Good Friday- 2014-The Wages Of Peace    

 From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

I can remember, distinctly remember, another Good Friday prior to 2014 back in 1971. That was a time when my friend, Peter Paul Markin, an ex-soldier from North Adamsville, coaxed me into attending a Quaker Good Friday silent vigil for world peace on the Boston Common near the Park Street Station entrance. Markin had just a few months before been released from an Army stockade at Fort Devens near Ayer, Massachusetts after about a year for various refusals of lawful orders. Those lawful orders being connected with the idea that he was to don the military uniform of the United States and go quietly if angrily to Vietnam where he was to be assigned a place in an infantry company. To burn and destroy what people and places with which he had no quarrel. After much inner turmoil he decided that he had to say “no” and so he did his “military service” in stir.

Part of his getting out of the stockade in as early as a year (the way things were going he figured he might wind up in the stockade for five to ten years and that was a very distinct possibility) was through the good officers of the Quakers in Cambridge through their American Friends Service Committee which provide him legal and moral witness support while he was incarcerated. After he got out of the Army Markin began to hang around the Cambridge scene and part of that scene entailed hanging around with various younger radical Quakers who met at the Harvard Divinity School as a break-away from the more conservative traditional meeting house over off of Brattle Street (another example that even in the peace community the lines were drawn between young and old and the ways they differently perceived the world).

It was from those young radical Quakers that Markin learned of the tradition of going to the Boston Common on Good Friday for a couple of hours of silent witness on the peace front. This was also neutral territory on the generational front. Although Markin had his qualms about silent vigils and about Quaker pacifism then he felt that he owed them an act of solidarity and agreed to be present. Since we were roomies at the time he persuaded me to go along as well.  

As we came up from the subway station at Park Street on that Good Friday we could see a large circle of maybe two hundred to two hundred and fifty mostly older people silently holding signs and banners or just standing silently by bearing witness to their thoughts of a peaceful world. Nothing weird, or anything like that, unlike let’s say the activity of the usual panhandlers, pick-pockets and pimps who held forth on the Common since time immemorial. Nor the even wilder weirdness of the sarong-draped Hari Krishnas asking for alms and clinking bells. But even in the war-weary American night of 1971 that small (by the standards of the times when thousands could be gathered at the slightest call) silent mob was impressive. And so I joined with Peter Paul and some of his radical Quaker cronies to stand there for a couple of hours while hordes of people came by waving their arms in agreement or making the then ubiquitous two-fingered peace sign.   

Fast forward to 2014- I am not sure where Peter Paul Markin is these days since he and a lady companion have spent the last several months working their way down to Central America but as this Good Friday approached I thought about that time back in 1971 when we, for one of the few times in our “street politics” careers, were actually quiet on a demonstration line. I, we, had made it a policy since were are both now retired to join in at least one street event a month. Since I had not done anything this month yet and did not see anything on the calendar coming up before May Day I figured that I would take the subway into Boston and join the vigil held between twelve and two as I found about from information that I had gleaned from the Internet.

Today as I came up alone from the Park Street subway station I saw about fifty mostly older people, mostly older people who looked like me now, silently holding signs and banners or just standing silently by bearing witness to their thoughts of a peaceful world. Nothing weird, or anything like that, unlike let’s say the usual panhandlers, pick-pockets and pimps who have held forth at that locale since there was a Boston Common. Nor the even wilder weirdness of the ghost of the sarong-draped Hari Krishnas asking for alms and clinking bells. But even in the war-weary American night of 2014 after over a decade of continuous war and more war clouds on the horizon that small (by the standards of these times when hundreds could be gathered at great effort) silent mob was impressive. And so I joined with the ghost of Peter Paul and maybe some of his radical Quaker cronies turned traditional meetinghouse Quakers and stood there for a couple of hours while hordes of people came by mostly ignoring us or with an unobtrusive nod of agreement. All I am sure as bewildered as we are by the permanent war mentality afoot in the land.