LACW - Catherine & Jeff Sentencing for Aug 10th line crossing PS Frank too

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Frank Cordaro

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Nov 22, 2024, 10:23:32 AM11/22/24

to Iowa Peace List

Privilege to stand in court with Jeff and Catherine. Plead guilty and given a $40 fine , will not pay. And let go. A great day in court... below Jeff's statement. Catherine recited their marriage vows 50 years ago. Very powerful.

I'll be back in DM tomorrow... love

Frank Cordaro

cell 515 490 2490

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Los Angeles Catholic Worker <donot...@wordpress.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 7:03 PM
Subject: Catherine & Jeff Sentencing
To: <frank....@gmail.com>

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Los Angeles Catholic WorkerCatherine & Jeff Sentencing

By LACW Admin on November 21, 2024

Catherine and Jeff appeared at the Santa Barbara Federal Court House today for sentencing for their August 10 trespass arrest at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Great news-- NO JAIL TIME! They both received two years of unsupervised probation.Below is Jeff's pre-sentencing statement:Your honor, I stand before you charged with trespassing onto Vandenberg Space Force Base, to which I proudly plead guilty of crossing the line in protest of nuclear weapons, and the war on the people of Gaza. My wife and I celebrated our 50th anniversary on Hiroshima Day when we did this protest with friends gathered at the base.I am 78-years-old and my wife Catherine Morris is 90. For the last 55 years, we have served the poor and the homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles. My wife has mobility issues and I have MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment), a diagnosed form of memory loss.I am a member of the Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933, as are my friends assembled here today. My role models are, first of all, Jesus Christ, who cared for the poor, was a peacemaker, and an anti-war activist who was crucified by the Roman Empire for civil disobedience. My other role models include Rosa Parks, MLK, Caesar Chavez, Phil and Daniel Berrigan, and others like them. Where would America be without these powerful and courageous resistors? I have three books published on serving the poor and homeless, and I have written hundreds of articles for various media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times and the National Catholic Reporter.My wife and I, under Mayor Tom Bradley, were instrumental in creating a well-defined Skid Row as a place for homeless services—an Ellis Island refuge for the poor and homeless. In the 1990s, along with our colleague Alice Callaghan, we fought to preserve housing for the homeless in City Hall. This action is now under threat from rapacious developers. We also helped establish the Inner City Law Center, which represents the needs of the homeless poor.For 55 years we have run a soup kitchen on Skid Row. On my kitchen days, I get up early so I can leave at 6:30 in the morning with the early crew. I chop onions for the soup pots and tomatoes for the salad. I can no longer stand for the lengthy serving hours, so I sit and hand out napkins, which is a superfluous job. But I smile, hand out napkins just the same, and say God bless you to the poor who pass through our door, and inevitably they respond with the blessings of God. To be blessed by the poor is ineffable.On my “house days,” I prepare meals for our house guests, who were formerly homeless. I clean the toilets of the poor. I hang the laundry on our clothesline for my wife who can no longer walk, and when I hang the laundry that came from the kitchen, I remember the poor who have been served the 500 daily lunches we prepare at Hospitality Kitchen so they can eat in our beautiful dining garden. The Felony Commander-in-Chief was elected because the Democratic Party abandoned the working class and the poor by embracing the same neoliberal policies as Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, and as the Republican Party did.The Felony Commander-in-Chief promised to “drain the swamp,” but he will appoint his billionaire friends to enact the same policies that have strangled the poor and the working class in the past.The “Felony Commander-in-Chief” will illegally deport millions of migrants. We hereby commit ourselves to throwing our bodies under the transport buses to prevent that from happening.So, I ask your honor to be true to the “rule of law,” because today, the “rule of law,” and our merciful God, are our only protection against the Felony-Commander-in-Chief. And someday I hope the “rule of law,” and our God of justice, throw the Felony Commander-in-Chief in jail where he belongs.Those who stood up in the past for the rights of farmworkers to organize; the rights of black people to ride anywhere on a bus; and the resistance to the devastating war in Vietnam are my heroes whom I have spent life emulating.

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