Photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa
Jeff Dietrich and Catherine Morris of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker renewed their wedding vows on Saturday, August 10 during a protest at California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (formerly Air Force Base). Seventy-five people joined them to celebrate their 50th anniversary – five decades together of community, hospitality, love and resistance! – and to commemorate the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. test-launches nuclear missiles from the Vandenberg base.
After renewing their vows, Catherine and Jeff crossed onto base property (90-year-old Catherine with the aid of a walker), along with Frank Cordaro, Nuri Ronaghe and Dimitri Kadiev. All were cited and released.
The protesters then went a nearby park for an afternoon of prayer, celebration and delicious food!
Photo by Jack Cohen-Joppa
COURT UPDATE
by Dennis Apel
On Thursday, November 21, 2024, four peace activists were arraigned in Federal Court for having trespassed at Vandenberg Space Force Base on the central coast of California. The defendants were Catherine Morris and Jeff Dietrich of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, Frank Cordaro of the Des Moines, Iowa Catholic Worker and Dimitri Kadiev, itinerant muralist.
The four had crossed over the green line at Vandenberg on August 10, 2024 in remembrance of the 79th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The act of civil disobedience followed a ceremony outside the Main Gate where Catherine and Jeff renewed their wedding vows after 50 years of marriage and in celebration of Catherine’s 90th birthday.
At the arraignment all four plead guilty of trespassing and, before sentencing, gave powerful statements alluding to Vandenberg’s vital role in our country’s nuclear program, our country’s support of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the theft of resources for the poor by our military budget and the destructive impact of the military on the global environment. In addition Catherine re-read her and Jeff’s wedding vows (see below).
The four were represented by attorney Bob Jacobs, former Los Angeles Catholic Worker and current volunteer at their soup kitchen.
In a stark departure from the long-standing disdain for activists over the years in this courtroom, both the prosecuting attorney and the magistrate judge were clearly moved by the witness of the four defendants. The result was that none of them were given any sentence, either prison time or fines. All were given two years of unsupervised probation and told to stay off the base with the exception of being able to continue to be in the “designated protest area” for future vigils.
Both the prosecuting attorney and the magistrate judge made comments thanking Jeff and Catherine for their dedicated lives of service to the poor.
MARRIAGE VOWS:
We promise to love, cherish and honor each other, we promise that our love for each other will grow into a community of faith and resistance that forms other human beings to be more human, compassionate and to serve the poor.
We promise to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and resist the powers of death, war, in-justice and nuclear destruction as long as we both shall live.
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 resisters?
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.
Front row: Jeff Dietrich, Catherine Morris, Frank Cordaro. Back row: Tensie Hernandez, Dennis Apel, Dimitri Kadiev, Bob Jacobs, Scott Fina