Spirit in Action

Non-violent Cow takes on ROTC at Marquette U - Bob Graf At Work

Bob Graf spent 7 years as a Jesuit scholastic student, was part of the Milwaukee 14, a 1968 action to destroy draft records during the Vietnam War, and recently he got arrested as a result of his protests of ROTC training at Marquette U<

Broadcast on:: 18 Aug 2013
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I spent much of my early life in a 45 mile radius of Milwaukee, Wisconsin And so I feel especially connected to events and people there. Today for Spirit in Action, I welcome Bob Graf, who has put his efforts of decades towards making Milwaukee better, especially in the institutions of the Catholic Church, of which he is a part. Bob spent seven years as a Jesuit scholastic student, was part of the Milwaukee 14, arrested for destroying draft records during the Vietnam War, and recently he was arrested for trespassing at Marquette University because of his activism at Marquette opposing the ROTC program there, the Reserve Officer Training Corps. LA religious Catholic, Bob Graf continues his lifetime of service to his religious ideals, and he joins us today by phone from Milwaukee. Bob, welcome to Spirit in Action. Thank you. I'm so glad to have you come to my attention recently. You got arrested recently because you didn't want to pay, well, you got arrested for trespassing at Marquette. You want to describe that situation, what happened? Well, for a long time, as far as I can look back in the records, there's been a very active protest at Marquette campus. Since 1969, against the military presence on campus, sometimes called OWLTC, this is something many people have been concerned about. Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, had been protesting military presence on Catholic campuses in 1948. It came to a head at Marquette, started in '69. After in 1968, there was an issue of racial injustice where the basketball players were the major part of the African American presence on campus, sort of came to a head in the spring of '68, and resulted in some of the African American students resigning, including the basketball players at the time. Well, no one. In support of that, I had been arrested. But a year after that, not me, but a number of students were involved there. And over the years, it's been on and off, sometimes real popular. But it kept alive, but people in the Catholic Worker community and other people. In 2006, on the anniversary of the ratification date of France, the other center. The Austrian who had refused to enter the military was beheaded. The date he was beheaded, we had a march at Marquette on the OWLTC. Question is, presence. We've been doing that since 2006. During that time, we've done a lot of research and record keeping. When it's gone off, the military has radically changed. It's not the OWLTC, or Dorothy Dase time, or your mother and father's time. After the draft in the '70s, it was in it, the selected service system. It was in it, the department of defense, and the government decided to make education. Their main route to military recruitment. In the college level, a lot of schools were refusing to have OWLTC programs on campus. Eventually, this come troublesome and it passed a law in 1996 saying that you have to offer this program on a campus or any campus, except if you're a pacifist school. If you do not do it, you can be forbidden from any federal funds on any part, not just military funds. It was at the level for schools, but the military also at that time, during the '70s and '90s, started creating selected schools that schools by choice that would offer these military programs of creating officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. And Marquette had some programs. He got the third one, became one of the by-choice selected schools. In fact, now it's gone to a point where it's the only university in the five-county area that offers military training, professional training for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. In fact, Marquette University is the only Jesuit school in the United States that offers all three departments of the defense. And one of the only two Catholic schools, Notre Dame, being the other one, that offer all three departments. There's 21 Catholic schools off of military training, but Marquette and Notre Dame are the only ones that offer all three departments. Also in her research, we discovered that the training has radically changed. We had a movie shown of soldiers of conscience, which is a well-known movie made with the consent of the Army. In the military, it goes into very detail what is the military training that is also included in our DC schools. And during that film, there's an ethics professor from West Point who talks about the training for reflexive killing, killing without conscience. And it shows in the movie how they're trained to kill without any decision making, any conscious, or more. It's just automatic on orders or on circumstances. And a part of this reason he explains is because in the Second World War, made a big research study afterwards. We found off that 25% of the military personnel had fired or gotten at the enemy. That's unacceptable. So over the years, various wars, Korean Vietnam wars, they kept into this type of training, sort of like a video game kind of thing. You just shoot at instinct. Now they have it up to over 95%. People fire their weapons at the enemy. This partially explains a little bit about the cases of suicide and PSAD that are increasing. In fact, there's no two officers here even talks about that. That you can kill somebody without conscience, but it will eventually come back to you and haunt you. And this is what's happening in the present military. And especially in the wars now that many of us consider unjust and immoral, don't get the quiet period for war or self-defense that many of us are. Even not passive us are. So we've been intentifying our efforts. And in 2009, we started conducting these weekly prayer visuals during Lent where we would go into a library or into the union and conduct prayer service like stations across wherever maybe with our banners that gave our message, "Markhead, teach war no more. Markhead, be faithful to the gospels, no longer host military departments." Or more recently, our message has been simplified to say, "Markhead, teach is killing." This is my side of the story, but they've called the cops at us. They instructed us with arrest, but they have never arrested us all these years. This year, they served me with a ban at a prayer service in the West. Just me personally, those are a group of people there. And it's the order of no trespass. Say, "I'm on a wall coat. If I come to market, campus, I'll be arrested for trespassing." And that's what I went to market campus and I wanted to be arrested during the prayer service to Wednesday after. But I had been doing some research in Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Archives, which are exclusively there. I mean, Dorothy would not be happy about that. But they're there, and I thought I'd come early. But some of the security got the word and they were ready for me. And so I went to this community. My card was deactivated. I went over the desk and announced my name, and then I was surrounded by officers. And then they said, "If I left, I would not be arrested." So I left right away. But then I went back to my car. I said, "Why am I supposed to stick around somewhere publicly because I have to meet these people at four o'clock for the prayer service?" And so I was walking back up Wisconsin Avenue, and the police officers picked me up for trespassing because I had gone to the library, and that's what, you know, is. Now, Marquette, in the order of picking me up, it says I was a known trespassed runner who were anti-war person, all that. But Marquette's announcement to the press, and as a trial, they state that the podcast had nothing to do with the arrest. The judge is very understanding, very sympathetic. Both the judge and the attorney were very good. But really, after a extensive trial, they allowed us in municipal court. I was on the grounds, and even though I thought the security officers testified that they committed purge reading, described it wrong. It didn't really matter. It didn't really matter that they told the press that I had been disrupting classes and knocking people over and stuff on campus. All these allegations really did not matter to the final thing, and I was -- my fine was upheld $131, when I said I would not pay it. The judge said that if I didn't pay the 90 days, they would come and get me to put me in the House of Corrections for three or four days to pay off the money. So that's a long story and a long way. Well, let's catch up on some of the pieces. First of all, it may surprise some of our listeners that Catholics in general would oppose military training at Marquette, or in general. I grew up Catholic. My father was a proud veteran of the Korean War. He thought that it was a good thing for a man to learn how being a man is about. How prevalent is the attitude within Catholic circles, including yourself, of course, that training for killing, like they're doing at Marquette, is a wrong thing. That doesn't uphold the gospel. Well, there's a couple of gloss here. One is that we have a very outdated justification for war called the Just War Theory. But as one of the moral theologians that spoke at the rally before the trial said very clearly, and he's very well respected, Professor McGuire, is that even by those criteria, which are really not too relevant with modern weapons, there's no way you can justify a war. The kinds of wars that we're into, you know, since the World War II. But then there's the other branch that says that the church that the gospel causes for non-violence love and love your enemies and do good details and hurt you and so forth. And that's a prevalent belief in the church, too. Then there's the whole issue of conscience. That Catholic catechism states the priority of conscience over anything the government says, sort of like a Nuremberg trial kind of thing. Your conscience is priority over the military states, very clearly your manual. You get military values, take a priority over your religious and personal values. So if you're ordered to do something, you do it as you're ordered. For example, there's a conscience ejection thing in the military, but there's no selective conscientious objection. In other words, you could believe in a justified war, but you can't go to any war unless you're in the military. So this is what the movie, Soldiers of Contrets, is all about. It's about following some really long-term soldiers and veterans who, at these wards, Iraq and Afghanistan object against, and they couldn't get, you know, they were punished until they were bound to be completely against all wars. So there's a door to the day at one side, it's a pacifist and completely against all wars, a famous Catholic worker, a Catholic person in their respects. And then there's other wannabe pacifists like me that really don't believe you can teach killing on instinct without conscience. There's another, well-known movie, Wooten Clattoo, which follows all these soldiers, so a very difficult experience in Iraq they had. And they all came back, and many of them committed crimes and suicides and murders and so forth. They were just terrible. And then at the end of the movie, one of the guys really tried to get help, talks to his chaplain, Counselor, and Counselor said something very, I think, true, but damaging. When you go to a war, like these wars, you have to put your conscience aside. When you get done, you can pick it up again. And this is pretty much what the military teaches right now. So what happens is you do damage, I mean, you do damage to other people, and now we're becoming more of a troll-like military where, you know, more technical equipment, trolls, secret squads, dirty wars. Remove the American people from the experience of war. Many of us remember the Vietnam War watching on TV. Now, you never hear about the -- I think I have friends who deny that these trolls really have damage in children. I mean, I've seen the pictures, I've seen the results in studies. You know, they're just really complete denial, and people like Marquette don't want to hear it. So Marquette can't say that I was arrested for this. They have to say I was arrested for being disturbed in campus with students and so forth. Because if they say that, they have to argue against the all the various moral theological arguments. We've had tons of research, and they have just ignored everything, ignored our signs, ignored our papers. We even sat in the new president's office one day about a year ago, and, too, we've got to meet with him. We've got to meet with him eventually, and he just -- we asked him some questions. It's very simple, and he just wouldn't answer them, period, you know. You know, they can't say, "Yes, we teach a reflexive killing," and they can't say, "No, we don't," because we know they do. So they just sort of go after the messenger, like defamed me, and there's been others in the past. Or they ignore us like you did the vigils. Just, you know, never arrest us. Just pretend it doesn't happen. This is where we're at. We're at a point where the Catholic Church is very clearly. In fact, Paul John II, who's now, of course, St. Louis, very clearly stated the war was a moral, illegal, and unjust. The rock war, if in his embassy, the president, Bush at the time, just tell him that it was a crime against humanity, and we did it anyway. And he was very clear, and the teaching of the church is very clear, even if you accept the just war theory, it's clear. One of my friends, a professor, Mark Kent, retired now, said that the just war theory pretty much went off the window with the atomic bomb, because it never was intended for the modern weaponry. You know, St. Thomas Aquinas had no idea what he was talking about war that was going on there. But even the old standards don't apply. I mean, you have to, you know, they didn't seem to survive. It was just six standards. None of them apply to this modern warfare. There's no justification for these wars. So churches condemn them, condemn the killing, but the Catholics, especially the local American church, like the church in Germany, just pretty much ignore it. Gordon John did a study, a very active piece activist from Milwaukee, creator of Pax Christi, and a couple other Catholic piece of all the ships. The sociological study about the German war and the church in the German war Catholics. And, you know, they pretty much went along with it all, even though they didn't like Hitler, they didn't like what he was doing. There were people like white rolls in France, and yet the people spoke out. But in general, the church has been, you know, with the government in the same here in the United States. And I'm not saying compared to Hitler or Germany, I'm just saying it's the same principle of, you know, I had a good friend of mine say the principle and put it this way. I don't want to hear it. They just don't want to hear it, you know. And it'll come out over over again until they finally admit it and open their records. This whole Catholic church thing of secrecy and transparency is we see this everywhere in the church, you know. So, you know, I'm still a Catholic girl. I don't like you. And I still believe in my faith in that. And I'm a Jesuit educated. I have 14 years of Jesuit education behind me, some high school, college, master's degrees. The more I understand my faith, the more committed I am. How common are your thoughts, your beliefs within the Catholic church? Maybe, you know, there's the Casa Maria Catholic worker house there in Milwaukee. I think it'd probably be pretty common amongst those folks. Well, I don't agree. I think there's a person in Casa Maria that works for the Marquette now. And the Peace Center, he's really trying to damage me personally. And I mean, other good people, there's people that support us deeply. But it's more than Catholic workers. I mean, if you look around all the people that were there the other day in the trial, I don't know if anybody that really lives in Casa Maria was there. No one was there. But it's look at Kansas City last week. 24 piece activists, some Catholic workers, some just in sympathy and across the line on the nuclear base in the Kansas City, one of the three new nuclear boundaries built by our president and administration are being built through private enterprise. You know, I think there's a lot of people, there's a growing number of people willing to take risk on this. And there's a lot of supporters that won't get arrested, but, you know, I find it just a wide range of support. It's not like in the 70s for the students, you know, and we had hundreds of students out there against the military. You know, pretty much the students are nowadays, passive spy with our flyers or signs, you know, they'll want to be bothered. Notre Dame and Marquette both have famous centers for peace. It's basically a passification of the students, you know, peacemaking centers, and yet both of the leaders in military training. You know, so it's a -- and both have Catholic worker communities in South Bend and Milwaukee. So I think it's a lot bigger than in Catholic workers. I just -- I mean, there are some Catholic workers. I feel myself, I call myself a Catholic worker, even though I'm not part of Casa Maria. It's just like there's a movie out now called Hidden Stay. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's about the Catholic left movement in the '60s and '70s, where there was actions like Kingsville 9 and Milwaukee 14, and there's hundreds of those actions, where some of us went in, got the selected 18 files out, took them outside in Napalm, the Burnham, or destroyed them some way. There's a movie -- whole movie about that movement, which is really gone now, you know, in the Catholic Church. It was there for many years, and it was like hundreds and hundreds of people were involved on all levels, you know. And there was hundreds of actions. And the movie is fascinating to see, because I actually was one of the actions in Milwaukee 14. In 1968, I was part of that, which is like the second major action application for those nine people like the Baragans. They're no one for that, but there was thousands of people that did that, tried publicly and sent to jail. So there was a -- there has been, and there's a big movement now. Especially on the nuclear site thing, you know. There's never been a local sister, Megan Rice, 82-year-old nun at Traspas, but she did a very good job at it. She got all the way to the nuclear reactor in Tennessee. And that really embarrassed the government. A little bit more to Traspas, the editor, she filed in jail for us real life, because she -- both two or three barriers got into the actual site, you know, which is really scary to have a lot of them. Of course, she's got violent passes, but most of the time it's just crossed the line, like SOA -- SOA School of Americas. School of Americas, yes. People have been doing that for years and years, and they're still doing it. And Roy was, they have communicated for supporting a woman priest. But they're still doing it, you know. That's where the priests are doing it. You know, there's a lot of layers in this. So you have to fly out about it, you know, like Catholic workers have a little list of -- they tell us people about it. NCR has articles, catch them, Catholic reporter. It doesn't really make the papers. It did hear only because the religious editor knew some background, and I've been involved in another struggle with the Catholic church over a million dollars that should be going to the poor, and it's not going to the poor. Because of that background, maybe she covered it. Also, because of Marquette Milwaukee, Marquette were the plates that were walking 14, which I was involved in, was about the '68 resolution of institutional racism, which results in a very good program now for education opportunities program, which is now going to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It's real -- Marquette's real proud of it. But it was the same request that they turn us down and locked us up for and kicked me out of school and took my degree and all that stuff back, which I have no regrets, you know, any of that. And that was just me, was a bunch of people. At the times, I guess, these students were much more involved. In those days, we didn't do a lot of service, direct service. Now they do direct service, but they don't -- you know, they go to Catholic workers' cost me or they help with the poor, but they don't connect that with the resistance. And so it swung the balance, it swung completely over. So now, Marquette's students do tons and tons of service. That's part of their whole curriculum, but they don't do any resistance. Where I think the Catholic worker itself has really bounced the two, you know. Dorothy was arrested for resisting the war and she was doing the service. You know, Catholic workers have always had the double side in this to them. Now they praise and honor these people, King and Dorothy Day, but they don't really -- the side of political change is not really talked about anymore, you know. I had people who didn't tell me that all King wasn't arrested very much. Connie wasn't arrested very much. She wasn't meeting non-violent actions, and Dorothy was. In fact, that's what I was going to do research out of day. I was arrested. I had done some research and it was about how many non-violent actions Dorothy Day was involved in. She was involved in the last of them. But I had to prove it to people, even people that praise her and write about her. You know, it bothered me about the whole banning thing or order no trust. They would never admit it was about any of the fame I character. I've been associated with the Society of Jesus since 1957. One way or another, I went to high school in '57, marked that high. And I went to the Jesuits after that. I've been at a graduate degree from Wella. I've been associated with the lay group, associated with the Jesuits for many years. I mean, I've been really out there, and for them to just have some spokespersons say, it's nothing to do with that. He was pushing himself through some crowd or some, I don't know. He made up some allegations. Even the security officer that day claims to be there just really missed. I was arguing with them and all that. It wasn't really relevant because to a technicality of law, but it was pretty much shows you how much ends they were going to not deal with the real issue. I think we did that at a very little cost, three or four days in jail, very small cost. We poked the silence on this one issue of market. Well, you're talking about so much. I want to follow a lot of different threads. Number one, I want to mention to our listeners that I've had a number of guests on this program that you might want to go back to, and all of those are available on our website, northernspiritradio.org. So you can listen to my interviews with people talking about moral injury, or talking about just war theory, or talking about various Catholic groups, actions like Pax Christi. All of those are available on my website. I just go and search. You can search by religion or topic or just a name, if you wish. Talk about people like the Baragons and so on. So all of that is available on northernspiritradio.org. This is Spirit in Action, and today I'm speaking with Bob Graf, who is part of the Milwaukee 14, way back during the Vietnam War, and he continues his activism with Catholic workers and other folks. On our website, you can find all of our eight years of programs for listening and download. You can find links to our guests. You can post comments, and we'd love to have two-way communication. There's also a place to make donations. Your donations help us a great deal. I also want to remind you to support community radio station, like the one you're probably listening to this via. Community radio station is so important for bringing to our populace an alternate view of news and music, stuff that you get nowhere else. So remember to support your local community radio station. Again, we're speaking with Bob Graf. I'm Mark Helps-Meet. Let's talk about some of the threads of what you've mentioned already, Bob. The Milwaukee 14. Let's get a little bit concrete. What actually happened, and what year was it? Well, it's in the December 24th of 1968. There was 14 people from around the country, a number of priests and one brother, and some lay people like myself at the time. We basically, in the spirit of the cases of when I and other actions that came later, we went into Milwaukee, selected service system files. We took out 1A files. What does that mean, 180 files? In that time, the selected service system was a non-voluntary system. You would just pick out and craft it. When you're 1A, you admit you're about ready to be taken to the military, you know? Or you pretty much went to the military, or you went to Canada, or you went to prison, you know? It wasn't much of a choice here. We had an exemption, a lot of college kids had exemptions at time, or seminary and ten exemption. I had a seminary and exemption, which ran off that same day. But anyway, so those 1A files were in a certain file. These are easy for computer systems, you know, and records, you know, paperless records. So we went into all 14 draft boards, or not 14, but all the draft boards were really numbered. And we stuffed our bags full of all the 1A files. We took them outside, a little square to the outside of that draft board. And it's down to Milwaukee, and we put some homemade napalm thrown on it. We lit it and sang around, sang songs, read from the scriptures, and waited for the police to come. There's actually films. We had media there, and there's some films on my website, not filing college.org. Say that again? The website is www.nonviolentcal.org. And I'm there on the right side. If you look at Milwaukee 14 today and click on that, you'll see some of the actual live coverage of the event. And what happened to the various people involved? A number of them now have died. But we did that, and then the police came arrested us. We were arrested on for burglary, breaking in, arson, burning, and theft, stealing. And later on, the federal charges, which sounded nicer, were for destroying the selected service files. We were taken to jail, took us about a month for supporters to get us out and bond. Twelve of the 14 went to trial with the state charges in 1969, and two went separately for various reasons to federal courts. The 12 of us, at the end, in order to get our case heard, we had lawyers, so we really couldn't have a test by ourselves. We are our own lawyers. And so with the jury, we were able to present our case, and we had people like Howard Zinn testify about nonviolence, non-violent actions. And we were found guilty of burglary, arson, theft, sentenced to two years, consecutively for each count. And we were all taken to the maximum security prison, and at the time, upon some people were sent off to various camps and farms, or medium security, or a youth security prison. And we spent from one year to 18 months, one of our priests, Father Lorenzo Rosebaw Ableich, who ended up being a famous martyr in Guatemala. But anyway, he spent the most part of the time going on cooperation. Two other people, like the federal prison, did their time. One of them was Mike Collins, who was a friend of mine, founded the Catholic World Health Hospital in Milwaukee. And he eventually was deported to Ireland with his family, and kept there many years before he came back, and came back about 15 years later. But basically, we're there from all over the place, people from Boston, you know, everywhere. But there was a whole series after the Chicago 15, and Jersey 28, and on and on. And this is what this movie, it's out in a circuit, a movie circuit now, in states, it's all about documenting these actions. So we were pretty much the second big one here. Phil Bergen had poured some blood with some other people in Baltimore before the case in 2009 action. And then it was Milwaukee 14, and then it was like tons of them, a slew of them all over the place. And basically, they were a similar format. That's what a movie called. We hit the action in state, and we're caught. And, you know, it was a trial, actually some trials. They were found not guilty once in a while, but mostly, you know, people served sentencing. So that was the Catholic left where we want to call it. It doesn't exist now, but it was, but a lot of Catholic people now. Even organizations, like Gordon and John, helped start Jim Forrest, Milwaukee 14. A lot of people who started these organizations, like Catholic Peace Fellowship, or Parks Christi. Gordon and John was one of the founders of Georgia A and others. Parks Christi, they've gone a very good route, but more of a education talk, discussion, no really, not a violent, direct action disobedience. I'm not criticizing that. I've learned a lot from these groups, and I've been part of these groups. But there is an aspect of what people in civil rights movement and in the peace movement did missing. How would Jim would call it, civil disobedience? It's a key factor in all the various labor movements, civil rights. It's really always been, you know, a key item that has made them happen. You have to do something more than talk, and I get emails every day. There's 20 talks every night, just about. I only go to one or two a week because I can't handle it. I can't handle hearing these things about all these issues, and then going to another one, you know, it's like, we've become defensive. And we're always defending ourselves, and I just got tired of it. I said, hell, we're defending myself. I don't have to prove that I'm a good guy, you know, not disruptive person. I just go on and do it. I can go to a library, and I don't care if you want to arrest me if you want to go to a library to do research and learn today. That's their issue, you know. We have to stop. And there are people, and I'm not talking about myself. There's hundreds and hundreds of people around this country who are going out and not finally staying up with their rights. And it's working. I mean, people that do it, like the gay rights people, who did it really very strongly, and they did gain a lot of rights, you know. And other groups can't do it, like people with mental illness, who they can't get organized because they don't even accept a lot of them. I support that so much because they've been really pushed down and down. I mean, I've done some stuff with segregation in the church in Milwaukee. It's unbelievable, you know, we're so much. I just went to a prayer video this morning for you, two young men, one of them was 20 years old. It was just innocent victim of a shooting incident on the north side. Somebody started shooting and got killed. There's just too much of this, and we can't be silent anymore, you know. We found that violent action is better than expresses love more than words. Words are good, but if I love market, you just spoke about, you know, I can't speak here anyway, but I really love somebody. I'm going to do something about it, you know. One more thing on this, a famous Nazi fighter, why so? He's famous, a flock of Germans. He has a famous quote and says, "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference." He goes through a whole series of things, and the opposite of it is indifference. In difference, tapping our phones and messing our computers up, who cares? We cannot be undefensive anymore. We have to call after what we believe in. Slow down the empire, falling apart, you know. The empire is falling apart, and we have to throw some things in it so we can build up a community perhaps before it's destroyed, you know. That's my attitude at least. A lot of good attitudes there. I think I want to get into some of the detail here, some of the stories of your life. For instance, you spent something like eight years in Jesuit training, so from age of 18 up to 25. Yeah. So, why did you pull out of that? Were you nurtured? Was it deeply inspirational to be part of Jesuit training? Jesuit training? Oh, yes. In those days, you spend first four years out of the wilderness, like, you know, in a country and a roof of the world, and that was very healthy for me to get myself together. And I went to St. Louis for studies and philosophy. My last year was at Marquette, the university student. It really helped me understand, get progressive, and understand what's my mission and, you know, my value system and helped me get in touch with me. It helped me get in touch with myself. And I really do appreciate that education. I really just sort of gradually walked the same path that was going. And one day, I was outside of the Jesuits. You know, this is like a very natural thing. In fact, when I left the Jesuits summer of '68, I felt, well, I'm going to have this tremendous event. So, I went to stay with Dan Bierge with Longtime Jesuits, still a Jesuit, 90-some years old, in Cornell at the time. And I felt, well, I'm going to get it really hit by this change. I was the same person. Nothing happened. So, I came back and, same friends, same people. You know, just kept moving on. He got to the fringes when he was already a priest in the elderly, you know, but a lot of other people get the fringes earlier. And so, we, you know, just keep going in the directions that we're called. And we're not a priest someday. I mean, not a seminary. I was never a priest. I was even close. I was halfway through the trade. But there's a lot of priests that left the Jesuits. I just have a friend. He was 80 years old. He's been a Jesuit provincial. He's in Momohon now in Wisconsin province. And he just left the Jesuits in the priest for that 80 years old. And wrote a three-page letter Y, you know, and basically, it's not lack appreciation of his life. It's just a matter of going in the same direction. What does it mean to be a provincial? A provincial is the head of the order for a province. You know, the Wisconsin province is like five states. And he was the superior of that. You know, it's a hierarchical system like the Archbishop and the Pope. You know, we have our superior general enrolled and we have our provincial. So he's very high-level and even at that age. He was. I mean, after his provincial ship, he went out working Omaha and he just left from there. You know, I have another friend who's still a Jesuit. He was at my trial. He was at my rally daily. He's 93 years old. He was standing by me now. He's a little bit elderly and he's in a wheelchair and all that. He came out to the event. I don't think he's going to leave. I think he's too close to dying, you know. But the point is that he is the one who got in trouble last year for saying mass with a woman priest at School of Americas. Another friend of mine who was a woman priest from Milwaukee, he said mass with her and he got censored. You know, he can't wear his collar anymore and he can't say mass in public anymore and, you know, so forth. But after 93 years old, I'm not going to kick him out. He's not like Roy, you know. Roy's pretty old too, but not that old. I just had Roy on my program before too. I know him too a little bit. And he was, in fact, this woman preached at Father Breadon, 93 year old Jesuits in mass, which is the one that Roy was at her ordination when he was as communicative, you know, for that. Wouldn't take it back. We're all connected. People will walk. You like to say we are neighbors and connected, you know. And I think in this realm, Quakers, Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims, followers of Gandhi, just so many of us. It's just that we kept divided or divided like some people now. This is division, you know, that's, oh, you're organizing against this and that, you know, and you're against the veterans or what it is. You know, the camps are divided. Divide and conquer, right? So we have 25 issues going on. I decided my life to focus on two. One is the archdiocese in segregation of the poor and the minorities, which I'm working on, and the other one was in military and Marquette. Gandhi says we should start at home. So, you know, say my mom told me charity starts at home. I don't think she meant this. And so I decided to look around and there's all these issues, you know. There's so much that can be done. I'm going to focus on just two. One is for the church to spend that million dollars that you got from Seattle churches in our central poor area to the poor, which we're not quite waiting that one. And the other one is Marquette who did not teach killing anymore. So that's my two. You know, I mean, not that I don't support other ones. I go to other events and I do works of mercy kinds of stuff. But in terms of we've got too many going on and we can't be going to talks every night and then coming home and going to another talk, you know, or another fundraiser. You know, I went to Haiti and all these groups were raising money for Haiti. I went with an SOA watch. People were writing other people to Haiti somewhat after the earthquake. And all these groups I was getting money to, they had just abandoned the camps. You know, they had raised all this money. The camps had no toilets and they didn't want them to the camps. And they were, you know, food. People were just worse off. And there was no housing going on and all these millions and millions of dollars. In fact, Bill Quigley, you might know, too, did a study of where the money went. And it didn't go through the people. I stopped giving to all these groups, you know. Because I just can't deal with that. You know, it's all this talk and show and fundraisers and money and the people are just worse off. And that's what's going on in the whole world. You know, it's like I've been in other places like El Salvador or Venezuela. I've seen it all the side. And it's just like we're all connected and we're all fighting for the same thing. It just never kept divided. And it wasn't waiting in '68. I walked out of the street in Milwaukee, 14. People would love or hate what I did. At least we took a stand. Now, they just say, "I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it." The left side says, the active side says, "Oh, we've got to go with another talk. There's a few brothers there." And we keep chasing around and the conservatives then react. And then we end up with a health bill. There's 50 of the health companies. And then the health companies are not fighting the health bill. But they wrote, you know, it's like we have an immigration bill. And we give in to all these terrible things. And then we want more, you know, I don't know. It just goes on and on. And until we get an offensive, as Marquette I think was a little bit on the, we were on the offensive a little bit in this trial thing. We made it our issue. We could have reacted to all these personal attacks. We did not. We had people speak to what was really going on. You know, even the judge understood it. The judge and the attorney, the judge said, "I'll tell you this. I would agree with you, you know, Mr. Groff. I benefit from your years in the 60s." Both of them were African Americans who went on the Marquette and benefited from what we did. But they, you know, technically, I did break the law. You know, it was no denying that, you know. But the point is that we got to go on offense. The fact that they allowed us to do this in a city, municipal courtroom, gave us hours of time to have this trial. It was unbelievable, you know, gracious. You know, that's our victory. And not just getting, not doing it again. You know, keep it. Like, Catholic workers are people against nuclear movement. They just keep doing it. They keep crossing the line at the three plants. The new, I mean, how many people recognize that we've built three new nuclear plants. In 30 some years, we never had a new nuclear bomb plant. Now, we have three of them coming up in Tennessee, the Mexico, and Kansas City. In private contractors, you know, everything's so privatized, even the military. The militarization of the border is going to be privatized, you know. Which means they can hide it from public view. Yeah, well, like this nuclear plant, the one in Kansas City, never went through Congress. The city bought the land and went to the government or somebody got the land. If private companies built the plant and put it making nuclear bombs. I mean, the money's coming from us, but we never had to go through Congress. In the wars are like the drone wars are all privatized. And that's why they're having so many leaks because they have so many contractors doing all this stuff, you know. Because some people have conscience, you know. There are heroes, many into the world, you know. You know, I hear dedication on your part, and obviously it's many decades, 50 years of dedication. You've clearly been engaged and continue to be engaged. Nothing's discouraging you that way, but I do hear a note of discouragement. I do hear your concern that there aren't all the students out there with you were used to back in the 60s, 70s. I do hear your concern that the Catholic Church is selling out. I mean, for the money that they get in via ROTC and so on. How hopeful can you be or what is your hope based on? You know, if I didn't believe, I think Thomas Merkin said it on a letter to a fourth in the 60s and 70s, a letter to him. He says, "My conscience, you have to work for these things, but you don't work for results. You work because it's the right thing to do. You know, whereas if you're looking for results, you're going to get discouraged. I do what I believe is the right thing to do. Now, on very minor things, I get results down the basketball rim so the African-American is not playing the neighborhood park. You know, white neighborhoods by me couldn't play full court basketball. They've been doing this all over. I spoke out and a number of people, after a couple of years, they put all the rims back again, but that's very seldom that that's happened. You know, that's not a minor issue. I have another one going on with the church right now. They closed down in the African-American. The most segregated city in the United States is Milwaukee. The most segregated part of the city is the North Central side. The poorest, Milwaukee, the fourth poorest city, the poorest side is the North Central. Milwaukee has the most people that are sent to prison and people who are sent to prison and from prison are back in the North Central. And so we can go on and on. This is the side of town that the Catholic Church had 17 churches in the 60s, now has three. And taking the money from the recent church, they closed, which is another MIR church. When I bought it, it took over $1.1 million, transferring it to other churches out of the area. And I fought that. I'm still fighting that. I'm losing. But I may say this is the Paul cause. I've seen people, increasingly poor, the landlords are even providing refrigerant stoves anymore. We're only people that can call and get maybe some better refrigerant stoves. You know, the church, you know, this is our Catholic Church. It talks about social justice and all that, the poor and the Pope and all that. I just brought it to the tension to the forefront. I mean, you've got the same kind of treatment. But now, am I doing it for results? Yes, I like to get results. But if I don't, should I get discouraged? No. I mean, I get discouraged. Like you said, I have a little discouraged in my voice. And some people call it negativity, you know. But I'm not really negative. I don't think. I'm just sort of saying to people, you've got to do your business. Do your, what you believe in, your conscience. You just can't numb yourself. I've numb myself for many years. I wasn't business. And after walking forward, I was all over the place. And then I was doing well, making money. I just didn't feel great. You know, I just had to come back and do what I have to do, you know. Can you tell me a little bit more about your time away from activism? You were making money. I mean, you have race in a family, probably, that kind of thing. Right. Well, after the Milwaukee 14, after I got out of jail, I helped some other people. We started on one of the early private, credited schools where young girls, they were kicked out of school because they got framed in, or the guys who went to, you know, were in trouble was threw it out in the linkage, so-called. And then after that, I got into community organizing, sort of like a solid, sweet type organizing to build up and out of the east. And then after that, I got back to Madison. A job never worked out, and we had moved around a lot, a young family. And I fell into some kind of business adventure, which eventually led to my own curriculum, advertising business. And one of the 17 years when my two sons were growing up, we did that. And then eventually got to this priest that just resigned 80 years old. He had bought all the ex-judgers together. And to a group, he was starting a lay organization of people associated with society. So we decided to do that, but what could I, and our kids are growing up now, and did that. But I couldn't understand why I was making all this money and doing all these things, but I think it's a little of God because I said I'm not really satisfied. But when I sold my business, I sold my cottage, I sold my boat, and my house, and everything. Didn't give the money to the poor. But I did part one, what Jesus said, but I was able to, which had sort of resources, come back and work in St. Vitzley-Paul. I worked in his youth minister, you know, my last job, some church work, you know, with kids and social activity, and I retired when I could. And I had that money, you know, helped me get settled out. So we were able, you know, God provided those things so I didn't understand the time, but it was a way for us now to have that freedom. For real, he had the freedom and to be able to do this. You know, I don't have, I'm in solidarity with the poor, but I'm not a poor, you know. I joke with my poor friend, I have a lot more poor friends than I ever had. I didn't have any really poor friends for many years, but now I joke with them, and when Walker passes his big text and raises their taxes, you know, "Wow, man, I've got that big text cut coming this year. You're going to have yours raised," you know. People living on social security wherever they be, SSI. Now, my friends are people with mental illness, my friends are people that are seniors, my friends are people that are very active, like I am being able to believe this, you know. So it's another whole, I have to be prioritized in my life. I put my service to people who need first, and I do these other things, so like I've been to just two issues right now. So that's it. I have a house, a car, and you know, I have all the comforts. I have grandchildren, so I'm blessed. I'm very blessed. In fact, when I do things for people, they always should pay you for driving here. I said, "No, you're giving me so many blessings." I get tons of blessings. I go every day, I go to people's houses and do things for them. You know, if we go to the poor, not to do things for them, but to get our blessings. God gets all his grace and blessings to the poor. One of my Indian priests friends told me, "We've got to go there to get it." So I'm really wealthy right now. I'm blessed every day. You know, I feel blessed, and I'm not seeing this sort of corny way, but I just feel when something's right, it's peaceful. You know, when you get your mind is curved, when I start thinking about all these things, you're just thinking about me, it gets me upset. But when I think about all the good people that are believing this, I really feel peaceful, you know. So that's what you call a nation disturbance, a nation as a servant of spirits, which I did study by the way. You discern what God's will for you, and God's consciousness for you. It looks like you found what God calls you to, and you're living it out, and who could ask for more? Yes, amen. You mentioned, Bob, that your website is nonviolentcow.org. Why nonviolent cow? Just two parts of it. The nonviolent part is what we talked about today. The other part I'm interested in is growing. We have growing power here in Milwaukee. You know, growing ecologically sound organic way. I have gardens all over my house, my small house, and using worm castings and worms, we can grow a lot in small areas. So the first name I had for it when I started the site was nonviolentwerm.org. In fact, if you look that name up, you're still finding my website. And I do a daily diary of the worm, which I've done for many years now. And basically, it was about my observations in life. One of my teachers had scheduled and taught me how to make little observations. It's gone from growing stuff, you know, nature. It's gone back to the civil rights. It's gone back to peace or this kind of issues. In that website, you know, one site is about growing stuff. You know, using worms, and so forth, and compost, and castings, and worm poop, and all that. The other site is about this all market, nonviolence, and stuff like that. And I try to connect them both. And then the name change came about people who have a name worm, means a lot of things with viruses and worms in the computer. But I went to India, Gandhi pilgrimage, with some Gandhi leaders, to the state of the ashmans in various places. And I saw that the cow had a special place. And it wasn't for the cow, it was leaked because they don't eat it. It wasn't for the milk, which is a secondary thing. It was for the cow poop. And the cow poop, as Gandhi praises greatly, was dried out and used for planting as farmers to adhere. But they also added worms to it, castings, which is, I found, in Guatemala, all over the world. This is not a new thing we learn here in the United States, and going about it. This has been going on for years. And worm castings, a worm poop, as you would call it, have this tremendous value of healthy, organic enzymes and so forth. It's the best kind of natural fertilizer you can get in the world. And so they feed worms in the cow poop and have just dried out, and they create this beautiful soil, energy, they bag it, and they use it for the land. This is all over the world, they do this. This is a very ancient way of growing. And we bought it here in town, and so I saw the cow as a symbol. And then, of course, there's the wild cow. The cow just roams every word, and they use the cow. You're in the cow milk. The cow is everything. And that's got a holiness to it. So I call it not a violent cow, but I still kept the diary with the worm. And also my son moved to a house across from a dairy farm. So now my grandchildren are showing cows at the fairs. So cows are a big part of my life. They're going to go up there and take pictures of cows, you know, for my website. I hope you keep getting that name out there in the public. I wanted to say, milking it for all its worth. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, you were expecting that, okay. No, I didn't. That's a new one, but I like it. Thank you so much for doing that work, for standing as a long-time witness at Marquette University because you love it. Yes. For you to be there standing in love and to help Marquette University and the Catholic Church to be better. That's just a wonderful witness. I thank you for doing that, and I thank you for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you pretty much for inviting me to join us. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You