Jim Wallis said that "Some of the best conversations occur behind bars." Fred Brancel will be able to verify that in a month or so. He’s been ordered to report to the Oxford, WI Federal Penitentiary to begin serving a six month sentence for civil disobedience stemming from an arrest in Columbus, Georgia in November. Fred and 41 others were popped for protesting the very existence of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security (aka the School of the Americas), "…a training ground for Latin American assassins and military thugs,
including former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Roberto
D’Aubuisson, architect of El Salvador’s right-wing death squads."
We had dinner with Fred and his wife Mary Ann a month or so before his arrest. Conversation turned on his recent experience in Baghdad as a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams.
Fred is seventy-nine and more active and engaged than people thirty years younger. He expects to be out in time to avoid celebrating his eightieth birthday in prison.
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