Tribute to an antiwar activist

March 31, 2009

PETER JOHN DE MOTT
Jan. 6, 1947 – Feb. 19, 2009

Peter De Mott, 62, loving father, husband, son, uncle, friend, peace activist and Catholic Worker, died after a work related accident, February 19, 2009. He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Ellen Grady; and their four daughters, Marie (23), Kate (20), Nora (16), and Saoirse (6); his mother, Marie Ryan De Mott; siblings, Joseph (Katherine), James (Lynn), Michael (Gemma) and Catherine Steel (Richard); mother-in-law, Teresa J. Grady; sisters and brothers-in-law, Mary Ann Grady Flores (Oscar Flores), Clare Grady (Paul Sayvetz), John Grady (Laurie DeFlaun), Teresa B. Grady; and many nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his father, John Irving De Mott; and siblings, Mary, Stephen, John, and Charles.

Peter was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Crookston, MN and Omaha, NE. Peter was a graduate of St. Margaret Mary’s Grade School, Creighton Prep, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He served in the Marine Corps and spent 1969 in Vietnam. He also served in the Army where he received training as a linguist and was assigned to a NATO post in Ankara, Turkey.

Peter wrote: “My experience in the military convinced me of the futility of war and of the sad misallocation of resources which war making requires. In l979 I joined the Catholic Worker movement and began to work nonviolently for justice and peace by addressing some of the root causes of poverty, unemployment and homelessness.”

From that point Peter committed his life to Jesus’ message of non-violence. “My faith in God prompts me to work for a world which unifies us all by ties of love and solidarity and mutual cooperation.”

This commitment brought Peter on a journey that sought to confront the works of war. He was arrested and jailed numerous times and served over three years cumulatively in prison for his nonviolent civil disobedience.
“It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to nonviolently confront our leaders who break the law with impunity, through their use of lies, deceptions and forgeries to promote and prosecute war,” he wrote. “The law should promote life and the well being of everyone and should preserve and protect the earth and its creatures.”

We remember Peter this St Patrick’s Day, the sixth anniversary of the March 17, 2003 action where Peter, Danny Burns, and Clare and Teresa Grady poured their blood at the local Army/Marine recruiting center, two days before “shock and awe” began, in an act of nonviolent symbolic action.
We commit ourselves to continue the work for peace and justice whenever our government persists in a policy of war that takes the lives of the innocent at home and abroad.

“Nothing of good and lasting value comes without a price,” Peter wrote, “and I have been privileged to be part of the world-wide struggle for peace and justice, along with so many others who have done so much. To the extent that we sit passively by during these challenging times-when the fate of the earth and all its life forms hangs in the balance, to that very extent we give our tacit approval to the forces amassed to destroy us.”
We thank God for the gift of Peter’s life. His loving spirit, warmth, generosity, caring, and hope, have endeared him to so many. He was our papa, our dad, our husband, our rock, our teacher, our guiding light, our love. This loss is hard to comprehend, it seems so unreal, but we must try to hold onto the faith that he taught us. We walk in his love.

Contributions can be made to the Ithaca Catholic, 133 Sheffield Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850.

We are at a loss for words to describe what we are feeling about the sudden and tragic death of our dear brother Peter De Mott. Without knowing the ways in which each one of you has been touched by Peter we welcome each of you to share your grief and love with us. Below are moving words shared by our friend Art Laffin from the D.C. Catholic Worker and words from Peter himself.

Please join in coming together with the De Mott Grady family to celebrate Peter’s life.

There will be a wake on Sunday, Feb. 22, at the Women’s Community Building, from 3 to 7 p.m. http://www.lightlink.com/womens/

Father Simon Harak, S.J. will celebrate the Mass for Peter, Feb. 23rd, Monday at 1 p.m., Immaculate Conception Church, 113 N. Geneva St (corner of Geneva and Seneca Sts.) in Ithaca, NY, 14850. http://www.immconch.org/

The burial will be at 3pm at Greensprings Natural Cemetery, 293 Irish Hill Road, Newfield, NY 14867. Dress for very cold and muddy conditions at the cemetary. Directions to Greensprings can be found on their website: http://naturalburial.org. Their phone number is 607-564-7577.

We will be gathering again at the Women’s Community Building afterwards at approx. 5pm, for a potluck meal. Bring food for the Monday evening potluck, by 4:45 pm.
In lieu of flowers please send donations to:.

The De Mott Grady Family.
133 Sheffield Rd.
Ithaca, NY, 14850

For out of town travelers please call Leslie Schultz at 607-272-6482 for a place a stay.

We best remember Peter by holding each in the circle of love, a love that he shared with all of us.

Peter De Mott, Presente!

Dear Friends,
As we grieve the loss of our beloved friend and peacemaker, Peter J.DeMott, we take great inspiration from his steadfast commitment to Gospel peacemaking and nonviolence. The below excerpt from an article that Peter wrote was read today at the “100 Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo” White House vigil.
Peter Demott, father and laborer, pray for us.
Peter DeMott, peacemaker and faithful follower of Jesus, pray for us.
Peter DeMott—Presente!!!

With deep love and gratitude,
Art

From Warriors to Resisters —U.S. Veterans on Terrorism

Welcome to ResistersBook.org. You can read our book entirely online or order a paperback copy, whichever you prefer. Sixteen U.S. warriors-turned-resisters tell very important stories in this book, stories we want to be read in every living room, library, coffee shop, and classroom throughout the land. If you agree, please help spread the word.

Click here to read the Preface or Introduction.

Thanks and Peace, Margaret Knapke, editor

Attribution for the photos is given when known, and many belong to the resisters themselves. If one of these photos is yours and you would rather we not use it, contact the site manager and it will be removed

Finding My Way

While in Vietnam I attended Roman Catholic Mass regularly and on occasion would go to confession, as I had been brought up to do. As a dutiful young Marine who followed orders well, I had no idea that my work in Vietnam was helping to bring about the deaths of some two million people there, maim and displace countless others, and severely damage and degrade the local environment. That sad realization came to me only much later. While in Vietnam I operated under the influence of a training film my fellow recruits and I viewed in boot camp,which justified U.S.involvement in the war as a defense against communist aggression. (We were told the communists were struggling to extend their”evil empire.”) Like millions of other soldiers down through the course of history,we were taught by the power elite to look at ourselves as heroic patriots willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our native land and its cherished ideals.

After a tour of duty in Vietnam, I found myself serving as a military policeman at the Marine Corps base atTwentynine Palms,California.

There I became more and more disillusioned with life as a Marine, with its stultifying duties and inflexible discipline. I left the Marines in the summer of 1970 and about a year later joined the United States Army,after signing an enlistment contract which promised me a course of study at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

For a year I applied myself to acquiring Turkish there, and then received orders for a NATO assignment in Ankara, where I worked in a three-man office in the Turkish General Staff Building. My duties could be described as primarily clerical in nature and did not prove particularly demanding. What I liked most about Turkey were the frequent trips all over the Anatolian Peninsula as well as Thrace,visiting areas of historical or archeological significance. From Turkey I also traveled to the Soviet Union, Germany, Syria, Ireland, Italy, and Greece. In those years I viewed the Army as an interesting job, which provided me with training and travel experience and an opportunity to meet and know other cultures. My role as a pawn in a geopolitical struggle for global resources did not intrude upon my consciousness.

Finally I had an eye-opening experience during my trip to the Soviet Union, when I realized that the people there had the same hopes and dreams as the folks back home. Having grown up on a diet of propaganda that the Russians made up a godless country bent on world domination, I saw and experienced instead their common humanity, which helped to change my perspective profoundly.

Once again feeling rather disaffected with the sterility and bureaucracy of military life, I turned my back on the Army in February l976, and returned to my hometown to complete my college education. Following graduation, I explored the possibility of becoming a diocesan priest by going to a seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota—but dropped out after a year and got involved in the Catholic Worker movement.

---

The Catholic Worker taught me many things I’d never heard before: pacifism, nonviolence, voluntary poverty, personal responsibility for contemporary injustice, and service to Christ in the person of the victims of military and corporate violence and greed. The Catholic Worker also introduced me to nonviolent civil disobedience and its history and practice in our country. A process of conversion had begun in me, as I began to question authority and realize the need to make myself as marginal to evil as possible.

My arrest at an “arms bazaar” was the initial outward, visible act of my conversion process, an ever-evolving journey leading me (please, God) on the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross). Christ tells us that if we wish to be His disciples, then we must deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him in faith and obedience. The cross represents both the lot and the glory of those who nonviolently resist systemic, institutional injustice, and then experience the retribution of the high and mighty as a consequence. Jesus commands us to love one another, and He tells us that no one has greater love than a person who lays down his or her life for a friend. Every act of civil disobedience (which is equally aptly termed “divine obedience”), performed in a spirit of love, helps to restore humanity to a communion of solidarity, unity, and mutual aid.

So, with this consciousness, I took part with Father Roy Bourgeois and others in a protest at an arms bazaar in Rosemont, Illinois (by Chicago O’Hare International Airport) in February 1979. An arms bazaar amounts to nothing more than a marketing event put on by weapons manufacturers, who invite members of the “defense departments” of various countries to view and then purchase the weapons systems on display there. The United States sells billions of dollars worth of weapons annually all over the world. Expenditures for these lethal instruments of war deny life to those whose basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and education then go unmet.

As President Dwight Eisenhower put it: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius

of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Since my first act of civil disobedience more than two decades ago, I have undergone arrest many times at the Pentagon, the White House, the School of the Americas, and various military bases and weapons manufacturing sites. Participation in two Plowshares disarmament actions (which symbolically yet concretely beat the nuclear sword into a plowshare, in accord with the vision of the prophet Isaiah), are included in that list. These acts have resulted in periods of incarceration in a variety of jails and prisons, cumulatively about two years in all. Separation from family and friends has been difficult, conditions behind bars less than ideal.

I realize, however, that nothing of good and lasting value comes without a price, and I have been privileged to be part of the world-wide struggle for peace and justice, along with so many others who have done so much. To the extent that we sit passively by during these challenging times—when the fate of the earth and all its life forms hangs in the balance, to that very extent we give our tacit approval to the forces amassed to destroy us.

–

Mary Anne Grady Flores

514 N. Plain St., Ithaca, NY 14850

1-607-273-7437/ 1-607-280-8797

Ithaca Catholic Workers

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with a mosquito”-War Resister’s League

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It brings me unspeakable shock & sadness to acknowledge the accidental passing of Peter DeMott at age 62.  Peter chose to conduct his life among us in a way always aspiring toward humble & idealistic service to society, community & family.  He was a tireless, articulate advocate for peace, & year after year he raised his voice & put his body on the line in opposition to war, violence & injustices regardless of where in the world their impact was being felt.  His courage in the face of personal risk, in confronting obstinate unyielding institutions of great power, was an inspiration to countless numbers of activists.  Likewise he taught us about equanimity & gentleness…  through all the bruising uphill struggles to try to right wrongs on a societal level, Peter still presented himself to the individuals around him with unpretentiousness & calm dignity.  His message in life was a positive one, & he would never surrender to cynicism.

He was a devoted, loving husband, & father of 4 children, & is survived as well by a remarkable extended family which has always joined him in visions & efforts seeking a more peaceful & just world.

I’ve hastily assembled below a small collection of words Peter wrote or spoke at various times in the past, as one step in remembrance & tribute.  Peace be with your soul always, Peter.

—Bob LeRoyIn Caring Memory Of Peter DeMott, Jan. 6, 1947 – Feb. 19, 2009

The violence continues as it has for millennia. In James Hillman’s book A Terrible Love of War, it states: ‘During the five thousand six hundred years of recorded history, fourteen thousand six hundred wars have been recorded. Two or three wars each year of human history.’ Violence has ever and ever will beget more violence.

Modern war, because of the proliferation of weapons and because of their increased destructive capabilities, claims more and more lives, primarily from the civilian sector. In solidarity with the victims of wars past, wars present and wars yet to come, and from a sense of ‘enlightened self interest’, we each need to rededicate ourselves to peacemaking lest the human family annihilate itself in a final paroxysm of bloodletting. How any one of us or any group of us takes up this most vital work depends on our particular set of circumstances. But take it up we must.”

Before we began our testimonies we raised our hands and swore to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. You all know that again and again we have told you in PART of our concerns about our government’s actions and behaviors that have moved us to in turn take the lawful actions which we did in December of 2002 and in March of 2003.

The United States went to war influenced by the lies, forgeries and deceptions put forth by the Bush Administration to justify the war. You, the jury, are now being asked by the prosecutor to render a verdict in this case based on half-truths and falsehoods. You also know that our explanations were often interrupted, and I am sorry that we have not been able to tell you the whole truth that prompted us to act as we did. I wish we could have explained more to you about our understanding regarding the constitution and international law and how those beliefs informed, shaped and guided us in the actions that we took.

The prosecution wants to portray us as people who have no regard for law. Meanwhile roughly two thousand of our military personnel have been killed and over a hundred thousand Iraqis. The national treasury has been robbed of over 100 billion to wage this war, while the infrastructure of our cities continues to erode as we saw so devastatingly in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

I would submit to you that the prosecutor, Mr. Lovric, has failed to prove us guilty. He has failed to show that we used “force, intimidation or threat to impede an officer of the United States in the performance of his duties” or in any other way. We certainly had a specific intent when we went to the recruiting station but it was not, most emphatically not, the government’s version.

Our intent in protesting was to warn young recruits, the recruiters themselves and the broader community that the war about to ensue would claim the lives of tens of thousands. We knew that the war could not be waged without a wholesale waste of blood, of human life, of valuable resources. We knew that the war would contaminate the environment with fallout from depleted uranium munitions and would poison our own troops even as it annihilated the Iraqis. We knew that the war on Iraq, just like all modern wars, would murder mothers and their children, the elderly and other noncombatants in the greatest numbers.

Sadly, and you know this, the warning we, and millions of others around the world tried to give did not prevent the war. But the predictions that frightened us, that were described by all codefendants, have come to pass. You do not have to believe what we believe in order to find that the government has not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The government claims that we conspired in one way or another to damage government property and officials. But there is certainly reasonable doubt about whether what the government says we did, was, in fact, WHAT we did.

Protesting rather than conspiring. Causing a mess rather than damaging property. Being friendly, as Sergeant Rachon Montgomery testified to and non-threatening rather than intimidating. These are all reasonable, sensible conclusions compelled by the evidence and consistent with our legal innocence.

In sum and substance, this trial is about the government’s attempt to stop peaceful protest against the war on Iraq, to silence dissent and our voices on this issue.

WE ASK YOU TO DO THE RIGHT THING! WE ASK YOU TO DO JUSTICE! WE ASK YOU TO SAY “NO!” TO DEATH AND WAR! WE ASK YOU TO SAY “YES!” TO LIFE!

Thank You!”

‘Our apologies, dear friends, for the fracture of good order.’ As our nation prepares to escalate the war on the people of Iraq by sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers to invade, we pour our blood on the walls of this military recruiting center. We mark this recruiting office with our own blood to remind ourselves and others of the cost in human life of our government’s war making.

Killing is wrong. Preparations for killing are wrong. The work done by the Pentagon with the connivance of this military recruiting station ends with the shedding of blood, and God tells us to turn away from it. Blood is the symbol of life. All life is holy. All people are created in the image and likeness of God. All people are family, and everyone is loved by God.

Dr. Martin Luther King reminds us that ‘…we are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls *enemy*, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers [and sisters].’

We come here today with pictures of Iraqi people — mothers, children, those who have been the victims of U.S. bombardment and sanctions for the past twelve years. We also come here with love in our hearts for the U.S. service people, also victims of war making.

We find hope in these dark times when sisters and brothers around the world resist the spirit of hatred and violence, lift up prayers for peace — together with works for peace.”

…War is bloody. The blood we brought to the recruiting station was a sign of the blood inherent in the business of the recruiting station. Blood is a sign of life, which we hold to be precious, and a sign of redemption and conversion, which we seek as people of this nation. The young men and women who join the military, via that recruiting station, are people whose lives are precious. We are obligated, as citizens of a democracy, to sound an alarm when we see our young people being sent into harm’s way for a cause that is wholly unjust and criminal. Blood is a potent symbol of life and death.

Blood is the sacred substance of life, yet it is shed wantonly in war. As Catholics, when we receive the Eucharist, we acknowledge our oneness with God and the entire human family. We went to the recruiting center using what we have – our bodies, our blood, our words, and our spirits – to implore, beg, and order our country away from the tragedy of war and toward God’s reign of peace and justice.”

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jonah House
Date: Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 9:10 PM
Subject: Peter De Mott., Presente!
To: mgrady@lightlink.com

How do we say it? How can we begin to absorb, much less communicate, the news we have to share? Peter de Mott did not make it through surgery. He died – as best we can understand it – in surgery this evening.

Peter, well named “the rock”, is gone from us. A rock, an anchor? Both! And then some. We reach out in grief to Ellen, to their stunning daughters, to all the Gradys, to the whole Ithaca community, to the DeMott family that has endured so very much. He was there for all of us.

Lets hold Peter’s family within the circle of our love. And let us hold one another in love and compassion. Maybe it’s the best way to hold Peter among us. How will we make it without him?

Love from us all at Jonah House