- US Air Force Academy

While War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prepared to address the cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation on May 29, about 20 pickets at the south gate held banners of protest. His arriving audience was reminded that "'Rumsfeld is the most ruthless man I know' - Henry Kissinger." Other banners proclaimed "Let Iraq Live" and "Feed the poor, not the Pentagon."

After about half an hour, sheriff's deputies demanded the pickets move across the road. Four refused, believing the order to be an arbitrary denial of free speech. Mary Lynn Sheetz, Peter Sprunger-Froese, Mary Sprunger-Froese, and Bill Sulzman were arrested and charged with trespass. While handcuffed in the squad car, they overheard a police radio dispatcher say of Sulzman: "There is an FBI hit on him as being a member of a terrorist organization."

Sulzman, a former priest and long-time coordinator of the Colorado Springs-based Citizens for Peace in Space, describes himself as a "rather strict nonviolent person." When the four were later booked and released, police denied that such a list existed, insisting there had been a mistake. Yet only a few months earlier and a few dozen miles north, in Denver, peace and other community activists learned that their names and organizations were cataloged in a police file labeled "criminal extremist." Sulzman plans to pursue the source of the comment as his trespass case proceeds. The four are scheduled to enter their pleas on July 29.

For more information, contact Citizens for Peace in Space, POB 915, Colorado Springs, CO 80901, (719)389-0644.