Manchester soccer players
replace a minuet of silence with
a minuet of applause before
a game.

We have a tradition at our church of people making announcements at the end of Sunday liturgy. I got up to announce our prayer and protest vigil against militarism at Marquette University this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday,at 4–5pm in the Raynor library lobby at 4–5pm. I decided to tie the announcement in with my recent trip to Guatemala with the SOA Watch delegation. I told the assembly how militarism was so overt in Guatemala, with security armed with assault weapons everywhere. I also spoke how one of the priests, Lorenzo Rosebaugh, that worshiped at times with us in the USA was honored in Guatemala as a martyr in the province where he was killed. I said how militarism was more subtle in USA but Marquette University, a Catholic Jesuit University, a few blocks away was the training center for the Department of Defense schools of Army, Navy/Marines and Air Force. Then I announced our prayer and protest this Wednesday. To my surprise my announcement was met with applause.

I thought afterwards that if only we could turn the applause into action how effective our nonviolent actions at Marquette would be. We have had a dwindling attendance at our resistance events in recent times, making it easier for the administration of Marquette University to ignore us.

How to turn applause into nonviolent action? Consulting with my wife about why people seemed disinterested she mentioned that many people often do not connect our opposition to military training on campus, ROTC, to militarism and training how to kill human beings. War, violence and killing and the teaching of it seems remote to many Americans she says, no matter how passionate some of us believe in it. We need to convince people in words, actions and images that it is really people dying as a result of this teaching of war and that the child they may save by resistance could be their own. Only than we can turn applause into action.

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