In late May, 2002, Bill Sulzman was arrested in Colorado for picketing on the sidewalk at an Air Force Base when Donald Rumsfeld came to speak to graduates. Two other adults were with him, arrested in the same way. The police said Sulzman was a "affiliated with a terrorist organiztion" but later retracted that. Three months earlier, the same thing happened to me in Arizona (except i was not arrested, i was stopped for allegedly speeding on a slow highway). Two other adults (with no history of federal arrests) were in the car with me. The cop used the same words ("affiliated with a terrorist organization") to justify handcuffing me and detaining the three of us. Demetria Martinez wrote about this and published it in National Catholic Reporter.
Stepping a bit further into the past...you can also find the following story at CatholicWorker.org.
HOLY CROSS SEMINARY PARKING LOT, NORTHERN INDIANA--Paranoia is in fashion in this new era (post-Sept. 11, 2001) in the USA. Although I didn't meet them, I assume that the professional bomb squad workers were not amused when they tried to defuse the car I drive. I am slightly annoyed that my sloppy driveable artwork has been utilized by the FORCES OF FEAR in South Bend Indiana a week after September 11th. "The devil will find work for idle hands to do." My residence is in New Mexico, and I've driven to the "Midwest" to attend some pacifist gatherings and to work on some folk media projects. The car I'm driving needs some serious repair, so I park & ride with others whenever feasible on this journey. Any of you who have ridden in the little red car in question know it's a messy mysterious piece. Out of the "radio zone"/instrument panel you'll see cables snaking into the headliner. Excess mirrors adorn the dashboard, the passenger seat has been removed for extra cargo space, the walls and headliner are covered with swirling paint as well as anti-war & nuclear abolition messages, the window is propped up with pieces of wood, the door handle is a rope, and the hood pops open with a loud BANG. The reality of this vehicle is neither a joke, nor a threat (except to the environment, as with ALL automobiles); it's funky image is a combination of impoverished utility and creative decor. I guess when, in this ridiculous season of war-mongering, such a car is contrasted with the bourgeois sensibilities and oddly poor communication of paranoid campus security guards at Notre Dame University (folks I never met) we end up with a story of wasted time, energy, emotions, and money. My new friend, Father Michael Baxter, told me I could park the little red car in his community's parking lot where he and about 30 other Holy Cross men live. I then carpooled up to Michigan for five days, and straight down to the Christian Peacemaker Congress in Central Indiana. 168 hours after parking the car at the seminary parking, I returned to begin my trek towards New Mexico, only to discover that "vandals or thieves" had rifled through the car and apparently taken nothing except the cap from my 3 gallon water bottle. (They left my used motor oil, antifreeze, gas mask and portable radio.) The strangers unplugged the distributor cap wire as part of their diffusion technique. (I bet their hearts skipped a beat when they popped the hood in its typically noisy way.) Fr. Mike tells me that he found out there was a bomb scare in the parking lot early one morning. The security folk obviously didn't wait to ask all the residents of the seminary if they knew who owned the car with New Mexico plates parked there with suspicious wiry designs and other non-standard alterations. He told the "authorities" he knows the owner of the car (and he knows I am an alleged peace activist). After shutting down traffic for half an hour, the cops and explosives experts determined that the little red metro was not too dangerous, so they went home. (But do they feel more secure about the possibility that people don't want to bomb Indiana?) The media was still curious--and that's their problem in this case--all that time waiting for news of violence in the neighborhood. So many of us are more interested in fear than in love. These are unfortunately dark times indeed! My only complaint is that, with all those resources at their disposal, they failed to leave a note of apology. Actually, I wouldn't have been bothered by that discourtesy so much if they had at least given the engine a tune-up while they were playing around under the hood. An advantage in such better foresight would've been that they wouldn't have had to inconvenience the media and the residents wanting to use the parking lot or adjacent campus roadway. My only compliment is that their offensive vandalism did not include OBLITERATING the car to "save more lives". P.S. I doubt that the FBI was notified; the title alludes to the idea that maybe even their agency doesn't have the wisdom that comes with art appreciation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (CW WEBSITE Editor's note: The South Bend Tribune covered the incident in their September 20th edition with this description of the car: "Someone reported a graffiti-covered car parked in the seminary parking lot, according to the University of Notre Dame and South Bend bomb squad officials. A security officer investigating the car observed that the front passenger seat had been removed and what appeared to be a liquid-filled container and wires were visible within the car. . . . It was determined that there was no bomb. Traffic was diverted for about 30 minutes.") |
