: I scratched a quote from that person into the surface of the painting. And that was a key part of the idea of Americans Who Tell The Truth, is that these quotes – I thought – were particular truths about who we have been, who we are, what we could be, and why we aren’t what we claim to be. And they were not softballs. I mean, you can throw softballs and call them truth – these were tough. For instance, let me just give you one example: one of the people I painted early on, who was not a 19th Century figure but extremely important to me, was Wendell Berry, who is a poet, novelist, essayist, and farmer from Kentucky. Still alive, he’s in his mid-80s now. One of the great people in the world explaining what a land ethic should be – how we have to be in relationship to the world, and to nature, and to land, if we’re going to survive on this planet. And the quote I put on his painting came from an essay he wrote at the end of what was called the First Gulf War, in 1991, when the US had invaded… Well, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and then the United States had put together this coalition of countries to kick them out. I mean, that’s a superficial explanation of what happened there. But Wendell Berry wrote this essay at the end of it. He said – and this is what I put on his painting – “the most alarming sign of the state of our country today is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but not the courage to tell us to be less greedy, and less wasteful.” If you take a statement like that and, say, talk to high school kids, and ask them: “What’s he talking about? What kind of courage does it take for a leader to sacrifice the lives of young people in war? Is he being sardonic, is he being cynical? What’s he talking about?” And then you say to them: “Well, what kind of courage would it take to less us to be less greedy, and less wasteful? And why has he put these two things together?” Really analyze that statement – it doesn’t take long for any group of high school kids to figure out that there’s a relationship between those two things, and finally, that the reason that leaders don’t have the courage to demand that we be less wasteful, and less greedy, is because of the economy. That we’ve built an economy based on waste and greed, and that the most sacred thing in our society is basically our economy, and keeping it going. That keeping, maintaining, the level of waste and greed that we have to keep it moving – the economy moving. And if that is the most important thing, then sacrificing the lives of your own children to keep it going – having the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people – is secondary. [00:08:48 interference] –
 
[00:08:53] RS: It was finding quotes like that from people from all areas and walks of our lives – whether it’s around economic issues, environment issues, gender issues, women’s issues, educational issues, workers’ issues, you name it – our society is full of people who’ve had the courage and the perseverance to demand that we see a certain truth about what’s going on, and then live in accordance with that. And, often, staked their lives on doing that. And so, this has been absolutely fascinating for me – to be identifying with some of those people. The thing is, there are millions of them. And then honor them by trying to paint a portrait, and then use the portrait, in turn, for education. And my life, through the process, has been absolutely changed by this. Both the process of the larger part, of just making the portraits and doing the educational work, but the other thing is: meeting the people I’ve painted. I’ve painted, now, over 230 portraits – the goal being 50. It’s an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at this point, I just can’t stop, because they’re so interesting. I keep hearing about, and meeting people, who are doing amazing things. And some of them have become such great friends that I want to keep doing things with them, which is fascinating. I went to Rwanda with an artist named Lily Yeh to work in a village of survivors of genocide, and use art to rebuilt community. Again, I went with her to Palestine to work in refugee camps in the West Bank, also using art to rebuilt community. [00:10:47 interference].
 
[00:10:50] RS: I get to spend a lot of time with some of the most courageous people in our culture today, who are whistle-blowers, around all sorts of governmental, intelligence, corporate organizations. And it’s interesting – these are often the people inside organizations, and systems, and government who are, initially, the most patriotic, the most idealistic. And then, when they see corruption, they think that they’ve discovered it, and everybody’s going to want to know, and change because of it. Little did they know that the system, and the people who run the system, know fully well, know very well what’s going on – and they’re profiting by it, and will actually try to crush the whistle-blower when he or she tries to tell what’s really going on. These often turn out to be absolutely fascinating people: about how they stand up to that stress, and how they continue to talk. Anyway, there’s just so many realms of what’s happening today, and people who struggle against it, and people who find community, and meaning, and joy in their lives by doing that work. I think a lot of people think that doing political activism is unfulfilling, tough, driven work – and it’s just the opposite, in a way. It is often very hard, because success is tough. But the communities, people who are involved in the work are wonderful people. And [00:12:41 interference] full of great life, and spirituality, and meaning, and fun [00:12:50 pause].
 
[00:12:53] RS: One of the people I painted, who was probably one of the best-known – because I’ve discovered that most of the people I paint are not well-known, even the people that should be – is a world figure, Helen Keller. And most people know her as the person who did so much about awakening people to disability, the lives of people with disabilities, and beginning a movement for disability rights. Changed consciousness, you know? She really changed the consciousness of how people think, which is one of the things that everybody wants to do. But anyway, the quote that’s on her painting, I think, is one of the most significant in the whole Americans Who Tell The Truth series, now. And she said: “When you come to think of it, there are no such things – no such things – as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights.” She was basically saying that our Declaration of Independence is wrong. We don’t really have these things. We don’t have these inalienable rights. When she says: “When you come to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights – rights are things you get when you have the strength to put your claim on them.” That is profound, about what it means to be an agent in a democratic society. That we aren’t just born with these things – we like to think that, but we’re not. We have these rights because we struggle for them. And in one sense, that sounds: “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to work even harder now – we’ve got this big fight.” But no – it’s an enormous opportunity. We know that we can achieve these goals, make sure that not just we have rights, but other people have rights – or at least have the opportunity to have rights – if we have courage. That we can do this. And people have done it, you know? And that’s the great lesson of all these paintings, too: people have done this. We have succeeded in getting more civil rights, in ending Jim Crow, in ending lynching, in giving workers rights, in ending child labor, in giving women rights. These things all happened, and they happened not easily, but with struggle, by people who understood that they would have no rights unless they claimed them. Helen Keller understood that – we all can understand that. If we understand that deeply enough, we can transform this world.
 
[00:15:45] RM: Robert, thank you so much for this conversation, and for all your incredible work in the world.
 
[00:15:49] RS: Thank you – I’m just keeping myself alive [laughter].
 
[00:15:54] RM: Thanks again, Robert.
 
[00:15:55] RS: Yes, thank you.
 


​

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More information about the Love and Courage podcast, other episodes, and sign-up for e-newsletter at www.loveandcourage.org ​​​​​

Irish-Australian peace activist Ciaron O'Reilly was once described by Martin Sheen as his personal hero. Ciaron grew up in Australia and has spent his life in the Christian anarchist pacifist Catholic Worker movement. Ciaron was mentored by the renowned anti-war priests Frs. Daniel and Philip Berrigan and for over 40 years now he has focused on supporting homeless communities and campaigning on Aboriginal, East Timorese, prisoner and refugee struggles. Part of this campaigning is explored in his book Remembering Forgetting: A Journey of Non-violent Resistance to the War in East Timor.

Ciaron has participated in numerous often controversial acts of civil disobedience – including the disabling of a B52 Bomber in New York on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War for which he served 13 months in U.S prisons. His actions also included disabling uranium mining equipment at the Australian Jabiluka mine site in 1998 and a U. S. Navy war plane at Shannon Airport during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In recent years he has been a friend, bodyguard and solidarity organiser for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and has been a leading light in organising support for US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Now in his late 50s, Ciaron shows no sign of slowing down in his activism.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, YouTube. Full transcript below.
​
More information about the Love and Courage podcast, other episodes, and sign-up for e-newsletter at www.loveandcourage.org ​​​​​
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The Love and Courage podcast

The Love and Courage podcast features interviews with inspirational people who are making a real difference in the world today. Guests are typically people passionate about social justice, and who have demonstrated courage and conviction in their lives.

Host Ruairí McKiernan is leading Irish social innovator, campaigner, writer and public speaker. He is the founder of the pioneering SpunOut.ie youth organization, and helped set-up the Uplift and the A Lust For Life non-profits. In 2012 the President of Ireland Michael D Higgins appointed Ruairí to the Council of State, a national constitutional advisory body whose members include all current and former leaders of the country. Ruairí is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright fellowship, and he contributes regularly to the media on youth, health, community and social justice issues.

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:38] CO: So, everything you do has both actual and symbolic. So, you know, the action of putting one plane out of action is one thing – but the symbolism of a fragile community coming together to disarm looks forward to a world of disarmament. Just like feeding someone a bowl of soup: it has a pragmatic but a symbolic… That you hope everyone will be fed, one day.
 
[00:01:03] RM: My guest in this episode is Irish-Australian peace activist Ciaron O’Reilly, who was once described by Martin Sheen as his personal hero. Ciaron grew up in Australia, and has spent most of his life in the Catholic Worker movement. Ciaron was mentored by renowned anti-war priests Father Daniel and Philip Berrigan – and, for over 40 years now, he has focused on supporting homeless communities, and campaigning on Aboriginal, East Timorese, prisoner, and refugee struggles. Ciaron has participated in numerous, and often controversial, acts of civil disobedience, including the disabling of a B-52 bomber in New York on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War – for which he served 13 months in US prisons. His actions also included disabling uranium mining equipment at the Australian Jabiluka mine site in 1998, and a US Navy warplane at Ireland’s Shannon Airport during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In recent years, he has been a friend, bodyguard and solidarity organizer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and he has been a leading light in organizing support for US army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning. Now in his late 50s, Ciaron shows no sign of slowing down in his activism. As you’re about to hear, he’s a fascinating person, determined to do all he can to live out his values, whilst challenging injustice and inequality. Here’s Ciaron O’Reilly.
 
[00:02:22] RM: OK, Ciaron – thanks very much for joining me on the podcast, today. I know you’re heading back to Australia soon, from Ireland, and I often catch you when you’re coming and going. And I’m just curious as to what you’re up to – what brings you home?
 
[00:02:36] CO: Yes, well the last six years, my focus has been solidarity with Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange who, I felt, were largely abandoned by the anti-war movement after exposing the war that millions marched against: the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. So, that’s been…it’s been one of solidarity, primarily, rather than continued resistance. And I guess, I think, there’s not much resistance because there’s not much solidarity. So, I think solidarity work is very, very important. So, I’ve spent the year between Dublin, here: three people host me each week – someone puts me up for three nights a week, the other guy for two, the other guy for two. We have a Catholic Worker farm near Watford that’s for destitute refugee women, and women who’ve been trafficked into England, and also a house for women and children. And there they gave me a hermitage beside a lake, which was very nice.
 
[00:03:41] RM: Does that mean you’re kind of monk-esque, now? I can call you Brother?
 
[00:03:47] CO: Yes! Well, it’s always… I remember, someone wrote a book called Contemplation and Resistance – I think it was James Douglass, in the 60s. And Ched Myers once quipped that what we end up doing is contemplating resistance, and resisting contemplation. So, it’s always been, primarily, a spiritual journey for me – which is expressed…for me, it’s radical Christianity.
 
[00:04:12] RM: And how are you with the contemplation bit? Because activists, by their nature, go for action – and they don’t tend to do so well with the quiet contemplation bit. Can you manage that?
 
[00:04:24] CO: Yes, I mean, I think I’m struck by the beauty of humanity, some days. And instead of rushing by that, I kind of dwell on it. And I believe all human lives are sacred, because it’s created in the image of God. You love God by loving humans – and that’s the expression of God in the world. So, that and I do enjoy the sacraments, and the rituals I was raised with. I remember, when I was in prison in Texas, I was the only white boy in the jail. And I used to go to the mass, which was in Spanish – and, being a linguistically land-locked Australian, the rhythms of the mass were really nourishing for me. So, I prefer more home-based liturgies, in workplaces or where people live, rather than the, kind of, football stadiums of churches.
 
[00:05:21] RM: So, when you…you drop in there: “When I was in prison in Texas.” I think most people would be curious to know: how does a white Aussie end up in prison in Texas?
 
[00:05:30] CO: Yes, well, I guess… It’s a long story, really. I grew up in Brisbane, Australia.
 
[00:05:41] RM: Yes, tell me about your childhood, and we’ll get to prison later [laughter].
 
[00:05:45] CO: Our house, which we still have, shares a back fence with the second-largest army base in Australia. It’s called Gallipoli Barracks now, but…my grandmother had three brothers who went through that base to Gallipoli in France, in World War I. One of them got married there, before shipping out. So, when I was growing up there – I was born in 1960, so the backdrop was the Vietnam War. There were kids in our school whose fathers were in Vietnam. We can literally, and still do, hear the rifle range, automatic gunfire, and helicopters flying over the house, and stuff.
 
So, that was the backdrop. And my father was born in Kilbeggan, where his grandfather had a pub. His paternal grandfather had, I think, eloped with money from Gorey, in Wexford, and bought a pub in Liverpool in about 1890, called Man At The Wheel, in Paradise Street – which would have been one of the main streets of old Liverpool. And they swapped it – apparently a handshake swap – for a pub in Kilbeggan. So, he was raised in Clara, and his father and his grandfather fell out over the Civil War. My grandfather had been in the IRA, and as my grandmother was in the women’s section, I guess, and she was probably from a working-class background. She was an O’Connor. And my father was raised by her parents – he was the first of 13. And her parents were also influenced by Connolly, so he had a bit of a dose of socialism. And so, really, when I was, I think, 11, the first demonstration I was taken to was a week after Bloody Sunday. So, what was happening in the north of Ireland had a much bigger impact in our house than what was happening in Vietnam – even though people were shipping out.
 
[00:07:55] RM: Yes. Just backtrack, Ciaron – how did the family end up in Australia, then?
 
[00:07:59] CO: My father left Clara at 16 to look for work in London. And then they were basically begging white Europeans, I guess, to go to Australia after World War II. And, I think it was two pounds, and you had to stay two years. And so, I think he just went out for a look, and kind of got stuck there – didn’t get back to Ireland for 26 years. Once…having a family, and stuff.
 
[00:08:27] RM: So, he married locally?
 
[00:08:30] CO: He married Mary McCaffrey, whose grandmother was from Milltown Malbay, and could speak Irish – she lived with her as a child – and her grandfather, paternal grandfather, was from Enniskillen.
 
[00:08:41] RM: This is in Queensland, where you grew up? Or elsewhere?
 
[00:08:43] CO: In Brisbane, Queensland. Yes, they had moved down from Charters Towers, in the north of Queensland. And I think her maternal grandparents were English, and had gone out for the gold rush in the north of Queensland, yes. So my maternal family were pretty mainstream, conservative Catholics, and my father was much more Irish Republican, and a Labor Party person, and someone who could see what the Aboriginal people were going through was quite similar to what Irish people had gone through. And, so not a lot of Irish made that connection. I think, often – and maybe they share this with Israelis – but they think they’ve a monopoly on human suffering. He did make that connection with people who were being colonized.
 
[00:09:41] RM: Is that a core component of solidarity: to understand that the struggle is one common struggle?
 
[00:09:48] CO: It is, and I guess a big thing is to transcend your own subjectivity. Like, I could sit in an Irish pub, quite comfortably, for the rest of my life [laughter]. But to interact with people from other cultures, and other sexual orientations, and other classes, requires a kind of transcendence. And especially, I became engaged with Aboriginal people when I was at high school, and that was really an eye-opener, I guess. They were in the same space as me, but in a totally different reality in terms of state oppression.
 
[00:10:30] RM: Yes, I often find that there are parallels between the Aboriginal people of Australia and the travelling people in Ireland, in that you may end up with one or two travelers in a classroom – when I was young – and then they’d disappear: they’d be off travelling again, maybe, or things didn’t work out in school. And I know, to some extent, you could argue the suffering has been worse in Aboriginal Australia. But, I mean, look at statistics around suicide and imprisonment – it’s obviously complex issues, but is that something you would have ever thought about, in your travels to Ireland? Have you seen that?
 
[00:11:06] CO: Yes, I think it’s different, because there’s so many language groups amongst Aboriginal people, and it’s so huge a continent. Like, when I was eight years of age, Aborigines didn’t have the vote.
 
[00:11:24] RM: Because they were almost seen as sub-human.
 
[00:11:26] CO: Yes, they weren’t counted in the census. They didn’t have citizenship. I think, in my state, when I was 11, it was still illegal to cohabitate with a native, under the Vagrancy Act.
 
[00:11:42] RM: Because Queensland was one of the worst states for…
 
[00:11:45] CO: Yes, I mean, Queensland… When I was 17, they suspended all civil rights in Queensland, which they had done ten years earlier in response to the Vietnam anti-war movement. So, there was a real marriage between a very corrupt government that were making corrupt money out of…from transnational mining companies and tourist industry companies, and a very corrupt police force that were running the brothels, and casinos, and drugs. And willing to be used politically on the streets. And that, eventually, all came undone with the Royal Commission, and the 1980s Fitzgerald Inquiry. And so, the Aborigines would have received the worst of that, in terms of deaths in custody, and abuse, and the Stolen Generation, and all of that kind of stuff. So yes, it was pretty intense to engage that reality.
 
[00:12:54] RM: So, you mentioned earlier about Bloody Sunday, and around the same time, you had Vietnam. There were so many global issues at play – what first captured your attention, say, as a teenager?
 
[00:13:07] CO: It would have been the struggle in the north of Ireland, I think, and ethnically identifying with that, I guess. I had a very good school teacher, who, one thing he told me was: “Don’t let school get in the way of an education.” And he kind of challenged me out of that Irish Republican ghetto way of thinking.
 
[00:13:34] RM: Was this a history teacher, by any chance?
 
[00:13:35] CO: Yes, it was a history and English teacher, who I’m still in contact with.
 
[00:13:38] RM: Quite often… Same, my history teacher – Hugh Barney O’Brien – history and English, and had me think in a very similar way, just outside of the classroom.
 
[00:13:45] CO: Yes. And he would have been at the University of Queensland in 1968, which was a very active campus – not that he was active himself, but he was influenced by that. He was a Tagan, from the north of Queensland. So, that’s a relationship I’ve continued. When I’m in Brisbane, I’ll go and see him every week, and stuff like that.
 
[00:14:05] RM: It’s good to continue those links. So, also, East Timor was on your radar a lot.
 
[00:14:12] CO: Yes – well, it really… It was invaded when I was 15, and I remember being engaged with that for about a year. And it really – even when there was a huge peace movement in the 80s – Timor wasn’t on the agenda. We were hearing more about El Salvador, and the Philippines – and it wasn’t really until Max Stahl, who I’ve met, courageously filmed the Santa Cruz massacre, and got that out. And John Pilger used that in Death of a Nation. And I remember, actually, being in jail, in Texas, and someone used to photocopy articles from the New York Times and mail them to me. And there was a report on the Dili Massacre, and I remember thinking: “Oh, the East Timorese,” you know?
Because, for 16 years, when most of the killing – when they killed a third of the population – occurred, there really wasn’t much of a solidarity movement. So, when I was deported back to Australia in the early 90s, we started a house called Greg Shackleton House, and that was one of the five Australian journalists who were killed in Balibo just before the invasion. They were killed in the October of ’75, and the invasion occurred in the December, just after Kissinger had visited Jakarta. And that, in the early 90s… And it was all exploring ways we were complicit: there was a mining company, Petrolas Mining Company, headquartered in Brisbane, who were [inaudible 00:15:38 (legally or illegally?)] drilling in the Timor Sea, cooperating with the Indonesian military. They were training Indonesian troops at Canungra, in jungle warfare training, just outside of Brisbane. So, you know, we did actions like…we poured human blood over the Petrolas boardroom table, did an exorcism of their office, and we also blockaded Canungra.
 
[00:16:00] RM: You’ve written a book about that, haven’t you?
 
[00:16:03] CO: Yes – Remembering Forgetting. And one thing we did, quite successfully, was: the Labor Party government were going to deport a lot of Timorese to Portugal. And we started initiating a sanctuary movement that became quite big in Melbourne and Sydney, where most of the Timorese were. And that became quite a mass movement, and a successful one. And the government backed off.
 
[00:16:25] RM: So the Australian government – Australia being quite next to Timor – wanted to deport them to the far end of the world?
 
[00:16:30] CO: Yes. I ended up living with Timorese in England, later – from ‘96 to ‘99 – and all these guys had occupied embassies in Jakarta. And the Indonesian government came to the conclusion that they’re less of a pain in the ass in Portugal. So they let them go to Portugal, and then they came to England.
 
[00:16:49] RM: You just mentioned, there, a minute ago, about being deported back to Australia. Deported from where, for what?
 
[00:16:57] CO: Ah, OK. So in the late 70s, when I was at high school – in response to the anti-nuclear movement – the state government suspended the right to march, the right to hand out leaflets, the right to gather in three or more people. And while I was at high school, I had a large anti-uranium demonstration. People decided to march – and there were 418 of us arrested. It’s 40 years ago this October – October 22 ‘77. And I remember, the lead guitarist of The Saints, Ed Kuepper, and the guitarist Grant McLennan from The Go-Betweens, were arrested, as well. And they would have been the two big bands of my teenage years in Brisbane.
 
And so, after going through this – it was quite a mass movement, for about three years, and there were thousands of arrests, and we were bashed, and raided – a group of us decided… We were influenced by a lecturer at university, who had been one of the main figures of the 60s – Brian Laver – who was an anarchist. And a few of us, who were Catholics, decided to explore Christian anarchist pacifism. And we thought we’d invented the concept – but then we discovered the Catholic Worker movement in the States, and the Berrigans, who had raided draft boards in the 60s, and had started the Ploughshares Movement. So we started the Catholic Worker house, aimed at Aboriginal street kids who were homeless. And we made our living off making bread and soap, and we opened a shop selling Nicaraguan coffee and prisoners’ art, and stuff. And that went for about four years. So, when that collapsed with exhaustion, I went to the States to live with older people in that tradition, and that kind of…including Phil Berrigan. I lived with Phil for about a year, and Liz McAllister had joined the house, and the kids. And that concluded with Moana Cole, who’s from New Zealand, myself, Bill and Sue Frankel-Streit breaking into an Air Force base in upstate New York, near Syracuse. And we managed to put a B-52 bomber out of action and close the runway.
 
So, we were arrested at gunpoint, and interrogated by the FBI, and eventually put on trial in Syracuse and sentenced to a year in jail. So, at the end of that year, I remember they put me on Con-Air in New York, and flew me to Oklahoma Penitentiary. And then on to El Paso – and then they put me in a prison, a jail, in a very small town called Pecos, in the outback of Texas. And it was 24 of us in a cage, six cages welded together in one room. All doors to the cages would be open, maybe, 16 hours a day. So, you’re in a room with 120, 130 men. It was predominantly Mexicans. So, I did nine months there, and they moved me to Louisiana Penitentiary in the later part of my sentence. And then [laughter] at the end of my sentence, they charged me with overstaying a visa, and being guilty of a crime of moral turpitude, and put $50,000 bail on me.
 
And I’d never heard the word turpitude before – I didn’t know what it meant. And it’s usually to do with high school teachers seducing young girls. And with my act, it all had to do with a non-consensual relationship with a B-52 bomber that was older than me – because they were all built in the 1950s. They were using them in Syria, only two weeks ago. They’re still using them. And they’re a weapon of mass destruction – they just open the bomb bay doors and napalm, cluster bombs, fuel-air explosives. So, they’re the real workhorse of the American military in Vietnam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and now they’re being used in Syria. But they’re also nuclear-capable.
 
[00:21:03] RM: And can you bring me back to…how vivid are your memories of that first arrival into prison? What…can you remember what was going through your head?
 
[00:21:09] CO: I’d done a few short stints in a maximum-security prison in Brisbane, in the 80s, in Boggo Road Gaol. And that’s where I had my last haircut, in 1988. And that was… So, I knew – we were expecting 3-5 years – so I knew what the environment would be like. And I’ve been, probably, in 18 different jails, and they were all different environments. So, if you’ve seen the film Chopper, that was like Australian jails in the 80s.
 
[00:21:49] RM: So, mentally, you were – for the most part – prepared, it sounds like?
 
[00:21:52] CO: Yes, I mean, in the 80s I was in a faith-based community, and we’d prepare and reflect together, on not only how to survive and thrive in jail, but how to be supportive of the prisoners’ struggle, which we got involved in. And we closed that jail, eventually. It was also a beautiful flip, that many of the young Aboriginal people who’d stayed with us, in our house, were now in prison. And they were offering us hospitality in their house – the big house. And, you know, telling us how to be safe, and smuggling us vegetarian food, and all sorts of stuff. So, it was a really nice mutuality about that.
 
[00:22:31] RM: I’m just going to rewind another bit, again – I’m just curious about those teenage years. Am I right in thinking you might have been into punk music? What was the other teenage Ciaron like? Or was it all politics, was it all justice?
 
[00:22:50] CO: It was… It was a Christian Brothers school, a very working-class school. It was half Italian, and kind of half Irish descent. I played a lot of football – soccer was a big focus, for me. And then, I would often argue with the religion teacher about the IRA, and stuff like that. I got expelled from school for protesting the Queen’s Jubilee visit. 
 
[00:23:26] RM: Wow. Not for moral turpitude, though.
 
[00:23:28] [Laughter]. Yes. But, by the end of my schooling, I’d come to a position of pacifism – I thought pacifism was implicit in Christianity. And, eventually, also concluded that an anarchist orientation, and a pacifist orientation, are implicit in Christianity.
 
[00:23:44] RM: Can you talk to me a bit about anarchism, briefly? Because it seems to me that it’s so misunderstood.
 
[00:23:52] CO: Yes, I mean, both my anarchism and pacifism are rooted in my discipleship and my attempts to follow Jesus. So I don’t know if anarchism can stand alone, without some kind of base like that, or pacifism can stand alone. And the point I’m at now is, I think, I’m a radical, Christian disciple. And radical is not a scary word, it’s not a word left over from the 60s. It’s a Latin word – it means “to return to the roots.” And I think the roots of Christianity have an anarchist orientation toward power, and a pacifist orientation toward violence. And because they’re negative definitions – one meaning ‘without violence,’ and the other meaning ‘without exploiting people’ – they’re much better questions than answers. So, an anarchist should be someone who lives with the question: “How do I live without exploiting people?” And a pacifist: “How do I live without violence?” And they’re much better questions – rather than a rigid, just add water and stir, trite response to everything. So, they’re kind of more orientations, for me. But I would have read Kropotkin and all that kind of stuff, as well. And I think, too: in Europe, the radical traditions are much more socialist, and social-democratic. In the United States, they’re much more libertarian-anarchist. So, I’d be going, in my late teens, drawing a lot of nourishment from what was called the Catholic Left, in the 60s. But Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and that draft board raid movement, and Dorothy Day – who was just dying. She died in 1980, around the time John Lennon was shot there in New York… She had lived like that since the 30s.
 
[00:25:46] RM: Yes, tell me about Dorothy Day – because I think she’s up to be sainted, isn’t she?
 
[00:25:52] CO: Yes. I guess another thing, for me – because I missed the 60s, I was too young for that. And I remember Joe Strummer saying he was too young for that, too, and it’s like arriving on a battlefield after a battle. And I was really concerned about selling out. And, I guess in Christianity, that means to remain faithful. And I went and tracked down a lot of people I’d read about in Brisbane, who were active in the 60s, and tried to talk to them about what happened. Do they feel co-opted or not? So, that was always a concern, to me – it’s more about being faithful. So, Dorothy Day had been faithful for 50 years, and I was very interested in it being a long-term, life-long project.
 
[00:26:46] RM: So, for people who may never have heard of her – who was she? Where was she from?
 
[00:26:52] CO: OK – she’s from…her father, I think, was a journalist, and she, too, became a journalist. And she would have mixed in the circles with John Reed and Emma Goldman. She wrote for the masses. She was a suffragette. She was jailed for opposing World War I. And if you ever see a film that’s really suppressed – I was just talking to Harry Brown about this, the other night – a film called Reds, directed by Warren Beatty. And he won the Best Director Oscar – but you never see that movie. And it’s about John Reed, who wrote Ten Days That Shook The World. And throughout the movie, they cut in, and they have people from the 1920s speaking straight to camera, as the narrative goes on. And they wanted Dorothy Day for that film but she was dying, she was very ill, when the film was made in ’79 or ’80.
 
So she has her own conversion story – she had, I think one at least, maybe two, abortions and the bohemian, promiscuous scene she was operating in, with Eugene O’Neill and others. And then she was in a relationship with an anarchist – and I don’t know if the phrase is “fell pregnant,” [laughter] but became pregnant. And she thought that was quite miraculous, because she didn’t think she could have a child. And that initiated a kind of conversion for her, and she found a lot of solace. So, she converted to Catholicism.
 
But brought with it her desire for social justice, and her anarchist analysis of capitalism. And she met an old French, eccentric kind of guy, Peter Maurin, who had a… Because this is at a time where totalitarianism has a popular base. Like, Mussolini gets voted in, Hitler’s popular, Stalin’s popular amongst the left around the world. And this was very much an anarchic, personal response to totalitarian solutions, really. So, when the depression hits, she and Peter Maurin start the Catholic Worker movement, which was based on houses of hospitality, practice in the acts of mercy, rather than looking for big-state, New Deal solutions to unemployment and poverty. And encouraging people to rediscover feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and that kind of solidarity.
 
[00:29:18] RM: Back to basics?
 
[00:29:20] CO: Yes – so I guess the three themes I try and embrace is: community building and affirming – whether that’s a faith-based community, an intentional community, or whether that’s a broader idea of a network that I’m part of in Dublin, of people of different faiths and no faiths in the struggle for peace and justice, and solidarity with Chelsea Manning over the last few years. So, that’s community. And from that, the acts of mercy, solidarity with the homeless and the poor – very directly. And then non-violent resistance. So, we would say each of those themes give each other an authenticity. Like, if all you did was community, it’d become very self-indulgent and therapeutic. If all you did was the acts of mercy, it’d be like mopping up after capitalism. If all you did was resistance, it’d be like a disembodied voice. So, those three things give each other integrity, I think.
 
[00:30:25] RM: Yes, just thinking about that time of totalitarianism – how many… It’s hard not to draw some parallels to where the world is at, today. So, it strikes me that these themes are ever more present, ever more relevant. I’ve heard different debates on how similar today is to the 1930s – do you have a view on that? You know, macro-politics.
 
[00:30:54] CO: I think with technology – and, you know, I’ve had quite a bit to do with Julian Assange for the last six years, and he has a pretty fearful analysis of where technology is taking us, and their surveillance techniques. And, you know, Snowden revealed the pretty total, and yesterday’s expose of the CIA… I remember asking Ched Meyers, who’s a theologian that’s influenced our movement – he wrote a very good book on Mark’s Gospel called Binding the Strong Man – and when the war began, on Afghanistan, we had a meeting with him in London. He’s from California. And I asked him in the pub, I said: “Well, how’s the movement going?” And he said: “Well, the problem is, anyone under 30 is now a lot more brainwashed in terms of sophistication of social control.” And he said: “Anyone over 30 in the movement seems to be hopeless at mentoring the young.” [Laughter]. So, that was interesting. And obviously the collapse of the Soviet Union in ’91 – there’s no longer a balance. It became a kind of one-empire world, and now you’ve got the growth of China, economically. It looks like anything could happen. I mean, there could be a nuclear exchange on the Korean Peninsula next week [laughter].
 
[00:32:22] RM: What is Assange’s take in terms of the technology aspect? So, we kind of now know about surveillance, to some extent. I’m sure there’s more we will find out. But where does he think it’s all going?
 
[00:32:36] CO: I think…
 
[00:32:37] RM: You’ve met Assange in the embassy, yes?
 
[00:32:41] CO: Julian and I met three weeks ago, and I had a longer session with him last year. And a lot of people think that people will be voluntarily putting chips in their head, by 1930.
 
[00:32:58] RM: When, sorry? 1930?
 
[00:33:00] CO: He thinks 1930.
 
[00:33:02] RM: 2030?
 
[00:33:03] CO: 2030, sorry. I was raising this on a soapbox, speaking in Hyde Park, and there was a techie from LA there, who didn’t like Julian. But he said it was going to be a lot earlier than 2030.
 
[00:33:16] RM: Yes – there’s a tech journalist in the US, right now, who has voluntarily put a chip in his wrist, so he could demonstrate how he could pay for all his meals for a month, by just scanning his wrist.
 
[00:33:26] CO: But, you know, you’re on a tube in London, or a bus here, and everyone’s on a smartphone, disconnected from the people sitting next to them. So, it’s just like downsizing that – making it more portable, I guess.
 
[00:33:38] RM: I have read a bit of research that suggests that we’re at a slight tipping point, in that a good percentage of people will volunteer their privacy and their rights for the sake of what they might perceive to be convenience. So, a lot of people will go for that. A lot of people… We know we’re being monitored. We know our data is not private – but, yet, there’s a volunteering over, there.
 
[00:34:08] CO: I’m not that sophisticated with this stuff, but this whole thing about singularity… And people seem quite willing to surrender their privacy on Facebook, even.
 
[00:34:21] RM: And, in terms of surveillance, like traditional surveillance…
 
[00:34:26] CO: And also the surrender of solitude. I remember someone remarking that: that the idea of solitude is abandoned, and privacy. So, you know, the demand is that there should be transparency of the state, and privacy for the individual. But, at the moment, we’ve got total surveillance of the individual and cover-ups for the state.
 
[00:34:48] RM: And in terms of traditional surveillance – what level of interactions have you had with surveillance, that you’re aware of? Because you’ve had numerous brushes with the law, and with the state – including Ireland, which we’ll talk about in a short time. Have you been aware of when, or how, you’ve been surveilled?
 
[00:35:13] CO: Yes, I mean, I was…we had Special Branch tailing us two weeks ago, for two days.
 
[00:35:20] RM: In Dublin?
 
[00:35:21] CO: Yes.
 
[00:35:22] RM: Right, OK. When you say ‘us’..?
 
[00:35:26] CO: Oh, I was just chatting with [inaudible 00:35:28] on the street – and she’s a lot more alert than I am [laughter]. And we had a guy behind us, and I don’t know how much he heard, but another guy turned up at lunch the next day. We were making an arrangement to have lunch together, in Cornucopia. And he didn’t order any food, so maybe he wasn’t a vegetarian [laughter]. So, yes… And previously, they stopped the vehicle I was in.
 
[00:35:53] RM: So, can I stop you on that? Because a lot of people are – how to say – suspicious that that happens, for instance. So, you know, somebody might say: “You’re paranoid. That was just a guy who was just in there, and thought he was in a burger joint and couldn’t find any food…” Like, how do you know he was Special Branch?
 
[00:36:14] CO: Well, I trust her judgement – I mean, she’s lived a lot in Palestine, and Lebanon, and Iraq, and she’s a lot more seasoned in that kind of stuff. Previously, they pulled up the car on the way to the Brigid’s Festival I was in, and we hadn’t left Dublin. They wanted to know if we were going to Shannon. And this is also weird because…
 
[00:36:41] RM: This is the recent…[inaudible 00:36:44] Brigid?
 
[00:36:46] CO: No, this is five or six years ago. And actually, more recently, at Brigid’s Festival, it was the tenth anniversary of our action. Special Branch knew I was in Ireland – they turned up in Kildare at the Brigid’s Festival. [Laughter]. And I was actually staying at the Shannon Airport Hotel, with Deirdre Clancy – and we were there to mark the tenth anniversary.
 
So, I’m not saying I’m flattered by this. A lot of these guys haven’t got much work to do, so they’ll take someone like me and spin me into a threat. And the actual – when they pulled up that car, and I challenged them about taking people’s names, they said: “Oh, we’ve got Mr. O’Reilly here, a self-confessed eco-terrorist.” And I said: “That’s bullshit.” And I said: “I just flew Ryanair – I’m hardly ecologically sound.” [Laughter].
 
[00:37:36] RM: And do you think that, at some level, that that’s their category that you could be slotted into? They just want to slot you into some sort of terror..?
 
[00:37:46] CO: Yes. I think they’ve got a very broad definition of terrorism.
 
[00:37:47] RM:  Yes, because terrorism isn’t the guy who’s flying the B-52, dropping bombs on entire villages or towns. Terrorism is one guy with a mask, or with dreadlocks [laughter].
 
[00:37:58] CO: And it doesn’t… It even means property damage, too, I think.
 
[00:38:02] RM: Yes, so let’s go back to…let’s talk about the property damage – because that was really at the core of your action at Shannon. And there was a lot of outrage that you’d damaged property, which is quite interesting. Particularly in the Irish context, because we have a love for property in our constitution. Well, maybe not a love – but it has a lot of weight. So, talk to me about the action in Shannon, and how that came about.
 
[00:38:32] CO: So, the action in Shannon, for me, was my third ploughshares action. And a ploughshares action is usually a faith-based action of attempting to beat swords into ploughshares, as predicted by the Prophet Isiah. And my first one was on the eve of the Gulf War, in ’91 in New York, on a B-52 on a runway.
 
[00:38:54] RM: And a ploughshare being an agricultural...
 
[00:38:58] CO: Yes, it’s the idea of taking something that is implicitly a killer of human life, and transforming it into something that nourishes human life. So, these actions were pioneered by Phil Berrigan and others, who had come out of the non-violent resistance to the Vietnam War. And I also did an action with Treena Lenthall and Deborah Luka – we disabled uranium mining equipment in ’98. So, I was in Ireland in ’02, and obviously America was mobilizing. Well, it was really pretty much the same war – it’s been a 26-year war on Iraq, and it didn’t stop in ’91. It turned into the sanctions, and then the full-scale invasion and occupation. And now, it’s a new phase.
 
So, I was in Ballyfermot at this stage, and I started these weekly liturgies. About four or five people would come to them, and reflect. And then, quite rapidly, in November of ’02, I met Deirdre Clancy for the first time, in early November. Carmen Trotter from New York came over, and was doing a bit of speaking – she turned up for that. And then, mid-November, I met Damien for the first time. January 1st I met Nuin Dunlop for the first time, and I knew Karen from London. And, within a short time of us meeting, we were all in jail in Limerick Prison after doing $2.5 million worth of disarmament to a US Navy war plane that was en route to Iraq. So, compared to the B-52 – when we were in an 11-month process, taking away every second weekend with people like Phil Berrigan and elders, and prepared for an action that could cost lives, could cost years in jail – this was pretty rapid. And successful, you know? It was probably the most disruptive action to the mobilization for that war. And that’s a sad thing – because we didn’t have a lot of competition [laughter]. But, I would think, if 1% of the people that marched against that war had non-violently resisted to the point of imprisonment, and the other 99% had done pro-active solidarity, we could have gone a long way to stopping that war.
 
And most of the non-violent resistance didn’t come out of the sitting-in peace movement, which marched in its millions. It came out of the military. And obviously, the most severely-sentenced person was Chelsea Manning. And that’s why…I’ve been the recipient of a lot of solidarity in my jail time, and I felt it was my time to focus on Chelsea and Julian. And prior to that, I organized around eight different ploughshares trials in England, and Australia, and the States, and Ireland. So I had that skill-set. There’s a lot of hostility to Julian in London, engendered by The Guardian newspaper. I think Glenn Greenwald recently remarked: “There’s only one person The Guardian hates more than Jeremy Corbyn, and that’s Julian Assange.”
 
[00:42:17] And what exactly is the beef that The Guardian has with Assange?
 
[00:42:21] CO: Well, initially, I thought: “This is a kind of cultural and class issue – that here’s this hippie kid who went to 32 schools, his mother’s a puppeteer, becoming this media rock star in 2010. And the resentment of Guardian journalists, who all went through Oxford and Cambridge.” And, you know, Australians are very direct, and it’s seen as culturally obnoxious. And then I talked to a Guardian feature writer, and he said: “No, it’s more significant than that. It’s that what journalists value is to be the gatekeeper of secrets. Who gets to know, how quickly they get to know, when they get to know.” And WikiLeaks comes along and throws up all the primary data and says: “You work it out.” So it undercut their status, and their financial base. And then there’s also speculation that the grand jury indictment includes some Guardian journalists, along with Assange – so maybe The Guardian is saying: “We’ll give you the head of Julian Assange – leave our boys alone.” So, that’s speculative, that third one.
 
[00:43:28] RM: So, go back to Shannon and the trial process, because that lasted for four years, didn’t it?
 
[00:43:34] CO: Yes, three and a half years. So, we had a very short time in preparation. Two of the people had never met the other two, eight days before the action. And it was all very rapid – and we thought the war was going to begin in the February. It didn’t start until about March 20. And we were at our best in the hangar, in jail, and in the courtroom, when we needed to be at our best. And we were kind of stuck together for three and a half years. And, as the anti-war movement – that was large – evaporated, that required a kind of stamina, to keep raising the issue. The war was ongoing – the anti-war movement was not. Our prosecution was ongoing. And we received a lot of gifts. We received a very talented legal team that came together, and some of the best barristers in Ireland, and a very good solicitor, Joe Noonan. [Laughter] I would later find out that this was his first trial [laughter]. And then others, like Jimmy Massey, who had been in the war – and had been involved in killings in Iraq – came to testify on our behalf, from the US military. And Kelly Doherty, and Dennis Halliday, who had a big position with the UN, during the sanctions.
 
[00:44:58] RM: I think you got a presidential pardon, in the middle of it?
 
[00:45:00] CO: We did, yes. Martin Sheen gave us a presidential pardon.
 
[00:45:02] RM: He’s the president in the West Wing, so… That was in, was it in Damien’s home town, in Offley?
 
[00:45:08] CO: No, it was in Shane Macgowan’s home town, Borrisokane, in Tipperary.
 
[00:45:13] RM: And that’s where Martin Sheen’s mother is from, is that right?
 
[00:45:16] CO: Yes, it was her hundredth anniversary. And he and his siblings, Martin’s siblings, were over for a mass.
 
[00:45:25] RM: Because Martin Sheen would be very sympathetic…
 
[00:45:27] CO: Yes, Martin Sheen has a long history with the Catholic Worker… When he was an unemployed actor in New York, he used to eat at our soup kitchens. And he met Dorothy Day in the 50s, and then he became quite big in Hollywood. And then, he had a heart attack making Apocalypse Now, and that kind of brought him back to the church. And he came back to the church through the Berrigans. And one of the first things he does is, he plays the role of the judge in a film about the Ploughshares Eight, the first action – 1980.
 
And I think he has great stewardship of celebrity. And, whether he likes it or not, when he steps out of his front door, the spotlight is on him. So, what he does is move next to marginal people – whether it’s anti-war resisters, or El Salvadorans. And the media have to, reluctantly, follow them. And I think that’s a great stewardship. And people look at me – you know, I’ve got dreadlocks down to my butt – in Ireland, and they don’t initially trust me. But when Martin Sheen puts his arm around me, they think: “Well, I trust that guy.” So, I think celebrities and lawyers play that…in American football, you’d call it running interference, where you’re defending the quarterback, you know.
 
[00:46:36] RM: Yes – he’s been arrested countless times, hasn’t he?
 
[00:46:40] CO: Yes, he’s a very good guy.
 
[00:46:46] RM: And I think he had special words for you, at one stage, didn’t he?
 
[00:46:48] CO: Yes, I was in Australia at the time, yes.
 
[00:46:52] RM: Did he call you his…
 
[00:46:53] CO: His personal hero, which was very sweet [laughter].
 
[00:46:57] RM: There’s no doubt, he’s a special character. I’ve seen him interviewed, or heard him interviewed, a few times, and he’s definitely a voice of conscience, that’s for sure. So, there were several trials, and there was bumps along the road, and you had to do the stamina and the staying power. And then there was one particular trial that collapsed, that was very interesting. Tell us about that, and why it collapsed.
 
[00:47:23] CO: Our first trial ended when the judge acted illegally, after I gave evidence. And he denied a witness without hearing legal arguments. And the barristers just jumped on that, and he had to abandon the trial. So, six months later, we were put on trial again – and that judge seemed to know about the first trial, so he let a lot of evidence in. And then he was going to rule out our legal argument – and the legal argument was that we had damaged property at Shannon to preserve the life and property of others, in Iraq. And we called for an adjournment, and we had an angelic apparition who told us that that judge was a personal friend of George Bush, and was invited to both inaugurations, and attended the first one. And we remembered that, when we were choosing the jury, one woman who had been chosen on the jury stood up and said: “Look, I’ve just remembered that my daughter is an airline hostess, and it might look like I’m prejudiced.” And our barristers jumped up and thanked her for her integrity – and the judge thanked her for her integrity [laughter]. But he didn’t mention his connection to George Bush. And when we confronted him, we had to decide: do we want to confront him with that? And we were like: “What’s the negatives?” And the negatives was: we’d piss him off, and he’d sentence heavier. And we just all looked at each other and said: “Let’s confront him.” And we did confront him, and he fled the courtroom, saying: “I’ll talk to you in chambers,” to the legal team. But they just waited for him to come back out. And he came back out in such a rush that he forgot to put a media gag on it, which the first judge had done. And so, I think, the next day, there were photos of him and George Bush. And he’d had a long relationship with George Bush – he’d been introduced to him when he was the governor of Texas.
 
[00:49:22] RM: Well, it’s often how all establishments work, through the nexus of technology, media, business, sport, or whatever – it that you get to go to certain events, and you meet certain people. Power works in different ways, as you felt. But then, an angel appeared – I’m not going to ask you to name the angel – but I’d be very curious to hear, another time. I remember the time, as well – you did say there was media coverage the next day, but I would have felt, watching it at the time and aware of the issues today, that media typically are shy of these issues. Perhaps some of the reasons that you talked about in relation to The Guardian – but there could be class issues, there could be filters, or political lenses.
 
[00:50:06] CO: Yes – in Australia… The biggest contribution Australia makes to American warfare and killing is Pine Gap. And you never hear that in the mainstream media. That name is never mentioned – and that’s the NSA base out near Alice Springs that targets Cruise missile and drone attacks. So yes, there is a censorship on anything to do with Pine Gap in Australia. And there is censorship on Shannon, here. And people are surprised that the US military are still using Shannon.
 
[00:50:35] RM: Yes, I mean, two and a half million troops have been through Shannon. We like to wag our finger at Trump, or whoever else, but…
 
[00:50:43] CO: You look at the WikiLeaks cables from the Dublin embassy, following our acquittal, but also following our action, and the Americans actually offered to leave Ireland. And the Irish government begged them to stay. They could have flown on to their bases in England, etcetera.
 
[00:50:58] RM: And that was under, I believe, Bertie Ahern?
 
[00:51:01] CO: Yes.
 
[00:51:04] RM: And Dermot Ahern was the Minister for Foreign Affairs – I might be wrong on that. But yes, this was Fianna Fáil, the republican party upholding the values of peace, justice, equality after Irish independence, if you like. [Laughter].
 
[00:51:17] CO: And I think they were aware that this was a huge identity crisis for Ireland – when I was growing up, and possibly facing the draft if the Vietnam War had continued – there was talk in our house about shipping me back to Ireland, or something like that. So, Ireland was always perceived as neutral. And that neutrality came out of the militant anti-conscription movement during World War I, that should be recognized and celebrated, and which flowed on to Australia. The Irish Catholic church in Australia defeated the government twice in World War I, on the question of conscription. So, Ireland could play a great role as a peace-maker third party, if they took themselves a bit more seriously. And Ireland has incredible cultural capital – there’s a huge Irish diaspora in the United States and Australia, in the military as well. And if Ireland had taken a principled position -  I think Germany and France opposed the war, they wouldn’t have been alone…
 
And if you read these cables, you can see the government thinking: “Oh, it’s amazing we’re getting away with this.” They were really, really worried. And they continued to be worried. After our acquittal, they said: “What are you going to do next?” And I said: “I hope to get 100 people together, and go and occupy the runway.” And then they spent 2 million Euros in the next six months on that – they described it as a threat, and I said it was a promise, rather than a threat. So, they were really, really concerned. And they felt humiliated by our action. Because it only happened a few days after Mary Kelly’s action, and the plane had just been repaired. And we disabled it again. So, everything you do has both actual and symbolic. So, you know, the action of putting one plane out of action is one thing – but the symbolism of a fragile community coming together to disarm looks forward to a world of disarmament. Just like feeding someone a bowl of soup: it has a pragmatic but a symbolic… That you hope everyone will be fed, one day. So, whatever you do has this kind of actual and symbolic factor to it, I think.
 
[00:53:32] RM: You did make history in that action, in the sense, also, that you were acquitted by a jury. You forgot to mention that.
 
[00:53:39] CO: Yes, we were unanimously acquitted, which is very rare in Dublin. If there’s any acquittals, it’s usually 11-1 or 10-2. Harry Brown wrote a good book called Hammered by the Irish, and his critique of the Irish media’s lack of coverage of the case is quite interesting. It made Time Magazine, the acquittal – but there was no one coming up, saying: “Well, we haven’t been allowed to interview these people, because of sub judice, for three and a half years. Who were these people, and what motivated them?” That’s rarely happened, from the Irish media. So, as Ched Meyers says, the media covers the war – literally, covers it up [laughter].
 
And, for us, anti-war resistance is a primary thing for me, because it’s a relationship between peace and justice. Like Pope Paul VI said: “If you want peace, work for justice.” And the flipside of that is true, too: if you want to maintain an empire of exploitation, you’d better prepare for war. And so, there’s a relationship between peace and justice, and violence and exploitation. So, the B-52 might not be dropping napalm today, but it’s used in the same way as a gun is used in an armed robbery, without it being fired. It’s a means to exploit. And that’s why we focus on the military, and war, and preparations for war.
 
[00:55:03] RM: Where… We live at a crossroads in relation to power – the US, Russia, China, all of that, what’s happening in Syria. I think it’s the seventh anniversary, the sixth or the seventh, today? Or we’re in that kind of time zone. But I’m just wondering where you, personally, see chinks of light, or signs of hope?
 
[00:55:29] CO: I think in people’s faithfulness, and people’s resilience. There’s some beautiful signs of hope – and they’re not celebrated. Right at the beginning of the war on Afghanistan, two train drivers in Scotland refused to transport arms. And everyone should know their names, in the anti-war movement.
 
[00:55:51] RM: What are their names?
 
[00:55:53] CO: I don’t know their names [laughter].
 
[00:55:56] RM: We should add that. Let’s go and Google that.
 
[00:55:59] CO: Yes, so we’ve got to find those hopeful stories, and share them, and celebrate them. And Chelsea Manning – all Chelsea had to do was what we’re asked to do. And we’re not asking, like in Vietnam, for the conscription of our young. All they’re asking for us is to avert our gaze, to look the other way. And if Chelsea had done that in Baghdad, when she saw evidence of war crimes, she wouldn’t have been locked up for the last seven years. So, all we’re asked to do is avert our gaze. They don’t want active support for the war, or active opposition – they just want our silence, and our sedation. So, any breakout of that… And it comes from the most amazing places. Like Ben Griffin, who was the British SAS deployed in Iraq, refusing to redeploy, and then going on to start Veterans for Peace. So, there’s now 500 ex-soldiers, and Air Force, and Navy, organized in England, who are anti-war. And that’s a great sign of hope. And I was at the Veterans for Peace Christmas party in December, in London, and these guys had been through… There’s Jim Radford, who was 16 at D-Day, there. He’s 80-something. There was young guys who had been in the Battle of Basra. There was Michael Lyons, who had read the WikiLeaks cables and refused to report to Afghanistan, and went to jail in Colchester. There was such a variety of experience. And people from the French Navy in the Gulf War, and all sorts of Vietnam veterans. So yes, the Veterans for Peace phenomenon has really struck me as very, very hopeful.
 
[00:57:35] RM: Ciaron, we’ll leave it at that – it’s been an absolute pleasure, and I wish you a safe passage back to Australia. And, no doubt, you’ll be back like a boomerang.
 
[00:57:43] CO: Hopefully [laughter].
 
[00:57:45] RM: Cheers, mate.
 
[00:57:47] CO: Thank you.             


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