{"id":309621,"date":"2025-12-15T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=309621"},"modified":"2025-12-10T18:28:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T18:28:48","slug":"when-kathy-kelly-went-to-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/when-kathy-kelly-went-to-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"When Kathy Kelly Went to Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Kathy’s Arrest – (Image by Shane Franklin)<\/p><\/div>\n

(2015) –\u00a0Kathy Kelly is the co-coordinator of <\/em>Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has traveled to Iraq and Gaza during wartime\u2013to bear witness and give comfort. The author of <\/em>Other Lands Have Dreams, she has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and among inmates of US prisons. In Dec 2014, she was sentenced to 90 days in federal prison after she and Georgia Walker had attempted to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter to the commander of Whiteman Air Force base, asking him to stop his troops from piloting lethal drone flights over Afghanistan from within the base. She began serving her sentence on 23 Jan 2015. (info@vcnv.org<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Kathy Kelly went to jail,
\nthe land of the free, home of the brave
\nbent out of shape over deflated footballs;
\nO\u2019Reilly railed at one of his guests
\nwho dared to suggest that \u201cAmerican Sniper\u201d
\nwas not a really, really good show;
\n\u201cblack ice\u201d blanketed Texas to New England
\nas 16-wheelers careened and caromed,
\nhaphazardly killing all the way home.<\/p>\n

She had tried to deliver:
\na loaf of bread
\nand a letter
\nto Whiteman Air Force base
\nrequesting they stop sending their drones
\nover the heads of Afghan kids
\n(and everyone else for that matter!).<\/p>\n

A little past 60, small, with features chiseled
\nby wind and her will, she has lost count
\nof numbers assigned to her,
\nprison food regurgitated, times being ill,
\nfor protesting wars for the sake of the children\u2014
\nwhite, black, red, yellow, brown\u2013
\nall her pretty ones,
\nforsaken by men pushing buttons in bunkers
\nat Whiteman or elsewhere;
\nin serpentine caverns, winding under
\nPennsylvania Avenue;
\nor in boardrooms in London\u2026
\nhaphazardly killing all the way home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mind-forged manacles\u201d Blake wrote about
\nare what she\u2019s standing fast against\u2014
\nthis wind-chiseled, Irish-Catholic girl,
\nwho took Christ\u2019s messages to heart:
\nto feed the multitudes with Truth;
\nto suffer for the sake of it;
\nto alleviate the suffering
\nso loaves and fishes multiply.<\/p>\n

She cannot help but see
\nthe commonality of life:
\na kid walking down a street
\nin Ferguson, Missouri,
\nor Kabul, or Fallujah, or Gaza\u2013
\nwalking in a sniper\u2019s crosshairs,
\nslipping on black ice.<\/p>\n

The \u201csummer soldiers and
\nsunshine patriots\u201d
\nsend boys and girls to kill for them\u2014
\nother people\u2019s boys and girls.
\nRanters rant about 100-year wars,
\n\u201cbad guys and good guys\u201d
\n(like children playing video games);
\nbillionaires cavort on multi-decked yachts
\nwhile the masses rot under chem-trailed skies;
\npuffer-fish generals, medals galore,
\nparade for more money (always more)
\nbefore a Congress of stooges
\nin on the take.
\nMedia meatheads and celebrity clowns
\npreen for the cameras,
\ntake selfies of grinning,
\npancake-make-up faces.<\/p>\n

Kathy Kelly, 04971-045, at FMC Lexington\u2013
\nmore than a number stapled to a file;
\nmore than a cog in a Chaplinesque movie,
\nwon\u2019t keep the flywheel grinding
\nthe better angels of our nature down;<\/p>\n

she dares to see things as they are
\n(and ask, \u201cWhy?\u201d).
\nDares to see things as they still might be
\n(and ask, \u201cWhy not?).<\/p>\n

Against tentacled and prying darkness, she
\nwhispers to the crying child: \u201cWe are here\u201d;
\nstands fast, and tells a mortified Authority:
\n\u201cWe are one with those who share
\nthe morsels of our shared humanity\u2013
\nthe leavened loaves of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>Gary Steven Corseri\u00a0is a member of the\u00a0<\/i><\/span>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0 He is the grandson of Ukrainian-Jewish and Sicilian-Catholic immigrants.\u00a0 Gary has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and his dramas have been produced on\u00a0<\/i><\/span>PBS<\/span>-Atlanta and in universities, high schools and Little Theaters.\u00a0 He has published 2 novels, 1 full collection and 1 prize-winning chapbook of poems.\u00a0 His poems, articles, fiction and dramas have appeared in hundreds of global publications & websites, including:\u00a0 <\/i><\/span>Countercurrents, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine, The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times,\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Transcend Media Service<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 He has taught at universities in the U.S. and Japan, and in US prisons and public schools.\u00a0 He has worked as a grape-picker in Australia, a gas-station attendant, and an editor. Contact:\u00a0<\/i><\/span>garyscorseri@gmail.com<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Kathy Kelly is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>,\u00a0board president of <\/em>World BEYOND War<\/em><\/a>, an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of <\/em>Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator <\/em>Voices for Creative Nonviolence<\/a>. Three times since 2000, she has been nominated for the <\/em>Nobel Peace Prize. As part of peace teamwork in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US-Iraq wars. Her recent travel has focused on Afghanistan and Gaza, along with domestic protests against U.S. drone policy. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and inmates of U.S. prisons. She lives in Chicago.<\/em> kathy@vcnv.org<\/em><\/a> – info@vcnv.org <\/em><\/a>– <\/em>kathy.vcnv@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathy Kelly has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and among inmates of US prisons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":309627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[229,2394,1177,1243,868],"class_list":["post-309621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-activism","tag-civil-resistance","tag-inspirational","tag-nonviolent-action","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309629,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309621\/revisions\/309629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}