[Announce] Fw: Utah Phillips on Ammon Hennessy, Anarchism, Pacifism and Voting

[Robert Waldrop]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frank Cordaro" <frank.cordaro at gmail.com>
> (Attached Photo of Utah at the Oct 2006 National 
> CW Gathering in Iowa.)
> ( Youtube videos of Utah
> http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=utah+phillips )
>
>
> From Utah Phillips' Stories, Songs, and Poems 
> (Part 1)
> Transcribed by James Han 
> http://www.jeddy.org/moi/utah.txt
>
>
> I learned in Korea that I would never again in 
> my life abdicate to
> somebody else my right and my ability to decide 
> who the enemy is.
>
>
> Got back from Korea; I was so mad at what I'd 
> seen and done I wasn't
> sure I could ever live in the country again.  I 
> got on the freight
> trains up in Everett, north of Seattle, and kind 
> of cruised the
> country for two years makin' up songs, but I was 
> drunk most of the
> time and forgot most of those.
>
>
> I'd heard that there was a house in Salt Lake 
> City by the roper
> yards... where there was a clothing barrel and 
> free food.  So I, I got
> off the train there.  I was headed for Salt Lake 
> anyway.
>
>
> I found that house right where they said it was, 
> but most of all I
> found this, this wiry old man, sixty-nine years 
> old. Tougher'n nails,
> heart of gold, fella by the name of Ammon 
> Hennessy.  Anybody know that
> name?  Ammon Hennessy?  One of Dorothy Day's 
> people, the Catholic
> workers, during the Thirties they started houses 
> of hospitality all
> over the country; there're about eighty of 'em 
> now.
>
>
> Ammon Hennessy was one of those; he'd come west 
> to start this house
> I'd found called The Joe Hill House of 
> Hospitality.  Ammon Hennessy
> was a Catholic anarchist, pacifist, draft-dodger 
> of two World Wars,
> tax refuser, vegetarian, one-man revolution in 
> America - I think that
> about covers it.
>
>
> First thing he said, after he got to know me, he 
> said: "You know you
> love the country.  You love it.  You come in and 
> out of town on those
> trains singin' songs about different places and 
> beautiful people.  You
> know you love the country; you just can't stand 
> the government.  Get
> it straight."  He quoted Mark Twain to me: 
> "Loyalty to the country
> always; loyalty to the government when it 
> deserves it."  It was an
> essential distinction I had been neglecting.
>
>
> And then he had to reach out and grapple with 
> the violence, but he did
> that with all the people around him.  These 
> second World War vets, you
> know, on medical disabilities and all drunked 
> up; the house was filled
> with violence, which Ammon, as a pacifist, dealt 
> with - every moment,
> every day of his life. He said, "You got to be a 
> pacifist."  I said,
> "Why?"  He said, "It'll save your life."  And my 
> behavior was very
> violent then.
>
>
> I said, "What is it?"  And he said, "Well I 
> can't give you a book by
> Gandhi - you wouldn't understand it.  I can't 
> give you a list of rules
> that if you sign it you're a pacifist."  He 
> said, "You look at it like
> booze.  You know, alcoholism will kill somebody, 
> until they finally
> get the courage to sit in a circle of people 
> like that and put their
> hand up in the air and say, 'Hi, my name's Utah, 
> I'm an alcoholic.'
> And then you can begin to deal with the 
> behavior, you see, and have
> the people define it for you whose lives you've 
> destroyed."
>
>
> He said, "It's the same with violence.  You 
> know, an alcoholic, they
> can be dry for twenty years; they're never gonna 
> sit in that circle
> and put their hand up and say, 'Well, I'm not 
> alcoholic anymore' - no,
> they're still gonna put their hand up and say, 
> 'Hi, my name's Utah,
> I'm an alcoholic.'  It's the same with violence. 
> You gotta be able to
> put your hand in the air and acknowledge your 
> capacity for violence,
> and then deal with the behavior, and have the 
> people whose lives you
> messed with define that behavior for you, you 
> see.  And it's not gonna
> go away - you're gonna be dealing with it every 
> moment in every
> situation for the rest of your life."
>
>
> I said, "Okay, I'll try that," and Ammon said 
> "It's not enough!"
>
>
> I said: "Oh."
>
>
> He said, "You were born a white man in 
> mid-twentieth century
> industrial America.  You came into the world 
> armed to the teeth with
> an arsenal of weapons.  The weapons of 
> privilege, racial privilege,
> sexual privilege, economic privilege.  You wanna 
> be a pacifist, it's
> not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and 
> fists and angry
> words, but giving up the weapons of privilege, 
> and going into the
> world completely disarmed.  Try that."
>
>
> That old man has been gone now twenty years, and 
> I'm still at it.  But
> I figure if there's a worthwhile struggle in my 
> own life, that, that's
> probably the one. Think about it.
>
>
> I'd always wanted to write a song for that old 
> man.  He never wanted
> one about him - he's that way - but something 
> mulched up out of his
> thought, his anarchist thought.  Anarchist in 
> the best sense of the
> word.  Oh so many times he stood up in front of 
> Federal District Judge
> Ritter, that old fart, and he'd be picked up for 
> picketing illegally,
> and he never plead innocent or guilty - he plead 
> anarchy.
>
>
> And Ritter'd say, "What's an anarchist, 
> Hennessy?" and Ammon would
> say, "Why an anarchist is anybody who doesn't 
> need a cop to tell him
> what to do."  Kind of a fundamentalist 
> anarchist, huh?
>
>
> And Ritter'd say, "But Ammon, you broke the law, 
> what about that?" and
> Ammon'd say, "Oh, Judge, your damn laws the good 
> people don't need 'em
> and the bad people don't obey 'em so what use 
> are they?"
>
>
> Well I lived there for eight years, and I 
> watched him, really watched
> him, and I discovered watching him that anarchy 
> is not a noun, but an
> adjective.  It describes the tension between 
> moral autonomy and
> political authority, especially in the area of 
> combinations, whether
> they're going to be voluntary or coercive.  The 
> most destructive,
> coercive combinations are arrived at through 
> force.
>
>
> Like Ammon said, "Force is the weapon of the 
> weak."
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> The Nation - Oct 12, 2004
> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041025&s=crane
>
>
>
> From "Voting for the First Time: An Interview 
> with Utah Phillips"
> by Carolyn Crane
>
>
>
> You surprised many people who are familiar with 
> your work with your
> announcement that you were going to register to 
> vote for the first
> time ever.
>
>
> This is not easy for me. I'm an anarchist and 
> I've been an anarchist
> many, many years. The anarchy that I've followed 
> and practiced all of
> that time came to me through Dorothy Day and the 
> Catholic Workers,
> through Ammon Hennessy, the great Catholic 
> anarchist and pacifist.
> Ammon taught me, as he did, to treat his body 
> like a ballot. My body
> is my ballot. And he said, "Cast that body 
> ballot on behalf of the
> people around you every day of your life, every 
> day. And don't let
> anybody ever tell you you haven't voted. You 
> just didn't assign
> responsibility to other people to do things. 
> You accept
> responsibility and see to it that something gets 
> done." That's the way
> he lived and that's the way the past forty, 
> going on fifty, years that
> I have lived. It's a way to vote without caving 
> in to the civil
> authority I'm committed to dissolving.
>
>
> But, we are in a desperate situation here. And 
> it's not just us in the
> United States. There are people all over the 
> world who are affected by
> these people who have staged a coup on our 
> government. I can see a
> shopkeeper in Damascus who's threatened by being 
> bombed out. I can see
> a schoolgirl who's collaterally killed by the 
> action of these people.
> There are millions of people in the world who 
> are affected by the
> actions of this government, and they can't vote 
> in this election. I
> have no use for Kerry. I have no use for Bush. I 
> don't like either one
> of them, but these folks can't vote in this 
> election. They have to
> have people vote for them. And I intend to be 
> one of those. What's the
> best chance they've got to keep them from being 
> bombed and killed? I
> don't know.  Kerry is an unknown quantity. Bush 
> is a known quantity. A
> crapshoot, isn't it? But I'm going to stand in 
> for one of these
> people. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong by myself.
>
> 
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